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chapter 21
Grayish light slipped in through a broken window and illuminated the dirty ceiling above me. I studied the dusty cobwebs and slowly realized that I was in a bed. Turning my head sideways, I saw another bed. MacClayne was in it, asleep. So he was here too.
On the seat of the chair next to me lay Cuauhtémoc's small blanket. But where was he? I raised myself up on an elbow to look around, and then I felt something stirring beside me. It was Cuauhtémoc, cuddled up next to me. His presence made me feel better, though I still hadn't figured out where I was.
My last memory was of being in a room not too different from this one, except for the beds, the window and the grayish light. They were about all that distinguished this dismal place from the dark, drippy dungeon from which I'd just awoken. A gust of air blew in through the broken glass. There were faint sounds of vehicles, distant voices and an occasional shout.
My journal lay on the floor. As I retrieved it, memories of our journey came flooding back to me, and I knew where I was and how I'd come to be in this room. Just the same, I took another careful look around to reassure myself that the floor wasn't covered with empty bottles and beer cans, and that there wasn't a moldy print of the Virgin of Guadalupe on one of the walls. The dream was still disturbingly real, and I felt irrationally fearful, as if a squad of Royal Marines were about to come bursting into the room to grab me.
I wanted to record the dream while it was fresh in my mind. First I arose and gave Cuauhtémoc his breakfast of oats, then I sat down with my journal and began writing. The abundance of intricate detail kept me writing page after page. When I eventually glanced up, MacClayne was sitting on the edge of his bed. He was also writing something, presumably a poem. I hadn't realized he was awake.
"You looked so intent on your notes," he said. "I didn't want to disturb you."
"I had a weird dream," I said. "You and I were riding in a Mercedes. It was really fancy. It even had a coffee maker."
"Where were we going?"
"We were cruising down the road to Apatzingán," I said.
"Did we get there?"
"Not really. When we arrived it turned into something else."
"Like what?"
I hesitated. My vision of him drinking with his lost shipmates--was that something he'd want to hear? Probably not.
"It was a cold place," I said. I noticed that he had a sheet of paper in his hand. To change the subject I said, "You were writing something. A poem?"
MacClayne affirmed that it was. I invited him to share it with me, and after a bit of persuading, he read:
Writhing awake
from some black dream
I come to wonder
am I become phantom?
a ghost alone,
an apparition
in grey robes
lost, even to myself?
Destined to wander
and haunt?
To sidle
subtler than shadow
elusive
indefinable
without destination
within this labyrinth
of lostness?
After he finished the reading, I said, "If you were to appear as a ghost, it wouldn't be in gray robes. You'd be in a Royal Marine's uniform. In battledress, I think you once told me it was called."
MacClayne looked at me quite strangely, then he said, "Yes, we called it battledress."
There was a silence, and I tried to think of something more appropriate to say about the poem, something that would obviate mention of him drinking with his lost shipmates. Finally I said, "I guess I found it a bit disturbing. That's because it's slightly reminiscent of dreams I sometimes have." And having said that, I realized that I'd unwittingly revealed more of what I was trying to avoid.
"Yes, I understand what you mean," he said with a sympathetic nod. The unsettled look in his eye, however, gave me the uncomfortable feeling that he saw beyond my vague explanation.
"I didn't sleep at all well last night," I said, trying to turn the conversation away from the implications of the dream. "It was the cold. I froze all night long. Would you excuse me while I go back to bed and take a nap?"
* * *
It was almost noon when I woke up. MacClayne was reading.
"Do you think you might have the flu?" he asked.
"No, I'm okay now," I said.
"You were pretty green around the gills earlier, but you do look better now. Are you hungry?"
"I guess I should eat something."
"Let me finish this chapter, a couple of pages," he said, and turned back to his book. I glimpsed a name that looked like Italo Calvino, or something like that. MacClayne seemed to have brought a lot of books with him.
I gave Cuauhtémoc some oats for his lunch, and went out to the pila to shave. When the three of us were ready, we set out for the restaurant, taking our things with us.
The sky was overcast and the air was damp and heavy. The town seemed to reflect the weather. "Even in the daylight this town looks unreal," I said as we walked down the street.
We reached the restaurant of the previous afternoon where the little pig had come out to look at us. An inviting odor made me realize I was hungry after all. Today the lady had beef, so we had that.
"¿Hay telefono?" I asked her, and explained that I needed to make a call to Uruapan. I was thinking that maybe Chayo hadn't left on her trip for Chiapas yet, and, if she hadn't, then I wanted to phone her, just to let her know where I was.
"Sí hay," she replied, and told me there was a shop just two doors down where they had such a service. But at the moment it was closed. She didn't know when it would be open.
The piglet made his appearance while we ate, peeking out from the kitchen as before. MacClayne recalled an incident back in the old country, the time a neighbor's pig escaped just before it was to be butchered. It hid in somebody's kitchen.
"Did it make good its escape?"
"For an hour or two," he said, and took a deep drink of his coffee. "So, are we going on to Apatzingán?"
We looked at each other for a thoughtful moment. It had been our plan to get up in the morning--or afternoon as it now was--and take a bus into Apatzingán. It was only 30 km away, and the road from here appeared to be flat, paved and smooth. A half hour ride, or less, and we'd be in Apatzingán. Such had been our thoughts--I shouldn't say "plan" because so far we hadn't really planned anything in more detail than this. But now that we were here, only half an hour from our goal, our assumptions seemed to have suddenly changed in some strange unspoken way.
