The Snake

by J A Kellman

  “He and the lord talk about trade, exchanges of craftsmen and ambassadors, and finally, after a night of feasting, a wedding. Relatives and dignitaries from Tikal are summoned. A couple months later they appear. It’s a long trip on foot—mile after mile of mountains, arroyos, jungles, highland plateaus—and they had to carry supplies, bundles of gifts, their own finery. They’d stop to put on their best clothes before they reached the city. They’re tired, but they want to impress. After all, they’ve come to meet K’utz Chman, to visit his kingdom, to see his daughter, and, if all goes well, to arrange the marriage.”

  The waiter brought another plate of tapas.

  “Weeks later, after complex negotiations and countless fiestas, K’in A’jaw starts home with his new wife. Everyone is laden with presents from K’utz Chman—cacao, feathers, brocade garments, jade and shell jewelry—and a jade vulture pendant, a token of the new alliance, hangs from K’in A’jaw’s neck.”

  My story was complicated, but it was as reasonable as anything else. What else would include all the variables? Besides, I love to make things up.

  Zoila nodded. “It makes sense. It even might explain the similar channels in both communities.”

  “And the ancestor on the stele,” said Luis. “And the pendant.”

  But it sure as hell didn’t explain Ruston. How did he become discoverer and then victim? There was Polop, too. We were overlooking something.

  After dinner that night, lying under the slowly revolving fan and awash in the metallic drone of insects and the roar of howlers, it was hard to sleep. I missed Rosie, missed my own bed, missed the prairie wind rocking the world.

  Fourteen

  Flores, Guatemala, Late November, the Following Day

  The next morning, before the mist had completely cleared, Luis and Zoila headed to the museum and its priceless artifacts and archives with Poncho and Ochoa. I climbed into the hotel van with a young English couple on their way to explore the caves near Santa Elena. I was going to Flores to meet Ochoa’s wife, Esperanza, in her gallery. Not only was I looking forward to getting to know her, I was eager to see her weaving collection, and I was hoping to poke around in Flores for signs of Ruston. Maybe with my fresh perspective, I’d notice something the police had missed.

  Flores, the capitol of the Petén, is the island heart of the lowlands. It, like the Petén, is its own world, a tiny island floating at the end of a causeway, a mirage in the middle of Lake Itza drifting in the morning light. The Petén is island-like, too—disconnected from the rest of the world by a vast jungle. There are some vehicles on the single highway coming in from the Highlands, of course, and planes land in Santa Elena and a handful of smaller airports, but there is not much else.

  I’d wondered why anyone didn’t notice a gringo like Ruston in such an isolated setting. Where was he for those months between his disappearance and death, if not nearby? Others had to be with him, too. Someone took care of him during that time, and he sure as hell didn’t sacrifice himself. So, where was he, and why had he been snatched? What did he have that someone wanted? And how about Polop? Surely his disappearance was related to Ruston’s. The two men had to have something else in common besides academia.

  The van let us out at the roadway that connected the mainland to Flores. With its close-packed, red-roofed buildings and waterfront shacks, small boats, and countless sagging docks, Flores seemed suspended in the middle of the lake—untethered, surreal. The young couple headed south to the caves. I turned onto the narrow land bridge into town.

  The warm breeze from the southwest, smelling of water and wood smoke, ruffled my hair and tugged at my pants as I walked along the uneven surface. The land stopped a few inches on either side of the road, leaving it adrift on the lake. The view from the causeway was magical. In the distance, a slight chop rocked the handful of boats, low black shapes against water silvered by the morning light. Near the jetties protruding from the island, cormorants fished from pilings or rocks, or dried their wings, turning slowly with stately steps, huge black birds dancing in the sun.

  At the end of the causeway, I hurried across the narrow strip of beach surrounding the island and darted across the ring road, through the cars, vans, and shiny rental motorbikes that circled the island, belching smoke.

