Steiner didn’t see the urchin-“archeologist” again until New Year’s Eve. In Taxco the arrival of the New Year is celebrated at a midnight mass in the cathedral. For hours beforehand the ancient bells ring out. A thousand worshippers are drawn to Santa Prisca. Those who can, crowd into the large, bare hall, pushing as close as possible to the brilliant altar. Those who can’t, fill the huge open doorways and spill out onto the steps, and into the plaza. At midnight they fall on their knees and join the padre in prayer that they may live up to the example of El Cristo Rey in the year to come. Then fireworks shoot off into the sky and burst in joyous sound and color over the cobblestones.
Steiner came out of Santa Prisca with a sense of exaltation, of cleanliness, pleased that for the first time since he had left New York for Hollywood he would face the New Year not with a hangover but with a clear head and fresh eyes. At that moment he felt a tugging at his sleeve. Steiner recognized the earnest, brown face of the undersized vendor in pre-Columbian artifacts.
“Meester,” he said, “I am your friend, Miguelito. At the mass I feel very bad to cheat you. The padre tells us we must start well the año nuevo. Tomorrow morning, if you will pay for the horses, I will take you twenty kilometers to cave of old Guerrero gods. No turistos ever see this. I will go into the cave with you, and we will see what we can find, hokay?”
How could Steiner, how could anyone drawn to Mexican archaeology, refuse?
That night Steiner heard again the choral screams that had awakened him the first night, and that had been explained by the night clerk with a casual shrug. “Oh, those are only our dogs, señor, we call them the howling dogs of Taxco. They are very hungry and up in the mountains they hunt in packs, like wolves. The nights are so quiet that we hear them miles away.”
The howling dogs of Taxco … Steiner could picture them up there, baying at some invisible prey. The sound was unlike anything he had heard, but after a while he grew used to it, accepted it as part of the night life of Taxco, and went back to sleep.
Next morning at dawn Miguelito was waiting for him with two very small horses. In the fine, early-morning air they galloped down the high ground from Taxco and out into the countryside to a village, a poblado of half a dozen thatch-roofed huts. Beyond them, on a stony hillside, they hitched their horses, and Miguelito led Steiner toward a narrow opening in the rocks. With a dramatic flick of his small flashlight, Miguelito beamed it into the darkness. God or Quetzalcoatl be praised, Steiner was thinking, Miguelito had brought him to his first archaeological cave.
There were the ancient stucco walls, the faded fresco, the steps leading from the entrance cave to the next chamber. There were indentations where idols had been placed more than a thousand years ago. They followed the path of the flashlight until the cave narrowed to a tunnel barely wide enough for Miguelito to squeeze through.
“I go in,” Miguelito said. “Never go this far before.”
“Cuidado, be careful,” Steiner said. For some reason, perhaps because this place had a churchlike atmosphere, they both spoke in whispers. At least five minutes passed, possibly ten, while Steiner waited in the darkness. He heard some strange, scurrying sounds. Lizards, rats? He felt excited and a little frightened. At last he was being his own archaeologist, his own idol-hunter. Then, from inside, he heard a muffled cry. A few moments later, Miguelito appeared.
“Meester—look! Look, Meester!”
In Miguelito’s hand was an idol, in the shape of a drinking vessel. The ears were handles. The face was that of an ancient warrior of Guerrero. It was chipped and cracked but intact. Miguelito wrapped it tenderly in a cloth he had brought, and back they rode, triumphantly, across the valleys and barrancas to Taxco.
In Steiner’s room they bargained gingerly. “Five hundred pesos—forty bucks U.S.,” Steiner opened. Miguelito shook his head. It was such a treasure he hated to part with it. Actually he should turn it over to the National Museum, which would probably give him two thousand pesos for it. Steiner raised his bid to one thousand—eighty dollars. They finally settled on one hundred even.
At lunch Steiner showed his prize to the plump, seedy-prosperous patrón of the hotel, who turned it over carefully in his hands and pronounced it old, very old. Si, señor, a very rare, very fine piece. Muy antiguo. Muy preciosa.
