The Eagle and the Donkey,
A Story of the Christmas Season
It was a day like no other in memory. It was a day of miracles, and there were to be two of them before midnight. The sun saw the first one when it peeked over the mountains and looked down into the great Valley of Mexico, astonished to find that during the night the valley had been swept clean of the smog that usually covered it in layers of filthy smoke and grit. Only the oldest people, like old Pablo Gutierrez, nearly one hundred, remembered when the air was clean and smelled so sweet. Pleasantly surprised, the sun rose over the mountains and bathed everything in light. From village to village it went, waking birds and animals and people, moving rapidly toward the vast city that lay like a gigantic animal across the ancient dry lake bed of Lake Texcoco. 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 had 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. Tlaloc was pleased with the results of his work, but he was somewhat grumpy too. In both city and village, people would think the smog’s disappearance was a miracle of the God the Spaniards had brought with them only 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 was trained as a carpenter. Tlaloc growled, rattling the trees. Then he folded his arms and stared, disillusioned. Such is the way of life. Hadn’t he and Huitzilopochtli the old Aztec war god said it to each other often enough during these past few hundred years? Was there really some small chance that somewhere 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 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 get the idea that it was Tlaloc who performed the miracle. He and no other. He sighed. Allegiances shift. It is the way with the world, even for gods. Huitzilopochtli had said it often enough. If there was any satisfaction, it was the knowledge that the God the Spaniards had brought with them suffered the same fate as both Huitzilopochtli and himself: mostly ignored except on special occasions and times of trouble when people think they can’t handle things by themselves.
Turning away from the valley, Tlaloc began trudging slowly through the pine forest toward Popocatepetl, a slow cold wind moving toward the mountain causing superstitious people to cross themselves and promise to carry an extra candle ord two that night during the procession of Las Posadas.
Eric became aware of the first miracle when, deep in the city near Chapultepec Park, 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. He opened his eyes and thought, why is the sun so bright this morning? It’s as if there is no smog. In the months he’d lived in Mexico City he couldn’t remember having seen such a bright, sunny morning. 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, he showered, dressed and went into his kitchen to make himself a pot of coffee. Then, cup in hand, he went to the window that looked out onto the street, opened it, and put his head outside. 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, Eric said he’d stop by for a glass of juice after he first went up to Panadoria Fidelia to pick up some pastries. Gustavo Heinz waved back at him, nodded, and went on polishing glasses. Across the street, señorita Luisa Moreno threw open her widow and called across.
“Buenos dias, señor Eric, isn’t this the most glorious day you have ever seen in Mexico City?” She smiled. “I don’t remember the last time the sun has shone so brightly and there has been no smog. A miracle, wouldn’t you say?”
“It is, señorita, it definitely is.” Excusing himself, he ducked back inside and a few moments later popped out his door and went to the bakery for pastries, which he shared with the orange juice vendor and drank a tall glass of fresh juice. Looking at his watch, he excused himself and went back to his apartment. Thirty minutes later, shaved and with a folder under his arm, he walked down Gutenberg to Melchior Ocampo, waited for a lull in the traffic, then darted across to Tiber and went down the hill. His ESL class started in twenty minutes, so he rushed across the Paseo and down Florencia to Hamburgo, where he turned left, running to get to the Language and Cultural Institute on time.
His three students, Braulio Cárdenas, Edgardo O’Gorman and Lázaro Benavidez met him just inside his classroom, bursting with news. “For a Christmas present, señor Eric, we’re taking you out for dinner tonight at the del Prado, and then out for an unforgettable evening of fun! So don’t plan anything else, and if you have, cancel it right away!”
“Well, the del Prado sounds like fun, but what else do you three have in mind?” He knew their reputation for surprises well enough to ask. “Where are we going after the del Prado?”
“To the most fabulous of places, señor Eric! You won’t forget it!”
“Where is it again?” He continued to press for specifics; the three young men played coy.
“Right downtown,” Braulio said. “Don’t worry about a thing!”
“Fabulous plans!” Edgardo said, trying to dodge around specifics.
“Unforgettable!” Lázaro said. “You will absolutely have the time of your life! We’re taking you to Plaza Garibaldi, the place of never ending festivals, to show you what Las Posadas is really like!
