This is a book of wonders. Each story unfolds with humor and simplicity and perfect naturalness into something original and totally unpredictable. Not one tale is like another, yet all together they form a beautiful whole, a world where one would like to stay forever, the kingdoms of Borges and García Márquez lie just over the horizon, but this landscape of desert towns and dreaming hearts, of lost sisters and ghost scientists, canary singers and road readers, is Alcalá-land. It lies just across the border between Mexico and California, across the border between the living and the dead, across all borders – a true new world.

Ursula K. LeGuin

Kathleen Alcalá captures the essence of the magical realism in her work. Her stories convincingly move the reader from one reality to the other. Kathleen's craft illuminates the souls of her characters: the Mexican women who carry the universe in their hearts. The relationships of the women in the stories are finely wrought, and it is in the relationships that the women find the complex richness of their lives.

Not since Ron Arias' The Road to Tamazunchale have I been so captivated by the story and style. I am sure Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist will stand the test of time. A most welcomed contribution to the world of literature, especially that stamped with the magic of Mexico.

Rudolfo Anaya

Kathleen Alcalá has written a superb collection. Gentle and lyrical, her stories open onto lives and legacies we cannot afford not to know.

Charles Johnson, Author of Middle Passage

CALYX, PO BOX B, Corvallis, OR 97339

Phone: 541-753-9384

Toll free 1-888-336-2665

FAX 541-753-0515

info@calyxpress.org

The publication of this book was supported with grants from the national Endowment of the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the King County Arts Commission.

© Copyright 1992 by Kathleen J. Alcalá

No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher except in reviews or critical writing.

Cover art, Nuestra Señora de la Selva, by Alfred Arreguín

Cover design by Carol Sawtelle and Cheryl McLean

eBook: http://www.marciabreece.com

CALYX Books are distributed to the trade through major library distributors, jobbers, and most small press distributors. For more information contact CALYX at http://www.calyxpress.org/books.html

Library of Congress Cataloging–in-Publication Data

Alcalá, Kathleen J.

Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist/Kathleen J. Alcalá

p. cm.

print ISBN: 0-934971-26-9 – ISBN 0-934971-25-0

eBook ISBN: 978-0-934971-98-0

Mexican American women – Fiction. 2. Women – Mexico – Fiction. I. Title.

PS3551.L287M77 1992

813'.54 – dc20 92-4469

CIP

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the King County Arts Commission, the Cottages at Hedgebrook and Artist Trust for enabling her to complete this project. She also acknowledges the following publications in which some of these stories were previously published in slightly different form: Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist was originally published in The Seattle Review, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1985; Taking Inventory first appeared in The Daily, University of Washington, February 5, 1986; Amalia was first published in Women and Aging by Calyx Books, 1986; Reflection in the Eye of a Crow originally appeared in Black Ice, Vol. 3, 1987; The Fire of San Marcos first appeared in Chiricú, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1989; Sweetheart was originally published by Davis Publications, Inc. in Isaac Asimov's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 3, March 1991; Flora's Complaint first appeared in Magic Realism by Women - Dreams in a Minor Key in 1991, edited by Susanna J. Sturgis, published by The Crossing Press.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

The Transforming Eye

Sweetheart

Gypsy Lover

Reflection in the Eye of a Crow

Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist

The Fire of San Marcos

A Pearl in the Desert

Ghostwriting for the Archbishop

Reading the Road

The Canary Singer

Flora's Complaint

Taking Inventory

Amalia

La Esmeralda

PREFACE

There is a garden surrounded by a crumbling stucco wall where the flowers always bloom and the sound of running water is incessant. There is no time and all time. Cool shadows fall across the warmth of the courtyard, a later afternoon in late summer, a time for remembering. The people who wander through this garden — a bruja, an ugly young woman, and a woman as gracious to dead guests as live ones – find it is time to move on to another form of existence; for others, it is time to take control of the lives they have. Miracles flower in this neglected courtyard, and old women grapple with the devil or converse with angels. A priest seeks immortality through the smell of beauty, and the undertaker misses his own cue.

