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chapter 14
Chayo had just returned from Teotihuacán, an archeological site near México City. It had been in ruins long before the time of the Aztecs, but it remained a sacred place, and even today performances of ancient rituals were held there from time to time, such as are held at Stonehenge in Britain. On this occasion Chayo, her aunt and Socorro had gone there to take part in a ritual purification of the site. Some two hundred people had attended, many of them shamans and others who were versed in the ancient ceremonies, but the gathering had also included persons very representative of the modern world, such as labor activists, poets, historians and even a computer scientist.
The purification was deemed necessary to cleanse the sacred site of spiritual contamination resulting from a visit by a former official of the hated Nixon Administration. A spokesperson for the group which performed the purification stated in a press release: "That such a person, an imperialist warmonger, could presume to tread upon one of our sacred places, desecrating the soil and polluting it with his presence, is an offense to our culture and to the traditions of our ancestors."
I had read about it in a newspaper, and now, on her return, I heard details of the event from Chayo herself. We were walking towards the plaza, and, as had become our norm, Cuauhtémoc was with, wrapped in his blanket.
Chayo told me about the ceremony, which included the lighting of torches, the burning of incense and recitals of ancient incantations. She also spoke about Teotihuacán itself, its significance and history. The city had flourished until approximately 500 AD, after which it gradually went into a decline.
"So what would you like do?" I interrupted Chayo to ask as we reached the corner of the plaza.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
"Not really."
"Then how about an atole?"
Atole is a sweet, syrupy drink. There were three or four kinds and my favorite was the one made from tamarind.
So we went to Antojitos, a block north of the plaza, just around the corner from La Huatapera. Here numerous vendors offered various specialties such as enchiladas, tamales and pozole.
The food here was delicious, but most impressive was the architecture of this eating hall, though maybe "hall" wasn't the best word for it since it had no walls. It didn't need any as this was the tropics.
This structure was modern, but unlike any other that I'd seen in México or elsewhere. It was unique to Uruapan and fit superbly with the local atmosphere and traditions. The floor was constructed of blocks of black lava, cut and fit together to form a raised platform standing a meter above the street. The red tiled roof was the kind seen throughout México and even California. The pillars which held up the roof were huge tree trunks with the bark removed. The effect was simple but awesome.
We sat there, sipping our atoles, and I said to Chayo, "For me, this place captures the spirit of that legendary hall where Hrothgar once feasted with his warriors."
"Who was Hrothgar?" she said.
"A Scandinavian chieftain. That was way back, during the time of Teotihuacán. He built a magnificent hall where he held banquets; it also served as a barracks for his soldiers. But he had a problem with a horrible monster known as Grendel. One night Grendel barged into the hall, slaughtered thirty men and devoured them. Nobody dared stay in the place after dark."
"Why did Grendel kill those people?"
"Out of anger, I'd say. It was his way of lashing out at the world. I think he was lonely and felt badly treated, left out. Everybody else was in the hall having a good time, and there he was out in the cold, excluded. Not wanted."
"¡Ay pobrecito!--Poor thing," she said. "Poor monster!"
"Monsters need love too," I said and looked at Cuauhtémoc who was now sitting on Chayo's lap. The bird looked up at us and I stroked his feathers, which were well on their way to growing back to their normal state.
Chayo kissed me on the cheek and said teasingly, "Yes, monsters need love too. Even men deserve some kindness."
"Only some kindness?" I feigned surprise.
"I'm teasing."
"Another kiss then," I said.
She kissed me again.
"Once more."
"No more, you've gotten enough kisses," she laughed. "But I'll give you one anyway."
We finished our atoles, got up to leave, and began the walk to Chayo's house, strolling hand in hand.
"So what did they do about the monster?" she said as we crossed the plaza and began our way down the shadowy street. "His name was Grendel?"
"Yes, it was Grendel," I said. "At first there wasn't much anybody could do, and for quite a while he got away with it. But Hrothgar had a friend in a neighboring country who eventually came to help out. This friend of Hrothgar came to the hall and spent the night there, waiting for Grendel. And when the monster showed up, the guy wrestled him barehanded. It ended with him tearing Grendel's arm off."
"It can't be easy to take a monster's arm."
"The poet depicted it as quite a fight," I said. "It's one of the great epics of heroic age poetry. That was an age when dragons still roamed the earth and monsters lurked on the moors."
By this time we were nearing the bridge over the Río Cupatitzio. When we were halfway across, we paused at the railing to gaze into the rushing water below.