"If we go there now," MacClayne ventured, "our trip will be over."
"That's true," I said. "Then there'll be nothing to do but go back to Uruapan."
"You're not in a hurry to get back?"
I sighed. "Chayo won't be there, or if she is, she'll be leaving very soon. She'll be gone for at least a couple of weeks."
"I'd like to see more of this region," MacClayne said. "We're still in Michoacán, aren't we?
"Yes. Close to the state of Jalisco, but yes, we're still in Michoacán."
We pondered for some moments in silence. Finally/Soon I broke the silence. "Being true and resolute chevaliers in search of the Grail, I do think we should continue on our way to Apatzingán. But you're right, it doesn't have to be now."
MacClayne nodded and Cuauhtémoc looked at me attentively.
I proceeded, "Remember when we were setting out from Uruapan and were about to board a bus that would have taken us on a comfortable ride down a smooth, paved road? We could have been there in two easy hours. But we decided that was not our road to the fabled and forbidden city of Apatzingán."
"Yes," MacClayne said slowly and thoughtfully, with all the reverence of a Calvinist deacon. "There might still be some more requirements for us to fulfil. Perhaps we could work on that and at the same time see more of Michoacán."
"Right!" I said, "and it wouldn't necessarily be straying from our path to find another route. As a matter of fact, it might be that some other route is the true and proper path. We're not tourists, but since we shall be passing through more of the countryside, seeing it may be part of what's required of us."
"As chevaliers, we'll do whatever the mission requires. Sightseeing included."
"I'm sure that even Grailers are allowed a bit of sightseeing."
We chuckled at our private joke, and Cuauhtémoc crowed lustily.
"Another thing about fabled cities," I said. "One should enter through the city gates, never by the back door."
"So, we must find a road that will take us to the front gate," MacClayne affirmed, then added, "Do you know of such a road?"
"I think I do," I said. I opened my notebook to an empty page and drew three or four parallel lines to represent the mountain ranges, the valley and the distant sea coast.
"The coastal range is on the other side of this valley, it's the bluish mountains we saw in the distance," I began.
"The Needle Peaks, you mean?"
"No, they're to the west of us," I said, and marked a large X at one side. "When we're facing south, looking at the coastal range, then Apatzingán is to our left, and the Needle Peaks to our right. Behind us is the Meseta Volcánica, the plateau we just came from, with Uruapan and Tancítaro." I drew a few more lines to fill in the picture.
MacClayne nodded.
"I would suggest this," I said. "We'll head southward, cross the coastal range, and that will put us at the Pacific Ocean. On a tropical beach."
MacClayne smiled beautifically, and I could almost see the visions of palm trees and blue water and sunshine passing before his eyes.
I took a sip of coffee, then continued. "We'll follow the coast eastward to Lázaro at the Rio Balsas. There we'll turn north, re-cross the mountains and descend into the other end of this valley. That will take us to the front gate of Apatzingán."
"How much of a trek is this going to be?"
I thought for a moment, "On the order of a thousand kilometers."
"What's it like out there?"
"It's one of the wilder backwoods regions of México."
"Are there roads? Buses?
"I assume so."
"You assume?" The tone of his voice had changed.
"It's a safe assumption," I said. "Buses go everywhere in México."
"We just came through a stretch where buses didn't go. Is there going to be a lot of that?"
I tried to think of a response.
"Have you ever been there?" He looked at me skeptically.
"No."
"So you don't know."
"I've met people who lived there," I said. "It's not completely uninhabited."
"We don't even have a map," he said. His dreamy smile was gone, and I could guess that the sun had ceased to shine on the warm sandy beaches of his vision. Mountains had become impassably rugged and rose to formidable heights.
I said, "Have you read The Quest of the Holy Grail?"
"Years ago. There are half a dozen such romances, and at one time or another I read most of them," he said. "But why are you asking me that now?"
"Because that particular account, written by an anonymous Frenchman around year 1220, explains in graphic detail what one must do to find the Grail. When the chevaliers set out on their quest, they struck out into the forest, wherever they saw it to be thickest and darkest, and even where there was no road to follow."
"You're taking this pretty seriously," he said.
"Isn't that the whole spirit of the thing?" I said. Cuauhtémoc clucked as though to affirm that it was.
MacClayne sucked in his breath and tapped his finger on the table. "And so we're going to set off into a trackless wilderness without even a map?"
"I think I can get one," I said.
"You think you can." He gave me a most dubious look.
"Yes, I certainly do!"
"Okay, you get a map. Then we'll talk about it."
"I'll be back shortly." Leaving my backpack on my chair, I headed towards the door. I also intended for Cuauhtémoc to wait there for me, but from behind came the flutter of wings, and I resignedly held out my arm for him to land on.
Even small towns in México have stationery stores which sell paper, pencils and other basic school supplies, including maps. I found one on the next block, and in a few minutes I had bought a large map of Michoacán. It was designed for use in a classroom, and showed cities and villages as well as the townships into which the state was divided. Roads were also shown, though it was not intended as a highway map.
