Andy Hall: John and Carmen as Altar servers in 2001
At the top of calle Tokio was the church where my family went every Sunday. Tere's brother was baptised there and in the 1950s Teresa's grandparents lived nearby, in the Colonia Roma.
Mexico City was still one of the most beautiful places on Earth in the 1940s and 50s. The Indian saint, Yoganada visited it and describes Xochimilco, (now rather unkempt), in his Autobiography of a Yogi as the most beautiful place on Earth. Mexico City was a decorous Queen of cities. The crime rate was low. The broad central avenues, modelled on the Champs-Élysées, were passable, and the clear air allowed a view of distant snow-covered volcanoes. Family members sigh over the lost beauties of Mexico City.
Our neighbour on the right ran a casting agency. Every few weeks hundreds of extras would line up in our privada waiting to be interviewed. Most of the residents living in the other houses were squatters and so was the casting agent. The landlord didn't dare take action against them for fear of reprecussions (1). The squatters often held parties in the privada but we weren't invited.
Installing a new fuse box, the workers in the house next door broke through into our living room leaving rubble on the floor and a hole next to the coffee table. This hole lead through into the hallway of the adjacent house. When the hole was large enough we felt they might come through, or that a hand would reach out and take a handbag or the lamp. But they closed it up again.
On one occasion, slats of the highly polished parquet floor in the dining room gave way under a chair leg. We had the whole floor re-laid, but, for a while, the wooden beams were visible above the foundation. Floors and walls were giving way. The City was breaking and entering.
Nicholas I of Montenegro, 1909
Two men came to install the cable for DirectTV and left with a string of river pearls and my great-grandfather's fob watch: given to him by King Nicholas I of Montenegro.
After two years, a few male prostitutes and transvestites moved down from Avenida Sullivan and started to gather along Sevilla on Sunday evenings. We could no longer send our youngest son for milk at the local OXXO shop. On the same road Teresa was kidnapped, robbed of her wedding and engagement rings and then left, miles away to make her way back.
Our servant was a member of the Opus Dei, a "numeraria". She was perfectly sour. She loved Carmen and would spend a long time combing Carmen's long hair in the morning and plaiting it in complicated patterns (See Andy's picture above.) or putting it into tight buns. Eve, she was less affectionate towards, partly because Eve was smaller and less stoic and she complained too loudly when Ceci's comb pulled at her.
The servant was a plant, sent by an aunt. I would open the door and inadvertantly interrupt surruptitious conversations. I was always puzzled by her reactions to me. She hated men and she hated me, but felt the need to explain why this was the case. She had been raped by an older cousin.
The black iron stair case behind the kitchen zig zagged skywards towards Ceci's room and bathroom which was on the roof. There was also a store room there with boxes of surgical disinfectant and piles of bulky, pointless objects: Hats, vases and boxes.
Angel de la Independencia, from visitingmexico
From the roof you could see the slabbed backs of the buildings that lined the Reforma and hear the distant rush of traffic in a stream, slowing down to a hush as it rounded the four lane roundabout of the Angel de la Independencia.
A short walk away was Chapultepec park and the monument to the Ninos Heroes, the young cadets who had thrown themself from the battlements of Chapultepec castle rather than surrender the flag to the invaders from the United States. We found two kittens that had been abandoned there on the pedestal of a statue. We took them home and my daughters fed them, but Teresa insisted they get rid of them.
And in the south of the city lived one of Tere's sisters married to a doctor, in the north two sets of aunts and uncles, another aunt to the west,in the direction of the airport. She lived with her two sons: one of them was a carpet salesman and the other a vulcanologist working at the UNAM.
We saw Popocatepetl erupt. It looked beautiful and harmed no one. Orange boulders fountained up and cascaded back down onto the sides of the mountain, sparking as they did so. The next morning we wiped a thin layer of volcanic dust from our car windows.
In 2000 just after we arrived we celebrated the victory of the PAN and Vincente Fox at the Angel de la Independencia in Reforma, a block away from the house. The dictatorship of the PRI, in various forms, had been in power for 80 years in Mexico - the longest lived dictatorship of the 20th century. After the celebrations we felt at home, but after the robbery and kidnapping, less so.
Just before Christmas in the year 2000. My mother was diagnosed with her first comparitively unthreatening
I fell asleep on our king size bed one cool afternoon.
From the Thoth tarot
I dreamt I was in one of the Twin Towers. I dreamt I was in a group of panicking people running down flights of stairs. steps. We came out onto a mezzanine and we crowded around, turning to look out of the high windows between the superstructure. "Something's happened to the other building. In the sky. Something's coming." I felt dread and looked up, like everyone else, but saw nothing. Then, realised: "My mother's in the other building. Oh my God" And I started shouting silently: "Mom, Mom, Mom."
The dream shifts.
I look down. I am higher up and I see what there is below. From about fifty stories up. I can see a big empty rectangle. We are positioned on one side of this rectangle. Everywhere I there is the evidence of construction. There is scaffolding and tarpaulin. But the middle of the square is flat - smooth, as if it were covered in a sheet of water.
I wake up.
And I am so worried I phone my mother and tell her about my dream. This is what I said:
"Mom I dreamt I was in one skyscraper and you were in another and that you were in great danger and we were in New York."
It sounded completely ridiculous.
My mother, thinking that I was worried about her decided that I must be sublimating this anxiety in my dreams.
Don't worry darling. It's hellish uncofortable, but I am OK. It's not life threatening.
A few months later, I am making coffee and listening to German Dehesa. Reports of the sabotage of the Twin Towers filter through. The radio presenters make one or two jokes and then, obviously, switch on the TV. The jokes stop.
I rush up stairs to watch Direct TV. After a while I get a phone call from a senior figure in government: Even more senior now.
"Phil. What on Earth is going on. Can you explain it to me?"
And all I could think to say was: "Well, It's time the US stopped giving it's full support to Israel."
But the answer was far too glib. Somewhere in my unconscious, I had linked up to the people in the Towers on 11th September 2001.
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(1) Apparently he has now got the squatters out and has sold the land. Looks like someone is going to build a hotel there. to hotel. The house will be demolished soon and so a little bit of pre-war Mexico City history will go with it.
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