Antiguo, preciosa hummed in Steiner’s mind all the way back to Los Angeles. He even showed it to Rhoda, the wife he was separated from but still saw occasionally, like a bad habit he couldn’t break. Rhoda had once gone on a dig to Yucatán and so considered herself a pre-Columbian maven. She was taking extension courses at U.C.L.A. and knew practically everything. “I’d take it to Stendahl’s,” she suggested, “and have it appraised.” Stendahl’s was the gallery on La Cienega known for its pre-Columbian collection and expertise.
Stendahl fingered it carefully, held it up to the light, wet his finger and rubbed it—and, almost inaudibly, pronounced it worthless. A good fake—but still a fake.
Discouraged by his fiasco as a would-be collector of pre-Columbian art, Steiner stayed away from Taxco for several years. But finally, after finishing a screenplay that was actually going into production, he couldn’t resist going back, and found himself caught up again in the appeal of the old church, the twisting cobblestone streets, the fawnlike Indian children, even the howling of the dog packs in the mountains.
Next morning in the plaza Steiner felt a polite tap on his shoulder and turned to face a slender young man dressed in powder-blue guayabera, pressed tan slacks and polished sandals, his black hair looped artfully over his forehead.
“Meester, you remember me? Here is Miguelito.”
“Miguelito, get away from me. Vayate! You’re a liar, a thief, a crook.”
Miguelito tried again but Steiner left him at the foot of the steps leading up to Paco’s. Next morning when Steiner came down for breakfast, Miguelito was waiting for him in the patio restaurant of the hotel. He had with him a brown gunny sack. He had something to show Steiner, he said, that was muy importante, muy serioso.
“Miguelito, you are ruining my trip,” Steiner said. “I want to enjoy Taxco—without you. Now, vayate, beat it, get lost.”
“Please, my friend, por favor!” The tears in Miguelito’s eyes were genuine. “Last night, at the midnight mass for the New Year, I say, ‘Miguelito, you are very bad. Muy malo. You lie. You cheat.’ ”
“It was after the other midnight mass that you cheated me,” Steiner reminded him.
“Yes, I know,” Miguelito confessed. “But this time I bring you something true. In fact it is something so special I cannot show it to you here in public.”
Intrigued in spite of himself, Steiner took Miguelito back to his room again. The balcony opened on the great church. The bells were clanging. They always seemed to be clanging. Reverently, like a priest, Miguelito drew from the gunny sack a great head, exquisitely chiseled, the neck lean and tender, the hair a mass of curls that on closer inspection were sculptured serpents.
“Mi gran amigo,” Miguelito said, “this time I swear on my beloved mother and the sainted Virgin …”
“You lied to me twice,” Steiner said.
“Señor!” Miguelito pleaded. “Would I lie to you a third time?”
“If you could get away with it—hell, yes! Go find yourself another gringo sucker. This town is full of them.
Miguelito left with his sack and his hurt dark eyes. Steiner decided he had had enough. He knew enough phonies in Hollywood. Who needed an Indian version in Taxco?
In the morning when he was checking out, the sleepy desk clerk reached down and handed him a gunny sack. There was a note pinned to it: “Señor Steiner—I am everything you say. Muy malo. A ladrón! But I wish you to take this with you as a gift to remember me in a better way. Your friend in truth, Miguelito.”
Steiner left the sack on the floor near the desk but the clerk ran out to Steiner’s rented car parked at the entrance. “Señor, señor, you forget thees.” With the patience or stoicism
he had admired in Mexican peons, Steiner managed to stuff the sack into his duffel bag.
Home from Mexico again, Steiner dutifully lugged the gunny sack to Stendahl’s. This time Mr. Stendahl stared at it intensely for several minutes, and then asked for a few days to study it more thoroughly.
The next day Stendahl called Steiner at the studio, asking him how soon he could come to the gallery. Steiner had been waiting for a call from his producer that he didn’t really expect to come through for days, and it was almost lunch time. Sensing something was up, he said he’d be over right away.
“Mr. Steiner,” Stendahl greeted him, “you have brought us a very, very important piece from the Rio de las Balsas area, from the classic period of the little-known Guerrero culture. It is almost too good to be true—the nose, so fine, so delicate, should have broken off centuries ago. I have only seen a few heads like this before, but never with all the serpent coils intact. It is one of a kind. And belongs in a museum. Right now I am ready to offer you one thousand dollars for it.”
