![](daniel_novel_photo_small.jpg")
chapter 12
Not far up the road past Chayo's house was an ancient lava flow known as the malpaís. A few days after our excursion to the ranch I ventured out to have a closer look at it. The word meant "bad country," and had even been adopted into geological jargon to refer to an area covered by an old solidified lava flow. It occurred to me that it might have been this very place which brought the word into our language when this area was studied by vulcanologists back in the 1940's.
Over the years this malpaís had come to be covered with pine trees, brush and nopal cactus, but under the vegetation it was still a river of jagged boulders, some of them as large as automobiles. Interestingly, it didn't look very old, at least not what geologists consider "old." Vulcanologist Howel Williams had mentioned it in his book, The Paricutín Region, where he speculated that it might be only a couple of centuries old. He'd made an attempt to find mention of it in local histories, but without success. Now it was my turn to be intrigued by it, and I wondered if by using my knowledge of Spanish I might be able to turn up some record that might give it a date. If the rock of this malpaís were really a product of recent centuries, then the eruption could hardly have gone unnoticed.
Someone, maybe a Spanish colonial official, might have recorded the event, perhaps in a letter to a friend saying, "Guess what I saw!" I tried to envision where that hypothetical letter could've gone. To Spain? I pictured it among a bundle of old letters in the bottom of a trunk in an attic.
I spent the morning and much of the afternoon there, then finally headed back towards the boardinghouse. On reaching my room I sat down with my field notes and was putting them in order when a movement at the door caught my awareness. It was wide open, as I always kept it during the day to let in the light and fresh air.
Cuauhtémoc stood in the entrance. The late afternoon sun shone from behind to enhance his plumage and outline his figure with a surreal aura. Though he was a relatively small rooster, he cast a long shadow--extending in across the floor, seemingly all the way to the opposite wall.
"¡Que milagro!" I exclaimed, surprised that he should pay me a visit. This was the first time this bird had ever come to call on me socially.
He gave me a most curious look.
"¡Pásate hombre!" I said. "Come on in!"
Seeming to understand my words, he stepped in and strutted to the center of the floor, where he stood directly in front of me. Then he glanced around, looking first at my book shelf, then at my desk and finally returned his gaze back to me.
"¿Quieres un mango?" I chose a nice juicy one I'd bought in the market place on my way back that afternoon, and sliced off a piece for each of us and put them on plates. I set one before him on the floor, and said. "Estás en tu casa," the proper greeting for an honored guest.
He pecked away furiously at his slice of mango, and I began mine.
"¿Quieres otra?" I said as he finished it, and I put another slice on his plate.
He ate this too. After a short visit he left, and I went back to my notes and thoughts about the malpaís and other volcanic phenomena of the region.
* * *
Chayo and I were sitting on the edge of the stone fountain in the courtyard of the Huatapera. Crickets were chirping in the darkness, and Chayo gazed into the arched walkways of the ancient adobe building in front of us, reading the shadows.
I told her about the bird's visit of that afternoon and my explorations at the malpaís. I also mentioned that MacClayne and I were making plans to set out in quest of the Holy Grail, and she was amused. She asked me where we hoped to find it.
"In Apatzingán," I said.
Her brief smile faded. Even in the dim light by the fountain I could see concern in her eyes. "You're going to Apatzingán?"
"Why yes," I said. "But you look so serious."
"A strange feeling went through me," she replied.
"About me going to Apatzingán?"
For a few moments she said nothing. "Tell me something about MacClayne," she said at last. "He was shipwrecked, wasn't he?"
"Yes, but that was more than thirty years ago, during the Second World War."
"How did it happen?"
"His ship was torpedoed. It was off the coast of France, during the battle of Normandy, just before dawn when most of the crew was sleeping. The attack was unexpected, so there was no battle, no heroic firefight, not a shot fired--just the explosion. I guess that's how war often is. Not always the glorious stuff we read about."
"Were many lives lost?"
"A lot. Out of the crew of eighty six officers and men only nineteen were rescued. MacClayne happened to be on duty that night. He was a gun crewman and so that put him up on deck where he was able to save himself. The ship sank so quickly that the men who were asleep below deck went down with it."
"¡Pobrecito!" she exclaimed softly. "It must've left him with pains of guilt to have survived when so many of his shipmates were lost. How has it affected him?"
"I don't know. He hasn't said much about it."