“We couldn’t do that at the del Prado, guys? I’ve heard of Garibaldi, and it doesn’t sound too safe.”
His three stooges cocked their heads and looked at him. “When you’re with us,” they chorused in unison, “you’re in safe hands! Don’t worry about a single thing! You have our joint word, isn’t that true, amigos?”
“¡Si!” they shouted, again in unison.
“The time of your life señor Eric!” Braulio said.
“Fantastic!” Edgardo said.
“Absolutely top drawer!” Lázaro said.
“We can’t wait!” the three said in unison. “We’ll meet you at the Hotel del Prado at six! We’ll have dinner there — on us — then we’ll go and enjoy ourselves. Nothing in Mexico City like it, señor Eric! It is absolutely the best place to be during the Christmas season, without any question about it!”
There was no turning them down. The whole idea of spending the evening at Plaza Garibaldi gave him a sinking feeling that lasted the rest of the day.
**
The Hotel del Prado stands at the corner of Juárez and Revillagigedo, directly across from Alameda Park. Eric liked the park with its statue of Benito Juárez. There was always something going on in and around the park. Shooing away the crowds of shoeshine boys that crowded around him as he neared the hotel, he went inside, where his students met him in front of Diego Rivera’s famous mural, and reminded him of the evening’s agenda.
As they took the elevator up to the restaurant, it was Braulio that hogged the conversation, going on about the food. “I’m so hungry I could eat my shoes!”
“That would be interesting to watch,” Lázaro said, but it would spoil my appetite. Let’s go get something to eat before we find out he’s not joking.”
“Stuff ourselves like pigs!” Braulio continued, pushing past the others as the elevator doors opened. “And flirt with the girls!”
“You do that all the time, Braulio. Why not try something new?”
“Because there’s nothing as interesting, Edgardo.”
“Sometimes, Braulio, I think if we opened your head and looked inside, all we’d find would be a big plate of food, a fast car, and a couple of cute girls.”
“Would that be so bad?” Braulio replied, looking shocked.
**
At exactly eight forty-five, Eric and this three students left the Hotel del Prado, turned right on Juárez, and left at Bellas Artes onto Alarcón. That is the simple part. From there back in 1973, the journey was fairly complicated if you didn’t know the area well because the naming of the streets was so inconsistent. Plaza Garibaldi, where they were headed with some enthusiasm is only five or six blocks from Bellas Artes, and was easy to find if you knew that Alarcón became Serdán in a block or two. If you failed to pay attention to that, as Eric tended to do, you might think you’d got onto the wrong street, turn around or take one of the side streets and end up at the Zócalo staring at the Metropolitan Cathedral and scratching your head. But if you kept going steadily down Serdán, you’d be at Garibaldi in only a few short blocks. But by then Serdán became Leyva which, if you again let your attention drift, could start another cycle of confusion. To correct this confusing nightmare, the city fathers got to thinking that it would make everything a whole lot simpler if they renamed the street Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas. End of confusion. If you kept going toward the noise and the light, you would be just fine. Plaza Garibaldi has always had more than its share of light and noise. But on that night the city fathers hadn’t arrived at a decision (they couldn’t agree on a name), and so confusion still reigned. Fortunately for Eric Lindahl, his three students knew exactly where along this confusing street Plaza Garibaldi was.
You encounter the street vendors about a block before you get to the Plaza. These are mostly poor women with small charcoal braziers cooking food they sell to passersby. It’s pretty good and causes intestinal problems only some of the time. Mexicans call the intestinal problems “los animales”, amoebas that usually only bother tourists. Just imagine a horde of little animals running around in your intestines and you get the idea. You don’t want anything to do with them; they give you a really sore gut and a very bad case of the runs. I’d give you a more graphic picture of what the word “runs” means in this context, but I won’t, as it’ll spoil your appetite. Anyway, I’m sure you’re capable of picturing it yourself without my help.
Getting closer to Plaza Garibaldi you hear the street musicians, and you see a crowd of poor people scrounging for money, hundreds of party-goers and pickpockets, always pickpockets, because they consider Plaza Garibaldi a bonanza of free cash, credit cards, and an occasional passport or two. Feeling suddenly nervous, Eric felt for his wallet, still zipped safely inside the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He was definitely not taking any chances, at least not where his wallet was concerned. Though his three students, Lázaro, Edgardo and Braulio were relaxed and anticipating an evening of fun, he was feeling a little more than slightly out of his element. “Why,” he asked himself, “did I let myself get talked into this?” Receiving no answers, he followed his students into the jam-packed plaza.
