by James Runcie
Approaching a man drinking from a water fountain, I asked in the native tongue where lodgings might be found. After admiring Pedro, he took us to a solid brick house in a narrow street and introduced me to a woman named Doña Tita. She lived in a house occupied entirely by women who, I soon guessed, sold their favours for money (and from my soldiering days, I remembered a woman once taking one hundred cacao beans for her pleasure).
Doña Tita proved to be a lady of both sensuality and wisdom. She also had a great affection for dogs. Taking pity on my plight, and recognising me to be an educated man, she informed me that I could stay in her lodgings without charge if I was prepared to teach her son the rudiments of Latin and let her walk Pedro each evening. This I gladly agreed, and although her son was a somewhat obstinate child of eight, I could see that there might be benefits in staying in such a place while I searched for some sign of Ignacia’s family.
That night I asked the ladies of the house if any people had arrived in the last year from the city of Mexico, for I had known a girl of great beauty there called either Ignacia or Quiauhxochitl. Perhaps I did not express myself clearly, but Doña Tita and the ladies of the establishment seemed confused by my questioning. They told me that they knew none by that name, although so many people arrived from different places, it was impossible to know everyone.
I then informed the assembled company that if she, or any of her relatives, had arrived here it would have been after the siege of Mexico.
At this the ladies stopped and stared at one another.
‘This was long ago,’ said Doña Tita.
‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘I was there but two years ago.’
At this the women began to laugh and shake their heads.
‘You are strange. Perhaps you are ill after your travels. There is no one called Ignacia or Quiauhxochitl here …’
I did indeed feel faint.
Had I travelled all these days and nights to be disappointed?
That night Doña Tita came to my room, and asked if I needed any further comforts. The girls in her care had been amused by my arrival and wished to hear a full account of my adventures. Perhaps I would be good enough to take chocolate with them?
I told them that I would be glad to help in the preparation. This would be my chance to win their trust, and we soon fell into conversation about the best ways in which to drink chocolate. The ladies were extremely interested in my opinions, and were impressed by my insistence that they should add vanilla before the drink was whisked. They also admired my silver molinillo, believing it be an object of some antiquity, but I hastened to assure them that it had newly come from Montezuma’s court, as I had been there at the time of the siege.
Again, the women seemed amused by my response.
‘Sir, we have heard of this war from our grandfathers. If you truly witnessed the fall of Mexico, and are not merely a teller of tales, then you would have to be over a hundred years old.’
‘I was there, I tell you.’
‘It cannot be,’ said a dark and fiercely attractive woman known as Doña María.
‘No, truly, I was there. I was beloved of a woman whom I called Ignacia. I saw the great Montezuma.’
‘Love has touched his brains,’ another observed.
‘More chocolate,’ said Doña María, quickly, as if she wished to cease the conversation.
It seemed that they were dismissing me as a man who dissembled and could talk no sense. I felt dizzy with fear. Was this another of my dreams?
Doña Tita saw my distress.
‘Rest,’ she said, gently, ‘rest, sleep and dream. You will be better in the morning.’
I closed my eyes and began to drift away. Perhaps when I awoke all would return to normal.
The ladies now turned their attentions to Pedro, stroking his ears through their fingers, rubbing his stomach, and playing with him in a manner of which I did not altogether approve. But it seemed as if this too was a dream, an erotic fantasy. Not knowing if I was awake or if I dreamed, I turned away to sleep well and long, leaving any attempt at understanding until the morrow.
At daybreak I took Pedro for a walk around Chiapas. It was a crisp autumn morning. Churches, missions, homes and a small government assembly began to reveal themselves as the light slowly brightened. In the main square I saw a fantastically decorated cathedral with vine-draped columns and vegetable motifs as if it had been enforested in stone. It could have been Santiago or Cadiz, so majestic was its presence, and I could not understand how this building could have been constructed so recently and with such speed. People now emerged from their houses and began to fill the streets, and Pedro raced ahead to greet them. Yet on closer inspection, the townspeople were dressed in a manner that I had not seen before, and seemed to move at a far faster pace than I considered normal.
What was happening to me?
It seemed as if we had stumbled into another New World. Spanish women wore tight bodices and elaborate farthingales in which it must have been extremely difficult to proceed, while the men dressed in effeminate cloaks, unbuttoned doublets and ribboned breeches in which it cannot have been possible to perform any real labour. Chamula Indians were clothed in long white woollen tunics rather than tasselled loincloths; Zincantecans wore pink costumes with ribbons, while their women were dressed in blue rebozos, gathered white blouses, and black skirts wrapped around their hips. In these garments they set out to work in Spanish plantations full of tobacco and cotton under the hot sun. The Indian slaves worked from sunrise to sunset, and there was little of the joy in their faces that I had seen in the Mexico that I remembered. The town had become a factory, and I felt hardness in my heart when I saw the way in which we Spanish had assumed power and lived a life of indolence and disdain, never venturing into the fields where those good people toiled for so many hours.
