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Chapter 4
The band was still playing. From the plaza? I opened my eyes and cobwebs came into focus. I was in my hotel room. Was it morning? I twisted my arm around so I could see my watch. Seven forty. The music seemed to be coming from a radio somewhere.
I pulled my trousers on and stepped out onto the balcony to try and get my bearings. The landscape was vibrantly alive under the bright tropical sunlight, with the red-tiled roofs and the green of distant fields. But the volcanoes. The volcanoes simply weren't there. How could that be? I so distinctly remembered seeing them from the bus as I was arriving the previous day.
Well, I'd seen many wondrous things during the last twenty-four hours, and I knew some of them couldn't possibly be real. Missing volcanoes were no more explicable than a courtyard full of strange people out of a forgotten past, so perhaps I could dismiss these phenomena as the peculiarities of being in a strange place.
Chayo--she had to be real. She couldn't vanish like the volcanoes.
I decided to resolve the volcano question. I went out to find a tall building with a roof top that offered a good view of the whole town. There was a four story building by the plaza, but I'd have to ask permission to climb up to the roof, and I tried to think of how I might phrase my request. The problem was that this was one of those things which wasn't likely to make much sense to anybody except myself. Maybe I could just tell them that I wanted to look at the town; I needn't say anything about volcanoes. Just the same, I felt a bit self-conscious about it.
On the north side of town was a good-sized hill, almost a small mountain. It wasn't far, maybe a kilometer or two. So I went there instead, found a path up the slope and climbed up to a height where I had a panoramic view.
From this vantage point the mystery was solved. The volcanoes were definitely there. Half a dozen were clustered off to the right of me, slightly beyond the western edge of the town. Like other volcanoes I'd seen in this region, they were relatively small and forested with pines. Farther on, in the same direction, there rose a much higher mountain which disappeared into the clouds. That, I later learned, was Mount Tancítaro, the tallest peak in the state of Michoacán. It was on the edge of the plateau which I'd crossed the previous day on my way to this mysterious town with its roofs of red tile.
I hadn't seen those mountains from my hotel balcony because I'd been facing the wrong direction. There appeared to be no volcanoes to the southeast; there was just the brief, open plain beyond which the world seemed to end in haze. I recalled that that had also been my impression the day before. The town and the plain beyond it was on a horizontal ledge that was perhaps a dozen kilometers in length and breath.
The nearest volcanoes were within an hour's hiking distance, and I was tempted to head off towards them right now, but I didn't have that much time. I was supposed to meet Chayo at noon. She'd promised to take me to a boarding house where I might be able to get a room.
In my journal I sketched a rough map of the town and the volcanoes. Then I took notes on the kinds of rocks making up the hillside I was on. As noon approached, I set out for the shop where Chayo worked.
As I walked, I thought about Chayo and me. The night before, I had actually held her hand. I remembered the movie poster at the theater. The rancher's daughter. Somehow she had become associated in my mind with Chayo. Would I find Chayo as attractive today as I had yesterday? Was she just being helpful, or was she really interested in me?
I definitely wanted to stay here at least a week in order to see Paricutín and the other volcanoes, and for that I would prefer a more comfortable place than the seedy hotel I was presently at, but what was I committing myself to here? If I were to move into a boarding house, I'd probably be obliged to stay a month or so. How would that work out? My plans were to spend the summer in México; how much of it did I want to spend in this town? I wasn't really sure. It did appear to be an interesting place, from what I'd seen of it so far. Incredible geology. My thoughts kept returning to Chayo which raised another question. If I stayed here I'd presumably be seeing a lot more of her. How far would this go, and how far would I want this to go? Well, we'd just met, but was it too soon to be thinking about it?
Her aunt Rosario was there and greeted me pleasantly. Chayo would be here soon, when she got off work. I wasn't sure I heard that right. Wasn't this where she worked? With some difficulty, I managed to put my question into Spanish. Doña Rosario told me that Chayo helped out here at the store from time to time, but she actually worked at a nearby medical clinic. "Es enfermera," she said. It took me a moment to remember that "enfermera" meant "nurse."
"Y tu. ¿A que te dedicas?" doña Rosario asked. I appreciated the way she phrased the question, literally, "to what do you dedicate yourself?" It was, to be sure, a phrase I'd encountered before in books, and had wondered if Spanish speaking people actually expressed themselves so eloquently. At this moment I was delighted to see they actually did.
She repeated her question, apparently thinking I hadn't understood.
"A la geología," I said. "To geology." Having only graduated that very same month and not having yet worked in the profession, I wasn't quite comfortable with calling myself a geologist. I told her how excited I'd been arriving on the bus, seeing so many volcanoes in one place, that I'd considered staying for a while to look at them in detail. I also mentioned having read about Volcán Paricutín in my grade school reader.
"Paricutín, yes, that was quite an event! " she said, and related some personal experiences of the eruption. So she'd seen it happen? I was thrilled to be talking with a person who'd actually been there, and tried hard to follow her account. I got the drift, but missed the details. Hopefully, I could get her to talk about it again.
She went on to ask me more about myself, so I told her about my childhood with my grandmother in Minnesota, my university studies in California. She seemed genuinely interested. Perhaps she wanted to know more about this guy that her niece had met. I hoped I was passing the test. Anyway, as long as questions were being asked, I took the opportunity to ask about something that had been puzzling me. Why was her niece's name Chayo instead of Chaya?
"So many women's names end in 'a,'" I said. "Elena, Lola, Julia. And of course, María."
The aunt laughed and told me I wasn't far wrong. "Half the women in this country are called Maria."
I found myself following most of what doña Rosario said, and it gave me a good feeling to be doing so well in Spanish. Of course she'd been speaking slowly and distinctly.
Chayo arrived before long. She was wearing her white nurse's uniform, and, while she was busy changing clothes in another room, and her aunt was busy with a customer who had just entered, I glanced around the shop. The ornate tooling of a saddle caught my eye and I stepped over to examine it more closely. Before long, Chayo reappeared, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket.
The two of us set out, chatting as we walked, her doing most of the talking, and me doing my best to keep up with her, since she spoke a lot faster than her aunt. Eventually we came to the central plaza, passing by the bandstand where the mariachis had performed the night before, then down a narrow street and up another. Like many streets in this town, it was so narrow that traffic was one-way. But there weren't many cars so it was reasonably quiet.
We came to an adobe building with thick walls and entered a passageway through a tall door. I could glimpse a courtyard beyond, as we went through another door immediately to our right, and found ourselves in a dining room with a single long table. It was large enough to seat a dozen guests.