As expected, Plaza Garibaldi was packed to its edges with pickpockets, street people, tourists, locals, musicians and students. But no sign of any of the troublemakers that frequented the Plaza, and especially no sign of the one person they were watching out for, el Águila Primero, Numero Uno, rumored to be a sometimes independent agent of the government and bane of students and tourists, a tough guy named Emilio Benitez, who loved Plaza Garibaldi as much as anyone did, slipping in and out of the crowds like a knife-wielding ghost leaving not a few bleeding students and tourists in his wake.
“How do you know he isn’t around?” Eric asked his students.
“Because he makes himself obvious,” Edgardo responded, “and we don’t see him anywhere. If you see a tall guy wearing black pants and a black leather jacket, that’ll be him. We’ll keep our eyes peeled, señor Lindahl, you can rest assured of that”
“Oh.” Somehow, he didn’t feel assured. He had read about the gangs that liked to prowl the plazas at night, especially the gang called “Los Águiles”, leftovers from the government’s crackdown on student activists during the student protests in 1968. Emilio Benitez was the top gun of that group.
But on this night, at least, he was not there; at least not yet.
“Keep your eyes open, señor Eric,” Lázaro said.
“How would I recognize him again?”
“Black pants, black leather jacket, aviator sunglasses. He’s almost as tall as you, so you won’t miss him if he shows up. You’ll either see him, or you’ll see the crowd making room for him. He always makes himself obvious. If one of us sees him, we’ll let you know, and then we’ll head for one of the cantinas, because they have guards at the door, and they’re big, tough, and armed. They’re the one place that el Primero can’t get in.”
“Oh, good, I really feel better knowing that.”
“Hey!” said Braulio, startling him. “Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving!”
“That’s the third thing we’d find in his head if we opened it up, amigos!” Edgardo remarked; “A beautiful girl, a fast car, and food.”
Braulio gave his friend a shocked look. “There’s more?”
“Braulio’s holy trinity!” Lázaro said with a laugh as they walked through the door of one of the cantinas that ringed the Plaza. While Braulio ate a full meal, his friends, who weren’t hungry after their meal at the del Prado’s famous dining room, drank coffee and ate a few snacks.
When they emerged into the Plaza again, there were more people, more musicians, more food vendors, and more pickpockets. But no Eagles, no el Primero. Braulio began scanning for pretty young women to flirt or dance with, while the others amused themselves listening to a musician that was attracting a growing crowd of admirers. The musician was a young man with Down Syndrome who was singing at the top of his lungs while he drummed out the rhythm of the song with wooden shoes. A second young man, his manger (or handler, as Lázaro cynically remarked), whipped up the crowd and collected the money that the musician’s cheering admirers began throwing at him. Eric and his students, Braulio with a pretty young woman in tow, pushed to the front of the whistling, dancing, cheering crowd to get a closer look. The more money people threw, the more they whistled and cheered, the more excited his manager was, and the more wildly the young man sang and pounded his feet, his face beet red and bathed in perspiration.
It was then that Edgardo spotted him, a tall young man in black pants, black leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, moving slowly through the crowd from Camilito Street in their direction. Emilio Benitez, el águila primero, walked slowly toward them, his gaze fixed on Eric and his three companions. Emilio’s approach was precise and simple: appear, harass people, cut someone or, more often than not, scare them out of their wits, then vanish, ¡Pouf! into thin air. The police were unable—or unwilling; it was never clear which—to touch him. Just seeing him nearby caused crowds to fall silent and begin moving out of his way, just as they were doing now as he strode steadily and silently through the crowded plaza toward Eric and his three students. Even the ecstatic young musician, seeing him, fell suddenly silent.
“We’d better get out of here, señor Manning, fast!” Edgardo said, touching Eric’s elbow. “You see that guy coming toward us? It’s him; we’d better get into a cantina, and do it fast!”
But before they could take a step, Eric heard an icy voice say next to his right ear:
“Hey, gringo!”
He turned toward the voice; there was no one.
From behind him came: “Enjoying yourself?”