I soon became disorientated and returned to my lodgings fearing the onset of the debilitating faintness that threatened to overpower me. Back within the comforts of my room, I found myself falling into a deep sleep in which I dreamed once again that Ignacia was for ever unreachable.
I awoke to find Doña Tita mopping my brow. She listened patiently when I eventually told her the story of my life, but then explained, as if to a child, that if my story was true, I must be over one hundred and forty years old. I should understand how hard it was for the women with whom I now lived to believe me.
Thinking of all the events of my former life I acknowledged that some strange fate must have befallen me. Time seemed to have slipped.
Doña Tita encouraged me to spend as much of my recreational time as possible in quiet reflection. She would care for Pedro while I undertook a long convalescence. How long I spent in this fashion I know not, but I do not think that I had ever experienced such loving concern. Two of the girls in the hostelry, Doña María and Doña Julia, even offered me the pleasures of their bedroom, their dark-red blouses revealing much of their breasts beneath, but although sorely tempted, I was too confused to accept their kind proposition, fearing that my brain, already touched by fever, might be tipped into madness by the delights of their flesh.
But as soon as I had regained a modicum of strength, I asked if I could attempt to return to normality by helping the ladies to prepare their meals.
I believed this would not only provide me with unchallenging labour which might aid the restoration of my sanity, but could also give me time in which to think on my past, reconstruct my memory, and plan my future life.
The women accepted my offer with much amusement, doubting my abilities in the kitchen, but asking most particularly for the chocolate recipe of which I had spoken.
‘We know what you can do with your molinillo,’ they laughed.
And so it was that my composure slowly returned. The ladies helped me to crush sugar cane and cinnamon, added to sweeten the paste. We also included orange blossom water, almonds and dark ambergris before experimenting with different quantities of aniseed, vanilla, chillies and hazelnuts. The
hostelry became a veritable laboratory of chocolate and I think our most exceptional breakthrough came when we decided that such a drink might be better prepared by adding hot water at an earlier stage of its creation. By mixing two teaspoons of boiling water into the first mixture of powdered cacao, vanilla and cinnamon, we were able to make a thicker and smoother paste. The heat of the water helped the cacao to melt and then, by adding the mixture to a beaten egg in the bottom of a serving jug, we created such a dense and richly textured creation that it was almost possible for a ladle to stand within it.
The first time we tasted it we knew that we had invented an utterly transcendent concoction.
The women gave the drink to their customers, and the men even took the recipe home to their wives. It became a sensation in the town and word spread that I had created a veritable nectar.
Every time I made it I could not help but think of Ignacia. The chocolate became my means of remembering her, the warmth of the aroma never failing to take me back to the happiness we had known on the plantation. I was filled with the recollection of the completeness we had shared, mourning its passing, and lived within the dream of that memory, away from the cares and troubles of the world.
After a few months people began to tell me that they were quite unable to live, even for a few hours, without the ingestion of my hot chocolate, and that they would surely die if they were denied it. Indeed they confessed that they had been made mad by their passion for it.
The women even let it be known that they were now unable to endure the length and solemnity of Mass in the cathedral without resort to this refreshment. Their small round bellies ached for chocolate and they would perish if denied it for more than an hour. This consequently occasioned the arrival of their maids in the middle of the Divine Service, bringing hot chocolate to aid their mistresses so that they might bear the contemplation of temptation, sin and the mortification of the flesh with equanimity.
This ingestion of chocolate by so many of the women in church inevitably caused great interruption. The congregation could hear neither Epistle nor Gospel, so great was the clatter of consumption and conversation. After a few weeks the Bishop of the city opined that this insatiable activity, and the opportunity to exchange glances, looks, and even conversation between friends, appeared to be the veritable climax of the Divine Service, and that the women were replacing the sober ingestion of the body and blood of our Lord and Saviour with an altogether more worldly refreshment. He denounced the drink from his pulpit, warning that if this interruption of the Mass did not cease then he would be forced to ban the taking of chocolate altogether.
The women were horrified, and gathered together in resistance. Such a ban could not be countenanced. They could not live without chocolate.
Their first recourse was to seduction.
After a great amount of discussion, Doña Tita dispatched herself to the house of the Bishop and pleaded with him for lenience, eventually offering the comforts of her bed if only he would allow her to take chocolate during the Mass.
This was a brave and dangerous strategy, risking further condemnation, but the Bishop wavered in the midst of his first test, drinking Doña Tita’s chocolate and contemplating her delights. It was clear that his chastity and sobriety might not survive for long, since Doña Tita was possessed of the most extraordinary beauty, and if the Bishop had ever wondered about the temptations of the flesh, he could tell that he would surely learn of their delights more speedily from this extraordinary woman than from any other living mortal. Only by a lifetime of self-discipline, repression and restraint did he manage to steady himself against her charms, and he asked her to leave without granting her any concession.
