Note: Maya Legend adapted from Robert Laughlin’s Of Cabbages and Kings.
His Eyes Full of Darkness
Whose truth do I tell when I speak the words of another?
-Anonymous
Once there was a Chamulan whose wife died. His wife was a very good person. The man cried and cried. He wept over his wife. When All Souls’ Day arrived the woman came in, came walking into the house. “Are you here?” she asked. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m not doing anything,” said the man. Then they chatted for a little while. He left the woman sitting inside the house. The man went outside. He was scared, because he was alone. For a moment the man couldn’t see. When he looked again, there she was sitting beside him. “I’m going. Are you still here? I’m going visiting. It’s all right. You stay!” said the man. He didn’t want to talk very much, because he realized that his wife was dead. His wife was dead, but she had been sold to the Earth Lord. The man cleared out. The woman went crying along the trail. She came another time. She was just like a real woman.
“Where are you going?” asked the woman.
“I’m not going anywhere. Is it true that you were sold to the Earth Lord? Because I miss you very much, because I’m going to go see you there where you have been sold,” said the man.
“Ah, go see me, then, I can’t say anything myself. Speak to the Earth Lord. Enter the cave here!” said the woman. Then the woman vanished. The man went. He entered the cave. He met another man on the way. He continued. He passed on by.
“Go talk to the Earth Lord. It’s whatever he himself says,” the other man said. The husband continued. He arrived and spoke to the Earth Lord. It seemed as if there was sunlight there, but who knows where it was. The man was startled. He was panic-stricken.
“How can I get out of here?”
“What did you come looking for? You should have just talked to me up above,” said the Earth Lord. He let him go, but the man went mad. He went crazy. The man is still alive. Now he is fine.
Juanca stopped reciting and shrugged, glancing almost guiltily at the hk’opohel riosh, the little picture of San Judas Tadeo that sat in a box on the altar in his house. He knew it was not good of him to feel as passionately about this story as he did; no good would come of it, and if he spoke his mind to the gringos making the film, he would only cause trouble. But nevertheless he did feel passionately about it, and he had no family to talk to, and he could not drink posh or even something weaker because he could not risk being drunk when the gringos came by later. If he did not talk this through, he felt certain his mind would explode out of him in a tirade during the day; so here, in the comfort and solitude of his home, he talked to his saint.
“You know that that is the story as my father told it to me,” Juanca said almost accusingly, as though the saint had asked him what cause he had for reciting the story. “That is how it really is, and how it always has been! It is absurd, what they ask me here.”
He cast a dark look at a sheaf of papers on the dirt floor beside him. The gringo filmmakers had sent someone to deliver those papers yesterday—his scene that was being shot today. Juanca snorted to himself; the papers were in English, and had been delivered to his house the day before the shooting, clearly showing how little the gringos knew about how things worked in the rural mountains around Zinacantán. They were fortunate indeed that they were working with Juanca, who knew the gringo ways and was willing to accommodate them.
But it was the contents of the delivered script that had outraged Juanca. After he had re-acclimated himself to reading English, something he hadn’t done since his days at the American university, Juanca had read through the scene carefully. He knew the gringos were making some sort of adventure film. When they first contacted him, a minor representative of the film had come and sprayed a number of buzzwords at him—exotic action, cultural flyby, humanitarian bent—but the word that had stuck in Juanca’s mind was authenticity, which had given him hope; but as he had read the scene, his hope had turned to dismay. It would have been better if he had not recognized the story.
“Of course, you do not understand English, San Judas, and I am too tired to translate to Tzotzil or Spanish,” Juanca said to the saint, “but you should know that it is not true what their story says, not authentic at all. And I must read it for them?”
San Judas maintained his irritatingly placid stare, and Juanca’s temper cooled to a sort of grumpy broodiness. “And I was good to them, too,” he muttered. “I was helpful, and I did not cause trouble. Even when they said in my authentic role I must not wear Indian clothes, I was helpful to them.” That still rankled a little with Juanca; the gringo who had come to his house had taken one look at the colorful Indian outfit and told Juanca that it was just too loud, and that it would distract from the essence of the film. Juanca, who had an idea of the similarities between the terms loud and tasteless, had almost been offended; but he decided San Judas didn’t need to know the particulars of the gringo’s description. Grudgingly, he admitted, “Not wearing the clothes, that’s not so inauthentic, since many Indians nowadays no longer wear the old clothes. But it is still very gringo that they want what is authentic, but not what doesn’t suit them. But I was still good,” he added, as if San Judas had been about to rebuke him for his passions. “I nodded to them, and I got out my Ladino clothes. See, today I am wearing the clothes I bought in Zinacantán. I have been very good.”
