Chapter Eleven
Dancy didn’t see Armando again until dinner. When they came down from the tower he apologized graciously for having to see to business that had piled up while he’d been in Los Cabos. Then he let Santiamen escort her to a suite of white and gold rooms, with wispy curtains framing a vista of the valley and a bathroom where everything, even the toilet, was molded in a scallop shell motif. She showered quickly and stepped out to find the girl from the plane holding huge Turkish towels and a thick white robe. She’d also brought in a long loose peasant dress in white cotton gauze with a hand-embroidered trim of hundreds of tiny pastel flowers and a huge crystal vase exploding with clouds of calla lilies. Dancy reached for the robe and the girl moved quickly to hold it so she could put it on. She cinched the waist, then touched herself and said, “Dancy.”
The girl looked askance, but touched her own breast and said, “Martita, Señora.” Dancy didn’t press her to any first name basis. The girl produced the hairbrush and Dancy pulled a carved chair out on the semi-circular balcony and sat down, tossing her hair back for the girl’s attentions. I could get used to this, she thought. Then she wondered why she didn’t have such service at home. She could afford it. It’s not a matter of money, she decided. It’s a matter of attitude. And whatever the attitude was, Armando had it. She’d have to pay him closer attention. When the girl had brushed her hair dry she left, but must have told Santiamen that the golden senora was engrossed in the view, because the big man knocked, entered, and handed her a pair of twelve power Zeiss binoculars. She thanked him, which brought out more of his welterweight grins, and settled down to surveying the domain.
When the girl brought her Armando’s note announcing dinner, Dancy slipped into the ropa tipica dress, and tied a pink gauze sash around the waist. The girl came to her side and said, “Con permiso, Señora?” Dancy nodded and watched the girl retie the sash, winding the ends around so they resembled a rose at her hip. Very nice, gracias. She chose pink rose earrings from her jewelry box, which the girl had taken from her bag and placed on one of the gold-handled white dressers. She stepped into rope-soled espadrilles and motioned Martita to lead on.
She had expected an extravaganza laid on the giant refectory table in the baronial salon she had seen earlier, roasting oxen and fatted calves, but Martita led her through several halls and up an effusively curved stairway lit ruby red by tall stained glass windows, then through a small music study with a grand piano and a case of guitars and trumpets, and onto a balcony where a glass topped table was set beside the stone balustrade. Armando stepped out behind her, saying, “Thank you for joining me.”
“You should,” Dancy said, “I broke several dates to be here.”
Armando shook his head, “You’re too kind. Do you like game?”
Settling herself regally at the table, Dancy looked up at him innocently, “What kind of game do you have in mind?”
“Venison,” he said, sitting opposite her and ringing a silver bell for waiters who brought sterling dishes and crystal glassware. “From upriver, in the wilderness. My chef has been bored with the food he could get over in Los Cabos and is glad to be back here where he can control the very day vegetables are planted and continue his quest to perfect a regional cuisine. Let me know how he’s doing.” Naturally it was delicious but Dancy was careful to restrain her praise. Two could play at this aloof bit, she thought as she sipped her coffee with Kahlua and almond icecream. But seriously, it was a great way to chow down.
Armando had kept up a murmur of sophisticated patter throughout the meal, as though on a first date with some easily-spooked ballerina who had to be carefully seduced with talk of art and culture. Over the coffee, Dancy said, “You know a lot about European museums and all. And this cuisine de chef. But how about Mexican culture? That’s what I’d like to know more about. That and details of the heroin trade.”
Armando didn’t quite spit out his coffee over that one, and he rallied quickly. “Well, this is certainly no occasion to talk shop,” he said, “But I think I can show you something of Mexican culture. Let me ring for some after dinner drinks and I’ll show you one of my favorite collections.”
“I noticed you’ve got a collector’s zeal, all right,” Dancy purred. The white-jacketed waiter brought them both glasses of a smooth, almond flavored liquor that Armando insisted was Tequila, even having the bottle brought so she could inspect the “Tequila Almendrada” on the label. Like that meant anything to her. Armando escorted her far back into the castle to where the marble floor and intricate carpet runner ended at a wall of crude rock. He swung open a wide, low door of heavy timbers and she stepped into a cave, a room carved out of the living black stone of the ridge. A servant was lighting a hastily-laid fire in the vast fireplace and the flames flickered up walls that seemed to crawl with grotesque, distorted faces.
As the firelight expanded through the room, Dancy made out hundreds of masks, covering almost all the available wall space. She stared around her, moving along the walls and examining the abstractions of faces and moods and magic displayed there. There were Aztec and even Inca ceramic masks, crude Indian faceplates of woven straw, big gods cut and soldered from strips tin cans, elaborate pre-Columbian deities of polished stone laced with gold wires. But most were carved of wood, a shaman’s funhouse menagerie of animals, birds, men, women, gods, insects, and abstract emotion. The faces were hilarious, unsettling, horrifying, charming, ugly, exalting, ridiculous, sublime. In the flickering light they jumped and throbbed, their colors merging, their forms mutating. “It was genius to put them in this cave,” she whispered to Armando, “And to light them with fire like this. I feel like a Cro-magnon in church.”
Armando stood silently, letting her roam among the faces. “It’s okay to touch them,” he said. “Except for the paper maché ones on the far wall. They’re a little fragile.”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, Army. But you’re impressing the hell out of me here. The plane is just money, the castle is really something, but also just money and time. But this has got some soul in it. How long have you been collecting them?”
