April 2022. Malinalco, Mexico
In the centre of the town of Malinalco sits a church that is held up by strings. The strings spark off in straight lines from different parts of the building as though it has been shot through with electricity. Some end up wrapped around the thick trunks of trees standing at a distance. Others look to be attached to something invisible in the sky and tumble down through the clouds to latch onto onto a battered bit of tower. This sixteenth century relic, from which little branches claw their way out from the roof and moss leaks down crevices, was nearly dragged down by the 2017 earthquake. Under the spider web of support that was installed afterwards it sits looking defiant but also a bit ashamed. As though it came up from the scrubby undergrowth by accident, got caught there, started to be revered but felt like a fraud, tried to return again one day when nobody was looking but got caught a second time — and is now stuck within its network of strings. To me, it’s a building that looks like it has imposter syndrome.
A big grassy yard yawns out before it, large enough to fit enough of the indigenous Mexican worshippers who were once banned from services to get close enough to overhear the priest from outside. Thick stone walls have long curved dips that are low enough to let overflow crowds peer inside on tiptoes. Inside is where magic lies. Entering through a tunnel at the front leads to cool stone cloisters that are like being inside a hollowed out and veined tobacco-stained lung. The high walls are covered in detailed medieval murals, all black and white and spiralling and sprawling on top of each other: hallucinogenic images of creeping vines and sly animals, the occasional dancing skeleton, a mixture of pagan and Christian paradise in photographic negative, the death mask of the Garden of Eden.
If you have paid sixty pesos to be there on Good Friday you might find a Roman Soldier waiting in the cloisters, as I did. Wearing thick purple velvet robes and strapped sandals made from trainer laces, my soldier looked furious and was shooting looks at an increasingly nervous man giving a tour to a group of tourists. The sense was that this tour guide was dragging on the tour for as long as he could to buy time and using the bumbling tourists as a shield from the furious Roman. At this point a soldier’s presence wasn’t a surprise — he’d just wandered off from the approximately three hundred more standing about in the courtyard outside.
On this particular Easter weekend temperatures reached about thirty-four degrees celsius, but the hundreds of Roman soldiers, having prepared their outfits and acts for this day during the year, were undeterred. They had come together, were there, everywhere, all in one place, all sweating, all melting, in thick velvet and plastic helmets with feathers in them. For what they were waiting, it wasn’t clear. It all felt exactly like children prepared for the day of their school play, having gotten into costume far too early and now unable to talk to each other incase of breaking the moment of theatrical reverence. Everyone hovered, avoiding eye contact, sitting down, or simply standing very still with a spear attached to their sweating palm. They were all very strongly “In Character”.
The operation was immense. Children also paced about as tiny soldiers, though one had chosen to be an angel instead, perhaps the hangover favourite role from a nativity play. I could imagine her having a tantrum about wearing the unseasonal outfit, holding out well, and her Roman soldier parents eventually relenting. She now sat happily floating in the arms of her father, her silver halo glistening. The sun was excruciating but the waiting did not stop . I wandered around taking everything, noting I, too, was soon waiting, without knowing why or what for. It was impossible to tell whether the event had happened yet or not. But one of the most amazing qualities in Mexicans is patience, and it has always been that way. As Sybille Bedford, in her 1953 travelogue A Visit to Don Otavio, says “I should have learned patience from the woman who sat on the pavement opposite The Glass of Milk. She was there every morning and vanished sometime in the night. She neither begged nor had anything to sell and her clothes were decorous. She always sat perfectly still and her expression told one nothing. There are many such persons in the streets”.
I’ve seen a few days like this in Mexico, where something and nothing is happening all at once. When I’m amongst this sort of situation I become panicked that preparations have gone wrong. But what is being ready? Once the event’s over we have to prepare for the next one. The angel will have her turn, she’s just taken her cue a bit early. Nothing feels complete or finished in Mexico; the rehearsal becomes the play but always ends up being more truthful than any show. At one point I found four soldiers set up on a stage and guarding a coffin in silence. I stood about fifty metres away. They looked at me, I looked at them. This was the act, and it was executed perfectly. Nothing else was needed. We had looked, and it was over.
It was time to go home. I had managed about one hour in the town. I may have missed the parade but I will never know. Until next Easter, which will roll around again like an egg shaped stone, when the Romans will be there again, waiting for the event to begin.