It'd taken me no more than five minutes to find the store and buy the map, so I had time to look in another shop where I bought some barley to take with for Cuauhtémoc, and then headed back to the restaurant. On the way I glanced at the telephone shop, but it was still closed.
MacClayne was ordering another cup of coffee as I walked in the door, and I asked for one too. Cuauhtémoc returned to his perch and I spread out the map before the two of them; it covered most of the table. MacClayne was visibly impressed.
I outlined the proposed route, marking the roads and towns. And since MacClayne was now able to see where these places were, as well as the road we'd use to get there, he seemed content.
We finished our coffee and took a last look at the piglet who was resting by the wall. The little animal seemed relaxed and without the least trace of anxiety for its future.
We paid the restaurant lady and headed out to find a bus.
Even the sky was clearing up. I felt electrified with enthusiasm for the journey ahead. MacClayne was back in an excellent mood, and Cuauhtémoc seemed to be enjoying the prospect of adventure.
First we needed to get across the valley, to a town with a name spelled:
T-E-P-A-L-C-A-T-E-P-E-C
"¿A dónde van?" asked the ticket-seller. I looked at my map again and tried to read it, "Te... Te-pal..."
"¿Tepalcatepec?"
"Sí," I replied and bought the tickets. We boarded and the bus set out.
Groves of grapefruit, oranges, and limes extended out on both sides of the well-paved road as we rolled out across the valley floor. "Surprisingly productive," I remarked, impressed at how these people were able to take advantage of the hot desert with the use of irrigation. "We didn't see any of these orchards from back in the hills. Everything looked brown."
"This greenery is probably not very extensive," MacClayne suggested. "Anyway, we couldn't see much of what was down here. Mostly, this valley floor was covered with fog."
As if in response to his words, the groves ended abruptly, and we were in the midst of barren flatness. The tropical sun, barely out from behind the clouds, was already beating down on the dry rocks and brown earth, reflecting a harsh glare into our eyes. I caught brief glimpses of the distant Needle Peaks. It must have been land like this that was given to the campesinos in Juan Rulfo's sardonic story: Nos han dado la tierra. Actually, the place that Rulfo had in mind when the wrote it was probably in this general region, maybe a bit farther to the west of us over in Jalisco.
A couple of cinder cones shot past us; one was being quarried for the black gravel. "It hurts me to see that," I said.
"It does?"
"Volcanoes should be respected."
We began to descend the terrace-like steps of eroded badlands and before long found ourselves on the rim of a deep canyon. At the bottom was a river, crossed by a bridge. Río Tepalcatepec--the river had the same name as the town we were heading for. It felt good to have a map in my hands, but the sight of this river brought back thoughts of the river I'd crossed in my dream.
In Norse mythology there's a river that flows through Niflheim--the valley of the dead. It marks the final separation between the land of the living and the cold, foggy abode of lost souls. It was called the Gjallar. Every culture seemed to have such a river in its mythology. The Japanese called it the River of Sanzu, and the ancient Greeks called it the River Styx. In any language, it was something you'd hesitate to cross.
Once when I was very little and had done something naughty, my grandmother warned me that next time she was going to send me off beyond the Gjallar River. I didn't really understand where that was, but I definitely didn't want to go there. That evening I had a nightmare about it and woke up screaming. Grandma came rushing to my bedside and when I told her about my awful dream, she assured me that there really was no such river. But I somehow went on thinking there must be such a river out there somewhere, maybe over in North Dakota.
I was thinking about that as our bus drove across the bridge, and for a brief moment I felt just a twinge of uneasiness, as if I were about to cross over to another world. I glanced down at the water, then up at the canyon walls, and almost wanted to shut my eyes. At the same time, I felt a bit silly, like a big boy who shouldn't be afraid of things like that.
I began to write that in my journal, but thought better of it and scratched it out. I didn't want to risk the chance of anyone reading it and thinking less of me.
Looking up from my journal, I saw that we had finally reached the foot of the coastal range, those once-distant bluish mountains, and were ascending into some dry rolling hills where the rocks were strikingly different from what I was used to seeing back in the Meseta Volcánica. Here they appeared to be sedimentary, not volcanic. The geology had become strikingly different.
A few minutes later we entered a town, Tepalcatepec as it turned out, and disembarked at the terminal. We'd arrived just in time to transfer to a bus which would take us on the next leg of our journey, up into the mountains. But MacClayne objected.
"Let's go out and take a look," he said. "Otherwise, we're just riding buses."
We checked the schedule on the wall of the terminal, and saw that the next bus would be leaving in two hours. I jotted down the departure times in my notebook.
The sun was warm now, and we took our jackets off. Dust was blowing around us as we strolled down a concrete street lined with concrete buildings.
"The stoor," I said, recalling MacClayne's refrain about the place in Scotland where the crows flew backwards. I gave it a deep 'oo' sound and rolled the 'r'.
"Another Ecclefechan," he said.
"This entire valley. It's said to be one huge dust bowl. But I think I'll always remember it as a land of rain and more rain."
We walked for some time. There were a few adobe houses, but most were of concrete, an ugly substitute for adobe. All of a sudden, I noticed it was getting chilly. The sun had disappeared behind dark clouds.
"¡Viene agua!" a boy shouted to a man who must've been his father. Curious, I glanced around, expecting to see a water wagon coming down the street.
