The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys
is a champion!” his mother shrieked, and a roar went up outside. She laughed, the boy laughed, and the universe rocked with pleasure.
“There, you see?” said his mother, caressing his little face. “Strong, beautiful, and clever. The whole world knows it!”
Watching the scene, Sarita spoke with fondness. “Yes, these are the days when Miguelito first began to walk. He was leaving infancy and starting his life as a child.” She let out a long sigh. “Like his brothers, who took so much pleasure in tormenting him, he would develop a strong talent for trouble.” She smiled as the memories rushed toward her and the light in the room began to flicker.
“Stop!” Lala said, interrupting her recollection. “My dear, this is not just the beginning of tedious boyhood that we are witnessing. Listen!”
They looked back at mother and child, as baby Miguel reached a small hand toward the stove, then pulled it back at the shocking recognition of heat. Sensing danger, his eyes widened in surprise.
“Ay! No!” he heard his mother shout. “No! No, no, no!”
Looking up at his mother, the boy repeated the sound. “No!” he mimicked with serious precision. “No!” The response from his mother was immediate and theatrical. Pulling him into her arms, she ran from the house, shouting to everyone that the little genius had spoken his first word.
“That! Did you hear?” shouted Lala with animation. “That is the beginning!”
“Of what?” asked Sarita. “Yes-no? Hot-cold? Mamá-papá? The beginning of words, you mean?”
“The Word,” Lala stated, almost reverently. “See how it goes? One word leading to another, and another, until you build a universe of perception.” Looking into the old woman’s eyes, she said, “This moment is the beginning of knowledge and the universe it will create. This,” she added wistfully, “is the moment of my birth.”
Her birth? Sarita marveled to herself. The creature from the other tree yields to the laws of birth and death like the rest of us? In any language, it is a simple thing to recognize that a burning stove will cause pain. No! is essential to a baby’s education. She regarded the other woman with interest, noting the pride in her expression. Who was she, to be proud of another woman’s child?
“Never forget it,” intoned Lala as she sat down at the table. “If you wish to retrieve your beloved son, follow the words.”
“Nonsense!” boomed a voice from the doorway. The two women looked up, startled, and saw an old man hovering just outside, standing in full sunlight. He was not tall, but he held himself with dignity, lending him the look of a much taller man. His hair was a delicate white, but there was nothing else about him that seemed delicate. He was lean, sinewy, and quite handsome in a cream-colored suit that spoke of another time.
“Papá!” Sarita exclaimed.
“Papá?” the gentleman repeated in surprise. “How could I be father to this honorable abuela?” He tipped his hat graciously.
“Yes, it is true that I am now a grandmother and great-grandmother,” Sarita said, moving toward him, “and that you are long since dead and buried! Still, this is a joyful reunion!” She hugged him and pulled him into the room.
“What world have I blundered into,” he asked good-naturedly, “where my children are great-grandparents and withered memories have blossomed anew?”
Sarita was unable to answer. Seeing her confusion, he thought it best to take charge. He led Sarita to the wooden table and seated himself next to her.
“Who is it we must retrieve?”
“My youngest. You remember Miguel,” said his daughter, placing a frail hand on his. “He is slipping away from us. He has suffered a heart attack, one that would seem fatal to any whose talents were less than ours.”
“If this is true, it won’t be words that bring him back. It will be the irrefutable force of life.” He glanced at her companion, now sitting regally at the head of the table. Assuming the person to be a gentleman like himself, he nodded deferentially before turning back to Sarita. Then, with a jolt, he looked again. No, Sarita’s friend was nothing like him. In fact, she was a woman—strikingly beautiful, with eyes like burning coals. She smiled at him, and her eyes glowed brighter.
“This is Lala,” his daughter said.
“La Diosa,” corrected the woman. She could wield no power over the dead, she knew. They were beyond temptation, beyond her reach; but with this one, as with them all, there had once been a time. . . .
“Beautiful, as always, señora,” don Leonardo said with a bow. Then he felt a slow wave of realization. Could it be that his daughter was not fully aware of the nature of this affair? Until he was sure, he would play the game with sincerity. “Did you start at the beginning, ladies?” he asked.
“Well,” shrugged Sarita. “It was a beginning of sorts. We began before Miguel was born—at his conception, in fact—but we found the scene to be unsavory.”
“And unrevealing,” added her companion.
“Show me!” the man said; and as he said it, the morning sunlight was extinguished.
Without warning, the three of them were standing by that earlier bed, in the dark little room with a tiny window where two lovers laughed and sighed.
“If you please,” uttered Lala, retreating to a dark corner of the room. “I will not witness this vulgarity again.”
“Don Leonardo,” his daughter objected, her body heaving from the effort. “We’ve seen this before.”
“Have you?” he said, smiling broadly. “Have you really seen this?”
The nude woman was sitting astride her husband, enjoying the pleasure of their union. Suddenly, she shouted in ecstasy as she had done before, her arms in the air and her head thrown back.
“There. Did you see that?” said the old gentleman.
“Yes,” she said, turning away to look out the open window. “And I felt it. I remember the moment well.”
“And?”
“And . . . I felt the burning light as Miguel came into being.” A star flared in the blackness, and Sarita became distracted. “How amazing,” she whispered, clutching the window frame as she leaned her face into the cool night air.
“Yes! Your body felt it happen. A message was delivered, and creation began in you. Again! Little Miguel won the race. He was one among the tens of millions of spermatozoa to try—and he succeeded!”
“Are you here to make tasteless jokes? I have neither the time—”
“We are witnessing the making of a soul!”
In spite of herself, Sarita looked back into the room. “Soul? The poor and sinful soul?”
“No such thing! A soul is the epoxy that binds a universe—a matter of basic physics,” he proclaimed. “Here you see a universe being born out of the cataclysmic division of two cells!” He paused to take a breath, pleased with himself.
“A boy’s body is beginning,” she mused.
“A body that will grow into manhood. The soul will see to that.”
“And what of God?”
“Yes,” said Lala from the shadows. “Tell us what you know of God.”
“It is all God,” answered Leonardo with a glance into the shadows. He pointed dramatically to the bed. “Is this not God in action?”
“No, tell me,” Lala said, over the moans of the two lovers. “Tell me of God.”
“We have had our promenade already, señora. I have nothing more to say about God. I am witnessing God.”