"He hasn't? You told me he's a poet and a storyteller. Doesn't he write about his war experiences?"
"No," I said. "His stories are mostly about his childhood in Scotland, and, of course, many are about drinking. One of his best stories was about a time he wound up in a detox hospital unit, then escaped to continue his binge. In fact, the only time he spoke about that particular experience--his ship going down--was when he was drunk."
"So your friend has an alcohol problem."
"Yes. It's pretty serious." I told her more about MacClayne's drinking.
"People drink for reasons," she said.
"Reasons? You mean the war?"
"It could be more than that," she said. "Maybe his father drank. Maybe his mother didn't love him," she said. "But yes, I do think that particular tragedy made a real difference in his life."
"But that was a long time ago," I said. "You and I weren't even born."
"We often say that no evil lasts a century, but the sad truth is that a horrible experience can haunt one for a lifetime." She was again gazing into the shadows of the ancient building. "So the two of you are planning to go to Apatzingán."
"Yes."
"In search of the Holy Grail?"
"We needed a bit of fantasy for our trip, and, who knows, maybe there really is a Grail, hidden away somewhere," I said. "It started with a poem he wrote and sent me. I responded to his poem, and he responded to my response, and it all kind of grew from there. So now Apatzingán is where the Holy Grail awaits us."
"Does the Grail have to be in Apatzingán? Couldn't you look for it somewhere else?"
"Surely you're not advising me against going there?"
She shook her head, perhaps trying to rid herself of unwanted fears. "I guess I told you that my father went to a violent death down there. Visions of it still haunt me."
"You must have been very close to him."
"I was," she said. "And when he died I knew it immediately."
"A feeling?"
"More than a feeling," she said. "I was fifteen at the time, living with my family at the ranch. It was mid afternoon and I was out gathering firewood when I heard an unearthly howl from the world of the Cucúi. 'A death?' I wondered. 'Whose might it be?' Then I saw my father walking up the road.
"His footsteps made no sound, and he was wearing embroidered charro--I'd never before seen him dressed entirely in white. 'I came to say good-bye. I have to go now,' he said, and before I could respond, he vanished.
"I ran back to the house, and there I found my sisters cooking and working and talking. Doña Lucía was also there. You remember doña Lucía? We visited her at her house in Jucutacato."
"Yes, I remember her."
"'Something has happened to Father!' I told them. A few days later we were informed of his death, and eventually we learned the gruesome details of his murder."
The story that Chayo told me of don Pánfilo's death was basically the one I'd heard from doña Josefina and don Pablo. A few details varied, but Chayo was unquestionably the one who knew it best.
A decade had passed. It was unlikely that the killers would now be lying in wait for me--what could their motivation be? Her fears for my safety could only be an echo of that long-ago tragedy. Just the same I asked, "You don't think my life would be in jeopardy if I went there?"
"I've told you all I can," she replied after some deliberation.
"You seem to know more."
"I'm only aware of possibilities that I am fearful about, but I know nothing of the consequences of your decision. I only know that you must decide for yourself, and that any attempt I might make to inform or dissuade you might have disastrous consequences."
"So you can't tell me anything at all?"
"My advice on this matter would not only be of no use to you, it would interfere with the outcome of what you do."
* * *
Returning to my room that evening I was thinking of writing to MacClayne, about Apatzingán, but I didn't really know how to say it, or even what to say. What should I tell him about Apatzingán? I lay on my cot thinking about it, and drifted off into a shallow sleep, and found myself in a dream.
I was walking down a street in a town with no buildings. There were just empty lots and a grid of streets which led off in all four directions. The land was flat and covered with dust, which gusts of wind swept up, swirling it about me and depositing it in bluish drifts. The dust had become snow. The sun had set and only a frozen twilight remained to illuminate the barren land.
Trudging through the deepening snow, I continued along the empty street. A flock of ravens flew overhead, landing on the roof of a lone building, the only structure that seemed to exist in this desolate landscape. Perching there, they sent their sharp cries echoing out into the cold.
I was now inside the building. On the floor lay a man in white; he was wearing finely embroidered white charro. Blood oozed from his wounds, and over him stood a shadowy figure with a pistol. The walls were red with blood.
The man lying on the floor was no longer someone else. He was me, and I was looking down at myself.
