by Paula Guran
“But this is the main house.”
“I know,” she said.
The servants brought in the dishes. Pale fish fried with capers and alcaparras, turkey in red-squash seed sauce. There was also toksel and a myriad of other things. An impressive bounty and he knew much thought had been put into it.
“So you are engaged,” Imelda said. “I hear she is not of the blood.”
“No,” Eduardo replied.
“I have not told father. He’ll be upset.”
“It is 1965, cousin. Our medical issues should not isolate us.”
“Our medical issues? Is that what they’ve taught you in Mexico City?” she said, smiling at him.
“Superstition hangs thick over the family, but I believe we are not the monsters of old legends.”
“What do you think we are?” Imelda asked, chuckling with skepticism.
“We have certain genetic issues and I will not argue that heredity has not gifted us with a strange mutation, a degenerative condition, but these tales of gods and—”
“Tales!” Imelda exclaimed.
“It’s all it is. We are flesh and blood, like anyone else.”
“You have been away from home for far too long.”
“I’m a modern man, not some superstitious peasant.”
She was upset. He knew she would be. But were there not stranger people than them? Conjoined twins, people missing limbs. Julia Pastrana, born covered in fur, who had toured the world as the Ugliest Woman in the World. Yes, his family had its collection of oddities but also its set of healthy, regular folks. Juana, for one, but also Grandmother Susana who had died at the age of seventy-five, wrinkled and bowed by age, but otherwise perfectly normal. Eduardo’s own father had perished in a car accident, handsome as he’d ever been, with no medical issues. And Lucia, Imelda’s mother, died giving birth to her, but no abnormalities marred her body.
They ate in silence. Once in a while Mario would walk in, refill their glass, then walk away.
“When our lawyer phoned he said your father needed to discuss an urgent matter with me. Do you know what it is?”
She glanced at him, uncertain.
“Please, tell me.”
“Father will not last through the summer. He wants to . . . he’d ask you to be head of the family.”
“Head? Me?” Eduardo said with a chuckle.
“Who else?”
“Well, I should expect that would be you, quite frankly,” Eduardo said.
“A woman? It’ll never do, you know that. The family won’t let it be, Tomas will come from El Principio with his lot to set us straight. The minor branches will object, too.”
All of a sudden she was on her feet, rounding the table, and she was sitting next to him, clasping his hands between her own.
“You don’t need to do anything. I can run this household, I’ve been running it for the past couple of years and doing quite well at it. All you need to do is marry me.”
He recalled when they were children. On one occasion she’d forced him to play the groom and she the bride, they’d been married with her doll officiating the ceremony. It was not an odd thing for cousins to wed, not for the Marins. The blood, after all, mattered very much. But he’d grown out of those peculiar notions long ago. His family was old-fashioned, trapped in the past; he was not.
“I am engaged,” he muttered.
“To a stranger.”
“To a nice girl.”
“You’d have Tomas come here, to handle the affairs of the house? My father sent him away for a reason.”
“Imelda, I have a life in Mexico City.”
She released his hands and stood up, her eyes cold.
“You did not write. You said you would but you didn’t write a single letter.”
She left him with that.
His uncle called for him the next morning. Eduardo had seldom been admitted to his room. It felt like a sacrilege to walk past the paintings of long-dead Marins hanging from the walls and approach the bed where Zacarias lay. Even more of a sacrilege to stare down at the pitiful man, old and shrunken, completely bald, drowning in the pillows. He had a rash on his face, his hands were gnarled, stiff with arthritis. How odd and different he seemed now.
“You look just like your father,” Zacarias said in a rasping, strained voice. “So handsome. How old are you now?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three. Such an age. Sit down.”
Eduardo sat by the bed.
“I will go away this summer.”
“Uncle, has a doctor come to see you?”
“A doctor. It is the change, my boy. Soon I’ll go to our cenote.”
Yes, the old ways of the family. When the “change” came the Marins threw themselves into the waters of a sacred cenote. Ritual suicide. Eduardo had never been witness to any of these “partings” – children could not witness the rituals – but he’d known of them. They were all instructed in the mysticism of such an experience. When he was small Eduardo had truly believed that the physical changes in some of his family members marked a supernatural change. Now he thought better of it. Disease could cause dramatic changes. A degenerative condition could be the culprit. One need only look at a patient afflicted with syphilis to see the truth of this.
“We should take you to a hospital. The middle of the jungle is no place for you.”
“I am going nowhere. Imelda tells me she has spoken to you about the household.”
“She did. I am needed back in Mexico City.”
“With that woman?”
“My fiancé, Natalia, yes, for one. There’s also my job. I’m an architect, uncle, not a family patriarch.”
“She’s an outsider. Your father married an outsider. You know what happened.”
He did. His mother had abandoned him and his father. He’d looked her up after he moved to Mexico City. They spoke over the phone. She had a new family, she told him. Other children. She would not see him. She hung up. He wondered what Natalia would say if he told her they must move to Yucatán. He tried to imagine her in the stifling heat, baking inside the white hacienda. He could not.
“I love her.”