He wheeled around. Nothing. He looked from Edgardo to Braulio to Lázaro, who, seeing nothing, shrugged.
Then, so close to his left ear that he could feel the warmth of the man’s breath, he heard: “Scared, señor?” But when he looked, there was only empty space.
“I am going to have some fun,” Emilio Benitez said, looming suddenly in front of him with a large and very shiny knife in one hand. “I don’t like tourists, or their friends. And I like gringo tourists worse than anything. Except,” smiling, “for fun. That I enjoy. ¿Comprende?” And he laughed. The laugh made Eric Lindahl’s skin crawl.
He thought he was going to die, skewered on a shiny knife wielded by a total stranger. He stared at the young man who slowly and deliberately ran a thumb along the cutting edge of his knife, and he couldn’t manage a single intelligible thought except to wonder if Braulio’s head, usually filled with as cars, pretty young women and food, was as empty of content as his. The eagle began circling the four of them, caressing his knife, his face a blank mask. Circling, circling, circling, waiting for just the right moment to thrust, to slash, to tear these four men to shreds, el águila primero inspected his victims…and waited.
And Eric, feeling very much like a mouse about to be caught in an eagle’s talons froze, and stopped breathing. Deprived of oxygen, his brain sent an emergency message to his lungs: “Breathe!!” it shouted. Responding, his lungs drew air through his constricted throat in a high-pitched “HEEEEEE!” Then it came out in a loud “HAWWW!” causing Emilio Benitez’ mouth to drop open. “HEEEE!” he went again as his lungs gasped for air; “HEEEEEE!” and “HAWWWW!” Then, eyes popping half out of his head, he threw back his head, opened his mouth and began braying like a mule.
“HEE-HAW!” he went. “HEE-HEE-HEE-HAW!” stopping the shocked eagle dead in his tracks and bringing a stunned silence to the Plaza. “HEE-HAWWW! HEE HEE-HEE-HAWWW!” The sound of his braying spilled out of the Plaza and rolled up and down neighboring streets scaring dogs and cats and sending flights of pigeons circling into the night sky. “HEE-HAWWWW! HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HAWWWW!”
Emilio Benitez, el águila primero, stood rooted to the spot and stared. The donkey stared pop-eyed back at him, his teeth showing, and kept madly braying.
“HEE-HEE-HEE-HAWWWWWW!” He brayed on and on, filling the air with wild donkey sounds that rose up into Tlaloc’s smog-swept air, filled the nearby neighborhoods, stalled traffic circling around the Zócalo, and brought everything for a square mile to a screeching, silent, deadening stop. People opened their windows, stuck their heads out, and listened. “HEE-HAWWW! HEE-HEE-HEE-HEE-HAWWWW!” For a square mile around, all that could be heard was the donkey’s wild braying and the loud flapping of pigeon wings. Even Tlaloc, dozing on Popocatepetl’s crater rim, snapped suddenly awake, looked down toward the city, and cocked an ear at the racket.
Then, just as quickly as it had started, the mad braying stopped, and the teacher was himself again, standing there with his mouth shut and a serene look on his face. A smile broke slowly across his face at realizing that his nemesis was nowhere to be seen. The eagle had flown. El águila primero, the terror of Mexico City at night, had sprinted out of the Plaza like a m an possessed. Assaulted by the donkey’s awful braying, he had taken flight, run away from Garibaldi and the noise toward Allende Street, run as fast as he could from this donkey-man who was suddenly, and perhaps supernaturally, more powerful than he. Scared into bewildered, mindless flight, Emilio Benitez, for the first time in his thirty years, entered the Metropolitan Cathedral to pray, the sound of the donkey’s raucous braying still loud in his ears.
“Holy Mother of God!” he said as he struggled with shaking hands to place a small lighted white candle in a side altar in the old cathedral’s sanctuary. “Blessed Virgin, please save me!” He looked around for signs of the demon donkey, but saw nothing but a nearly empty sanctuary. He remained there, huddled near the altar, until the sun crept over the eastern mountains and bathed the valley of Mexico in the light of a new day.
At Plaza Garibaldi, the crowd was cheering and whistling for the donkey. People crossed themselves. They thanked Jesus and His mother. They congratulated Eric for scaring that no-good, that thug, that notorious bad guy into such a fit of alarm that he dropped his knife and fled as fast as his legs would take him. A group of young men lifted Eric to their shoulders and paraded around the plaza with him, cheering at the top of their lungs.