A museum! How could an amateur collector like Steiner monopolize it? When Stendahl interpreted Steiner’s shock as hesitation, he quickly went up another two hundred and fifty and Steiner took the money, thinking how it would help his settlement problem with Rhoda. A few months later Steiner heard that Stendahl had sold the piece for twenty-five hundred dollars, and now he had no doubt but that one day it would be worth twenty-five thousand.
The following Christmas, when Steiner returned to Taxco again, and asked for Miguelito in the plaza, he was directed to his new casita, a steep ten-minute climb up from the cathedral. Steiner found him sitting in an elaborate wicker chair on his freshly painted portico, which was full of flowering plants in gasoline cans, and cages of small birds. He was reading a new pamphlet from the National Museum on the classic culture of Guerrero. He had grown a little moustache, wore real shoes now, and looked every bit the petit bourgeois he was becoming.
A little brown urchin, who could have been Miguelito when Steiner first met him, ran up with a fistful of pesos. “Here you are, Don Miguel, I sell mine very quick.” Miguelito counted the money carefully and handed his young salesman his cut. Meanwhile another Miguelito look-alike from five years back ran out of the house with two grotesque clay heads that were dead-ringers for the fakes Miguelito had palmed off on Steiner that first time.
“First try the steps of the church,” Miguelito instructed, “and if that doesn’t work, try Paco’s Bar. Those gringos borrachos will never know the difference. And don’t forget to say, ‘I find this myself. Mucho auténtico. Only five dollar.’ ”
Steiner had been standing there watching him for a moment. When he saw his old customer, Miguelito jumped up to grab him in a warm abrazo. “Señor Stein-err!” he said. “Always I am hoping you come back.”
“I see you are still up to your old tricks,” Steiner said. “Only now you have become a big comercio, with your own sales force.” Miguelito gave an exaggerated Guerrero shrug. “Remember what I say to you when I am still barefoot in the plaza? You are the colossus of the north. We are a very poor country. So we must do everything we can to get your dollars into our empty pockets.”
“Miguelito, you don’t have to apologize. You have a nice little business. Lots of our people are in the business of selling fakes, one way or another.” He was thinking of his producer, and of half the people he knew in Hollywood.
Miguelito brought out his aged tequila especiál and poured generous shots for each of them. They touched their stubby glasses ceremoniously.
“Miguelito, this time it is my turn to feel guilty. This Christmas I’ve come back to tell you I have cheated you.”
“Mande?—please?”
When Steiner told him of his profit at Stendahl’s, Miguelito nodded, unsurprised.
“I knew it was auténtico. Of course I did not realize it was worth almost a million pesos, but I found it myself. In a new secret place down the River Balsas. Un million pesos!” Pleased with himself, he poured them each another añejo. “It’s like hitting the lotería.”
“Exactly,” Steiner said. “In your country, with the peso constantly falling, a small fortune. And I feel it belongs to you. After all, you gave me that piece.”
Miguelito nodded proudly. “Si, como no? I felt I owed it to you, amigo.”
“But why—why—after cheating me twice?”
“My very good friend, this time I speak the truth. As you know, I was born here very poor. I walk barefoot on the cobblestones. I sleep like a dog on the floor. I see the rich gringos come to take pictures of us and look down on us, and I say to myself, Miguelito, you must find a way to—”
“—get our dollars out of our pockets and into yours—even if you have to lie and cheat?”
Miguelito gave that familiar shrug that bespoke the local philosophy. “You have heard the howling dogs of Taxco? When a dog is starving he will snap at your hands to get what he needs.”
“So what changed you, Miguelito, from a little crook to an honest man?”
“Last year my Mami—who loves the Church even more than she loves me, her little Miguelito born like Jesu Christo without a father—she die. There is not even time to say goodbye. I feel very sad. I never go in the big church except maybe to find customers. But now I go in to make confession. I feel very bad for all my lies and cheats. I promise my mother and the Blessed Virgin I will do something to make up for all my mentiras. So when you come back for Christmas, the Holy Spirit moves me to give you free gratis no charge the escultura classica I discovered on my first expedition after I bury my mother in the little cemetery at the bottom of the hill.”
