chapter 6

A few days later I went to meet Chayo at her aunt's shop. It was early afternoon and Chayo and I were going to see the Stone Gardens which were right on the western edge of town, just below the volcanoes. These gardens, she had told me, were in a small canyon which cut back into a low hill, and where, if I'd understood her right, was to be found the source of the Río Cupatitzio. "It flows out of the rock," she'd said.

Arriving at the shop I passed through the door, and there, perched on a table across the room from me, was a cat. A domestic cat. A kitty cat. A very handsome, dignified, short-haired feline who gazed upon me with bright, soul-piercing eyes that he seemed to share in common with the humans of this establishment. Most remarkably, his coat was white, pure white, a glowing whiteness that could almost have shown in the dark, like the white cougar I had apparently tripped over in the doorway just before that strange experience in the courtyard.

"¿Que pasó?" Chayo asked. She looked at me and then at the cat.

I said nothing for a moment, transfixed by an odd notion forming in my mind. To assure myself that it was indeed a cat, I spoke to him. "Hello, Kitty," I said, approaching him. He hopped down to the floor and slipped by me out the door to the street, as if to avoid interaction with me. Turning back to Chayo, I asked, "Is he your aunt's cat?"

"He lives next door and comes by to visit now and then. His name is Blanco."

"Blanco," I called out in a soft voice, but he did not reappear. "Truly a handsome cat," I said.. "Was he by any chance here the first day I came here?"

"No."

"He wasn't? Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Why do you ask?"

"I wonder if I haven't seen him before," I said.

"You could have. As I said, he lives next door."

"I mean the day I arrived in Uruapan. The day I first came to this place."

Chayo shook her head and looked at me wonderingly. "Would you care to tell me about it?"

Many thoughts and questions were flashing into my mind, more than I could hope to express in my limited Spanish, especially as it would require a description of that very strange experience I had had in the courtyard. Even in English, all this would've been difficult. The very nature of what I wanted to know seemed to put me a bit beyond the pale. I did have a feeling that Chayo would understand, but still, I didn't feel I knew her well enough. Not yet anyway. After all, people who have visions are automatically suspect, especially people who turn kitty-cats into mountain lions.

For now, I felt I should leave this for another day. Chayo was looking at me more inquisitively than ever, almost looking through me with that gaze of hers, as if she saw something in me in a world beyond both of us. Maybe she already knew, since she was there that day. I wondered what her experience had been, what she had seen in that courtyard. Maybe she had seen it all, just as I had. But it was all far beyond any Spanish I could summon up, for the time being at least. I said to her, "Please give me a hug," and she did, putting her arms around me and murmuring something soothingly in my ear.

Moments later, I glanced up and there in the doorway sat the white kitty on his haunches, intently watching us as we made ready to leave for the Stone Gardens.

The Cupatitzio was the river we'd crossed each evening when I walked her home, and, as rivers went, it was relatively small. But it still carried a sizable volume of water. What puzzled me was that I'd never seen a spring that produced much more than a trickle, and I couldn't imagine one large enough to create an entire river. Maybe I hadn't heard her rightly.

The Gardens were only a fifteen minute walk. They had been a national park for several decades, the tiniest one in the republic, she told me, only a kilometer long and consisting of twenty hectares. The official name of this park was "Barranca del Cupatitzio."

We entered through a large gate, then followed a path among the trees till we found ourselves looking down into a small canyon. Exposed in the walls of this canyon were ancient flows of black lava, presumably basalt. At the bottom, the Río Cupatitzio rushed along, swirling around large boulders.

We followed it upstream along a path which had been carved into the rock, then we crossed the river on a stone bridge. There were decorative fountains, fed by water diverted into pipes so it could be spouted upwards. In another place water cascaded down a wall of black stone masonry. These footpaths, bridges and fountains were so well designed that they looked quite as natural as the rock itself, and were done on an impressive scale that must have taken decades of effort, blending the best of human craftsmanship with a unique work of nature. The builders had been careful not to overdo it. The river still followed its natural course, its channel left the way it had been since its inception through geological forces.

In a couple of places the river formed pools deep enough to swim in, and children were splashing gleefully around. "An idyllic scene in paradise," I remarked to Chayo. "The water looks invitingly warm."

"No," she said, "step down to the water's edge and put your hand in it."

I did, and it was surprisingly cold.

Continuing upstream we came to a series of springs in the canyon wall. Again I tested the water with my hand, and again, I found that it was almost frigid. How could water here in the tropics could be so cold?

The water flowed out from between a horizontal layer of basalt and an underlying bed of red clay. These springs were relatively small. The main source of the river was just up ahead. When we got to it, I saw a pool nestled among the trees. It was large enough to swim in. Out of it issued the Río Cupatitzio.

The far end of the pool was bounded by black rock--basalt. It appeared to be part of the same lava flow which was exposed in the canyon walls downstream. An underwater spring fed the pool. As Chayo had said, the river flowed out of the rock.

I shook my head in amazement. Despite my studies in geology I wasn't prepared for a spring of this size.

We retraced our steps and followed the river downstream to a place where a side path took us to a ledge in the canyon wall. Here we sat in comfortable silence, gazing down into the water rushing over the rocks.

"That is what I imagine Iceland looks like," I said.

"Iceland? It looks like this?" she said, gesturing at the foliage around us. There was even a palm tree nearby.

"The cold water flowing over the black lava," I said.

She looked down into the water. "You've been in Iceland?"

"Not yet. I hope to see it some day."

"So do I," she said.

"You do?" I looked at her.

"Yes," she nodded, "It's one of my aspirations."

I doubted that she could be referring to the same Iceland I was thinking of, and I asked her, "What do you know about Iceland?"

She recited a poem. About all I caught was the word "Islandia." Then she wrote it out on a page in my journal. I read it carefully, several times over. I could read Spanish much better than I could understand it spoken.

Islandia de la nieve silenciosa
y del agua ferviente.
Isla del día blanco que regresa,
joven y mortal como Baldr.

Iceland of the silent snow
and boiling water.
Island of the white day that returns
young and mortal as Baldr

"Where did you hear it?" I asked. I was surprised and impressed that she knew a poem about Iceland.

"It's by Borges."

"¿Jorge Luis Borges?"

"Yes." Chayo in turn was impressed that I knew who Borges was. Although he was a well-known author, Chayo was surprised that a person from the States would know much about Hispanic literature. "Have you read any of his stories?" she asked.

"Several," I said. "La espera, also El muerto and--" I was about to include Emma Zunz, but that was such a morbid story that I didn't want to mention it. The first two were grim enough.

"¿Emma Zunz?" she queried.

There were moments like this when Chayo seemed to read my thoughts. During these few short days I'd known her she'd done that several times. "Well yes," I conceded. "I was thinking of Emma Zunz."

"What did you think of it?" she said.

"Of Emma Zunz, you mean?"

"Yes."

"A bizarre account of how a daughter avenges the death of her father," I said and paused. "I avoided mentioning it because I thought the story was quite perverse."

"What did you find perverse?" Chayo studied me as I struggled to find words to express my thoughts. "Would you consider Emma Zunz a criminal?"

"No," I said. "I believe Emma was justified in killing the man. He'd betrayed her father's confidence in a business matter, causing his ruin and ultimately his death."

Chayo nodded, and I continued.

"The tragedy," I said, "was that Emma herself obviously didn't feel justified, and so she created a hideous subterfuge to justify her actions to the police, and even to herself. That's what I consider perverse."

Chayo quickly leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you," she said. "That's what I wanted to hear."

I was taken by surprise and couldn't think of anything to say at that moment.

"Yes," Chayo said. "Emma's stratagem was disgusting. But that's how she was able to deal with the situation. That's the kind of person she was."

"Tragic," I said.

"Yes, tragic. But there is another way for a woman to be. A less tragic way."

"How would you have written the story?" I said.

Chayo looked at me for a long moment before replying. She bit her lip and clenched my hand tightly. "The woman in my story would've been a different person. Very different from Emma Zunz. My protagonist wouldn't have felt the least qualm about killing the man who caused her father's death. She would've felt completely justified, and she would've gotten away with it."

I wondered why Chayo felt so passionate about the motivations of Emma Zunz, who was after all just a fictional character. Had someone caused the death of Chayo's father? She'd once told me that he'd passed away some years earlier, but had said nothing about the circumstances. Perhaps it was best not to ask, at least not now.

Gradually the intense look on Chayo's face softened as she gazed into the water. The tight grip of her hand on mine relaxed. "Perdóname," she said.

"For what?"

"For . . . , for getting so serious. How did we get on that subject? What were we talking about?"

"Iceland," I said. "And Borges."

"Yes, Borges," she said the name slowly, almost significantly.

I said, "I'm amazed to hear that Borges wrote poetry about Iceland."

She nodded. "He traveled far and wide, studying the literature and traditions of many lands. I believe that in Iceland he found a land of poetry."

"Yes, poetry. And stories too," I said. "My grandmother used to tell me stories that came from there. We call them sagas."

"I'd like to hear them."

"You would?"

"Of course I would," she said, taking my hand.

I glanced down into the cold water flowing over the black lava. For a few moments I continued to gaze at it, and then something came to me--Urð! For days now, ever since my arrival here in Uruapan, that name had been floating around in the shadowy recesses of my mind, but it hadn't quite come out into the light. Now I'd finally remembered it.

"There was a story about Urð," I said. "She was a mythical person who sat by a magnificent spring, like the one right here."

"¿Urð?" Chayo repeated the name thoughtfully, "That name sounds as though it were taken from the name Uruapan."

"It does," I said. "I was just thinking of that too."

"And what does this woman do as she sits there by the spring? Anything? Or does she just sit there?"

"Her name, Urð, is the Old Norse word meaning fate," I said. "According to the myth, she determines the fortunes of men, and where their journeys will lead them. She writes it all down on slips of wood in the ancient runic script."

"Have you read any of Carl Jung?"

"Some," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Then you may know that myths contain underlying truths." With an ironic smile, she added, "Could it be that Urð brought you to Uruapan?"

I assumed she was joking. "No doubt about it," I chuckled. "I'm sure it was Urð."

"Perhaps," she said chidingly, "you still think it was an accident that you got on the bus for Uruapan."

That night I had a dream. Grandma was in the kitchen, working and cooking, and talking with someone in Norwegian. From time to time she and the other woman laughed. The two of them were having a good time together. Then I saw that the other woman was Chayo.


continued in Chapter 7

Chapter 1

México. June 1975.

It was my ninth day on the road and I was now in the southwestern region known as Michoacán. The ancient Aztecs had given it this name, but they never got this far. Each of their attempts at conquest had been driven back with bloody losses, and this land had forever remained beyond the limits of their world.