A strong, well-built man of about sixty set down the newspaper he was reading and stood up to greet us. Chayo introduced him to me as don Pablo. He had a day's growth of stubble on his face, and, though that was probably the only time I ever saw him that way, I somehow always think of don Pablo as unshaven.
We sat down at one end of the long table. A middle-aged woman brought us coffee, then left. Don Pablo and Chayo began talking to each other in the usual rapid-fire Spanish.
"¿Doña Josefina? ¿No está?" Chayo asked. I guessed she was asking about his wife.
"Ahorita viene," don Pablo replied.
They began with small talk, and for a while I was able to follow the conversation, but it required extremely intense concentration. I began to tire and soon I was just catching words here and there.
"… la que …" "¿De veras?" "… es como …" "… así…"
My mind drifted off, and my eyes followed a spider as it climbed the wall and disappeared over a beam which supported a roof of corrugated metal.
Three walls of the dining room were of concrete. The fourth, which separated it from the kitchen, was of chicken wire. In every way, the room was crudely fashioned and appeared to be a recent addition to the older adobe structure, which in contrast appeared to be very well built.
On the other end of the table was an object that looked like a thick meat-chopping block, or at least that's what I took it to be. I gazed at it for a moment, wondering why it wasn't in the kitchen. Then I saw that the top surface was covered with ruled lines, dividing it into small squares. So it was a game board of some sort, maybe something they'd been playing here in México since Aztec times.
From time to time I heard a car go by on the street outside. The spider re-emerged from above the beam, then vanished behind another.
". . . lo cual es . . .," Chayo was saying to don Pablo. I had no idea what she might be referring to. I'd completely lost track what they were saying.
On the wall to my right was a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of México, and, on a small shelf beside it, a large candle was burning. On the wall directly in front of me, a calendar displayed a painting of an Aztec warrior standing in front of two pyramids, probably the temples of the sun and the moon at Teotihuacán.
The picture took me back to when I was a child reading stories of the Spanish Conquest. In them, Hernando Cortés had been presented as the hero, symbolizing the power of the white conqueror. Later on, I'd read more about México and found that the Mexicans' view of their history was very different from the one that I'd been taught. I guess I was terribly naïve, but I was amazed to learn that Mexicans do not honor Cortés--no more than Europeans today honor Hitler. The Aztec man of the hour, their equivalent of Winston Churchill, was a man hardly known outside of México. His name was Cuauhtémoc, and I guessed that he was the warrior represented in the picture.
Till now, México had been a world I'd only read about. It felt strange to be here at long last, sitting here among these people, to be listening as they spoke their language, to be looking at the symbols and icons which represented their beliefs and traditions.
Chayo and don Pablo had a lot to talk about, and their conversation continued for some time. Don Pablo had been a close friend of Chayo's father. But I sensed that he was reluctant about renting me a room.
"¿Habla español?" he finally asked, glancing my way.
"Está aprendiendo," Chayo replied.
It was one of the few things I'd completely understood during the last half hour. They'd both paused to glance my way. I sensed it would help if I spoke for myself, so I repeated Chayo's reply, adapting it for my use by changing está from the third person to the first. "Estoy aprendiendo."
Chayo gave me a nod of approval, apparently pleased to see that I was paying attention.
Don Pablo then asked me something else. I asked him to repeat his question. He did, but I still didn't understand. Whatever it was, Chayo finally answered it for me. And I didn't understand her reply either.
More talk between them. And, as before, I caught many of the words, but the sentences eluded me. Then he said something I did understand:
"¿Es tu novio?" don Pablo asked with a grin. He was asking Chayo if I were her boyfriend.
I bit my lip, embarrassed, both for myself and her, and at the same time wondering what she'd reply. I even held my breath, lest the sound of my breathing should cause me to miss a single word in this unfamiliar language.
"Es un amigo," she said.
She'd told him I was "a friend," and that seemed an appropriate response. At the same time, it did remind me of the questions I'd been asking myself earlier. Were we slated to just be friends, or was there the possibility of something more?
Then don Pablo said something else, a bit teasingly I sensed, though I didn't quite catch his exact words. Nor did I thoroughly understand Chayo's reply. But she frowned, and the tone of her response conveyed the feeling of a polite but firm rebuke.
Don Pablo shifted slightly in his chair, and muttered something which sounded like an apology. There was a brief silence. Then Chayo went back to a pleasant tone of voice, and the conversation resumed. Even with my limited Spanish, I could tell that she handled it well.
Perhaps I should have said something in support of Chayo, but I wasn't even sure what had been said. I felt helpless, slightly humiliated--not by don Pablo, who seemed like a basically decent fellow, but by my own linguistic limitations. Nevertheless, my not understanding made it easier for me, since, even in English, I'd never been very adept at handling awkward situations.
Eventually Chayo turned to me, speaking slowly and using simpler words so that I would understand. No foreigner had ever stayed in this hotel before, she told me, and don Pablo was wondering if it would be suitable for me? Nobody here spoke anything but Spanish, and the food was Mexican.
Don Pablo was frowning; though he was listening politely, the answer seemed to be no.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell him that I really liked Mexican food, that I was hoping to improve my Spanish, and that I therefore wanted to live in a place where Spanish was spoken, but I sensed that Don Pablo had the notion that a gringo wouldn't fit into the social scene at his hotel.
Silence. There was just silence.
Chayo sighed, fingering the fringe of her rebozo as her eyes moved around the room and then came to rest on the picture of the Aztec warrior. "¿Sabes quien es?" Do you know who he is?
"Cuauhtémoc," I replied.
Don Pablo appeared a bit surprised, "You know who Cuauhtémoc was, it seems."
Chayo was watching me intently, almost tensely.
In my halting Spanish I said, "Cuauhtémoc defended Tenochtitlan. And he nearly won."
"Yes," don Pablo affirmed with feeling, "He nearly won."
Then I added, struggling for words as I spoke, "I believe Cuauhtémoc did win. You have his picture on your wall--I do not see any picture of Hernán Cortés."
Don Pablo laughed heartily. "¡Tienes razón! ¡Nobody in this country paints pictures in honor of Cortés!"
Chayo also laughed. She looked quite pleased.
"Cuauhtémoc . . .," don Pablo began, and went on to praise the war leader's skill, his courage, and a lot more. I understood the feeling, though not all the words.
Chayo said something to him and he nodded. Then turning to me he said, "Would you like to see the room?"
"The room?" I repeated.