A large rain drop smacked me in the face. The sun was gone and the sky was black. More drops followed. We stepped under the eaves of a building, wondering what to do now. Across the street was a hotel.
"When does the next bus leave?" MacClayne asked.
"In less than an hour," I said, checking my notes. "We should start heading back if we're going to catch it."
The downpour had trapped us where we stood under the eaves of a shop, looking at the hotel. There wasn't much of the afternoon left, and if we missed that bus and had to take the one after it, we'd be traveling in the dark, unable to see the countryside.
"What's the name of this town?" MacClayne asked.
"I can't quite pronounce it."
MacClayne smiled. "Maybe we should stay a while and learn to say it."
"I don't think I want to stay that long. But we might spend a night here."
We managed to cross the street without getting too wet. The hotel was of concrete, on the usual pattern of rooms surrounding a courtyard. It was functional, reasonably clean and even rather pleasant-looking. We took a room and settled in. For a while we sat there looking out at the courtyard through the open door as rain cascaded down off the roof. MacClayne reminisced about some of the cold, rainy climes of this earth.
"I had a shipmate from Stornoway, a town on an island in the Outer Hebrides," he said. "Could you envision a more descriptive name for a place desolate beyond belief?"
Cuauhtémoc was looking out into the courtyard. Poor bird. He hated the rain too, probably as much as MacClayne did.
"Stornoway?" I repeated. "Yeah, that's a good name for a place on the outer fringes of the known world."
MacClayne continued, "The guy would tell me that there were no windows on the weathered side of the cottages, because the wind was so strong that the rain was horizontal. It makes you shudder just thinking about it."
He dwelled for some time on horizontal rain. For a guy who hated rain that much, it was amazing how much he could talk about it.
Cuauhtémoc crapped on the floor. I cleaned it up, and MacClayne went on to tell about the Falkland Islands, a place which in his estimate surpassed even the Outer Hebrides in severity of climate. He'd spent a year in the Falklands shortly after he got out of the Royal Marines.
"They're a thousand miles from Cape Horn, and there was snow on the ground eight months of the year. Rain the rest. The two industries were seal hunting and sheep rearing. I went there on a construction job, erecting buildings for a slaughterhouse.
"The entire population was two thousand, and men outnumbered the women six to one. I was at a desolate inlet called Ajax Bay where there were no women at all. The one thing to do was drink. Rum mostly. They served it from huge wooden barrels called rumbullions. I found out years later that there was more alcohol consumed per head of population in the Falkland Islands than anywhere else in the British Empire."
"It must've been awful," I commiserated.
Out in the courtyard the rain was pouring straight down, in quantities sufficient to overpower any horizontal wind, had there been one. I marveled at how cold it was. It was hard to imagine that normally this was one of the hottest and driest parts of México. Fortunately, the landlady had managed to dig up a couple of blankets. I wrapped one over my shoulders and sat in a chair by the door, watching the rain.
Eventually the squall passed. For a couple extra pesos the lady gave me a pot of warm water and with that I gave Cuauhtémoc a bath. The bird put up his usual squawk of protest.
I still wanted to phone Chayo, or at least try. The landlady allowed me to use her phone. However, the line was down, apparently damaged by the storm. I decided it didn't matter; Chayo had probably left for Chiapas by this time.
When I returned, MacClayne was reading the Odyssey, an appropriate book for a journey, I thought. He'd once told me that when one has the Odyssey, that's enough reading material for a long journey. He hadn't followed his own advice however, since he'd brought quite a number of books.
I took up my journal, and my eye fell upon the line I'd scratched out earlier. Despite my attempt at eradication, I could still make out the word Gjallar which I'd written as we crossed the Río Tepalcatepec. It disturbed me that the place I encountered MacClayne in my dreams was so much like that mythical Norse hell.
Cuauhtémoc was perched on the chair beside me, looking over my shoulder. It was comforting to have him there. He seemed to share these things with me, and at times I suspected that Chayo had wanted him to go with in order to look after me.
I missed Chayo. Since I might not be able to phone her, maybe I should send her a postcard. I wondered if I could find one in this town. She'd given me the address of where she'd be staying in Chiapas, and so if I found a postcard that's where I could send it.
As I sat there thinking of that, I recalled telling her about the sinking of MacClayne's ship and the loss of so many of his shipmates. She'd asked me how it had affected him and that had led to me telling her about his drinking, his winding up in detox units, being dismissed from jobs and spending occasional nights in jail.
"People drink for reasons," she'd said. "Maybe some part of MacClayne went down with his shipmates."
That observation had somehow stuck in my mind, though I hadn't recorded it in my journal at the time. Perhaps it was a bit too poignant. "Died, you mean? That some part of him died during that experience?" I'd asked her.
"In a sense, yes, you could say that."
"You're suggesting that his spirit might be stuck in a bleak netherworld?" I'd then told Chayo about the dream where I'd visited a snow-swept valley and found myself searching for MacClayne, experiencing a dreamland reenactment of a Norse myth, the one where Hermoð attempts to rescue his brother.
"You might understand more than you realize," she'd said.
"Really?"
"Myths reveal things to us about ourselves, who we are, what we're doing, and even about the people around us."
