The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys

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СКАЧАТЬ scene from one of Mamá’s telenovelas, in which each character, played by actors with varying talents, wreaked havoc in his own life and the lives of others. My other family communicated through impressions, feelings, and encouragements. This second family might not have existed at all, or they might have been right there, living with me. They might have been my mother, my father, and my brothers, talking to me beneath the noise of their randomly spoken words.

      There might have also been a third family with me that day—I could have been sensing a lingering trace of my ancestors. The old ones were gone but not gone, and all of them were wiser than I. Whatever that connection was, I felt I had company that morning when we buried Memín. The mystifying presence of the old ones stayed with me throughout the day, even as we left the cemetery and went home . . . and the family’s bitter tears turned inexplicably to laughter.

      That’s right. As if someone had changed the channel on our tiny black-and-white television, the mood of the group lightened miraculously when the front door opened and women poured into the house to lay out platters of food. Suddenly I was watching a different kind of spectacle. In this one, the women gossiped, the children played, and after a few beers, the men took turns telling hilarious stories about my dead brother.

      I saw how people put on arbitrary faces and took them off—on cue, and following each other’s lead. Racked with grief in one instant, they needed just a little encouragement to remove the grief masks and start again with a joke and a smile. They kept up with each other, mirroring responses back and forth, eyebrows twisting and lips moving to the words someone else was speaking. Oh, there was food on the tables, and everyone ate well that afternoon, but I saw for the first time how nobody missed a bite from life’s emotional buffet.

      And it wasn’t all good. With every bite of biscochito, they took two doses of poison—feasting on scandal, sharing disapproval, spreading rumors. A kind woman would say unkind things about someone else, inexplicably. A grown man would seem pleasantly congenial one moment and fighting mad the next, for no other reason but that a particular word had been uttered. A word, a phrase, a look, a shrug—what more did they need? I’d been learning how to act this way for years, without realizing that I had become a master at it. It was already easy for me, at eleven years old. It was automatic, but when I watched everyone else that day, I felt the wrenching shock that comes with sudden awareness.

      Emotions seemed to be feeding something I couldn’t see. They ran unchecked through each human body, causing sickness and frenzy—but for what reason? There was nothing about sadness, anger, or joy that was wrong. I remembered a time in my childhood when emotions ran through me like river sprites—they touched me, changed me, and then vanished without leaving a scar. These people, though, were scarred in ways I couldn’t see, and the pain was still being felt. It seemed odd for someone to submit to sorrow simply because the occasion called for it. And a bit later, were they all being jovial simply because it was three o’clock? Would they be terrified by evening, and disappointed by bedtime? There didn’t seem to be any rationale for their emotional drama—except that someone, or something, was feeding on the power of it.

      In time, an idea came to me. As I listened, and as I watched, I could see that normal emotions turned intense, even vicious, as people were drawn into one story or another. It might be something they were hearing, or saying, or thinking, but the story ruled each of them, and changed them, turning them into hunters, hungry for a certain kind of blood. Sensing, feeling humans were being transformed into creatures who devoured human feeling.

      I began to play with random emotions, feeling them at my fingertips, as people moved around the little house that day. Without speaking to anyone, I practiced shifting moods and attentions. Sitting on the floor, I steered the subtle flow of emotional energies here and there, getting a sense for how it was done. People laughed, then they cried a little. They comforted each other, and then fell silent. The current would stop, start, then move faster. It would correct itself, making a new pattern, and the moods would shift again. No one noticed the little boy with eyes closed, seeing something that couldn’t be seen, as his fingers gently touched the air around him and his expression remained curious but serene.

      Look at him. Do you see what he’s doing?” asked Sarita, who was sitting on one of the high-backed chairs in the home she’d shared with her husband and children long ago. It was interesting to find her elderly self there, in her usual seat at the head of the table, staring at bowls of salsa and platters of chicken. Sipping a cup of herbal tea, she felt she might recover her strength again.

      This kind of scene, where dozens of relatives filled the house and spilled onto the porch and into the street, was as familiar as old shoes. She still loved nothing better than to hold family gatherings at her home—to cook, to eat, and to exchange stories. She could hear José Luis laughing out on the porch, and she felt deeply comforted. These had been wonderful years for the two of them, when the older girls were married and raising their own families, and when the first grandchildren were born. Life in this tiny place had seemed perfect, at least before the accident. After that, it had seemed less safe and less certain.

      “I do see what the boy is doing,” said don Leonardo, “but I can’t see why he’s doing it.” He went back to picking galletas off the dessert tray.

      “Of course you can,” she said, pointing at the boy, who was still sitting on the living room carpet. “You and I do it all the time. He’s watching life flow around the room in ribbons and streams.”

      “He’s not normal; that I can say. Maybe before, but not now.”

      “It was far from a normal day.”

      Sarita looked around, moved at the sight of so many dear family members. There were nieces and nephews, children and grandchildren—most of them old now, many of them departed. She was one of only a few left of her generation, those who remembered the old times, and yet she had to admit it was hard to recognize many of the people in this room. Had she changed as much as they?

      There was an old man sitting on the divan at the far end of the room, a plate balanced on his lap. He was dressed elaborately in a traditional Mexican outfit of flared black pants and a cropped jacket, both studded in silver conchas. Beneath the jacket he wore a ruffled blouse, once white perhaps, but now faded to a musty yellow. A large sombrero lay next to him on the couch, grimy with age, its tassels knotted and stained. The old man’s skin looked like sun-baked buffalo hide, but his eyes were bright and full of mischief.

      “Is that—?” she began, and then stopped herself. “Could that be don Eziquio?”

      Don Leonardo gave her a look made of fresh innocence and headed toward the tub of cold beer that awaited him on the porch. Muttering to herself, Sarita rose from the table and moved across the room with slow deliberation, still unsure of her balance. She approached the leathered old man and stood over him as he wolfed down his food and hummed quietly to himself with pleasure.

      “Grandfather,” she said abruptly. “Why are you here?”

      The rugged face looked up at her in surprise, beaming a smile of recognition. “Sara! How very old you’ve become!” he exclaimed, swallowing a mouthful of beans. “I’m honored to be answering the call of my much-bewildered son. He is in need of my advice and expertise, as it happens.”

      “My father called you? Do you know why?”

      “A matter of death and life, I was told,” he explained cheerily, ripping the last meaty morsel from a chicken bone. “And he promised there would be women.”

      “It is a matter of death . . . and life,” Sarita said СКАЧАТЬ