Steiner offered to give him half the money from Stendahl but he refused. It was hard to believe.
“Not even the big archaeologists from the Museo Nacional know about my cave on the Balsas. And I have been very careful not to let my local competitors know where I am going. So it makes me happy if you keep the money. Next week I will make another expedition. And maybe, God willing, I will find something else further back in the cave, even more valuable.”
A few months later, home in West Los Angeles, Steiner was awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night. As he answered, he checked his watch, almost two o’clock! It was, most unexpectedly, Miguelito, and he sounded breathless. “Hola, gran amigo, here is your old compañero Miguel! I am just come back from a wonderful trip down the Rio Balsas. And señor, I have found something truly fantástico. You must think me loco to call at such an hour, but I could not wait until morning. This piece is so serious I will keep it for your eyes only.”
“Where are you calling from, Paco’s Bar?” At four o’clock in Taxco, his little archaeologist could only be calling from one too many tequilas añejos.
“No, no, I call from my house, in my oficina. I have my own telephone now. Amigo mio, would I call you at such an hour if this was not the discovery of a lifetime? You know, I have been studying with the masters at the Museo. I study Olmeca and Vera Cruz Classico and I learn all the periods of my own Guerrero. And tonight, what I bring back, believe me, señor, it is worth a special trip to Taxco.”
Two days later Steiner was flying down to Mexico City and then speeding around the hairpin turns that took him past Cuernavaca and on to Taxco. Miguelito was waiting for him at their usual meeting place, the congenial balcony of Paco’s overlooking the plaza. His moustache was fuller now, more authoritative, it seemed, and instead of the familiar native vest, he was wearing a proper city suit. Next time Steiner came, he speculated, the urchin he first met when he was running barefoot on the cobblestones would be mayor of Taxco, if not the local presidente of Turismo. He was on his way. Everything about him advertised his climb. Like the self-important way he said to Steiner, “First we will have a copita to celebrate the treasure. And then you will come with me to feast your eyes on it.”
When they climbed the steep cobblestones to Miguelito’s house, and while Steiner paused to catch his breath, his host disappear
ed into a deep rear closet. When he reappeared, he held an object wrapped in cloth, which he uncovered with deliberate ceremony.
Revealed to Steiner was the stone head of a jaguar, carved in worn brown stone, with fierce fangs, menacing square teeth, and gaping, heart-shaped holes for eyes. It was round as a pumpkin, and about six inches high and six across. Between the fangs a large, flat tongue extruded, lighter at the tip than in the middle. As an amateur, haphazard collector of pre-Columbian artifacts, Steiner had never seen anything like it.
“Pick it up,” Miguelito said. “Hold it to the light.” As Steiner did so, he was aware of the new professional tone. “It is a jaguar mask, brown marble, from a very early period in the culture of Guerrero. From the shape and the treatment, I would think it is definitely Olmeca. Certainly the Olmec influence. Although I must confess I have never seen bold square teeth like that in other Olmec pieces I have studied.”
Steiner held it to the light of the sun in the doorway, slowly turning it over in his hands, reverently caressing its smooth brown contours, even its cracks and blemishes.
“Well, my old friend, what do you think now?”
Steiner could only shake his head in wonder. “A marble jaguar head all the way back to the Olmecs? It must be worth a fortune.”
“In L.A. or New York, I would think at least five thousand dollars,” Miguelito said matter-of-factly. “But for you, since I consider you my patrón who made me think seriously about my profession, I will let you have it for half.”
Since in Mexico the bargaining spirit is the spice of life, Steiner said, “Even that is a little high for me. What about one thousand now? And another thousand next month, when my next payment is due from the studio?”
Miguelito nodded. “For you,” he said. “But only for you would I part with such a treasure at less than half its true value.”
Next day Steiner flew back to Los Angeles with his prize. He felt a little guilty about sneaking out an archaeological treasure. But he rationalized that he had already visited the enormous basement of the National Museum, where there were at least ten times the thousands of pieces in the public exhibitions above, so this venerable brown marble jaguar head would hardly be missed.