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chapter 24
There were four people ahead of me at the telephone café, so I wrote in my journal while I waited. Eventually my turn came, and this time I finally got through to Uruapan.
"¡Hola!" It was the voice of Chayo's nine-year-old cousin. "Buenos Días," I said, and then the line went dead--before I could even ask if Chayo were still in town. The telephone lines were apparently still under repair from the storm damage. Well, Chayo had almost certainly left for Chiapas by now, and so I hadn't really expected to be able to talk with her anyway, but I felt disappointed just the same, and Cuauhtémoc seemed to share my sense of disappointment. I gave him a hug and he put his head under my arm.
MacClayne had said he'd be waiting for me in the plaza. On the way there I stopped to buy a postcard, wrote Chayo a couple of lines and mailed it at the post office. Then I thought about our travel plans. It was about nine o'clock and the trail to Aquila could be an interesting hike. I hoped MacClayne would see it that way.
I found him at the far end of the plaza, sitting on a park bench reading The Persian Expedition. I saw that as a good omen; the story might put him in an adventurous mood, though it occurred to me that the 13th century novel The Quest of the Holy Grail might be even more appropriate.
"How did it go?" he said as I walked up.
"She already left town."
"So," he said after a respectful pause, "What are we going to do?"
"I suggest we hike to Aquila," I said.
"The horse trail."
"Yes."
"And if it rains?"
"There's hardly a cloud in the sky," I said. "It shouldn't rain today."
"What about tonight?"
"By tonight we'll be in Aquila," I said.
"Will we? The trail isn't even marked. Isn't that what they told us? We could spend days wandering in those mountains. We don't even have a compass."
"It's a risk we have to take."
"I don't understand why you want to go slogging through thirty miles of mud."
I was disappointed, but I could see that MacClayne didn't want to hike to Aquila, and there would be no persuading him otherwise. It would be an argument I wouldn't win.
"We could take the bus to Tecomán. That's in Colima," I said after a lengthy silence.
"Colima's another state?"
"Yes."
"How much of a detour would it be?"
"A hundred kilometers. Maybe a lot more."
"It's not on our map, is it?"
"No," I said. I'd already told him that, and was tempted to tell him he ought to pay attention.
"So we go to Colima," MacClayne said. "And where'll we be then?
"On the coast."
"In a jungle?"
I stared at a shop in the arcade in front of us and sighed. MacClayne was a poet and a dreamer, an Odysseus. But he also wanted to know where the god damn roads went.
"It's the way to Apatzingán," I said.
"Can we get through? That's what I'm asking."
We could reach the coast of Colima. That was reasonably certain. But from there we'd have to get back to Michoacán, on the ocean side of this mountain range. And once we'd done that, some two hundred kilometers of coastal route would still lie ahead of us. That was the critical segment for which our map showed no road at all--MacClayne had pointed that out the day before, and I knew it worried him. The obstacles ahead seemed formidable, but the very difficulties were making it important and giving it meaning.
"We've come this far," I said.
MacClayne nodded and stared into the same shop I was staring at. But he said nothing and we sat in silence.
This was the fifth day of our journey, and I thought of the afternoon when we set out from Uruapan, determined to act out this whimsy we'd invented about getting to our fabled city in the proper way. We could've taken that first class bus and have reached Apatzingán in two hours, but instead, we'd chosen to go by way of Tancítaro. Our own way. That was because the town at the end of an easy ride wouldn't have been our fabled and forbidden city. There would've been no Holy Grail awaiting us.
From Tancítaro village we'd intended to go straight down the mountain to Apatzingán. At that point our travel plan was still relatively simple, but it acquired new dimensions as we put it into practice. Complications caused us to add another loop that brought us to the valley town of Buenavista, which put us only thirty kilometers from Apatzingán. There we again had the choice of an easy ride, which we'd rejected. Instead, we'd decided that a Grail city must be entered through the front gate--never by a back door.
So now we sat here in the plaza of Villa Victoria, staring at shops in the arcade and silently contemplating our next move. I didn't try to argue or even remind MacClayne of the hopes, dreams and fantasies which had brought us here. At this critical moment, persuasion would only backfire because he was a stubborn Scot for whom independent mindedness ranked second only to frugality. Even to influence his decision could only rob him of integrity. His decision would have to be his, just as mine had to be mine.
The silence dragged on.
I glanced at Cuauhtémoc. He was gazing up at a white bird which was passing over the plaza. It brought to mind the avian which had descended into the pond back in Uruapan, the day we began our journey.
MacClayne had also noticed the white bird. The three of us watched it circle overhead and finally alight on a red tiled roof above the arcade. For a brief moment the bird remained perched, looking in our direction. "Are you coming or not?" he seemed to be saying.
Then it took to the sky and was gone. Cuauhtémoc gripped my knee tightly with his talons and turned his head to look at me.
"The answer to your question is yes," I said to MacClayne. "I think we can get through. In fact I'm very sure we can--just so long as we don't break the golden thread."
MacClayne looked at me, perhaps waiting for me to say something more.
"Our connection with the white bird," I added. Cuauhtémoc was now looking at MacClayne.
"There's a Scottish folk tale about a white bird," MacClayne said. "She guides a traveler across rugged mountains, leading him by a golden thread. I guess you know the story too?"
"It was you who told it to me."
"I suppose I did, didn't I. It's one I hadn't thought of for years. Strange though, it suddenly came to me in Uruapan, when we were sitting by that pond. The place you called the Spring of Urð."
MacClayne kept gazing at the red-tiled roof where the avian had perched the moment before. At last he grinned. "The white bird has graced us with her presence," he said in his tongue-in-cheek manner. "She must be bidding us to the fabled city."
I laughed, not because I thought it was funny, but because I was so overwhelmingly glad to hear him say that. Cuauhtémoc gave a sharp flap with his wings.
