by Bea Gonzalez
“We are powerless to do anything here, Mr. Nelson, it is not our nation, not our fight. But it is time, I think, to wake those in our own country up to the situation they are helping to create by purchasing the fibre made from this infernal plant.”
Nelson had listened in silence to Turner’s story, the story that would be published abroad the following year to the rage of the henequen magnates, who knew, at the very least, that some things were best kept hidden, that some things would never be understood. Nelson had listened in silence because he knew that there was some work that was best left to others, best left to the reformers like Turner who sought to set the world to rights with paper and pen.
“I am here to observe, Mr. Turner,” the naturalist had said, “to catalogue nature’s bounty without opinion or judgment interfering in any way.”
“And I, sir, am here to record,” the journalist had replied, “to be a witness to the injustices being committed and bring the news back to the world.”
It is madness, madness all, Nelson says to himself now, thinking of the fate of the Passenger Pigeon that once thundered over American skies and that was now mere moments from following the course of the Dodo and the Labrador Duck. Gone—them and so many more—vanished due to man’s stupidity, man’s unquenchable greed. Yes, madness rules the world as it has from the very first—a madness that allows for the destruction of a species, the decimation of a people through incalculable abuse and so many other abhorrent things, so many that the human imagination could not hope to cope with the enormity of the burden, could not hope to assimilate all the despair.
Time, he hopes, will find a cure. The only way to survive it now is thus—with field glasses pointed to where one can catch a glimpse of the tiny lights of perfection that roam the sky—here a Pygmy Kingfisher, there a Caribbean Dove, a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl perched on a branch above.
Nelson looks up now and the light begins to fade from his face, fading, fading until darkness turns to pitch black and no form can be discerned on the stage.
SCENE THREE
In a Mérida bookstore
The Librería Maya, founded by Sofia’s grandfather, Miguel Duarte, before his much-lamented passing years ago, sits just three blocks to the east of the great cathedral, a location he had chosen carefully so that he could be serenaded by the ringing of the church bells as they called people to worship, or celebrated the life of a saint or tolled for a dearly departed soul. Sofia’s own father, Roberto, had fallen in love with the cathedral bells as a child and had made it his business later on to learn all there was to know about the ringer’s art. By the time he was twenty-one he had travelled the length of the Yucatán, visiting churches big and small where, with the approval of the verger, he would lovingly inspect the bells, gauging their weight, their tonal quality, how difficult or easy they were to handle, how each of them sounded in their different vestments of mourning, celebration and prayer call.
We are men tormented by an insatiable need to know, old Miguel had commented as he watched his son pack his bags, ready to embark on one of his improbable journeys, but he had ushered him off gladly, knowing full well that while today it was the church bells that called out to him, tomorrow it would surely be something else—marine history, mapmaking techniques of the seventeenth century, the mythologies of the native Indians, the scientific classification of the region’s wonderful birds. There was no subject too small for the Duarte imagination; no day passed that did not present an opportunity to become obsessed with a new area of concern. It was a curiosity that had filtered down through the generations like a hereditary virus and whose latest victim was none other than our lead soprano herself.
And there she is now, inside the bookstore, dressed in a fetching pale pink dress, seated at an ebony escritoire, gazing at a favourite book. All around her, in shelves that rise upwards of twelve feet, are the leather-bound books that arrive monthly from London, Paris, New York and Madrid, venerable tomes of poetry, dictionaries of a dozen kinds, atlases and scrolls of ancient maps, all the works that are lately preying on the popular imagination, adventure novels by Fernández y González, Alexandre Dumas, Pérez Escrich and Jules Verne. And, of course, who can forget the catechisms and Lives of the Saints that are pored over endlessly by the Meridanos during the sobremesa, that hour after the Sunday meal has been consumed when the tablecloth is lifted, an oil lamp is solemnly lit, and the family congregates around the table to listen to the elder sons read.