But Juanca didn’t think he was being so good, because if he was honest with himself, he was still angry at the way the script had changed the story his father had told him. He knew how they thought; they needed the story to make sense to gringo audiences, their work had been to “flesh it out” for “modern audiences”—the catch phrases and buzzwords came easily to him from his half-forgotten years studying among the gringos. He had learned their ways as best he could, but he knew better than to try to really explain gringos to his fellow Indians. Apparently, the gringos hadn’t learned the same lesson.
The sound of an engine from outside roused Juanca from his thoughts, then from his seat. He snapped the box closed on San Judas (who was still watching him with that annoying placidity) and waited to respond to the gringo’s greeting. But instead of a spoken greeting, there was a rapping at his door. Of course there was.
Juanca opened his door to find a young gringo he had never seen before standing on his doorstep, anxiously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The boy was pale and blonde, no older than twenty, and looked as nervous as a sheep in a storm. For the pure mischievous fun of it, Juanca said in Tzotzil, “You’ve come.”
The gringo boy seemed to freeze up for a moment, near panic in his eye. Then, with as much courage as he could muster, he threw his dice: “Hola. ¿Usted…hablas Inglés?”
Juanca didn’t laugh, though he knew his eye must have been twinkling, but the joke was over. Adopting the gringo way, he met the boy’s eye, smiled, and extended his hand. “I speak English. Welcome.”
The boy seemed to melt with relief. “Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed, clasping Juanca’s hand and shaking vigorously. “They gave me GPS coordinates, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get close enough and then I wouldn’t understand anything anyone was saying, and it would take me years to find… Wait, you are Juan Carlos, right?”
Juan Carlos. It was telling that Juanca’s neighbors had told the gringos to look for Juan Carlos, just as it was telling that the gringos had been directed to Juanca at all. The filmmakers had told him that, when they had asked around for an Indian to participate in their film, all they had heard in reply was, “Talk to Juan Carlos,” “Juan Carlos will help you.” Juanca’s face remained still, but inside he smiled wryly and bitterly. Even all these years after his return to the community, Juanca was the one commonly associated with outsiders. And outsiders would be sent to him under his Spanish name, Juan Carlos, and not by his Indian name, Shun Kalos Mentira. In his mind, Juanca could hear San Judas telling him about returning home again.
But the gringos didn’t know any of these Indian matters, and there was no reason for them to learn. So Juanca kept his pleasant smile, nodded, and told the boy his familiar Spanish name: “People call me Juanca.”
“Wonka. Okay. I’m Avery, I’m Mr. Wilson’s intern—Mr. Wilson, that’s the director. It’s nice to meet you, Wonka.”
It wasn’t worth correcting his pronunciation. Juanca stepped back, implicitly inviting Avery into his house, but the invitation was clearly lost on the young gringo, who continued shifting from one foot to the other and prattled on. “Uh, well, like I said, I’m Mr. Wilson’s intern…I don’t know if you know what an intern… Anyway, I’m with the film crew for Mexican Dust—that’s the film, you know, the movie—and they sent me up here to tell you that we’re shooting your scene today, and so you need to come back with me, so we can shoot your scene, like now, so…yeah…”
Having run out of thoughts some time ago, the boy had finally run out of words. Juanca waited for Avery to lead the way back to his vehicle, but he seemed to be waiting for some sort of cue from Juanca, so Juanca stepped out of his house and closed the door behind him.
“Cool,” said the boy. “So, you’re all ready, then? Already ready? D’you need your script.”
“I am ready,” Juanca replied.
The boy hesitated, but then said, “Awesome. Come on, then.”
Avery’s vehicle was a shiny new all-terrain Jeep; Juanca guessed it was the most expensive vehicle that had been seen in his hamlet since the last time the army came through the area, but Avery seemed oblivious. “You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t talk a lot,” the boy chattered. “I’ve really got to…focus on the road here. Well, not the road…like, even the GPS doesn’t know roads around here. Google probably doesn’t know the roads around here. Am I going the right way? Will this take me to Zeena-can-tan?”
