Becoming Marta Read online

  “What is it you so want to see in Xochicalco?” Pedro asked as he ate. “They say it’s a pile of rocks.”

  “Rocks? Are you crazy? It was a city of twenty thousand inhabitants in the ninth century. Can you imagine? Twenty thousand! What’s worse is that we still don’t know much about it. How did they live? What did they think? A few marvelous structures remain, but since the Spaniards set themselves to destroying not only the people but the culture as well, all we have left are some clues. The observatory, where the sun aligns at midday on the equinox, remains extant. Can you imagine all they must have known? My archaeology friends told me I couldn’t miss it.”

  It annoyed Pedro when she acted like an UNAM student. She had friends in every department—archaeology, biology, political science, literature, medicine—and among them they knew everything. Pedro didn’t feel like driving just to see some ruins. He hadn’t even brought appropriate footwear. But he couldn’t say no to her. He knew they’d be on their way in five minutes.

  They had a tacit agreement between them, one thing in exchange for another. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. They both knew they had to do it, and most of the time they fulfilled their obligations willingly.

  It was the rainy season, so the landscape was entirely green. On the road to Acapulco they saw the turnoff and rode up a dirt track to a mesa. Pedro was annoyed. It bugged him when people spoke badly about the Spaniards. After all, he was Spanish. “Pedro de León,” his mother would say, “is a conquistador’s name.” That always made him feel important. His hazel-green eyes and wavy blond hair were a point of family pride. In truth, his ancestors were not conquistadors. They’d left behind the hunger of rural Spain, emigrating at the beginning of the century in search of better fortunes. Marti’s family, on the other hand, had been in Mexico for centuries. The Tordella de la Vegas even had viceregal palaces in the city center, which they had managed to conserve despite the War of Independence and the Revolution.

  They got out of the car. The view from the mesa was impressive. Every shade of green imaginable and clear skies with puffy white clouds that seemed specifically designed for framing the landscape. Marisol walked about the ruins excitedly. She talked nonstop, explaining to Pedro everything she knew about the ball games, the glyphs, and the steles. Unlike Pedro, Marisol felt a connection to this ancestral culture. It was her history. The ancient pyramids were her home, the exterminated inhabitants her people.

  “That’s why I’ll never feel complete. Octavio Paz got it right: we were screwed from the start. Our history is replete with abuse, submission, and rape. How can I attend Mass, pray to Jesus Christ, and follow a religion imposed by oppressors who destroyed my culture? Where can I worship Quetzalcóatl? We mistook our enemies for gods and screwed ourselves. I enjoyed the Concheros ritual dances in the zócalo, but that is not a religion. Besides, it’s something they made up a few decades ago. Truth is, the fuckers managed to annihilate everything.”

  “Okay, enough, sweetie. We came to enjoy the ruins, right? Look, they’re really impressive. Even I like them.” Pedro neither understood nor cared about archaeology, but he had some sense when it came to real estate, and he knew that this property had great potential. The mesa overlooked the valley and was between Tenochtitlán and the coast, a perfect location for a business. No doubt these people—the Mayas or Aztecs—knew the land well. “C’mon, let’s go to the observatory. Don’t get all worked up on me. What were the inhabitants called?”

  A twelve-year-old boy guided them inside the observatory in exchange for a few coins. Pedro saw only a hole in the ceiling of a small cavern, while Marisol seemed to glimpse the very essence of the universe. Her head spun, imagining the stars in the sky and the complex mathematics that her ancestors used to precisely determine the movement of heavenly bodies.

  “I don’t know how to explain it to you,” Marisol said to Pedro when they were heading back to the car. “I go through life without knowing who I am or what I should do, always acting on impulse. Then suddenly for an instant I can sometimes make out threads, the intricate workings, the entire fabric of my life, as though it all made sense. As though I had always been happy and knew what to do. Today in the observatory I felt that way. My whole life seemed clear—every knot, every stitch—and not just my life but existence itself. Has that ever happened to you?”

  “No, never.”

