Medea did not acknowledge him and did not allow herself to be acknowledged. A very ancient wisdom in her person told her it was better not to. If Maxi wanted to acknowledge her, he would have to do it on his own. She would not lend herself to any emotional bribery. Such was the strength of her character that after the dreadful experiences of recent days, she extracted from herself, as if from those old abandoned mines whose only treasure is mystery, the silver that for so long had been thought exhausted.
Maxi heard. Maxi smelled. Maxi felt. At last Maxi saw. Medea waited eagerly for her son to sing. She did some useless things. She played a Cuco Sánchez record. She stirred up the canaries. She whistled the tango “Madreselva.” All in vain. Maxi stayed there, lying on the cot with two serapes covering him and the Picot Songbook as a pillow. A distant look and a closed mouth.
This was when Medea told herself that great evils demand great remedies.
She went to see the woman who managed a nearby restaurant to ask to borrow the wheelchair reserved for disabled patrons. Back in her house, she struggled to sit Maxi in the chair and pushed it out to the street.
She knew very well where she was headed.
She wagered her destiny and her son’s on the auspicious date of November 22, the day of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians.
She entered the Church of the Immaculate Conception. An entire wall was dedicated to the ex-votos expressing gratitude for miracles ranging from saving someone from an automobile accident to resurrection two days after death. Would Medea Batalla have the occasion to add her own ex-voto to the gallery? Would the Virgin return a mariachi’s voice to her son?
Mother and son reached the altar. Maximiliano seemed entranced and distant, as if being alive were miracle enough. Doña Medea hoped for the miracle. She didn’t take it for granted.
She knelt in front of the image of the Virgin dressed in blue with embroidered stars and the half-moon at her feet. It was a miracle-working image. People said it had brought back to life the daughter of an acrobat at the fair who fell from her chair and was run through the chest by stakes but was saved when the image of the Virgin appeared at the top of the Ferris wheel.
Now Medea asked for a new but lesser miracle: that the Virgin return his voice to her son. That Maxi sing again. That the mariachi not remain mute, with catastrophic consequences for everyone: the world, the nation, music, Maxi, and Mede.
Medea spoke to the Virgin by speaking to her son. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t love me, Maxi. Your real mother is the Virgin.”
And to the Virgin: “Mother of God, give my son’s voice back to him so he can praise you.”
And to Maximiliano: “Go on, Maxi, go on, don’t you see that Our Lady is asking you to do it? Don’t be stubborn!”
Then they say — you haven’t heard about it? — that the miracle happened. The Virgin extended her hand to Medea Batalla and gave her a bunch of tiny keys. “This is so you can enter my house, Medea.”
She took the keys, kissed them, placed them on Maxi’s lips, and said: “Go on, son. Sing. The Virgin has given you back your voice.”
But Maxi didn’t open his mouth. He only opened his eyes, still partly bewildered and partly absent. And yet the Virgin looked at him. Maxi did not look back. But Medea did. The mother looked at the Virgin as she would have liked her son to look at her. In that look, Medea brought together her entire life, her excessive loves, the joy of giving birth twenty-five years before, the relief of the snake’s rattle, the tiny tasks of washing other people’s clothes, the midsize ones of making pottery, the large ones of assisting women in the neighborhood to give birth. Everything assembled in that moment of the meeting of the Virgin and the son, son of Medea and son of María, the mariachi who lost his voice because of a blow from a club on the day of the riot, the singer who now, if the Virgin really was a miracle worker, would recover his voice right here.
There was an enormous silence.
Everything was illuminated.
Each ex-voto caught fire like a lamp of hope.
The candles shone.
Maximiliano remained silent.
Medea opened her mouth and began to sing:
Peacock you are a courier
going to Real del Oro,
Peacock if they ask you,
Peacock tell them I’m weeping
tears of my own blood
for a son whom I adore.
Medea sang in front of the candles with an unconscious desire for her breath to extinguish them. But the candles did not go out. They grew with Medea’s song. They became animated with the life of her voice. A voice that was clear, strong, and sonorous enough to animate a yard full of roosters. A man’s voice, a mariachi’s voice. A voice that came out of the mariachi’s mother, illuminating the ex-votos, the candles, the keys that the Virgin gave her, the bit of the key with the image of the supper in Jerusalem.
A voice that filled the entire city with light.
6. Doña Medea Batalla is naked in a cell at the police station. All she is wearing is a diaper held up with pins. She was pulled along in the general roundup on the day of the disturbances. The cops, the blues — the gendarmes, as she called them, betraying her own verbal antiquity. But the residents closest to the trouble were brought in, stripped, locked up. At least they allowed her to keep the shameful diaper that she was resigned to using to protect herself from incontinence.
Now Medea is waiting for you to come and rescue her. To pay the fine. She had to give your name. Who else could she mention? The undertaker at the funeral home? The managers of restaurants? The lovers who died in pulque taverns? The mariachi band the Taste of the Land? The son she thought she caught a glimpse of in the mob the night before?
Of course not, Señor. Only you. You who were twenty when she was forty, and every man in the neighborhood followed her because of her fresh, dark beauty, guided by the black braid that reached down to Medea’s buttocks, don’t you remember, licentiate, Señor Stuckup? Did you lose your memory, Don Fop? Don’t you remember anymore how pretty Medea was and the decision she made to have a son only with you, the father of the mariachi? Have some shame. Only you can come to save her. Don’t be a prick. Acknowledge him. Take responsibility. For once in your damn life, Señor. Forget about who you are and become the man you were. For your mother’s sake.
And don’t give me the same old story:
“We’re in Mexico. Pray.”
You’d be better off taking a snake rattle.
Regino and Regina came to complain at the lost-luggage office at the airport, traveling on their honeymoon from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to Acapulco by way of Mexico City, how can they go without their suitcases, what’s going on, where are they, whew, sir, madam — Regino, Regina — don’t be impatient, in half an hour we’ll have them, in the meantime why don’t you have a nice cup of coffee, listen, the thirty minutes are up, what happened? where are they? and Regina thinking about the gorgeous underthings her girlfriends gave her with erotic intentions at the shower in Tuxtla and the airport, well, the suitcases haven’t come yet, you know, a car crash, where? in Chiapas on the runway at the airport so they never got on the plane no but the news is that the suitcases were destroyed but it was all new clothes, a bride’s clothes, do you know what I’m saying? ay, Señorita, what I recommend, please, I’m Señora, Señora, is that you don’t pack anything you’ll miss, but it’s my bridal trousseau, ay, if you only knew the kinds of things that get lost here, who knows what happened to your truss but sometimes what disappears are artificial limbs, medieval armor, even contraband dolls with drugs hidden in the removable head, what haven’t we seen here! and you’re complaining about losing a night-gown, show my wife more respect, yes Señor it’s just that, you know, there are more than two million people who lose suitcases every year at the airport so our advice is that people travel wearing what they’ll need I mean underwear shirts and socks and a small bag for packing what the family doesn’t want to lose and if you like take pictures of what you’re carrying in the suitcase and this way there’s no loss, you know, all the suitcases are the same all of them are black because that’s what’s fashionable and thank your lucky stars because once more than five hundred suitcases arrived for a Mr. Mazatlán because the gringos in Los Angeles thought it was a passenger and not an airport so if you want you can file a complaint with the warehouse in Scottsboro Alabama which is the cemetery for all lost suitcases in North America and listen what’s this couple complaining about as if they needed clothes for a honeymoon in Acapulco, what do they need that for