Juanca thought about the route they were taking; assuming the boy took a reasonable route from the current road, this was about the third fastest way Juanca knew to get to Zinacantán. “Yes,” he said, “this will take us to Zinacantán.”
“Great,” Avery said, “if we get there before ten we’ll even be early! That’s good, that’ll impress Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Wilson’s said he’s already impressed with me, so this’ll just be even better. It’s awesome to be working with Mr. Wilson—but then, I guess here in Mexico, you don’t know so much about Mr. Wilson, huh?”
Juanca said he didn’t, privately wondering whether this gringo always spilled his life story on whatever complete strangers happened to be in the vicinity.
“Aw, man, you’re missing out!” the boy jabbered happily. “William Wilson (everybody who talks about him calls him Billy, though) is, like, this generation’s Blake Edwards. Except less funny and more action-awesome-y. He’s somewhere between Stanley Kubrick and Michael Bay, but he’s got discipline and vision, man… The guy knows what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.”
Juanca privately, and a bit bitterly, agreed.
But Avery had noticed Juanca’s passivity and was apparently surprised by it. In somewhat sympathetic tones, the boy said, “You nervous, man? Yeah, I get that. Everybody gets nervous before they go on camera, and it’s a big deal to work with a guy like Mr. Wilson.”
Juanca didn’t comment.
“You’ll be fine, man,” Avery persisted. “Don’t even worry about it. I read the scene, it’s good stuff, the writing’ll help you. Just don’t look blank and you’ll be fine. Be, you know, kinda sad. The writing’ll help you; it’s a sad story.”
After a moment, Juanca said, “It is a sad story that you hear.”
“There you go, that’s the spirit,” Avery said cheerily, bobbing his head. “I’m telling you, man, Mr. Wilson’ll take care of you; the guy knows how to say what he wants to say.”
In Juanca’s mind, he heard the voice of San Judas speaking words Juanca’s father had told him: “A gringo or Ladino speaks, and then everyone stops to listen; but you must listen first before an Indian will speak.”
As their trip progressed, Avery continued to prattle tirelessly, and Juanca was content to let him continue. Now and then, Avery would throw out a personal question about Juanca; Juanca, when forced by protocol to answer at all, resorted to the age-old tactic of giving the most boring answers he could think of with as few details as possible. Eventually Avery seemed abandon all hope of striking up a dialogue with Juanca, after which he simply spent the rest of the voyage happily monologing on whatever thoughts crossed his mind.
Nearly an hour and a half later, as the sun was starting to get quite hot, Avery brought the truck down the mountain road on the north side of Zinacantán. “We’ll just barely be early,” he said. “That’s perfect; it’s impressive without wasting anybody’s time. Come on,” he said as he parked the car and got out (Juanca surreptitiously watched Avery open the car’s door to make sure he remembered how to do it). “I’ll take you to Mr. Wilson.”
They had stopped about half a mile outside of Zinacantán at what the Americans might call a trailer park, but what Juanca privately thought was a small and exceptionally busy village. Everywhere Juanca looked, people—gringos mostly, though some locals had been hired to help—were bustling about with the most outrageous urgency. Juanca, of course, was well-acquainted with this sort of hustle from his years in the north. Even so, being thrown back into the thick of the hurry after all these years of rote subsistence made Juanca feel as though he were a mouse in a busy street, or a tree in the path of an avalanche. Despite his best efforts to remain as blank and impassive as possible, he felt sure he looked as he felt—too small to be allowed.
But if something in Juanca’s posture or demeanor changed, Avery gave no sign that he noticed. Still chattering aimlessly (now listing the functions of the different people and trailers around them), he parked the jeep, clambered out, and began to lead Juanca deeper into the area. Though Juanca tried to remain attentive to his guide’s words, he felt overwhelmed by the bustle around him and so passed into a somewhat dazed plod, following blindly as Avery led. In his mind, San Judas observed that it didn’t really matter where he was going anyway; he was supposed to follow Avery, and that was all he needed to know.
After a minute or so of weaving through the activity, Avery paused next to a man with the bearing of authority; Juanca absently guessed that this was the Mr. Wilson that Avery had described earlier. The man was short for a gringo, not much taller than Juanca himself, but this man wore his grey jacket as though he had been given it at his baptism and it had grown with him ever since. The man was talking earnestly to a gringa woman. Juanca absently glanced at her figure, and he felt a twinge of ironic amusement. All the wealth in the world, and the gringos choose to starve their women.