Out in the courtyard the rain was again pouring down. MacClayne was still reading the Odyssey. Later in the evening, after going out to eat, we took turns reading stories to each other, as we'd done before.
continued in Chapter 22
On the seat of the chair next to me lay Cuauhtémoc's small blanket. But where was he? I raised myself up on an elbow to look around, and then I felt something stirring beside me. It was Cuauhtémoc, cuddled up next to me. His presence made me feel better, though I still hadn't figured out where I was.
My last memory was of being in a room not too different from this one, except for the beds, the window and the grayish light. They were about all that distinguished this dismal place from the dark, drippy dungeon from which I'd just awoken. A gust of air blew in through the broken glass. There were faint sounds of vehicles, distant voices and an occasional shout.
My journal lay on the floor. As I retrieved it, memories of our journey came flooding back to me, and I knew where I was and how I'd come to be in this room. Just the same, I took another careful look around to reassure myself that the floor wasn't covered with empty bottles and beer cans, and that there wasn't a moldy print of the Virgin of Guadalupe on one of the walls. The dream was still disturbingly real, and I felt irrationally fearful, as if a squad of Royal Marines were about to come bursting into the room to grab me.
I wanted to record the dream while it was fresh in my mind. First I arose and gave Cuauhtémoc his breakfast of oats, then I sat down with my journal and began writing. The abundance of intricate detail kept me writing page after page. When I eventually glanced up, MacClayne was sitting on the edge of his bed. He was also writing something, presumably a poem. I hadn't realized he was awake.
"You looked so intent on your notes," he said. "I didn't want to disturb you."
"I had a weird dream," I said. "You and I were riding in a Mercedes. It was really fancy. It even had a coffee maker."
"Where were we going?"
"We were cruising down the road to Apatzingán," I said.
"Did we get there?"
"Not really. When we arrived it turned into something else."
"Like what?"
I hesitated. My vision of him drinking with his lost shipmates--was that something he'd want to hear? Probably not.
"It was a cold place," I said. I noticed that he had a sheet of paper in his hand. To change the subject I said, "You were writing something. A poem?"
MacClayne affirmed that it was. I invited him to share it with me, and after a bit of persuading, he read:
Writhing awake
from some black dream
I come to wonder
am I become phantom?
a ghost alone,
an apparition
in grey robes
lost, even to myself?
Destined to wander
and haunt?
To sidle
subtler than shadow
elusive
indefinable
without destination
within this labyrinth
of lostness?
After he finished the reading, I said, "If you were to appear as a ghost, it wouldn't be in gray robes. You'd be in a Royal Marine's uniform. In battledress, I think you once told me it was called."
MacClayne looked at me quite strangely, then he said, "Yes, we called it battledress."
There was a silence, and I tried to think of something more appropriate to say about the poem, something that would obviate mention of him drinking with his lost shipmates. Finally I said, "I guess I found it a bit disturbing. That's because it's slightly reminiscent of dreams I sometimes have." And having said that, I realized that I'd unwittingly revealed more of what I was trying to avoid.
"Yes, I understand what you mean," he said with a sympathetic nod. The unsettled look in his eye, however, gave me the uncomfortable feeling that he saw beyond my vague explanation.
"I didn't sleep at all well last night," I said, trying to turn the conversation away from the implications of the dream. "It was the cold. I froze all night long. Would you excuse me while I go back to bed and take a nap?"
* * *
It was almost noon when I woke up. MacClayne was reading.
"Do you think you might have the flu?" he asked.
"No, I'm okay now," I said.
"You were pretty green around the gills earlier, but you do look better now. Are you hungry?"
"I guess I should eat something."
"Let me finish this chapter, a couple of pages," he said, and turned back to his book. I glimpsed a name that looked like Italo Calvino, or something like that. MacClayne seemed to have brought a lot of books with him.
I gave Cuauhtémoc some oats for his lunch, and went out to the pila to shave. When the three of us were ready, we set out for the restaurant, taking our things with us.
The sky was overcast and the air was damp and heavy. The town seemed to reflect the weather. "Even in the daylight this town looks unreal," I said as we walked down the street.
We reached the restaurant of the previous afternoon where the little pig had come out to look at us. An inviting odor made me realize I was hungry after all. Today the lady had beef, so we had that.
"¿Hay telefono?" I asked her, and explained that I needed to make a call to Uruapan. I was thinking that maybe Chayo hadn't left on her trip for Chiapas yet, and, if she hadn't, then I wanted to phone her, just to let her know where I was.
"Sí hay," she replied, and told me there was a shop just two doors down where they had such a service. But at the moment it was closed. She didn't know when it would be open.
The piglet made his appearance while we ate, peeking out from the kitchen as before. MacClayne recalled an incident back in the old country, the time a neighbor's pig escaped just before it was to be butchered. It hid in somebody's kitchen.
"Did it make good its escape?"
"For an hour or two," he said, and took a deep drink of his coffee. "So, are we going on to Apatzingán?"
We looked at each other for a thoughtful moment. It had been our plan to get up in the morning--or afternoon as it now was--and take a bus into Apatzingán. It was only 30 km away, and the road from here appeared to be flat, paved and smooth. A half hour ride, or less, and we'd be in Apatzingán. Such had been our thoughts--I shouldn't say "plan" because so far we hadn't really planned anything in more detail than this. But now that we were here, only half an hour from our goal, our assumptions seemed to have suddenly changed in some strange unspoken way.