"Whatever's in Colima might be worth a look," MacClayne said in a more serious tone. "And if we can't get through, we can always come back the way we came."
And so we set out for Colima.
Since the bus wouldn't leave for several hours, we decided to hitchhike. The town was set back from the main road, and we spent the next quarter of an hour walking up hill to get to the turnoff.
On the way, we paused to look back at the town below us and admire the mosaic of red-tiled roofs and verdant foliage which filled the small valley. I hadn't realized before how many trees there were in the town, practically concealing a good deal of it from here.
Along the far side of the town rose a steep cliff of bare rock, and along its base there flowed a river. Several blocks off to the right of the plaza stood a dark shape which we guessed to be the ruins of an old church, a very large one.
We rounded a bend and the town disappeared. Soon we found ourselves at the junction with the main road. It was an unpaved, washboard surface. Would there be any more traffic than yesterday? No doubt we'd be here a while.
Broadleaf trees and bushes grew thickly around us. I'd expected to see pines, but there weren't any. Strange. We'd been in a pine forest when darkness fell upon us the evening before; that was just as the bus had arrived and brought us to Villa Victoria. I recalled how we'd descended the mountainside, watching the lights below till we finally arrived. Apparently we'd dropped below the pine tree line, which in these latitudes seemed to be at approximately 1500 meters--about one mile above sea level.
Rising or dropping from one elevation to another brought abrupt changes in vegetation. So did crossing a mountain ridge. We now seemed to be on the Pacific side, which got the rain, and the lush green foliage around us had replaced the dry grasses that covered the hills we'd passed through the day before.
I also recalled, shortly before reaching Villa Victoria the day before, having seen slate, a metamorphic rock. Here, on the roadbed where we stood at this moment, we were on fissile shale, which is sedimentary. The laminae were twisted in every direction. Beside me the strata stood vertically on edge, and only five meters away they were almost horizontal.
Today the sun was shining on us in a new and intriguingly different environment.
"Come and look at this!" MacClayne called up to me from a creek bed below. I stepped down towards him and Cuauhtémoc flew past, arriving on the scene ahead of me.
MacClayne had discovered a number of large stones lodged in the shale along the creek bank. Several were the size of a fist, and one was almost as large as a person's head. "How do you suppose they got here?" he said.
"The shale must have been deposited as sediment on an ancient sea bottom, quite a distance from shore," I said. "It's mud rock consisting of tiny particles of clay which drifted out to sea as muddy water and eventually settled to the bottom. But the stones were too heavy to have gotten carried out like that."
My explanation probably only confirmed what MacClayne suspected. These stones in a bed of shale were an unusual find, and I was impressed that he recognized them as such.
At that moment a vehicle drove by on the road above us, raising a cloud of dust. A potential ride lost.
"We missed it."
"Doesn't matter."
We continued our discussion of MacClayne's discovery.
"Maybe these rocks were washed out to sea, enmeshed in the roots of a large tree," I suggested.
"And then this region got uplifted, I suppose?"
"Right."
Cuauhtémoc scratched and pecked at a rock which was nearly as large as he was.
"Or could they have been dropped from an iceberg?" MacClayne said.
I paused to think for a moment. "Not likely," I said. "This shale is probably something like a hundred million years old, and there probably wasn't any ice back then."
"No?"
"Except for the last million years, icebergs and glaciers have been a rare thing in geologic history. These are strange times in which we live."
"You mean sandy tropical beaches under a warm sun was the norm?" MacClayne said with a grin.
"That's what the rock record seems to indicate," I said. "Of course there weren't any humans around to enjoy it back then. We're part of this ice-age anomaly that's been going on for the last million years."
"You think the earth will ever be like that again?" he said, sounding almost wistful.
"I don't know. Some meteorologists speculate that we could have a major climate change in the near future due to a buildup of carbon dioxide and other gasses in the atmosphere. But from what I've heard, it wouldn't be anything to look forward to."
MacClayne nodded, then said, "I read something about that in the Bay Guardian just as I was leaving San Francisco on my way to Uruapan. The 'greenhouse effect,' I think they called it. They thought this unseasonable storm we were having was a symptom of it."
"It's frightening," I said.
"If they're right, we're heading for a disaster. What do you think the chances are?
"I have no idea. In my geology classes I learned to look at rocks, not study the sky," I said. "I've been talking with Chayo.
She has a foreboding about the way humans are abusing the earth, polluting the land, the water and the sky. She says the earth will fight back and reject humanity. I fear she could be right."
"She's some kind of shaman, isn't she?"
"I suppose one might call her that," I said guardedly. I was a bit worried that he might dismiss her as a witch. To shift the subject slightly I said, "There's an ancient Scandinavian foretelling of a cataclysmic event called Ragnarøk. The sun turns black, and what follows is drought, famine and war."
"There seems to be a universal instinct that we're destroying ourselves. But I suppose nobody's going to do anything about it till it's too late. Everybody wants two cars and five TV sets, and when they get that they want more. How do you stop such a thing?"
"We all need to be more frugal," I agreed.
The two of us went on to discuss and extol the virtues of Old World frugality, which was so native not only to Scotland, but also in my estimation to Scandinavia. Frugality, frugality. Mankind must be more frugal. That was the Scots' solution to the impending disasters that awaited humanity.
The frugality theme struck us both as a bit humorous and the discussion returned us to a much better mood. Meanwhile, no vehicles were coming, and we began to think of what a beautiful, interesting town Villa Victoria was.
"So maybe we should go back and stay another night there," I suggested.
MacClayne thought for a moment. "Okay, if we can find a different hotel."
"I was told there are one or two others."
