Sacred Ground (13 page)

Marimi explained that they were here to deal with traders from tribes in the east, from as far away as the village of Cucamonga and even farther. When Godfredo saw that the ancient path continued due east, he asked where it went. “Yang-na,” she said, and by her gestures he surmised she had never been there.

Marimi had never been farther than these tar pits.

“Don’t you want to know what lies beyond?” Godfredo asked when they erected shelters from boughs and sticks they had brought with them.

“Why?”

“To see what is there.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

For the first time, Don Godfredo, who had journeyed thousands of miles to this place, was astonished that this girl had no idea of the vastness of the world, was unaware that she lived on a globe spinning in space, that man-made cathedrals rose up and pierced the sky in lands far across the water. These miserable pools of stinking tar were the easternmost border of her world. To the north, her land was bounded by a ridge where sacred oaks grew and she did not traverse it, and to the west and south lay an ocean which she believed supported the sky!

But we have known now these fifty years, he wanted to cry, that the world is not flat. And it certainly is not the size of a common dishpan as is
your
limited world, but is vast and terrifying and awesome in its wonders. He tried to tell her, drew sketches in the earth, described grandeur with his hands, but it was no use. Marimi only laughed at his antics and thought it was a nice myth.

In that moment, Godfredo knew what he had to do. As Marimi’s people engaged in bartering acorns, soapstone, seafood, otter and seal skins for fired clay pottery, mesquite seeds and deerskins, rattling their strings of shell-beads, which was the universal currency, Godfredo formulated his secret plan. When Spanish ships returned, as he was certain they someday must, he was going to take this girl back with him and show her the splendors of his world. He was going to delight her with the feel of silk and pearls against her brown skin, show her the towering monuments of man, the works of art, the perfumes and tapestries and plates of silver and gold, and take her for rides on his horse and astonish her with marvels that her primitive mind could not even begin to dream of.

That night, he watched her over her grinding stone, breasts swaying seductively. Marimi had spread herself with red ochre paint, giving her body a glossy look, highlighting the delectable hills and valleys of her lush form. The sight of her filled him with growing lust. What was it about this savage creature that enchanted him so? For one, she had saved his life. When he had first washed ashore, many months ago, no one had wanted to touch him. But Marimi bravely did. But there was more to her allure than that. There was something in the way she moved so graciously among her people. He had seen women of similar status in his own society, nuns with power, ladies with money and connections, but few were gracious and many abused their rank and privilege.

There was also a vulnerability about her. Those strange spells that occasionally struck her down. It could be anywhere at any time, and the first time he witnessed it it alarmed him. She had cried out in pain and crumpled to the ground. The men drew back while women rushed forward to gather her up and carry her to her hut. There, Godfredo had stood in the doorway while he had watched her head roll from side to side in silent agony. She then went into a deep sleep and later reported seeing visions. The women told him it was a holy sickness and that it enabled her to communicate with the gods. He had seen such people in Spain, holy monks and nuns. But those were Christians who spoke to saints, and this heathen woman was no Christian.

Finally, there was her loneliness. Even though Marimi was an integral part of the tribe and was in fact the focal point for a lot of their religion, she was also at the same time separate from the tribe, living alone. In the evenings, in the other huts Godfredo heard talking and laughter, the music of flutes, the sound of sticks as games of chance were being played, men laughing as they competed vigorously. Women’s laughter, the squeals of children. But Marimi’s hut was always silent. Her solitude reminded him of his own, the one he had carried in his heart after leaving the three graves behind in Spain, his wife and sons taken from him when fever had swept through the town.

“Oh, maiden,” he cried in silent agony, “dost thou not know how I burn for thee?”

* * *

On the final night of the encampment at the tar pits Godfredo finally found the courage to tell Marimi what was in his heart. He told her of the wonders of his world and how he longed to take her to see them. To his astonishment, she wept bitterly, and confessed that the same desire was in her heart. She would like nothing more than to be his wife and go where he went, but it could never be. She had been dedicated to her people, she must keep her vow of chastity.