"If we go there now," MacClayne ventured, "our trip will be over."
"That's true," I said. "Then there'll be nothing to do but go back to Uruapan."
"You're not in a hurry to get back?"
I sighed. "Chayo won't be there, or if she is, she'll be leaving very soon. She'll be gone for at least a couple of weeks."
"I'd like to see more of this region," MacClayne said. "We're still in Michoacán, aren't we?
"Yes. Close to the state of Jalisco, but yes, we're still in Michoacán."
We pondered for some moments in silence. Finally/Soon I broke the silence. "Being true and resolute chevaliers in search of the Grail, I do think we should continue on our way to Apatzingán. But you're right, it doesn't have to be now."
MacClayne nodded and Cuauhtémoc looked at me attentively.
I proceeded, "Remember when we were setting out from Uruapan and were about to board a bus that would have taken us on a comfortable ride down a smooth, paved road? We could have been there in two easy hours. But we decided that was not our road to the fabled and forbidden city of Apatzingán."
"Yes," MacClayne said slowly and thoughtfully, with all the reverence of a Calvinist deacon. "There might still be some more requirements for us to fulfil. Perhaps we could work on that and at the same time see more of Michoacán."
"Right!" I said, "and it wouldn't necessarily be straying from our path to find another route. As a matter of fact, it might be that some other route is the true and proper path. We're not tourists, but since we shall be passing through more of the countryside, seeing it may be part of what's required of us."
"As chevaliers, we'll do whatever the mission requires. Sightseeing included."
"I'm sure that even Grailers are allowed a bit of sightseeing."
We chuckled at our private joke, and Cuauhtémoc crowed lustily.
"Another thing about fabled cities," I said. "One should enter through the city gates, never by the back door."
"So, we must find a road that will take us to the front gate," MacClayne affirmed, then added, "Do you know of such a road?"
"I think I do," I said. I opened my notebook to an empty page and drew three or four parallel lines to represent the mountain ranges, the valley and the distant sea coast.
"The coastal range is on the other side of this valley, it's the bluish mountains we saw in the distance," I began.
"The Needle Peaks, you mean?"
"No, they're to the west of us," I said, and marked a large X at one side. "When we're facing south, looking at the coastal range, then Apatzingán is to our left, and the Needle Peaks to our right. Behind us is the Meseta Volcánica, the plateau we just came from, with Uruapan and Tancítaro." I drew a few more lines to fill in the picture.
MacClayne nodded.
"I would suggest this," I said. "We'll head southward, cross the coastal range, and that will put us at the Pacific Ocean. On a tropical beach."
MacClayne smiled beautifically, and I could almost see the visions of palm trees and blue water and sunshine passing before his eyes.
I took a sip of coffee, then continued. "We'll follow the coast eastward to Lázaro at the Rio Balsas. There we'll turn north, re-cross the mountains and descend into the other end of this valley. That will take us to the front gate of Apatzingán."
"How much of a trek is this going to be?"
I thought for a moment, "On the order of a thousand kilometers."
"What's it like out there?"
"It's one of the wilder backwoods regions of México."
"Are there roads? Buses?
"I assume so."
"You assume?" The tone of his voice had changed.
"It's a safe assumption," I said. "Buses go everywhere in México."
"We just came through a stretch where buses didn't go. Is there going to be a lot of that?"
I tried to think of a response.
"Have you ever been there?" He looked at me skeptically.
"No."
"So you don't know."
"I've met people who lived there," I said. "It's not completely uninhabited."
"We don't even have a map," he said. His dreamy smile was gone, and I could guess that the sun had ceased to shine on the warm sandy beaches of his vision. Mountains had become impassably rugged and rose to formidable heights.
I said, "Have you read The Quest of the Holy Grail?"
"Years ago. There are half a dozen such romances, and at one time or another I read most of them," he said. "But why are you asking me that now?"
"Because that particular account, written by an anonymous Frenchman around year 1220, explains in graphic detail what one must do to find the Grail. When the chevaliers set out on their quest, they struck out into the forest, wherever they saw it to be thickest and darkest, and even where there was no road to follow."
"You're taking this pretty seriously," he said.
"Isn't that the whole spirit of the thing?" I said. Cuauhtémoc clucked as though to affirm that it was.
MacClayne sucked in his breath and tapped his finger on the table. "And so we're going to set off into a trackless wilderness without even a map?"
"I think I can get one," I said.
"You think you can." He gave me a most dubious look.
"Yes, I certainly do!"
"Okay, you get a map. Then we'll talk about it."
"I'll be back shortly." Leaving my backpack on my chair, I headed towards the door. I also intended for Cuauhtémoc to wait there for me, but from behind came the flutter of wings, and I resignedly held out my arm for him to land on.
Even small towns in México have stationery stores which sell paper, pencils and other basic school supplies, including maps. I found one on the next block, and in a few minutes I had bought a large map of Michoacán. It was designed for use in a classroom, and showed cities and villages as well as the townships into which the state was divided. Roads were also shown, though it was not intended as a highway map.
It'd taken me no more than five minutes to find the store and buy the map, so I had time to look in another shop where I bought some barley to take with for Cuauhtémoc, and then headed back to the restaurant. On the way I glanced at the telephone shop, but it was still closed.