"I suppose this river flows all year round?" I said. "It never runs dry?"
"Once upon a time it did, according to an old Tarascan legend."
"During a terrible drought, I suppose?"
"No," she said. "The legend tells of a thirsty mountain that grew like a plant and drank the river dry."
"How did that happen?"
"The mountain was black and hot. So hot that nobody could touch it, and it kept growing and spreading till it reached the river, and when it got there it guzzled up all the water. There was none left for the farmers and their crops. Even the deer of the forest went thirsty."
"Sounds almost like science fiction," I said. "Could it have been a volcano?"
"That's what I've been wondering, and I've been meaning to ask you."
"I take it the legend doesn't specifically say the mountain was a volcano?"
"No," she said. "The Tarascan language didn't even have a word for volcano, at least not until Paricutín erupted. You remember the Indians at Angahuán told us how surprised they'd been by the eruption, and that such a thing had never been seen by their fathers or grandfathers. They were completely mystified by the phenomenon until geologists came and told them what was happening."
"Yes, I see," I said. "This legend comes to us from a pre-scientific people who in fact could be describing a volcanic event in their own words. Though it could be total fantasy, a story that only by sheer coincidence happens to sound like an eruption."
"So what do you think?"
"I'd like to give the storytellers the benefit of the doubt, and investigate it," I said. "So we seem to have the remains of a thirsty volcano around here somewhere."
"There are a lot of old cinder cones. Which one could it be?"
"Mount Jicalán, perhaps." I named the only one that was within a couple kilometers of the river, but even it probably wasn't close enough.
"According to the legend, the mountain finally disappeared," she said. "Do you suppose it's gone? Not here any more?"
"Volcanoes don't vanish that quickly," I said. "It takes thousands of years for one to erode away. Many of the cinder cones here on the Meseta Volcánica were probably here long before the first Chichimecas arrived. Unless the legend is fantasy, the mountain is still here, and probably in plain view."
"Something we've seen?"
"We probably have. It's just that we didn't know what we were looking at."
"You'd recognize it, wouldn't you?" she said.
"Maybe not," I said. "Even geologists are capable of overlooking the obvious. My paleontology professor used to say: 'If you don't know it's there, you won't look for it, and if you don't look for it you won't find it.'"
We stood on the bridge gazing into the river as it rushed along under us. Cuauhtémoc sat contentedly on my arm. His feathers were beginning to return, and he seemed to be recovering. I turned the Tarascan legend over in my mind. There were several kinds of natural phenomena which could account for a river disappearing, such as a landslide or an earthquake.
"There's the Malpaís near my house," Chayo said. "It extends all the way to the river, and--"
"Yes, of course!" I said, suddenly realizing that this might be it.
"You were telling me the other day," said Chayo, "that the Malpaís had once been a lava flow. That it'd puzzled geologists because it didn't look very old and they'd tried to find some written record of it. You even asked me if I might know of any stories about it, and of course I couldn't think of any. I didn't even know it was a lava flow. Perhaps nobody around here does."
"That would explain how the mountain vanished," I said. "I suppose storytellers passed the legend on from generation to generation, but without remembering the exact location."
Chayo continued, "I've watched films taken during the Paricutín eruption, of the lava moving very slowly across the fields and into the village of San Juan, where that church was engulfed in molten rock," she said. "And now that I think of it, I could imagine that people of a pre-scientific age might've described it as a hot, black mountain that grew and kept on growing, like a pernicious vine that just keeps spreading out and takes over fields, gardens and even whole villages."
"I was thinking there might be an account of it buried in some old Spanish archive, or maybe in some bundle of old letters stashed away in somebody's attic, somewhere between here and Madrid.
"Did you really plan to look for it in Spain?"
"Well, no. Not really. But . . ."
Chayo laughed. "You did! Now admit it!"
I sighed. "I certainly didn't expect to find an account of it encoded in an ancient legend. Now is there any way of dating the event? Is there any mention of any chieftain or personality whose name might appear in historical records?"
"Yes. I think it was in the days of Fray Juan de San Miguel."
"When would that have been?"
"Shortly after the Spanish conquest. Maybe about the time they were building the Huatapera."
"In the 1540's?" I said.
Chayo nodded. "Something like that. But I'll have to look it up."
"What?"
"I said I'll have to look it up."
"You mean you'll check with a Tarascan storyteller? A keeper of the legends?" I said.
"No, it's in a book," she said. "I have a copy. I'll loan it to you."