The proprietor of the inn where I'd stayed the night before had proudly told me this, thus introducing me to the traditions of Michoacán. That inn was in the town of Zamora, and my talk with the innkeeper had been my first lengthy conversation in the Spanish language--outside of a classroom that is. I was out of school now, and at last out in the world, on a journey which I'd been planning for years. I was traveling leisurely, pausing for a day or two here and there. This morning I'd set out for Pátzcuaro on a regional bus, and had been riding for a couple hours now. It gave me a special thrill to be gazing upon a landscape that had been denied even to Moctezuma.

The countryside was rather open, almost a prairie, but as the morning wore on, that changed and I found myself entering a mountainous world of pine forest and volcanoes. There was first one volcano, then another; after half a dozen, I lost count. The forest was full of them. As volcanoes go, they were strangely undersized, hardly much larger than the ancient pyramids which were said to dot this land. Cone-shaped with hollow craters, these volcanoes were grown over with pine trees.

At villages along the way, passengers boarded with their bundles of market goods and even with their animals. A pig was squealing and radios were blaring. The bus was nearly full of people; all were dark skinned with the black hair of their pre-Hispanic ancestors. I was the only one with blond hair and blue eyes, and I felt self-conscious. Even the chickens were dark brown; the fellow in the seat beside me held one in his lap. From its plumage, I could see that it was a rooster.

The bird was contemplating me. As I glanced at him our eyes met. For a moment he glared at me--an intruder in his domain. Then his neck feathers rose and he clucked angrily.

Haven't you seen anybody with blue eyes before? I felt like saying. But he was just a chicken.

The owner, whose skin was as brown as the chicken's feathers, was reaching for a tequila bottle which was being handed to him from across the aisle. After taking a hefty swig he passed the bottle to me, and, unexpectedly, I found myself holding it, looking at it, and wondering what to do with it. Other passengers were looking at me, also wondering what I was going to do.

Very decisively, I raised the bottle to my lips and pretended to take a swig--though without actually drinking any. But at just that instant the chicken cut loose with an abrupt squawk. I gasped and got a mouthful of tequila.

It tasted awful. Absolutely awful. But I tried not to let that show on my face as I bravely swallowed it and returned the bottle. The fellow grinned, took another swig and passed it on.

My feathered antagonist cocked his head sideways, looked at me out of one eye and clucked with malicious satisfaction.

Well, he was just a chicken. Only a chicken.

More volcanoes kept appearing, and the road wove in and out among them as we sped along. We skirted the edge of a hillside where I looked down upon a small valley and got a top view of an especially low volcano. I peered down into the hollow crater as we passed--a natural amphitheater.

I noted it in my journal, along with other topographic details I'd been seeing along the way. Then I looked at my map and tried to figure out where we were, but nothing seemed to match anything on the map. We were heading deep into these mountains. Except for the volcanoes, this land of pine forest looked like the Canadian Rockies. Hardly a tropical jungle, even though this was indeed the tropics, somewhere around twenty degrees north latitude.

Pine trees don't grow at sea level this far south. I figured we must be at a fairly high elevation, maybe a good fifteen hundred to two thousand meters. Despite the bright sunlight, the air flowing in through the window wasn't warm. I took out my jacket and put it on.

My ears popped from the altitude.

Another village, larger than most. Perhaps it was on my map, but there was no sign to indicate the name.

"¿Dónde estamos?" I asked the fellow with the chicken; and he said something, but I didn't catch it. I could hardly hear anything over the din of radios, motor and voices. He offered me the bottle again, but this time I shook my head, "No, gracias."

He took another swig and reached around to pass it to someone behind us, but the bottle fell to the floor with a loud thud as the bus swung into yet another sharp curve. The fellow went sliding off his seat and plunked into the aisle, carrying the chicken along with him, and somehow landing on top of it. The bird gave off a muffled squawk. Several g's of gravity were pulling me in the same direction; I somehow managed to hang on. Pine tress whizzed by as I glanced out the window.

The fellow climbed back into his seat and carefully lifted the dazed bird onto his lap while five or six of his companions crowded around, everyone talking at once and a couple of them applying artificial respiration to the chicken. These people were showing an awful lot of concern over a mere bird, and I guessed that he must be a highly-valued fighting cock--one of those famously pugnacious Mexican warrior chickens.

At this moment the bird lay there gasping for breath, and I almost felt sorry for him. "Pobrecito," I said and gave him a pat of sympathy. With great effort the chicken feebly raised his head, and, with his last milligram of strength, sank his beak into my hand.

I jerked my hand back. It began to bleed slightly, apparently nothing serious.

The tequila bottle rolled under my feet as the bus swung around in the other direction. I retrieved it and returned it to one of the onlookers who then took my hand and poured a generous amount of the liquid on my wound. It burned, powerful stuff. Another fellow produced a piece of cloth from somewhere and wrapped up my hand, while others poured tequila down the chicken's throat.

Just what you deserve! I thought to myself as I gingerly touched the bandage on my sore hand.

It may have been the tequila. The bird recovered quickly and, to the delight of all, stood up, flapped his wings and crowed lustily. Everyone cheered wildly. A moment later the bird crapped on the floor, barely missing my foot.

The party got off at a rather large village a few minutes later. I was really glad to be rid of that obnoxious chicken. Despite the ongoing din of voices, the radio, the pig squealing and all else, there was a feeling of silence, and now I even had the seat all to myself.

Lake Pátzcuaro should appear any minute now. Or had we passed it? No, I couldn't possibly have missed it, it was so large on the map. But where exactly were we right now? I studied my map carefully. These mountains didn't seem like a place for a large lake. Was I on the right bus?

We kept going higher into the mountains, deeper into the forest, often shifting down to second gear as we climbed. Finally we seemed to have passed the summit, for the road began to descend. We rounded one long mountain curve, and suddenly down below there came into view the red-tiled roofs of a town. It was rather large, almost a city, but it didn't seem to be on my map. I turned to a passenger across the aisle and asked what it was called.

The name he gave was fairly long and I only caught the first syllable of it, something that sounded like "oor".

The town was bordered on the right by a cluster of volcanoes, and beyond it extended a flat plain of farms and forests, but only for a few kilometers. After that, everything seemed to suddenly drop off, with nothing but haze in the distance. I tried to picture what, if anything, might lie beyond it. Nothing, perhaps. It gave me the sensation of coming to the end of the earth, and, had I lived back in medieval times when many people believed the world was flat, this is what I would've expected it to look like as I approached the edge.

Soon we were in the town itself, cruising by the plaza and finally arriving at a depot. I stepped off the bus, and there on the side of a building I saw the name of the town painted in large red and black letters: Uruapan.

Uruapan? I finally located it on my map--a full sixty kilometers to the southwest of where I intended to be! I stood there shaking my head. How could this be? I had so carefully checked the departure schedule, my ticket and the bus number.

At that moment I was just very glad to be traveling alone, with nobody along to witness my error--I could just picture myself with a bunch of people who'd left the navigating to me, fretting, worrying, glancing at their watches and looking at me, wondering why we weren't where we were supposed to be. People always expect you to know what you're doing, even if they can't do any better themselves.

I looked at the departure schedule on the wall. Buses left almost every hour. My destination was Pátzcuaro, and, provided I didn't make another bonehead mistake, I'd have no difficulty in getting there ultimately. Basically, my object was to see the country, and, since I'd heard that Pátzcuaro was a picturesque city from the colonial era, I'd decided to go there and spend a few days. But nobody was waiting for me, so it didn't really matter if I got there today, tomorrow or next week.

Having figured out where I was, and how to get where I wanted to go, I wasn't really lost any more. I'd unexpectedly found myself in a place where I hadn't planned to be, that was all, a serendipitous result of traveling in a country where I hardly knew the language. It was all part of the adventure, and I felt a sense of freedom.

Since I was here, I might as well have a look around. But what was the name? I glanced at the sign again: Uruapan. It vaguely suggested some legendary place that wouldn't come to mind at the moment. Everything about this town intrigued me, from the name itself, its type style and the way it was printed in red and black letters, the way the town was nestled up against the side of a mountain, and the way I had accidentally gotten here. It all gave me the feeling of finding myself in a realm of mythical enchantment.

I glanced at my watch. It was still only 10 o'clock and I had the entire day ahead of me. Maybe I'd even visit the volcanoes. They seemed to be within walking distance. I felt a thrill of excitement. Sometimes it's fun to get lost.

I checked my pack at the baggage counter and set out on foot. The central plaza was only a couple blocks away. Every city, town and village in México has its plaza, an open space surrounded by shops, restaurants, local government offices, churches and often a lot more, depending on the size of the town. It's the center of activity, and, like a human face, each town's plaza has its own distinct personality.

Uruapan's plaza was exceptionally long and narrow. A few large broad-leaved trees spread their branches protectively, and in the shade below there were pruned hedges and grass with numerous park benches. People were coming and going, some taking a moment to sit down and enjoy the pleasant surroundings. For a while I took a seat and watched the people. As on the bus, nearly all were dark skinned. I wondered if I were the only foreigner, the only blond-haired, blue-eyed person in this whole town, perhaps even in this whole region. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but there was also the excitement of finding myself in a world where few outsiders seemed to enter.

Across the street from me stood an ancient-looking adobe building which attracted my curiosity. I walked over to it and found it was a museum, but it wouldn't be open till noon. In the courtyard beside it was a stone fountain. I sat on the edge, then unbandaged my hand and washed it in the water. It was still sore, and hurt slightly when I flexed my fingers, but there was no major injury, except to my pride. What an obnoxious chicken! I dispensed with the bandage, and continued on to explore the arcade which surrounded most of the plaza.

At a theater I paused to look at the movie posters. There was one with a handsome woman leading a horse by a corral. La hija del ranchero--the Rancher's Daughter--it read. It'd be playing today; maybe I'd come back and watch it later on.

All around me were people busily coming in and out of shops and restaurants. I was walking down a crowded arcade, a kind of covered sidewalk along the plaza. Some people glanced my way, but nobody stared. I came upon a newsstand with a large display of newspapers, magazines and sundry publications. One, titled Uruapan, cuatro siglos, caught my eye. It was a collection of essays, poems and historical bits about this town. Naturally, it was in Spanish, but, having studied the language in school, I was able to read it.

I bought it and sat down at a sidewalk café, ordered a cup of coffee and began paging through the booklet. Paricutín, the cornfield volcano ... an article began. An event from the 1940's was being remembered:

"The campesino planted corn, and expected to get corn. He got a volcano, and Uruapan got a harvest of ash and cinders."

So that happened around here? The story had been in my third-grade reader. While in high school I'd also read an account of the eruption, and finally, as a geology student, I'd found it mentioned in my textbooks. Although I'd always known that Volcán Paricutín was somewhere in México, I'd never gotten around to finding out exactly where. This was like coming into a strange town and hearing that a lifelong acquaintance lived nearby. I'd have to stay a while and pay a visit.

Then the waitress came back and said something. I had to ask her to repeat it twice before I understood she was asking if I wanted more coffee. Well, that's the way it was. I'd been studying Spanish for years and could read it with a fair degree of proficiency, but rapid-fire speech was hard to follow.

