The Five Acts of Diego Leon Read Online Free PDF

didn’t like Diego and took turns making fun of him when Father Solís wasn’t paying attention. They called him stupid, a bad dancer, and Ignacio pushed Diego one afternoon as they walked home, causing him to fall over a rock and scrape his knee. Then the three boys laughed and ran off together, leaving Diego lying on the ground, bleeding, angry. When Elva asked him what happened, and he told her, she called the boys rude and ill mannered and told him to quit.
    “No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
    He didn’t care. He liked it too much. Father Solís had taught him the steps, taught him how to bend his legs and crouch and shake his arms while the violinist named Gonzalo played. The dance would start with Diego and the others walking into the center of the clearing, holding on to their canes, hunched over, their knees trembling. They would pretend to stumble and fall then form a straight line with the canes held out before them. Then came Diego’s favorite part: the heavy stomping of their feet. He found he liked the way his movements blended with the music of the violin. He felt himself part of the song, part of something ancient and meaningful. After they rehearsed, the music stayed with him the rest of the day and, at night, when his father lay snoring just a few feet away, Diego would hum quietly, would imagine dancingunder the bright blue moonlight, an audience of owls and white-haired coyotes looking on from the trees or from behind bushes.
    Elva said she would use some of her money to buy his costume when Diego’s father said he had none. Then he grabbed the last bottle of pulque from the shelf and walked to the back house.
    “Aren’t you going to eat?” Elva asked.
    “I’m not hungry,” Gabriel said, and vanished.
    The old woman shook her head. She turned to Diego. “You’ll need a mask,” she said. Elva handed him a few pesos and said, “Go see José Tamez. Tell him I sent you.”
    Old José Tamez was skilled in the art of taking lumps of misshapen resin from candles or a hunk of dried and brittle wood and giving it a life, a meaning, a purpose. Diego found him outside his shop off the main avenue. José sat on a crate with a hunk of wood between his legs. A lit cigarette dangled from between his lips, and he wore a hat with a wide brim. He looked up when Diego approached and said hello.
    “You’re León’s boy, aren’t you?” José asked.
    “Yes.” Diego handed him the pesos. “I need a mask. For the dance of the old men.”
    “That’s what I’m making here,” he said, lifting the hunk of wood, splintered, its edges sharp and jagged.
    “From that?” Diego asked.
    The old man took his cigarette and placed it on the ground. “Hard to see, I know.” He laughed, and his teeth were bright white and perfectly straight. “But use your imagination.”
    Diego stood there, waiting. After a few moments, the old man spoke.
    “You young people,” he said. “No imagination.” José waved toward a set of opened doors. “Go. You’ll find something.”
    Elva said José came from a long line of wood-carvers and used tools that had been passed down from father to son over many years—knives to cut and smooth wood, gouges to scoop out the insides of hunks of wood like the flesh of a piece of fruit, chisels toform lines and wrinkles across the faces of the masks he made. In the courtyard, the old man’s bench stood like an altar, its many jars of paint and pigments and varnishes like the chalices and vessels Father Solís used at Mass. A yellow glow filled the patio, lighting the area just enough for Diego to see that, on the walls, a series of shelves and niches had been pecked out with a chisel. On each shelf was a different carving of an animal. There was a burro, a horse galloping through a field of wheat, ducks with ruffled feathers, the veins of each plume so delicately etched they looked real. A dog played with a stick, and a cat stayed busy batting a ball of yarn, one string of the