Like the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, I have tried to tell the stories my characters would tell if they were writers. Many of the stories concern the women who came of age in the United States within a Mexican social structure, surrounded by a pre-Columbian landscape and sensibility. I owe a special debt to Juan Rulfo, the Mexican writer who gave voice to the blood-soaked earth of the Mexican Revolution and gave portrayed a people who endure. "La Esmeralda," the final story, goes back a little farther in time to people already buffeted by the forces that will tear the country apart fifty years later.

These stories are about inner landscapes; they explore the invisible world behind the visible, and the characters who move in both worlds through the windows of dream and imagination.

This is the "interior" West that must accompany the exterior one, the cactus and gun smoke reflection in an obsidian mirror. When the reader looks in that mirror, I expect her to see a room not the room in which she stands, a hint of roses in the air, or is it copal? The sound of the ocean that must be a thousand miles away, a piano, and empty cradle… where is the pianist? Where is the baby? There are so many stories to tell….

THE TRANSFORMING EYE

There were Japanese fishing floats and a dried wreath of grape vines; Persian boxes with enameled gazelles on the lids, rubber stamps of business addresses, broken coffee mugs, dog leashes, and partially disassembled clocks. I could just see either a fur coat or a stuffed animal, several war medals, and some worn leather gloves in a corner; an aviator's cap, drafting tools, and a tied bundle of old fountain pens; tiny dolls with amazed expressions on their faces, accompanied by a straw man on a burro; a saddle with silver trimming, and four matching teacups and saucers. A dried porcupine fish hung from the ceiling, and several transparent, dried seahorses crumbled on the ledge in the late afternoon sunlight. Volumes of books with illegible titles, a lace collar, a scattering of hatpins, and a string of pearls spilled off of the shelf below the window.

Each item, I felt sure, had a reason for being there; each had a story of mystery and romance. "There," I thought, "is what's missing from Los Picos." The Transforming Eye, was lettered on the glass, and below that Fine Photography - a Gift to Last Forever in fancy gold script. It appeared to be more of an antique store than a photographer's studio. A symbol in gold, an eye peering between the legs of a camera tripod, completed the dusty window. Except for the light from the street, all was dark inside, and gave the illusion of a half-opened trunk discovered in an attic, filled with lost items from the past. The street remained empty, the shadows long, and I returned home accompanied only by my own footsteps.

♦ ♦ ♦

I came to Los Picos to help my grandmother to die. My ancient great-aunts, Doña Luisa and Doña Elvira, could no longer care for Abuelita Clara, my grandmother, who lay curled like a mummified doll in her giant mahogany bed. I was between jobs as a television production assistant when they invited me down. Who could refuse an all-expense paid summer in Mexico, even if it was in a small town?

My great-aunts, although well into their seventies, continued with their business of making fine linens. The two no longer did the find needlework themselves, but hired young women with keen eyesight and strong fingers. The hired women worked in a room which had originally been the parlor, and sometimes one or the other of my great-aunts would sit down at the monstrous sewing machine to hem a finished tablecloth if an order were running late. A renewed interest in fine, hand-made items had made my great-aunts well off, and they moved with the grace and assurance of the financially and socially secure.

I fed Abuelita and read to her in the mornings, then tried to feed her again at noon, coaxing a few warm noodles between her slack lips. Her dentures lay on the nightstand, unused. The room smelled of glycerin and rosewater, and the stale, sharp smell of old people. Sometimes a tear rolled down my grandmother's cheek, and I didn't know if it was the story I was reading or if she was thinking of something sad. We were said to resemble each other, with our high cheekbones and curly hair, and I watched her palsied hands and trembling lip as though contemplating my own future.

In the afternoons she slept, and I walked slowly up and down the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Los Picos, nodding to the shopkeepers, the flower vendor, and the young woman who cared for the children in the corner house. I saw the same people every day. On the Calle Benito Juarez, which ran all the way around the plaza, was a magazine stand that carried an English language paper; sometimes I read it. The news seemed strange and distant.