I had a second cup of coffee, then resumed my tour of the town. For a while I ambled through the long, crowded galleries of the arcade. Then, as I was about to cross a street, I nearly bumped into a fellow. Somehow, I hadn't seen him standing there.

I stepped back, trying to think of the Spanish words for excuse me. Strangely, it came to me in Norwegian--a language I hadn't spoken since Grandma died.

The man gazed at me but said nothing. He wore a wide-brimmed sombrero and a neatly trimmed gray beard. He might've been around fifty. There was a sense of dignity in his face even though he wore a patch over one eye. His visible eye was blue, like mine.

"Perdóneme," I said, finally remembering the Spanish phrase. I felt like a fool for forgetting something so basic.

For another moment the man continued to look at me. Then he nodded, turned and continued on his way. I stood there watching him as he went, feeling that he was somehow familiar. Of course I didn't know any one-eyed person, and certainly not here in this region. Logic suggested that the fellow had to be a total stranger, but a peculiar gut feeling told me I knew him.

No doubt he was a local rancher who just happened to resemble someone I'd known, one of my professors perhaps. Maybe a character in a movie, or the portrait of a Spanish nobleman I'd seen in a painting. No, I couldn't think of anybody. But the sense of acquaintance didn't diminish. I should have spoken to him.

By now he'd reached the end of the block where he rounded the corner and was gone. Maybe I could catch up with him. I hurried to the corner, and when I got there, I saw him in the distance. I followed, walking as swiftly as I could without actually running. He was a fast walker and had a good head start, but I was catching up.

The late morning sun glared down from directly above, leaving few shadows. It was extremely bright and reflected up off the cobblestones and into my eyes, causing me to squint. The air was warm, but not unbearably so; this town was high up in the mountains, at pine-tree elevation.

Then the man turned up another street, and when I reached it he was nowhere in sight. I continued my search for another block, and finally concluded that I'd missed him. Well, obviously he wasn't anyone I could possibly have known. I felt a bit silly about the whole thing, but so what? I shrugged my shoulders. This too was part of the adventure of being abroad.

I continued with my tour. For a while I strolled up one street, then down another, randomly exploring. Mostly the streets were narrow, and the houses were of adobe. They came up to the sidewalk without space for lawns, and were tight up against each other, with no daylight between. I could tell from the thickness of the walls, visible at door and window jambs, that these buildings were constructed of adobe rather than concrete. That meant that the neighborhood was quite old, perhaps from the turn of the century. I enjoyed the ambience.

One street had many shops, which occupied rooms in the private houses. A street-level room was easy to convert into a shop because every room in a Mexican house generally had it's own door. These were things I'd been noticing during the past few days.

Why not step into one and take a look, just out of curiosity? The thought had no sooner crossed my mind than I again saw the one-eyed man. He was standing there, looking my way, less than a dozen meters up ahead of me.

Startled at his unexpected appearance, I stopped in my tracks and blinked my eyes. No. He wasn't there after all. I glanced up and down the street. Nobody in sight. Absolutely nobody. It'd been a figment of my imagination, a trick of vision caused by the glaring sun. It was slightly disconcerting.

I walked up to the door of the shop where I thought he'd been standing. Had he stepped inside? I doubted it. His appearance had been an illusion; I was sure of that--I even wondered for a mad moment if he'd been real the first time, when I'd nearly bumped into him in the plaza arcade.

I stepped inside the shop, entering through the tall door that was typical of these adobe buildings. The walls inside were whitewashed, and the ceiling was high, even though the room was not extremely large. On display were saddles and ranch gear, burro harnesses, kerosene lanterns, tools and numerous other items, anachronistic in a world of automobiles and electricity. Nobody was around at the moment.

I'd been looking at the wares on display for several minutes when I heard someone entering from another room, and, turning around, found myself looking at an attractive, dark-eyed woman with brown skin and shiny black hair. Over her shoulders she wore a dark blue, pin-striped rebozo, the traditional shawl of this region.

She was far more than merely attractive; she was absolutely beautiful. Along the left side of her face was a noticeable scar, but, for some strange reason, even that added to her beauty. I felt slightly overwhelmed. My tongue had somehow lost its connection with my brain, and words seemed to fail me.

She said something I didn't understand.

"Me llamo Olaf," I said finally, and she told me her name was Chayo.

We exchanged a bit of conversation, though with considerable difficulty, as she spoke rather rapidly. Then she asked how long I'd be here in Uruapan.

I was trying desperately to force my mind to function in Spanish, to follow what she was saying, and at the same time respond as quickly as I could. And what I replied was: "Todo el verano."

And suddenly I realized what I'd told her--that I was staying all summer in this town. The shock of it hit me and I felt like a complete idiot. What I'd meant was that I was spending the summer in México. On a tour of the country, I'd meant to say. I struggled for words to correct my mistake.

I opened my mouth to say that, but no words came out.

She smiled, and I was sure she was laughing at me.

For another moment I stood there, still unable to speak. My face burned red with embarrassment and everything blurred before my eyes. Then I turned to leave the shop.

I heard her voice behind me. What she said, I didn't understand. Probably ridicule and insults, or so I assumed, but I didn't turn to answer. There wasn't much I could say in a language I found myself speaking so poorly. I just wanted to get away.

But I was barely out the door and into the bright sunlight, when something came dashing up from behind and brushed against me. I stumbled. A flash of white fur with a long tail swirled around me. A huge cat, the size of a cougar. The sidewalk came slamming up to whack me in the face.



continued in Chapter 2

dedication

This novel is dedicated to

Leonard George Irving,

soldier, sailor, beachcomber, poet,
and raconteur.
An old warrior from the land of the thistle,
a Border-country Scot,
free spirit and frugal soul,
my companion through the back country of Michoacán on our journey to the fabled and forbidden city.
Without him this book would never have been written. The poetry and anecdotes ascribed to MacClayne are actually his, and he has kindly allowed me to reprint them herein.

Poetry by Leonard Irving is at Tae a Haggis





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Chapter 3

My first waking awareness was a feeling of impending doom--I'd heard the low, clear voice of the Chichimeca with the obsidian-edged war club. That voice was silent now, and the Shining Cougar's heavy paw was no longer on my knee. I no longer felt the cat's breath on my face. Instinctively, I tried to pull the blanket tightly about myself, but I was lying on part of it, and as I struggled with it, I could feel an accumulation of grit on my hands. Cautiously, I opened my eyes and glanced around.

A thin ray of brilliant sunlight sliced in through a crack in the door and illuminated the floating dust. There was no window. The ceiling was low, and clouds of dark cobwebs filled the corners and extended down the concrete walls of the tiny room.

I was reassured to see there was no cougar and no Chichimecas. They must have been the fleeting remnants of a dream. The images were fading from my mind, but leaving a dislocated fear. Where was I, anyway? Not in a courtyard. Not now, anyway. I remembered the courtyard, the wraiths that had surrounded me, and that huge, white panther sitting amongst them. Had I dreamt about something that had actually happened?

I stared at the dusty spider webs as I tried to think back and sort things out. I saw my pack on the chair beside me, and then I remembered coming here and renting this place. A little boy had helped me find my way here. A small brown-skinned boy.

More images came to mind. Narrow streets of adobe buildings. A busy plaza. A world of brown-skinned people. Volcanoes. Endless pine forest. An obnoxious chicken.

Yes, of course! I was in México, my ninth day on the road. That was all real. It wasn't just a weird dream I was awakening from. At the very least, this room was real.

The walls were painted a greenish blue, and smeared with dirt. Wads of used chewing gum were stuck to the bedpost. On the floor lay the rag of a shirt and a couple of empty beer cans, left by some previous occupant. Who knew when this place ever got cleaned?

I sat up and dug into my pack to take out my journal. In the semi-darkness I struggled to make out the final entry. It was in my handwriting, jagged and jerky, recorded on a lurching bus:

"10:03 a.m. Town ahead. Not on map."

I remembered writing that. I also remembered events that followed my arrival. My tour of the plaza. The strangely familiar one-eyed man I'd chased after, eventually ending up at the shop where I'd met the woman with a rebozo. I almost had the sense that the one-eyed man had led me there. I kept wondering why I felt him to be so familiar, while at the same time convinced he was someone I'd never seen before.

The woman with the rebozo. She had been so unbelievably beautiful. No, not unbelievably, I'd simply never met a woman so attractive to me, leaving me almost speechless. And then things got certifiably weird and stopped being the kind of stuff that could have happened. Not here. Not anywhere.

I remembered falling on the sidewalk, the sunlight inexplicably turned off, sudden darkness, surrounded by the Chichimecas with their war clubs and painted faces, while at the same time sitting at the pila having my face washed by the woman with the rebozo. A woman whose name was Chayo. Chayo?

Had I got that right? In Spanish, feminine names didn't normally end in 'o'. Well, yes, some did, but it was rare. I'd never before heard of a name like Chayo.

My dreams were often vivid, and the most unbelievable images had often stayed with me for hours or even days. Once, a couple of years before, I'd gotten up in the middle of the night to go out in the back yard to look at an ancient Norse runestone. Of course there'd been no runestone, and I'd known very well that there couldn't possibly be any such thing out there. Nevertheless, for the next several days the absurd notion had persisted, even though I'd repeatedly gone out there in person and confirmed that the runestone didn't exist.

That was the bizarre thing about my dreams: impossible images could sometimes seem absolutely real. The reverse also happened – real stuff could seem like fantasy, and, sometimes, somebody or something that I'd concluded to be fantasy would occasionally turn out to be real. It was hard at times to keep daytime reality and my dream stuff separate.

I sighed and tried to think of something else. Something solid and reassuring.

The name of this town. What was it again? I looked at my map, holding it under the ray of sunlight that cut in through the door. Uruapan. Why did that word tug at my mind?

I glanced at my watch. 11:35. How long had I slept? According to my journal, I'd arrived here on Wednesday. Now it had to be Thursday. That meant that I'd slept for more than 24 hours. Was that possible?

I opened the door and stepped out into the bright tropical sunshine; I was on a balcony overlooking a courtyard. My room was on the second story and this balcony ran the full length of the building, functioning as a sort of open-air hallway. At both ends of it were stairways. Across the courtyard was another row of rooms, also part of this hotel, but they were only one story high. This kind of construction was fairly typical of the hotels I'd been staying in for the last nine days, though not all had a second story.

In the courtyard below, a woman was washing clothes in a pila. It was in such a pila that Chayo had rinsed out the cloth with which she'd wiped my face. And that's when the white cougar had padded up to me and put his heavy paw on my knee, in that incredible untimely darkness. And the Chichimeca with the war club had spoken to me in a strange language which I had somehow understood.

Really? Had all that really happened?

And if so, what had he said to me? I couldn't remember.

I shook my head and gazed at the pila. Every house had one, and they all looked like they came from the same factory. It was a simple, rectangular concrete basin for holding water, and at one end was a flat space for washing clothes and dishes.

