The City Has Many Faces: A love story about Mexico City

Chapter Fifteen: The Eagle and the Donkey (The Birth of a Ballad)

It was a day like no other in memory, a day of miracles, and there were to be two of them before midnight. The sun saw the first miracle when it peeked over the mountains and looked down into the great Valley of Mexico, astonished to find that, during the night, it had been swept clean of the smog that usually covered it in layers of smoke and grit. Only the oldest people, like old Pablo Gutiérrez, nearly one hundred, remembered when the air was clean and smelled so sweet. Pleasantly surprised, the sun slipped over the mountains and bathed everything in light. From village to village it went, waking birds, animals and people, moving rapidly toward the vast city that lay across the ancient dry lake beds of Texcoco, Xochimilco and Chalco. High in the western mountains the Aztec rain god Tlaloc looked down on the valley and smiled, pleased with his night's labor. Moving this way and that with his great broom of wind and rain, he pushed the mass of filthy air over the eastern mountains where it descended to the sea and was dispersed by winds that swept north from Central America to Texas and back out to sea again. Pleased with the results of his work, the old god was somewhat grumpy too. In both city and village, people would tell each other that the smog's disappearance was a miracle of the God the Spaniards brought with them a few hundred years earlier, who walked on the earth as the man Jesus, had an earthly mother named Mary, a father named Joseph, several brothers and perhaps a sister or two, and was trained as a carpenter. Tlaloc growled, rattling the trees. Then he folded his arms and stared, disillusioned. Such is the way of humans. Hadn't he and Huitzilopochtli the old Aztec war god said that to each other often enoughduring these past few hundred years to have fixed the idea in his head? Was there really some small chance that somewhere in the vast Vallé de México the idea might pop into someone's head that it was he, Tlaloc, who performed the miracle of a smogless day without help from anyone? Or was he just wasting his time thinking about it? Whatever the case, he couldn't bring himself to give up the idea. Maybe somewhere in the huge city that stretched out below him, or in a village in the great valley, or on the slopes of snowcapped Popocatepetl or Ixtaccihuatl, some small and insignificant person would believe that it was he, Tlaloc, who performed the miracle, and no other. He sighed. Allegiances shift; it is the way with the world, even for gods. If there was any satisfaction, it was the knowledge that the God the Spaniards brought with them suffered the same fate as Huitzilopochtli and himself and the others had done -- mostly ignored except on special occasions and times of trouble when people think they can't handle things by themselves. Perhaps that was some justice after all, though it didn’t chase his sour mood entirely away. 

Turning away from the valley, Tlaloc trudged slowly through the pine forest toward Popocatepetl, a slow cold wind moving toward the mountain that caused superstitious people to cross themselves and promise to carry an extra candle or two that night during the procession of Las Posadas.

Mark became aware of the first miracle when, in his apartment on Ejercicio Nacional in Colonia Anzures, the sun crept over the windowsill of his bedroom, slid silently across the floor and bathed his sleeping face in golden light. Opening his eyes, he asked himself: “Why is the sun so bright this morning? Isn’t there any smog?” In the months he'd lived in Mexico City he couldn't remember having ever seen such a bright, sunny morning as this. Getting up he went over to the window, opened it, and poked his head out. The layers of smog that always filtered the sunlight were gone. The sky was clear, a bright ice blue, and the air smelled fresh and clean.

Smiling and whistling a happy tune, he showered, dressed and went into his kitchen to make himself his morning cup of coffee. Then, cup in hand, he went to the window that looked out onto the street, opened it, and put his head out into the fresh morning air. From up the street on the corner of Ejercicio Nacional and Coqui, the delicious smell of pastries wafted from the Panadoria Fidelia. From a few doors down in the opposite direction where Ejercicio Nacional, Gutenberg and Concepción intersected, the orange juice vendor Gustavo Heinz stood polishing glasses at his stand. Calling out to him, Mark said he'd stop by for a glass of juice after he first went up to Panadoria Fidelia to pick up some pastries. Gustavo waved back at him, nodded, and went on polishing glasses. Across the street, señorita Luisa Moreno threw open her widow and called across.