But Doña Tita knew that the man was tempted, and was pleased when the Bishop sent a gift the next morning to thank her for her visit, offering her an open invitation to his house and enclosing a necklace of orange and black rosary beads, consisting of the vividly hued peas of the fruit known as abrus precatorius. This he urged her to wear directly against her ample bosom as a talisman to protect her from evil.
Doña Tita delighted in the gift, and wore it through many a hot afternoon of her labour; but once the Bishop discovered that she still enjoyed the ardour of men in ways denied to him, and had refused to alter her behaviour at Mass, he returned to his attack on the drinking of chocolate with renewed vigour. He issued a proclamation, excommunicating any that saw fit to eat or drink within his church.
The women of the city, far from being chastised by this fierce instruction, became positively militant, and sent messages to the Bishop stating that they could no longer continue to attend Mass under this new ordinance, for they would die of pain if they were forced to do so. They took to their houses, refusing to leave for even the smallest of trifles, sending messages to each other by their maids, and denied their husbands the favours of the marriage bed.
The Bishop stood in his ornate baroque pulpit and preached to an empty cathedral. Quite unmoved, he made it clear that he preferred the honour of God above that of his own life.
This remark was to prove fatal.
For it was well known that the Bishop still took chocolate in his own home. His page, a young man named Salazár, had been ordered to stir the drink each evening while repeating the words of the Salve Regina. His Grace believed that this was the only manner in which chocolate could be whisked to perfection, for it would then reach a perfect level of froth on the final Amen.
Unfortunately, Salazár was not as faithful to the Bishop as might be expected, for he spent many nights in the arms of Doña María, the sister of Doña Tita. She had informed him of my new additions to the chocolate that they drank, and how its taste had improved quite immeasurably. She felt certain that the Bishop would enjoy the new configuration of his favourite bedtime beverage.
Salazár then returned with the ingredients for my recipe, telling the Bishop of the delights awaiting him if he did but try the drink, if only as a means of understanding why the women of the city were so distracted.
At first his master was suspicious. He was also angered by the time Salazár took in its preparation and the delay before he could hear the reassuring sound of his familiar prayer.
Salve, regina, mater misericordiae
Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve!
When the page returned, the Bishop took one sip and adamantly refused the concoction.
‘This chocolate does not taste of the Salve Regina.’
Salazár removed the drink and stirred again, reciting the prayer once more. He could not understand how the Bishop, a positive misogynist, should so desire the invocation of a prayer by women, about women, and for women.
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Evae,
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes
In hac lacrimarum valle.
He returned, the Bishop tasted again, but still no satisfaction came.
‘This is not how I like my chocolate.’
For the third time Salazár removed himself to the adjoining room.
Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
Nobis post hoc exsilium ostende,
O clemens, o pia,
O dulcis virgo Maria.
At last he returned.
The Bishop took up the drink, his face clouded by doubt and weariness. But then, as he drank again, a strange sense of calm possessed him.
‘That is better,’ he replied, ‘most sweet.’ He sipped again. ‘It fills the mouth, leaving no other need.’
It was to be his last drink upon this earth. For Doña María had included among the cardamom, cinnamon and chillies, a well-ground mixture of jimson weed, henbane and belladonna.
After ten minutes the Bishop clasped his stomach and fell to the floor.
In the next few hours he became increasingly feverish, crying out that he had seen visions of the Virgin made in chocolate, of Jesus nailed to a chocolate cross, and of the disciples eating his flesh and blood. He shouted Doña Tita’s name in passion and vengeance, a
nd fell into a wild delirium. Physicians were sent for, but their aid was futile. The vitriolic priest was dying of the deadliest of poisons and the chocolate had disguised its taste to perfection.
The Bishop took a week to die, his body swelling to such an extent that the slightest touch caused his skin to erupt. His blackened fingers fell away from his hands, and thick white liquid seeped from his skin. The physician pronounced epithelial necrosis and oedema of rumen, reticulum, and liver.
This, then, was death by chocolate.
The dispute was over. The women dutifully donned their robes of mourning but were inwardly delighted that they had won such a victory. They would corrupt a new priest, and the drinking of chocolate would continue, uninterrupted by the demands of the Mass. Life could return to normal.
But three days after the death of the Bishop, a curious event befell us. At daybreak on the Sabbath, Doña Tita fell ill and died herself.
This was strange, for she had always been the most vigorous and lively of women, and we were at a loss to understand what could possibly have caused her untimely demise. There was no contagious illness in the town and no other woman had suffered from such a fever. Only after the physician had searched her quarters most extensively was the cause of her death discovered.
The rosary given to her by the Bishop had proved to exude a deadly poison. It had seeped into Doña Tita’s body through her skin during the sweat of her amorous labours. The more energetic her lustful endeavours had become, the more swiftly the poison had entered her body, until after several days and nights of love she had been so ravaged by the essence of abrus precatorius that she gave up the ghost.
Clearly this was an extremely dangerous town in which to live, and I began to fear for my own safety: a suspicion that proved justified later that night when I awoke to find Pedro barking furiously and Doña María lying full across my chest, straddling my body with her fine legs.