Near the pila stood a tree with shiny green leaves and large yellow flowers. White clouds floated across the blue sky above, and the rattle of noisy vehicles came from the nearby street.

The rather low angle of the sun suggested late afternoon--or early morning. Whatever my watch said, this couldn't be eleven thirty five. I took another look at it. The second hand wasn't moving. No? How could that be? This was a reliable watch. I'd had it for years now, and this was the first time it had ever stopped.

Holding it to my ear, my hand brushed across my face and touched something. The bandage! I pressed it and felt a tinge of pain. Then I remembered the woman applying it. So that part of my memory was valid.

She existed! The woman with the scar on her face and those eyes that peered straight through me. I sighed deeply.

By degrees, my sense of disorientation was clearing up.

From sheer force of habit I glanced again at my watch. The second hand was moving now. It had started again. I went downstairs to the registration desk to get the correct time. I recognized the clerk as the one who had checked me in. It was 5:20 p.m., he told me. I was too embarrassed to ask him what day it was. Fortunately, there was a newspaper lying there, and I glanced at the date. It was still Wednesday, the day of my arrival. I asked if it was today's paper and he affirmed it was. So I'd slept only for a few hours, not an entire day.

I was about to return to my room when the clerk remembered there was a message for me. For me? Yes, a little boy had been here an hour ago and left it for me. I struggled to think of who that might be and then it came to me. Panchito, who'd brought me here.

The message was signed "Chayo." I gasped. To think that she not only existed, but had even sent me a note!

I took it upstairs and read it several times. It was in Spanish, but brief and simply written. She expressed concern about me, hoping I was okay. Since I was new in town, perhaps I might like to accompany her to an event in the plaza this evening. She'd get off work at eight o'clock. A las ocho. There was also an address, presumably of her shop.

I felt reassured and also elated. I was going to see her again, this attractive woman with the piercing eyes, this woman who had ushered me into such an amazing other-worldly experience, right there in her aunt's courtyard.

A las ocho--that would be in another two and a half hours. Then it occurred to me that I should write down the events and experiences of that morning: the volcanoes, the chicken on the bus, my first sight of this town in its edge-of-the-world setting, the one-eyed man, my meeting with Chayo, and finally the Chichimecas. It was best to do it while it was still fresh in my mind. I just wished that my utter fatigue hadn't precluded my recording it before I'd fallen asleep, especially the scene with the Chichimecas--that would've eliminated any doubt that my memory of the vision was not just a product of my exhausted sleep.

I took up my journal and began writing. I omitted nothing, no matter how bizarre. I spent some time at this, and I felt much better about the experience as I wrote. The act of putting these images on the pages drained off some of the trauma and cleared my mind to recall more of the details. But when I got to the part where the Chichimeca with the obsidian-edged war club spoke to me, I couldn't recall anything he'd said. It disturbed me profoundly.

At the time, I thought I'd understood every word. He'd spoken slowly and clearly, but now I wasn't even sure what language he'd spoken. Presumably it was the language of an ancient, indigenous people, a language perhaps no longer understood by any living person, certainly not by me. And yet I'd understood every word of it.

Except for one thing. I had the vague remembrance of something they had wanted me to do for them. Some kind of task. What could it have been?

Maybe it would come back to me later. I continued with my account, bringing it up to where I'd arrived at this hotel, and included the dream I'd woken up from. When I finished it was nearly seven o'clock. Time to get ready.

The thought that I'd shortly be seeing Chayo began to give me a feeling of apprehension. It was more than just a concern about my usual social awkwardness with women. There was a sense of something mythological about her, something beyond flesh and blood. I stepped out onto the balcony, stretched my arms and back and took a deep breath as I looked out across the roof tops at the gently rolling hills beyond. The volcanoes. There weren't any volcanoes! How could that be? I'd seen so many that morning; the town was nestled among them.

Something was very weird about this place. This whole town. I gripped the balcony handrail tightly, very tightly, desperately trying to hang on to reality. As I did so, a brief stab of pain shot through one hand--that obnoxious chicken who'd jabbed me with his beak. That damned chicken!

I looked at my wound, and, as I did so, another thought came to me. That damned chicken had character!

Maybe there was a good reason for me to be here, in this strange town I hadn't planned on coming to. Perhaps, in some weird sort of way, I had even been slated to meet that chicken. If I'd really wanted everything to be easy and free of risk, then I shouldn't have come to México in the first place.

Hurrying to get ready, I went to take a shower and found there was no hot water. So I showered with cold water, but didn't stay long. When I emerged, it was dark. Night had fallen. Twilight is short in the tropics.

Without too much difficulty, I found my way back to the shop. At the entrance I hesitated, took a deep breath, then stepped through the tall door.

"Buenas noches," I said as Chayo looked up at me.

A warm look appeared on her face, almost a smile. She was putting some things away and I stood there watching her as she finished up. Her dress was long, falling nearly to her ankles, but displayed a well-shaped figure as she moved about. Everything about her was attractive to me, even her feet, clad so simply in the sandals she wore.

"¿Puedo ayudarte?" I said after a bit, offering to help. I said it out of courtesy although I didn't really see anything for me to do, but she put me to work moving some heavy items across the room.

All this time I was hardly able to take my eyes off her. The scar on the side of her face was faintly visible; it made her more vulnerable, which added to her attractiveness.

She soon finished what needed to be done, after which we walked over to the plaza. It was the same one I'd visited that morning, though it appeared different in the night. On all sides of it ran the busy streets full of noisy cars, trucks and buses--perhaps the traffic had been just as congested that morning, but I hadn't paid it much notice. The blaze of headlights added to the glow of shops and restaurants of the surrounding arcade. The plaza itself was dark, the trees and hedges forming a shadowy patch of jungle in the midst of the bright lights and activity.

The plaza was also longer than I remembered it. Music came from the far end, where a mariachi band was playing on a stage. They wore charro, the embroidered sombreros, jackets and trousers which was the traditional costume for festive occasions. I'd seen charro in movies and photos, but it surprised me to find people in México wearing these clothes.

"My father dressed like that for fiestas," Chayo remarked.

I asked if he lived here in town. She shook her head, and explained that he'd died some years ago. The family had owned a ranch, she told me during an interlude between sets. A brief look of pain passed across her face when she mentioned her father.

The band began their next set. For a moment I thought they were playing dance music, and that worried me because I didn't know a single step, but to my relief nobody seemed to be dancing. People mostly stood still or milled around, enjoying the music. Sometimes it was just instrumental music, and sometimes there were also vocals.

I closed my eyes and listened; even with them shut I could feel Chayo standing there beside me. I wondered if I dared hold her hand. A new song was starting.

Una pasión me domina
y es la que me hizo venir

A passion dominates me
and that's what brought me here

For once I was able to understand the lyrics. I touched Chayo's hand. She responded by taking my hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. It was my sore hand and a slight pain shot through it, but it didn't matter.

The music continued, sometimes with lyrics. The mariachis, the lights, the shadows, the ambiance, and even the mystical-sounding name of this town created a sense of enchantment. Eventually the mariachis took a break. Chayo and I stood there holding hands, looking at one another. For some moments neither of us said anything. We were standing in the shadows, but her face was lit up and animated, almost shining in the darkness. I wished for a way to make this moment last.

Chayo gave my hand another squeeze, and seeing me wince, asked if my hand hurt.

"No," I said.

"¿No?" She squeezed again, grinning wryly as she did so. This time I admitted that yes, it did hurt. She looked at the wound closely and said, "This didn't happen when you fell, did it?"

I told her how I'd been stabbed by an obnoxious chicken.

"A chicken?" she said. "A chicken inflicted such a wound?" Then she held my hand up to her lips and kissed it. Instantly, the pain was gone.

I wondered how she'd done that, but it seemed almost natural. From the very first moment I'd seen her that morning, I'd sensed that she might be a person with unusual gifts and powers.

It also helped that she'd stopped squeezing my sore hand. I was still thinking about that when she said, "What brought you to Uruapan?"

I didn't want to admit that I'd gotten on the wrong bus, or, even more importantly, that I hadn't intended even to come to Uruapan in the first place, so I tried to think of a face-saving explanation that wouldn't be a total lie. Finally I replied that it was my interest in volcanoes.

"¿Los volcánes?" she repeated.

I told her I'd studied geology and that volcanoes were a subject of interest to me. It then occurred to me that by having expressed a professional interest in the natural phenomena of this region, I'd also established a credible pretext for staying here for a while. After all, as much as I now wanted to stay, I certainly didn't want to say that my interest in her had anything to do with my decision. That would've been too forward.

I went on to mention Paricutín, the cornfield volcano, and told her I'd read about it several times since I was a child. "Is it difficult to get there?" I asked.

"I'd be happy to show you the way," she said. "If you'd like."

I assured her that I'd like that very much. I added that there was also another matter I could use her help in.

"Yes?"

I thought about the fact that I needed a place to stay, something a bit cleaner than the hotel I was in. A place where they served meals was what I had in mind, and I tried to think of the word for boarding house. Then it came to me--pensión. I told her I was looking for a "pensión."

"For your car?" she said.

"My car? I don't have one. I came here by bus."

"Then why do you need a pensión?"

"To live in."

For a moment she looked puzzled, then told me that a pensión is where one keeps an automobile.

"Oh."

She suggested that I perhaps meant casa de huespedes.

"Yes." I remembered the words now that she said them. "But doesn't "pensión" also mean the same thing?

Chayo looked at me for a moment. "You're right. Pensión is a Spanish word for hotel. But here in Michoacán we use some words differently."

"I see."

She told me of a place she had in mind. The proprietor had been a friend of her father. She would take me there tomorrow afternoon, during the lunch time. If I liked it, then fine, and if I didn't, then she'd help me look somewhere else. There were several hotels that offered monthly rates.

The music started up again.


continued in Chapter 4

chapter 19

Morning came and I woke up shivering, even though I was under three blankets. MacClayne was stirring in his bed, and Cuauhtémoc was strutting about, ready to start the day. At last I got up, wrapped myself in one of the blankets and moved my arms to get the circulation going as I went to open the door.

A world of white met us. I stood in the entrance, watching as Cuauhtémoc stepped into the courtyard to investigate. He pecked and scratched at the strange fluffy, white substance, took a few more steps, then pecked and scratched again, discovering that it was the same everywhere. "Remarkable!" he seemed to be saying each time he lifted his head to reflect on the situation. "Quite remarkable!"

I wished Chayo were here so I could throw a snowball at her, though it would have been hard to scrape together enough to manufacture one, considering that the snow was hardly more than a centimeter deep. In the room behind me, MacClayne had gotten up and was putting on his shoes, which must've still been damp from wading across the street the evening before. "Do you think we can travel in this?" he remarked as he came to look.

Why not? I thought. In spite of the snow, Cuauhtémoc was stepping about with relative ease. The air was clear and the sun was shining. It was the nicest day I'd seen in weeks, and presumably the buses would be running as usual.