It is late February and although the heat is building it has not yet reached its peak. The scorching winds have begun to blow from the south, bringing with them the scent of freshly burnt forest scrub. The air inside the librería is being cut by the blades of a fan—swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. The sound is comforting, it silences the doubts, the many worries that are plaguing Sofia’s mind. Well, in truth, one worry looms large among the crowd. One worry is growing bigger and bigger with no end in sight.
It has to do with the dance of the eyes.
Carlos Blanco Torres, the dandy who had once restricted himself to merely gazing at her during the Sunday evening promenades, is growing bolder with the passing of time. Of late, he has even begun to appear at her father’s store, where he asks for books he is unlikely ever to read. François Coppée’s A Romance of Youth the first day. Rudyard Kipling’s The Seven Seas the next. El Gran Galeoto by josé Echegaray y Eizaguirre the following day; a copy of Fowler’s The King’s English, the revised edition, for his library the day after that.
Whenever the young man appears, Sofia makes herself as invisible as she can at the back of the store, burying her nose in whatever book happens to be near lest assumptions should be made and she is forced to listen to yet another lecture on decorum from her aunt, or worse, from her grandmother, who has suddenly taken to staring at her intently as if attempting to extract Sofia’s very thoughts from her head.
Seated at the back, her face buried inside the pages of the most ample tome she can find, Sofia can still feel the weight of the dandy’s eyes as they travel down her face and her side. Good God, can it be true? Can this man be arriving at the librería with more than a book in mind? She hesitates to think it so—not out of any false humility, mind you—but because she refuses to believe she could be cursed with such ill luck.
She lifts her eyes every so often, turns her face to gaze at the front where Carlos speaks to her father about this title or that, and then, just as quickly, returns her eyes to the book that shelters her, trying with all her might to concentrate on the blurry words.
Finally, after weeks of this routine, after weeks of doubting her instincts and then confirming them with the occasional furtive glance at the front, she admits to herself what she will from that moment on attempt to conceal from everyone else. Carlos Blanco Torres has most definitely fixed his eyes on her, has begun the dance of the eyebrow la tia once so aptly described.
Horrors! she thinks, aghast. Calamity! she writes inside the journal she has kept since she was old enough to write. And then she brings her pen to her lips, thinks hard, dips pen into inkwell and adds: Something Must Be Done. She underlines it once, stops, and then underlines it again, anxiety pouring freely from her hand.
Above all, above all, she thinks, heart beating rapidly, nerves aflame, this is a disaster best kept to oneself. If the three madwomen of Mérida should learn of the news, things will surely go from bad to worse. The pressure to join in the dance will be tremendous, unbearable, she will be made to tango whether she likes it or not, for she has been put on this earth, it seems, to fulfill the schemes of those three women no matter how distasteful, how insane those schemes may be. Because despite Carlos Blanco’s position, despite the fact that he is the son of one of the region’s most important henequen magnates, despite the lure of the box in the theatre, the diamonds, the access to the European modistes, Sofia is sure she does not want to engage Carlos’s eye in a dance, does not want to begin the lengthy flirtation that will lead to the altar even at the advanced age of t
wenty-two.
No, Sofia has been planning an alternative future for some time. She is determined, against all odds, to travel down a much different path.
Yes, the dandy must be stopped, she thinks. This silly dance must be brought to an end, she writes. But how, Sofia? Think.
There is Mr. Nelson, yes, the most wonderful man in the world, a trusted friend of her father, who welcomed the American naturalist into his house when he first arrived in the Yucatán almost fifteen years before. She has thought often of approaching Mr. Nelson, of asking this man who has watched her grow from a young girl into the woman she is now, a woman who has a special place in his heart—she knows this, she can see it in his smile—she has often considered asking for his help. He had, after all, on her insistence, taught her how to classify mammals and birds, what to look for, what to record, what to omit. And he is an American, never forget. Women in America can do many things, are allowed moments of liberty that their Mexican sisters cannot even aspire to in their dreams. Las locas, is the way the Mexicans refer to the women who dare to stray too far from the nest—the crazy ones, despised, ridiculed, exiled to back parlours and madhouses so they may not be seen or heard. Yes, what Sofia needs is to make her way north, find a way to be allowed to forge her own path, make her own decisions, live the life she wishes for herself. But how? she asks herself. How?