"Oh," was all I could say. It somehow hadn't occurred to me that this would turn out to be a written account after all.
"It was a gift from my father for my tenth birthday, and I've treasured it all these years. So please be very careful with it."
We continued on our way towards Chayo's house, and as we went, she asked me how a lava flow might be able to consume a whole river, even a relatively small one the size of the Cupatitzio.
"The temperature of that molten rock must've been a thousand degrees Celsius. It would've turned the river to steam. There must've been a huge, dramatic vapor cloud above the scene."
"It must've been quite a spectacle."
"I'm sure it was," I said. "Fire-spitting dragons may have passed from this earth, but volcanoes remain, and, like the dragons of old, they breathe fire and burn forests and destroy villages and even dry up rivers."
Of course our Thirsty Mountain wasn't a dragon, nor probably even a volcanic cinder cone. It had to be a lava flow.
Usually I walked back to my room at the boardinghouse, but this evening I was in a hurry to get home and read the book that Chayo had just loaned me. I grabbed a bus which took me as far as the plaza, then made it the rest of the way on foot.
When I got there, I sat up late, reading first the legend of The Thirsty Mountain, then the other stories in the small volume, titled Leyendas de Michoacán. It was printed in fairly large type, intended for young readers. According to the inscription inside the front cover, it had been a gift to Chayo from her father on her eleventh birthday.
Most of the stories were from the Colonial period, and a few were from pre-Hispanic times. I recognized several well-known motifs, but the Thirsty Mountain legend was new to me, and as I read and reread it, I shook my head in amazement. This was clearly an eyewitness account, preserved in myth, of a pre-literate, pre-scientific people describing a volcanic event in terms of their own concepts. As far as I knew, very few descriptive legends of volcanic eruptions had ever been recorded. This just might be the only one.
No volcanoes were mentioned, nor was any other scientific interpretation attempted; the account simply described a mountain that grew like a huge vine and drank a river dry.
The 16th century Indian observers of that moving lava apparently saw the earth as a living thing--a view that would've been uncompromisingly rejected by every educated Westerner from the time of the Enlightenment until very recently. Today there were scientists, geologists among them, who'd be inclined to agree with those Indians and say, "Yes, you people had it right. The earth is a living thing."
At that moment Cuauhtémoc nudged the calf of my leg with his beak. I reached down and lifted him onto my lap, as he was still not recovered sufficiently to hop up on his own. Perched there on my leg, he looked at me and then at the book I was studying. Perhaps he sensed that this was an extraordinary moment and wanted me to share it with him.
I glanced at my watch. It was now after midnight, but I couldn't sleep. I felt a tremendous, growing excitement as the importance of this discovery sank in, wanting the next day to hurry up and come so I could go running to Chayo and give her a tremendous hug. It had been the two of us together; neither of us could've done it alone. There'd been a lot of people who'd had the two parts of the puzzle, the vulcanologists on one hand and the traditional storytellers on the other--but Chayo and I were the ones who'd put the pieces together and deciphered the meaning.
Up to now we had been sweethearts. Now we were co-discoverers of something important. Our relationship might become a partnership of two people who could work together, accomplish things together, build a life together. Or was it just wishful thinking?
My thoughts drifted back to when I'd arrived here in Uruapan, some three months earlier. Beginning on that day I'd suddenly found myself in a new and strange realm, where I was again a child, learning the ways of a new world. It was like going back to primary school and starting all over again with Chayo as my guide, more than a teacher.
Chayo knew the language, the people, the customs, everything. She was also two years older than me, both chronologically and socially. She knew the ropes and called the shots. That's the way our relationship worked, and right now I depended very heavily on her.
But some day I would know the language well enough to speak for myself. I'd understand the customs, and know what was going on. How would our relationship work then?
That day would come. And our relationship? Maybe we'd still be working together, and need each other as much or even more than ever before.
"Have you two had a fight yet?" doña Josefina had asked me a few days before. And she'd said, "If you haven't had a fight, then you don't know her yet."
I wondered if that could be true for us. Outside of MacClayne, I couldn't offhand think of anyone I'd quarreled with, but then MacClayne was like an older brother, and brothers are meant to quarrel, at least once in a while.
Suddenly I felt terribly drowsy. Cuauhtémoc was already asleep on my lap. I gently put him to bed in his cardboard box, tucked his small blanket in around him, then lay down for the night.
* * *
In the morning I went to doña Rosario's shop and got there just as Chayo was arriving for work. Without any explanation I gave her a big hug and a kiss. She was quite surprised, because I'd rarely visited the shop during working hours.