“Remember, authenticity, Brittany,” said the short authoritative man with a hint of exasperation. “Your character would feel out-of-place, probably even a bit frightened. You’re in a different country! Don’t you feel a bit nervous?”
“Not here,” said the woman called Brittany. “I mean, here it’s hardly even another country, is it? But even not here, when I do feel that it’s foreign, I just don’t think that that’s a good thing. I mean with the trailers, you know, and outside the trailers. It’s like America. Anyway, you know, I just think… How will we ever stop being foreign in real life if we try to act foreign in movies?”
After a moment’s consideration, Juanca realized that her thoughts were in the wrong order, and he wondered if they arrived that way or if she mixed them up after she’d first thought them.
The director, who seemed to be more accustomed to the woman’s idiom, said, “We’re not activists, Brittany. My vision is to show what’s here, not what we wish were here. Look, just…just try not to act like it’s a vacation. Your character is not on vacation, she’s running for her life. Remember, you’re on somebody else’s terrain; you should be a bit nervous, a bit suspicious, maybe even overawed by the strangeness of it all.”
Juanca kept his face still.
Detecting a lull in the conversation, Avery raised his voice. “Mr. Wilson? I brought Wonka.”
The director turned toward Avery, blinking uncomprehendingly. “What? What’s a Wonka? Oh!” he said as he spied Juanca. “This is the Ind—Native American, then? Juan Carlos, I think?”
Confronted with obvious authority, Juanca almost bowed, but he caught himself in time and extended a hand (albeit shakily) toward the director. “Señor, I am Juanca,” he said.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” said the director, shaking the proffered hand more vigorously than Juanca was entirely comfortable with. “I’m the director of this film, so I’ll be working with you today on the shoot. The people who contacted you initially should have given you a script, I think?”
Juanca felt sure he flushed a little, even though he knew his role. “I am ready,” he said.
The director hesitated, then shrugged. “Fair enough; we’ll have spare scripts on site in case we need them anyway. Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the introductions over with as quickly as possible. I guess you won’t really need costuming…is that what Ind—your people actually wear?”
Juanca fought the agreement even as he voiced it: “Yes, Señor.”
“Sounds good. So, I guess the only people you really need to know are…you’ve met me, you’ve met Avery… So this is Brittany Price, our lovely leading lady…”
The waifish gringa woman stepped forward, smiling brilliantly. “Oh, it’s wonderful to meet you.”
Juanca forced himself to ignore his habits and go through the motions of the gringo salutation with the woman; he had forgotten how persistently taxing it was to completely suppress his own cultural habits, even if he knew which habits were supposed to replace them. But he must have pulled it off decently, for as the introduction concluded nobody seemed offended.
“And somewhere around here,” the director said, continuing his introductions, “is Nico…”
“Did somebody call for me?” The spoken English was accented with a slightly exaggerated Mexican flair; and as Juanca saw when he turned to look, the speaker was styled with an identically cliché flair. The young man, no older than twenty-five, was a Ladino; and to use an English idiom, he was working it. His black hair was long, damp-looking, and meticulously arranged in a well-thought-out impersonation of carelessness. A perfectly-groomed pencil mustache adorned the youth’s upper lip. From the build of his face, and from the undisguised irony in the glance he threw at Juanca, the Indian realized that this youth truly was a Ladino, a real Mexican. But he didn’t look like one; he looked like an idealized Mexican in an American movie, and both he and Juanca knew it.
“There you are, Nico,” the director remarked as though it was still news. “Call was almost an hour ago. Long night?”
“Not the part I remember of it,” the Ladino said smoothly, and a little sarcastically. “Who’s the Indian?”
“Keep it civil,” the director said warningly. Juanca almost smiled at this naïve…heroism.
The Ladino called Nico glanced at the director, then returned his gaze to Juanca. “I’m sorry, I meant no offense. I am Nico Infante.”
His hand surged forward, an offer of a handshake that was both salutation and challenge. Juanca shook the proffered hand, but as meekly as possible; the rituals must be completed, but he had no interest in challenges. As the Ladino leaned back from the greeting, his face bore a little smirk as though his suspicions had been confirmed.
Oblivious, the director resumed talking officiously. “Right, that’s the meet-and-greet done. Mr. Carlos, if it’s all the same to you, we can do the whole contract dance later; we’re supposed to have clear skies only until mid afternoon, and we’ve got a long drive to the shooting site, so I’d rather get moving as soon as possible. Does that sound alright?”