We started back, feeling the joy of vagabonding, the freedom to spend an extra day or two where we wanted. Villa Victoria was almost like a new town below us as we descended the hill. And now we could investigate those mysterious ruins that we'd seen in the distance. It wouldn't have been right to leave without visiting them.
First we looked for another hotel, and found one across the street from where we'd eaten breakfast. The landlord was a cheerful, robust fellow in his forties. He showed us a small, low-ceilinged room with a dirt floor. In it were two cots and two chairs. There was no whitewash on the walls, just the bare, brown adobe brick. Nevertheless, it was a cozy little room and had its charm; it was similar to the one we'd stayed in the previous night, but without the grain sacks or the miserly, brain-dead landlord.
Outside our door was a chirimoyo sapling on which a few green fruit were beginning to form. Instead of the usual second row of rooms across the way, an adobe wall separated the courtyard from the next property.
The price amounted to less than half of what we'd paid the previous night, and the landlord gave us extra blankets. With one I intended to make a small shelter for Cuauhtémoc to use that night.
We then set out to see the ruins, which turned out not to be ruins at all, but a single huge megalith, the size of a cathedral. Though weathered black on the outside, a broken fragment revealed a fresh surface which was reddish brown. It looked like an igneous blob, completely out of place among these mountains of shale.
"So what is it?" MacClayne asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"You don't know," MacClayne repeated dryly.
Better to let it pass, I thought, but just the same it rankled me, and a moment later I said, "You know I could've tossed out some ten-dollar technical jargon for that rock--that's what a good many geologists do when they don't know something, but I don't want to pretend I know something when I don't, and I don't see why I should have to."
"I don't understand what you're accusing me of," he said. "Did I say something wrong?"
"Well, you're implying that I should've known what sort of rock that was."
"I was hoping to get information. You didn't seem to have it. That's all. I don't understand why you're upset."
MacClayne seemed to be disclaiming any criticism of me. I wondered if I'd overreacted. We continued on, mostly in silence, visited the river gorge, then leisurely strolled about on the cobblestone streets. All the houses were of adobe; some were large and elegant; others were small and humble. The town was a beautiful, living picture of the past. But we didn't talk much about it. Our irritated exchange had marred an otherwise good moment.
Eventually we found ourselves back at the plaza, next to the ugly concrete church which was the town's only eyesore.
A well-located park bench offered a view of the arcade, and we sat down on it with our backs to the cardboard cathedral and took in the old-fashioned atmosphere. Nearby was a newsstand where I bought Uno Mas Uno, a México City daily. It was two days old. Around the corner was a cinema with movie posters. Despite the isolation and lack of indoor electricity, this town had many of the trappings of the current decade.
I returned to sit on the park bench by MacClayne. He watched the activity of the plaza while I paged through the two-day-old daily. From somewhere behind us I could hear a radio playing El rey, a popular song by José Alfredo Jiménez.
The sky was amost empty of clouds, then I remembered that it hadn't rained all day. Maybe the storm was coming to an end. A weather report in my newspaper indicated that as of a couple days ago it was expected to wind down.
Finally we returned to our hotel. MacClayne went to sit in the courtyard by the chirimoyo sapling, and began to write in his notebook. Perhaps he was composing a poem.
I went to ask the landlord for some extra blankets, and while doing so got into a conversation with him. He was a well-informed person who had followed the outcome of the recent war in Vietnam and President Nixon's impeachment.
He also knew a lot of local lore, and in the course of our talk I told him about my mistaking the megalith for the ruins of a huge building. He chuckled, then told me it was a body of iron ore. A mining company had sent engineers to look at it, he said, but nothing had come of it. Perhaps the deposit was too small, or the hauling distance too great. Scattered throughout these mountains were several ore bodies like it; a very large one was being mined on the coast near Lázaro.
So that's what it was. I was slightly embarrassed at having failed to identify it as such myself. I wondered how many of my classmates would've passed that test.
MacClayne was still sitting by the chirimoyo tree, reading. I went inside our room, set the blankets on one of the beds and sat down with my journal.
The subtle criticism of my expertise that MacClayne had expressed back at the megalith continued to nag at me. It was a unjustified barb that had seemed to arise from nothing. Perhaps the uncertainty about the roads was continuing to worry MacClayne and make him irritable.
Was it really worth mentioning in my journal? I glanced up and discovered Cuauhtémoc looking over my shoulder. My bird, my beautiful bird. His presence warmed my heart.
After updating my journal, I read some more of my newspaper, then lay back on my cot and dozed off. I was in a pine forest and there was snow on ground, but the air was warm. Cuauhtémoc was with me as usual, but he was standing on a rock and I knew something was about to happen. All of a sudden he took to the air and flew upwards. Even in the dream I knew that no rooster could fly very high, and I was surprised. But he kept on flying higher and higher, till at last he disappeared among the tree tops. Chayo then appeared. "Did you really think he was just a chicken?" she said.
At that I awoke with a start. Cuauhtémoc was on the cot beside me. He put his head under my arm, and then I glanced at my journal which I'd left on the chair. Once again, Cuauhtémoc had crapped on it.
"¡Por tus travesuras te quiero mas!" I said. For your mischief I love you even more.
With Cuauhtémoc in my arms, I went to the door and looked out into the courtyard. At the far end were some flowers in bloom. MacClayne was still reading. But he wouldn't be reading for much longer, for the sun was gone from the sky overhead and about to set. I watched the colorful flowers and the green leaves as they faded into the darkness.
This would be our second evening in Villa Victoria. We got ready and ventured out for dinner. The place where we'd had breakfast was closed, and so was the one where we'd eaten the night before. Our landlord had recommended a place on the far corner of the plaza. "The lady there makes good pozole," he'd told me.
Like the other establishments of this town, there was no sign or shingle, just the open door of a high-ceilinged room. It was well lit with a gaslight, and that's how we found it so easily, because everything around it was so dark. It was nearly full of customers. A single small table remained unoccupied.