The bird was soon back looking for his breakfast, and I gave him the remainder of the tortillas. While he ate, we got ready to go. I sucked in my breath and shivered as I put on my damp trousers, then my damp shirt and finally my damp jacket which hadn't dried much since the soaking of the night before. It was like wearing a wetsuit; hopefully my clothes would dry out as I wore them. I thought longingly of my childhood in Minnesota where rooms were heated and you always had something dry to wear.

Then I realized that I hadn't bothered to bring any of my maps, not realizing that we'd be traveling this far afield. Although maps of this region weren't terribly good at showing where all the back roads went, they at least gave an idea. Well, we'd just have to ask. The landlady seemed well informed.

I told her we were looking for the road which led down the mountainside to Apatzingán.

She shook her head, "Go back to Uruapan. Take the bus from there."

"There's no other road out of here?" I asked.

"No. Only the trail to Apo."

"Apo?"

"From here it's a five hour walk," she said. "Sometimes a pickup goes through, and you might get a ride.

"There's no bus?"

She wagged her finger, a gesture which in México means no.

"Which direction is Apo?" I wished I had my map.

"You go north."

Apatzingán, of course, lay to the south.

I translated for MacClayne, who had understood some but not all of the dialogue. "Perhaps we could find someone else to ask," he suggested. "A second opinion."

We decided to go have breakfast; we could ask directions at the restaurant. There had to be a road.

"Maybe we could leave the rooster here in the room while we eat?" MacClayne said. "Things might be simpler that way."

"Cuauhtémoc," I said. "Do you mind?" The look in his eye told me that he did mind. No, things wouldn't be simpler that way; I could see that. So I took him with.

The snow had mostly receded from the plaza, leaving only scattered patches behind, and the cobblestone street we'd waded across the night before was drying under the morning sun. The air was almost warm and the sky was almost clear. Mount Tancítaro was still hidden in clouds.

The restaurant on the corner wasn't open, but we found a nearby market where food was served. And there was not only food. Vendors sold everything from oranges to blankets to pots and pans. It was a miniature of the covered market in Uruapan which consisted of booths and stalls under a corrugated metal roof. It was probably the only concrete structure in the village.

"Not very aesthetic, but practical," MacClayne said. "I remember markets like this in Veracruz."

"Were you in the merchant marine then?"

"No, I was out of the merchant marine by then. It was after I came to America, some time in the mid-1950's."

The market was nearly empty, probably because of the weather. The air was so chilly our breath turned to vapor, but there was the delicious smell of food, and my damp clothes didn't feel so cold now. We sat down at a small booth and I asked the lady what she had to offer.

"Carne de res, y carne de puerco," she said.

It was what we'd had the evening before, and again, MacClayne had one and I had the other. This time I had the beef and he had the pork. As was the custom, these were served with beans, rice and tortillas. From time to time I shared a tiny morsel with Cuauhtémoc; he liked the beans.

"What weather!" the lady remarked after serving us the food.

"Does it often snow here in the village?" I said.

"Not at this time of year."

We chatted with her while we ate. She asked us about the bird, and where we were from, the usual stuff. Finally I asked about the road to Apatzingán.

"Go to Uruapan, take a bus from there," she said.

"Isn't there a road or trail going down the mountainside?"

She stopped to think, and then asked the vendor of a nearby stall that happened to be open. That person expressed belief that such a trail existed, but didn't know where to find it. Word went around, but nobody knew for certain.

Customers were trickling in. After eating we decided to have coffee and wait a while. Somebody who knew the way might turn up.

"It's strange that these people have lived here all their lives and don't know the roads," MacClayne remarked.

"That's the way it is," I said, "People know the way to the nearest large town or city, but they don't know the back roads of their own region. Nobody goes into the hinterland. Almost nobody, I should say. Chayo is different. She's been everywhere and knows these mountains well."

"It would be helpful if she could show up now," MacClayne said. "To give us directions."

"Yes," I said, and sighed. Without Chayo I felt a bit lost. Maybe this was one of the reasons why I needed to make this journey without her, to learn to find my own way in this new world.

Cuauhtémoc hopped onto my lap, reassuring me with his presence.

MacClayne took a long, slow sip of coffee, then reflected for a moment. "Apatzingán is a fairly large town, isn't it?" he said. "Don't people go there?"

"These are mountain people and, when they go to town, they go to Uruapan," I said. "The mountain is one world. The valley below is another."

Indeed, everything around us did seem to be split up into separate worlds, not only the mountain and valley, but even the languages we spoke: English, the private language between MacClayne and me, and Spanish, the public language which MacClayne was generally left out of unless I translated it for him.

Just then the lady told me that there was a customer who knew a road which went downhill to Apatzingán. He was a large, robust man and had the self-assured look of a professional, perhaps an engineer. The lady introduced us to him.

Yes, a route did exist, and he'd occasionally taken it himself. But it wasn't a road, it was a horse trail, inaccessible to vehicles. We'd have to walk. "If you start now, you might get to Apatzingán by evening," he said. "But in this weather--no, it's not a good idea. You could easily get lost. If you don't want to return to Uruapan, then take the trail to Apo, it's much easier and you might get a ride."

I translated for MacClayne and suggested that in spite of the difficulties, we should take the way which went directly down the mountainside. That was why we'd come to Tancítaro, to take that trail. But he shook his head and asked, "Did Chayo recommend that route for us?"

"She mentioned it, but she didn't tell me where to find it."

"When?"

"Recently, some time during the last month or so."

"Not in the depot when she met us there?"

"No."

"She didn't specifically instruct you to take that trail?"

"I never said she did."

"Well that's what I'm asking, and you made it sound like she had."

"I only meant to say that she'd told me of a trail going directly down the mountainside. So I think that would be the way to go."

For some moments we sat there in a tense silence, which was finally broken by MacClayne. "What other road is there?"

"The trail to Apo."

"Another isolated village?"

"Apparently," I said. I kept wishing I had my map.

"So what happens when we get there?"

"Then we can get a bus to Los Reyes, and from Los Reyes--"

"Los Reyes is in down in the Valley of Infiernillo?"

"No. It's the other way," I said.

"So we begin with a five hour walk. Go north to get south, and get deeper into these mountains? Is this how you plan things out?" MacClayne's voice was becoming somewhat raspy, the way it was when he was impatient.

"We're in the back woods of Michoacán, and this is how the road system works around here."

MacClayne glanced up at the bare concrete restaurant wall and sighed, apparently disappointed, frustrated and perhaps even angry. I wondered if he felt misled, that I'd done him a disservice by getting us into this apparently dead-end situation.

I took another swallow of my coffee, pondered a moment, then said, "We're in quest of a fabled city, so we can't expect the going to be easy. If the roads don't go where we want them to go, that's perhaps the way things are supposed to be."

"We're Holy Grailers," he said. I wasn't sure if it was a question or a groan.

"I should hope so," I replied.

A long silence ensued, punctuated only by the sounds of the market around us. MacClayne stared at the remains in his cup, perhaps looking for an omen. "Then let us set out," he said at last, returning to his previous good humor. "We must not delay in our quest for the chalice."

I was glad to see him getting back into the spirit of things.

We finished off our coffee. Over to one side of us was a booth where they sold oranges, and nearby was one where they had oats which would serve as bird food. We stocked up for the journey ahead and then stepped out onto the bright sunlit street. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.

Snow had left the village and was retreating up the mountainside, which was by now free of clouds. We walked to the middle of the plaza for a better view, and saw the green forest rise upwards to where it turned white, then narrowed to a pointed pinnacle.

From Uruapan I'd seen the mountain as a long, extended ridge, but this village was at the end of that ridge, so from here it had the appearance of a peak. It was like looking at a long, sloped roof from a new angle. I wished Chayo were here to see it with me.

We got our things from the room and set out.

The road to Apo was a pair of tire tracks going off into the forest. At first the trail was fairly straight, but it soon began to make hairpin curves, doubling back on itself as it clung to the edge of one steep ravine after another which cut deep into the mountainside and exposed outcrops of ancient lava flows. The thick woods prevented us from seeing what lay to either side of us, but we could look upwards through the treetops and catch glimpses of the snow-covered slopes above.

There were water puddles here and there, but not a lot of mud. Though I couldn't imagine anyone driving a vehicle on this trail, it was easy enough to walk on, and walking kept us warm.

We weren't carrying much. My backpack was just big enough to hold three books, some oranges, a small sack of oats for Cuauhtémoc and his blanket. MacClayne carried a bag of similar size slung over his shoulder in which he had a few personal items, a book or two, and perhaps a change of socks.

Cuauhtémoc scurried along on his short little legs, doing his best to keep up. Back on the malpaís where we'd had to fight our way through underbrush, the bird had gotten around much better than me, but here on this open trail he was at something of a disadvantage. When he fell behind he took to his wings, flew over our heads and landed on the trail up ahead. Then he turned around and stood there looking at us. "Slow pokes!" he seemed to say. As we approached he hopped on my arm and let me carry him.

From time to time the pine forest closed in so tightly on both sides that I felt as if we were winding our way through a tunnel. I glanced at my watch and found that we'd been hiking for over an hour, but the surroundings were so pleasant that it didn't feel that long.

The path curved along the edge of a cliff. We rounded the bend when suddenly the trees opened up and we found ourselves gazing raptly at a magnificent pair of snow-capped volcanoes. Their steep slopes rose almost vertically; a small, lonely cloud clung to one of the peaks.

We stood there in dumb amazement. I was astonished to see volcanoes so tall and slender. "A pair of needles," I exclaimed. They dwarfed the tiny cinder cones around Uruapan, and must have been even higher than Mount Tancítaro.

The valley below spread out before us. That gave us a better notion on how very distant the volcanoes must have been. I would have guessed at least 70 kilometers. Paradoxically, some peculiar atmospheric condition must have brought the peaks up close and made it appear that we'd soon be climbing their slopes.

"I think I'll have an orange," said MacClayne.

"An orange break?" I said. "Sure."

We stood there, peeling oranges and admiring the view. Although the sky was clear, the valley floor was covered with a sea of fog. Only the rims of scattered cinder cones poked through. They were brown and treeless.

"So where would Apatzingán be?" MacClayne said, thinking aloud.

I shook my head and offered a piece of my orange to Cuauhtémoc, but the bird's attention was fixed on the misty scene below.

"Can that really be a desert down there?" said MacClayne.

"It apparently is. That's because it lies in a rain shadow."

"Which means?"

I pointed to the bluish silhouette of the distant coastal range which rose up on the south side of the valley. "The wind comes in from the Pacific Ocean and drops its moisture as it rises up over those mountains. That's where the rain falls, so the air is pretty dry when it reaches the valley."

"And that makes it a desert? It looks like something out of one of your Norse myths. What did you call that place?"

"La Tierra Caliente--the Hot Country," I said. "Some call it the Valley of Infiernillo."

"In the Norse myth, I meant."

