A Corpse for Cuamantla Read online

  "You're right, Maestra. What do you propose we do until we hear from Professor Fortin?"

  Anna hesitated at his use of the pronoun we, since she had no desire to be sucked into a problem of the man's own making. "I think you should tell no one. Behave as if nothing's happened. After I reach Professor Fortin, I'll get back to you with his suggestions. Try not to worry. I believe you're innocent and others will as well. Besides, Professor Fortin knows a lot of important people. I'm sure he'll be able to help."

  The President thanked her with his usual loquacity and headed back to his office. Anna stood in the shadows wondering if he were as innocent as he claimed and whether her knowledge of the crime made her an accessory. In addition to contacting Art, she needed to call her father, ask his lawyerly mind for advice and make him promise not to tell her mother who fretted more than she should about her only daughter living alone in rural Mexico.

  One more worry to add to my day, Anna thought, glancing around to see if anyone noticed her furtive conversation with the Municipal President. Despite his popularity, the man had enemies. She had no interest in inheriting them. In fact, the more she thought about it the more she wondered if the theft might be nothing more than a ruse to cause trouble for the President, maybe land him in jail so an opponent could take over his job. With so little at stake, village politics like politics in academia could be vicious.

  At least the President hadn't commented on her tardiness. Maybe Cinco de Mayo was running on Mexican time, which for once would be a good thing.

  Chapter 3

  Still thinking about her conversation with the Municipal President, Anna crossed the street to Rosa's. From the corner of her eye she could see the fiesta crowd forming in the village plaza.

  What if the thief is among them and noticed me talking with the President? Would he assume she knew about the theft? If so, was she in danger? She worked to push the idea out of her mind. After all, she was a visitor in the village. Why would a Municipal President confide in a gringa like her? She wished she could discuss the matter with Miguel, and immediately regretted her rash promise to confide only in her thesis advisor.

  She'd make that call to Art shortly, but hunger overrode all other sensations and she unlatched Rosa's courtyard gate for another attempt at breakfast. The sharp smell of chorizo greeted her as she stepped into Rosa's kitchen to join the crowd of teachers seated around the kitchen's two long tables. Miguel grinned when he saw her, waving her to the chair beside him. Enrico Salinas, a fourth grade teacher in the morning school and the local dominoes champion shouted the first greeting.

  "Buenos días, Maestra! We've been waiting for you."

  Anna recognized the box of dominoes next to his place at the table. What a crazy pastime for adults. "Buenos días," she said, smiling a greeting to everyone as she sat in the empty chair still warm from the presence of the Municipal President.

  "Well," Miguel chided, "the Maestra finally found her way to Cuamantla this morning."

  Anna glanced at him and rolled her eyes at the group, pretending to be unfazed by his teasing. For Miguel’s part, he inhaled visibly and mugged for the crowd. Anna noticed he looked uneasily handsome today dressed in his best suit for the festivities. Not the blue serge uniform of the villagers, but rather an up to date sport coat and contrasting slacks that might have been torn from the pages of Style magazine, which caused Anna to feel a bit self-conscious about her current apparel. Not that she had many choices beyond jeans and shirts. She could barely remember the last time she wore a dress or a skirt, and never thought to pack either for her fieldwork stint.

  Across from Miguel three men in matching blue suits were devouring their breakfasts. She recognized the first two as passengers from the taxi.

  Guess I'm not the only one who's late this morning, she thought, as Miguel introduced her to the visiting bureaucrats.

  "This is Maestra Anna Merino from the United States," Miguel said. "She's studying our honored school in order to learn the techniques of Mexican educators so American education might progress." He grinned broadly at Anna. She ignored his teasing and greeted the men. Miguel’s competitive nature was spilling into their relationship lately, a trend she needed to reverse before his jibes became insufferable.

  Encouraged by Miguel, the three men described their respective responsibilities in the education bureaucracy. The two taxi fares worked for the state and federal educational agencies in the city of Tlaxcala. The third official at the table, Tomás Bello, held an office in the powerful federal teachers union, the largest union in Latin America. Anna recognized his name from earlier conversations among the teachers. The cozy relationship between union officials and the Mexican government often invited charges of cronyism from the teachers in Cuamantla.