"People tell me you have good pozole," I said to the proprietress. She was a portly lady in her forties.
"That I do," she smiled proudly. Then her eye fell on Cuauhtémoc who sat on my arm, and the smile froze on her face.
"The bird will just have water," I said.
"Yes, of course," she said, but in a tone which implied that roosters didn't normally dine in her establishment.
"We'll have water too," I added. I was slightly embarrassed and felt compelled to say something. This was a slightly classier restaurant than we were used to. I hoped the bird wouldn't do anything to embarrass me, like crapping on the floor or demanding a beer.
We sat down at the unoccupied table in the usual fashion; MacClayne on one side, me facing him, and Cuauhtémoc on the third.
"Did you find out what's on the menu?" MacClayne asked me.
"Pozole," I said.
"What's pozole?"
"It's soup with meat and corn. Looks like hominy. We had some back in Uruapan."
"Find out what else she has."
"But pozole is her specialty."
"Just because someone told you she makes good pozole doesn't mean we have to eat just that. Ask what else she has."
So I asked, and the lady recited a list of foods.
"I don't recognize a single item," I said to MacClayne. "Why don't we just keep it simple and have pozole?"
"The lady has other foods, doesn't she?"
"Yes."
"Then I'd like to try something different."
Among the items offered in this establishment was something called flautas. Without asking what flautas might be, I ordered us each a dish.
"You know a lot about México," MacClayne said after a brief silence. "But you don't seem to know much about the food."
"I don't pretend to know. I just eat what there is."
"Food is part of a culture," he said.
"I'm sure it is."
"It's also part of the language."
"It's not a part of the language which interests me."
"Knowing food is part of being a competent, well-rounded person," MacClayne went on.
"Then I guess I'm just incompetent."
"I don't know if one should call himself incompetent. It's rather demeaning to talk that way about oneself."
"Can we just eat?"
"The food isn't here yet."
"Well, it soon will be. And for now, if you'll excuse me," I said, and began writing in my journal.
"Whatever you want to do," he said, obviously determined to have the last word.
Cuauhtémoc looked at MacClayne reproachfully, reminding him that this was no way to talk at the dinner table in a nice restaurant. Then he dipped his beak into his water glass and drank, but with finesse, taking care not to spill on the tablecloth.
When the flautas arrived, they were sort of like tacos, though tubular in shape. They were served with guacamole and a salad of grated cabbage. It was a gourmet meal and seemed to confirm my conjecture that there were few transients in this town, so that restaurants were frequented by locals who normally ate at home but wanted specialized treats.
Nevertheless, although I'd managed to avoid another quarrel, MacClayne's barbed remarks had soured the ambience of our meal. We ate in silence, finished up in silence, eventually left the restaurant in silence, and headed back along the arcade in silence.
As we approached a corner, Cuauhtémoc perked up his head to check out a person who was coming towards us, and then brushed against the sleeve of my jacket as he passed by.
"Wasn't that the guy ...?" said MacClayne, looking back over his shoulder.
"I truly think it was," I replied.
"He didn't even see us."
"Probably left his brain in a can of stewed pears."
"Fruta fresca," MacClayne recalled with cynical amusement and went on to recite his well-rehearsed opinions of shopkeepers. I then expounded on the brain-dead members of mankind, and MacClayne followed that with an eloquent discourse on postal clerks, shipping clerks, incompetent military officers of the British Empire and the useless hide-bound aristocracy of old Scotland. Nor did he fail to add a lengthy curse for Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 18th century pretender who led the Highlanders to disaster at Culloden Moor back in 1746.
At length our discussion returned to personalities closer at hand--the seller of canned pears, and the builders of the cardboard cathedral which stood ungracefully at one end of the plaza.
By the time we'd reached our room, our camaraderie was reestablished and the unity of our expedition reassured. Our differences of the day had been forgotten, and I was by now wondering how I could've been so annoyed over such trifles.
Communication between MacClayne and myself having been restored, we amicably resumed our speculations concerning the fabled and forbidden city, expressing at the same time our hopes for wonderful adventures along the way. In a day or two we'd reach the Pacific Ocean.
"A sunlit world of beaches and palm trees," said MacClayne.
"We'll be strolling barefoot on the sand by the waves."
MacClayne recalled the day his ship docked in the Canary Islands and he became a beachcomber. "A world flooded with sunlight," he remembered nostalgically, a happy smile on his face.
Cuauhtémoc was watching MacClayne. As usual, he'd taken over the backrest of the chair, leaving the cots for us to sit on.
"He likes to hear you talk," I said. "Perhaps he's also dreaming of the sunshine."
MacClayne glanced at the bird, and I continued, "You notice how he pays attention when we talk?"
"He does seem to listen up," MacClayne said.
"Sometimes I read poetry to him," I said. "Originally I did that to practice my Spanish elocution and enunciation. Then I noticed that he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. If I'd stop, he'd sometimes nudge me with his beak, urging me to read on."
"I've heard of birds and animals who got used to hearing the sound of human voices."
"At times he seems to understand what's being said."
"I'll take some convincing on that," said MacClayne. "Even so, he's a remarkable bird."
"He is," I said proudly.
"Anyway, maybe we should read something now?"
"Would you like that, Cuauhtémoc?" I asked, and the bird looked at us, full of attention and anticipation. Then I remembered that MacClayne had been jotting something down that afternoon. "Did you write a poem today?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "It was inspired by an incident that happened some years ago. Seeing the white bird this afternoon brought it to mind." He then recited the poem he'd written in honor of an avian who'd once been his guest.
Once, in some peculiar shard of time,
an egret entered my garden.
White and stately.
All serpent-neck and beak,
his elegant presence arrived.