"Don Pablo would be pleased to rent you a room," Chayo said. "You might like to look at it."
"Yes, I would." I felt both surprised and pleased that my modest familiarity with Mexican history had succeeded in overcoming don Pablo's objections.
Don Pablo led us into the courtyard which, as in most houses in México, was an open quadrangle between two parallel rows of rooms, joined at the far end by a high wall.
We entered one of the rooms. It was like stepping into the past, back to the turn of the century. The ceiling was high and the walls were whitewashed. Everything was very plain, but with an elegant plainness. I stood in the middle of the floor and almost gasped. This was exactly the kind of place I wanted to live in. I noted that it was very clean, no dust and only a single cobweb in one corner of the ceiling.
"It was built before the Revolution," Chayo said. She was apparently referring to the one which began in 1910. In México, there had been several events that could have been called "revolutions," but from what I'd read, the one which began in 1910 was what was meant by "la Révolución," and marked the beginning of the current era.
"¿Te gusta?" she asked.
"¡Me encanta!" I told her.
Chayo had a satisfied look on her face, apparently pleased to see her recommendation validated. She now had to return to work, to the clinic. I walked with her part of the way, as far as the plaza.
"Don Pablo was very impressed that you knew of Cuauhtémoc, and our traditions," she said, and then added, "I was too. Not many Americans know much about México."
It had been Chayo who'd brought up that question, thus creating the situation where things had worked out so well. Somehow, she'd known what to do. But how had she guessed that I knew who Cuauhtémoc was? Chayo clearly had an acutely developed sixth sense.
"You're very pensive," she remarked suddenly. "What were you thinking about?"
I shook my head, unable to find Spanish words to express my thoughts. But I had a feeling that she knew.
At the plaza we parted, and I went to pack up my few belongings from the hotel where I'd stayed the previous night. I didn't have much, nothing more than what fit into a back pack. I took them and moved into my room at don Pablo's hotel-boarding house.
My new room, together with an evening meal, was 1,200 pesos a month, which was about $55 U.S. dollars. It was surprisingly economical; I'd read that tourist hotels in resort areas charged $100 a day, over fifty times as much. At this rate I could easily afford to stay all summer. And not only was this place cheaper, it was much more to my taste; these adobe houses were the Mexican equivalent of those beautiful old Victorian houses in the U.S.
Thunder was rumbling in the distance, and I'd gotten back with my belongings just as the sky was darkening. This was summer, the month of June, but down here in Michoacán this was apparently the rainy season--or at least that's what the innkeeper in Zamora had told me the other day. Such a thing had never occurred to me when I was planning this trip. I'd read numerous books, saved up money, and looked up places I wanted to see. But the climate? I'd never thought to look into that. For some reason, I never associated rain with the summer, but then I remembered all the summer cloudbursts back in Minnesota.
I took out my few possessions and stowed them in the armoire, and set my photo of Grandma on the writing table. Then I sat down to enjoy the elegance of my new room, work on my journal and catch up on my correspondence. This would be a good time to write MacClayne.
MacClayne was an ex-seaman I'd met in California. At the present moment he was up in Nova Scotia and god knew what he was doing way up there. It was probably just that he got cranky whenever he stayed in one place for too long. Anyway, he'd been thinking of coming to México, and, if he came, we could spend a few days together.
Before beginning my letter, I reread the one I'd received from him just before leaving the U.S. With it was a poem he'd composed, titled The Holy Grailer.
Will mine be the lot of the
drunken sailor?
Shipwrecked ashore like a
bankrupt tailor
A bear-assed failure--a
Holy Grailer
Hung by the neck on the
apple tree
A first class loser for all
to see?
No, I'll flee to a faraway
land
Patagonia, Zimbabwe, the
Río Grande
In the distance I hear the
sea bird's cry
Must prepare myself for the
last goodbye
Leave my crown of thorns,
heave a long sigh
Thunder rumbled again, almost in response to MacClayne's poetic sigh. It was closer now, and crashed more loudly each time. Flashes of light could be seen through my open door, and occasionally they reflected off the white walls around me. A couple seconds later I'd hear the rumble.
Those brief flashes made me aware of how dark it had gotten as the squall approached, so I turned on the light. With that, I began my letter.
I told MacClayne I was in a land of pine forests and volcanoes, in a mile-high town in the tropics, situated so close to the edge of the world that if I'd gone any further I would've fallen off the rim and into the mythical abyss. But I didn't say anything about arriving here by accident, after boarding the wrong bus and getting completely lost. That was something MacClayne didn't need to know. Nor did I mention the Chichimecas, the shining cougar, nor my humiliating encounter with that obnoxious chicken.
Should I mention Chayo? Maybe it was better not to. Not yet, anyway. She was so beautiful, so ideal. I didn't want to get my hopes up and then feel disappointed. If things worked out, I could tell him later. Instead, I told him about Paricutín, the cornfield volcano, which I intended to visit soon. I gave him the address of don Pablo's hotel, said I expected to be here at least a month, and suggested that he come down for a visit.
Before putting the letter into an envelope, I paused to think of some fitting comment on his poem. I could just say I liked it, but perhaps that was too prosaic.
Brilliant white light suddenly filled the room and enveloped me as thunder crashed all around. The floor under my feet and the ceiling over my head shook. The next instant the electric bulb faded out and I was in near darkness. Why was the electric light going out? That was especially disconcerting.
Then all was silent, and my ears rang with quiet. I watched the light bulb as it slowly came back on and regained its power. No, the building hadn't been hit. The electrical disturbance was over with, and I was still alive.
Thunder crashed again, not so insanely close this time, but it was still unnerving. I'd always smiled at people who said they were frightened by thunder and lightning, but now I found myself shaken by it.
Then the rain began. It pounded on the tile roof. I heard it pouring down in the courtyard, splashing all about outside the door. Down it came, loud and fierce. I went out to watch, standing under the cover of the eaves as water by the bucketsful came tumbling down from the sky.
Never had I seen it rain with this awesome intensity, but soon it was over. The sun was out, and white clouds were again floating in the sky overhead. A pleasant aroma of damp earth filled the air.
I returned to my table, where the poem lay, next to my unfinished letter. MacClayne, the Holy Grailer, I thought to myself. Then it came to me. Tongue-in-cheek, I sat down and wrote:
If we are to be hung from apple trees, first class losers for all to see, then at least let's have it be while in pursuit of something truly meaningful, a sacred quest. I'm quite sure that the Holy Grail--the existence of which I've never for a minute doubted--must be located somewhere in these parts. While awaiting your arrival, I'll learn it's location, and we can set out in search of it together.
