4

The Magical Market

Grace worried that she had caused the disappearance of Cuernavaca’s central market two years ago. Lyda tried to persuade her that it wasn’t her fault, but she hadn’t been able to convince her. As Grace, Lyda, and Lyda’s eleven-year-old daughter, Annie, crossed the new park where the market building once had stood, Grace started fretting again.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Gracie, the governor and his wife were dining in your hotel. The wind was blowing this way. Of course you would apologize for the smell.”

“They didn’t move it far,” added Annie.

That was true. Cuernavaca’s small plaza with its Victorian bandstand was across the street from the Colonial. The market had occupied an entire block just beyond the far corner of the plaza. Now it splayed out through the streets next to the hulking Governor’s Palace on the other side of the park. Grace could see the canvas awnings of the market kiosks from her balcony.

“And anyway,” said Lyda, “they started demolishing the old market within days of your conversation with the governor. Nothing happens that fast in Mexico. They must have planned it long before.”

“They made that wacking great building vanish in a hurry,” said Grace.

That was also true. However the official demolition crew had unofficial help. It seemed that everyone in the city wanted part of the former market.

The building had encompassed a city block, open to the elements in the center, with a large fountain there. Grace had looked out from her balcony one morning to see workmen swarming over it. A parade of mule-drawn wagons waited to haul away the debris. But after the workers left each night, more of the building disappeared like cake at a wedding. People dismantled it to use the tiles, wood, iron work, and stones on their personal construction projects.

Grace took consolation in the fact that most of the old market’s parts now provided shelter for the poor. And the new park created where it once stood served a purpose possibly not intended by the city fathers.

To reach the market, many people walked for miles from the outlying villages. The new park, called Jardín Morelos, with its trees and shrubbery, walkways, fountain, and tiled benches, provided a lovely place for families to camp the night before laying out their wares. Smoke rose from their small cooking fires. The new streetlights illuminated their sleeping forms, curled up on the reed mats they had brought with them.

Grace imagined Cuernavaca’s market as a rabbit pulled out of a magician’s hat. Its brightly colored awnings and crowds of people appeared like abracadabra in the steep labyrinth of Cuernavaca’s streets. Foot traffic and the passing of an occasional burro were possible in the press of people and goods, but nothing so large as a horse or motorcar.

Whenever Grace ventured there she wore her high-top laced boots and held her skirts up so the hems wouldn’t trail through the offal and rotting produce. The stench was overpowering at times. She wanted to hold her nose, but that would have been undignified, and insulting besides.

Lyda solved the offal problem by hemming her skirts six inches above her ankles. Underneath she added a pair of white cotton trousers like those the Mexican farmers wore. It was an audacious departure from fashion, but Grace had come to expect audacity from Americans in general and Lyda in particular.

Lyda tossed a copper centavo to the Indian woman squatting under the tattered canvas of her awning, then scooped a handful of chapalines, fried grasshoppers, from the heap of them. They were about as long as a finger joint, just right for snacking. Lyda and Annie ate them as they strolled along, the insects crunching like popcorn. Annie was adept at tossing them into the air and catching them in her mouth. It was a feat that had won her a share of admirers among the market children. The children called out “’Ello” to Annie as she passed and she always answered “Hola.”

“Wish I’d known how tasty these are when I was coming up,” Lyda said. “Lord knows we had locusts a-plenty in west Texas.”

“I prefer my victuals with fewer appendages.”

“They taste like chitlins.” Lyda held out her hand, offering to share.

Grace waved them away. “What are chitlins?”

“Fried pig intestines.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Lyda laughed. “You’re a fine one, you are, to talk about disgusting, what with all the kidney pies you Brits put away.”

“I would never eat a kidney,” observed Annie. “That’s where pee is made.”

“How do you know that?” asked Grace.

“Annie has her mind set on becoming a doctor,” Lyda said.

In spite of the smell and the chaos, Grace loved the market. Foothills of roots, fruits, and vegetables, and festoons of gutted critters from goats to guinea pigs made wandering through it an adventure. The amount of food astonished Grace, although she couldn’t identify a lot of it.