Stayed for weeks,
beyond summer into fall.
continued in Chapter 25
"¡Hola!" It was the voice of Chayo's nine-year-old cousin. "Buenos Días," I said, and then the line went dead--before I could even ask if Chayo were still in town. The telephone lines were apparently still under repair from the storm damage. Well, Chayo had almost certainly left for Chiapas by now, and so I hadn't really expected to be able to talk with her anyway, but I felt disappointed just the same, and Cuauhtémoc seemed to share my sense of disappointment. I gave him a hug and he put his head under my arm.
MacClayne had said he'd be waiting for me in the plaza. On the way there I stopped to buy a postcard, wrote Chayo a couple of lines and mailed it at the post office. Then I thought about our travel plans. It was about nine o'clock and the trail to Aquila could be an interesting hike. I hoped MacClayne would see it that way.
I found him at the far end of the plaza, sitting on a park bench reading The Persian Expedition. I saw that as a good omen; the story might put him in an adventurous mood, though it occurred to me that the 13th century novel The Quest of the Holy Grail might be even more appropriate.
"How did it go?" he said as I walked up.
"She already left town."
"So," he said after a respectful pause, "What are we going to do?"
"I suggest we hike to Aquila," I said.
"The horse trail."
"Yes."
"And if it rains?"
"There's hardly a cloud in the sky," I said. "It shouldn't rain today."
"What about tonight?"
"By tonight we'll be in Aquila," I said.
"Will we? The trail isn't even marked. Isn't that what they told us? We could spend days wandering in those mountains. We don't even have a compass."
"It's a risk we have to take."
"I don't understand why you want to go slogging through thirty miles of mud."
I was disappointed, but I could see that MacClayne didn't want to hike to Aquila, and there would be no persuading him otherwise. It would be an argument I wouldn't win.
"We could take the bus to Tecomán. That's in Colima," I said after a lengthy silence.
"Colima's another state?"
"Yes."
"How much of a detour would it be?"
"A hundred kilometers. Maybe a lot more."
"It's not on our map, is it?"
"No," I said. I'd already told him that, and was tempted to tell him he ought to pay attention.
"So we go to Colima," MacClayne said. "And where'll we be then?
"On the coast."
"In a jungle?"
I stared at a shop in the arcade in front of us and sighed. MacClayne was a poet and a dreamer, an Odysseus. But he also wanted to know where the god damn roads went.
"It's the way to Apatzingán," I said.
"Can we get through? That's what I'm asking."
We could reach the coast of Colima. That was reasonably certain. But from there we'd have to get back to Michoacán, on the ocean side of this mountain range. And once we'd done that, some two hundred kilometers of coastal route would still lie ahead of us. That was the critical segment for which our map showed no road at all--MacClayne had pointed that out the day before, and I knew it worried him. The obstacles ahead seemed formidable, but the very difficulties were making it important and giving it meaning.
"We've come this far," I said.
MacClayne nodded and stared into the same shop I was staring at. But he said nothing and we sat in silence.
This was the fifth day of our journey, and I thought of the afternoon when we set out from Uruapan, determined to act out this whimsy we'd invented about getting to our fabled city in the proper way. We could've taken that first class bus and have reached Apatzingán in two hours, but instead, we'd chosen to go by way of Tancítaro. Our own way. That was because the town at the end of an easy ride wouldn't have been our fabled and forbidden city. There would've been no Holy Grail awaiting us.
From Tancítaro village we'd intended to go straight down the mountain to Apatzingán. At that point our travel plan was still relatively simple, but it acquired new dimensions as we put it into practice. Complications caused us to add another loop that brought us to the valley town of Buenavista, which put us only thirty kilometers from Apatzingán. There we again had the choice of an easy ride, which we'd rejected. Instead, we'd decided that a Grail city must be entered through the front gate--never by a back door.
So now we sat here in the plaza of Villa Victoria, staring at shops in the arcade and silently contemplating our next move. I didn't try to argue or even remind MacClayne of the hopes, dreams and fantasies which had brought us here. At this critical moment, persuasion would only backfire because he was a stubborn Scot for whom independent mindedness ranked second only to frugality. Even to influence his decision could only rob him of integrity. His decision would have to be his, just as mine had to be mine.
The silence dragged on.
I glanced at Cuauhtémoc. He was gazing up at a white bird which was passing over the plaza. It brought to mind the avian which had descended into the pond back in Uruapan, the day we began our journey.
MacClayne had also noticed the white bird. The three of us watched it circle overhead and finally alight on a red tiled roof above the arcade. For a brief moment the bird remained perched, looking in our direction. "Are you coming or not?" he seemed to be saying.
Then it took to the sky and was gone. Cuauhtémoc gripped my knee tightly with his talons and turned his head to look at me.
"The answer to your question is yes," I said to MacClayne. "I think we can get through. In fact I'm very sure we can--just so long as we don't break the golden thread."
MacClayne looked at me, perhaps waiting for me to say something more.
"Our connection with the white bird," I added. Cuauhtémoc was now looking at MacClayne.
"There's a Scottish folk tale about a white bird," MacClayne said. "She guides a traveler across rugged mountains, leading him by a golden thread. I guess you know the story too?"
"It was you who told it to me."
"I suppose I did, didn't I. It's one I hadn't thought of for years. Strange though, it suddenly came to me in Uruapan, when we were sitting by that pond. The place you called the Spring of Urð."
MacClayne kept gazing at the red-tiled roof where the avian had perched the moment before. At last he grinned. "The white bird has graced us with her presence," he said in his tongue-in-cheek manner. "She must be bidding us to the fabled city."
I laughed, not because I thought it was funny, but because I was so overwhelmingly glad to hear him say that. Cuauhtémoc gave a sharp flap with his wings.