  Beyond the road, Flores’ streets are few—narrow cobblestone lanes that contain the island like a net. Five minutes from the causeway, I reached the plaza with its church and tiny park. Families in their Sunday best strolled around the square, greeting one another with polite nods; children chased up and down the church steps, and clots of tourists sipped coffee in the tiny cafés. The restaurants and shops selling boat tours, souvenirs, and guided trips to Tikal were busy.

  According to the map Ochoa had given me, Esperanza’s gallery lay just beyond the plaza on La Avenida Libertad in a neighborhood of businesses devoted to Mayan arts and crafts. Her shop was easy to find once I hit La Avenida: Hilos de Tempo, Arte del Maya was painted in large gold and black letters on the front window, making it hard to miss despite the milling tourists window-shopping the length of the street.

  Four huipiles—San Martín Sacatepéquez, Patzún, San Juan Comalapa, Sololá—pinned to gray felt display boards, brightened the window with multiple colors and complex patterns. Inside, a woman folded garments, placing them on the shelves behind her. A younger woman swept near the back of the store.

  A bell tinkled as I pushed open the door. “Esperanza?” I asked. The woman sorting garments looked up with a smile…her long black braid, laced with red cotton ribbon, was coiled around her head like a crown.

  “Ann? Welcome! Miguel has told me about you, as well as Señor Ruston,” Esperanza said, stepping from behind the counter. “He said you were interested in weaving, too. If you would like, I thought we could look at some huipiles and then have coffee on the square. After that we could ask around about poor Señor Ruston if you are still interested. Juana can watch the store while we’re gone.”

  “Sounds perfect to me,” I said. “If the huipiles you have in the window are an indication, your collection is amazing.”

  ~ * ~

  Four hours later, after examining countless huipiles, drinking coffee, and making visits to the hotels and bars that catered to tourists, we decided to tackle the docks. “Maybe someone there can tell us something,” Esperanza said.

  “I’ve been wondering,” I said as we started toward the water, “What does NM stand for? I saw it painted on several walls on the way to your gallery. It was even on the steps of the cathedral. I’ve spotted a couple of stepped pyramid outlines, too. They’re all done in red paint. What’s that all about?”

  I nearly tripped over a broken cobblestone, but Esperanza gracefully hopped over it onto a strip of sidewalk. “I don’t know. I imagine it has something to do with the young men I see lounging in the plaza with ponytails in front of their eyes and earplugs. I’ve asked Miguel, but he doesn’t know. He’s seen the graffiti and the kids as well. As far as he’s heard, the boys don’t do anything. Just look like pre-Columbian toughs.”

  The waterfront, a jumble of coiled ropes, beached canoes, boat motors in need of repair, nets, and traps, smelled of fish, fuel, mud, and weeds. Half a dozen men were hard at work overhauling engines or scraping boats. A man, younger than the rest, seated on a white plastic five-gallon bucket, mended a net. The nearby boathouse had been tagged with the familiar initials and a tiny outline of a pyramid.

  Out on the lake, ferries from smaller communities plied their daily routes, and boats loaded with tourists hoping for fresh coconuts, zoo visits, or picnics headed for lakeshore landings on one of the tiny islands that dotted the lake. Small fishing canoes with single occupants and boats with two or three men and large nets searched the water for fish.

  “Buenos días,” Esperanza began. The men looked up briefly. A couple of the younger ones had earplugs and ponytails over their eyes; the others were ordinary boatmen, their short black hair spikey with sweat. Esperanza introduc
ed us. Conversation wasn’t their strong suit and unknown women—one a gringa at that—made them nervous. The conversation lurched along: Did they know anything about Ruston? Had they met a man named Polop? They knew nothing.

  No surprise. This was getting us nowhere. It was like dragging a dead horse. Would they let Esperanza know if they heard something about the two men, she asked as we turned to leave. They nodded.

  “Back to the gallery?” I asked Esperanza. The guy who had spent the entire time sewing on a dip net looked up for a moment, his ponytail nearly covering his eyes. Since I had his attention, I plunged in. Why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  “I’m curious. What does NM mean?” I asked him. “Is it a social group? A team? I’ve seen the initials and the pyramid drawing in several places.” I tried to look harmless, just an old, retired gringa professor asking stupid questions.