Evening came and it was time to eat. I went to the concrete dining room with the corrugated metal roof to have my first meal with the other residents of this boarding house hotel. Seven or eight people were already seated at the table as I entered the room. Don Pablo sat at the head of the table. Next to him was a thin but good-looking woman in her fifties. She had sparkling eyes and somehow reminded me of a bird. I guessed that she was probably his wife, doña Josefina, who I knew was a distant relative of Chayo.
I took a chair and found myself sitting across the table from a man of about thirty, with light brown hair and blue eyes. Another foreigner like myself? No, it wasn't possible. Don Pablo and even Chayo had clearly told me that no other foreigner had ever lived here in this hotel--or at least that's what I'd understood them to have said. I couldn't believe I'd misheard them, but such were the limitations of my Spanish.
This blue-eyed fellow was conversing with don Pablo in rapid Spanish. He spoke it with such ease that it made me envious. I wondered if I could ever learn to speak the language like that.
Then I realized everyone was looking at me, and don Pablo announced with a broad grin, "Ya tenemos dos hueritos."
The bird-like lady whom I'd assumed to be doña Josefina asked me if I'd understood. I shook my head. So she then explained it to me. Speaking very slowly, she introduced me to this other blue-eyed person across the table from me. His name was Marco Kleinst, but here at the boarding house they called him Huero. Huerito meant Blondie, and now, with my arrival, they had two blondies--"dos hueritos."
"¿De dónde es?" I asked. Where is he from?
The blond, blue-eyed fellow grinned, and started to say something, but the lady spoke for him. "De Morelia."
"¿Morelia?" I paused to recall that Morelia was a city here in Michoacán, the state capital. Without thinking I blurted out my question, "¿Es Mexicano?"
Everyone laughed.
"¡Sí! ¡Soy Mexicano!" Marco replied, laughing with the others. The lady spoke again to assure me that this blue-eyed man was indeed fully as Mexican as the rest of them. Then she went on to introduce the others. One was Carlos, another was Estefan.
A lot more was said, most of which I did not understand. As dinner was coming to an end, a man named Domingo took up his guitar and sang several ballads. "To welcome Olaf to Michoacán," he said, to the general approval of everyone.
So, my stay having started on a good note, I went to bed in my new room, and lay there in the dark, on the fuzzy edge of dozing off. Then, in my ear, clearly and distinctly:
"Hun er en heks!"
I jumped, instantly awake. It was Grandma's voice, in Norwegian, and her words meant: She's a witch!
I listened in rigid silence, scarcely breathing. But nothing followed, just the profound silence of the night.
High above me were the beams of the tall ceiling, which I could barely make out in the darkness--or maybe it was just that I knew those beams were there and imagined I could discern their outlines. I kept staring at them, wondering if I really saw them or not.
Vaguely, from somewhere out in the night, I heard a cat screech. Then more silence.
Though Grandma's voice had seemed so real, I soon realized it was just an auditory effect of the sleeping imagination. It had been couple of years since she'd passed away, but I often saw her in my dreams. Sometimes I heard her voice. For a while I lay there thinking about her, recalling a story of hers about a granduncle back in Norway who used to travel deep into the mountains above Trondhjem.
Grandma always told it as though it had happened just a couple of years before, but when I think about it I'm sure it must have been well before her time. No doubt the granduncle was a great, great granduncle. Anyway, at that time he was young and handsome, and in a remote mountain village he met a woman who had some remarkable skills.
"Was she beautiful?" I asked. I was just a small child then, but I knew that heroines were always supposed to be beautiful.
"Bewitchingly so," Grandma assured me. "But she was more than just beautiful." The lady could turn day into night, and, if she felt like it, she might call up the specters of ancient Viking warriors to come and sit around the fire.
"And they lived happily ever after?" I asked, beginning to feel uneasy about the outcome.
"The man was never seen again."
"So he must have been very happy with her," I suggested hopefully.
Grandma looked at me for a moment, then gave me a hug and said, "Yes, I'm sure he was very happy with her." But somehow I hadn't felt completely reassured.
The story used to bother me, and I sometimes wondered if maybe those Viking ghost warriors might not have hacked the poor man to pieces with their swords and axes. But I never asked Grandma about that. I didn't like the idea of one of our ancestors coming to such a sad end. Especially when he had the same name as me.
As I grew older I eventually decided that it was probably a story someone made up to explain the disappearance of a guy who went into the mountains, met with some accident and died a lonely death. A tragedy no doubt, but nothing to do with warriors and witches.
But this evening as I lay there in the dark, under a strange roof, a thousand miles from Minnesota, I felt terribly alone, and my recent encounter with the Chichimecas still troubled me.
For a moment I shut my eyes tightly, almost fearing the Chichimecas might reappear in the darkness of this room. Then I opened them again, staring upwards, towards the hardly visible roof beams of the tall ceiling above me. My irrational fears made me feel foolish, but how was one supposed to deal with Chichimecas and shining cougars?
I continued to think about my great, great granduncle. Exactly when would he have lived? It depended on how many "greats" you put in front of "granduncle." Sometime in the eighteen hundreds perhaps. It could have been even much earlier; maybe two or three hundred years ago. His name was Olaf, the same as mine. But then, half the men of Norway are named Olaf.
I wondered what might have drawn Granduncle Olaf into the mountains. Some scientific interest? It could have been botany or even geology. Maybe both. Back in those times scientists weren't as specialized as they are nowadays. Of course all this speculation about him being a scientist was rather fanciful on my part--but no more fanciful than the story of his meeting a witch who called up the ghosts of Viking warriors.
Fanciful? The bizarre reality was that, less than two days ago, I myself had been welcomed to this very town in these mountains by a host of Chichimecas. An hallucination, perhaps, because I knew they couldn't possibly have been there, even though I'd seen them. It's disturbing to have seen something you know can't be there.
Every detail of those creatures remained vivid in my mind, from the costumes they wore to the obsidian-edged clubs they brandished.
Another fanciful thought crossed my mind. Supposing, just supposing, that Granduncle Olaf really had met with the specters of ancient Viking warriors. Why had I been so ready to assume that they'd hacked him to pieces with swords and axes? They might've been a welcoming committee.
Apparently the Chichimecas and the shining cougar weren't there to hack me to pieces either. Despite their frightful appearance, they'd really done me no harm. I doubted that they were a welcoming committee, but who could say?
I peered into the darkness about me, and now it felt like a less hostile darkness.