  35

  The Gringo

  Marta woke in a king-size bed surrounded by silk-covered walls decorated with a collage by Matisse and a drawing by Degas. A chocolate-brown silk bathrobe hung next to the bed. She was still dressed in her clothes from last night, but she wrapped herself in the robe and sheathed her feet in the matching cashmere slippers that had been left on the rug.

  Her head felt like a piñata after a party, but she was pleased to be in such a nice place. As flashbacks of vomit-covered floors and waking up in unfamiliar beds ran through her head, making the vein on her forehead bulge, she looked for signs of disorder. She had her underwear on. There was no vomit. She found her purse between some cushions embroidered with hunting scenes and confirmed that everything was there. Slowly, she pushed open the bedroom door.

  She walked into a grand marble room with a spiral staircase that led to the floor above. A young woman dressed in a black uniform and a starched apron with white lace greeted her.

  “Mr. Kauffman has gone to the office. He asked me to leave you breakfast and this note.”

  The woman motioned toward the bay window, where sunlight spilled onto a glass table on a gilded pedestal of carved wood. The sun shone directly on a bunch of grapes as large as plums and a parfait dish of wild strawberries with whipped cream. Marta watched the servant approach with a silver tray bearing steaming coffee and a basket of bread. She wanted to run away, but she restrained herself. She sat down, started eating, and opened the note:

  Dear Martha,

  It was enchanté meeting you. Hope to see more of you. Su casa es mi casa. La Grenouille @ 8:30?

  Yours,

  Arthur Kauffman

  PS Don’t look for your shoes—you threw them out of the cab.

  She vaguely recalled tossing her shoes out of the taxi because they were bothering her. That old fucker—why hadn’t he prevented her from throwing seven hundred dollars out the window?

  Marta pulled some cigarettes from her purse and had a staring contest with the maid, which she won handily. Sparks flew in her mind. “Su casa es mi casa”—the asshole hadn’t even gotten that right. Why the fuck had that phrase become the slogan of Mexico? Whatever happened to “and let the cannon’s blast shake the very core of the earth”? brooded Marta as she quickly finished eating. Mi casa es su casa. That’s what we get for eating humble pie and lending our homes to others.

  Without saying good-bye, and still wearing the cashmere slippers, she left the robe on the chair and left. A doorman hailed her a taxi, and she headed for the hotel.

  She reviewed her messages. Mau had called several times, worried about her. How nice, she thought. Let him fuck off. If he wanted to go off with Adriana, she wasn’t about to get in his way. There were also three messages from her father. In the last one, desperate at not finding her, he explained that he wanted to start a business with Gaby. He was determined to come out ahead, but he needed a small loan—an advance, really—which he would pay back as soon as he’d closed the first few sales. Just a little nudge. At the end of the message, he begged her to help him. Marta did not return his calls.

  36

  The Mural

  The next morning they headed out to Taxco. Pedro didn’t want to learn about Hernán Cortés or listen to Marisol chatter nonstop about the conquistadors and how it would be more appropriate to call them colonizers, exploiters, genocidists, and thieves because to conquer suggests not only to defeat but also carries connotations of superiority. Marisol was so insistent on seeing the Palacio de Cortés, however, that Pedro dropped her off in front of the plaza while he went off to have coffee
and read the sports section.

  The mural’s vivid colors seemed to breathe. They depicted a warrior dressed like an eagle, a suit of beak and feathers, the costume’s cuffs adorned with lynx claws and, in one hand, a sling ready to be shot. What a magnificent suit, thought Marisol. Such a potent imagination: to think, dress, and desire oneself as an eagle. The Europeans, with their armor and rifles, bore the suits and weapons of cowards. In the background were flames. The plumed warrior was on the floor. On top of him a Spaniard protected by his shield and armor and mounted on a white horse brandishes his sword at an Indian dressed like fire, a barefoot fighter with only a mallet for a weapon. There is a jade bracelet on the floor. Marisol would have liked to pick up that bracelet, save it from destruction, and take care of it. She was ashamed of her desire. Had she, a survivor of massacres, been converted into a plunderer?

