The Mapmaker's Opera by Bea Gonzalez

Author:Bea Gonzalez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Centre stage stands an enormous ceiba—the sacred tree of the Maya—tall, majestic, so strong that no hurricane can hope to topple it, dignified in its perennial cloak of brilliant green. At its feet Very Useful and Diego sit on a blanket of estribilla surrounded by odds and ends—ropes, hooks, field glasses, notebooks and paints. They are feasting happily on tropical fruits: tamarinds, mangoes, mameys, sour oranges, gingo leaves.

“Hombre,” Very Useful is saying to Diego, “could you have been more of a bruto earlier on with Sofia? Are men in your country not familiar with the rules of courtship? How one is to approach a young girl? One does not storm the castle like a bull inside a church, trampling over altar, chalice and cross. What on earth am I to do with you, my boy?” Very Useful rolls his eyes, slaps his forehead once, twice with his fist.

Diego would like to respond, would like to say he made amends to Sofia for his shoddy behaviour in the end, but he thinks better of it and says nothing at all. Some things, he knows, are best kept to oneself and besides, he cannot be sure his assessment is correct. Only eyes met, after all, no actual words had been exchanged.

In the two months since Diego’s arrival in the Yucatán, Very Useful has made it his business to take the young Spaniard under his wing. “El patrón can show you all there is to know about birds, mammals and things of the like but Very Useful, mi’jo, Very Useful is here to show you how to extract the marrow from the very bones of life.”

He said this to Diego on that very first day in Mérida, after they had watched the promenading of the young people around the Plaza Mayor and after Very Useful had declared that enough was enough, this was a thing for dandies. They were not flowers but men, virile, strong, as feos y fuertes as the best of them and it was time to move on, to the barrio del Maine where women of a certain reputation were waiting to be bought. Once there, Very Useful had purchased a whore’s time for Diego’s edification and for his own sanity as well. “Listen,” he told him, “I have served one monk well for the last decade but I am not prepared to dedicate myself to another one of your kind. Yes, mi amigo, serving another one will surely drive me writhing and screaming into the bowels of the monastery myself.”

And so it was that Diego had gone inside the ill-lit house with a young girl with large eyes and skin the colour of weak tea, skin that glistened with a fine powder made from ground eggshells that, up close, smelled of roses, cinnamon and the sea. Inside a small hot room with a rusty fan, the two had fumbled and groped and grunted for as long as it took, neither deriving any great pleasure from the exercise, both grateful when the thing had been consummated.

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