In fact, as I thought of it, nobody I'd encountered in this town had been hostile--except for that obnoxious chicken.
My hand was still sore.
continued in Chapter 5
I pulled my trousers on and stepped out onto the balcony to try and get my bearings. The landscape was vibrantly alive under the bright tropical sunlight, with the red-tiled roofs and the green of distant fields. But the volcanoes. The volcanoes simply weren't there. How could that be? I so distinctly remembered seeing them from the bus as I was arriving the previous day.
Well, I'd seen many wondrous things during the last twenty-four hours, and I knew some of them couldn't possibly be real. Missing volcanoes were no more explicable than a courtyard full of strange people out of a forgotten past, so perhaps I could dismiss these phenomena as the peculiarities of being in a strange place.
Chayo--she had to be real. She couldn't vanish like the volcanoes.
I decided to resolve the volcano question. I went out to find a tall building with a roof top that offered a good view of the whole town. There was a four story building by the plaza, but I'd have to ask permission to climb up to the roof, and I tried to think of how I might phrase my request. The problem was that this was one of those things which wasn't likely to make much sense to anybody except myself. Maybe I could just tell them that I wanted to look at the town; I needn't say anything about volcanoes. Just the same, I felt a bit self-conscious about it.
On the north side of town was a good-sized hill, almost a small mountain. It wasn't far, maybe a kilometer or two. So I went there instead, found a path up the slope and climbed up to a height where I had a panoramic view.
From this vantage point the mystery was solved. The volcanoes were definitely there. Half a dozen were clustered off to the right of me, slightly beyond the western edge of the town. Like other volcanoes I'd seen in this region, they were relatively small and forested with pines. Farther on, in the same direction, there rose a much higher mountain which disappeared into the clouds. That, I later learned, was Mount Tancítaro, the tallest peak in the state of Michoacán. It was on the edge of the plateau which I'd crossed the previous day on my way to this mysterious town with its roofs of red tile.
I hadn't seen those mountains from my hotel balcony because I'd been facing the wrong direction. There appeared to be no volcanoes to the southeast; there was just the brief, open plain beyond which the world seemed to end in haze. I recalled that that had also been my impression the day before. The town and the plain beyond it was on a horizontal ledge that was perhaps a dozen kilometers in length and breath.
The nearest volcanoes were within an hour's hiking distance, and I was tempted to head off towards them right now, but I didn't have that much time. I was supposed to meet Chayo at noon. She'd promised to take me to a boarding house where I might be able to get a room.
In my journal I sketched a rough map of the town and the volcanoes. Then I took notes on the kinds of rocks making up the hillside I was on. As noon approached, I set out for the shop where Chayo worked.
As I walked, I thought about Chayo and me. The night before, I had actually held her hand. I remembered the movie poster at the theater. The rancher's daughter. Somehow she had become associated in my mind with Chayo. Would I find Chayo as attractive today as I had yesterday? Was she just being helpful, or was she really interested in me?
I definitely wanted to stay here at least a week in order to see Paricutín and the other volcanoes, and for that I would prefer a more comfortable place than the seedy hotel I was presently at, but what was I committing myself to here? If I were to move into a boarding house, I'd probably be obliged to stay a month or so. How would that work out? My plans were to spend the summer in México; how much of it did I want to spend in this town? I wasn't really sure. It did appear to be an interesting place, from what I'd seen of it so far. Incredible geology. My thoughts kept returning to Chayo which raised another question. If I stayed here I'd presumably be seeing a lot more of her. How far would this go, and how far would I want this to go? Well, we'd just met, but was it too soon to be thinking about it?
Her aunt Rosario was there and greeted me pleasantly. Chayo would be here soon, when she got off work. I wasn't sure I heard that right. Wasn't this where she worked? With some difficulty, I managed to put my question into Spanish. Doña Rosario told me that Chayo helped out here at the store from time to time, but she actually worked at a nearby medical clinic. "Es enfermera," she said. It took me a moment to remember that "enfermera" meant "nurse."
"Y tu. ¿A que te dedicas?" doña Rosario asked. I appreciated the way she phrased the question, literally, "to what do you dedicate yourself?" It was, to be sure, a phrase I'd encountered before in books, and had wondered if Spanish speaking people actually expressed themselves so eloquently. At this moment I was delighted to see they actually did.
She repeated her question, apparently thinking I hadn't understood.
"A la geología," I said. "To geology." Having only graduated that very same month and not having yet worked in the profession, I wasn't quite comfortable with calling myself a geologist. I told her how excited I'd been arriving on the bus, seeing so many volcanoes in one place, that I'd considered staying for a while to look at them in detail. I also mentioned having read about Volcán Paricutín in my grade school reader.
"Paricutín, yes, that was quite an event! " she said, and related some personal experiences of the eruption. So she'd seen it happen? I was thrilled to be talking with a person who'd actually been there, and tried hard to follow her account. I got the drift, but missed the details. Hopefully, I could get her to talk about it again.
She went on to ask me more about myself, so I told her about my childhood with my grandmother in Minnesota, my university studies in California. She seemed genuinely interested. Perhaps she wanted to know more about this guy that her niece had met. I hoped I was passing the test. Anyway, as long as questions were being asked, I took the opportunity to ask about something that had been puzzling me. Why was her niece's name Chayo instead of Chaya?
"So many women's names end in 'a,'" I said. "Elena, Lola, Julia. And of course, María."
The aunt laughed and told me I wasn't far wrong. "Half the women in this country are called Maria."
I found myself following most of what doña Rosario said, and it gave me a good feeling to be doing so well in Spanish. Of course she'd been speaking slowly and distinctly.
Chayo arrived before long. She was wearing her white nurse's uniform, and, while she was busy changing clothes in another room, and her aunt was busy with a customer who had just entered, I glanced around the shop. The ornate tooling of a saddle caught my eye and I stepped over to examine it more closely. Before long, Chayo reappeared, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket.
The two of us set out, chatting as we walked, her doing most of the talking, and me doing my best to keep up with her, since she spoke a lot faster than her aunt. Eventually we came to the central plaza, passing by the bandstand where the mariachis had performed the night before, then down a narrow street and up another. Like many streets in this town, it was so narrow that traffic was one-way. But there weren't many cars so it was reasonably quiet.
We came to an adobe building with thick walls and entered a passageway through a tall door. I could glimpse a courtyard beyond, as we went through another door immediately to our right, and found ourselves in a dining room with a single long table. It was large enough to seat a dozen guests.