She thinks resentfully of Diego Clemente, Mr. Nelson’s Spanish assistant, who disappeared into the backroads of the region to begin work on Mr. Nelson’s bird guide. She has thought many times of the Spaniard, the usurper who has taken her rightful place by Mr. Nelson’s side. Yes, he may well be talented with the brush, but she too has been much praised for her abilities, can beautifully depict a trogon, a jay or a hawk. Mr. Nelson himself has told her so. What is more, she has been trained in the finer points of species identification, has watched and learned from the American since she was old enough to be entranced by his work.
A passing fancy, her father had called it, when she had first asked Mr. Nelson to teach her all the things he knew about animals, plants and birds. She is just ten years old, her tastes will change as she grows. Teach her, teach her, it will amuse her, but be careful around the other women of the house eh, Edward? her father had added, a chuckle in his words. He loved to indulge his daughter, but he was wary of the territory, knew better than to throw himself unarmed to the dogs. His daughter’s interests were fine now but later, later, well, later, he reasoned, she herself would surely abandon them to the things that entranced those of the fairer sex—embroidery, the piano, all manner of dances and balls.
Who would have thought he could have been so wrong? Sofia thinks, smiling to herself. Like her father, and his father before him, Sofia is in love with the feel and the smell of paper, in love with the possibilities waiting inside the pages of obscure volumes where she learns the secrets of apothecaries, the size and look of the heavens; where she can roam the streets of Victorian England or the plains of sixteenth-century Spain. She is thankful her father has no such misgivings about her, a daughter, taking an interest in what has clearly been written for the eyes of men, that he has stood firm in the face of her grandmother’s strident objections about bringing the girl to a place of possible ruin. “Nonsense,” he had told his mother, “Sofia is never there alone. What could possibly happen to the girl inside the confines of a bookstore?” Harrumph, his mother had replied, “That store will addle her brain, mi hijo,” she warned him. “That store will corrupt her weak feminine heart.” But he had held his ground—poor Papá, only this once maybe; he was not usually able to withstand his mother’s violent assaults—but here she was, in her own private sanctuary, away, in the mornings at least, from the old woman’s grasping claws.
And why in heavens not? She is, after all, a señorita hecha y derecha, a woman down to the tips of her toes, and she loves to be useful, loves to spend the mornings here helping to catalogue the books that arrive from the United States, England and Spain. Never mind that there are few customers to pore over the volumes that arrive here in crates. Never mind her grandmother’s loud objections, her complaints about young women wandering into men’s areas of concern, wandering into a world which does not belong to them, venturing too far from the realm of needle and thread.
She thinks again of Diego Clemente and envy once again darkens her face. Another emotion weaves its way upwards as well, curiosity perhaps? Interest? No matter, all other thoughts are quickly suppressed—after all, more than two months have passed since their eyes locked in the cathedral. She cannot even recall his face with any clarity anymore, does not even remember why her eyes had been drawn his way at all.
And, just as if the usurper had heard each of her thoughts, a few minutes later it is Diego Clemente himself who enters through the door, with Mr. Nelson and Very Useful following closely behind.
Sofia looks up as she hears the door open; her mouth prepares to form a greeting, but, finding it is the Spaniard who is before her, the words quickly dissolve. For his part, Diego, who has until that moment been listening pensively to a story being told by Mr. Nelson, is suddenly frozen to the spot looking not—as you would imagine—at the young woman, but the book she holds in her hands.
It is, as it turns out, one of the most important books in her father’s collection, one that will never be offered up for sale. It had been acquired with the aid of a New York bookseller by the name of Richard Smith who, wandering through Mérida once on his way to explore the by now famous Mayan ruins, would declare himself forever indebted to Don Roberto for his kind assistance, his enthusiasms, his intimate knowledge of the beloved terrain.