“El águila primero es finito!” they shouted. “He is a coward! Long live The Donkey! ¡Viva el borrico!” They carried him into Cantina Rosario, followed by Braulio, Edgardo and Lázaro and a cheering crowd of admirers.
He was at a loss to explain what had suddenly come over him and made him begin braying like a mule. One moment he had been standing there scared out of his wits, and the next moment he was braying like a maniac unable to stop himself. Then all of a sudden it was over and he was himself. Edgardo declared that he had never heard such a deafening sound. Lázaro looked at his teacher as if he expected him to start barking like a dog. And Braulio, he was too busy flirting with a pretty young cigarette girl to think about anything else. But everyone else was focused on Eric, el borrico, who in the flash of an instant, was transformed as if by a miracle into a donkey and scared the nemesis of the night into abject cowardly, cowering flight. “Hooray for el borrico!” they shouted.
And so began the story of el borrico, a story that grew with the telling, “La historia d’el águila y el borrico”, made popular by storytellers and plain street-corner gossip-mongers who love this kind of tale. There hadn’t been such an amazing event in anyone’s recent memory, a day on which Garibaldi Plaza was cleansed of terror. Again and again people hoisted their glasses into the air and shouted “Viva el borrico!” while a mariachi band played and sang a new composition in honor of this magical event.
All the while, the donkey sat there surrounded by warmth and a full belly, still not quite back down to earth. Gradually the image of the black-clad Benitez and his knife faded from his mind, and he began to relax and enjoy himself. He sang along with the musicians who stopped by his table. He danced with Braulio’s most recent girl, who whispered in his ear that she’d never heard a man make sounds like that, ever, querido mio, which made him blush and miss a step.
At around two in the morning, just as Andrés the red-haired waiter was polishing glasses, a man wearing a black leather jacket, black pants and aviator sun glasses came into the cantina for a nightcap before catching a taxi to his home in Colonia San Angel. The donkey caught a glimpse of him in the mirror behind the bar. At first he did nothing but stare. He tried to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth. Finally prying his mouth open in what Edgardo thought was a yawn,he said “HEEEE!” filling his lungs with as much air as he could and then pausing, eyes popping from their sockets.
“What’s wrong?” Edgardo exclaimed, startled.
The donkey pointed at the leather-clad young man. “HAWWWWW!” he shouted at the top of his voice, scaring everyone.
Braulio stopped flirting with a pretty young cigarette seller and looked. “Nothing to worry about,” he said, “it’s not him.”
The black-clad young man, stopped in his tracks by the donkey’s deafening braying, turned tail and dashed out of the cantina and across the plaza and all the way to Juárez where he jumped into the first taxi he saw. “San Angel!” he shouted at the driver, scaring him so badly that he jammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled rubber for half a block, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
“He was wearing the same outfit,” el borrico said, calming down. “I thought…”
“It wasn’t him,” Lázaro replied. “Let’s call it a night.”
So the four friends, accompanied by a swarm of volunteer bodyguards from the cantina, traipsed up the street to Juárez w here they flagged down a pesero taxi. By three, Eric was safe in his bed in a deep, dreamless sleep that lasted until ten in the morning when he awoke to the kiss of the sun.
In the neighborhood surrounding Plaza Garibaldi, people still tell each other how God protected good people on that night so long ago. They talk endlessly about the gringo who was miraculously changed into a donkey so that evil was scared away on that special night at the beginning of Las Posadas in 1973.
**
And so ends the story of the donkey and the eagle, the gringo and the tough guy. Instead of ending in a tragedy, as so many similar incidents before and since, it ended in happiness for almost everyone. Perhaps even for Emilio Benitez, who was never seen again. Rumor has it that there is an aging priest in a tiny village in the mountains of Michoacán, who has a donkey named “Gringo” and once lived in Mexico City and has a shady past. But no one has asked the old priest about it. With a story, “truth” is in the telling of it. And around Plaza Garibaldi in the dead of night, it is said that the donkey’s mad braying can still be heard. And that is enough for those who believe it.
(This story will appear as a chapter in my novel “The City Has Many Faces”.