A strong, well-built man of about sixty set down the newspaper he was reading and stood up to greet us. Chayo introduced him to me as don Pablo. He had a day's growth of stubble on his face, and, though that was probably the only time I ever saw him that way, I somehow always think of don Pablo as unshaven.
We sat down at one end of the long table. A middle-aged woman brought us coffee, then left. Don Pablo and Chayo began talking to each other in the usual rapid-fire Spanish.
"¿Doña Josefina? ¿No está?" Chayo asked. I guessed she was asking about his wife.
"Ahorita viene," don Pablo replied.
They began with small talk, and for a while I was able to follow the conversation, but it required extremely intense concentration. I began to tire and soon I was just catching words here and there.
"… la que …" "¿De veras?" "… es como …" "… así…"
My mind drifted off, and my eyes followed a spider as it climbed the wall and disappeared over a beam which supported a roof of corrugated metal.
Three walls of the dining room were of concrete. The fourth, which separated it from the kitchen, was of chicken wire. In every way, the room was crudely fashioned and appeared to be a recent addition to the older adobe structure, which in contrast appeared to be very well built.
On the other end of the table was an object that looked like a thick meat-chopping block, or at least that's what I took it to be. I gazed at it for a moment, wondering why it wasn't in the kitchen. Then I saw that the top surface was covered with ruled lines, dividing it into small squares. So it was a game board of some sort, maybe something they'd been playing here in México since Aztec times.
From time to time I heard a car go by on the street outside. The spider re-emerged from above the beam, then vanished behind another.
". . . lo cual es . . .," Chayo was saying to don Pablo. I had no idea what she might be referring to. I'd completely lost track what they were saying.
On the wall to my right was a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of México, and, on a small shelf beside it, a large candle was burning. On the wall directly in front of me, a calendar displayed a painting of an Aztec warrior standing in front of two pyramids, probably the temples of the sun and the moon at Teotihuacán.
The picture took me back to when I was a child reading stories of the Spanish Conquest. In them, Hernando Cortés had been presented as the hero, symbolizing the power of the white conqueror. Later on, I'd read more about México and found that the Mexicans' view of their history was very different from the one that I'd been taught. I guess I was terribly naïve, but I was amazed to learn that Mexicans do not honor Cortés--no more than Europeans today honor Hitler. The Aztec man of the hour, their equivalent of Winston Churchill, was a man hardly known outside of México. His name was Cuauhtémoc, and I guessed that he was the warrior represented in the picture.
Till now, México had been a world I'd only read about. It felt strange to be here at long last, sitting here among these people, to be listening as they spoke their language, to be looking at the symbols and icons which represented their beliefs and traditions.
Chayo and don Pablo had a lot to talk about, and their conversation continued for some time. Don Pablo had been a close friend of Chayo's father. But I sensed that he was reluctant about renting me a room.
"¿Habla español?" he finally asked, glancing my way.
"Está aprendiendo," Chayo replied.
It was one of the few things I'd completely understood during the last half hour. They'd both paused to glance my way. I sensed it would help if I spoke for myself, so I repeated Chayo's reply, adapting it for my use by changing está from the third person to the first. "Estoy aprendiendo."
Chayo gave me a nod of approval, apparently pleased to see that I was paying attention.
Don Pablo then asked me something else. I asked him to repeat his question. He did, but I still didn't understand. Whatever it was, Chayo finally answered it for me. And I didn't understand her reply either.
More talk between them. And, as before, I caught many of the words, but the sentences eluded me. Then he said something I did understand:
"¿Es tu novio?" don Pablo asked with a grin. He was asking Chayo if I were her boyfriend.
I bit my lip, embarrassed, both for myself and her, and at the same time wondering what she'd reply. I even held my breath, lest the sound of my breathing should cause me to miss a single word in this unfamiliar language.
"Es un amigo," she said.
She'd told him I was "a friend," and that seemed an appropriate response. At the same time, it did remind me of the questions I'd been asking myself earlier. Were we slated to just be friends, or was there the possibility of something more?
Then don Pablo said something else, a bit teasingly I sensed, though I didn't quite catch his exact words. Nor did I thoroughly understand Chayo's reply. But she frowned, and the tone of her response conveyed the feeling of a polite but firm rebuke.
Don Pablo shifted slightly in his chair, and muttered something which sounded like an apology. There was a brief silence. Then Chayo went back to a pleasant tone of voice, and the conversation resumed. Even with my limited Spanish, I could tell that she handled it well.
Perhaps I should have said something in support of Chayo, but I wasn't even sure what had been said. I felt helpless, slightly humiliated--not by don Pablo, who seemed like a basically decent fellow, but by my own linguistic limitations. Nevertheless, my not understanding made it easier for me, since, even in English, I'd never been very adept at handling awkward situations.
Eventually Chayo turned to me, speaking slowly and using simpler words so that I would understand. No foreigner had ever stayed in this hotel before, she told me, and don Pablo was wondering if it would be suitable for me? Nobody here spoke anything but Spanish, and the food was Mexican.
Don Pablo was frowning; though he was listening politely, the answer seemed to be no.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell him that I really liked Mexican food, that I was hoping to improve my Spanish, and that I therefore wanted to live in a place where Spanish was spoken, but I sensed that Don Pablo had the notion that a gringo wouldn't fit into the social scene at his hotel.
Silence. There was just silence.
Chayo sighed, fingering the fringe of her rebozo as her eyes moved around the room and then came to rest on the picture of the Aztec warrior. "¿Sabes quien es?" Do you know who he is?
"Cuauhtémoc," I replied.
Don Pablo appeared a bit surprised, "You know who Cuauhtémoc was, it seems."
Chayo was watching me intently, almost tensely.
In my halting Spanish I said, "Cuauhtémoc defended Tenochtitlan. And he nearly won."
"Yes," don Pablo affirmed with feeling, "He nearly won."
Then I added, struggling for words as I spoke, "I believe Cuauhtémoc did win. You have his picture on your wall--I do not see any picture of Hernán Cortés."
Don Pablo laughed heartily. "¡Tienes razón! ¡Nobody in this country paints pictures in honor of Cortés!"
Chayo also laughed. She looked quite pleased.
"Cuauhtémoc . . .," don Pablo began, and went on to praise the war leader's skill, his courage, and a lot more. I understood the feeling, though not all the words.
Chayo said something to him and he nodded. Then turning to me he said, "Would you like to see the room?"
"The room?" I repeated.
"Don Pablo would be pleased to rent you a room," Chayo said. "You might like to look at it."
"Yes, I would." I felt both surprised and pleased that my modest familiarity with Mexican history had succeeded in overcoming don Pablo's objections.