Juanca’s English was good, but the barrage of idioms and jargon in that sentence had left him at a loss for what most of it meant. “Yes, Señor, thank you.”
Nico the Ladino released a single tiny puff of a laugh; none of the gringos paid any heed.
The director continued, “Good. I’ll assume you all know the scene, so let’s talk about shooting schedule. We’ll be shooting the story narration part first—so, from your line about how people everywhere are the same, Brittany. I’d like to get that in one take if possible; I know it sounds ambitious, but I think that’s going to be the best. After the rest…well, to be honest, I haven’t decided on a detailed schedule of the shots, so Avery and I will work on that on the way over. Meanwhile, just know we’ll be shooting the story thing first, so if you need to study any lines on the ride over…” He was looking pointedly at Juanca, who did not meet his gaze, but did not reply either. “Okay, we’ll work it all out in the end. Anybody have anything they want to talk about for that scene? Questions, comments, concerns?”
Juanca felt as though San Judas was prodding him in the back, telling him to speak, and he suddenly found that he had raised his eyes and was looking directly at the director. He was fighting himself, straining both to speak his mind and to hold his tongue. From the corner of his eye, he realized that Nico the Ladino was watching him closely. Juanca dropped his gaze back toward the ground.
“Nobody? Okay, then,” said the director. “Everybody get together whatever you need, find your rides—Nico and Brittany, if you could show Mr. Carlos where he needs to go—and we’ll be on our way. Avery, you’re with me. The rest of you, I’ll see you all in a few hours, a hundred miles from nowhere.”
* * *
For nearly two and a half hours, the jeep and its four occupants—Juanca, the gringa Brittany, the Ladino Nico, and a gringo driver—had bounced and jostled along decrepit mountain roads. When the three actors had first climbed into the jeep, it had been Nico who had orchestrated the seating arrangements. He had been clever about it too, deciding where Brittany would sit by politely holding the front passenger door open for her. Juanca had seen how Brittany had interpreted this as a simple act of gallantry, and how Nico had played it off as such to her; but Juanca also saw the smugness of his expression as he climbed into the back of the jeep beside Juanca, and they both knew that Nico’s intention the entire time had been to isolate Juanca.
What could the Ladino possibly want to say to the Indian? Juanca had no idea, but he readied himself to be aggressively impassive if necessary. Yet the ride droned on and on without a single word from Nico. And two hours later, the jeep was still bouncing, Juanca was still staring at his knees, and Nico was still absently watching the terrain go by.
Then, at last, Nico broke the silence. “You’ve done a good job with it, Indian,” he said in Spanish. Juanca guessed that neither of the gringos in the front seats could speak Spanish, and that Nico probably already knew that. Juanca waited for Nico to elaborate, to explain what he meant by “it,” but the Ladino said nothing; he simply looked intently and expectantly at Juanca.
“Thank you,” said Juanca at last, in Spanish.
A broad, easy smile flashed across Nico’s face. “There, you see? We make progress!” He chuckled. “Tell me, what is it that you really think of this film that we’re making?”
“It is a good film.”
“Yes, that is what you would say, but you should know that won’t work on me. The gringos will believe what you say—that’s what gringos do—but I know what the gringos do not: I know how to talk to Indians.”
Juanca knew very well that this was exactly the sort of thing that it’s best not to answer.
The Ladino continued, “Yes, Indians are like possums. If you show them power or danger, they will fall over, play dead, and offer no resistance as you do whatever you want; but as soon as you are gone, up they will stand and do exactly as they did before.”
Almost on principle, Juanca was offended even as he kept his demeanor still. And yet…
Nico persisted, “But even a possum will not lie still forever; and if you are patient enough and clever enough, look! You can bring the Indian back to life.”
Nico fell silent, looking intently at Juanca again. In the corner of the Indian’s mind, San Judas was whispering that, somehow, this conversation was a trap, that listening to this Ladino would only bring trouble. Juanca kept himself silent; but in his lap, his hands fidgeted.
Nico smiled, gave another puff of humor, and leaned back in his seat. “I know you are not happy with the film, Indian. I was watching for it. You do not like our director’s authenticity?” The Ladino laughed out loud.
Juanca borrowed from Avery’s words, saying quietly “The director knows what he wants to say.”
Nico laughed all the harder. “Ha! The director speaks as he wishes to speak, and he knows what he likes, but he uses the right word for the wrong meaning. He is true to the world in his head, but only so much of the world can fit in one head.” He chuckled.