In the evenings, we wrapped my grandmother in shawls and carried her out to the front room, where the sewing machine stood in its canvas cover like a horse in its stall, and we sat and read or talked. We thought the change of scene might cheer Abuelita up, and it was easier to talk to her if there were others in the room who could answer. We propped her up in an overstuffed chair, and she stared at us with great brown owl eyes, magnified by her ill-fitting glasses.

"What did you do today?" asked Doña Luisa, rattling a sheaf of papers as she did her accounts for the day.

"I walked way down there," I said, mimicking my aunts in my exaggeration, "and way, way up a steep hill, so steep I thought I would fall off backwards."

"Oh!" said Doña Elvira. "How tiring! I don't like to walk up those hills."

"What was the name of the street you were on?" asked Luisa.

"I don't remember," I said. "I forgot to look. But there was some kind of a shop up there, like a photographer's shop. It was called The Transforming Eye."

"I don't know what that could be," said Luisa. "I haven't been up that way in ages."

"There used to be that crazy Dutchman," said Elvira. "He had an art studio, or something."

"Oh, him!" said Luisa, dismissing the idea with her hand. "He was always arguing with people and filling their heads with strange ideas... Hoove, or Noobes. They ran him out of Europe for being an anarchist or Mason or some such nonsense."

"He sounds interesting," I said.

"No, no. Well, maybe to you," said Luisa, "but he died a long time ago. There used to be people like that all over Mexico, in exile."

"Like Trotsky," said Elvira. "Did Noobes really die?"

"I suppose so," said Luisa. "Who's heard anything of him in ages? Anyway, he was just trouble."

"Too bad," said Elvira, "he was very handsome. He had his eye on your grandmother."

"Yes, but she would have none of it," added Luisa quickly. "She was already engaged to your grandfather."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yes, but enough of that," said Luisa. "Sometimes the past is best forgotten. It's time for bed."

I slept in an enclosed porch off of the parlor, surrounded by the spools of colored thread with which the women worked during the day. The vivid magentas and greens and golds seemed to embody the fantastic designs into which they would one day be transformed, and I could sense their glowing presence in the dark.

It rained every day for the next week; the deep gray clouds piled up and piled up until the mountaintops could hold them no longer, then sheets of rain would come crashing down on the town. Each day, the rain came as a relief, the temperature and humidity remaining high until the clouds burst. Our clothes stuck to us, and my aunts carried handkerchiefs soaked in perfume to dab at their brows as they worked. In the courtyard, the doves huddled and cooed, as though mourning their children which were just the right age to be baked into delicious little pies.

On Friday, the sky was white and opaque, but it did not rain. I went for my first walk in five days, heading east along the near edge of the plaza, then up into the streets on that side of town. The weather turned suddenly, and it began to rain in fat, wet drops. I headed for a worn green awning, and found myself back in front of The Transforming Eye. The front door stood open, so I stepped into the dark, woody-smelling interior.

The shop sagged with dust and neglect. Stacks of old photographs lay in the corners, dismembered frames, and old ends of cardboard. A counter stood opposite the door, but was piled so high with musty books and papers that it was obviously not used for business. A man bending over an old camera looked up at me. He had dark eyes and light, graying hair, and looked somewhere between forty and fifty years old.

"Hello," I said.

"Hello," he grunted, and bent back over the camera. I stood there for several moments before he looked back at me, as though surprised to see a real person in his shop.

"I just came in from the rain," I said, "and was enjoying the things in your shop. Some of them are very old."

"My father's things," he said.

"This is your father's shop?" I asked, and began thumbing through the stacks of old photos. The pictures were striking, and the people seemed very life-like in spite of their stiff poses and formal clothes. Beyond the photos were glass plates covered with dust.

"Was," he answered.

I walked further into the shop and found an area arranged for portraits. There were old hats, sprays of artificial flowers, and what looked like everybody's family Bible. Behind was a painted backdrop. It was in fantastic colors with a checkerboard floor in the foreground.

"This is beautiful!" I exclaimed.