Don Pablo led us into the courtyard which, as in most houses in México, was an open quadrangle between two parallel rows of rooms, joined at the far end by a high wall.
We entered one of the rooms. It was like stepping into the past, back to the turn of the century. The ceiling was high and the walls were whitewashed. Everything was very plain, but with an elegant plainness. I stood in the middle of the floor and almost gasped. This was exactly the kind of place I wanted to live in. I noted that it was very clean, no dust and only a single cobweb in one corner of the ceiling.
"It was built before the Revolution," Chayo said. She was apparently referring to the one which began in 1910. In México, there had been several events that could have been called "revolutions," but from what I'd read, the one which began in 1910 was what was meant by "la Révolución," and marked the beginning of the current era.
"¿Te gusta?" she asked.
"¡Me encanta!" I told her.
Chayo had a satisfied look on her face, apparently pleased to see her recommendation validated. She now had to return to work, to the clinic. I walked with her part of the way, as far as the plaza.
"Don Pablo was very impressed that you knew of Cuauhtémoc, and our traditions," she said, and then added, "I was too. Not many Americans know much about México."
It had been Chayo who'd brought up that question, thus creating the situation where things had worked out so well. Somehow, she'd known what to do. But how had she guessed that I knew who Cuauhtémoc was? Chayo clearly had an acutely developed sixth sense.
"You're very pensive," she remarked suddenly. "What were you thinking about?"
I shook my head, unable to find Spanish words to express my thoughts. But I had a feeling that she knew.
At the plaza we parted, and I went to pack up my few belongings from the hotel where I'd stayed the previous night. I didn't have much, nothing more than what fit into a back pack. I took them and moved into my room at don Pablo's hotel-boarding house.
My new room, together with an evening meal, was 1,200 pesos a month, which was about $55 U.S. dollars. It was surprisingly economical; I'd read that tourist hotels in resort areas charged $100 a day, over fifty times as much. At this rate I could easily afford to stay all summer. And not only was this place cheaper, it was much more to my taste; these adobe houses were the Mexican equivalent of those beautiful old Victorian houses in the U.S.
Thunder was rumbling in the distance, and I'd gotten back with my belongings just as the sky was darkening. This was summer, the month of June, but down here in Michoacán this was apparently the rainy season--or at least that's what the innkeeper in Zamora had told me the other day. Such a thing had never occurred to me when I was planning this trip. I'd read numerous books, saved up money, and looked up places I wanted to see. But the climate? I'd never thought to look into that. For some reason, I never associated rain with the summer, but then I remembered all the summer cloudbursts back in Minnesota.
I took out my few possessions and stowed them in the armoire, and set my photo of Grandma on the writing table. Then I sat down to enjoy the elegance of my new room, work on my journal and catch up on my correspondence. This would be a good time to write MacClayne.
MacClayne was an ex-seaman I'd met in California. At the present moment he was up in Nova Scotia and god knew what he was doing way up there. It was probably just that he got cranky whenever he stayed in one place for too long. Anyway, he'd been thinking of coming to México, and, if he came, we could spend a few days together.
Before beginning my letter, I reread the one I'd received from him just before leaving the U.S. With it was a poem he'd composed, titled The Holy Grailer.
Will mine be the lot of the
drunken sailor?
Shipwrecked ashore like a
bankrupt tailor
A bear-assed failure--a
Holy Grailer
Hung by the neck on the
apple tree
A first class loser for all
to see?
No, I'll flee to a faraway
land
Patagonia, Zimbabwe, the
Río Grande
In the distance I hear the
sea bird's cry
Must prepare myself for the
last goodbye
Leave my crown of thorns,
heave a long sigh
Thunder rumbled again, almost in response to MacClayne's poetic sigh. It was closer now, and crashed more loudly each time. Flashes of light could be seen through my open door, and occasionally they reflected off the white walls around me. A couple seconds later I'd hear the rumble.
Those brief flashes made me aware of how dark it had gotten as the squall approached, so I turned on the light. With that, I began my letter.
I told MacClayne I was in a land of pine forests and volcanoes, in a mile-high town in the tropics, situated so close to the edge of the world that if I'd gone any further I would've fallen off the rim and into the mythical abyss. But I didn't say anything about arriving here by accident, after boarding the wrong bus and getting completely lost. That was something MacClayne didn't need to know. Nor did I mention the Chichimecas, the shining cougar, nor my humiliating encounter with that obnoxious chicken.
Should I mention Chayo? Maybe it was better not to. Not yet, anyway. She was so beautiful, so ideal. I didn't want to get my hopes up and then feel disappointed. If things worked out, I could tell him later. Instead, I told him about Paricutín, the cornfield volcano, which I intended to visit soon. I gave him the address of don Pablo's hotel, said I expected to be here at least a month, and suggested that he come down for a visit.
Before putting the letter into an envelope, I paused to think of some fitting comment on his poem. I could just say I liked it, but perhaps that was too prosaic.
Brilliant white light suddenly filled the room and enveloped me as thunder crashed all around. The floor under my feet and the ceiling over my head shook. The next instant the electric bulb faded out and I was in near darkness. Why was the electric light going out? That was especially disconcerting.
Then all was silent, and my ears rang with quiet. I watched the light bulb as it slowly came back on and regained its power. No, the building hadn't been hit. The electrical disturbance was over with, and I was still alive.
Thunder crashed again, not so insanely close this time, but it was still unnerving. I'd always smiled at people who said they were frightened by thunder and lightning, but now I found myself shaken by it.
Then the rain began. It pounded on the tile roof. I heard it pouring down in the courtyard, splashing all about outside the door. Down it came, loud and fierce. I went out to watch, standing under the cover of the eaves as water by the bucketsful came tumbling down from the sky.
Never had I seen it rain with this awesome intensity, but soon it was over. The sun was out, and white clouds were again floating in the sky overhead. A pleasant aroma of damp earth filled the air.
I returned to my table, where the poem lay, next to my unfinished letter. MacClayne, the Holy Grailer, I thought to myself. Then it came to me. Tongue-in-cheek, I sat down and wrote:
If we are to be hung from apple trees, first class losers for all to see, then at least let's have it be while in pursuit of something truly meaningful, a sacred quest. I'm quite sure that the Holy Grail--the existence of which I've never for a minute doubted--must be located somewhere in these parts. While awaiting your arrival, I'll learn it's location, and we can set out in search of it together.
