All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [91]
“Well,” says Cindy, “how much space do you really need, anyway?”
“Right,” I say. Cindy and her family live in a little house on a big piece of land and, like me, believe in small spaces and minimal living for environmental reasons and also because it forces you not to accumulate too much stuff, which is an American disease. I see friends who have garages and spare rooms packed with big plastic Tupperware-like boxes and am glad I’m limited to two hall closets and the space beneath my bed. Having less stuff makes me feel light. I’m definitely guilty of having too many books and shoes, but we’re all guilty of something.
“Sounds like an adventure, anyway,” says Cindy, and then she asks where the house is, to see if she can place it from her memory of the town.
“Right near the mercado,” I tell her.
“Oh,” says Cindy, and her voice becomes dreamy. “I remember getting huge bouquets of sunflowers there for only a few pesos.”
“You still can.”
THE ONLY OTHER person I tell about buying the house is Finn, whom I run into at a café with her little daughter, Tallulah, who is dressed in pink with sparkly shoes.
“You won’t believe it,” I say. “I made an offer on a house.”
“Honey!” Finn says, thrilled. “That’s great!” She wants to hear the whole story, so I tell it, including the part about the irresistible, inexplicable impulse to buy the house.
“It was meant to be,” Finn says with such certainty that I’m feeling a little less crazy—or maybe a little more New Agey.
She insists we walk down to Calle Loreto to see the property.
“This is it,” I say, a few minutes later, standing in front of the house. It suddenly looks a lot narrower than I thought. “It’s tiny,” I say, back to feeling extremely uncertain. Really, it’s a complete dump.
“It’s adorable!” Finn says, then asks Tallulah what she thinks. She considers it. “The fairies can play here,” she says.
We make our way back, past the mercado toward the jardín. “It’s a great location,” says Finn. “That house is a little gold mine.”
A GOLD MINE. I’ve been sitting in the attorney’s fusty office for the past forty-five minutes with the owners of the turquoise house, ready to sign the papers, but at the last moment, the elderly señora is refusing to sell. From what I gather, she thinks there’s treasure buried on the property—silver, and maybe gold.
The diminutive woman, in her dark blue shawl, checkered pinafore skirt, and weathered Indian face, is squabbling with her well-pressed son, who is brushing off her arguments like flies. I’m straining to understand, but the señora seems convinced about the treasure, and maybe with good reason. San Miguel de Allende was founded in 1542 as a way station on the dangerous Antiguo Camino Real, the route the mule trains took from the gold and mainly silver mines of Guanajuato and Zacatecas to Mexico City. There were no banks in those days, so over the years, as the little town grew, the workers and bandits did what people have done with treasure forever: they buried it in their backyards. The turquoise house and its backyard have existed for more than two hundred years; prior to that, it was probably part of a larger property before it was divided up into workers’ row houses. It’s entirely possible someone buried a stash there.
Finally the elderly woman’s son seems to have convinced her to sell. She’s sitting back in the chair, resigned, her feet not touching the floor, her shawl pulled tightly around her crossed arms. The son may have argued that it would, after all, take a great deal of buried silver to make up for the amount of money I am prepared to pay, in cash, for the house. They’re asking the equivalent of 350 pounds of silver for the lot, which is more than you’d get if you turned the entire artisans’ market upside down and shook.
Before the señora can change her mind, I try to distract her by making polite conversation in Spanish, asking how many children and grandchildren she has—so many, she’s not sure—and when she lived in the house. She doesn’t seem to be nostalgic for the place; eleven people were crammed inside those walls.