The Lacuna

by Barbara Kingsolver

  The brujo's bamboo hut stood in a clearing, inside a circle of stones. It might have been made a thousand years ago. The door was a curtain of snail shells strung together that made a wooden tinkling sound when his hand pulled it aside. Inside was an altar covered with little clay figures, and branches with leaves standing in jars, and cockleshells of burning copal gum, the same incense as in the church. He said to take off our shirts, which Mother did immediately, down to her silk underthings. The brujo didn't look at her, his eyes went to the roof of the hut and he began to sing, so he truly was a brujo, not just a man.

  He seemed as old as a person could be, and still living. His chant was quiet and fast, Echate, echate. He walked all around Mother first, swatting her body gently with a branch of leaves dipped in a jar of leaf-water, shaking drops of it on her hair, breasts, and belly, then everything else, son included. Then he blew smoke over her, from the cockleshell of burning gum. With his knotted old hands he held up a figure cut from thin paper, a small catlike man-shaped thing, and burned it in the flame of a candle. Some of the carved figures on his altar looked like a man's thing, his organ. Stone pachangos.

  When he finished Mother paid him in coins. She didn't speak until after crossing the bridge back to the village. The square was deserted, except for the great stone head. Natividad hadn't come back. "Enrique can't be told about this," she said. "You know that, of course."

  "Does he want you to get a baby?"

  She straightened her dress and pulled at the back of her stocking. "Well. It would change things, wouldn't it?"

  Leandro's baby girl died in January after Feast of the Kings, and no one here knew. Cruz told Mother today. He was gone three weeks, not because he was angry with his sergente, but to bury a child. The two small grapefruit heads in church: only one now. Cruz had a fight with Mother because what Don Enrique pays is not enough for feeding a chicken. She said Leandro's wife couldn't get her milk, and the baby died.

  How can he go home to a family with nothing to eat, then come to this house to make one hundred tamales? He behaves as if he had no dead children. The real Leandro never comes here. He only pretends.

  9 March

  Today the lacuna is gone. Directly below the knob in the cliff, nothing. If it is there, then buried below too much ocean. The grass hummock on the cliff face is very low to the water now. Or rather, the sea is higher.

  Don Enrique is away in the Huasteca, and Mother has taken up kitchen knives. She waved one around this morning. Not to chop onions but to show she means business about keeping her secrets. Not just the brujo, but also Mr. P. T. Cash. So, no mention here about another surprising visit from him, while the master was away. Anyway Mother is too lazy to lift up a mattress and find this little book.

  13 March

  The lacuna came back. In the afternoon the rock opened its mouth and swallowed the boy down its gullet. But it was hard to swim, the water was rushing out. It was the same as before, lungs bursting, turning back too soon. Leandro's brother whispering, Come live with me here, but a brain hungry for oxygen loses courage and wants air.

  Tomorrow will be the day.

  Last Will and Testament

  Let it be known. If HWS drowns in the cave, he leaves nothing

  to anyone. His earthly possessions are stolen things: pocket

  watch. This book. One year of good luck.

  He leaves his body for the fishes to eat.

  He leaves Leandro to wonder where he has gone.

  He leaves Mother and Mr. Produce the Cash to enjoy the company

  of the devil.

  Dios habla por el que calla.

  14 March

  The cave has bones inside. Bones of humans! Things on the other side.

  This is how it feels when you are nearly drowned: the brain pounds like a pulse in red and black. The salt water burns your eyes, and you nearly go blind following the light until you come to the air, breathing.

  At the end of the tunnel the cave opens up to light, a small saltwater pool in the jungle. Almost perfectly round, as big across as this bedchamber, with sky straight up, dappled and bright through the branches. Amate trees stood in a circle around the water hole like curious men, gaping because a boy from another world had suddenly arrived in their pool. The pombo trees squatted for a close look, with their knobbly wooden knees poking up out of the water. A tiger heron stood one-legged on a rock, cocking an unfriendly eye at the intruder. San Juan Pescadero the kingfisher zipped back and forth between two perches, crying, "Kill him kill him kill him!"