MacClayne was ordering another cup of coffee as I walked in the door, and I asked for one too. Cuauhtémoc returned to his perch and I spread out the map before the two of them; it covered most of the table. MacClayne was visibly impressed.
I outlined the proposed route, marking the roads and towns. And since MacClayne was now able to see where these places were, as well as the road we'd use to get there, he seemed content.
We finished our coffee and took a last look at the piglet who was resting by the wall. The little animal seemed relaxed and without the least trace of anxiety for its future.
We paid the restaurant lady and headed out to find a bus.
Even the sky was clearing up. I felt electrified with enthusiasm for the journey ahead. MacClayne was back in an excellent mood, and Cuauhtémoc seemed to be enjoying the prospect of adventure.
First we needed to get across the valley, to a town with a name spelled:
T-E-P-A-L-C-A-T-E-P-E-C
"¿A dónde van?" asked the ticket-seller. I looked at my map again and tried to read it, "Te... Te-pal..."
"¿Tepalcatepec?"
"Sí," I replied and bought the tickets. We boarded and the bus set out.
Groves of grapefruit, oranges, and limes extended out on both sides of the well-paved road as we rolled out across the valley floor. "Surprisingly productive," I remarked, impressed at how these people were able to take advantage of the hot desert with the use of irrigation. "We didn't see any of these orchards from back in the hills. Everything looked brown."
"This greenery is probably not very extensive," MacClayne suggested. "Anyway, we couldn't see much of what was down here. Mostly, this valley floor was covered with fog."
As if in response to his words, the groves ended abruptly, and we were in the midst of barren flatness. The tropical sun, barely out from behind the clouds, was already beating down on the dry rocks and brown earth, reflecting a harsh glare into our eyes. I caught brief glimpses of the distant Needle Peaks. It must have been land like this that was given to the campesinos in Juan Rulfo's sardonic story: Nos han dado la tierra. Actually, the place that Rulfo had in mind when the wrote it was probably in this general region, maybe a bit farther to the west of us over in Jalisco.
A couple of cinder cones shot past us; one was being quarried for the black gravel. "It hurts me to see that," I said.
"It does?"
"Volcanoes should be respected."
We began to descend the terrace-like steps of eroded badlands and before long found ourselves on the rim of a deep canyon. At the bottom was a river, crossed by a bridge. Río Tepalcatepec--the river had the same name as the town we were heading for. It felt good to have a map in my hands, but the sight of this river brought back thoughts of the river I'd crossed in my dream.
In Norse mythology there's a river that flows through Niflheim--the valley of the dead. It marks the final separation between the land of the living and the cold, foggy abode of lost souls. It was called the Gjallar. Every culture seemed to have such a river in its mythology. The Japanese called it the River of Sanzu, and the ancient Greeks called it the River Styx. In any language, it was something you'd hesitate to cross.
Once when I was very little and had done something naughty, my grandmother warned me that next time she was going to send me off beyond the Gjallar River. I didn't really understand where that was, but I definitely didn't want to go there. That evening I had a nightmare about it and woke up screaming. Grandma came rushing to my bedside and when I told her about my awful dream, she assured me that there really was no such river. But I somehow went on thinking there must be such a river out there somewhere, maybe over in North Dakota.
I was thinking about that as our bus drove across the bridge, and for a brief moment I felt just a twinge of uneasiness, as if I were about to cross over to another world. I glanced down at the water, then up at the canyon walls, and almost wanted to shut my eyes. At the same time, I felt a bit silly, like a big boy who shouldn't be afraid of things like that.
I began to write that in my journal, but thought better of it and scratched it out. I didn't want to risk the chance of anyone reading it and thinking less of me.
Looking up from my journal, I saw that we had finally reached the foot of the coastal range, those once-distant bluish mountains, and were ascending into some dry rolling hills where the rocks were strikingly different from what I was used to seeing back in the Meseta Volcánica. Here they appeared to be sedimentary, not volcanic. The geology had become strikingly different.
A few minutes later we entered a town, Tepalcatepec as it turned out, and disembarked at the terminal. We'd arrived just in time to transfer to a bus which would take us on the next leg of our journey, up into the mountains. But MacClayne objected.
"Let's go out and take a look," he said. "Otherwise, we're just riding buses."
We checked the schedule on the wall of the terminal, and saw that the next bus would be leaving in two hours. I jotted down the departure times in my notebook.
The sun was warm now, and we took our jackets off. Dust was blowing around us as we strolled down a concrete street lined with concrete buildings.
"The stoor," I said, recalling MacClayne's refrain about the place in Scotland where the crows flew backwards. I gave it a deep 'oo' sound and rolled the 'r'.
"Another Ecclefechan," he said.
"This entire valley. It's said to be one huge dust bowl. But I think I'll always remember it as a land of rain and more rain."
We walked for some time. There were a few adobe houses, but most were of concrete, an ugly substitute for adobe. All of a sudden, I noticed it was getting chilly. The sun had disappeared behind dark clouds.
"¡Viene agua!" a boy shouted to a man who must've been his father. Curious, I glanced around, expecting to see a water wagon coming down the street.
A large rain drop smacked me in the face. The sun was gone and the sky was black. More drops followed. We stepped under the eaves of a building, wondering what to do now. Across the street was a hotel.
