Summary: Diez (10)
The orange of the golden carp appeared
at the edge of the pond. As he came out of the darkness of the pond
the sun caught his shiny scales and the light reflected orange and
yellow and red.
See Important Quotations Explained
When María’s youngest brother, Lucas Luna, is near death
that summer after having fallen ill the previous winter, neither
a Las Vegas doctor nor the local priest can cure him. When Pedro,
Lucas’s brother, asks for Ultima’s help, he explains that Lucas
saw the daughters of Tenorio Trementina dancing the Black Mass,
a blasphemous satanic ritual. When Lucas challenged them with a
cross made from two sticks, they fled the scene. Within the week,
Lucas fell ill.
Ultima says that she will need Antonio’s help to cure
Lucas. Antonio states that he will be proud to assist a curandera.
As they approach El Puerto, they see the horned day moon, the moon
of the Lunas, between two dark mesas at the end of the valley. When Ultima
arrives in El Puerto, she forbids the Lunas to kill the coyotes that
will surround Prudencio’s home when she works her cure. When Ultima
takes Antonio to confront Tenorio to warn him that his daughters
must lift the curse or suffer the consequences, Tenorio makes the
sign of the cross. Ultima declares that his daughters gathered Lucas’s
hair for their curse after he came to Tenorio for a haircut. Tenorio
denies her accusations and calls her a bruja, or witch.
Ultima closes herself and Antonio in Lucas’s room. After
she forces a mixture of kerosene, water, and herbs down Lucas’s
throat, she asks Antonio if he is afraid, and Antonio says that
he is not. She explains that the reason for his courage is that
good is always stronger than evil. Antonio hears Ultima’s owl attacking
the coyotes surrounding Prudencio’s home. Antonio enters a trance
and finds that he cannot move or speak. When Lucas writhes in pain,
Antonio feels pain as well. Ultima makes three clay dolls covered
with wax and forces Lucas to take more medicine. Afterward, Antonio
drifts to sleep. When he wakes, he vomits green bile. Ultima catches
it in rags that she stores in a bag. Afterward, Antonio is able
to keep down some atole, a gruel made of corn meal. Lucas screams
in pain, vomiting a squirming mass of hair. When Lucas successfully
eats a bowl of atole, Ultima declares the cure finished. The house
fills with happy people, but some whisper the words bruja and hechicera (meaning
“witch” or “sorceress”). Ultima burns the mass of hair and dirty
linen in the grove where Lucas challenged Tenorio’s daughters.
Summary: Once (11)
Cico offers to take Antonio to see the golden carp. After
confirming that Antonio has never fished for a carp, Cico asks Antonio
if he believes the golden carp is a god. Crestfallen, Antonio replies
that he cannot believe in any god except the god of his church because
he is a Catholic. At Cico’s request, Antonio swears by the cross
that he will never hunt or kill a carp. Afterward, Cico and Antonio
visit Narciso’s garden, where they eat carrots. Cico explains that
Narciso’s magic and an underground spring make the garden so lush. Narciso
plants by the light of the moon.
Antonio’s group of friends invites Antonio and Cico to
play ball. Ernie claims that there is a witch living in Antonio’s
house. Horse asks Antonio to do a magic trick for them. Angry at
Ernie’s taunting, Antonio agrees. He vomits the carrot juice on
the ground, frightening his friends. Cico and Antonio run to a hidden
pond where the huge, beautiful golden carp makes its appearance.
Cico explains that the carp lives in the Hidden Lakes, a place with
a strange power like the presence of the river, but stronger and
hungrier. A mermaid lives there, trying to lure men to their deaths.
Cico warns Antonio never to go there alone.
Cico explains that the golden carp prophesied that the
weight of people’s sin would cause the land to sink and be swallowed
by the underground lake beneath it. When Antonio replies that it
is not fair to the men who don’t sin, Cico tells him that all men
sin. The story saddens Antonio, and he feels burdened by the knowledge.
When he returns home, he learns that Ultima already knows about
the golden carp. She tells Antonio that he must find his own truths
in adulthood. That night Antonio dreams about the conflicting beliefs
he has encountered, as well as the conflict between his parents’
wishes for him. Ultima tells Antonio and his parents that the water
of the moon and the sea are the same water and that each family
member is part of the same cycle.