The backdrop was Moorish in style, and showed an impossibly lush scene of bright trees and flowers, with mysterious red minarets in the background. Near the center, two lime-green parrots shared a hoop and touched bills affectionately, framed by a full moon. The black and white checkerboard pattern appeared to recede into the trees and buildings above it.

I made my way back to the front of the store and repeated myself: "The backdrop is very beautiful."

" Yes," he said, looking at me. "It came from the cargo of a Portuguese shipwreck. It is very old."

"It looks it," I said, then watched his deft hands as he worked on the camera. I found myself fascinated by his movements and his clothes. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, high-waisted trousers, and a vest with a gold chain dangling from the watch pocket. It had stopped raining outside, and was very bright in contrast to the gloomy interior of the shop.

"There," he said, standing back from the camera.

"Do you know how to use it?" I asked.

"My father taught me before I left. But it needs glass plates. It doesn't use film."

"I saw some glass back there," I said, "behind the counter."

He looked at me more carefully as I stood with my hand on the door, ready to leave. "Maybe I'll have the camera working by next week."

That evening I teased my great-aunts. "I found that crazy Dutchman."

"How could you?" asked Elvira. "He's long gone."

"Not really. It was his son. He was trying to fix an old camera. And there's a beautiful backdrop for picture-taking!"

"Really!" said Luisa. "Well, you be careful up there. His father was involved in sorcery, or some such trash. That's why his wife left him."

"Oh, I think I'll be all right," I said. "He doesn't seem to know much about his father's business, much less any sorcery."

Abuelita Clara's face contorted with pain or discomfort, so we carried her back to her room and laid her in the embrace of the great mahogany bed.

I dreamed that night about the backdrop. In it, dusty photos were piled on the checkerboard foreground, and the fountains were running with ice-blue water. When I awoke, it was raining again.

When a week and a day had passed, I returned to The Transforming Eye. The door was open, and a few cobwebs had been cleared away. The photographer was peering at the exotic backdrop through the lens of the old camera.

"I think it's working," he said, "but I'm having trouble adjusting the angle. It seems to slip. There are some prints I've developed," he said nodding to the counter. "I keep getting things in the frame that don't belong. I've cleared out some of this stuff, so that should help."

One print showed the backdrop with a stuffed pheasant in the foreground. Another showed a large plumed hat on a stone bench, as though left by a distracted lady to be picked up in a moment. I looked around the shop and saw neither of these objects.

"These are in black and white," I said, disappointed. "The colors of the backdrop don't show."

"No," he said, "but they can be colored by hand." He stooped and peered through the camera lens.

"Can you do that?"

"Yes," he said. "My father taught me the craft when I was little. I often colored his prints for him, although he never told the customers."

After another silence, he said, "Come sit over here. I need a human subject. That way I can tell if it really works or not."

I sat in a rickety chair before the backdrop, which glowed with jewel-like colors, while the photographer arranged the lights. When he told me to look up, I did, and sat very still while he exposed the plate.

During that time he said, "Your eyes are very lovely. They remind me of a woman my father used to know."

"I could feel my cheeks grow warm under the compliment, although I could not speak. The photographer looked younger than the first time I had seen him.

At last he said, "That's it. You're finished," and I jumped up, almost knocking the chair into the backdrop.

"Now," he said, smiling and placing a hand lightly on my shoulder, "come back next week and I'll have the photo ready. If it's good I'll even color it and give you the print."

"I would like that," I said. "It will give me something by which to remember Los Picos."

He laughed and said, "Why would anyone want to remember Los Picos?"

I smiled and said goodbye. Passing the open door, I noticed that it said in small gold letters, Hiram Noobes & Son." My feet flew down the cobblestone streets as I tried to escape the afternoon rainstorm, but I still returned to my aunt's house slightly damp.

"I just had my picture taken," I announced gaily to Elvira when she opened the door for me.

She looked at me slowly and said, "By whom?"

"By Hiram Noobes' son, the photographer."

At the mention of that name, Elvira and Luisa, who had entered the front hall to see who was at the door, stopped where they were.