I awoke with a start, sat up and turned on the light, reached for my notebook, and began recording the dream. I could no longer recall anything of the chain of events which had brought me to the dusty town on the cold flat plain. I jotted down what I could remember, then thought of the letter I'd planned to write to MacClayne.
Somehow, the act of putting the dream down on paper dispelled my sense of horror. It was nothing more than a product of my subconscious, dramatizing the fear expressed in Chayo's premonition.
An easy way of dealing with Chayo's foreboding might've been to designate some other town as our Grail city, but, somehow, I felt averse to doing this. Apatzingán had become more than just 'any city'--it was acquiring a special place in my imagination as well as in my correspondence with MacClayne. The ironic thing was that Chayo's fears and my ensuing dream had imparted an additional touch of mystique to Apatzingán, and in my next letter to MacClayne I wrote in my most grandiloquent style:
The perils of the place are such that would-be visitors are warned against even thinking of going there. . .
But of course I said nothing of Chayo's premonitions nor of the murder of don Pánfilo which had taken place there. After all, this was to be a pleasant excursion--a short vacation you might say, or as the British would call it, a holiday. Colorful characterization is what I wanted for the place: some curious legends, a ghost story or two, a bit of dramatic local history.
I dug around to see what I could find. I started with a geography book and learned that the town had a population of about 50,000 people. It had stores and gas stations and repair shops and all the things any modern Mexican town of that size would have. There was even an airstrip. All that was nice to know, but not terribly exciting. I read on, and found an historical anecdote which fit the image I wanted it to have, and included that in my letter:
"Apatzingán de la Constitución" is the full name of the town. The first Mexican constitution was signed there back in 1814, during the war of independence. The Spanish army had inflicted crushing defeats and had gained the upper hand. So General Morelos and the Mexican army who were then in full retreat chose Apatzingán for its remoteness and inaccessibility. The deterrent was effective, and the Spaniards weren't willing to follow them into that valley.
Its historical remoteness and inaccessibility qualified it as a forbidden city. Then I recalled that Chayo had told me there was nothing there to see. Nothing. Nada. It isn't easy to create a myth out of nothing, but at this point even nothingness offered potential.
. . . but of course I'm certain that the alleged nothingness is only a façade, a ruse to dissuade the unworthy, and that it must be in a place of such absolute nothingness that we'll find the object of our quest, in a citadel where none but the truest of grailers would ever think to look.
It would've been hard to top that, I figured. But we could still use some additional material to fill out and fully justify our myth about Apatzingán. I recalled something I'd mentioned in a previous letter to MacClayne--that it was named after Apatzi, a pre-Hispanic deity who resided there. It occurred to me that I might look around to see what more I could find about Apatzi.
The next morning I asked my tutor, don Javier. But, to my disappointment, he was skeptical.
"I don't think Apatzingán has anything to do with Apatzi, who supposedly belongs to a pre-Christian belief system," he said, "but I doubt there was any deity by that name. There's no mention of him in The Chronicles of Michoacán."
"There isn't?" That book had been written by a Spanish Friar around 1540, and was the basic source for the pre-Hispanic history for this region. I still hadn't read it myself.
"No, and, besides that, the inhabitants of Apatzingán were not even Tarascan-speaking people."
He cited archaeological evidence, and told me that Apatzingán was a cultural island, isolated from the Tarascans, who avoided the place.
"And the name Apatzingán," he continued, "Comes from the Náhuatl words apantli and tzinco, which mean behind the river. To the Tarascans, Náhuatl was a foreign language, and it sounded to them like Apatzingán, which in their language just happened to mean the place where the weasel rises. It was coincidence, pure chance, nothing more. Apatzi was the Tarascan word for weasel, nothing more, and certainly not a deity."
Really? I wondered. It seemed to me that he had some resistance to the idea of Apatzi as a deity of his ancestors.
"I can only look at the evidence, and for Apatzi it doesn't exist," he continued after a brief pause, "The Tarascans made idols for each of their gods, icons we might call them. For Apatzi that would obviously be a weasel. No such image has ever been unearthed by archaeologists."
"Could they have seen him as an abstract deity?"
"Then why would they name him the Weasel?"
We went on to another subject.
That evening I took a closer look at a small book Chayo had loaned me--Mitología Tarasca by José Núñez Corona. The author was a modern day anthropologist who was himself Tarascan. In it was a quote from a Spanish report written back in 1579:
"Cutzamala is the Náhuatl name, and in the mother language which is Tarascan, it is called Apatzingán. Both names mean 'place of weasels'. That name is used because in antiquity they are said to have had an idol in the form of a weasel."
