covered by a mandarin costume of red silk and her eyebrows painted near the silk bangs, which Laura, when she opened her eyes, found there, really, reclining on pillows, waiting for Laura to pick her up in her arms, rock her, allow her, as before, as always, to move her porcelain head, open and shut her eyes, without moving those very thin eyebrows painted over her expectant, serene eyelids. Li Po hadn’t aged.
Laura Diaz held back a cry of emotion when she picked up Li Po, looked around her childhood bedroom only to find it perfectly clean, with the washbasin that had always been there, the dresser she’d used as a little girl, the door with gauze curtains hanging from copper rods. But Li Po had gone to Frida Kahlo’s house. Who had brought her back to Catemaco?
She opened the bedroom door, went out onto the perfectly clean patio, overflowing with geraniums, ran to the living room, and found her grandparents’ wicker furniture, the mahogany tables with marble tops, the lamps brought from New Orleans, the vitrines with the little porcelain shepherdesses, and the twin pictures, the little rascal in the first teasing a sleeping dog with a stick, and in the second bitten on the calf by the same dog, now awake, while the mischievous little boy weeps in pain…
She walked quickly to the dining room, now expecting what she found there, the table set, the big white tablecloth starched, the chairs in place, three on each flank of the armchair at the head of the table where old Don Felipe always sat, but each place set with Dresden china, knives, forks, spoons in order, and to the right of each plate a stiff napkin rolled up in a silver ring inscribed with the initial of the person who would sit there, Felipe, Cosima, Hilda, Virginia, Leticia, Maria de la O, Laura…
And on Grandmother Cosima’s plate, four jewels, a gold wedding band, a sapphire ring, and a pearl ring…
I’m dreaming, Laura Diaz said to herself… I’m dreaming this. Or perhaps I’m already dead and don’t know it.
She was interrupted when the dining-room door opened brusquely and a rough figure burst in, a dark, bearded man in boots, drill trousers, and a perspiration-soaked shirt. He had a shotgun in one hand and a red handkerchief was tied around his head as a sweatband.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. His voice was sweet, with a heavy Veracruz accent, no
“Excuse
“The master doesn’t want anyone entering without his permission, you’ll excuse me, ma’am.”
“The master?”
“Of course. You should see, ma’am, how carefully he’s restored the house. It was a ruin, after being the most important hacienda in Catemaco, according to what people say. Then the master came and made it just like new. It took him about five years to get everything together, he said he wanted to see the house exactly the way it was a hundred years ago, or something like that.”
“The master?” Laura insisted.
“Sure, my boss. Don Danton. He owns this house and all the land around here right down to the lake.”
Laura had a moment of doubt as to whether she should take Li Po with her or leave her resting comfortably in her bed, surrounded by pillows. She saw her so happy, so pleased in her old bed… She went back over her memories again, the living room, the dining room, the silver rings…
“Rest, Li Po, sleep, live happily ever after. I’ll take care of you forever.”
In the patio, Laura took a long look at the young caretaker, as if she’d known him forever. Then she went out onto the estate, told herself that no matter how big it might be it would always be the poor patch of earth we all finally have forever, after our season on earth. But this May afternoon, she was ever more thankful for the symmetry of the araucaria, which in the flowering of each branch immediately engendered its double, am I going to reproduce myself that way, will I be another Laura Diaz, a second Laura Diaz, not in myself but in my ancestors and descendants, in the people I come from and the people I leave in the world, the people toward whom I’m going and the people I leave behind, the whole world will be like an araucaria that grows a double in each of its flowers, that is not destroyed by storms, that is protected from the lightning by the lightning of its yellow flowers, the marvelous tree that can withstand both hurricanes and droughts?
She walked into the forest. Her thoughts thickened as the forest opened up. She was charged with life, her own and that of the people who went with her to live it, well or badly; that’s why her life wasn’t ending, the life of Laura Diaz, because I’m not only my life, there are many lines, many generations, the true history, which is the life lived but above all imagined; am I only the weeping woman, the suffering woman, the mourning woman? No, I refuse that, I always walked with my head held high, I never begged, I walk and try to measure the distance of my life, measure it by the voices that arise from the past and speak to me as if they were here, the names on the seven silver napkin rings, the names of the four Santiagos and the four men in my life, Orlando and Juan Francisco, Jorge and Harry, I wouldn’t be the suffering woman, I wouldn’t be the weeping woman, I would walk with my head held high, even though I’d humbly accept that I can never own nature because nature survives us and asks us not to own her but to be part of her, to return to her, to leave behind history, time, and the pain of time, no longer to delude ourselves that we have owned anything or anyone, not even our children, not even our loves, Laura Diaz owner only of our art, of what we could give to others from our own body, the body of Laura Diaz, transitory and limited…
She remembered the desire of her brother, the first Santiago, to lose himself in the forest as, eventually, he lost himself in the sea.
She would carry out the desire of Santiago the Elder. She would become forest as he became sea.
She would enter the forest as one enters a void from which no message will return.
With her were the unfulfilled lives of a brother, a son, and a grandson.
With her were the eyes and words of her grandfather Felipe Kelsen, was there ever a single truly finished life, a single life that wasn’t cutoff promise, latent possibility…?
She remembered the day her grandfather died, when Laura held his hand with its thick veins and old freckles, caressed the skin faded to transparency, and had the sensation that each one of us lives for others: our existence has no other meaning but to complete unfinished destinies…
“Didn’t I tell you, child? One day all my ailments came together and here I am… but before I go I want to tell you that you were right. Yes, there is a statue of a woman, covered with jewels, in the middle of the forest. I lied to you on purpose. I didn’t want you to get caught up in superstition and witchcraft, Laurita. I took you to see a ceiba so that you would learn to live with reason, not with the fantasy and enthusiasms that cost me so dearly when I was young. Be careful with everything. The ceiba is covered with spines as sharp as daggers, remember?”
“Of course, Grandfather.”
The forest arises like its own deep breathing, its own profound heartbeat.
The forest roads divide.
On one side can be seen the woman of stone, the Indian statue decked out with belts of conch shells and serpents, wearing a crown tinted green by nature imitating art, adorned with necklaces and rings and earrings on ears, nose, and arms…
On the other side is the way to the ceiba, queen of the virgin forest, whose crown is made up of the spines that are also spattered all over its brown body like wounding daggers, ageless, immobile but longing, its branches open like arms awaiting a mortal caress, which the great body of wounding daggers can give and wants to give.
Laura Diaz embraced the mother ceiba with all the strength remaining to her, the protecting ceiba, queen of a void from which no message will return.
26.
Los Angeles: 2000
ONE YEAR AFTER being attacked in Detroit, Santiago Lopez-Alfaro was given a commission that allowed him to continue his television work on Mexican muralists. This time too his vocation and his profession could miraculously join forces: he was assigned to cover the unveiling of the restoration of the mural that David Alfaro Siqueiros had painted in 1930 on Olvera Street in Los Angeles.
This “typical” street was invented by Anglo Americans to pay homage to the Spanish American past of La