"You must not go there anymore!" said Luisa finally.

"But why?" I asked, confused by their reaction. I thought they might be pleased by an old-fashioned photograph.

"Some of his father's friends disappeared. No one knows what happened to them," said Luisa.

"Well, you said he was an anarchist," I answered. "Maybe they went to start revolutions in other countries. I don't understand why you're so upset."

"A photograph can possess a person's soul," said Elvira quietly.

I almost burst out laughing. "No one believes that except a few old Indians in the hills!"

"That's enough!" said Luisa, so I went to get my grandmother ready for dinner. I felt sorry for myself, young in a house full of old women, and thought it was just as well that I would be returning to California soon to start a new project.

Dinner was very quiet that night. No one had much of an appetite, and we all retired early to our rooms. My aunts' stories had made me all the more curious about the handsome photographer, but at the same time, I felt that it was time to leave. I tried to book an earlier flight out of Guadalajara the next day, but the airlines couldn't accommodate me. I fed breadcrumbs to the doves in the courtyard and shared their mournful mood.

I decided to confide in my grandmother. Although she no longer spoke, I thought that she might have some sympathy. For all I knew, she might have been prevented from marrying Noobes by custom and family politics. As I spoke, her eyes grew rounder and rounder behind her thick glasses.

Finally, she pulled me towards her with a claw-like hand and rasped, with great effort, "Go back. Go back to Los Angeles."

Tears started to my eyes. She, too, had grown tired of me. I ran from her room and spent the rest of the afternoon locked in the little enclosed porch, looking through a book which I had no heart to read.

When I returned to The Transforming Eye, I hurried inside, more anxious to see him than I had realized. The photographer was not there. I paced about nervously, thinking that he must have stepped out for a moment, since the door had been left ajar.

Several new prints lay on a corner of the worn marble counter. They showed a serious young woman holding a bowl of pomegranates in her lap. One of the prints had been tinted. I admired the life-like quality of the photos, until I realized that the woman in the picture was me. The stiff pose and the artificial coloring made me look like someone I recognized, but not like me.

What was even more puzzling was that I had not been holding a bowl of pomegranates when the portrait was taken. He must have drawn it in, although the bowl appeared in all six prints, and he would have had to redraw my hands to make the change.

Impatient, I stepped back into the portrait area to see if the photographer was there. The lights were on, and the backdrop glowed enticingly. On the stone bench in the scene was a wooden bowl full of deliciously red pomegranates. They looked so real that I couldn't restrain myself from reaching to pick one up. The leathery skin and prickly end felt as real to me as any fruit I had ever touched. I turned with the pomegranate in my hand and saw that I stood on the black and white tiles, the bright trees trailing their branches over my head. The photographer's studio appeared vague and dim, as though seen through a gauze curtain. I was inside the backdrop. When I tried to step out, I was restrained by an invisible barrier, which gave slightly and sprang back at my touch.

Convinced that this was some sort of illusion, I sat down on the stone bench and resolved not to panic. I would wait for the photographer to return, enjoy his prank, and free me. Maybe then he would take me out to lunch.

In time, the photographer returned, looking as distant and self-absorbed as ever, and didn't seem to notice that anything was different. He acted as though he didn't see me.

"Hey!" I said finally. "Noobes! Are you through? I'm getting bored in here." And I tried to laugh. He still didn't seem to notice. "Hey!" I yelled, beating my hands against the invisible restraint. "Let me out now!"

Noobes sat by the front window sorting tools. He checked his pocket watch once, then returned to turn off the lights. When he did, it became night in the backdrop.

"No!" I screamed. "Don't leave me here!"

I heard the door shut and lock.

I screamed and clawed at the barrier until I was hoarse and my hands raw and bleeding, but I could not cut my way out. Tears coursed down my face and neck, but I didn't stop to wipe them away until much later. Exhausted, I sank back onto the cold tiles, still sobbing. When I was finally silent, I realized that I could hear the fountain splashing, and a faint breeze stirred the palm trees, bringing the scent of night-blooming jasmine.