“It is a big world,” Juanca said.
“So it is,” Nico agreed, “and it is full of voices. My father used to tell me that where many voices speak, many truths may be heard. But what happens when one voice speaks through many mouths? And what if that one voice speaks lies, yes? What then?”
“That would be many times a lie.”
“Many times a lie,” Nico repeated. “Ever too true. And a lie told in innocence is a lie yet, no?”
Juanca said that it was, though in his mind he noted that, likewise, a liar in innocence is nonetheless innocent.
Nico sighed. “Liars all, aren’t we, then? And those of us who see it, we are all the more to blame. Why do we not state the truth when we know it? Or at least, why do we not show the lie when we find it?”
Juanca fell silent again. Nico leaned forward. “I’m talking to you, Indian, about you. I was born and raised in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, I’ve known Indians as long as I’ve been alive. I know that you’ve not always been an Indian—you were something else for a while, when you learned English. And I know that story, the one they butchered, just as well as you know it. But I don’t care about the story. You do. That, too, I know.”
Juanca kept his silence for a long time, but the Ladino stared hard at him. At last, Juanca said, “It…is a good story.”
“You mean it was a good story,” Nico retorted relentlessly. “It was taken by people who could not see what it was, and they changed it until it lost what they never knew it had. They didn’t know any better! Who is to blame?” Juanca had no answer. “You! If you care, why do you not say so? I can see it because I know better than your tricks; I know how to talk to Indians. Must everyone learn to accommodate you, everyone else learn to read you in order for you and your people to have meaning?”
Juanca, for the first time, looked the Ladino in the eyes and knew that he was wrong. What good were his solutions when, despite his assertions, even he did not understand? Even accommodation, as he called it, could not convey true meanings!
But aloud, he said, “If we accommodate you and you accommodate us, this is peaceful and brings no trouble.”
Nico let out a long sigh; for the first time, he sounded tired instead of sarcastic. “How long, Indian, must I spit in your face before you will at least wipe yourself off? You wonder why so many Ladinos think ill of you? Look at you! It burns you, this mangling of your people’s culture, yet all you can say is, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ What does it mean to be an Indian if you will not stand and defend it? What does it mean, tlacuache?”
Juanca looked up, looked the Ladino in the eye one more time, and did not answer.
* * *
When at last they arrived at the site to shoot the scene, Juanca saw many things about the situation that were wrong. Why would an Indian be here in the middle of nowhere, far from any fertile land? Why would a scene of storytelling take place outside in the heat of the day? And what sort of Indian would speak so openly, so broadly, and at such great length to strangers, particularly to a gringa and a Ladino? As the inconsistencies and inaccuracies assaulted him, San Judas seemed to say to him, But see how you are good! Even as you were in the car with the Ladino, you were pliant but strong, like a reed in the wind; you were accommodating in word but strong in spirit; you were…
…a tlacuache. A possum.
You are good!
And yet he felt defeated.
But once again, his spirit did not seem to show through his face, for the gringos around him seemed chipper and business-like as they ushered him about, fiddled with their machines, and dodged streams upon streams of orders from the director. It all passed in a haze for Juanca, though he did not know if this time he was overwhelmed by the turmoil outside himself, or inside. The gringa with the jumbled thoughts came up to him and tried to begin a conversation; but Juanca’s thoughts were jumbled enough already, and after she failed to get an active response from him, she left him alone.
At last, the bustling died down somewhat. Juanca found himself seated on a rock facing the gringa and the Ladino. At least four cameras had been aimed at them, lighting reflections were in place, and microphones stood at the ready. The gringa had a look of concentration on her face, and her lips moved as though she was rehearsing her lines to herself. The Ladino simply regarded Juanca with a mixed look of irony and…what might have been pity.
Suddenly, from off near the director’s chair, Juanca heard Avery’s voice: “Picture is up! Quiet everyone!” When quiet fell, he called, “Roll sound.”
“Sound speed,” someone answered.
“Roll cameras.”
“Speed one.”
“Speed two.”
“Speed three.”
“Speed four.”
Someone called out, “Marker.” and there was a snap.
Then the director’s voice: “Action!”
Juanca tried to reign in his mind. The sequence had been explained to him before. He knew what was happening. He knew it was time.