  Anna struggled to keep the bureaucratic relationships straight, finding Miguel reluctant to discuss education politics. He hesitated to share anything that she might interpret as negative about his country, and the educational bureaucracy contained its share of negatives according to the gossip she’d heard from the teachers. While she admired Miguel’s patriotism his evasiveness hindered her research, and she sometimes found herself fighting off feelings of resentment when he met her questions with ambivalence or rambling non-responses.

  "If La Maestra had arrived in Cuamantla at the prescribed hour this morning," Miguel said, ribbing Anna for her late arrival, "she wouldn't have missed the great Battle of Puebla, re-enacted exclusively for the village of Cuamantla."

  What had she missed? Fiesta activities apparently started on schedule, attested by the litter of empty beer bottles scattered over the top of the heavy wooden table. Rosa stood by waiting for Anna's order as Miguel launched into a description of the morning's events. An inveterate storyteller he could barely contain himself, but Rosa prevailed, ignoring his interruptions.

  "Maestra, what can I prepare for you this morning?" she asked.

  Miguel paused and opened another bottle of beer, leisurely adding a thin slice of lime as he marked time waiting for Anna to place her order.

  He'll milk this moment beyond all reason, she thought, getting even with me for being late. Anna glanced around the room looking for her friend María, a first grade teacher in both the morning and afternoon schools and a Co-Director of the fiesta. She must be inside the school attending to last minute details, probably with the help of her live-in boyfriend, Pedro García. Pedro directed the morning school. Anna wasn’t a fan. She smiled up at Rosa. "I'll have the tamales and scrambled eggs with nopales."

  "And to drink? Atole?"

  "Coffee, thanks," Anna said, turning down the drink that reminded her too much of Cream of Wheat, not her favorite breakfast cereal growing up.

  Rosa nodded and headed back to the kitchen.

  Miguel took another swig of beer and returned to his story, pointing out that everyone had arrived at Rosa's between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. to begin the fiesta with good food and good conversation, including discussing the day's activities. "But," he glanced around for effect, "la Maestra Americana was not among us. What delayed you? Aren't you always on time for everything? Or were you running on American time this morning?"

  Rosa returned from the kitchen with Anna's order and Miguel caught her eye and winked.

  Anna shrugged off his remark knowing she deserved it, but unwilling to concede. "My Mexican alarm clock broke," she said, brushing aside his digs and tackling her plate of tamales. Her retort brought a laugh from everyone including Miguel, but failed to subdue him.

  "Perhaps it's just as well," he persisted, "so much violence in our little village might have frightened you into returning to the States." On a roll and he knew it, Miguel tipped his beer can in Anna's direction. "Which you would have witnessed had you arrived on time this morning when our friend and colleague Maestro Pedro García, who is never on time for anything, demonstrated his esteem for his colleagues by arriving early today in order to join the pre-fiesta celebrations."

  “Mmmm, these tamales are heave
n,” Anna said, ignoring Miguel's soliloquy to pay tribute to Rosa's cooking. Rosa was a great cook. Art once tried to talk her into traveling to the States with him to become his personal chef, as if every college professor had a personal chef, but Rosa turned him down flat. It was something she and Anna shared in common.

  "Accompanying the Director," Miguel tapped the table in front of Anna until she gave in and looked over at him, "was his esteemed companion, your friend and colleague, Maestra María, Co-Director of today's fiesta."

  Anna bristled. "Where is María?"

  She wished Miguel would come to the point given the tumultuous relationship between María and Pedro and the considerable consternation their out-of-wedlock living arrangement had been causing in Cuamantla.

  Anna and María had become friends, perhaps because both women were outsiders, though for different reasons. María's two teaching positions, one in each primary school, caused a great deal of resentment in the village and among some of her colleagues. Villagers attributed her second job to her relationship with Pedro, a patently false assumption since María had inherited her husband's government-issued teaching plaza on his death. Each permit entitled the owner to a public school teaching position. When an opening arose in the morning school, María's second plaza enabled her to move into the job. On top of everything else, she was strikingly beautiful, a curse to many a women.