  On a hill, Spaniards and Indians use their lances to fell an exuberant tree. Bodies hang from the collapsed tree’s crown; they appear to be dead, but they support themselves. There are Indian bodies and Creole ones, too. Who are they? Why are they dressed? Do they represent modern Mexico? In the first panel the Spaniards fill their trunks with gold. Behind them, brutal violence: pain, oppression, weapons, forced submission. A braided whip and a spear frame the mural. Stone by stone the Indians are building the palace where she now stood.

  Marisol took it all in as quickly as possible. She needed to hurry. The road to Taxco was still ahead, and she didn’t want Pedro to get in a foul mood. She vowed to return to Cuernavaca in order to examine the mural in greater detail.

  They didn’t speak on the way to Taxco. Pedro was thinking that this would be his last night with Marisol. The following day he would be on a flight to New York. The trip had not turned out as he had hoped. He thought Marisol would be more interested in him. He couldn’t forgive her for choosing a visit to the Palacio de Cortés over staying in bed with him.

  Of course, she did not know this was the last time they’d see each other. He considered telling her about it, spilling the beans about getting married, starting work, being responsible, but he’d opted to keep quiet. He hadn’t told her a single truth about his private life, so why start now? He’d told her that his father was an army doctor. The lies came easily to him whenever necessary.

  Marisol watched the landscape through the car’s window, the tropical greens intermixing with cacti and the pine-covered mountain they were climbing. She couldn’t get the mural of the enslaved Indians out of her head. The Indians working in the cane fields and mines that created the area’s wealth, the wealth of Mr. Borda, the exploiter. The images of October 2 and the Tlatelolco Massacre were engraved in her mind. Her memory was also burdened with recollections of friends who had disappeared. They hadn’t been killed but were pursued by the authorities; they were in danger and had to flee to a province or hide in the sierra.

  Next to her sat this man so white that he shone in the sunlight. He practically squeaked with his silver buckles, imported jeans, and fine moccasins. She felt simultaneously betrayed and betraying, victim and culprit. It had taken her four years to realize that Pedro used her as much, or more, as she did him.

  The first year had been a dream: cars, restaurants, the occasional gift, and his steadfastness. Her friend Vanessa had to change boyfriends every week to obtain these things, and the rotation wore her out. The second year Marisol had renegotiated the terms. They had to bring Miguel along as well. They fucked once a week and went out twice. The third year she tried to ask for more: more money, more time, more information. He resisted. She resorted to other means and found out that he had another girlfriend, that his father was a businessman and not an army doctor. She followed him in a friend’s car and staked out where he lived. The fourth year she went along with it out of inertia. She knew the limits of the relationship. She didn’t expect more from Pedro, but she also didn’t consider leaving him. She’d grown accustomed to him. He was part of her routine. She enjoyed his company and the paseos and couldn’t find a good reason to break off with him.

  Marisol didn’t judge Pedro. He wasn’t a bad person, just an ordinary one. He was caught in his own spider web. He was not going to help her. She’d have to weave her own shawl. She’d have to do it alone.

  They arrived at the hotel and went for a walk. There was the pink stone of Santa Prisca, with its two bell towers and intricately worked facade. Marisol looked at it with interest. She imagined the Indians making the chubby cherubs, so alien from their own culture, and decorating the columns with vine leaves, which they’d never actually seen because the Spaniards forbade importing vines, olive trees, and even novels in order to maintain their hegemony. Then she imagined the columns worked with Monsteras deliciosas and rubber trees, as Diego Rivera might have sculpted them. Perhaps she didn’t need to. The Europeans’ project had failed. Santa Prisca was not, and never would be, a European cathedral: the souls that sculpted the facade had left their mark there, probably in spite of themselves.

