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now, this evening, they were resurrected by the improbable creature on the podium in front of a gathering of the Center for Anthropological and Ethnographic Studies. Eric had not thought about them in years, never having gone back to his father’s English home or seen his grandparents since that one, early visit. When they died, his father had gone alone to their funerals in a churchyard in the deep, narrow valley in Cornwall where he had grown up. He had spoken of it rarely, whether because he had memories that pained him or because of his natural reticence, Eric could not tell. He had brought back a few objects in a small box but had immediately put it away in the attic and not reopened it. Perhaps memories and nostalgia had to be abandoned, like excess baggage, if one was to complete the experience his father had had of emigration and a new beginning in a New World.
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    I T OCCURRED TO HIM that he should take down some of the names so that he could—now grown, literate—look them up on a map and try to unearth the connections, burrow through a tunnel back into the old country to the old man and his toys in the seaside cottage with the rug on which he’d knelt by the fire, tingling. He began to pat down his pockets in search of paper and pencil. As he did so, he became distracted by a murmur that was rippling through the audience. Curious, he started to cast glances around and found a subdued but unmistakable air of consternation. Instead of listening to the grande dame, people were turning to each other with raised eyebrows, and whispering. She herself seemed not to notice this change in the atmosphere of the room, or if she did she ignored it; in fact, she raised her voice slightly as she went on to the end of her talk, then indicated that she wanted to rise from her seat and leave without inviting questions.
    Released, the audience streamed out onto a terrace lined with immense terra cotta urns in which orange trees displayed, in the Mexican way, both flowers and fruit together. At one end a table was laid with white linen and set with platters and pitchers and glasses of food and wine. Helping himself to both, Eric looked around, smiling, in the hope of finding someone who looked willing to answer his questions. The gorgeous young woman who had introduced the speaker was already surrounded by people and was talking to them with great rapidity, gesturing with her long hands and fine fingers; it was clear he was not the only one with questions. He did not feel he could approach her at this fraught moment and turned away, a glass of wine in one hand and a plate in the other, to survey the scene now cast into shadow by the ornately molded stucco of the cultural center and its exquisite dome.
    Catching the eye of the white-haired gentleman who had been his neighbor in the auditorium, and who was standing beside a woman with fine-spun gray hair and jewels so massive as to make her look fragile by comparison, he strolled over to them to see if they could enlighten him. “Well, that was quite an exciting talk, wasn’t it?” he asked, hoping he did not seem too intrusive.
    But he had made the right conjecture because the gentleman replied readily, in English. “About its exciting quality, I cannot say, but it certainly contained an element of surprise.”
    Eric, still curious, waited for an explanation.
    â€œTo come to hear a talk on the Huichol and the significance of the peyote cactus in their rituals, then hear instead an attack on the mining industry was definitely a surprise.”
    His companion said something now so sharply that it too caused consternation, and Eric had no alternative but to confess his ignorance of Spanish. Translating this for the lady, who nodded the towering arrangement of spidery gray hair on her head and gave a pinched smile as if her worst suspicions had been confirmed, the elderly gentleman explained to Eric, “Doña Vera is connected—through