Godfredo reeled from this unexpected declaration. In all his carnal achings for the girl it had never occurred to him to wonder how she might feel about him. That she should desire him had not entered his mind. But now that the confession was out, his desire seemed to burn out of his skin and up to the stars. “I cannot bear to go without you,” he cried, “but if I stay I can’t have you either! Marimi, if you come with me the rules that keep you celibate will no longer apply. We will be free to marry.”

She could not go, she said tearfully, and he must never again speak of his desire for her, for it was taboo and would bring bad luck to the tribe.

A wildness entered Godfredo that night, and when sleep could not keep him on his mat, he struck out into the foul-smelling night and paced the black beach of the stench-ridden tar pits, mindless of a few insomniacs who watched him. He paced and gestured and occasionally cried out in a language none of his casual audience understood. The people from Cahuilla and Mojave and the pueblos and beyond tended their fires and watched the tortured white man wrestle with demons.

That was when the idea came to him: he was going to teach the Topaa about the modern world. By teaching them how to make paper and mine metal, the use of the wheel and the draft animal, to build houses of stone and live by clocks he would open Marimi’s eyes and make her see how benightedly she was living and make her want with all her heart to go back with him.

* * *

His plan failed.

Each project, though drawing an interested audience at first, soon lost its novelty and the people drifted away. Don Godfredo managed to make candles, which the Topaa marveled at, but when the candles burned down, Marimi’s people had no desire to make more. When he manufactured a crude soap, they happily lathered themselves in the surf but lost interest when the soap was all gone. He planted a small garden of sunflowers and showed them how they could have seeds all year round, but when the flowers died because of lack of care, so did interest in them. Why should they change, the people asked Godfredo, when they had lived this way since the beginning of time, and their ways had always been good for the Topaa? “Change is progress,” he tried to explain. But to his exasperation, progress was a concept they could not understand.

He went to Marimi’s hut and asked her again if she could be released from her vows.

She said, “In your land, are there women who have dedicated themselves and their virginity to the gods?”

“Yes, the convent sisters.”

“And if you desired one of them, would you try to persuade her to give up her vows?”

He took hold of her shoulders. “Marimi, celibacy is man’s law, not God’s!”

“Do you speak to your god?”

His hands fell away. “I do not even believe in him.”

She reached for the gold crucifix around his neck. “And this man Jesus. Do you believe in him?”

“Jesus is a myth. God is a myth.”

Marimi’s black eyes filled with sadness then, and she regarded him for a long sorrowful moment. The sickness that gripped Godfredo’s honest soul was no mystery: he needed to believe in something.

* * *

It took two days to follow the ancient animal trail from the tar pits to the canyon in Topaangna.

When they arrived at the mountains, Godfredo and Marimi followed a trail through thick chaparral and wild lilac. Here, they came upon a patch of open ground, where they saw a female coyote performing a crazy dance: she lowered herself to the ground, muzzle turned up, and then with a sudden upward and sideways lunge, snapped her jaws and then landed to suddenly madly dig into the dirt. As she did this over and over, Godfredo drew back, fearing they had come upon a mad dog. But Marimi laughed, explaining how the coyote was simply hunting for rain beetles. Her people called the coyote “The Trickster” because he was known to lie down and play dead to lure vultures close enough to snatch and eat them.

When they reached a cave in a small canyon, Marimi paused, and said, “It is forbidden for anyone but me and other medicine people to enter this cave. This law applies to all Topaa, and members of other tribes. But you are different, your ancestors dwell in a faraway place, and I think, Godfredo, that with your spectacles that make you see things others cannot, and which cause fire to miraculously appear, that you must be a shaman in your own world. So it is not taboo for you to enter this sacred cave.”

As she led him inside, her voice dropped to a reverent whisper. “Our First Mother sleeps here.”

Godfredo saw that the grave was ancient, perhaps a thousand years or more, and when Marimi laid flowers upon it, she said, “We always bring a gift to the First Mother.” Then she showed him the painting on the wall and told him the story of the first Marimi.