"Niflheim--which means land of icy mist. It was said to be an extremely cold, desolate, miserable place. And it apparently lay at the bottom of a valley somewhere below Asgarð. There are accounts in the Edda of men who went there. It was a nine day horseback ride down through dark canyons."

"Nine days? That's quite a horseback ride."

"Yeah, but if you were to go there nowadays you'd probably find a bus service," I said.

"So where would the spring have been located?"

"The Spring of Urð? That would've been in Asgarð."

"Up in the mountains, then," MacClayne said. "So this is like a geographic setting from Norse mythology, and we're looking at it. Walking on it. Passing through it."

At the mention of Nieflheim, a chill seemed to rise from the valley below. Cuauhtémoc gave a low, mournful squawk. It was a sound I didn't realize his vocal chords were capable of producing.

"¿Estás bien?" I said. I hugged him gently and turned away from the valley, but he craned his neck around, unwilling to take his eyes away from it. He made the same sound again.

We moved on and were soon back in the forest. Cuauhtémoc seemed to be okay now. He hopped down to exercise his legs.

"Do you think the Vikings ever visited México?" MacClayne said after a while.

"Remotely possible, but extremely doubtful," I said. "They reached Nova Scotia, perhaps also Maine and Massachusetts, but not México."

"Maybe you're here to fulfill a destiny," he said. "To see this land and complete a project that Norsemen began a thousand years ago."

We came to a ravine crossed by two large logs, spaced the width of a vehicle axle apart.

"Can this be a bridge?" I said.

"What else it could be?"

"Can you imagine trying to drive a pickup across this?" I said.

"There's tire tracks on both sides, so vehicles must be using it."

We crossed with a bit of trepidation. It was only a few meters deep, but I still felt like a tight-rope walker.

The morning that had begun with snow on the ground was turning out very different. It was a good day and a good place to be walking. We talked as we went, daydreaming of how it might be fun to someday get a burro and spend a summer traveling around in these mountains, leisurely wandering from village to village.

With that and many other thoughts we passed the time as we walked, and couldn't have been too far from Apo when the forest behind us began to vibrate with the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was a pickup, and the driver offered us a ride.

Two elderly women rode with the driver, so we got on the flat-bed and rode standing up, hanging onto the roll bar. Cuauhtémoc perched beside me, using his wings for balance as we swayed from side to side and bounced along on the rough trail.

In less than ten minutes we reached the turnoff for Apo, where we got off, expressed our thanks, and chatted briefly with the driver. He was about the same age and build as don Pablo. He was taking his two elderly passengers to the village to visit the shrine of a virgin. One of them was ill and hoping for a miraculous cure.

"How did you cross that log bridge?" I asked him.

He grinned, and said, "In these mountains it's part of a day's drive."

We said our good-byes and, as it was getting on in the day, we felt we didn't have time to visit the village of Apo. We had hopes of reaching Apatzingán that afternoon and continued on foot. As we left the turnoff behind, the trail immediately widened out and became a road. It was still a horrible washboard surface, but it looked more traveled and our chances of catching a ride looked better.

Before long the needle-shaped mountains came into view again. The tiny cloud still clung to the peak of one as if it were pinned there. Maybe it was vapor trailing out from the volcano.

"Would that mean it's active?" MacClayne said.

"Probably. It must be scary to live under."

The slender cones appeared as close as ever, but we decided they must be a lot farther away than they appeared to be. They were due west of us and I had heard of a tall, twin-peaked volcano out in that area. But that was way over in Colima and Jalisco, perhaps a hundred and fifty kilometers away.

"What's that in miles?" MacClayne said.

"Almost a hundred."

Could we be looking at something so distant and be seeing it so clearly? MacClayne doubted it.

Above and immediately behind us were the snowy slopes of Mount Tancítaro. It too had once been a proud active volcano; its eroded remnants still dominated this region.

The fog had nearly disappeared from the valley below, revealing a dry, treeless landscape with eroded cinder cones. Still no sight of any large population center that could be Apatzingán.

We took another orange break. There was something about orange eating that went together with traveling like this. We didn't bother to carry water; oranges were handier. I again offered bits of mine to Cuauhtémoc, and this time he accepted them.

From there we got a short ride in a truckload of sawdust and emerged covered with the stuff, with packs, bags, and pocketfuls of sawdust. But it didn't bother Cuauhtémoc; he just shook it off.

A short walk took us the rest of the way to a road junction with a very tiny hamlet consisting of only three or four habitations.

"Do you have any idea of where we might be?" MacClayne said.

"It should be Copertiro. The driver of the pickup said we could catch a bus in that place."

There was an asphalt road which went northward, up into the mountains and presumably to Los Reyes. The road began here, or, rather, it ended here. We would of course go south, and in that direction there was only an unpaved washboard surface.

No vehicles were in sight.

In front of one of the houses was a tiny roadside restaurant which apparently catered to truckers. It consisted of a crude table with a bench on either side, but lacked anything overhead to shelter customers from the sun and rain. The only person around was an elderly lady who was apparently the proprietress.

"¿Es Copertiro?" I asked.

"Sí."

I asked if there was a bus for Apatzingán.

"Ya viene," It's on its way here. she said, and told us it would take us to Buenavista. There we'd have to change buses.

I glanced at MacClayne, who gave a nod to indicate that he'd understood. "We seem to be at the right place," he said to me, then to the lady, "¿Hay café?"

The lady shook her head. She didn't have much else either, except for several crates of soft drinks. I had a cola and requested water for the bird. MacClayne didn't want anything. Hopefully, the bus would be here soon; if not, maybe we could hitch a ride on some other vehicle. Either way, we expected to be in Apatzingán by evening; it was now mid-afternoon.

MacClayne read one of his books, and I took out my journal. Cuauhtémoc scratched in the pebbles nearby.

The Needle Peaks weren't visible from here, but the long, snowy ridge of Tancítaro still towered above and behind us. This was the western side of it, the hidden slopes I'd never seen before. The ridge now lay between us and Uruapan, separating me from Chayo.

I sat there thinking of the night we'd spent together in Los Reyes, that town to the north of us, the place where the paved road went.

Walking had kept me comfortably warm, but as I sat there I began to cool off. My clothes were still slightly damp from the soaking of the evening before, and they began to take on the chill of the air around me.

An hour went by. No bus, and no other traffic either. The proprietress was the only visible inhabitant of the entire region. Everything around took on a desolate appearance; even the trees and grass were dry and brown, a prelude to the parched valley below. Only the empty road connected us with the rest of the world.

Cuauhtémoc hopped up to perch on a branch beside me, looking over my shoulder as I wrote. The cold didn't seem to bother him. Or MacClayne either, who sat reading in a silence broken only by the occasional turning of a page, making a faint rustling sound that echoed out into the emptiness.

Insects didn't chirp and birds didn't sing. At long last, the beginnings of a faint vibration resonated in the distance. An approaching vehicle? But it was more a feeling than a sound, something so subtle that I wasn't sure if I heard it or not. Cuauhtémoc raised his head. MacClayne lowered his book and looked up. I got up and stretched my arms and legs, but still didn't see anything. Minutes passed; eventually a tiny speck appeared on the road above us, It was a bus, winding its way down the mountainside from Los Reyes. Hopefully, it was the one that would take us down into the valley.

MacClayne waved to flag it down while I gathered up Cuauhtémoc and took a last look in the direction of the snow-capped ridge. The mountain was no longer to be seen; then I realized the sun was also gone. The sky had turned gray and hung low overhead.

"Is this our bus?" MacClayne asked.

It had come to a halt beside us and the door opened. The destination read: BUENAVISTA.

We got on. It was only a third full, and we found a seat near the front where we could see through the windshield as well as the side window. The bus began to move, and almost immediately came to the end of the smooth asphalt surface where there was a jarring crash. We were pounding our way down the washboard road towards the valley.

A huge rain drop splashed on the window beside us. It was followed by another, and within seconds it was raining fiercely.
hillside of scrub

Through the water-streaked panes I saw oak trees, or maybe they weren't oaks; anyway they were deciduous. The pines were gone, so we'd lost elevation and were entering another ecosystem. Before long, the deciduous trees themselves thinned out, and eventually there were only nopal cacti scattered here and there. Several cinder cones loomed in the canyon below and ahead of us.
I imagined that all of this would normally be a dry brown, but the storm had turned everything into a bluish gray.

Icy water trickled in around the loose, rattling window frames, and with each jarring bounce I got spattered in the face.

We came to a stretch where the steep hillsides receded, and the canyon broadened out to form a narrow plain where the road was flat and the water puddled up. We squished and splashed our way along, at times like an old-time paddle-wheeler chugging down a river of soupy mud.

"Can you picture this place ever being dry?" I said.

"It must be a dust bowl," he said. "Another Ecclefechan."

"Eccl--?"

"Ecclefechan. It's a town in Kirkcudbright, about thirty miles from Dundrennan." He paused to recall a refrain and shift gears to Broad Scots of the Border Country:

"Ecclefechan--where the craas flee erse-wise
tay keep the stoor oot o' their een."

"'Craas flee' would be 'crows fly'?" I said.

MacClayne grinned and nodded.

"And they're trying to keep the 'stoor' out of their eyes," I said. "What's stoor?"

"Dust," he said, and finished the translation: "The crows fly ass-backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes."

"Dust, you say. I should've guessed. The Norwegian word is støv." There were a lot of Scandinavian words in Lowland Scots--"bra," meaning good, "foo" meaning drunk and "flit" meaning move were a few I'd come across in MacClayne's stories and poems.

The bus squished on.

"¡Que mierda!" It was a woman's voice, slightly slurred, and came from the seat behind us. I stole a quick glance. There were two of them sharing a bottle. I hoped Cuauhtémoc wouldn't smell it and demand a swig.

The windshield wipers oscillated back and forth, each swipe clearing water from the pane long enough to allow a brief and distorted glimpse down the road. Directly ahead was a treeless cinder cone which gradually grew in size as we approached.

Between it and us, in the near distance, I could make out an indistinct mottled mass that covered a wide area. As we drew closer, I could see that it was composed of individual creatures, which, as they came into focus, turned out to cattle blocking the road in front of us. We came to a halt as horsemen rode back and forth to divide them up and herd them to one side or the other to make way for us. The action was in slow motion as the animals slogged through the mud. The cattle were Brahmans, which I had been told were imported from India and cross-bred with European cattle to make them more resistant to the intense heat for which this region was famous.

At last we were moving again, nearing the cinder cone. We were slightly above it, so I could see into its hollow crater. Although I'd seen dozens of these small volcanoes, I was always curious to see one more, and I watched intently as the road curved around it. On the slopes there grew a few scattered nopal cacti, ubiquitous in this part of the world.

The volcano behind us, we were again pounding and crashing our way down a washboard surface. Hillsides were closing in from both sides as the canyon narrowed and deepened. There were especially loud crashes that shook the bus to its very chassis as the wheels fell into larger holes.

