He returns from the bathroom, his chest and face damp and smelling of soap. The dust from the gold mines in Jaime’s lungs insures that he won’t live much longer. In the States, sixty-three is not so old, but a Mexican who lives hard and works until he is ready to drop is worn out by that age. The knowledge that we don’t have much time left together makes each moment sweeter. He will not dishonor her by staying the night with me. He is loyal to his wife despite her alcoholism and her gargantuan proportions. Only the hours from 4:00 to 8:00 belong to us. I used to believe I could help him to live a few more years of stolen afternoons. He breaks off the story to get up and cough, shutting the bathroom door so I won’t hear him and cry. His voice is what first attracted me to him, the lilting tenor notes followed by deep bass. I float in the melody of his voice, drift in the current of his tale.
#Leyenda del colibri how to
Long before the Conquest, old women knew how to heal their families.” His square hands, scarred from the mines, move as he speaks. She was a curandera who knew all manner of healing with plants. She kept bees, and their honey was unsurpassed. “There was a grove of orange trees, bitter oranges like yours, near old Juanita’s house. His tales, sprinkled with totonaca magic, captivate me. “When I was a boy,” he begins, and I roll off and settle into the featherbed to hear another story. His musky scent mingles with the odor of orange blossoms. I roll on top of Jaime to lie on the great expanse of his body, supported by my arms.
When it lets up we watch the jeweled hummingbirds collecting nectar from the orange tree outside my bedroom window. Now the rain continues, hard and driving on the tiles, lulling us into a sweet torpor. By the time the hillsides bloomed with yellow and white wildflowers we became lovers. He did it for honor, for the sacrament of matrimony and because in a broken-hearted way he still cherished her. He took care of a woman who had long since stopped being a wife. I had imagined that the twenty-eight years between us would quell any sexual attraction, but we were both lonely. By late June when the rains began he had taught me enough Spanish that I could appreciate the subtleties of this man who was old enough to be my father. The breeze off Lake Chapala fanned us and we were content those drowsy April afternoons. We would sit outside listening to the clear whistles of orioles and the squeaky calls of finches. The iron dragons adorning the bandstand seemed to wink at me in my sheer white dress as I listened attentively to Jaime’s stories.Įventually I invited him to the house, set half-way up the hillside. We met in the season of searing heat and sought refuge under the shade of Indian laurel trees in the plaza of a nearby town. Longing for fields and trees, Jaime fell in love with me and my country house. As her health grew worse with the fondness she had for tequila, they moved to Guadalajara.
#Leyenda del colibri skin
He married a woman who, like him, was part Totonaca with red-brown skin and eyes so dark they’re almost black. Roaming freely through the hills and bathing in the warm waters of the Gulf, he tended goats.Īt sixteen, he was forced to go into the mines to support his family. When he was a child, Jaime lived in a small village on the Gulf about fifty miles from Poza Rica in the state of Puebla. Because of his concern with discretion we no longer sit on the patio and enjoy the view of the mountains reflected in the lake. He worries that the neighbors will catch on and ruin my reputation. Jaime makes it sound like a bigger scandal here.įor the past six months he’s been obsessed with secrecy. But that’s by the standards of my own culture in the States, where artists dance to their own drummer. I fancy the scandal wouldn’t upset me that much if everyone in Mexico knew I loved a married man.
My neighbors weren’t home when Jaime came to visit, so no one saw him.
We lie in bed listening to the tympani of rain on the tile roof and burrowing into each other’s warmth. I send my spirit every night to guard you.
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