“You don’t know love,” his uncle muttered. “You don’t know anything. It was a bad idea to send you to the capital, but your father insisted. He said it would do you good. What has the city taught you? Scorn for your own.”
He wanted to protest that he certainly knew love, that he loved Natalia. That he’d learnt how to live a life free of legends and whispers. He held back, knowing what his uncle would think.
“I care about the family.”
“Listen to me,” his uncle rasped, extending his hand and placing it on Eduardo’s knee. It looked more like a claw than a hand. “You will know no happiness outside of La Ceiba. You belong here. The water and the land call for you.”
“Uncle . . .”
“I will depart soon. Remain in Yucatán until then. Give me that.”
“Very well, Uncle.”
“Good,” the old man said, closing his eyes.
His father’s photographs of Mayan murals depicting Chaac, the rain god – shown with a human body and amphibian scales – spanned from the bottom to the top of the staircase and he paused to examine each one of them. Near the bottom there was one photograph different from the rest, showing his father with a camera around his neck. Eduardo smiled, pressing a hand against the frame.
He was startled by the sound of laughter and saw six children ready to bound down the stairs. Girls and boys in ages ranging from four to about ten. He recognized the girl in the pink dress. These were his little cousins, then. As soon as they caught sight of him they ran off. They seemed afraid. He supposed he would look a bit frightful the way he was dressed. They were still clad in clothes from the Porfiriato, creatures from sepia-toned photographs, while he sported a flamboyant nylon shirt. It was as if time had stopped at La Ceiba. It was a minor miracle they had electricity.
Eduardo wonder
ed what his father would have thought of him if he’d been able to see him now. He’d been different from the rest of the Marins, more outgoing and daring, and he’d had no fear of modernity with his cars and his trips to Mexico City. But he’d loved La Ceiba. Eduardo could not comprehend that love.
He went outside, to the back of the house, and stared at the vegetation bordering the perimeter of the property. Tall, lush trees, the jungle awaiting him at just a few paces. He could hear birds singing, the insects making their music, monkeys rustling in the trees. It was so different from the sounds of Mexico City, so alien.
“I am going to the cenote, are you coming?”
He turned around to see Imelda behind him. She wore another old-fashioned white dress that reached her ankles, her hair was pinned behind in a bun. In the city the girls wore mini-skirts and their hair was cut short.
“I was hoping to find Mario,” he said. “I want him to send a telegram.”
“It’s market day,” Imelda said. “Mario left for He’la’ already. He’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He cursed his luck. Imelda looked at him and smiled.
“You should come with me to the cenote, it will do you good.”
He’d loved the cenote. They’d played pirates one whole summer after he read a book about them. He was Francis Drake and she was John Hawkins, and they both attacked San Juan de Ulúa, like the book said. He’d even stolen the sword in father’s room – the one that had belonged to an uncle of theirs, the one who had been an officer when Mexico was still called New Spain – and taken it with them for their game.
“I have no swimsuit.”
She chuckled. “You can swim in your underwear, which is what I intend to do. I thought you were a modern man,” she said mocking him.
It was dreadfully hot. He’d forgotten just how oppressive the weather could be. He’d been looking for a fan the previous night, to no avail. Even the water that flowed from the ancient taps seemed warm.
“Very well,” he said.
The trail that snaked behind the house quickly led them to the cenote. The Mayans thought the god Chaac lived in these pools of water. But as a child the cenote behind the house had simply been a place for merriment.
They approached its edge and he peered into its perfect blue waters. Imelda unbuttoned her dress and leapt into the water in her slip. He was a bit more cautious, descending the ancient limestone steps, dipping a foot in the water, then finally jumping in.
“Have you forgotten how to swim?” Imelda asked.
“It’s been a while.”
She disappeared under the water, re-emerging far from him.
There was a stone carving of a two-tailed mermaid in the old machine house, her face serene and perfect. Imelda looked a bit like the mermaid, enchanting in her loveliness. It was easy to believe, watching Imelda swim, why people might have told those strange stories about the Marins. Her dark eyes pierced him, her laughter was all silver.
He recalled that they used to compete with each other, seeing who could hold their breath the longest under the water, then jumped up, gasping for air and breaking into laughter. And he felt like that in that instant, as though he were gasping for air.
He stretched out a hand to touch her face.
He realized he had been moving closer to her as she swam and they were now facing each other. His hand stilled in the space between their bodies, he pulled it back, pulled himself away.
“I think I’ve had enough swimming for a day,” he said.
He went up the steps and sat next to the edge of the cenote to dry himself. Imelda emerged and sat by his side. Her slip clung to her body. She ran her hands through her hair. He was careful not to look at her, instead focusing on the vegetation.
“I need to see if Mario is back,” he muttered and walked toward the house.
Eduardo sent two telegrams. One to the office and another to his fiancée. He hoped he did not have to remain long. But two days turned into four, and four became six. On the seventh day he seriously considered leaving despite his promise to his uncle. The seventh night found him pacing around his room. He could not sleep, the heat allowed him no respite day after day. When he could lie down and close his eyes he had strange dreams he could not fully recall but that followed him like a fog.