Evening came and it was time to eat. I went to the concrete dining room with the corrugated metal roof to have my first meal with the other residents of this boarding house hotel. Seven or eight people were already seated at the table as I entered the room. Don Pablo sat at the head of the table. Next to him was a thin but good-looking woman in her fifties. She had sparkling eyes and somehow reminded me of a bird. I guessed that she was probably his wife, doña Josefina, who I knew was a distant relative of Chayo.
I took a chair and found myself sitting across the table from a man of about thirty, with light brown hair and blue eyes. Another foreigner like myself? No, it wasn't possible. Don Pablo and even Chayo had clearly told me that no other foreigner had ever lived here in this hotel--or at least that's what I'd understood them to have said. I couldn't believe I'd misheard them, but such were the limitations of my Spanish.
This blue-eyed fellow was conversing with don Pablo in rapid Spanish. He spoke it with such ease that it made me envious. I wondered if I could ever learn to speak the language like that.
Then I realized everyone was looking at me, and don Pablo announced with a broad grin, "Ya tenemos dos hueritos."
The bird-like lady whom I'd assumed to be doña Josefina asked me if I'd understood. I shook my head. So she then explained it to me. Speaking very slowly, she introduced me to this other blue-eyed person across the table from me. His name was Marco Kleinst, but here at the boarding house they called him Huero. Huerito meant Blondie, and now, with my arrival, they had two blondies--"dos hueritos."
"¿De dónde es?" I asked. Where is he from?
The blond, blue-eyed fellow grinned, and started to say something, but the lady spoke for him. "De Morelia."
"¿Morelia?" I paused to recall that Morelia was a city here in Michoacán, the state capital. Without thinking I blurted out my question, "¿Es Mexicano?"
Everyone laughed.
"¡Sí! ¡Soy Mexicano!" Marco replied, laughing with the others. The lady spoke again to assure me that this blue-eyed man was indeed fully as Mexican as the rest of them. Then she went on to introduce the others. One was Carlos, another was Estefan.
A lot more was said, most of which I did not understand. As dinner was coming to an end, a man named Domingo took up his guitar and sang several ballads. "To welcome Olaf to Michoacán," he said, to the general approval of everyone.
So, my stay having started on a good note, I went to bed in my new room, and lay there in the dark, on the fuzzy edge of dozing off. Then, in my ear, clearly and distinctly:
"Hun er en heks!"
I jumped, instantly awake. It was Grandma's voice, in Norwegian, and her words meant: She's a witch!
I listened in rigid silence, scarcely breathing. But nothing followed, just the profound silence of the night.
High above me were the beams of the tall ceiling, which I could barely make out in the darkness--or maybe it was just that I knew those beams were there and imagined I could discern their outlines. I kept staring at them, wondering if I really saw them or not.
Vaguely, from somewhere out in the night, I heard a cat screech. Then more silence.
Though Grandma's voice had seemed so real, I soon realized it was just an auditory effect of the sleeping imagination. It had been couple of years since she'd passed away, but I often saw her in my dreams. Sometimes I heard her voice. For a while I lay there thinking about her, recalling a story of hers about a granduncle back in Norway who used to travel deep into the mountains above Trondhjem.
Grandma always told it as though it had happened just a couple of years before, but when I think about it I'm sure it must have been well before her time. No doubt the granduncle was a great, great granduncle. Anyway, at that time he was young and handsome, and in a remote mountain village he met a woman who had some remarkable skills.
"Was she beautiful?" I asked. I was just a small child then, but I knew that heroines were always supposed to be beautiful.
"Bewitchingly so," Grandma assured me. "But she was more than just beautiful." The lady could turn day into night, and, if she felt like it, she might call up the specters of ancient Viking warriors to come and sit around the fire.
"And they lived happily ever after?" I asked, beginning to feel uneasy about the outcome.
"The man was never seen again."
"So he must have been very happy with her," I suggested hopefully.
Grandma looked at me for a moment, then gave me a hug and said, "Yes, I'm sure he was very happy with her." But somehow I hadn't felt completely reassured.
The story used to bother me, and I sometimes wondered if maybe those Viking ghost warriors might not have hacked the poor man to pieces with their swords and axes. But I never asked Grandma about that. I didn't like the idea of one of our ancestors coming to such a sad end. Especially when he had the same name as me.
As I grew older I eventually decided that it was probably a story someone made up to explain the disappearance of a guy who went into the mountains, met with some accident and died a lonely death. A tragedy no doubt, but nothing to do with warriors and witches.
But this evening as I lay there in the dark, under a strange roof, a thousand miles from Minnesota, I felt terribly alone, and my recent encounter with the Chichimecas still troubled me.
For a moment I shut my eyes tightly, almost fearing the Chichimecas might reappear in the darkness of this room. Then I opened them again, staring upwards, towards the hardly visible roof beams of the tall ceiling above me. My irrational fears made me feel foolish, but how was one supposed to deal with Chichimecas and shining cougars?
I continued to think about my great, great granduncle. Exactly when would he have lived? It depended on how many "greats" you put in front of "granduncle." Sometime in the eighteen hundreds perhaps. It could have been even much earlier; maybe two or three hundred years ago. His name was Olaf, the same as mine. But then, half the men of Norway are named Olaf.
I wondered what might have drawn Granduncle Olaf into the mountains. Some scientific interest? It could have been botany or even geology. Maybe both. Back in those times scientists weren't as specialized as they are nowadays. Of course all this speculation about him being a scientist was rather fanciful on my part--but no more fanciful than the story of his meeting a witch who called up the ghosts of Viking warriors.
Fanciful? The bizarre reality was that, less than two days ago, I myself had been welcomed to this very town in these mountains by a host of Chichimecas. An hallucination, perhaps, because I knew they couldn't possibly have been there, even though I'd seen them. It's disturbing to have seen something you know can't be there.
Every detail of those creatures remained vivid in my mind, from the costumes they wore to the obsidian-edged clubs they brandished.
Another fanciful thought crossed my mind. Supposing, just supposing, that Granduncle Olaf really had met with the specters of ancient Viking warriors. Why had I been so ready to assume that they'd hacked him to pieces with swords and axes? They might've been a welcoming committee.
Apparently the Chichimecas and the shining cougar weren't there to hack me to pieces either. Despite their frightful appearance, they'd really done me no harm. I doubted that they were a welcoming committee, but who could say?
I peered into the darkness about me, and now it felt like a less hostile darkness.
In fact, as I thought of it, nobody I'd encountered in this town had been hostile--except for that obnoxious chicken.
My hand was still sore.
continued in Chapter 5
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