The human sacrifices begin at noon. I must hurry to prepare the ruins.
Good: The pyramids retain their purity of line; the hieroglyphs balance out the skulls, more or less. Let us say, oh, two to one.
A Diego Rivera mural stretches from wall to wall of the Mayan ball court. (Are those blues really from nature?)
Heads will roll! I predict.
I need more coffee — any style. Bring me the big, steaming bowls of France that you must slurp two-handedly. Bring me the tiny espresso shots of Italy, bitter and inadequate, always calling for another cup.
Bring me café in an ornamental Mexican jar painted in bright ochres and reds. Set it on a geometrically designed serape with just a hint of purple on the fringe.
I will sop up the last drop of caffeine with my tortilla, while dining room tables multiply like serpents.
I must hurry. The sacrifices begin at noon.
Already, the humidity clings to my skin like a cheap cologne.
How stupid of me not to have worn a white linen suit, huaraches, and a Panama hat (straw, of course).
In any case, I am the expert. My art criticism begins now.
Rivera’s human figures roll in a wave of revolutionary fervor: too rounded, too cherubic, too pastel. Industry, agriculture, fraternity, socialism. Hand me the hammer. But no bare breasts, as in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.
A careless oversight. Nudity always adds a pleasant focal point to a painting.
Suddenly, bad news breaks. The sacrifices have been called off; the ballplayers have converted to Communism. Viva la revolución!
+ + +
Frida Kahlo twirls her mustache to match the flair of Salvador Dali’s.
Her heart flutters for the Spanish surrealist, who has bug-eyes only for Gala.
Kahlo deigns to paint his portrait, which turns out to be another of her
self-portraits. So many selves. So many portraits.
This one sports ample facial hair and a monkey on her shoulder, who leans across to eat the gardenia behind her right ear. Or is it a carnation? Ah, carnations only calcify into clichés. Let us call it a hibiscus, and be done with it.
(Still, are those lurid colors from nature?)
I must hurry. The exhibition will begin at 2 a.m., the hour when all the wine shops close, and the retablos disappear from the churches. No respect for authority after la revolución. Only the self, the self. Always the self.
Kahlo twists her mustache into a braid for her next self-portrait: Liberty Leading the Mexican People. She squeezes into an orthopedic corset, bare-breasted.
I pull out my droopy Dali watch to eye the time. The hands cross at midnight.
I must hurry. Yet Kahlo insists I sit.
She paints my portrait with a spike through my spine, a shattered pelvis, and partial paralysis of the legs. I can no longer walk a straight line.
She thinks I am she, in trousers. The self, the self. Always the self.
My moustache grows heavier than hers, however, and I painstakingly pluck out the unibrow.
But I adore her monkey, with his close-set eyes. He eats a carnation for penance each morning, then primps before the mirror. The self, the self. The primate self.
More bad news: Dali cancels the exhibition. He has been demoralized by the retablos, which radiate beauty in six dimensions: height, breadth, length and the omnipresence of the Holy Trinity.
A genuine milagro: The streets fill with gardenias and hibiscus. The Mayan ballplayers convert to Catholicism.
A white skeleton dances with Kahlo in the moonlight. He wears her leather-and-steel braces.
No matter. I am the art critic, and I declare all Mexican colors indigenous, naturalistic, and caffeinated. Then I turn out the dining room lights.
A starry, starry night. The humidity sinks into the cenote.
Tomorrow, I shall buy a monkey and teach it to paint. All colors from nature, of course.