  “Maya Nuevo,” he said, returning to his net. No hope of further eye contact there, either. His hair screened his face, but I’d glimpsed a jade inlay in a front tooth, another ancient touch.

  “Maya Nuevo? Who are they? What do they do? Is it a club?” I asked.

  “Yo no sé,” he replied, continuing to mend.

  That didn’t help. There is no good way to respond to flat denial without sounding aggressive.

  “Maybe it’s the new soccer team in Santa Elena,” Esperanza said, breaking into the awkward silence that followed. “They just started playing this year,”

  I knew that wasn’t the case, but the guy wasn’t going to say anything else, at least not in front of me. How could he not know the name of a local soccer team, or who or why someone else might be tagging all over Flores? He probably lived here his entire life, and his hairstyle and decorations suggested he wasn’t out of the fashion loop either: he at least followed young men’s local styles.

  On the way back to Esperanza’s shop, we talked about weaving, a more satisfying topic than tagging, Ruston, or the missing Polop, given how little we knew. “I’ve always thought of weaving as threads of time,” Esperanza said. “I imagine weaving has held our world together since the very beginning. Ixchel the moon goddess weaves; the universe is measured by lengths of thread; ancient Maya portrayed fabric patterns in their art because they were significant.”

  Juana was behind the counter when we opened the door to the gallery. “Lots of shoppers today. I sold four huipiles to a woman from California, a belt from Santa María de Jesús to an American couple, and two shawls to a man from England,” she said, returning piles of garments to the shelves behind her.

  “Coffee?” Esperanza asked. “My poor feet. What a day.”

  We settled at the table at the rear of the gallery as Juana pushed through the curtains into the tiny storage area. She appeared a few minutes later with two mugs and a plate of cookies, placing them in front of us.

  “Snacks should help,” I said, adding sugar to my steaming coffee. “I feel like I’ve aged ten years.” I bit into a cookie. “All that walking and nothing to show for it.”

  Then, motivated by the closeness created by our day together, I told Esperanza the whole story—Luis, the lightning, Ruston, the jade vulture, Polop. I even threw in K’in A’jaw and our developing reconstruction of his life. Why not? She was part of the story now, too. There is nothing like misery to form bonds.

  ~ * ~

  An hour later, after promising to keep in touch, I was on the van headed for the hotel. How the hell had I gotten into this Ruston/Polop business anyway? There were the concerns of Luis and Zoila, of course. Their worries were the immediate reasons, and then my archiving business had gotten me involved with Ruston, but what had motivated me to keep going? Nosiness? A maddening desire to know the answers? Probably a mixture of both. Inquisitiveness isn’t always a good thing; I’d learned that earlier. Poking around is not always useful. Not at all.

  The van swerved around a pothole, another, larger hole loomed ahead with a branch sticking out to mark its location. The only other passengers, a retired couple from Cincinnati we picked up as we passed the airport, gasped and grabbed one another’s hands as the van veered across the road then back into our lane. I smiled at them reassuringly. We swerved again.

  Before we reached the inn, something small and dark darted across the road, disappearing into the jungle without parting the undergrowth. The couple from Cincinnati didn’t see it.

  Tikal National Park, Guatemala

  That night at dinner we shared information, or rather Zoila and Luis did, since all I could report was a guy with an inlayed tooth and a bad attitude and the presence of tags and pyramids in red spray paint on buildings in Flores.

  Zoila was looking pleased. The water thing, the connection between communities, must have panned out. It turned out that wasn’t all.

  “The type of hydro construction on Tikal began to change around five-ten BCE. They built channels and reservoirs for the runoff from buildings and plazas. Then the population began to grow as available water increased.” Zoila paused and sipped her water. “Maybe a link was formed with Takalik Abaj as well, maybe with the princess we imagined, maybe someone else. Then something happened a few years later to upset everything. For one thing, there was one of those periodic Petén droughts, perhaps made worse by increased forest clearance to enlarge the cornfields. It became drier in Tikal, not catastrophic, but life was more difficult.”

