Читать книгу The Discovery of Chocolate: A Novel онлайн | страница 23

Pedro’s nose twitched with fear, and he looked at me for a reassurance that I knew I could not provide. We were alone with our destiny.

At last I heard the muffled sound of a low canoe, and saw Ignacia, the maker of the chocolatl, coming towards us. She pulled in to the side of the lake and motioned me to join her.

I sat behind her as she paddled, the muscles of her back easing back and forth, and wondered what fate now planned for me. I could not help but stare at the way in which her dark hair fell on her bare olive skin. I do not think that I had ever felt such excitement.

Eventually we found ourselves in a shallow creek, and steered our way through the small islands of the chinampas. The air was filled with the sounds of quetzals and toucans. Midges, sawflies, bees and prepona butterflies moved through the stillness of the evening. The trees were lush and shady and so much fruit hung overhead that we did not even have to leave our boat to take figs, cherries, oranges and lemons. Small limestone buildings lay almost hidden in the vegetation and Ignacia pointed ahead to an orchard of low, well-shaded cacao trees growing beneath blackwoods and legumes, their large cauliflorous fruits sprouting directly from black trunks. The earth beneath was thick, soft and fertile, as if no one had walked inside these woods before and the leaves of years and of generations had been left to fall and rot, gently nurturing the growth of each new season. My beloved, for that was how I saw her now, steered the boat to the side of the canal, stepped out in one movement, and held out her hand for the rope. I threw it to her. Then she reached back into the boat, removed a silver sickle, and cut one of the large pods from the tree. After splitting it in half, she stretched forward and showed me the brown seeds lying in a soft, white veil, like the caul of a child.

Ignacia then pulled away the white buttery substance, and produced six cacao beans.

‘Happie Monie,’ she said, in my own language, as if she had learned such words only for me, and gestured that I follow her.