  They entered the church. Marisol headed for the Indians’ chapel, the first Catholic chapel that the natives were allowed to enter. She tried to imagine the way people thought in that era. On the one hand, the Spaniards were obliged to convert the Indians to Catholicism. It took them a long time to determine whether the Indians were human, whether they had souls, which in turn would influence whether they were granted rights. When they determined that they were in fact human, it presented an enormous conflict in terms of justifying the appropriation of their lands. Even though the act had taken place many years earlier, there existed an a priori legal order, an established way of thinking. Some things could be done and others could not. The Spaniards wanted those lands. So how could they take them in a just manner? In the end it was Pope Alexander VI who decided that the lands could belong to the Spanish colonists—he was, after all, Rodrigo de Borja, born in Valencia—so long as they also took charge of converting the natives and thereby ensuring their place in heaven. The worst pope in history, so evil that he was later known as the antipope, finally conceived a way out that was tailored for the Spaniards. In exchange for their lands in this world, the Indians were guaranteed life in the next one. Otherwise, these infidels would be destined to spend eternity in hell without having known God.

  Why hadn’t they just left the Indians with their own gods? Marisol was enraged. She felt the hotel receptionist looking at her, as if to say, If it weren’t for the white guy you’re with, the only way you’d get in here would be through the servants’ entrance. She felt the looks from the chambermaids and the waitresses, too. On the one hand, there was admiration, something like, How did you manage it? But it was immediately followed by disdain.

  Pedro looked uninterestedly at the gold-covered altars. He liked the church, the smell of wax, the feeling of the cool, enclosed, shaded air. There were virgins everywhere: virgins and more virgins. He realized for the first time that the church was a cult of virgins. Not a cult of the Virgin but of virginity. Not the Mother of Christ for being his mother but for her intact vagina, because she’d never lain with a man. He imagined Marti’s vagina: small, closed, pure. He thought about how he would penetrate her the first time, delicately and then forcefully, opening her and filling her. He’d never been with a virgin. She was to be for him only, his alone. By contrast, it disgusted him a little to imagine Marisol with another man’s dick between her legs. Pedro knelt in front of the main altar and prayed an Ave María for his fiancée the virgin.

  The restaurant was on a terrace facing the zócalo, the church’s facade, and the red-tiled roofs of the town. Above these were spectacular clouds, fat and heavy with rain. The sun illuminated one of them, making it shine. The light outlined its shape and gave it a three-dimensional sense of volume. The clouds that were not lit up looked leaden, heavy, and threatening.

  Marisol sat facing the church; Pedro faced the town and the mountain. Both were lost in their thoughts. They ordered enchiladas. They didn’t speak. Marisol carelessly ate the co
rn chips and salsa they had brought to the table. Her crunching was audible. She chewed the fried chips with her mouth open. Pedro watched her. Suddenly, he didn’t mind that he’d no longer be able to see her. What would he do with her in any case? In one year’s time he’d have his proper wife in bed beside him. He could wait a year, but he’d have to take up running again. He decided to run a marathon.

  They didn’t even kiss that night. Marisol told Pedro that she wanted to stay a few more days in Taxco and Cuernavaca. She might as well visit Tepoztlán, too, while she was here. She had some money saved from her wages and didn’t mind taking the bus back. Pedro told her that he was going on a trip and would see her on his return. When he said good-bye, he gave her some money. He thought he spotted a shadow in her eyes that had not been there before. Perhaps she knew that they would not see each other again.

  He got in his car and headed directly for the airport, just in time to catch the flight to New York, where he’d supposedly been staying the entire week. He had a day to carry out his mission.

  The next morning he went to Tiffany’s, as his mother had advised him to do, although she’d also told him not to miss Cartier, Harry Winston, and Forty-Seventh Street. He arrived at the store on Fifth Avenue. They took him to a special floor where they displayed only diamonds. Two hours later he emerged with the largest one he could afford. It weighed two karats. He paid in cash with the money his father had given him. Pedro hadn’t been able to save enough on his own.

  He presented it to Marti, as his parents had recommended, in a formal and boring dinner at the Tour d’Argent. Both of them felt completely out of place among the retirees and Japanese tourists. When they finished, they walked a bit along Saint-Germain. They needed to get back to the hotel in order to give their parents the news, so they didn’t have a chance to see whether they would enjoy themselves simply walking along the street.