THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

José Macias slithered through his father's garden like a viper - avoiding the brightly-lit bowers where his father's guests took their last airs of 1899; smoked, conversed and embraced. He mounted the trellis of an ancient rosebush in the shadows by the wall that encircled the Merida property; climbed it like a monkey and... slicing away an offending branch with Ruben's knife... leaped to the alley separating the grand houses of the Paseo from their poorer relations to the east. It was in this rubbish-strewn alley that Esteban, Silvestro and countless other whose work behind the scenes had made possible the fin del siglo had come and gone by day, but it stood deserted, now, as the novice Caballero loped southwards towards Merida's plaza.

Only once was José accosted. At the walled rear of the Narvaez house, a man who... unmasked... had been known as a famous bankrupt for years was pacing back and forth, desperate for a kind stranger to give him a lift up over the wall to the delights within. "Señor, permit me to stand upon your shoulders," the man appealed before properly regarding the skull mask and sharp knife. "Never mind!" he corrected himself and made a sign of the cross.

José grinned and proceeded to the corner, which he rounded and made his way directly to the Paseo. It was fifteen minutes to midnight... the Paseo was a madhouse of the gente decente in carriages and pulpitos, even afoot... scurrying to their next appointment under the watchful eyes of the police. José rolled the knife up in his shirt, hurrying south. He paused... and the tiny patter of footsteps behind him paused also. He resumed his pace, and they followed.

He turned.

"Anibal! Bad dog... this is no night for adventure. A hunting dog as yourself might be stolen... carried away in a sack." Anibal cocked his head, blinked and whined, "Get back to the house! Or do you want me to give you a kick?"

The terrier retreated a step or two. None of the celebrants of the Paseo gave a second thought to the calaver engaged in such animated... if one-sided... conversation with a hound. Such encounters were common enough for the fin del siglo.

Anibal trotted back in a northerly direction towards don Antonio's home and José resumed walking at a brisk pace. A few blocks south, he turned left into the eastern district of the city, the old barrio where... shortly... the stained and cobbled streets took on names instead of the good Mexican numbers that delineated the streets of the gente decente.

By and by he reached the heart of Merida's underworld... the Street of Four Winds... though which were blown every assortment of vice and depravity that the old century could offer up to the new. It was a dark street... the political jefes of the city saw no virtue in illuminating that which all desired to remain hidden... and a quiet one... except for the occasional chuckle escaping one of those dark windows in which, sometimes, a weak, red light glowed. A dim, red shadow of a horned beast, laughing and thrusting, flickered on an old wall far in front of the young man, so quickly gone that he rubbed his eyes, suddenly unsteady upon his feet. The walk had tired the Caballero, bringing a return of the ill-feeling occasioned by his initiatory drink. A headache... sharp as the biting of some dozen vicious, poisonous insects... suddenly seized José's skull... the real skull, beneath the mask... and he clasped his hands over his ears in such a way as might have inspired that certain melancholy Norseman whose portraits of disturbed, distorted countrymen in their throes of anguish had found favor with certain of the young persons of Paris. Yet he did not scream, only moaned... yet did so with such eloquence that half a dozen doors and twice that number of windows opened wide to the breath of the dying old century and the new from the Street of Four Winds. Someone threw a shoe that struck the wall by José's knee, having... apparently... mistaken him for a tomcat, lost in lust. Another businesswoman, however, motioned for him to draw nearer her window.

"I have something for you that will make all the pain go away... come!"

José removed his hands from his face and looked up. The bawd recoiled at first sight of him, but drew a breath and resumed her taunting...

"Is it Death... come to the Street of Four Winds in his despair? All the world is light, laughter and rejoicing with the procession of the centuries, yet Death stands alone. Pobre Don del Muerto!"

Behind her a goateed fellow, incredibly a clergyman... or a celebrant with a barbed sense of humor masquerading as one... leaned out the window, collar askew and cheeks red with liquor. "Forget this one, Dolores," he chortled. "Death is a eunuch. No woman... no boy, either, not even a goat... will go with him. He..."

José blinked. The ringing in his ears was not illness, nor liquor... it was all of the churchbells of Merida pealing in unison, ringing away the old century of Bonaparte and Marx, of Chancellorsville, Sedan and Queretaro. And... he was no longer on the Street of Four Winds but leaning against a wall in an alley some blocks distant. He shook his head and the Syrian cook's knife rolled out of his shirt and clattered to the street... even in the darkness its copious bloodstains were visible, as they were upon his shirt. But there was no lack of breath nor pain besides that in his head... it was not José's blood that had stained the fin del siglo.

The Caballero ran. Mindless at first... then, realizing he had run in circles, José applied his reason to his return... though all of the city remained loud, the lights were the brightest where the montes roamed and kept their houses. Following the light, by degrees, he eventually crossed one of the commercial streets of Merida which intersected... several blocks distant... the Paseo. A churchbell tolled the half hour... close by, the sound of fireworks startled the Caballero, who mistook them for gunshots. Down the street... chased in a desultory manner by three laughing policemen... the religious fanatic... the same elderly woman observed by Silvestro Kaak, Esteban Chan and others of the mazehualob... hurled her abuse and prophesy to the shadows and to the strangely-attired gente decente on their way to or from their merriment. She stood upright in an old carriage driven by a dour fellow of uncertain ancestry, himself cursing and lashing a mule of even worse disposition, declaiming "The Devil is throwing himself a función!" to those on the south side of the street... then those on the north... but when her eyes settled upon José, she was stricken dumb, as certainly as if... while in the talons of his eagle... the young man behind the death's mask had slit her throat, ear to ear.

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