But it appeared that the name Apatzingán meant somewhat more than just the place of Apatzi. According to Mitología Tarasca, a fuller translation would be the place where Apatzi was risen--the components of the name being: 'apatzi-anga-n.' The 'n' meant place, and 'anga' meant to arise or to be lifted up.
But from what did Apatzi arise? Apparently from the world of the dead. He was considered a "dios de la muerte"--literally, a "god of death."
I then borrowed Chayo's dictionary of the Tarascan language. The definitions were given in Spanish. "Apatzi" was listed, but only as a word for weasel. Then I happened to notice that Tarascan words beginning with "apa" generally referred to things associated with heat.
aparhiti means "hot"
aparhita means "sweat"
Could some pun or double meaning be implied in the word apatzi? Apatzingán was said to be an extremely hot place.
Curiously, I also found that there was a flower called apatsekua in Tarascan, given in Spanish as flor de muerto--meaning flower of death. It turned out to be the marigold. Could there be any connection between that prefix and Apatzi's label as being a god of death?
Without actually taking up a study of the Tarascan language, this was about as far as I could go. But there did seem to be a lot implied in that name, Apatzi.
I glanced up, and there in the doorway stood Cuauhtémoc, come to pay me another visit.
"Pásate." I welcomed him in as before. "Estás en tu casa."
***
"Is Apatzi one of the Cucúi?" I asked Chayo when I met her at the shop that evening.
"Apatzi? You mean Apatzi?"
"Yes, that's what I said. Apatzi."
She handed me the broom, Chayo's usual manner of getting down to business. "Let's get this done. We can talk about Apatzi later." She whirled about, putting this and that away, in a bigger hurry that usual. I finished the sweeping, and she gave me a couple of other small tasks. Done at last, within the space of about ten minutes, she planted a kiss on my mouth and told me, "We don't have much time. My aunt's going to be back at 9 tonight."
Conflicting thoughts and desires shot through my mind. "Are you sure she won't be back early?"
"She knows I wanted to spend some time with you."
"So she knows?"
"Did you think she wouldn't?"
"Well I just didn't know if you and your aunt talked about these things."
"She wants me to be discreet. That's all. Women's liberation is arriving, but not quite as rapidly as in California."
continued in Chapter 13
Over the years this malpaís had come to be covered with pine trees, brush and nopal cactus, but under the vegetation it was still a river of jagged boulders, some of them as large as automobiles. Interestingly, it didn't look very old, at least not what geologists consider "old." Vulcanologist Howel Williams had mentioned it in his book, The Paricutín Region, where he speculated that it might be only a couple of centuries old. He'd made an attempt to find mention of it in local histories, but without success. Now it was my turn to be intrigued by it, and I wondered if by using my knowledge of Spanish I might be able to turn up some record that might give it a date. If the rock of this malpaís were really a product of recent centuries, then the eruption could hardly have gone unnoticed.
Someone, maybe a Spanish colonial official, might have recorded the event, perhaps in a letter to a friend saying, "Guess what I saw!" I tried to envision where that hypothetical letter could've gone. To Spain? I pictured it among a bundle of old letters in the bottom of a trunk in an attic.
I spent the morning and much of the afternoon there, then finally headed back towards the boardinghouse. On reaching my room I sat down with my field notes and was putting them in order when a movement at the door caught my awareness. It was wide open, as I always kept it during the day to let in the light and fresh air.
Cuauhtémoc stood in the entrance. The late afternoon sun shone from behind to enhance his plumage and outline his figure with a surreal aura. Though he was a relatively small rooster, he cast a long shadow--extending in across the floor, seemingly all the way to the opposite wall.
"¡Que milagro!" I exclaimed, surprised that he should pay me a visit. This was the first time this bird had ever come to call on me socially.
He gave me a most curious look.
"¡Pásate hombre!" I said. "Come on in!"
Seeming to understand my words, he stepped in and strutted to the center of the floor, where he stood directly in front of me. Then he glanced around, looking first at my book shelf, then at my desk and finally returned his gaze back to me.
"¿Quieres un mango?" I chose a nice juicy one I'd bought in the market place on my way back that afternoon, and sliced off a piece for each of us and put them on plates. I set one before him on the floor, and said. "Estás en tu casa," the proper greeting for an honored guest.