"What is it?" she finally asked. "Why are you here so early?"
"Our discovery," I said. "I just wanted to hug you for it."
Her eyes widened slightly as I explained the significance of our find. "It's that significant?" she said.
"Scholars and scientists spend their whole lives searching and hoping to make a discovery like this," I told her.
"You mean this is going to make you famous?"
"Don't say you," I admonished her. "Us. The two of us."
"So the two of us are going to be famous?"
"It'll get us a couple of paragraphs in some obscure, scholarly journal. Maybe a whole page," I said. "And if you call that fame, then yes, we'll be famous."
Chayo laughed delightedly and put her arms around me. "¡Que gracioso!"
"But just the same," I said. "To me it means a lot. And it means even more to me that you're part of this. Your name will be in there beside mine."
I could tell by the look on her face that she was delighted with the idea.
"Can you take the day off?" I added. "That's what I came to ask you. I'd like you to go with me and visit the place."
"The malpaís?"
"Yes," I said. "I want you to be with me on this."
Chayo got permission from her aunt and we set out, taking a bus since we saw no point in making a half-hour walk just to get there as we did each evening. We got off near Chayo's house and walked from there. It was only another hundred meters up the road, and we'd both been there numerous times before, but this was to take a new look at the place in the light of our discovery.
This was the thirsty mountain of the legend, though the word mountain was a misnomer for this broad, rather flat, tongue-shaped landform that rose only about five meters above the surrounding land. Here on the rugged Meseta Volcánica it would hardly be noticed as even a hill--which is how the legend could rightfully say it disappeared.
The road ran right across the malpaís; it was no significant barrier, and we were able to walk around on it without too much difficulty. It was similar in height and form to the lava flow we'd visited at Volcán Paricutín. The difference was that this lava had apparently undergone four centuries of weathering and erosion under the tropical sun and rain. That had taken the jagged edges off of the boulders and altered the sandy ash to a clayey soil in which grass and trees had taken root, thus turning a once barren moonscape into a forested mound. Along one side of it, the Río Cupatitzio had cut a deep channel--almost a small gorge.
"Why would the lava flow right up to the river's edge and then stop right here?" Chayo wondered as we stood there on top of the flow, looking down at the river below us.
I smiled and shook my head. "Try again."
She stood there looking at it.
"What do you know about liquids?" I said.
"They flow, sort of like water."
"Yes, so where would it go?"
"Downhill. Right into the riverbed."
"You got it."
"So this is a new channel, and the old one is somewhere behind us, full of lava. Under the malpaís."
"Exactly," I said. "And then you can see how the 'thirsty mountain' would drink the water, leaving none for the people and animals."
"I think you already told me--the molten rock would've turned it to steam," she said. "And I suppose when the rock eventually cooled and the river began to flow again, it cut itself a new channel, the one we see here below us."
"Good," I said. "You get an 'A' for the day."
We both chuckled. She kissed me on the cheek.
"So, What do we look for now?" she said.
"Okay, let me explain. We're pretty sure this happened sometime around 1540--at least within the lifetime of Fray Juan de San Miguel. But, additional evidence would help us back up our claim. You've probably heard of carbon 14 dating?"
Chayo nodded.
"I'd assume this land was forested back in the 1500's, much as it is today. The hot lava would've turned those trees to ashes and charcoal, and buried them. So if we can find some places to dig around the edges of the flow, we might, with luck, be able to unearth some pieces of charcoal."
"How would we run the test?"
"We'd send it to a lab. We'd just collect the samples. And we won't actually do the digging today. What we'll do now is look for potential places to dig. Somewhere along the edges of the flow we could maybe find places where we won't have to dig very deep."
"I see," she said. "How big do our samples need to be?"
"Well, I don't really know," I said. "But I suppose anything the size of a fingernail would be more than adequate."
"They didn't teach you that in school?"
"No," I said. She was puzzled, so I added, "It's a rather specialized thing, and it's not even something that most geologists often do. Mostly it's archeologists and anthropologists who work with carbon 14 dating."
"So you don't know it all," she said, almost teasingly.
My stomach began to sink. I feared she was going to be terribly disillusioned with me. I said, "No, I don't, and I never said I did."
She grinned and said, "Then perhaps you'll still need me for a while."
"¡Chayo! That's what I've been trying to tell you all morning!" I paused and glanced around, "Just look at this malpaís. We're not the first to come here and wonder about it. Back in the 1940's Dr. Howel Williams was here and looked at it. He's the dean of North American vulcanologists, the guy who wrote the book on the geology of this area, but even he couldn't crack this puzzle. We did. You and I, working together. And together we can do things like this."