"Fuck! This shit sucks!" It was one of the women in the seat behind us, and for a moment I mused over how such a phrase might be translated into English. MacClayne glanced at me and grinned. Had he understood it? Then it hit me that the woman was expressing herself in English--not in Spanish.

In the next instant something flew past us, narrowly missing MacClayne's head. Cuauhtémoc let out a loud "Rhhhhhhh!" and then jumped from my lap and took off after it. It was a lady chicken and she reversed direction, half-flying, half-scurrying toward the back of the bus with Cuauhtémoc hot on her tail. The owner was also in the chase, running a poor third. I was fourth and last, slipping and sliding on the wet floor as I pursued Cuauhtémoc.

"¡Ariba la pollita!" shouted one of the drunken women.

"¡Ariba el gallito!" shouted the other.

The birds scurried under seats, then flew back over the tops of them. Back and forth they went, from one end of the bus to the other.

The chicken owner finally cornered his hen, and I grabbed for Cuauhtémoc. Just then the bus gave a lurch; the owner landed on a nearby passenger and I fell on top of the owner. The passenger cursed the owner and the owner cursed me, and I pretended I didn't understand Spanish.

"Cuauhtémoc!" I said, after finally apprehending him and hauling him back to our seat. "How could you do this to me?"

MacClayne was laughing.

The booze-guzzling women in the seat behind us were snickering and snorting. A moment later there was a loud rattle as one of them opened the window, shoving it upwards with all her might, sticking her head out into the wind and rain, vomiting into the storm.

My curiosity overcame me and I turned to look, and found myself staring into the face of one of the female drunks.

"What are you looking at?" she said in English, slurring her words and sitting almost immobile in her seat. She paused, then let out a torrent of four letter words that ended with: "Fucking assholes! Go to hell! You're on the road to hell anyway! You know that? You're on the road to hell!"

Having said that, she passed out and collapsed across the lap of her companion who peered at me through a drunken haze.

Cuauhtémoc hopped onto the backrest and gave their bottle a thirsty look.

"Let's move," I suggested as I grabbed hold of my bird.

We found some empty seats towards the rear of the bus. We couldn't see through the windshield from here; but the chances of getting puked on were less.

"I suppose people who die of drink also end up in Niflheim?" MacClayne said with a grin.

Across the aisle was another drinking party, this one more discreet. Three or four guys were quietly passing a bottle back and forth. A couple seats ahead of them sat the chicken owner with his hen. She raised her head over the backrest, spied Cuauhtémoc, and gave a conspiratorial cluck.

"Por favor, Cuauhtémoc," I pleaded, "Pórtate bien."

MacClayne eyed the booze as it went from hand to hand. Perhaps he was thinking nostalgically of his seagoing days when a sailor might smuggle a bottle aboard and pass it around in the forecastle.

At my instigation, we got up and moved again, this time to a seat over the rear wheels. It was the worst place on the bus. There was no leg room because of the wheel configuration, and we also got the full impact of every rock and pothole the wheel slammed into.

Rain beat on the roof and struck obliquely against the side window. We were heading into the full intensity of the storm. I looked out the window, but all I saw was water and darkness.

Suddenly, the road noise stopped, and we found ourselves cruising along smoothly on a paved surface. Within minutes the bus came to a stop. Everyone was getting off.

I slipped Cuauhtémoc's makeshift raincoat over his head as we waited for the crowd to clear. Eventually only the female drunks remained in their seat. One growled an indistinct phrase as we passed by on our way to the door.

"¿Buenavista?" I asked the driver.

"Sí. ¿A dónde van?"

"Apatzingán," I said.

He pointed up ahead, and told me that's where we'd find our bus.

Torrents of rain pelted down as we dashed to a sidewalk where we stood under the eaves of a nearby roof and then paused to look around. The bus had let us off on what appeared to be the town's main drag. That was unusual; normally passengers disembarked either at the plaza or at a depot.

The passengers who'd gotten off with us were also huddled under whatever would serve as shelter. As I peered through the sheets of rain I could barely see the other side of the street. According to the driver, the bus for Apatzingán should be here soon.

The two drunken women finally came stumbling out of the bus. Somehow they made it onto the street where they stood in the midst of the downpour, holding on to each other for support as they looked around.

"It's raining," observed one.

"Is it really?" responded her companion. The two deliberated for some moments longer, then wandered off through the downpour.

A bus drove up with a destination that read: APATZINGÁN. I'd gathered that the road from here on was excellent, so we could consider ourselves almost at our destination. People began to board.

I looked at MacClayne and he looked at me.

"What do you think?" said MacClayne.

For a long time I gazed at the bus. Finally I said, "Apatzingán should be entered in the morning, as the sun rises overhead. That is my vision of how it ought to be."


continued in Chapter 20

chapter 20

We decided to spend the night here in Buenavista. First we needed to get away from the rain and find a place to eat. We followed the sidewalk, trying to stay under eaves and avoid stepping into the water that filled the streets as well as the sky. Around a corner and not too far away we soon found a restaurant.

"Like the inside of a pillbox," MacClayne remarked as we entered.

A moldy print of the Virgin of Guadalupe adorned an otherwise bare concrete wall. Only a small electric light gave a tinge of yellow warmth and indicated that somebody might be around.

There were a few small tables. We chose one and sat down facing one another, with Cuauhtémoc at one end, perched on the backrest of a chair. I stood up long enough to take off my jacket, shivered slightly, then put it back on. Although wet, it helped to insulate me from the cold.

MacClayne was smiling at something, and I turned to see what it might be. It was a little pig, poking its head out of the kitchen for a peek at us.

"Not many foreigners travel in these parts," I said, "We might be the first the little animal has ever seen."

"No doubt he leads a fairly cloistered life."

Cuauhtémoc eyed the piglet curiously, then hopped down and strutted over to introduce himself. The piglet snorted and the bird jumped back with neck feathers raised; for a moment they sized each other up. Then the piglet gave a friendly-sounding grunt which cleared up the misunderstanding. The bird dropped his hackles, clucked a greeting, and returned to his perch.

Eventually the proprietress appeared. She was an attractive woman, despite large blotches of pale white skin, where the brown had ostensibly peeled off.

I asked what was on the menu, and she replied, "Carne de res, o carne de puerco."

It was becoming our custom for MacClayne to have one and me the other, and that's what we were about to do now, when another thought came to mind. I said to MacClayne, "With such a cute little pig officiating as our co-host, I think it would be in poor taste to eat pork."

MacClayne felt the same, and I ordered beef and beans for both of us. But a moment later the lady was back to tell us she was out of beef.

"So there's only the beans and tortillas?" MacClayne said. "Does she have pork?"

I nodded, but with a frown.

Cuauhtémoc looked at MacClayne, and MacClayne looked past both of us, towards the little piglet. The little pig looked back at MacClayne.

"I guess I'll just have beans and tortillas," he said.

So that's what we ate. I also asked for an empty dish on which I put some oats from my pack and added a few beans and a bit of a tortilla from my plate. Cuauhtémoc dug in hungrily.

"Couldn't the rooster eat on the floor?" MacClayne suggested.

I moved the dish to the seat of the chair.

Cuauhtémoc ate quickly and was soon back on his perch. MacClayne and I took our time and then had coffee. The roof leaked in a couple of places and water was dripping into pans on the floor. The muffled sound of a vehicle splashing its way along the street could be heard from time to time. The rain had momentarily stopped, and we lingered a while, hoping the storm would be completely over with before we ventured out.

"So this is the Valley of Infiernillo," MacClayne mused.

I wasn't sure if he meant that ironically or was asking a question. I said, "They also call it 'la tierra caliente'."

"Which means 'the hot country'?"

"Yes. It has several names, more than one of which reflect the fact that normally this place is like an oven. Dry and dusty. Actually, Infiernillo is a hundred kilometers from here, but Chayo applies it to this whole valley."

"Her father died down here, didn't he?"

"Yes. In Apatzingán."

"How recently was that?"

"Chayo was a teen-ager," I said. "You know, I think the storm is over with, at least for now."

MacClayne nodded, lifted his cup and finished off the few remaining drops of cold coffee.

As we paid the proprietress, I asked where we might find a hotel.

"Go to Apatzingán," she advised us.

"Aren't there any hotels here in Buenavista?"

"One," she said. "But I don't think you'd find it suitable. It's run-down and dirty, quite filthy in fact."

"At least we'll look at it," I said. "¿Dónde está?"

The lady directed us to a place a couple of blocks away, and we stepped out into a premature evening. Still an hour till sunset, street lights were not yet lit, but the dense, leaden clouds had already ended the sunless afternoon.

"She was good-looking," MacClayne said as we set out down the street. "It's unfortunate that her face is disfigured."

"Mal de pinto," I said. "It's said to be quite common here in the valley."

"It's not contagious?"

"Apparently not. You have to live here for ten or twenty years to catch it," I said. "But you can imagine how people in ancient times must have thought of a place where the inhabitants were afflicted by such a malady. They probably thought the valley was an abode of hostile spirits."

"Was this part of the Tarascan empire?"

"Eventually it got included, at least for a while. But the Tarascans were mountain people, and it appears that they generally avoided this region."

The hotel we arrived at was made of concrete, rooms on three sides around a large courtyard, the center of which sagged down into a shallow pond with an island of junk which included old mattresses and broken bed frames. Small birds were splashing in the water.

The landlady showed us a room. "There isn't any key," she explained, and reached in through the window with a stick and poked around till she found the lock. As we entered she flicked a switch, and a small electric bulb revealed a barren room with two beds and a chair. Four gray cement walls with a roof overhead.

"Another pillbox," MacClayne observed. I noted that there were sheets but no blankets on the beds.

"¿Las cobijas?" I asked.

"No hay."

The price was forty pesos. I glanced at MacClayne and he nodded, so we took it. It was the only hotel we'd seen. Leaving our things in the room, we set out to see the town.

"What did she say about blankets?" MacClayne asked.

"That she doesn't have any. Nobody uses blankets down here because it's normally so hot."

Only the main drag was paved, and, leaving it, we strolled down streets that were as bad as any of the roads our bus had ridden on. Nevertheless, most of the water had collected into pools which we were able to walk around without getting muddy. There was little traffic, so it was safe for Cuauhtémoc to use his own legs. He walked for a while, but eventually got tired. Before letting him hop back on my arm I tried to rinse his feet off in a puddle. In that effort I received less than his wholehearted cooperation.

MacClayne wanted to see the plaza, which is the center of activity in any Mexican town. But when we got there we found it not only deserted; it was nearly abandoned. Trees and shrubs were untended. Even some of the surrounding buildings were gone, leaving empty lots in their places. Those that remained had fallen into various stages of decay; a larger one with a caved-in roof must have been the city hall. Dim lights in the two or three buildings which were still occupied only added to the sad and desolate feeling.