He pecked away furiously at his slice of mango, and I began mine.
"¿Quieres otra?" I said as he finished it, and I put another slice on his plate.
He ate this too. After a short visit he left, and I went back to my notes and thoughts about the malpaís and other volcanic phenomena of the region.
* * *
Chayo and I were sitting on the edge of the stone fountain in the courtyard of the Huatapera. Crickets were chirping in the darkness, and Chayo gazed into the arched walkways of the ancient adobe building in front of us, reading the shadows.
I told her about the bird's visit of that afternoon and my explorations at the malpaís. I also mentioned that MacClayne and I were making plans to set out in quest of the Holy Grail, and she was amused. She asked me where we hoped to find it.
"In Apatzingán," I said.
Her brief smile faded. Even in the dim light by the fountain I could see concern in her eyes. "You're going to Apatzingán?"
"Why yes," I said. "But you look so serious."
"A strange feeling went through me," she replied.
"About me going to Apatzingán?"
For a few moments she said nothing. "Tell me something about MacClayne," she said at last. "He was shipwrecked, wasn't he?"
"Yes, but that was more than thirty years ago, during the Second World War."
"How did it happen?"
"His ship was torpedoed. It was off the coast of France, during the battle of Normandy, just before dawn when most of the crew was sleeping. The attack was unexpected, so there was no battle, no heroic firefight, not a shot fired--just the explosion. I guess that's how war often is. Not always the glorious stuff we read about."
"Were many lives lost?"
"A lot. Out of the crew of eighty six officers and men only nineteen were rescued. MacClayne happened to be on duty that night. He was a gun crewman and so that put him up on deck where he was able to save himself. The ship sank so quickly that the men who were asleep below deck went down with it."
"¡Pobrecito!" she exclaimed softly. "It must've left him with pains of guilt to have survived when so many of his shipmates were lost. How has it affected him?"
"I don't know. He hasn't said much about it."
"He hasn't? You told me he's a poet and a storyteller. Doesn't he write about his war experiences?"
"No," I said. "His stories are mostly about his childhood in Scotland, and, of course, many are about drinking. One of his best stories was about a time he wound up in a detox hospital unit, then escaped to continue his binge. In fact, the only time he spoke about that particular experience--his ship going down--was when he was drunk."
"So your friend has an alcohol problem."
"Yes. It's pretty serious." I told her more about MacClayne's drinking.
"People drink for reasons," she said.
"Reasons? You mean the war?"
"It could be more than that," she said. "Maybe his father drank. Maybe his mother didn't love him," she said. "But yes, I do think that particular tragedy made a real difference in his life."
"But that was a long time ago," I said. "You and I weren't even born."
"We often say that no evil lasts a century, but the sad truth is that a horrible experience can haunt one for a lifetime." She was again gazing into the shadows of the ancient building. "So the two of you are planning to go to Apatzingán."
"Yes."
"In search of the Holy Grail?"
"We needed a bit of fantasy for our trip, and, who knows, maybe there really is a Grail, hidden away somewhere," I said. "It started with a poem he wrote and sent me. I responded to his poem, and he responded to my response, and it all kind of grew from there. So now Apatzingán is where the Holy Grail awaits us."
"Does the Grail have to be in Apatzingán? Couldn't you look for it somewhere else?"
"Surely you're not advising me against going there?"
She shook her head, perhaps trying to rid herself of unwanted fears. "I guess I told you that my father went to a violent death down there. Visions of it still haunt me."
"You must have been very close to him."
"I was," she said. "And when he died I knew it immediately."
"A feeling?"
"More than a feeling," she said. "I was fifteen at the time, living with my family at the ranch. It was mid afternoon and I was out gathering firewood when I heard an unearthly howl from the world of the Cucúi. 'A death?' I wondered. 'Whose might it be?' Then I saw my father walking up the road.
"His footsteps made no sound, and he was wearing embroidered charro--I'd never before seen him dressed entirely in white. 'I came to say good-bye. I have to go now,' he said, and before I could respond, he vanished.
"I ran back to the house, and there I found my sisters cooking and working and talking. Doña Lucía was also there. You remember doña Lucía? We visited her at her house in Jucutacato."
"Yes, I remember her."
"'Something has happened to Father!' I told them. A few days later we were informed of his death, and eventually we learned the gruesome details of his murder."