"Okay," she said, taking my arm. "I'll help you."
continued in Chapter 15
The purification was deemed necessary to cleanse the sacred site of spiritual contamination resulting from a visit by a former official of the hated Nixon Administration. A spokesperson for the group which performed the purification stated in a press release: "That such a person, an imperialist warmonger, could presume to tread upon one of our sacred places, desecrating the soil and polluting it with his presence, is an offense to our culture and to the traditions of our ancestors."
I had read about it in a newspaper, and now, on her return, I heard details of the event from Chayo herself. We were walking towards the plaza, and, as had become our norm, Cuauhtémoc was with, wrapped in his blanket.
Chayo told me about the ceremony, which included the lighting of torches, the burning of incense and recitals of ancient incantations. She also spoke about Teotihuacán itself, its significance and history. The city had flourished until approximately 500 AD, after which it gradually went into a decline.
"So what would you like do?" I interrupted Chayo to ask as we reached the corner of the plaza.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
"Not really."
"Then how about an atole?"
Atole is a sweet, syrupy drink. There were three or four kinds and my favorite was the one made from tamarind.
So we went to Antojitos, a block north of the plaza, just around the corner from La Huatapera. Here numerous vendors offered various specialties such as enchiladas, tamales and pozole.
The food here was delicious, but most impressive was the architecture of this eating hall, though maybe "hall" wasn't the best word for it since it had no walls. It didn't need any as this was the tropics.
This structure was modern, but unlike any other that I'd seen in México or elsewhere. It was unique to Uruapan and fit superbly with the local atmosphere and traditions. The floor was constructed of blocks of black lava, cut and fit together to form a raised platform standing a meter above the street. The red tiled roof was the kind seen throughout México and even California. The pillars which held up the roof were huge tree trunks with the bark removed. The effect was simple but awesome.
We sat there, sipping our atoles, and I said to Chayo, "For me, this place captures the spirit of that legendary hall where Hrothgar once feasted with his warriors."
"Who was Hrothgar?" she said.
"A Scandinavian chieftain. That was way back, during the time of Teotihuacán. He built a magnificent hall where he held banquets; it also served as a barracks for his soldiers. But he had a problem with a horrible monster known as Grendel. One night Grendel barged into the hall, slaughtered thirty men and devoured them. Nobody dared stay in the place after dark."
"Why did Grendel kill those people?"
"Out of anger, I'd say. It was his way of lashing out at the world. I think he was lonely and felt badly treated, left out. Everybody else was in the hall having a good time, and there he was out in the cold, excluded. Not wanted."
"¡Ay pobrecito!--Poor thing," she said. "Poor monster!"
"Monsters need love too," I said and looked at Cuauhtémoc who was now sitting on Chayo's lap. The bird looked up at us and I stroked his feathers, which were well on their way to growing back to their normal state.
Chayo kissed me on the cheek and said teasingly, "Yes, monsters need love too. Even men deserve some kindness."
"Only some kindness?" I feigned surprise.
"I'm teasing."
"Another kiss then," I said.
She kissed me again.
"Once more."
"No more, you've gotten enough kisses," she laughed. "But I'll give you one anyway."
We finished our atoles, got up to leave, and began the walk to Chayo's house, strolling hand in hand.
"So what did they do about the monster?" she said as we crossed the plaza and began our way down the shadowy street. "His name was Grendel?"
"Yes, it was Grendel," I said. "At first there wasn't much anybody could do, and for quite a while he got away with it. But Hrothgar had a friend in a neighboring country who eventually came to help out. This friend of Hrothgar came to the hall and spent the night there, waiting for Grendel. And when the monster showed up, the guy wrestled him barehanded. It ended with him tearing Grendel's arm off."
"It can't be easy to take a monster's arm."
"The poet depicted it as quite a fight," I said. "It's one of the great epics of heroic age poetry. That was an age when dragons still roamed the earth and monsters lurked on the moors."
By this time we were nearing the bridge over the Río Cupatitzio. When we were halfway across, we paused at the railing to gaze into the rushing water below.
"I suppose this river flows all year round?" I said. "It never runs dry?"
"Once upon a time it did, according to an old Tarascan legend."
"During a terrible drought, I suppose?"
"No," she said. "The legend tells of a thirsty mountain that grew like a plant and drank the river dry."