“I tell you this, Godfredo, because you have an emptiness here.” She laid her hand on his chest. “This is not good for a man, because without faith to fill the emptiness, evil spirits will find a home here. The spirits of sadness and bitterness, jealousy and hate. I brought you here to fill this emptiness, Godfredo, with the wisdom of the First Mother.”

Godfredo looked down at the copper-skinned hand against his shirt that had once been white. He looked into the innocent yet wise eyes of the Indian girl, felt the weight of the mountain all around him, heard strange whisperings in the darkness, felt shadows shift and move, watchful and waiting. The cave reminded him of a grotto he had visited as a child, where it was said a saint had found healing waters. Perhaps there were such things as magical caves after all, perhaps Marimi’s First Mother truly was here.

Godfredo had learned to carry implements with him as the Topaa men did, and he now brought out of the leather pouch that hung from his waist a piece of obsidian, black and shiny. With its sharp edge he carved into a clear, clean space on the rock wall:
La Primera Madre.
Then he said with a smile, “Now all future generations will know who sleeps here.”

Marimi gazed in wonder at the strange shapes. While Godfredo had drawn his map and written his chronicle, he had tried to teach her to read. But the symbols remained only symbols. Now, as she gazed at the freshly engraved letters, a light dawned in her mind. Reaching out, she touched the carvings with her fingertips, and traced each one, pronouncing each in sudden understanding.

As Godfredo watched her, listened to her soft voice whisper the words, he was overcome. Here was the miracle he had longed for, the realization of his daydreams: he had taught Marimi something from his world. And in that instant he felt his lust turn into a more tender emotion. He fell in love with her.

Taking her hands, he drew her around to face him. “You are a virgin because of this first mother?”

“Yes.”

“Just like the sisters in Spain who dedicate their virginity to the Mother of God. Marimi, I cannot believe in your first mother any more than I can believe in another first mother named Mary. But I respect your belief and your vows. I will no longer ask you to come away with me, for I see now that it is wrong. Nor can I live any longer with you among your people. The pain is greater than any mortal man can bear. I will leave.”

When she started to cry he drew her into his arms and held her, shuddering within as he realized this would be the last he would ever see of her.

He drew back while he still had the willpower, and said, “You said that we never visit the First Mother without leaving a gift.” Removing his spectacles and handing them to her, he said, “This is my gift to her.” And suddenly he had a vision of the future. “Men will come and destroy you,” he said with passion. “I have seen this happen to the empires in the south. They will come with their scribes and their priests and their learned men and their soldiers, and they will take what little you have and give you nothing in return except subjugation, as they did the Aztecs and the Incas and all other places civilized man has set foot. So I am going to walk south to Baja California and I am going to tell them that there is nothing up here for them, and with luck, you and your people will be left alone, for a while at least.”

Marimi stayed in the cave after he left, feeling her heart break in two. For the first time in her life, she did not want to be the chosen servant of the First Mother. She wanted Godfredo.

She looked at the spectacles in her hand, these marvelous eyes that allowed one to see into other worlds. Wedging them onto her nose, she looked first at the letters that spelled First Mother, and then at the painting. She gasped. The pictographs had grown! They filled her vision and now revealed tiny details and imperfections she had never seen before. And when she moved her head, the symbols seemed to move!

Suddenly a pain shot through her skull. She cried out and fell to her knees, and then collapsed onto her side as the familiar sickness swept over her, first engulfing her in blackness and then in deep unconsciousness.

In her brief sleep, the First Mother came to her, an indistinct, shimmering vision that spoke silently, communicating through meanings rather than words, and what she told her servant Marimi was that celibacy was a law of men, not of gods. The First Mother wanted her daughters to be fruitful.

When Marimi awoke, the pain gone from her head, she removed God fredo’s magical eyes and, realizing in excitement and awe that they had enabled her to travel to the supernatural world where she had received a message from the First Mother, ran out of the cave and down the canyon, catching up with Godfredo where the boulders were carved with the symbols of the raven and the moon. “I will be your wife,” she said.