Analysis: Diez–Once (10–11)
Antonio’s friendship with Samuel initiates Antonio’s awareness
of the conflicts in his own religion. The El Puerto priest’s inability
to cure Lucas increases Antonio’s doubts. When Ultima successfully cures
Lucas, Antonio comes to realize that Ultima’s spirituality is both
valid and separate from the Catholic Church. Antonio’s realization
that the church does not have the same kind of power as Ultima suggests
to him that no single way of interpreting the world can ever comprehend
everything; life requires a commingling of different perspectives,
explanations, and beliefs.
In various ways, Anaya symbolically links Antonio’s character
to the power of healing, showing that Antonio himself may possess some
of the spirituality that he admires in Ultima. Mexican folklore traditionally
associates Antonio’s middle name, Juan, with mystical powers. People
who are named Juan are said to have special powers to resist witchcraft.
Anaya offers us a vivid description of Ultima’s cure, but he does
not explain her power. Her power is mysterious—recognizing and honoring
its existence is a matter of faith and spirituality.
Part of Ultima’s authority in the community and in Antonio’s family
comes from the fact that even though she is not a member of the
Catholic Church, she rigorously follows a philosophy that highly
values harmony and free will. She continually contrives to show
Antonio how his radically different heritages can coexist harmoniously
within him. When she asks Antonio to take part in the cure, for
instance, she does so because she knows that he will incur a social
cost for helping her, and she wants him to understand what is at
stake. This respectful treatment indicates that Ultima believes that
Antonio is ready to make independent decisions and accept consequences,
the hallmark of adulthood.
Antonio’s friends represent the collective social voice,
as many people in the community feel that Ultima’s cure is witchcraft. Although
Antonio maintains his individuality, he still has to deal with social
prejudice. Ernie’s mean-spirited teasing is Antonio’s first real
taste of this phenomenon and represents simply another obstacle
on his path to wisdom and adulthood. Whereas Ultima is able to understand
the multiplicity of life and the incompleteness of any one way of
explaining it, Anaya shows that many people are prejudiced by their
own views and react to other views with suspicion and fear.
The inability to look past biased assumptions is especially
visible in the townspeople’s treatment of Narciso. Most people simply
view him as the town drunk, and only a few, like Cico, possess the
perspective necessary to see that he is actually one of the magic
people, like Ultima. Cico’s view that Narciso’s lush garden is drunk
like Narciso illustrates his idea of tolerance and acceptance, ideals
he generally shares with Ultima. Cico’s moral order does not condemn Narciso’s
love of alcohol; instead, he has the ability to see beyond the blinders
of social prejudice to see the good in Narciso’s magic, just as
Antonio does with Ultima. His willingness to be open-minded brings
him strength, but also a lot of conflict.
Cico’s decision to share the golden carp’s apocalyptic
prophecy with Antonio illustrates the connection between Cico’s
religion and Catholicism: both are concerned with moral decadence.
The prophecy depresses Antonio because he feels that it burdens
him with responsibility, implying that all men sin. As Antonio’s
dreams about his older brothers reveal, he shoulders a great deal
of responsibility for the moral well-being of people close to him.
However, Ultima reminds him that he should concentrate on his own
fate. She acknowledges the conflict he experiences between the pagan
religion and the Catholic Church, but she does not tell him what
to believe or what to think. Unlike Antonio’s mother, she regards knowledge
as the best and most important asset in decision-making.
Antonio’s dream about the water of the moon and the water
of the sea is a way for him to deal symbolically with the religious
conflict between his parents. Gabriel’s spiritual beliefs are more
like Cico’s pagan religion than like María’s Catholicism, and the
result is even more tension between the parents. Antonio’s struggle
to cope with competing moral orders is now a symbolic part of his
struggle to cope with conflicting family traditions. Ultima, whose
character demonstrates the possibility of the harmonious coexistence
of opposites, calms Antonio’s fears in the dream by revealing the
interdependent relationship of the sea and the moon, symbolic representations
of his paternal and maternal traditions.
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