  Piles of stone blocks lay in a jumble around the edges of the pool, a broken-down something made of coral rock. Vines scrambled all over the ruin, their roots curling down through it like fingers in sand. It was a temple or something else very ancient.

  The light through the trees was shadowy at midday, but the water was clear. Belly-dragged up on a flat stone, sitting at the edge looking back in, it was plain to see the bottom of the cave dropped down to make a sort of room down there, huge and deep. Stones were piled like a sand castle underwater, with bits of shining things mixed into the pile. Maybe yellow leaves, or gold coins. It was like coming up inside a storybook. An ancient temple in the forest, and a pirate's treasure below. The treasure was mostly shells and broken pottery covered with sea moss, mostly too deep to dive down and reach.

  It took hours to explore everything. Some of the broken blocks of the ruin had designs carved on them, a script of lines and circles or perhaps the portraits of gods. One looked like a skeleton, its arms flung open, the skull smiling wide. A water snake slipped off a rock and made a sliding S shape across the top of the water. The jungle vines were tangled like fishing nets. It was the type of forest with a watery floor, and no good way to walk out of there. And no good way to swim back out of that cave, either. No way back from this story, it seemed. Nothing left to do but slide like a turtle into the pool, sink down, and sit on slime-covered rocks and the treasure of ancient times.

  That is where the bones were! Leg bones, wedged in the rocks. It made for such a shock, it was hard to breathe after seeing them. Floating in the pool was also not very easy because now the tide pulled downward, dropping lower and sucking against the stones around the edge of the hole, hissing a song of drowning: ahogarse, ahogarse. The ocean pulled hard, dragging a coward explorer back from the secret place, sucking him out through the tunnel and spitting him into the open sea.

  Out there again gasping, it was plain that the tide had turned and gone out. Now it was extremely low. Coral knobs poked out like heads. A great round moon hung on the eastern horizon, just coming out of the sea, white as an oyster.

  Then it seemed the bones and temple could not have been real, and this cave would vanish again. Only the moon was real, as big and whole as breathing.

  A book in Don Enrique's library says the pagans of old built their castles on this island. Not as tall as the great pyramids of the Azteca, but small stepped temples with platforms for sacrifice. They carved pictures of their gods, which were many in number. The book said the same things Leandro says, that the ancients watched light and signs to tell them when to plant corn, when to get married. But it also told more terrible things: they made sacrifices by throwing gold and sometimes girls (alive) into water holes in the forest. The cave must be that kind of hole, a cenote. Because of the bones.

  The book was written by a priest, not very good, but interesting at some parts. Hernan Cortes sent an expeditionary force to destroy the pagan city here and build the cathedral in town. If the ruin in the jungle is really part of that ancient city, then for certain the cenote has gold and treasure in its depths, along with the bones of unlucky girls. Leandro might know something about it, but can't be asked. There is no trusting his allegiance, he might tell Mother. So he will never know about going inside the lacuna.

  24 March

  First, the cave wasn't there today. Or so it seemed. But really it was, nearly two meters down from the surface, buried by tide, with a strong current flo
wing out of it.

  The last time, it was morning when the current inside the cave pulled inward toward the jungle-hole. During the hours of exploring the tide must have turned, so at evening it was easy to swim out. The moon was just rising then. The tides are the cause. The time to go in is just before the tide turns. Otherwise, more bones on that pile.

  25 March

  The tide was wrong completely, the current flowed out of the cave all day. On the day of the full moon, everything was right.

  Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true.

  How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing?

  This evening the moon was half, and Leandro said it's dying away. You can tell because it's shaped like the letter C, not curved forward like D. He says when the moon is D like Dios, it is growing to fill God's sky. When dying away it is C, like Cristo on the cross. So, no good tides again for many days.