The first line was Brittany’s: “Jaime, I was a cultural journalist before I became a professor; I’ve been everywhere, I’ve seen everything. All cultures are different; but at the end of the day, they are all the same. Why can’t we just learn to understand one another?” Just as scripted.
Then it was Nico’s turn, in his over-the-top teasing exasperation: “Deep questions again, Annie! I’m a simple man; I shoot things, I get paid. What do you want from me?” As scripted.
And now Juanca’s turn, after an appropriate pause: “It is not as simple a thing, Señora, to say that one thing is another. Some things can never be equal, for no two children will live the same life. Some things cannot happen twice, for no two sunsets will look the same. Some things can be said once, and never said again.” As scripted.
Now Brittany: “You mean, like a language difference, that not all languages have the same words?” As scripted.
And Juanca again, shaking his head: “It is deeper, far deeper than that.” As scripted.
And then the unscripted happened. From nowhere, and based on no instruction from the script or the director, Nico produced a pack of cigarettes, removed one, and offered it to Juanca.
Juanca looked at the cigarette, then for the third time he met the Ladino’s gaze directly. They had both read the script, and they both knew that Nico’s character did not smoke, nor was anyone else in the script said to smoke. The cigarettes were something Nico had brought himself, the barest taste of authenticity in a glimpse of the old ways, the greeting gift of a cigarette. The cigarette was not in the script, nor was it in the minds of any of the gringos who owned this film; the cigarette was in Nico’s hands, and in his eyes was one more look of sarcastic irony.
It was a dare, a final challenge. There, sitting before him in the hands of a Ladino, was defiance for the sake of the old ways, the contradiction he yearned for like a widower for his wife, who would wish to cheat death and destroy the order of the universe if it would only regain him his woman. How Juanca managed to keep his self-discipline, he would never know. Every muscle in his body and every thought in his mind yearned to reach forward and take that cigarette, take that challenge. Instead, he began to speak:
We Indians tell the story of an Indian man who loved his wife very, very dearly. He was a good man, and she was a good woman, and they were happy. But one day, the man returned home to find that his wife had died. He did not know why this had happened, and his grief consumed him, and he cried for days over his wife’s death.
But when All Soul’s Day arrived, his wife returned to him as a spirit, and she said to her husband, “What are you doing?” And he answered, “I am yet here.” And they spoke together for a while, but after a time the husband excused himself. He sorely missed his wife, but he knew that she was gone from the world of the living, gone from his world. Though he spoke to her, and though she seemed before him as she had in life, he knew that she was not truly his; for she had been given to the Lord of the Underworld, and even though she might now walk among the living, she belonged to that which had passed.
Seeing her husband’s distress, the wife left him for that night, though her heart broke to do it. She returned the next day and greeted her husband again.
Said the man, “Tell me how to find the Lord of the Underworld, for my grief is too great to bear. I will go see you in the Underworld, for I cannot bear to be away from you.”
And his wife answered him, “It is not mine to say what may or may not happen in the Underworld; but if you would speak to the Lord, I will show you the cave you must enter.”
So she showed him the cave that lead below the earth, and then she left him. The husband entered the darkness and followed the path to the Underworld, until at last he found himself in a sunny place and he did not know how he got there.
But there he found the Lord of the Underworld, and he said to the Lord, “Where is my wife that I may take her with me away from this place?”
But the Lord of the Underworld told him, “You will never find that which you seek, for though worlds may brush against one another, they can never truly mingle. Though you may see your wife before you, and hear her voice, she is not of your world, and you can never truly find her or take her back. Things cannot truly pass from world to world without being changed, and you may destroy what you steal away in order to save. I have told you now what many spend their lives failing to learn; be heartened as you return to your world.”
But the man only returned to his own world because there was nothing else he could do, and his heart was filled with loss and the madness of grief.
As scripted.
Context
This is another short story from my college days — possibly the last such story I’ll dedicate an entire post to — but I really did want to put this one up because, of all the short stories I’ve ever written, this one might be my favorite. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In the autumn quarter of 2012, I took a cultural anthropology class called, “Legacies of Conquest in Latin America,” or something like that. My reasons for taking that class were purely pragmatic (the anthropology department is a gold mine for graduation requirements), but I nevertheless expected to enjoy and learn a lot from the class, and I was not disappointed. The curriculum focused on anthropological study of several different native Central and South American cultures; one such culture was the Tzotzil people from the mountainous south of Mexico.
