… They all came,
both nobles and the people,
young men and young women,
so many they could not be counted,
there were so many.
And then he began his song.
He beats his drum,
again and again.
They begin to join in the dance.
They leap into the air,
they join hands weaving themselves together,
whirling around, and there is great happiness.
The chant wavers
up and breaks into the air,
returns as an echo from the distant hills
and sustains itself … .
The Toltecs
never understood what happened there,
they were drunk with it,
blind,
and afterwards gathered many times there to dance.
Each time,
there were more dead …— “The Deadly Dance”1
The party had been all day in the making. Since early morning the kitchen had steamed and bustled with women chopping, peeling, slicing, stirring savory sauces, frying chicken wings breaded and disjointed to resemble tiny drumsticks, arranging silver trays with alternating slices of crumbly golden cheddar and sticky pale white jack, then flanking them with strips of sharp prosciutto and rounds of marbled galantina and garlic-studded mortadella and thin-sliced dry salami spread with fruited cream cheese and folded and secured to resemble horns of plenty.
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