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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
"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
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