  12 April

  Today was the full moon, perfect tide, and the bad luck of slicing the end of a finger with the kitchen knife. Blood everywhere, even in the masa, turning it pink. It had to be thrown out. Oh no, let's serve it to Don Enrique and Mother! A clayuda of her son's blood, like the Azteca sacrifices to their gods.

  Leandro said, Pray God forgives you for such talk. Get busy and make more masa.

  Tonight the moon rose, the beach was quiet, and no one swam into the lacuna. The three Musketeers would have done it, diving in with scabbards in their teeth, not bandages on their fingers. But they were three, all for one and one for all.

  Tonight a shadow passed across the moon. Don Enrique says an eclipse. But Leandro says it is El Dios and El Cristo putting their heads together, crying over everything that happens down here.

  2 May

  Birthday of Santa Rita de Casia. Mother needed cigarettes, but there wasn't any market today because of the fiesta. All the women went to the procession in long ruffled skirts, their hair braided with ribbons and flowers. Boys carrying beeswax candles as tall as men. The old woman who sells nopal in the market was at the front, dressed like a wrinkled bride. Her old groom shuffled beside, holding her arm.

  Leandro says they couldn't have this fiesta last year because of the Silence against the church. But that Santa Rita de Casia is not really a saint, but a woman-god. Nothing is ever what they say, and no one holy one hundred percent.

  12 May

  Perfect tide today. Into the cave and back out. The water pushed, all the way in, to touch those bones again. Tomorrow the tide should be almost perfect again. But only a few more days this month, to look for the treasure hidden from Hernan Cortes.

  13 May

  Mother says tonight. In just a few hours we leave on the ferry. It isn't possible just to go away from here, but she said, Oh yes it is. Leave everything.

  Tell no one, she said: Don Enrique will be furious. Not even Cruz can know, don't pack anything from your room yet because she would notice. Wait till it's almost time. Take only what fits in one rucksack. Two books, only. Not those huaraches, don't be ridiculous, your good shoes.

  She said: Bueno. Very fine. If you want to stay here, stay. On this stupid island so far from everything, you have to yell three times before even Jesus Cristo can hear you. I will happily go without you, and light a candle for you in the Catedral Nacional when I get there. Because when Enrique finds out, he'll kill you instead of me.

  Mr. Produce the Cash is meeting us on the mainland.

  You will not say one word to Leandro. Not one word, mister.

  Dear Leandro, here is the note you won't read because you can't read. The pocket watch is in the jar in the cabinet, with the clay Pilzintecutli. It's a gift to find next year when you have to make the rosca with no sergente to help mix the flour. The watch is gold, maybe you can take it to monte de piedad and get money for your family. Or keep it to remind you of the pest who is gone.

  Mexico City, 1930 (vb)

  11 June

  La luna de junio, first full moon in June, a day to dive for treasure. But the nearest thing to ocean here is the rot-fish smell on Saturdays after all the wives on the alley cooked fish the day before, and their garbage is waiting for the slop-cart man. The ocean is the last dream in the morning before noise from the street comes in. Motorcars, police on horses, the tide goes out, the prisoner awakes on a new island. An apartment above a bakery shop.

  Mother says a casa chica means probably his wife knows about her but doesn't mind, because a Small House doesn't cost too much. The maid doesn't even sleep here, no room. The water closet and gas cooking eye are in the same room. The main kitchen is downstairs in the bakery, passed through from the street, with a key. No library and no garden here, in a city that stinks of buses. Mother thinks it is all wonderful and reminds her of childhood, even though that was a long time ago and not this city. And if it was so wonderful, why did she never go back to see her father and mother until dead?

  "Quit your moping, mister, finally we're off that island where nothing was ever going to happen. Here you don't have to yell three times before Jesus Cristo can hear you." Probably because after the second yell, Jesus would look down in time to see you get coshed by a trolley.