  “Anything else?” Luis asked.

  “The article I found said there was social unrest, too. I don’t know what that means.” Zoila shook her head. “Maybe people became edgy. Maybe the streets felt unsafe. Maybe neighbors began to eye one another as if they had angered the gods. Maybe rumors of evil spirits and spies were whispered in the market.”

  I waited impatiently as Zoila sliced her steak, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.

  Finally, she continued. “The royals made every effort to bring back the rains. The prince with the rest of the royal family let blood in elaborate rituals, prayed, burned copal, let more blood; they oversaw the sacrifice of captured warriors, but nothing seemed to work.”

  Zoila paused to consider, began again. “I’m guessing at this part, but maybe the traditional elite of Tikal, the scribes, the military officers, the advisors who had always had been uncomfortable with a princess from the coast and wary of her children, who would certainly usurp the places of their own families, began to agitate.”

  “You always have to watch the scribes.” Luis smiled at his own joke.

  “Not only was the princess from another world,” she said, momentarily slowed by Luis’s joke, “she was distinctive in a lot of ways. Everyone could see that. Usually a foreign princess came from a city in the Petén, someplace in the world of dense jungle, jaguars, ritual warfare, and bright macaws. Such a woman’s language would be similar to theirs; her clothes would look like the garments of the women of Tikal, too, but not this one.

  “Maybe the rumor started that her family was the source of trouble with Tikal’s water supply, the failure of the rains. Maybe Chaac, the lord of rain and storms, felt Tikal deserved to suffer because of an alien princess and her upstart children in their midst. Who or what else was there to blame?” Zoila asked.

  “Advisors from Takalik Abaj had helped build the original channels at Tikal,” she added, “but maybe it had been a trick, for now the city needed more water than before, had more people than it could care for.”

  “I can imagine it,” I said. “More people, less water, tension, spreading unease.”

  “There was something else that worried them, too: trade, the fear of losing Tikal’s place in the commercial network that tied them to the huge city of Teotihuacan further north if their power waned. Trade was more important than anything to the lives of the elite, even more critical to Tikal than the princess and her children.”

  Zoila stopped. “It sounds plausible, doesn’t it? It is always the stranger’s fault,” she added as she scooped up frijoles. The toucan, seated as usual in the middle of our
table, nodded his head as if in agreement.

  “I don’t have as much as Zoila, but it’s interesting,” Luis said after sipping his beer. “I read everything I could dig up on Ruston’s stele, but now there is a second one, maybe something more will come to light. The thing that strikes me, though is the apparent connection with the ruler of Takalik Abaj. An ancestor, maybe K’utz Chman himself or someone similar, is leaning out of the cloud of smoke rising from the sacrificial bowl on the second stele, bending over K’in A’jaw while the prince looks up, entranced.”

  The toucan, moving slowly, carefully snagged a piece of lettuce from Luis’s plate.

  “If we draw a line between the two steles, we get the suggestion of an enclosure in the surrounding rubble, as if the stele were markers of a precinct that existed before Tikal began to expand, before the jungle was cut down.” Luis traced a curved shape with the handle of his fork on the tablecloth to illustrate his point. “Maybe the prince and princess settled there, at least for a while. They would be safe. The terrain was rough in that part of the jungle. It would have been nothing but swamps, limestone ridges, impenetrable vegetation, poisonous snakes, jaguars, and who knows what else? It would be nearly impossible for Tikal to attack. Don’t forget, Tikal was still small then, too.”

  Our waiter appeared. I ordered another glass of wine. “Sounds reasonable. At least as sensible as anything else. After being in Flores, seeing that tagging and those retro Mayan guys, I’ve been thinking about Ruston, how he fits into the Tikal picture, how we got from an unknown stele, to cultural rebirth, to human sacrifice.”