What is it, you ask?
Ah, in a million years you will never guess. For it is none other than one of the volumes of the famed octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, published in 1842, hand-coloured and magnificent with all of the plates intact so that she can admire the Brewer’s Black-bird or the Crimson-Throated Purple Finch if she likes. And there are so many other treasures to be had in between. There, in all their glory, are the Cape May Wood Warbler, the Burrowing Day Owl, the Louisiana Tanager, the homely but comforting Brown Finch.
“Careful with that, hija,” her father never fails to warn her when the beloved book is in her hands, for he cannot help himself, cannot suppress the fear that surfaces around this book, an anxiety he rarely feels even when contemplating the dangers that could afflict his own children or the state of his deplorable finances as he sinks further and further into debt.
Sofia is careful. A book like this is a treasure, she thinks, and although she cannot keep herself from wanting to touch it, she is careful to ensure no harm comes to it—it is, after all, in such a pristine state.
For Diego Clemente, who is standing there with a stupefied look on his face, the book is bringing to mind memories he had thought permanently erased. He is thinking of a ten-year-old boy who had once sat in another bookstore an ocean away, hiding behind that same book, trying with those beautiful birds to drown out the unhappiness that trickled down from the floors above.
“May I see that book?” Diego asks now, voice tight, stepping forward abruptly and leaving Mr. Nelson with the remnants of a half-finished thought on his breath.
The young girl cocks her head, moves her eyes quickly from the usurper to the two men who stand next to him. She ignores the Spaniard’s request and stands up instead, runs to Mr. Nelson and offers him her hands, which he covers immediately with his. “How nice to see you, chata,” he says, using the affectionate name he has called her since she was a child. Pug-nose—the name no longer fits well now that Sofia is a woman—hecha y derecha—to the tips of her toes. But it sounds appropriate somehow on this one man’s special lips.
“And Very Useful too, you rascal,” she says now, tugging playfully at the assistant’s ear until he grimaces and begs her to stop.
“And what, may I ask, brings you this way?”
Sofia has her back to Diego, is pointedly ignoring him as she s
howers attention on the other two men. It is bad enough that the usurper has taken her rightful position by Mr. Nelson’s side, that he, a stranger, has been allowed to accompany the naturalist on his explorations through her very own Yucatán, but it is worse, so much worse, that he had chosen to ignore her completely just moments before, that he had rudely asked for a book without having had the decency to wait for the proper introductions to be secured. There are no limits to his infamy, she will later tell her friend Patricia in the privacy of her room, nothing that this malcriado, this miscreant, will not stoop to do.
In truth, Diego Clemente is shame-faced and uncomfortable by now, has realized too late the extent of his indecorous behaviour and is desperate to offer up an apology if only the lady will allow.
“Señorita,” he says, finally spotting a space in the clearing and jumping in before she ploughs forward with another topic and leaves him looking like an errant child, “I am so sorry to have barged in like that earlier. You must forgive me for my inexcusable abruptness. I did not mean to offend.” He wants to tell her about the importance of the book, of what it once meant to him, but she interrupts him before he has a chance to proceed.
“And you are Mr. Nelson’s assistant I assume,” she asks, poison in her eyes, “recently arrived from Spain?” And a lout like all of your countrymen, she adds to herself, the odious gapuchines we kicked out a century ago and had hoped would never return.
“This is Diego Clemente,” Mr. Nelson says, “Diego, this is la Señorita Sofia Duarte, the delightful daughter of a good friend. And you are right, Sofia, Diego is my new assistant but he is not so new to the area anymore. He has been in the Yucatán for over two months now, in fact.”
“Oh? And how does the señor like our region?”
“I like it immensely, Señorita Sofia, thank you. It is beautiful in every way,” Diego rushes to say, trying still to make amends for the abruptness of his first words, trying too to come to terms with the fact that it is this girl, the very girl whom he had searched for in vain in Mérida’s Plaza Mayor, who is now standing before him, who just moments before had been holding Audubon’s sacred book in her hands.