"When does the next bus leave?" MacClayne asked.
"In less than an hour," I said, checking my notes. "We should start heading back if we're going to catch it."
The downpour had trapped us where we stood under the eaves of a shop, looking at the hotel. There wasn't much of the afternoon left, and if we missed that bus and had to take the one after it, we'd be traveling in the dark, unable to see the countryside.
"What's the name of this town?" MacClayne asked.
"I can't quite pronounce it."
MacClayne smiled. "Maybe we should stay a while and learn to say it."
"I don't think I want to stay that long. But we might spend a night here."
We managed to cross the street without getting too wet. The hotel was of concrete, on the usual pattern of rooms surrounding a courtyard. It was functional, reasonably clean and even rather pleasant-looking. We took a room and settled in. For a while we sat there looking out at the courtyard through the open door as rain cascaded down off the roof. MacClayne reminisced about some of the cold, rainy climes of this earth.
"I had a shipmate from Stornoway, a town on an island in the Outer Hebrides," he said. "Could you envision a more descriptive name for a place desolate beyond belief?"
Cuauhtémoc was looking out into the courtyard. Poor bird. He hated the rain too, probably as much as MacClayne did.
"Stornoway?" I repeated. "Yeah, that's a good name for a place on the outer fringes of the known world."
MacClayne continued, "The guy would tell me that there were no windows on the weathered side of the cottages, because the wind was so strong that the rain was horizontal. It makes you shudder just thinking about it."
He dwelled for some time on horizontal rain. For a guy who hated rain that much, it was amazing how much he could talk about it.
Cuauhtémoc crapped on the floor. I cleaned it up, and MacClayne went on to tell about the Falkland Islands, a place which in his estimate surpassed even the Outer Hebrides in severity of climate. He'd spent a year in the Falklands shortly after he got out of the Royal Marines.
"They're a thousand miles from Cape Horn, and there was snow on the ground eight months of the year. Rain the rest. The two industries were seal hunting and sheep rearing. I went there on a construction job, erecting buildings for a slaughterhouse.
"The entire population was two thousand, and men outnumbered the women six to one. I was at a desolate inlet called Ajax Bay where there were no women at all. The one thing to do was drink. Rum mostly. They served it from huge wooden barrels called rumbullions. I found out years later that there was more alcohol consumed per head of population in the Falkland Islands than anywhere else in the British Empire."
"It must've been awful," I commiserated.
Out in the courtyard the rain was pouring straight down, in quantities sufficient to overpower any horizontal wind, had there been one. I marveled at how cold it was. It was hard to imagine that normally this was one of the hottest and driest parts of México. Fortunately, the landlady had managed to dig up a couple of blankets. I wrapped one over my shoulders and sat in a chair by the door, watching the rain.
Eventually the squall passed. For a couple extra pesos the lady gave me a pot of warm water and with that I gave Cuauhtémoc a bath. The bird put up his usual squawk of protest.
I still wanted to phone Chayo, or at least try. The landlady allowed me to use her phone. However, the line was down, apparently damaged by the storm. I decided it didn't matter; Chayo had probably left for Chiapas by this time.
When I returned, MacClayne was reading the Odyssey, an appropriate book for a journey, I thought. He'd once told me that when one has the Odyssey, that's enough reading material for a long journey. He hadn't followed his own advice however, since he'd brought quite a number of books.
I took up my journal, and my eye fell upon the line I'd scratched out earlier. Despite my attempt at eradication, I could still make out the word Gjallar which I'd written as we crossed the Río Tepalcatepec. It disturbed me that the place I encountered MacClayne in my dreams was so much like that mythical Norse hell.
Cuauhtémoc was perched on the chair beside me, looking over my shoulder. It was comforting to have him there. He seemed to share these things with me, and at times I suspected that Chayo had wanted him to go with in order to look after me.
I missed Chayo. Since I might not be able to phone her, maybe I should send her a postcard. I wondered if I could find one in this town. She'd given me the address of where she'd be staying in Chiapas, and so if I found a postcard that's where I could send it.
As I sat there thinking of that, I recalled telling her about the sinking of MacClayne's ship and the loss of so many of his shipmates. She'd asked me how it had affected him and that had led to me telling her about his drinking, his winding up in detox units, being dismissed from jobs and spending occasional nights in jail.
"People drink for reasons," she'd said. "Maybe some part of MacClayne went down with his shipmates."
That observation had somehow stuck in my mind, though I hadn't recorded it in my journal at the time. Perhaps it was a bit too poignant. "Died, you mean? That some part of him died during that experience?" I'd asked her.
"In a sense, yes, you could say that."
"You're suggesting that his spirit might be stuck in a bleak netherworld?" I'd then told Chayo about the dream where I'd visited a snow-swept valley and found myself searching for MacClayne, experiencing a dreamland reenactment of a Norse myth, the one where Hermoð attempts to rescue his brother.
"You might understand more than you realize," she'd said.
"Really?"
"Myths reveal things to us about ourselves, who we are, what we're doing, and even about the people around us."
Out in the courtyard the rain was again pouring down. MacClayne was still reading the Odyssey. Later in the evening, after going out to eat, we took turns reading stories to each other, as we'd done before.
continued in Chapter 22
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