"Whatever's in Colima might be worth a look," MacClayne said in a more serious tone. "And if we can't get through, we can always come back the way we came."
And so we set out for Colima.
Since the bus wouldn't leave for several hours, we decided to hitchhike. The town was set back from the main road, and we spent the next quarter of an hour walking up hill to get to the turnoff.
On the way, we paused to look back at the town below us and admire the mosaic of red-tiled roofs and verdant foliage which filled the small valley. I hadn't realized before how many trees there were in the town, practically concealing a good deal of it from here.
Along the far side of the town rose a steep cliff of bare rock, and along its base there flowed a river. Several blocks off to the right of the plaza stood a dark shape which we guessed to be the ruins of an old church, a very large one.
We rounded a bend and the town disappeared. Soon we found ourselves at the junction with the main road. It was an unpaved, washboard surface. Would there be any more traffic than yesterday? No doubt we'd be here a while.
Broadleaf trees and bushes grew thickly around us. I'd expected to see pines, but there weren't any. Strange. We'd been in a pine forest when darkness fell upon us the evening before; that was just as the bus had arrived and brought us to Villa Victoria. I recalled how we'd descended the mountainside, watching the lights below till we finally arrived. Apparently we'd dropped below the pine tree line, which in these latitudes seemed to be at approximately 1500 meters--about one mile above sea level.
Rising or dropping from one elevation to another brought abrupt changes in vegetation. So did crossing a mountain ridge. We now seemed to be on the Pacific side, which got the rain, and the lush green foliage around us had replaced the dry grasses that covered the hills we'd passed through the day before.
I also recalled, shortly before reaching Villa Victoria the day before, having seen slate, a metamorphic rock. Here, on the roadbed where we stood at this moment, we were on fissile shale, which is sedimentary. The laminae were twisted in every direction. Beside me the strata stood vertically on edge, and only five meters away they were almost horizontal.
Today the sun was shining on us in a new and intriguingly different environment.
"Come and look at this!" MacClayne called up to me from a creek bed below. I stepped down towards him and Cuauhtémoc flew past, arriving on the scene ahead of me.
MacClayne had discovered a number of large stones lodged in the shale along the creek bank. Several were the size of a fist, and one was almost as large as a person's head. "How do you suppose they got here?" he said.
"The shale must have been deposited as sediment on an ancient sea bottom, quite a distance from shore," I said. "It's mud rock consisting of tiny particles of clay which drifted out to sea as muddy water and eventually settled to the bottom. But the stones were too heavy to have gotten carried out like that."
My explanation probably only confirmed what MacClayne suspected. These stones in a bed of shale were an unusual find, and I was impressed that he recognized them as such.
At that moment a vehicle drove by on the road above us, raising a cloud of dust. A potential ride lost.
"We missed it."
"Doesn't matter."
We continued our discussion of MacClayne's discovery.
"Maybe these rocks were washed out to sea, enmeshed in the roots of a large tree," I suggested.
"And then this region got uplifted, I suppose?"
"Right."
Cuauhtémoc scratched and pecked at a rock which was nearly as large as he was.
"Or could they have been dropped from an iceberg?" MacClayne said.
I paused to think for a moment. "Not likely," I said. "This shale is probably something like a hundred million years old, and there probably wasn't any ice back then."
"No?"
"Except for the last million years, icebergs and glaciers have been a rare thing in geologic history. These are strange times in which we live."
"You mean sandy tropical beaches under a warm sun was the norm?" MacClayne said with a grin.
"That's what the rock record seems to indicate," I said. "Of course there weren't any humans around to enjoy it back then. We're part of this ice-age anomaly that's been going on for the last million years."
"You think the earth will ever be like that again?" he said, sounding almost wistful.
"I don't know. Some meteorologists speculate that we could have a major climate change in the near future due to a buildup of carbon dioxide and other gasses in the atmosphere. But from what I've heard, it wouldn't be anything to look forward to."
MacClayne nodded, then said, "I read something about that in the Bay Guardian just as I was leaving San Francisco on my way to Uruapan. The 'greenhouse effect,' I think they called it. They thought this unseasonable storm we were having was a symptom of it."
"It's frightening," I said.
"If they're right, we're heading for a disaster. What do you think the chances are?
"I have no idea. In my geology classes I learned to look at rocks, not study the sky," I said. "I've been talking with Chayo.
She has a foreboding about the way humans are abusing the earth, polluting the land, the water and the sky. She says the earth will fight back and reject humanity. I fear she could be right."
"She's some kind of shaman, isn't she?"
"I suppose one might call her that," I said guardedly. I was a bit worried that he might dismiss her as a witch. To shift the subject slightly I said, "There's an ancient Scandinavian foretelling of a cataclysmic event called Ragnarøk. The sun turns black, and what follows is drought, famine and war."
"There seems to be a universal instinct that we're destroying ourselves. But I suppose nobody's going to do anything about it till it's too late. Everybody wants two cars and five TV sets, and when they get that they want more. How do you stop such a thing?"
"We all need to be more frugal," I agreed.
The two of us went on to discuss and extol the virtues of Old World frugality, which was so native not only to Scotland, but also in my estimation to Scandinavia. Frugality, frugality. Mankind must be more frugal. That was the Scots' solution to the impending disasters that awaited humanity.
The frugality theme struck us both as a bit humorous and the discussion returned us to a much better mood. Meanwhile, no vehicles were coming, and we began to think of what a beautiful, interesting town Villa Victoria was.
"So maybe we should go back and stay another night there," I suggested.
MacClayne thought for a moment. "Okay, if we can find a different hotel."
"I was told there are one or two others."
We started back, feeling the joy of vagabonding, the freedom to spend an extra day or two where we wanted. Villa Victoria was almost like a new town below us as we descended the hill. And now we could investigate those mysterious ruins that we'd seen in the distance. It wouldn't have been right to leave without visiting them.
