Jeff Dixx

It came not from outside, but from within. A woman’s name which all men shout to call that Maria Tacun lost in their consciousness. Who has never called, never shouted the name of a woman lost in his yesterdays? Who has not pursued like a blind man that being who went away from his being, when he came to himself, who kept on going and still keeps on going from his side, a runaway, a tecuna, impossible to hold because if she stops time turns her into stone. Rock of Maria Tecun, image of absence, lover ever present and moving away, traveler always standing still, tall as the towers, opaque with forgetfulness, stone flute for the wind and, like the moon, with no light of its own. Fair skin and red hair ... Maria Tacun. He found her among the headless Zacatones; it was the Tecunes who cut off the heads of Zacatones. He named her Tecun, raised her and then made her pregnant. The film is scraped off his eyes ... Goyo Yic ... but he didn’t know Maria Tecun, so of what use were his eyes? He had known her only as a blind man, inside the fruit of his love, as he called his children, a flower invisible to the eyes of one who sees from the outside and not from within. “You know her better than anyone else you may hear,” the herbalist tells him, “she’s the one who ain’t going to know you, even if you swear it’s you, with your eyes cured.” To get women to speak he became a peddler, roads, towns, fairs: “Mirrors, my girls, pretty little mirrors. combs. soaps. florida water for florid young ladies. almanacs, fine yarn, ribbons, pearl earrings, lovely bracelets, handkerchiefs, pencils, writing paper for lovers." He coaxed older women with novenas, rosaries, basins of holy water, lockets ... A woman who is truly loved cannot be seen, she is the flower of the amate seen only by the blind, the flower of blind men, men blinded by love, blinded by faith, blinded by life. He has a possum slipped into his soul. He looks down at himself with his tray of goods and sees himself like a pregnant possum, his children in his pouch. Domingo Revolorio ... Judges and jailers seem like people without reason, deranged. Compliance with rules and regulations which have nothing to do with reality turns them into madmen, at least they seem so to those who are not under the strange influence of the law. Nicho, the coyote postman, with the commandant’s secretary: “Don’t go following her, just remember what they say happened to that blind fellow who fell down a ravine on account of him running after that Maria Tecun. He heard her speaking and just as he caught her up he recovered his sight, only to see her turned into stone. He forgot he was on the edge of the precipice, and for your information they’re still out looking for him.” The spider spell causes the woman to become a tecuna. Then the man takes on a madness, “spider’s maze madness,” turns away from goodness, are left like trees that lose the bark which protected them from the elements, and without the compass needle of good love to guide them, they turn to drink or concubinage, those vain refuges of sin which, far from bringing them peace, vex them still further, until they escape in search of the tecuna, ever enticed by the hope of finding her, a hope which is dissolved into tears, since it is the popular belief that when they are finally led on to Maria Tecun Ridge they see reproduced before their eyes, in that stone which once was a person, the image of the woman who abandoned her home, and who begins to call, all this so that the man, blinded by love, will rush forward to the joyful rendezvous, oblivious of the ravine, or chasm, which in that very moment swallows him whole.” ~Miquel Angel Asturias