Los correctos called the Indians brutos, brutes, but Grace knew better. They were dark-eyed magicians to coax such abundance from the stony soil as if it were the fertile muck of Eden. They were artists, too, in the way they displayed their wares. Great waterfalls of colored hemp hung from lines. The pyramids of mangoes, plums, oranges, and guavas looked like Christmas ornaments. Candles were suspended by their wicks. Even a burro’s burden of palm fronds were arranged in enormous green rosettes.

The place always had an air of fiesta about it, too. The Indians dressed in their best clothes embroidered in vibrant hues. Their blankets, shawls, and awnings shimmered with color, and so did the heaps of food, the toys, the piñatas, and the pottery. Children ran laughing among the stalls, and musicians performed for the coppers that people tossed to them. Grace encountered no hard sell here as she would have in English markets. Women called softly to Grace, “¿Que va a llevar, señora?” What will you take with you?

The market was Grace’s main contact with Mexico’s poor. Most of the Colonial’s Mexican guests were los correctos, the upper crust on holiday from Mexico City. They and the Colonial’s British, German, and American visitors, its European meals, clean sheets, and hot water, made it almost possible for Grace to forget that she lived in a foreign country. The redolent chaos here, however, reminded her that she wasn’t in London anymore.

María and the kitchen staff shopped for the food served at the hotel, but Grace had come here often enough to learn that the market wasn’t as chaotic as it seemed. The Indians paid a fee called a “floor tax” that assured them a spot to set up their awnings of canvas or striped blankets, and spread out their wares on the ground. Even though the market had moved, individuals sat in the same configuration that their ancestors had occupied for generations.

The folk of each village sat together and Grace was learning to distinguish them by the differences in the embroidery on their clothing. Grace, Lyda, and Annie headed for the side street where the potters of San Miguel displayed their goods. Their pottery was simple, made of undecorated red clay, but it was popular with the guests at the Colonial.

The problem was that San Miguel’s potters were not used to anyone wanting so many pieces at one time. Weeks before, when Grace tried to buy all their stock they became indignant.

“You can’t do that,” they scolded. “What would we do the rest of the day with no goods to sell?”

So Grace accepted the fact that market day wasn’t so much about commerce as that ineffable Mexican concept of ver y verse, to see and be seen. She bought a few vases from each potter, saving her favorite, José, for last. She couldn’t have said what it was about José that affected her, but he had a presence that occupied more space than his short burly body, his voluminous mustache, and his impossibly large, hound-dog eyes. Grace realized that even though she had been buying goods here for her gift shop for a year, she didn’t know anything about the artisans who made them.

Lyda was appalled when Grace paid the first price quoted. “You’ll spoil them.”

“They ask a pittance, and how can I give them less than a pittance?” Grace turned the rotund little pot over in her hands. Its design, she’d been told, had changed little from the ones the villagers were making when Hernán Cortés arrived in 1521. “Besides, my guests pay five times their asking price, and they buy all I can get. The problem is supply, really.”

“Then go to the source.”

“Go to San Miguel?”

“Why not?”

Grace was considering that suggestion when a ripple of consternation passed along the street. People covered their goods with shawls and blankets or moved to stand in front of them. A group of women, ragged and barefoot, with their babies strapped to their backs in their blue shawls, strode toward them.

“Soldaderas,” Lyda said. “The army’s camp followers.”

“Galletas,” Annie added.

“Galletas?” Grace asked. “Cookies?”

“People call the soldiers’ women ‘cookies.’”

“Sopilotas en jupones.” One of the potters spit into the dust. “Robando hasta los muertos.”

“Buzzards in petticoats,” Annie translated. “They even steal things from dead soldiers.”

But as the women passed, Grace wanted to weep for them. Their faces held no trace of joy. Even the indios here in the market laughed and smiled, though Grace had heard that their lives were hard. What misery had robbed these creatures of joy?

Besides, the rebellion had ended. The fighting had stopped. Why didn’t they return to their homes? Why were they following an army that wasn’t going anywhere?