Carolyn

“ Carolyn, here is Lady Macbeth, Senora Maria Ojeda-Solano, and Macbeth, Wang Zhijian,” said Vladik, taking away my chips and dumping them on top of his guacamole. “Not need these when have fine jelly crackers,” he added when I looked mutinous. Then to his stars, “And this is lady, Mrs. Carolyn Blue, whose crackers you are enjoy.”

The two singers stared at me, bemused. Perhaps they hadn’t understood the introduction.

“I go talk to president of board. Rehearsals closed, even for big shots. My Macbeth surprise for everyone but cast.” Vladik took himself and the guacamole off in the direction of the neurosurgeon, and good luck to Opera at the Pass’s artistic director, I thought, if he believed that he could convince the very conservative Dr. Peter Brockman that the drug-war Macbeth had been a cultural triumph and should be followed by more, not less, avant-garde productions.

What did Vladik have in mind? I wondered. Carmen set among the cardboard shacks in the squatter barrios of Juarez with the smugglers transformed into coyotes sneaking illegal aliens across the Rio Grande? La Boheme in a New Mexico ’60s hippie commune? Actually, that might work. Even my Carmen idea might work. In fact, I had rather enjoyed the weird Macbeth but mostly because of the voices.

“What an honor to meet you, Senora Ojeda-Solano,” I said, shaking the Chilean soprano’s hand. She had an empty flute of champagne in the other hand and was wearing a very regal garnet satin gown and a tiara. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually met anyone wearing a tiara. “Your Lady Macbeth was wonderfully powerful.” She nodded in queenly acceptance of my compliment. Didn’t the woman speak? “I see that you need another drink. Would you like to try a margarita?”

“I dreenk only champagne,” she replied. “Mexican cactus dreenks ees bad for the throat. So ees strange—” She looked disapprovingly at a tray of my canapés. “—theengs on plate.” She touched her throat as if to ascertain that it had not been damaged by our humble border offerings.

I waved a waiter over to refill her champagne flute and turned to the Chinese baritone. Initially I had thought a Chinese Macbeth even stranger than a drug lord Macbeth, but Mr. Zhijian, a stocky man with thick black hair, had proved to be not only a fine singer, but also an excellent actor. By the end of the production I had accepted him as a Juarense with a desire to garner the whole drug trade for himself. “What a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Zhijian. I enjoyed your performance so much.” I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation of his name.

“Not Mr. Zhijian. Wang my family name. Zhijian mean firm in spirit. In English you, Carolyn; I, Firm in Spirit. You, Blue; I, Wang.” He nodded cheerfully. “I like you food things.” He popped a jalapeno-peach canapé into his mouth. “Vely good taste, like dragon fire on tongue.” He consumed another and then tossed down the margarita a waiter had just provided.

Noting that Mr. Wang was not only very cheery but also somewhat glassy eyed, I said, “Margaritas taste better if you sip them.”

“Yes,” he nodded with a wide, loopy smile. “Taste vely good. I have another.” And he did. If I had drunk two, or however many, margaritas straight down, I’d have fallen flat on my face, which is almost what Mr. Wang did. Luckily, those of us in the circle, excluding Senora Ojeda-Solano, caught him before he could hit the floor, after which several male members of the chorus helped him away, while the Chilean soprano looked on with raised eyebrows and sipped her champagne. I noticed that the bottle the waiter poured for her was Tattinger’s, while the bottles on the table for the rest of us were some American brand I was unfamiliar with—perhaps of the five-dollar variety.

With Mr. Wang gone, I told Senora Ojeda-Solano how fond I was of the novels of Isabel Allende, especially The House of the Spirits. Although Allende was a fellow countrywoman and a famous author, the soprano had never heard of her and didn’t seem receptive to my recommendation. She turned and began a conversation in Spanish with Barbara Escobar, the banker’s wife. I went looking for Vladik in case there was any guacamole left. I almost caught up with him, but he had flitted off with the bowl, leaving me to catch a conversation between Dr. Brockman and Frank Escobar.

“We’ve got to get rid of him,” said the neurosurgeon, shaking a very long finger in Escobar’s face. “It’s bad enough that he snuck that atrocious staging of Macbeth in under our noses, but now he insists that more of the same is just what El Paso needs. We’ll be the laughing stock of the opera world when this gets out.”

I wasn’t convinced that the greater world of opera was that cognizant of what we were doing in El Paso, but I didn’t say that.

“I did not participate in establishing Opera at the Pass to be made a fool of by some upstart Russian,” the doctor continued. “I have to wonder now where the university found him. Probably some place like Uzbekistan.”