"How did that happen?"
"The mountain was black and hot. So hot that nobody could touch it, and it kept growing and spreading till it reached the river, and when it got there it guzzled up all the water. There was none left for the farmers and their crops. Even the deer of the forest went thirsty."
"Sounds almost like science fiction," I said. "Could it have been a volcano?"
"That's what I've been wondering, and I've been meaning to ask you."
"I take it the legend doesn't specifically say the mountain was a volcano?"
"No," she said. "The Tarascan language didn't even have a word for volcano, at least not until Paricutín erupted. You remember the Indians at Angahuán told us how surprised they'd been by the eruption, and that such a thing had never been seen by their fathers or grandfathers. They were completely mystified by the phenomenon until geologists came and told them what was happening."
"Yes, I see," I said. "This legend comes to us from a pre-scientific people who in fact could be describing a volcanic event in their own words. Though it could be total fantasy, a story that only by sheer coincidence happens to sound like an eruption."
"So what do you think?"
"I'd like to give the storytellers the benefit of the doubt, and investigate it," I said. "So we seem to have the remains of a thirsty volcano around here somewhere."
"There are a lot of old cinder cones. Which one could it be?"
"Mount Jicalán, perhaps." I named the only one that was within a couple kilometers of the river, but even it probably wasn't close enough.
"According to the legend, the mountain finally disappeared," she said. "Do you suppose it's gone? Not here any more?"
"Volcanoes don't vanish that quickly," I said. "It takes thousands of years for one to erode away. Many of the cinder cones here on the Meseta Volcánica were probably here long before the first Chichimecas arrived. Unless the legend is fantasy, the mountain is still here, and probably in plain view."
"Something we've seen?"
"We probably have. It's just that we didn't know what we were looking at."
"You'd recognize it, wouldn't you?" she said.
"Maybe not," I said. "Even geologists are capable of overlooking the obvious. My paleontology professor used to say: 'If you don't know it's there, you won't look for it, and if you don't look for it you won't find it.'"
We stood on the bridge gazing into the river as it rushed along under us. Cuauhtémoc sat contentedly on my arm. His feathers were beginning to return, and he seemed to be recovering. I turned the Tarascan legend over in my mind. There were several kinds of natural phenomena which could account for a river disappearing, such as a landslide or an earthquake.
"There's the Malpaís near my house," Chayo said. "It extends all the way to the river, and--"
"Yes, of course!" I said, suddenly realizing that this might be it.
"You were telling me the other day," said Chayo, "that the Malpaís had once been a lava flow. That it'd puzzled geologists because it didn't look very old and they'd tried to find some written record of it. You even asked me if I might know of any stories about it, and of course I couldn't think of any. I didn't even know it was a lava flow. Perhaps nobody around here does."
"That would explain how the mountain vanished," I said. "I suppose storytellers passed the legend on from generation to generation, but without remembering the exact location."
Chayo continued, "I've watched films taken during the Paricutín eruption, of the lava moving very slowly across the fields and into the village of San Juan, where that church was engulfed in molten rock," she said. "And now that I think of it, I could imagine that people of a pre-scientific age might've described it as a hot, black mountain that grew and kept on growing, like a pernicious vine that just keeps spreading out and takes over fields, gardens and even whole villages."
"I was thinking there might be an account of it buried in some old Spanish archive, or maybe in some bundle of old letters stashed away in somebody's attic, somewhere between here and Madrid.
"Did you really plan to look for it in Spain?"
"Well, no. Not really. But . . ."
Chayo laughed. "You did! Now admit it!"
I sighed. "I certainly didn't expect to find an account of it encoded in an ancient legend. Now is there any way of dating the event? Is there any mention of any chieftain or personality whose name might appear in historical records?"
"Yes. I think it was in the days of Fray Juan de San Miguel."
"When would that have been?"
"Shortly after the Spanish conquest. Maybe about the time they were building the Huatapera."
"In the 1540's?" I said.
Chayo nodded. "Something like that. But I'll have to look it up."
"What?"
"I said I'll have to look it up."
"You mean you'll check with a Tarascan storyteller? A keeper of the legends?" I said.
"No, it's in a book," she said. "I have a copy. I'll loan it to you."
"Oh," was all I could say. It somehow hadn't occurred to me that this would turn out to be a written account after all.
"It was a gift from my father for my tenth birthday, and I've treasured it all these years. So please be very careful with it."
We continued on our way towards Chayo's house, and as we went, she asked me how a lava flow might be able to consume a whole river, even a relatively small one the size of the Cupatitzio.