First we looked for another hotel, and found one across the street from where we'd eaten breakfast. The landlord was a cheerful, robust fellow in his forties. He showed us a small, low-ceilinged room with a dirt floor. In it were two cots and two chairs. There was no whitewash on the walls, just the bare, brown adobe brick. Nevertheless, it was a cozy little room and had its charm; it was similar to the one we'd stayed in the previous night, but without the grain sacks or the miserly, brain-dead landlord.
Outside our door was a chirimoyo sapling on which a few green fruit were beginning to form. Instead of the usual second row of rooms across the way, an adobe wall separated the courtyard from the next property.
The price amounted to less than half of what we'd paid the previous night, and the landlord gave us extra blankets. With one I intended to make a small shelter for Cuauhtémoc to use that night.
We then set out to see the ruins, which turned out not to be ruins at all, but a single huge megalith, the size of a cathedral. Though weathered black on the outside, a broken fragment revealed a fresh surface which was reddish brown. It looked like an igneous blob, completely out of place among these mountains of shale.
"So what is it?" MacClayne asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"You don't know," MacClayne repeated dryly.
Better to let it pass, I thought, but just the same it rankled me, and a moment later I said, "You know I could've tossed out some ten-dollar technical jargon for that rock--that's what a good many geologists do when they don't know something, but I don't want to pretend I know something when I don't, and I don't see why I should have to."
"I don't understand what you're accusing me of," he said. "Did I say something wrong?"
"Well, you're implying that I should've known what sort of rock that was."
"I was hoping to get information. You didn't seem to have it. That's all. I don't understand why you're upset."
MacClayne seemed to be disclaiming any criticism of me. I wondered if I'd overreacted. We continued on, mostly in silence, visited the river gorge, then leisurely strolled about on the cobblestone streets. All the houses were of adobe; some were large and elegant; others were small and humble. The town was a beautiful, living picture of the past. But we didn't talk much about it. Our irritated exchange had marred an otherwise good moment.
Eventually we found ourselves back at the plaza, next to the ugly concrete church which was the town's only eyesore.
A well-located park bench offered a view of the arcade, and we sat down on it with our backs to the cardboard cathedral and took in the old-fashioned atmosphere. Nearby was a newsstand where I bought Uno Mas Uno, a México City daily. It was two days old. Around the corner was a cinema with movie posters. Despite the isolation and lack of indoor electricity, this town had many of the trappings of the current decade.
I returned to sit on the park bench by MacClayne. He watched the activity of the plaza while I paged through the two-day-old daily. From somewhere behind us I could hear a radio playing El rey, a popular song by José Alfredo Jiménez.
The sky was amost empty of clouds, then I remembered that it hadn't rained all day. Maybe the storm was coming to an end. A weather report in my newspaper indicated that as of a couple days ago it was expected to wind down.
Finally we returned to our hotel. MacClayne went to sit in the courtyard by the chirimoyo sapling, and began to write in his notebook. Perhaps he was composing a poem.
I went to ask the landlord for some extra blankets, and while doing so got into a conversation with him. He was a well-informed person who had followed the outcome of the recent war in Vietnam and President Nixon's impeachment.
He also knew a lot of local lore, and in the course of our talk I told him about my mistaking the megalith for the ruins of a huge building. He chuckled, then told me it was a body of iron ore. A mining company had sent engineers to look at it, he said, but nothing had come of it. Perhaps the deposit was too small, or the hauling distance too great. Scattered throughout these mountains were several ore bodies like it; a very large one was being mined on the coast near Lázaro.
So that's what it was. I was slightly embarrassed at having failed to identify it as such myself. I wondered how many of my classmates would've passed that test.
MacClayne was still sitting by the chirimoyo tree, reading. I went inside our room, set the blankets on one of the beds and sat down with my journal.
The subtle criticism of my expertise that MacClayne had expressed back at the megalith continued to nag at me. It was a unjustified barb that had seemed to arise from nothing. Perhaps the uncertainty about the roads was continuing to worry MacClayne and make him irritable.
Was it really worth mentioning in my journal? I glanced up and discovered Cuauhtémoc looking over my shoulder. My bird, my beautiful bird. His presence warmed my heart.
After updating my journal, I read some more of my newspaper, then lay back on my cot and dozed off. I was in a pine forest and there was snow on ground, but the air was warm. Cuauhtémoc was with me as usual, but he was standing on a rock and I knew something was about to happen. All of a sudden he took to the air and flew upwards. Even in the dream I knew that no rooster could fly very high, and I was surprised. But he kept on flying higher and higher, till at last he disappeared among the tree tops. Chayo then appeared. "Did you really think he was just a chicken?" she said.
At that I awoke with a start. Cuauhtémoc was on the cot beside me. He put his head under my arm, and then I glanced at my journal which I'd left on the chair. Once again, Cuauhtémoc had crapped on it.
"¡Por tus travesuras te quiero mas!" I said. For your mischief I love you even more.
With Cuauhtémoc in my arms, I went to the door and looked out into the courtyard. At the far end were some flowers in bloom. MacClayne was still reading. But he wouldn't be reading for much longer, for the sun was gone from the sky overhead and about to set. I watched the colorful flowers and the green leaves as they faded into the darkness.
This would be our second evening in Villa Victoria. We got ready and ventured out for dinner. The place where we'd had breakfast was closed, and so was the one where we'd eaten the night before. Our landlord had recommended a place on the far corner of the plaza. "The lady there makes good pozole," he'd told me.
Like the other establishments of this town, there was no sign or shingle, just the open door of a high-ceilinged room. It was well lit with a gaslight, and that's how we found it so easily, because everything around it was so dark. It was nearly full of customers. A single small table remained unoccupied.