  But, she says. God has a swell house here, the biggest cathedral in the world. One of the high marks of the Distrito Federal. So far we've seen only one high mark, La Flor, the shop where Mr. Produce the Cash and his friends go for coffee. We went there alone, in defiance of orders. His businessman friends don't yet know about his new enterprise, the secret kept in a small box, the casa chica. The lid of the box is mother's hush money, which she says is not very much. So probably she will not be very quiet.

  She needed to go to La Flor to have a look-see at how they dress here, so she won't be a low-lid dumbdora like people on that island. On the streets you can see which men are farmers who've come to the city for the day: white trousers, rolled to the knees. The men taking coffee at La Flor were all black-trouser men. The ladies wore cloche hats and smart, short dresses like Mother's, but with black stockings for modesty. The waitresses had white aprons and eyes wide with fright. This city is like Washington, and it isn't. It's difficult to remember real places from the book places. The patio had giant fern trees like the forest in Journey to the Center of the Earth, and very good chocolate. Cookies called cat's tongues. The cat's meow, Mother said, but really the cat's not-meow. Our alley has so many, with a slingshot you could get a good supply of tongues.

  Mother was in a jolly mood, and finally agreed to stop at the stationer's on the way home, for a new notebook. She pouted: You love that little book more than me, you'll go in your room and forget me.

  But just now she came in and said, You poor thing. You're like a fish that needed water. I didn't even know.

  Today the cathedral. It took all morning to reach the central plaza, the Zocalo, two buses and then a trolley to get there from the outside edge of the Distrito Federal. The casa chica is located in an unfashionable neighborhood south of the bullfighting plaza on a dirt alley that runs into Insurgentes. According to Mother, we reside halfway between the Capitol of Mexico and Tierra del Fuego, South America.

  The Zocalo is a huge square with palm trees like parasols. Facing one side is the long Palacio Nacional of pink stone, with small windows all the way down it like holes in a flute. The brick streets leading into the Zocalo are narrow as animal burrows in tall grass, the buildings close on both sides, as far as you can see. Downstairs are shops and people live above, you can see the women leaning on their elbows on the iron balconies watching everything below. Bicycle carts, horses, and automobiles, lines of them, sometimes going both ways in the same street.

  The cathedral is immense as promised, with gigantic wooden doo
rs that look as if they could shut you out for good. The front is all warbly with carvings: the Ship of the Church sailing over one door looked like a Spanish galleon, and over the other, Jesus is handing over the keys to the kingdom. He has the same worried look the bakery-shop man had when giving Mother the key to come through his shop to our apartment upstairs. Mr. Produce the Cash owns the building.

  Inside the cathedral you have to pass the great Altar of Perdon, all golden with angels flying about. The black Christ of the Venom hangs there dead in his black skirt, surrounded by little balconies, maybe for the angels to land on when they get tired. It was such a monument of accusation, even Mother had to bow her head a little as she crept past it, sins dripping from her shoes as we walked around the nave, leaving invisible puddles on the clean tiles. Perhaps God said her name was mud. He would have to yell that more than three times, for her to hear.

  Around the back outside the church was a little museum. A man there told us the cathedral was built by Spaniards right on top of the great temple of the Azteca. They did it on purpose, so the Azteca would give up hope of being saved by their own gods. Just a few pieces of temple left. The man said the Azteca came to this place in ancient times after wandering many hundred years looking for a true home. When they got here they saw an eagle sitting on a cactus, eating a snake, and that was their sign. A good enough reason to call a place home, better than all of Mother's up to now.

  The best artifact was the calendar of the ancients, a great carved piece of stone as big as a kitchen, circular, bolted to the wall like a giant clock. In the center was an angry face looking out, as if he'd come through that stone from some other place to have a look at us, and not very pleased about it. He stuck out his sharp tongue, and in taloned hands he held up two human hearts. Around him smiling jaguars danced in a circle of endless time. It might be the calendar Leandro knew about. He would be happy to know the Spaniards decided to keep it when they bashed up everything else. But Leandro can't read a letter, so there is no use writing him anything about it.