"The temperature of that molten rock must've been a thousand degrees Celsius. It would've turned the river to steam. There must've been a huge, dramatic vapor cloud above the scene."
"It must've been quite a spectacle."
"I'm sure it was," I said. "Fire-spitting dragons may have passed from this earth, but volcanoes remain, and, like the dragons of old, they breathe fire and burn forests and destroy villages and even dry up rivers."
Of course our Thirsty Mountain wasn't a dragon, nor probably even a volcanic cinder cone. It had to be a lava flow.
Usually I walked back to my room at the boardinghouse, but this evening I was in a hurry to get home and read the book that Chayo had just loaned me. I grabbed a bus which took me as far as the plaza, then made it the rest of the way on foot.
When I got there, I sat up late, reading first the legend of The Thirsty Mountain, then the other stories in the small volume, titled Leyendas de Michoacán. It was printed in fairly large type, intended for young readers. According to the inscription inside the front cover, it had been a gift to Chayo from her father on her eleventh birthday.
Most of the stories were from the Colonial period, and a few were from pre-Hispanic times. I recognized several well-known motifs, but the Thirsty Mountain legend was new to me, and as I read and reread it, I shook my head in amazement. This was clearly an eyewitness account, preserved in myth, of a pre-literate, pre-scientific people describing a volcanic event in terms of their own concepts. As far as I knew, very few descriptive legends of volcanic eruptions had ever been recorded. This just might be the only one.
No volcanoes were mentioned, nor was any other scientific interpretation attempted; the account simply described a mountain that grew like a huge vine and drank a river dry.
The 16th century Indian observers of that moving lava apparently saw the earth as a living thing--a view that would've been uncompromisingly rejected by every educated Westerner from the time of the Enlightenment until very recently. Today there were scientists, geologists among them, who'd be inclined to agree with those Indians and say, "Yes, you people had it right. The earth is a living thing."
At that moment Cuauhtémoc nudged the calf of my leg with his beak. I reached down and lifted him onto my lap, as he was still not recovered sufficiently to hop up on his own. Perched there on my leg, he looked at me and then at the book I was studying. Perhaps he sensed that this was an extraordinary moment and wanted me to share it with him.
I glanced at my watch. It was now after midnight, but I couldn't sleep. I felt a tremendous, growing excitement as the importance of this discovery sank in, wanting the next day to hurry up and come so I could go running to Chayo and give her a tremendous hug. It had been the two of us together; neither of us could've done it alone. There'd been a lot of people who'd had the two parts of the puzzle, the vulcanologists on one hand and the traditional storytellers on the other--but Chayo and I were the ones who'd put the pieces together and deciphered the meaning.
Up to now we had been sweethearts. Now we were co-discoverers of something important. Our relationship might become a partnership of two people who could work together, accomplish things together, build a life together. Or was it just wishful thinking?
My thoughts drifted back to when I'd arrived here in Uruapan, some three months earlier. Beginning on that day I'd suddenly found myself in a new and strange realm, where I was again a child, learning the ways of a new world. It was like going back to primary school and starting all over again with Chayo as my guide, more than a teacher.
Chayo knew the language, the people, the customs, everything. She was also two years older than me, both chronologically and socially. She knew the ropes and called the shots. That's the way our relationship worked, and right now I depended very heavily on her.
But some day I would know the language well enough to speak for myself. I'd understand the customs, and know what was going on. How would our relationship work then?
That day would come. And our relationship? Maybe we'd still be working together, and need each other as much or even more than ever before.
"Have you two had a fight yet?" doña Josefina had asked me a few days before. And she'd said, "If you haven't had a fight, then you don't know her yet."
I wondered if that could be true for us. Outside of MacClayne, I couldn't offhand think of anyone I'd quarreled with, but then MacClayne was like an older brother, and brothers are meant to quarrel, at least once in a while.
Suddenly I felt terribly drowsy. Cuauhtémoc was already asleep on my lap. I gently put him to bed in his cardboard box, tucked his small blanket in around him, then lay down for the night.
* * *
In the morning I went to doña Rosario's shop and got there just as Chayo was arriving for work. Without any explanation I gave her a big hug and a kiss. She was quite surprised, because I'd rarely visited the shop during working hours.
"What is it?" she finally asked. "Why are you here so early?"
"Our discovery," I said. "I just wanted to hug you for it."
Her eyes widened slightly as I explained the significance of our find. "It's that significant?" she said.
