I believed him.
By this time it was very late. I told him that I would be leaving shortly, and that I had enjoyed the evening and his hospitality immensely.
“I hope you will visit again before you return to Canada,” he said. “My wife does not have many friends here, and it is good for her to have company.”
At that moment the object of his words came into view. She had appeared to me tc be drinking moderately throughout dinner, but had clearly made up for it since. Montserrat was leading, almost pulling her across the foyer. “Get upstairs,” she hissed. “You are a disgrace to my father and to me!”
Sheila moved past us on the stairs, tears in her eyes. Diego looked at his daughter, then the retreating back of his wife, and sighed. He descended the stairs to say good-bye to his guests, who were now beginning to leave.
Jonathan was at the door. “Do you have a car? Can I give you a lift?” he asked.
“I can just take a taxi,” I said.
“I won’t hear of it. I’ve called for my car and it will be here in a minute.”
Just then Montserrat reappeared. “Would you like to stay for a nightcap, Jonathan?” she asked.
“Not this evening, my dear,” he said. “I’m giving Senora McClintoch a lift back to her hotel.”
Montserrat did not look pleased. She was obviously accustomed to getting everything she wanted, including people. This was quite the family.
The car arrived, and we got in. Jonathan drove partway down the driveway, then pulled over to the side.
“How about moving our date up an evening or two?” he said. “My place?”
“Why not?” I replied. No one was waiting up for me, and despite a sense that I was still stepping out on my husband somehow, I could think of no real reason to say no.
Jonathan brought the same confidence and assurance to lovemaking that he brought to everything else, and I began to feel as if a part of my psyche I’d shut down was beginning to come to life again.
Later, though, as I lay in his bed, watching him sleep, pale in the moonlight streaming through the slats in the shutters, one arm slung proprietarily across my stomach, I wondered why I did not feel content.
EB
I awoke to the sound of rain, and an empty bed. A tropical downpour, stunning in intensity but mercifully brief, was passing through, appropriate enough for Eb, a rain day. Ten minutes later the skies had cleared, but my personal gloom had not.
I wandered to the kitchen to find a note on the counter. Called away. Problem at the site. Help yourself to anything you want, I read. Lucas will be by about eleven-thirty to take you back to Merida. Then ending on a slightly more positive note: Tonight?
It was not quite ten, so I decided to take a dip in the pool, lack of bathing suit notwithstanding. The pool was still in the shade, quiet and pleasant, and well protected from curious onlookers by a thick hedge.
Climbing out, however, I found myself face-to-face with a tiny Maya woman dressed in the traditional embroidered huipil. We were both very surprised to see each other, but she had a considerable advantage over me. She had clothes on.
She regarded me with deep suspicion, and possibly curiosity, as I clutched my towel and dashed to the bedroom. I showered and dressed, and as I did so I could hear her moving about the house.
I had nothing to wear except my silk dress from the evening before, a tad overdone for ten-thirty in the morning. I was inclined to stay holed up in the bedroom until rescued by Lucas, but I realized this was foolish, so I went into the kitchen.
We regarded each other once again across the kitchen counter. She was under five feet tall, with dark hair streaked with gray, pulled back into a bun. Her eyes, surveying me, sparkled with good humor, I thought, and intelligence.
Finally she smiled, and gestured toward a coffeepot on the stove. It smelled delicious and so I nodded, and she poured me a cup.
She spoke no English, and a heavily accented Spanish. Her native tongue, she told me, was Yucatecan. We exchanged names; hers was Esperanza, and she was, she informed me, Senor Hamelin’s housekeeper. She came in every day to clean, and to prepare something for his supper.
Her interest in my dress was apparent, so I told her about my friend Isa. Soon we were chattering away. I said I was from Canada, visiting my friends in Merida. Like so many who have never been there, many of them with considerably more formal education than Esperanza, I might add, she assumed Toronto was under several feet of snowdrifts all year round, and was eager to hear how we managed to get around, and what snow was really like.
“I have heard that every snowflake is different,” she said. When I nodded, she added, “Our world is filled with wonders, is it not?”
She asked me about my family, where I had grown up, gone to school. Her curiosity was boundless. She told me about her village, not far away.
“It was much bigger when I was growing up,” she said. “Now many of the young people leave. They go to the cities in search of a better life, but I do not think it improves life for them. So many have lost their center, their grounding, somehow.
“They have begun to think of Maya civilization as something in the past, something which has been superseded by another—European—civilization. And as young people do, they want to be part of the new.”
“Would you have them go back to the old ways? Cut themselves off from European civilization?” I asked, thinking that was what she meant.
“Obviously that is not possible,” she said. “But it is also not possible for us to embrace European civilization in its entirety, without losing an important part of ourselves.
“The young people must come to understand that European civilization has not superseded ours. Rather, the two civilizations now run parallel. Only that way can they be successful participants in contemporary life.”
“We have a saying that goes something like those who forget their past are doomed to repeat it. Not quite the same idea, but the basic notion is the same,” I said.
“I like that.” She smiled.
“So what do you think of the Children of the Talking Cross?” I asked her.
“If you’re asking me if I personally approve of stealing, even for a just cause, then the answer is, I do not.
“But if you are asking me if I understand the frustration that makes my people resort to such activities, then of course I do. My people have been subjected to centuries of oppression, some of it violent, some of it merely political and much more subtle.
“Think of our Maya brothers and sisters in Guatemala who have been driven from their land, and who live in terror of government-sanctioned death squads. At least one hundred and fifty thousand Maya have been killed there in the last twenty years; tens of thousands more have disappeared!
“Let’s just say that I understand there are many ways to survive oppression. One is simply acceptance, perhaps acquiescence is a better word. Another is accommodation, a denial of what you are—becoming more European than your oppressors—there are many of us who have done that. Yet another is resistance, armed and violent if necessary.”
At this point in the discussion, Lucas joined us, giving Esperanza a hug before sitting down between us at the kitchen counter.
“My godmother,” he said, smiling at her, but speaking for my benefit.
If Lucas had an opinion on the new status of my relationship with Jonathan, he kept it to himself. It did not escape my notice, however, that he was avoiding looking directly at me when we were talking. When our eyes met inadvertently, his quickly moved away.
Not so his godmother, whose eyes seemed to see right to my core. If there was an X-ray machine for the soul, she was it. When Lucas went to bring the car to the door and I was making ready to leave, she suddenly grasped my hand.