The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys

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СКАЧАТЬ is to save my youngest son, whom you may not remember.”

      “Of course I remember!” he said, patting his lips with a stained napkin. “Miguel Angel! It is for that reason I feel confident there will be women.” He peered through the crowd of people. “Which one is he?”

      “He is there, on the floor. At this time, he would have just turned eleven.”

      “Eleven? Is that all? Ah,” he said with dismay, hardly looking at the boy. “Then we will have to wait a year or so for willing girls and rhapsodic pleasures. Well, that’s no problem; I’ve got time.” He went back to his plate of chicken and beans, looking up briefly when a woman walked by—a gorgeous woman with red hair and eyes as deep and blue as the cenotes of his homeland. He looked at her once, then twice, wondering where he had seen her before. No, he had never seen her—and yet somehow they had met. Yes, they had met.

      Sarita left him where he was, unsure how his presence would improve the journey. Well, an ancestor was an ancestor, so she wouldn’t complain. She’d had enough of this particular memory, in any case. She wanted to be done with it. This sad day, which had been a horrible experience for her then, was somehow made more horrible by its recapitulation. She began working her way to the kitchen, in search of the redheaded woman. They needed to talk. They had a small amount of time available to them, and an even smaller shopping bag.

      In her haste, Sarita failed to see Lala milling through the crowd, considering her next move and circling the child who sat on the floor by himself. The redhead had already noticed the old woman, and although she was relieved to see her in good health again, she was tired of Sarita’s bothersome questions, so she made herself invisible among the relatives and neighbors who jammed the front room. She liked it here. She liked it when people came together to smoke and talk and spread the virus. Any virus was transformational. Any virus could change the way an organism worked, but this kind of virus changed the human dream. It was a word-borne virus, a virus that inflamed thought and started a fever in the human body. It was knowledge, something that her world would not exist without. She smiled, comforted to know that she lived in that world—a world built out of syllables, sounds, and the strong mortar of belief.

      Her world looked the same, felt the same as the physical universe, although some called it a reflection. Her symbol was also a tree, like the Tree of Life—great and lovely and deeply rooted. The roots of life stretched into the infinite and its branches breathed eternal light; but her roots drank from the spring of human storytelling, and her branches bore its fruit. There was no thought, no reality without her, she mused. Without her, there were only beasts in the field.

      She could sense the living Miguel in the room, although she could not see him. He wasn’t here, where the little boy sat, teaching himself to trace the forces of human feeling. Miguel was near, however, watching and waiting for the right moment to show himself. If he was here, he would be watching this boy, she thought. He would be remembering, and helpfully packing that memory into his mother’s shopping bag. He didn’t wish to return to the world he’d left, she knew, but he would. He would, because Sarita insisted. He would, because a wise apprentice will honor the teacher, if not the mother.

      Lala lay down beside the eleven-year-old that Miguel once had been and looked into his face. Ah . . . that face! And the eyes, hiding a blazing light somewhere in their darkness. These were the eyes of the man he would someday be, the man she had never truly learned to resist.

      “Do you know how much I have wanted you?” she whispered to the boy. “Can you see the past and the future of us, my love? Can you see how we will dance together, through a thousand more generations?”

      The boy’s expression didn’t change. His black eyes were focused on things that no other person in the room had noticed. None, that is, but her. Lala sighed, laid her head back on the rug, and closed her eyes. She was recalling the first time she had come to him . . . not just in visions and thoughts, but in the fullness of a woman’s body and a woman’s intellect. She had waited until he was bored, tired of the same tasteless food. She had waited until he was ready for the kind of knowledge that stirred men into a frenzy. It was only then that she had taken him by the hand and led him back into the ancient dream of the Toltec people.

      Like everyone, Lala had been shocked when Miguel left his medical practice and the safety of his books. She worried when he returned to Sarita—who was a sorceress, however she wished to call herself—asking to learn her skills. During those years as an apprentice to Sarita, he had become intuitive, and unafraid of his own power. He was slipping out of her control. Lala wanted him to understand how human beings are connected by words, only words, and to recognize the supreme authority of ideas over human actions. She felt compelled to help him elevate storytelling to its greatest genius, and that was what she did.

      Ah . . . Lala knew now where this journey would take them next, and she smiled in satisfaction. She must collect the old woman so they could start up again—so they could witness the moment when Miguel first met the woman who had inspired his storytelling. He had been afraid at their meeting, having recognized her from his sleeping dreams. He wished more than anything to run away from her that day, but he stayed. He stayed, and he fell in love. Yes, that’s where they would go next.

      She opened her eyes, and when she did, she saw the boy staring directly at her.

      “I’ve never danced with a girl before, but I will soon, I think.” He looked around the room and then his eyes drifted back to her. He assessed her, his face flushed with feeling.

      “Yes, soon,” she whispered. This fledgling student, with his innocent and tender eyes, would someday become the master. It was time for her to shift the dream to her will. This was her chance to move memory’s current. Nothing was inevitable, she assured herself, and this dance was far from over.

      Don Eziquio was on his third plate of food when Miguel Ruiz sat beside him on the divan, his own plate in his hand. Still wearing the hospital gown, he looked more out of place than ever. He was drawn to this time and this place, however. He had noticed his older brothers talking with a few of their cousins in the pebbled driveway, and he was curious to know them again as children; but by sitting here in the crowded living room, he had a view of himself as a child. He smiled at the sight of the boy, sitting there all alone, and remembered the curious feeling of shock he’d felt when he saw the human drama for the first time. As a boy he had envied adults—not just for their knowledge, but for the spectacular way they generated drama. The adult world had seemed like a soap opera set within a mental ward, and he wanted to discover ways to make it sane again. He had looked for solutions all his life, and at forty-nine years old, he felt he was making progress.

      He could see Lala lounging there beside the boy, watching, and casually guiding his thoughts. Would she try to woo him with a story? A revelation?

      With any intuitive feeling, there comes the temptation to tell a story . . . to think. While the boy sat there, following the tangible traces of life, she would offer him a story about life. Her stories would seem new, not like the ones he’d heard before, and they would appeal to a little boy’s vanity. It would be many more years before Miguel, the man, could appreciate any of her stories for what they were.

      Miguel finally took his eyes off the boy and plunged his fork into a dish piled high with food. The two men sat there, side by side, enjoying their home-cooked meal in silence. Neither of them acknowledged the other. Glancing out the window, Miguel saw don Leonardo standing alone in the street, his creamy suit catching the pink light of the evening sky. His grandfather looked like a high-born angel, patiently waiting to see what revelations the moment would bring.

      Finishing his third helping of food, don Eziquio СКАЧАТЬ