  "Bueno, Maestra," Miguel said, adopting a more conciliatory tone as he continued his story. "Shortly after Maestro Pedro and Maestra María arrived this morning, a young boy knocked at the door asking for Pedro. ‘A woman is waiting outside,' the boy said, ‘a woman who wishes to speak to Pedro.'"

  Miguel paused, assessing the anticipated impact of his next statement. "The woman," he looked directly at Anna, "is named Yolanda. She traveled a long way from the State of Vera Cruz where she lives. And, (oh by the way) Yolanda is Pedro's legal wife."

  Anna nearly choked on her chorizo while Miguel explained how Yolanda showed up in Cuamantla in order to join her husband for Cinco de Mayo. She told everyone within earshot that she hadn't seen her husband since the previous summer and was lonesome for his company. Reaching Cuamantla early the previous evening, she'd gone directly to Pedro's house at the far corner of the zócalo, but found no one at home.

  She had a key, she said, so she let herself in and waited all night. "No one ever arrived," she proclaimed loudly. "Especially," Yolanda paused, waiting for the full attention of the gathering crowd of villagers, "no one by the name of Pedro García Hernandez-Barrera."

  Miguel stopped for breath a mistake on his part because dominoes champ Enrico Salinas took over. No admirer of Pedro's, Enrico claimed the floor by mimicking Yolanda. "Very early," his voice rose in pitch, "on this special morning of Cinco de Mayo, I walked from Pedro's house to the school, stopping first at the Church to pray for the soul of my dead grandmother. As I'm leaving the church, who do I see arriving at the zócalo in an ugly red bug of a car? This very man, Pedro García Hernandez-Barrera, my cockroach of a husband, and with him an odious tramp with her two pig-faced offspring!"

  In painful detail, Enrico described the ensuing battle between the pair, which included screaming and rock throwing by Pedro's wife who aimed the stones at his head and various tender and private parts of his anatomy. The spectacle ended only when Pedro convinced his wife to return to the house to settle their differences in private. Throughout the ordeal, María sat at the battered kitchen table in rigid and stony silence. Once the squabbling couple disappeared from view she herded her children into the car and drove off.

  No one knew exactly where she went, but María's absence would mean extra work and responsibility for everyone in the room, including Miguel. The impact of this realization sobered the group faster than Rosa's strong black coffee. A poorly managed fiesta would upset the villagers, creating a domino effect that could hinder teachers' working conditions into the next school year. Unhappy villagers would complain to the education bureaucrats in Tlaxcala, who would vent their irritation on the union leaders, who would in turn retaliate against the teachers. A serious situation indeed, moderated only by the dose of levity everyone enjoyed at Pedro's expense. The Battle of Puebla quip alone would enliven conversations for the rest of the school year. Well worth the price for everyone except of course, Pedro and María.

  Chapter 4

  Do you think María will return for the fiesta?" Anna asked, as she and Miguel left Rosa's kitchen together and crossed the street to the school. The events at breakfast had relegated the theft of the Cédula to the back of Anna's mind and she forgot for the moment about phoning Art Fortin.

  "Of course, she'll return."

  "If I were her, I wouldn’t.” The level of embarrassment María suffered was more than most people could bear, Anna thought. If she were María, she'd hide out for the rest of the day and nurse her hurt feelings in isolation.

  Miguel’s attention was elsewhere. "Maestra, look." He pointed to the father and daughter crossing the zócalo. "Here comes the fiesta queen."

  The little girl, a first grader in Miguel's afternoon school wore a long white taffeta gown. She held tightly to the hand of her influential father, an important official in the barrio of Cuaxpo. Later in the day he would host a dinner for anyone of status within the village. The guest list could number over a hundred and this year included Anna, who had followed the selection of the fiesta queen with interest. Prominent in the negotiations was the new laptop computer Miguel extracted from the girl's obliging father. More evidence of Miguel's political finesse considering he desperately needed a laptop for his graduate classes at the University of Tlaxcala. When Anna complimented him on his ingenuity, he quickly explained how the computer would benefit the school and increase student learning.