The story that Chayo told me of don Pánfilo's death was basically the one I'd heard from doña Josefina and don Pablo. A few details varied, but Chayo was unquestionably the one who knew it best.
A decade had passed. It was unlikely that the killers would now be lying in wait for me--what could their motivation be? Her fears for my safety could only be an echo of that long-ago tragedy. Just the same I asked, "You don't think my life would be in jeopardy if I went there?"
"I've told you all I can," she replied after some deliberation.
"You seem to know more."
"I'm only aware of possibilities that I am fearful about, but I know nothing of the consequences of your decision. I only know that you must decide for yourself, and that any attempt I might make to inform or dissuade you might have disastrous consequences."
"So you can't tell me anything at all?"
"My advice on this matter would not only be of no use to you, it would interfere with the outcome of what you do."
* * *
Returning to my room that evening I was thinking of writing to MacClayne, about Apatzingán, but I didn't really know how to say it, or even what to say. What should I tell him about Apatzingán? I lay on my cot thinking about it, and drifted off into a shallow sleep, and found myself in a dream.
I was walking down a street in a town with no buildings. There were just empty lots and a grid of streets which led off in all four directions. The land was flat and covered with dust, which gusts of wind swept up, swirling it about me and depositing it in bluish drifts. The dust had become snow. The sun had set and only a frozen twilight remained to illuminate the barren land.
Trudging through the deepening snow, I continued along the empty street. A flock of ravens flew overhead, landing on the roof of a lone building, the only structure that seemed to exist in this desolate landscape. Perching there, they sent their sharp cries echoing out into the cold.
I was now inside the building. On the floor lay a man in white; he was wearing finely embroidered white charro. Blood oozed from his wounds, and over him stood a shadowy figure with a pistol. The walls were red with blood.
The man lying on the floor was no longer someone else. He was me, and I was looking down at myself.
I awoke with a start, sat up and turned on the light, reached for my notebook, and began recording the dream. I could no longer recall anything of the chain of events which had brought me to the dusty town on the cold flat plain. I jotted down what I could remember, then thought of the letter I'd planned to write to MacClayne.
Somehow, the act of putting the dream down on paper dispelled my sense of horror. It was nothing more than a product of my subconscious, dramatizing the fear expressed in Chayo's premonition.
An easy way of dealing with Chayo's foreboding might've been to designate some other town as our Grail city, but, somehow, I felt averse to doing this. Apatzingán had become more than just 'any city'--it was acquiring a special place in my imagination as well as in my correspondence with MacClayne. The ironic thing was that Chayo's fears and my ensuing dream had imparted an additional touch of mystique to Apatzingán, and in my next letter to MacClayne I wrote in my most grandiloquent style:
The perils of the place are such that would-be visitors are warned against even thinking of going there. . .
But of course I said nothing of Chayo's premonitions nor of the murder of don Pánfilo which had taken place there. After all, this was to be a pleasant excursion--a short vacation you might say, or as the British would call it, a holiday. Colorful characterization is what I wanted for the place: some curious legends, a ghost story or two, a bit of dramatic local history.
I dug around to see what I could find. I started with a geography book and learned that the town had a population of about 50,000 people. It had stores and gas stations and repair shops and all the things any modern Mexican town of that size would have. There was even an airstrip. All that was nice to know, but not terribly exciting. I read on, and found an historical anecdote which fit the image I wanted it to have, and included that in my letter:
"Apatzingán de la Constitución" is the full name of the town. The first Mexican constitution was signed there back in 1814, during the war of independence. The Spanish army had inflicted crushing defeats and had gained the upper hand. So General Morelos and the Mexican army who were then in full retreat chose Apatzingán for its remoteness and inaccessibility. The deterrent was effective, and the Spaniards weren't willing to follow them into that valley.
Its historical remoteness and inaccessibility qualified it as a forbidden city. Then I recalled that Chayo had told me there was nothing there to see. Nothing. Nada. It isn't easy to create a myth out of nothing, but at this point even nothingness offered potential.
. . . but of course I'm certain that the alleged nothingness is only a façade, a ruse to dissuade the unworthy, and that it must be in a place of such absolute nothingness that we'll find the object of our quest, in a citadel where none but the truest of grailers would ever think to look.