"Scholars and scientists spend their whole lives searching and hoping to make a discovery like this," I told her.
"You mean this is going to make you famous?"
"Don't say you," I admonished her. "Us. The two of us."
"So the two of us are going to be famous?"
"It'll get us a couple of paragraphs in some obscure, scholarly journal. Maybe a whole page," I said. "And if you call that fame, then yes, we'll be famous."
Chayo laughed delightedly and put her arms around me. "¡Que gracioso!"
"But just the same," I said. "To me it means a lot. And it means even more to me that you're part of this. Your name will be in there beside mine."
I could tell by the look on her face that she was delighted with the idea.
"Can you take the day off?" I added. "That's what I came to ask you. I'd like you to go with me and visit the place."
"The malpaís?"
"Yes," I said. "I want you to be with me on this."
Chayo got permission from her aunt and we set out, taking a bus since we saw no point in making a half-hour walk just to get there as we did each evening. We got off near Chayo's house and walked from there. It was only another hundred meters up the road, and we'd both been there numerous times before, but this was to take a new look at the place in the light of our discovery.
This was the thirsty mountain of the legend, though the word mountain was a misnomer for this broad, rather flat, tongue-shaped landform that rose only about five meters above the surrounding land. Here on the rugged Meseta Volcánica it would hardly be noticed as even a hill--which is how the legend could rightfully say it disappeared.
The road ran right across the malpaís; it was no significant barrier, and we were able to walk around on it without too much difficulty. It was similar in height and form to the lava flow we'd visited at Volcán Paricutín. The difference was that this lava had apparently undergone four centuries of weathering and erosion under the tropical sun and rain. That had taken the jagged edges off of the boulders and altered the sandy ash to a clayey soil in which grass and trees had taken root, thus turning a once barren moonscape into a forested mound. Along one side of it, the Río Cupatitzio had cut a deep channel--almost a small gorge.
"Why would the lava flow right up to the river's edge and then stop right here?" Chayo wondered as we stood there on top of the flow, looking down at the river below us.
I smiled and shook my head. "Try again."
She stood there looking at it.
"What do you know about liquids?" I said.
"They flow, sort of like water."
"Yes, so where would it go?"
"Downhill. Right into the riverbed."
"You got it."
"So this is a new channel, and the old one is somewhere behind us, full of lava. Under the malpaís."
"Exactly," I said. "And then you can see how the 'thirsty mountain' would drink the water, leaving none for the people and animals."
"I think you already told me--the molten rock would've turned it to steam," she said. "And I suppose when the rock eventually cooled and the river began to flow again, it cut itself a new channel, the one we see here below us."
"Good," I said. "You get an 'A' for the day."
We both chuckled. She kissed me on the cheek.
"So, What do we look for now?" she said.
"Okay, let me explain. We're pretty sure this happened sometime around 1540--at least within the lifetime of Fray Juan de San Miguel. But, additional evidence would help us back up our claim. You've probably heard of carbon 14 dating?"
Chayo nodded.
"I'd assume this land was forested back in the 1500's, much as it is today. The hot lava would've turned those trees to ashes and charcoal, and buried them. So if we can find some places to dig around the edges of the flow, we might, with luck, be able to unearth some pieces of charcoal."
"How would we run the test?"
"We'd send it to a lab. We'd just collect the samples. And we won't actually do the digging today. What we'll do now is look for potential places to dig. Somewhere along the edges of the flow we could maybe find places where we won't have to dig very deep."
"I see," she said. "How big do our samples need to be?"
"Well, I don't really know," I said. "But I suppose anything the size of a fingernail would be more than adequate."
"They didn't teach you that in school?"
"No," I said. She was puzzled, so I added, "It's a rather specialized thing, and it's not even something that most geologists often do. Mostly it's archeologists and anthropologists who work with carbon 14 dating."
"So you don't know it all," she said, almost teasingly.
My stomach began to sink. I feared she was going to be terribly disillusioned with me. I said, "No, I don't, and I never said I did."
She grinned and said, "Then perhaps you'll still need me for a while."
"¡Chayo! That's what I've been trying to tell you all morning!" I paused and glanced around, "Just look at this malpaís. We're not the first to come here and wonder about it. Back in the 1940's Dr. Howel Williams was here and looked at it. He's the dean of North American vulcanologists, the guy who wrote the book on the geology of this area, but even he couldn't crack this puzzle. We did. You and I, working together. And together we can do things like this."
"Okay," she said, taking my arm. "I'll help you."
continued in Chapter 15
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