There was something else that unsettled him: his cousin Imelda in her white dresses of ancient provenance, her black hair pulled back. She was very beautiful. He was not blind to her charms. In fact, he was very aware of them. When they sat in wicker chairs in the interior garden of the hacienda, sipping cold glasses of tamarind water, he’d turn his head and look at the sweat sliding down her long graceful neck. Or he’d watch her in the library, as she read an old book, her full lips silently mouthing a word. Desire cut deep and he had to remind himself that Natalia waited for him in Mexico City.
Day after day, night after night.
The seventh night he finally stopped pacing and went downstairs in a vain quest for ice (he should have known better). Instead he found Imelda sitting in the Blue Room listening to an ancient gramophone, ghostly music, some melody he had not heard before. All strings and loneliness.
She sat in her father’s chair, fanning herself. The fan had belonged to their grandmother, he recognized it. It had one small break at the shoulder of the right guard and the paper lining was split in several spots, but it was still a thing of beauty.
As was Imelda.
She looked up at him as he stood in the doorway hesitating, not knowing if he should step in.
“I didn’t wake you with the music, did I?” she asked.
“I was up,” he muttered.
She wore a green robe instead of her customary white. It was embroidered with images of leaping frogs, Chaac’s messengers.
He felt awkward in her presence, an interloper.
“You hate it here, don’t you?”
“It’s very different from the city,” he offered.
“What is so interesting about the city that you don’t want to stay in La Ceiba?”
“I have a life there.”
“You had a life here before you left. You were happy.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been happy here the past few days, have you not? Swimming in the cenote, talking to me, dining on your favorite dishes.”
“Yes,” he said, exasperated. “Imelda, you are dear to me, but I will not do what your father asks of me. I don’t belong here anymore in this old house. Christ, nobody does. You should come to the city with me, that’s what you should do.”
“To the city?”
“Yes! You could go to university, meet people. You are cooped up in this place with only silly legends and stories for company.”
“They are not silly legends,” she said.
Imelda closed her fan and put it aside. She rose, looking him straight in the eye.
“It is our legacy.”
She walked toward Eduardo, shrugging out of her robe. She was naked beneath. She raised her hands, holding her hair up, and turned around, revealing her back to him. A trail of . . . scales, it looked like scales, some skin imperfection, some mark . . . ran down Imelda’s spine, a delicate tessellation that ended at her buttocks. She looked at him over her shoulder with disdain.
“Is this some skin condition? Do you know of an ointment that will fix it?”
Eduardo extended a hand, his fingertips brushing her spine. Imelda shivered and he pulled his hand back, as quick as if he’d touched an open flame.
“You were the brave one when we were children,” she said casually, letting her hair fall upon her back again, as if she were not nude in front of him. Perfect and nude.
He could not think what to say.
She walked out of the room and he willed himself to remain anchored to that spot, to not follow her.
Mario knocked on his door early the next morning. Zacarias, he said, was going to the cenote. Eduardo knew which one he meant. There could be no other: the old ceremon
ial one, the place he’d heard about in whispers as a child, where the elders tossed gold and jade into the water once a year. The Mayans thought the cenotes were portals to the realm of the dead, Xibalba, but his family called it by another name, Y’ha-nthlei, and the cenote was Yliah’he. It had no meaning in Mayan, this was an older language, the elders had told them. A language from before the Conquest, before the great pyramids that rose upon the limestone bedrock of Yucatán. Much of the knowledge had been lost through the years, but some true names and words remained. Yliah’he.
Eduardo dressed slowly, dreading the trip. The mirror, weary with age, reflected his tired face. He had barely slept, the image of Imelda seared into his mind.
Mario, Aunt Celeste, and Zacarias rode in the automobile while Eduardo and Imelda went on horse behind them. The car moved very slowly, following an old road that was by some small miracle well kept.
They traveled in silence, Eduardo gripping the reins tightly, wanting to turn back. But he realized this was inevitable, Zacarias would not listen to reason and Eduardo was exhausted, blasted by the heat and the lack of sleep and the sharp pangs of desire. He would not protest.
The car stopped. They had reached Yliah’he.
Mario stood by the car and helped Zacarias out, but he would go no further. He handed Aunt Celeste an antiquated oil lantern to light the way down the steep, wet stairs leading to the cave. Imelda helped Zacarias walk. Eduardo followed last, watching his footing.
They managed to reach a ledge that led down to the water’s edge and Eduardo looked up.
A circular opening at the top of the cenote let in the sunlight, illuminating the water. There were very complex cave systems in Yucatán, and he had the feeling Yliah’he’s undulating water connected to incredibly deep, long rivers.
“Eduardo, help me,” Imelda said.
He took hold of Zacarias left arm and Imelda held the right one. Together they walked into the cool water, heading towards the circle of light. Small white fish, blind from living in darkness for generations, brushed against his feet. The white ladies, they called the fish. He remembered catching them together with Imelda in other cenotes, both of them giggling at the strange creature’s broad snout, its translucent dorsal fin.