It would've been hard to top that, I figured. But we could still use some additional material to fill out and fully justify our myth about Apatzingán. I recalled something I'd mentioned in a previous letter to MacClayne--that it was named after Apatzi, a pre-Hispanic deity who resided there. It occurred to me that I might look around to see what more I could find about Apatzi.
The next morning I asked my tutor, don Javier. But, to my disappointment, he was skeptical.
"I don't think Apatzingán has anything to do with Apatzi, who supposedly belongs to a pre-Christian belief system," he said, "but I doubt there was any deity by that name. There's no mention of him in The Chronicles of Michoacán."
"There isn't?" That book had been written by a Spanish Friar around 1540, and was the basic source for the pre-Hispanic history for this region. I still hadn't read it myself.
"No, and, besides that, the inhabitants of Apatzingán were not even Tarascan-speaking people."
He cited archaeological evidence, and told me that Apatzingán was a cultural island, isolated from the Tarascans, who avoided the place.
"And the name Apatzingán," he continued, "Comes from the Náhuatl words apantli and tzinco, which mean behind the river. To the Tarascans, Náhuatl was a foreign language, and it sounded to them like Apatzingán, which in their language just happened to mean the place where the weasel rises. It was coincidence, pure chance, nothing more. Apatzi was the Tarascan word for weasel, nothing more, and certainly not a deity."
Really? I wondered. It seemed to me that he had some resistance to the idea of Apatzi as a deity of his ancestors.
"I can only look at the evidence, and for Apatzi it doesn't exist," he continued after a brief pause, "The Tarascans made idols for each of their gods, icons we might call them. For Apatzi that would obviously be a weasel. No such image has ever been unearthed by archaeologists."
"Could they have seen him as an abstract deity?"
"Then why would they name him the Weasel?"
We went on to another subject.
That evening I took a closer look at a small book Chayo had loaned me--Mitología Tarasca by José Núñez Corona. The author was a modern day anthropologist who was himself Tarascan. In it was a quote from a Spanish report written back in 1579:
"Cutzamala is the Náhuatl name, and in the mother language which is Tarascan, it is called Apatzingán. Both names mean 'place of weasels'. That name is used because in antiquity they are said to have had an idol in the form of a weasel."
But it appeared that the name Apatzingán meant somewhat more than just the place of Apatzi. According to Mitología Tarasca, a fuller translation would be the place where Apatzi was risen--the components of the name being: 'apatzi-anga-n.' The 'n' meant place, and 'anga' meant to arise or to be lifted up.
But from what did Apatzi arise? Apparently from the world of the dead. He was considered a "dios de la muerte"--literally, a "god of death."
I then borrowed Chayo's dictionary of the Tarascan language. The definitions were given in Spanish. "Apatzi" was listed, but only as a word for weasel. Then I happened to notice that Tarascan words beginning with "apa" generally referred to things associated with heat.
aparhiti means "hot"
aparhita means "sweat"
Could some pun or double meaning be implied in the word apatzi? Apatzingán was said to be an extremely hot place.
Curiously, I also found that there was a flower called apatsekua in Tarascan, given in Spanish as flor de muerto--meaning flower of death. It turned out to be the marigold. Could there be any connection between that prefix and Apatzi's label as being a god of death?
Without actually taking up a study of the Tarascan language, this was about as far as I could go. But there did seem to be a lot implied in that name, Apatzi.
I glanced up, and there in the doorway stood Cuauhtémoc, come to pay me another visit.
"Pásate." I welcomed him in as before. "Estás en tu casa."
***
"Is Apatzi one of the Cucúi?" I asked Chayo when I met her at the shop that evening.
"Apatzi? You mean Apatzi?"
"Yes, that's what I said. Apatzi."
She handed me the broom, Chayo's usual manner of getting down to business. "Let's get this done. We can talk about Apatzi later." She whirled about, putting this and that away, in a bigger hurry that usual. I finished the sweeping, and she gave me a couple of other small tasks. Done at last, within the space of about ten minutes, she planted a kiss on my mouth and told me, "We don't have much time. My aunt's going to be back at 9 tonight."
Conflicting thoughts and desires shot through my mind. "Are you sure she won't be back early?"
"She knows I wanted to spend some time with you."
"So she knows?"
"Did you think she wouldn't?"
"Well I just didn't know if you and your aunt talked about these things."
"She wants me to be discreet. That's all. Women's liberation is arriving, but not quite as rapidly as in California."
continued in Chapter 13
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