"People tell me you have good pozole," I said to the proprietress. She was a portly lady in her forties.
"That I do," she smiled proudly. Then her eye fell on Cuauhtémoc who sat on my arm, and the smile froze on her face.
"The bird will just have water," I said.
"Yes, of course," she said, but in a tone which implied that roosters didn't normally dine in her establishment.
"We'll have water too," I added. I was slightly embarrassed and felt compelled to say something. This was a slightly classier restaurant than we were used to. I hoped the bird wouldn't do anything to embarrass me, like crapping on the floor or demanding a beer.
We sat down at the unoccupied table in the usual fashion; MacClayne on one side, me facing him, and Cuauhtémoc on the third.
"Did you find out what's on the menu?" MacClayne asked me.
"Pozole," I said.
"What's pozole?"
"It's soup with meat and corn. Looks like hominy. We had some back in Uruapan."
"Find out what else she has."
"But pozole is her specialty."
"Just because someone told you she makes good pozole doesn't mean we have to eat just that. Ask what else she has."
So I asked, and the lady recited a list of foods.
"I don't recognize a single item," I said to MacClayne. "Why don't we just keep it simple and have pozole?"
"The lady has other foods, doesn't she?"
"Yes."
"Then I'd like to try something different."
Among the items offered in this establishment was something called flautas. Without asking what flautas might be, I ordered us each a dish.
"You know a lot about México," MacClayne said after a brief silence. "But you don't seem to know much about the food."
"I don't pretend to know. I just eat what there is."
"Food is part of a culture," he said.
"I'm sure it is."
"It's also part of the language."
"It's not a part of the language which interests me."
"Knowing food is part of being a competent, well-rounded person," MacClayne went on.
"Then I guess I'm just incompetent."
"I don't know if one should call himself incompetent. It's rather demeaning to talk that way about oneself."
"Can we just eat?"
"The food isn't here yet."
"Well, it soon will be. And for now, if you'll excuse me," I said, and began writing in my journal.
"Whatever you want to do," he said, obviously determined to have the last word.
Cuauhtémoc looked at MacClayne reproachfully, reminding him that this was no way to talk at the dinner table in a nice restaurant. Then he dipped his beak into his water glass and drank, but with finesse, taking care not to spill on the tablecloth.
When the flautas arrived, they were sort of like tacos, though tubular in shape. They were served with guacamole and a salad of grated cabbage. It was a gourmet meal and seemed to confirm my conjecture that there were few transients in this town, so that restaurants were frequented by locals who normally ate at home but wanted specialized treats.
Nevertheless, although I'd managed to avoid another quarrel, MacClayne's barbed remarks had soured the ambience of our meal. We ate in silence, finished up in silence, eventually left the restaurant in silence, and headed back along the arcade in silence.
As we approached a corner, Cuauhtémoc perked up his head to check out a person who was coming towards us, and then brushed against the sleeve of my jacket as he passed by.
"Wasn't that the guy ...?" said MacClayne, looking back over his shoulder.
"I truly think it was," I replied.
"He didn't even see us."
"Probably left his brain in a can of stewed pears."
"Fruta fresca," MacClayne recalled with cynical amusement and went on to recite his well-rehearsed opinions of shopkeepers. I then expounded on the brain-dead members of mankind, and MacClayne followed that with an eloquent discourse on postal clerks, shipping clerks, incompetent military officers of the British Empire and the useless hide-bound aristocracy of old Scotland. Nor did he fail to add a lengthy curse for Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 18th century pretender who led the Highlanders to disaster at Culloden Moor back in 1746.
At length our discussion returned to personalities closer at hand--the seller of canned pears, and the builders of the cardboard cathedral which stood ungracefully at one end of the plaza.
By the time we'd reached our room, our camaraderie was reestablished and the unity of our expedition reassured. Our differences of the day had been forgotten, and I was by now wondering how I could've been so annoyed over such trifles.
Communication between MacClayne and myself having been restored, we amicably resumed our speculations concerning the fabled and forbidden city, expressing at the same time our hopes for wonderful adventures along the way. In a day or two we'd reach the Pacific Ocean.
"A sunlit world of beaches and palm trees," said MacClayne.
"We'll be strolling barefoot on the sand by the waves."
MacClayne recalled the day his ship docked in the Canary Islands and he became a beachcomber. "A world flooded with sunlight," he remembered nostalgically, a happy smile on his face.
Cuauhtémoc was watching MacClayne. As usual, he'd taken over the backrest of the chair, leaving the cots for us to sit on.
"He likes to hear you talk," I said. "Perhaps he's also dreaming of the sunshine."
MacClayne glanced at the bird, and I continued, "You notice how he pays attention when we talk?"
"He does seem to listen up," MacClayne said.
"Sometimes I read poetry to him," I said. "Originally I did that to practice my Spanish elocution and enunciation. Then I noticed that he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. If I'd stop, he'd sometimes nudge me with his beak, urging me to read on."
"I've heard of birds and animals who got used to hearing the sound of human voices."
"At times he seems to understand what's being said."
"I'll take some convincing on that," said MacClayne. "Even so, he's a remarkable bird."
"He is," I said proudly.
"Anyway, maybe we should read something now?"
"Would you like that, Cuauhtémoc?" I asked, and the bird looked at us, full of attention and anticipation. Then I remembered that MacClayne had been jotting something down that afternoon. "Did you write a poem today?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "It was inspired by an incident that happened some years ago. Seeing the white bird this afternoon brought it to mind." He then recited the poem he'd written in honor of an avian who'd once been his guest.
Once, in some peculiar shard of time,
an egret entered my garden.
White and stately.
All serpent-neck and beak,
his elegant presence arrived.
Stayed for weeks,
beyond summer into fall.
continued in Chapter 25
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