When New York Times critic Liesl
Schillinger reviewed Barbara Kingsolver’s book “The Lacuna” on Nov. 5, 2009, her
opening paragraph brought chills just as the description of the event in
Kingsolver’s book did.
“A skinny young boy holds his
breath and dives into the mouth of an underwater cave — a lacuna — swimming
toward pale blue light as his lungs scream for oxygen. He emerges, gasping, in
a ghostly cenote, a sinkhole in the Mexican jungle fringed with broken coral,
wedged with human bones: a place of sacrifice and buried remembrance. When the
tide rushes out, it will take the boy with it, “dragging a coward explorer back
from the secret place, sucking him out through the tunnel and spitting him into
the open sea.” He’ll paddle to shore and walk home, obsessed forever after by
hidden passages that contain deeper meanings — meanings that only art may recapture.
He’ll acquire a notebook and fill it with stories and memories; when it’s full,
he’ll begin another and then another. But were he to consign these notebooks to
the scrapheap, how would their mysteries be known? Who dares plunge into the
wreckage of a discarded history, not knowing the risks of retrieval?”
This is the cenote, or Well of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza which I write about more below. Double click to enlarge.
In a nutshell, if you haven’t read
it, “The Lacuna” is the life of Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a
divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his
American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the
1930s in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their
houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is
assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling down in Asheville, N.C.,
where he becomes an author of historical potboilers and is later investigated
as a possible subversive. The book is narrated in the form of letters, diary
entries and newspaper clippings, by the way.
The book was not an easy read, and
occasionally I got bogged down which was how I felt about “Poisonwood Bible.”
Kingsolver’s earlier books were easier. But—the depth and breadth of “The
Lacuna” was literally mind-blowing for me. It was worth the work.
But, it was the cenote, or sink
hole that sucked me in and haunts me still. I had never heard the word cenote
before. What a way to start a novel. I shiver thinking about it, just as I did
when I stood at the edge of the Sacred Pool of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza in
1979. Author David Gibbins has some wonderful photos and descriptions
of the ruins and the well.
He says, “From the central
precinct at Chichén Itzá the paths converge towards the Sacred Way, a raised
causeway extending some 300 metres north into the jungle. At the end is the
Sacred Cenote, the ‘Well of Sacrifice’ - a natural sinkhole in the limestone,
its roof collapsed long before the Maya built the small structures and platform
visible here. Soon after the Spanish conquest, a 16th century Franciscan
bishop, Diego de Landa, wrote that here ‘they had the custom of throwing men
alive as a sacrifice to the gods, in times of drought, and they believed that
they did not die though they never saw them again.’ Other Spanish sources spoke
of ‘Indian women belonging to each of the Lords.’ It was a haunting image of
maidenly sacrifice, yet was borne out when the cenote was dredged and explored
by divers on several occasions over the last century.”
I’ll admit that I have done
extensive reading over the years about reincarnation but haven’t really come to
any personal conclusions, except for the day I stood on the platform above the
well all those years ago. I was frozen in time and terror as I had vivid recall
of being drugged and convinced what an honor it was to be a virgin sacrifice
for my people.
I guess the bottom line is that
I highly recommend “The Lacuna,” if you are willing to go with the flow of
Kingsolver’s plot and technique. It made a period in history come alive for me and I really
loved her Frida Kahlo, who is a favorite artist of mine. I’ll also never forget seeing Diego Rivera’s
murals in Mexico City.
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