  "Don't you agree, Maestra?" he’d asked during their daily English lesson, an earnest expression accenting the lines of his handsome face. Anna grinned at his response, which brought a knowing smile to Miguel's lips. He winked at her, which made her blush and twist her ponytail, a nervous habit she’d retained from her high school days.

  Their noontime English lessons had led to their growing if competitive friendship. Anna used the opportunity to ask probing questions about the school and community. Miguel used the time to flirt with Anna. He could be unpredictable and cocky, but his sincerity was a trait she appreciated. Sometimes when they were alone together she felt as awkward as a teenager, a phenomenon she attributed to his dark good looks. She probably paid too much attention to his looks. Not that she was attracted to him. Well, maybe a little. Nothing serious.

  "Time to check on our fiesta preparations," Miguel said, returning to Director mode. He headed into the school leaving Anna to wander the plaza filming the chaotic preparations.

  §

  Smoke rose from the food stalls around the plaza, and despite her substantial breakfast Anna's mouth watered at the savory scents wafting across the square. She concentrated on her filming, focusing her camera on parents arriving at the school with costumes for their children's performances. A rather somber looking young man caught her attention. He resembled a Texan with his boots, spurs, and cowboy hat.

  "Good morning," she said, recognizing him as one of Art Fortin's students from the University of Tlaxcala where Art taught each summer. She tried to remember his name.

  "Buenos días," he replied as if trying to place her.

  "I'm Anna Merino. Dr. Fortin's graduate student? You stopped by the house a couple of months ago to drop off some papers for him?"

  "Ah yes, I remember now. Rolando Múñoz." He stuck out his hand. "How's your research coming along?"

  "Better than I anticipated," she said. "Do you live in Cuamantla? I haven't seen you here before."

  "A friend and I came in for the fiesta. I have a cousin in the village. He invited us and I couldn't turn down a fiesta invitation."

  "I agree. This is my first fiesta so I'm curious about everything."

  "Well, if I can help you in any way
, Maestra, let me know. I'll be around."

  Rolando drifted off and Anna resumed filming, wondering whether his friend was male or female. She thought back to the evening Rolando showed up at Art's house in Belén, surprised when someone other than Art answered the door. They’d had a nice conversation, but she never invited him inside even though he seemed nice enough. She wasn't taking chances with strangers even if they were Art's students.

  Turning her video camera to the center of the plaza, Anna focused on the bandstand, catching smiles of appreciation from the village musicians preparing for their evening performance. She knew they would ask for copies of her video. This filming enterprise of hers might get expensive, she thought, siphoning a little too much money from her limited grant funds.

  Looking around for a place to rest her feet, she decided to take advantage of Rosa's front stoop, a good place to sit and monitor the zocalo's activities. After settling herself onto the top step, she opened her backpack for a stick of gum and noticed her cell phone, which reminded her to call Art. Reception in Cuamantla was spotty, but the village square often provided a modicum of coverage. The phone registered one bar, enough to reach Art if the satellite stayed in range. She let his number ring until the answering service picked up, and left a message.

  "Art. Somebody stole the Real Cédula," she told the faceless machine, "and I need to talk to you right away. Please call me. Talk to you later." He'll return my call in a hurry when he hears that, she thought, relieved for an excuse not to talk to him at this particular moment. She wondered if he’d turned his phone off or was screening his calls.

  An awe-inspiring brilliance of color blanketed the zócalo and she wished her backpack contained artist's paints and brushes instead of a notebook and number two pencils. Cuamantla, Nahuatl for 'place of beautiful trees,' was aptly named and she felt especially grateful to be part of it. Maybe when she returned to the U.S., she would resume her painting. She could picture the zócalo right now as an abstract. A palette knife in her mind's eye spread dollops of color across a glorious sky blue canvas. Or maybe she would write. What a great backdrop for a novel. She played with titles, but nothing came to mind.