Free The Discovery of Chocolate by James Runcie Page B

for happiness,’ I replied.
    ‘You want happiness?’ he asked incredulously.
    ‘I do not expect it. I simply seek it.’
    There seemed little choice but to cast our fate to the winds and head for Ignacia’s home of Chiapas. Perhaps hersurviving relatives might tell us what had occurred. Perhaps they would allow us to live in the love and memory of her.
    Outside the city, the land seemed as vast as the sea, and Pedro and I found ourselves lost between plain and mountain, sun and moon, noon and midnight. We must have seemed such small figures, adrift in the grandeur of an infinite and hostile landscape. The fierce rays of the sun were almost unbearable, our thirst seemed unquenchable, and each day I had to make bandages for Pedro’s feet so that the searing heat of the sand would not burn his paws.
    We built fires at night, cooking simple meals where we could, and huddled together against the cold climate and our fear of the future. We slept in the open under the stars. The heat from the fire made me dream of flames, of travelling down an endless series of corridors in a great palace, all opening out into vast landscapes, but all on fire, impenetrable, a labyrinth of avenues in which Ignacia appeared in the distance, endlessly unreachable.
    Pedro and I suffered days of fear and nights of loneliness, not knowing if we lived or dreamed, forever dependent on the kindness of strangers.
    It was an eternity of travel.
    I could hardly count the days or measure the years that we walked through pine-forested hills, past the stone sentinels of the Atlantes of Tula, following the course of lakes and waterfalls and crossing dry sierra until we climbed up the mountains and reached, at last, Ignacia’s home of Chiapas.
    Approaching a man drinking from a water fountain, I asked in the native tongue where lodgings might be found. After admiring Pedro, he took us to a solid brick house ina narrow street and introduced me to a woman named Doña Tita. She lived in a house occupied entirely by women who, I soon guessed, sold their favours for money (and from my soldiering days, I remembered a woman once taking one hundred cacao beans for her pleasure).
    Doña Tita proved to be a lady of both sensuality and wisdom. She also had a great affection for dogs. Taking pity on my plight, and recognising me to be an educated man, she informed me that I could stay in her lodgings without charge if I was prepared to teach her son the rudiments of Latin and let her walk Pedro each evening. This I gladly agreed, and although her son was a somewhat obstinate child of eight, I could see that there might be benefits in staying in such a place while I searched for some sign of Ignacia’s family.
    That night I asked the ladies of the house if any people had arrived in the last year from the city of Mexico, for I had known a girl of great beauty there called either Ignacia or Quiauhxochitl. Perhaps I did not express myself clearly, but Doña Tita and the ladies of the establishment seemed confused by my questioning. They told me that they knew none by that name, although so many people arrived from different places, it was impossible to know everyone.
    I then informed the assembled company that if she, or any of her relatives, had arrived here it would have been after the siege of Mexico.
    At this the ladies stopped and stared at one another.
    ‘This was long ago,’ said Doña Tita.
    ‘No, no,’ I replied, ‘I was there but two years ago.’
    At this the women began to laugh and shake their heads.
    ‘You are strange. Perhaps you are ill after your travels. There is no one called Ignacia or Quiauhxochitl here …’
    I did indeed feel faint.
    Had I travelled all these days and nights to be disappointed?
    That night Doña Tita came to my room, and asked if I needed any further comforts. The girls in her care had been amused by my arrival and wished to hear a full account of my adventures. Perhaps I would be good enough to take chocolate with them?
    I told