One of these still housed a small shop where I bought a piece of coconut candy. The proprietor was old and gaunt, a fitting part of this scene. No doubt he remained in this once active place to live out the remaining years of his life, tending a business he'd owned for decades. As I paid him the money, a single street light went on to counter the darkness of the oncoming night.

"Like a setting from an Akutagawa story," I remarked.

"Akutagawa?"

"A Japanese novelist. His stories were often set in places like this. One of them, The Spider's Thread, is about a criminal who's given the chance to climb out of hell using the thread of a spider."

"Did he make it?"

"No."

As we walked, we munched on the coconut candy and I shared a piece with Cuauhtémoc.

The business district had relocated to a new area, five or six blocks east of the plaza, centered on the street where we'd gotten off the bus. By this time it was bustling with activity. People were doing the shopping they apparently hadn't been able to do during the stormy afternoon.

"Let's see if we can find a bench where we can sit," MacClayne said. "I want to take in the atmosphere."

But, since this wasn't a plaza, there weren't any benches, so we just strolled around. The sidewalks were lined with vendors and jammed with crowds of people who did their best to avoid the muddy water splashed up by passing vehicles.

The buildings appeared new, but makeshift and shabby, as if they were thrown together in a hurry. Not even the concrete structures looked very permanent.

"It has that boom-town atmosphere," MacClayne said, "Like something that just recently sprang up."

In reality it was a fairly old town, dating back to the previous century, and probably much further.

The inevitable radios played; one was crying out a song: "¡Soledad! ¡La horible Soledad!"

"Soledad?" MacClayne mused. "There's a prison with that name somewhere in the Salinas valley, I think. I knew a guy who spent five years there. He killed a guy, or at least that's what he was accused of. He said he was drunk, blacked out and had no memory of it. Didn't even know the victim."

"You think he actually did it?" I asked curiously.

"I wouldn't know. He didn't seem like a bad sort. Maybe he just happened to be at the wrong place and got picked up by the cops. Apparently he didn't have money for a good lawyer, and that's usually what makes the difference."

"Yeah, I can imagine," I said. "Sounds pretty tragic. At least it's an appropriate name for a prison. Soledad. Gives a feeling of dead silence and isolation."

The radio was playing something else now, but the words "¡Soledad, soledad!" still rang in my ears. They resonated with the melancholy scene around us. Despite the noise and activity, the yellow lights from the shops were lost in the massive darkness.

"How did this town get the name Buenavista, I wonder. That means 'good view', doesn't it?" MacClayne mused, "What kind of a view could you get in a place like this?"

"On a clear day you could probably see the Meseta Volcánica dominated by Mount Tancítaro to the north, the coastal range to the south, and possibly the Needle Peaks to the west."

"If it's that exceptional, they should've given the town an exceptional name," he said critically. "Buenavista sounds like something a land developer would come up with."

I had to agree. Back in California one became very accustomed to such. Although the older towns of California had authentic Spanish names, a lot of the newer places possessed pseudo Spanish names that were glaringly ungrammatical. Especially street names, which often included the word 'vista', and nearly always used it incorrectly. Throughout the state of California there were street signs on many a corner which stood as monuments to linguistic ineptitude.

Nevertheless, I took issue with MacClayne on his criticism. "This is México," I said. "And so you can be sure that Buenavista is real Spanish."

"What do you mean by 'real Spanish'?" he demanded

"Well, I suppose I would say that it's a place name given by a native speaker of the language."

"A native speaker with no feel for language," MacClayne shot back, "Do you think every Spanish-speaking person is a Frederico García Lorca or a Pablo Neruda?"

I started to respond, but MacClayne cut me off and went on, now with rising passion, to castigate the linguistic limitations of humanity. He said, "People the world over speak their native language without the least sense of poetic imagery. They regurgitate cliches and proclaim them as the most original innovations in human speech since the time of Homer."

MacClayne carried on for some time with his monologue, till at last he said, "But maybe you would care to disagree?"

"No, not at all," I said, feeling slightly beaten down. At times MacClayne got into these moods where he just had to dish out some of his righteous condemnation, and I had heard enough for now. But I did make a mental note that I must record in my journal that somebody had erred greatly in giving this town a name which did not meet MacClayne's approval.

"So what would you suggest they rename it?" I said.

"What's wrong with the one we were just talking about?"

"You mean name it 'Soledad?'"

"I think you're on the right track," he said.

"Then how about 'The Gathering Place of Lost Souls'?" I said. "For short they could just call it 'The Gathering Place,' and we'll make it a required stopping place for all true Grailers."

That seemed to meet with MacClayne's approval.

Lights reflected in the pond and silhouetted the island of junk as we returned to our hotel. A mangy dog wandered around looking lost. I could hear chickens roosting nearby; Cuauhtémoc was too sleepy to notice.

MacClayne went right to bed. Cuauhtémoc perched on the seat of his chair and I wrapped him up for the night in his personal blanket. I felt like reading, but the light was weak. I wrote in my journal for a while, barely able to see well enough to write in a straight line. Finally I turned in.

The sheets were gritty with sand; somebody must have stepped on the bed with muddy feet. It didn't matter; I was far more concerned with staying warm, which was a difficult task without a blanket.

I dozed off, and, the next thing I knew, I was in a dream. We were in a Mercedes with air conditioning and even a coffee machine. I was driving and MacClayne was pouring himself a cup of coffee as we sped down a smooth, asphalt highway towards Apatzingán.

The heat was stifling, but I shivered from the cold. Bright sunlight shone through the windshield, causing a frightful glare, but the sky was covered with black clouds.

Apatzingán was up ahead and we could see it in the distance, but the countryside suddenly changed. It was no longer the parched Valley of Infiernillo; it had become a windswept rocky landscape of some cold northern region. We entered the town, but the buildings didn't have the red-tiled roofs of a Mexican city.

"Stop here," MacClayne ordered.

He walked off and disappeared down the street, leaving me standing there alone. Cuauhtémoc wasn't with me.

A cold wind was blowing and the sun was setting. MacClayne had been gone a long time by now, and night fell. The Mercedes was gone, but its disappearance didn't concern me. I seemed to be waiting for something.

There was the sound of wings beating against the dark sky. The clouds parted, and Cuauhtémoc descended in the silvery moonlight and landed on my arm.

Now I had to find MacClayne. I set off down a dark street lined with the shapes of trees and houses. I could sense the inhabitants peering out at me as I walked past with the bird. Suddenly I found myself at a long bridge over a wide river where a female soldier stood guard at a sentry post. She had blond hair and wore a British uniform with a pistol in her belt. A mean-looking dog at her side growled at me. The animal's chest was spattered with blood. There was something uncomfortably familiar about this place. Cuauhtémoc let out a mournful squawk.

"Where's MacClayne?" I asked the guard woman.

"Across the river," she replied. "He goes there every night."

With Cuauhtémoc on my arm, I set out across, but when I reached the other side and looked back, the long bridge I'd just crossed was gone. There was only the strong, smooth sound of the flowing river which blocked my return. A distant bugle sounded taps.

Before me was a World War II dugout piled high with sandbags and surrounded with barbed wire. Nobody seemed to be around.

Inside the bunker was a long flight of steps which descended deep into the ground, till it reached the bottom, and I walked along a dark concrete passageway, silent except for the sound of my footsteps, which echoed back as I went. The place seemed untended and unused, for decades perhaps. Water dripped from above, and tiny stalactites were forming. I stepped through puddles and even waded through pools that were knee-deep.

The passageway divided and subdivided into a maze of corridors and tunnels as I trudged onward. Cuauhtémoc sat on my arm, guiding me; he seemed to know every branch and turn. Eventually I saw a light up ahead, and as we got closer I heard the murmur of voices and activity.

At last I found myself stepping into a low-ceilinged chamber which may have once been a powder magazine. Now it was a pub, poorly lit by small electric bulbs. At a makeshift table sat a dozen men in battle-dress, the uniform of His Majesty's Royal Marines. I somehow knew these were MacClayne's lost shipmates, the ones who'd gone down with the ship that night off the coast of France.

The room was cold and wet. Water dripped from the low ceiling, and the floor was strewn with tequila bottles and beer cans. Adorning a damp concrete wall behind the marines was a poster, tattered and caked with mold. In the weak light I recognized it as the Virgin of Guadalupe.

A barmaid was serving beer. The skin was peeling from one side of her face. I said to her, "What are those men doing here?"

"They were drowned in the war."

"I know that," I said. "But this certainly can't be Asgarð?"

The barmaid laughed derisively, "Did you think it was?"

"But those Marines. They're fighting men, they died in combat. They should be in Asgarð, with Oðin and Thor and all the rest."

She shook her head. "I just work here."

"Is there no justice? Not in the last world, or even in this one?"

"You can take it up with the management," she said. "I have to get back to work now. Shall I get you a drink?"

"No. I came to find MacClayne."

Among the Marines was a lad of about my age with light brown hair--it wasn't gray. Like the others, he was in battle-dress.

"MacClayne!" I called out, loudly enough to be heard over the din of conversation and clinking bottles.

The room fell silent as the marines turned to look at me. Then a stocky Marine with corporal chevrons spoke. "What do you want here?" he demanded.

"I'm looking for MacClayne." I said, a bit defensively.

The corporal turned and called out, "MacClayne! Is this your pal?"

"Never saw him before in my life," replied MacClayne.

"How can you not know me?" I demanded, "You were with me this very afternoon! On the road to Apatzingán. And you promised not to drink!"

"Listen to that!" the others began to laugh.

"I remember no such thing," said MacClayne; he was slurring his words. "But come! Join the company, have a drink and meet my shipmates! And tell me, while you're here, what is this promise I have made to you of not to drink?"

The room resounded with the laughter of the assembled company.

"Just sit down with us and have a drink," MacClayne said.

"I don't want any part of your drinking!"

"Then why are you here?" MacClayne asked. He laughed drunkenly, and, without waiting for me to reply he turned to the fellow beside him and began talking about something else.

"Let's go," I said. "I'm here to bring you back."

"Back? To where?"

"To the world of the living," I said, and took him by the arm and started dragging him towards the exit.

"Let go of me, damn you!" He wrenched himself free.

"These men are dead! It's your drinking that's brought you here."

MacClayne glared at me, speechless with anger. Then he rejoined his pals, some of whom had taken up their rifles.

"Who is this bloke?" demanded the stocky corporal, turning to MacClayne, "He seems to know you."

"A colonial," said another Marine, "judging by his accent.".

"A bloody Yank!"

They all laughed.

"He's no American!" growled another of their number, one who'd been eyeing me suspiciously; "Don't you blokes know a German when you see one?"

"A German?" repeated the corporal, a bit taken aback.

"Yes, a German! The bloody bastard who torpedoed us!"

The angry marines surrounded me and crowded in from all sides.

"I'm not a German!" I protested.

"Grab him!" ordered the corporal.

Cuauhtémoc leapt onto a table and crowed with all his might. Then he danced a circle around me. The men stepped back.



continued in Chapter 21