“Since I was in school, since I saw my first Huichol work.” Armando pointed out a row of small masks decorated with tiny glass beads.
“I’m knocked out.” She turned to the center of the room where a pedestal held a glass case with five masks that seemed fairly ordinary compared to the others. Except for the gold and jade one. With a shock, Dancy realized she’d seen it before. In “Newsweek”. Putting a hand on her hip, she turned to shake a finger at Armando, “Okay, ‘fess up. Wasn’t this stolen from a museum in Mexico City?”
She’d made Armando’s day. He shrugged elaborately, saying, “It was taken by thieves. I ended up being able to rescue it.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen how your rescues work. Are the rest of these in the case stolen, too?”
“I suppose any artifact not in Indian hands is stolen, isn’t it? People will tell you we stole this country. Yours, too, I notice. These are extremely important pieces, from key archeological sites. Are they more “stolen” than pieces locked in museum basements? Because I paid for their excavation, not some foreign university? If you want to see Mexican culture, that’s it right there–Indian artifacts enshrined in European buildings and laws.”
“And in the hands of rich criminals?”
“In the hands of power. That’s what Mexico is like. And this is what Mexico is, right here–a room full of traditional carved faces. The “Labyrinth of Solitude” is really just a maze of masks. We are built up like onions, masks within masks within masks.”
“Like those Russian dolls? With nobody inside the last one?”
“In a way. Look at this one. I think it explains a lot.”
He pointed out a smallish clay mask in the center of the wall opposite the fireplace. It was complex enough that Dancy had to walk right up to it to see what it portrayed. It was actually three masks, one inside the other. The outer one was an intricate Aztec god, like so many reproductions she had seen in the markets. It was split down the middle, right between eyes, and pried open to reveal another face inside, a typical Aztec face with curved, protuberant nose and blank almond eyes. It was also split and pried open to show one more visage inside it–a grinning skull.
Armando came up beside her. “Inside the godhead, inside the human, there’s always the guy with the grin, what do you think of him?”
Dancy kissed her finger and touched it to the skull’s leering teeth, “I think he’s cute.”
“That’s who’s inside every mask, down at the bottom. Old Señor Muerte himself. You can’t get much more Mexican than that.”
Dancy glanced around the room at faces of cobalt blue tigers, lobster/men, wolf/women, serene mermaids, howling devils, tortured souls, and ravening cannibals. She looked at the triple mask again and said, “This one does seem to sort of say it all.”
“Foreigners…well to be honest, all of us educated and civilized types, like that one best because we think we understand it, that it says something deep.
“Yeah. It’s so psychological. Great cover piece for a book by Henry James or Joseph Campbell. Wouldn’t it be more significant, though, if the God was inside the skull, instead of outside of the human?”
“Or maybe it means that the priest wears the mask of a God, but is himself just a mask temporarily worn by Death, his whole life merely something that bones put on for special occasions. Actually, we don’t have the slightest idea what it means. The man who made that mask might find all our Freud and symbolism child-simple, or lunatic schemes.” He pointed to a maze of hieroglyphics with eye-holes, “But that one…Or this one,” he touched an alligator with a threefold head of bearded Biblical prophets, “might be a true map of reality or maybe even the ultimate reality itself. Many of these are magical masks–they aren’t cover-ups or disguises, they’re the real thing. Realer than the people who wear them.”
Dancy looked around the room again, then rounded on Armando. “So here we are in your hawk-faced house. Your fancy plane. What other masks do you wear?
“Don’t you know that I’m a hero? A hero wears a hero mask. He IS a mask. There are guys all over this business, all over this country, wearing Lios-Leyva masks.”
“Like our guys wear masks of John Wayne or Ice Cube or Rambo?”
“Or of their father, or the movie star the girls are going for. Just a mask for protection and power. Over a dozen other masks, under a dozen more.”
“Well, then. What sort of mask would you recommend for me?” Dancy asked.
Armando made a dismissive gesture from the wrist. “Masks are for men, not women.”
“Time for some stock phrase about male chauvinism, I suppose.”
“But it is a male thing, isn’t it? Men put things on to be powerful. Armor, masks, medals, costumes, weapons, suits and ties. We cover ourselves up for strength. Women are at their most powerful when naked, when wide open. What is there here as compelling as a naked pregnant woman with her legs spread? Your nakedness is your most subtle mask. And you know it.”
“The birthday suit,” Dancy mused, “As the perfect disguise. And never needs ironing or goes out of style.”
“Your own unadorned body, Dancy. That’s your mask. The ultimate disguise. Concealing by revealing.”
Dancy pondered it a moment, then said, “But wait, under the nudity there’s a skeleton.”
“A skeleton is the only thing that isn’t a disguise. It’s the ultimate reality. It’s the only place when everyone is the same and the costumes no longer matter.”
“You Mexicans are really into skeletons, aren’t you? All the art and little figurines. Why this national hangup on death?”
“Because death is the only thing in the world that really changes anything.”
Dancy looked impressed, “Boy, that’s pretty heavy. For a minute there I thought you were just trying to talk me out of my clothes.”
“Not at all. I gave you that dress because I thought it suited you. Gilding an orchid and all that, but I hope you like wearing it as much as I enjoy seeing it on you.”
Dancy studied him a moment, then looked around the room again. “You know what’d really be cute?” she asked, “And functional?”
“What would that be?”
“Not to mention really sort of symbolic and all?”
Armando spread his hands, bemused before the mysteries of female intellect. “”I couldn’t begin to guess.
“A nice little leash and collar.”