“Or Chechnya,” suggested Frank Escobar. “They’re a group of troublemakers. I think the university suckered us when they suggested we take him on. I’ve heard that the new fad there is zarzuela, not grand opera. Not that I don’t like a good zarzuela. Barbara and I always attend the performances at the Chamizal. But imagine what Gubenko would do to a zarzuela.”

“I heard him say that he doesn’t like zarzuela,” I told them. I didn’t like it that much myself. The one I saw was a sort of Spanish operetta without subtitles or program notes. I had no idea what was going on.

“He won’t even be able to ruin that program,” said Brockman. “I’m sure you’re aware, Carolyn, being connected by marriage with the university, that state budget cuts are hurting spending on education. I’m told the music department took a severe hit.”

“Scientific research funding too,” I agreed. Jason had been complaining, although a lot of his funding comes from outside sources, thank goodness. Otherwise, I’d never hear the end of the blow to science dealt by short-sighted state legislators and a penny-pinching Republican governor.

“Let’s hope the music critic from the Times is still sick,” said Frank Escobar. “I’d just as soon not have this production reviewed.”

“Yes, I was very upset when I initially heard there’d be no review of the Friday night performance, but it turned out to be a blessing that the critic is the first reported flu case in the city,” Brockman agreed.

I murmured my excuses, having spotted Vladik with a group of university people. He’d only managed to finish half the guacamole. I accepted another margarita from a passing waiter and joined the new circle. My husband was trying to convince Vladik that the administration wasn’t singling him out for unwarranted budget cuts.

“President hate me,” said Vladik stubbornly.

I thought he looked rather sickly, but then who wouldn’t after eating a half-vat of guacamole. I helped myself to some in the interest of his health.

“Vice president for Academic Affairs hate me,” he persisted. “Music chairman hate me. All jealous of Vladik. My Macbeth make them give money. They see many Hispanics come. Many applaud loud and shout, ‘Bravo’.”

I personally thought that if the upper administration had been in attendance—I hadn’t seen any—that they’d take away his budget entirely.

Melanie Collins, who is married to a geology professor, said, “I thought it was wonderful. My first opera, and I was absolutely enthralled. I think the university is treating you dreadfully, Vladik. It’s shameful.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm and smiled at him like a girl with a teenage crush.

“You would say that,” snapped her newly arrived husband, who, instead of a tuxedo, was wearing dusty khakis and heavy hiking boots.

“Why Brandon, I thought you were still on a field trip,” said his wife. “Couldn’t you have changed your clothes before you came to the party?”

“And give you time to trot off with this Russian puke? You think I don’t know you’ve been sleeping with him?” Brandon Collins turned on Vladik and snarled, “I ought to break your scrawny neck, you communist son of a bitch.” He actually put his hand on a pointed hammer that was holstered on his heavy leather belt—some geological tool, no doubt, but it did look dangerous.

Those of us in the circle were, needless to say, both embarrassed and alarmed at this turn of events. The opera’s artistic director, who had turned a sickly shade of green, said, “Vladik sick. Very sick.” He thrust the guacamole bowl into my hands and stumbled away before Professor Collins could smack his head as if it were a rock of scientific interest.

“Some lover you picked,” Collins said to his pink-faced wife. “He didn’t even have the guts to stay and fight for you, did he?”

“It might have been the guacamole,” I murmured, “or even the margaritas.”

The simplest recipe for a margarita, according to the authors of The El Paso Chile Company’s Texas Border Cookbook is 3 ounces gold tequila, 3 ounces orange liqueur, and 3 ounces lime juice shaken with ice and poured into a cold glass, the rim of which has been coated with salt. But what of the tequila? It first became popular in the United States when Mexican Revolutionaries and their American counterparts across the border favored the drink. However, tequila did not gain a wider distribution in our country until the Second World War, when European liquors became hard to get. It has gained steadily in popularity since then.

In Mexico it dates back into Indian history before the Spanish Conquest when pulque was distilled from the agave cactus and drunk at religious ceremonies by priests and nobles, who were working themselves up to the high point of the event when a person or persons were sacrificed on the altars. The lower classes were not allowed to drink it unless they were to be sacrificial victims. Then presumably their fears were muted by drunkenness.

Later Mezcal wine or brandy was distilled from the agave, and finally tequila, which was produced from huge cactus plantations, where the sap is harvested and then distilled—in early days in rawhide containers—latterly in barrels of oak and even plastic. The distilleries are mostly in the state of Jalisco, and the processes are closely kept secrets. An interesting footnote is that women are not welcome in the distilleries. They are still considered “unclean” and “bad luck.”

Carolyn Blue, “Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Charleston, Southern Messenger.