Anthropology, in my experience, is a very unusual field of study which allows for a lot of flexibility in what it considers, “knowledge.” There is a sub-field called narrative anthropology which attempts to understand other cultures by telling stories the same way they do. Of course, I was immediately intrigued by this and wanted to try it for myself; so for my end-of-class project I asked the professor whether, instead of a research paper, I could write an anthropological short story. Why Professor Watanabe, an expert in Mesoamerican anthropology, allowed me to do that I’ll never know for sure. However, I think it was a fantastic pedagogical decision. I learned at least as much from writing that story as I would have from a research paper; and what’s more, I’ve retained what I learned to such an extent that now, nearly seven years later, I’m voluntarily posting it online.
Of course, there were stipulations on the story: it had to be about one of the cultures we had studied, it had to be of a certain minimum length, and it had to demonstrate an understanding of the culture with an emphasis on authenticity. This last word, authenticity, stuck in my mind. The more I learned about the Tzotzil people, the more it became clear to me how much I didn’t know, and I began to wonder, “Can I even do this?”
No. Of course I couldn’t. Real narrative anthropologists will spend years living amidst a culture before writing about it, and even their narratives are, by definition, works of interpretation. I ultimately concluded that, despite all efforts, no attempt to tell somebody else’s story can ever be truly authentic, and claims to authenticity are almost never more than a well-meaning vanity.
So the assignment, strictly speaking, was impossible; and that, surprisingly, is the realization that helped me start writing. I came up with a narrative I described as recursively ironic. “His Eyes Full of Darkness” actually contains a metaphor for itself: the movie being filmed tries and fails to transcribe authenticity, just as the containing story does. Thus, the central theme of “His Eyes Full of Darkness” is actually the irony and hypocrisy of its own existence. This theme is perhaps most explicitly distilled in the legend of the Chamulan.
In my anthropology class, we had read several Mayan myths and legends collected from oral histories by the likes of Robert Laughlin. When I first read these stories, I was immediately struck by how primitive they were — according to my definition of story. No arc, no flow, no character development, no resolution… They felt so lacking, flat, and empty. I wondered, given how many things these stories didn’t have, whether there were things they did have that I just wasn’t culturally equipped to see. I thought, “If I were to tell that story, I’d probably tell it differently. But then, would it be the same story?”
So that’s exactly what I did. In Of Cabbages and Kings, I found a native legend themed around loss, and I rewrote it to suit my own narrative tastes. I kept the core plot points and didn’t stray too far from the original words, but I added things. I insinuated motivations where none were specified in the original work. I reshaped the plot to resolve in tragedy, eschewing the original ending: “Now he is fine.” I’m certain culturally important elements were lost or corrupted by my rewrite; I may well have destroyed more authenticity than I preserved. In this particular case, that was alright. In fact, that was the point.
The rewritten legend echoes the theme and narrative of the containing short story, and for that reason it’s a fitting way to end the story. But it’s also fitting that the rewritten version is, at best, a destructive interpretation of the original Mayan legend. In this way, the legend itself serves as a metaphor for culture, embedded as it is within the film that serves as a metaphor for “His Eyes Full of Darkness.” The overarching story is thus composed of multiple layers of narrative and metaphor all telling and retelling the same tale — sometimes through words, and sometimes through the quintessential irony of their existence.
As a final note, for all the metaphors to work properly, I still had to try to be as authentic as possible even though I knew I could not fully succeed. Though the legend at the beginning is unquestionably the most authentic part of “His Eyes Full of Darkness,” many other elements are included because they truly belong in that culture and setting. The ethnic terms — gringo, Ladino, Indian — are included because those are the words (translated by researchers) used in that region. The greeting etiquette and similar details are taken directly from interviews and narratives recorded by anthropologists working in Chiapas. The native culture’s emphasis on passive compliance, which in the story Nico derides as possum-like, is especially interesting because it gives rise to the fundamental conundrum for Juanca: for a culture of passivity, the very act of self-defense is an act of self-destruction.
Again, though I did my best to be as authentic as possible, of course I misrepresented or misunderstood things. By definition I don’t know what I misunderstood, but the inevitability of misunderstanding is written into the metaphors that underlie the entire narrative. Maybe that’s what my professor wanted me to learn all along. But in case you’re wondering how well I succeeded — how authentic “His Eyes Full of Darkness” really is — Professor Watanabe graded the story personally. He gave it an A-, indicating that I made a good effort and mostly did quite well, though I did get a few things wrong.
As scripted.
–Murray