He gripped the bars again, fierce and frightening and hounded by devils, while I cringed in the darkness afraid of what I had unleashed. “I am damned!” he cried. “I cannot give into this!” He sank back into the confessional onto the floor where the light lit only the top of his head. “Oh Lord lead me not into temptation…deliver me from evil.”
The evil I had brought. He moaned, and cried out, and prayed under his breath down where I could not see him. “Julián…”
“No Isabel. Leave me….let me be, I beg you. Do not tempt me. I am only a man. I do not want to fall.”
I fumbled my way out of the box and ran out of the church back into the darkness that I had fled from. I ran until I reached the house, its cheerful lie of lit windows. I crawled into bed gasping for air, filled with smoke and heat.
I lay among the stones.
And felt as though I lay under them.
Chapter Nine
CREATION
Matilde was there in the morning, her face drawn and her movements nervous.
She watched me over her shoulder with darting red rimmed eyes as she chopped vegetables. I made coffee in silence, not knowing whether to excuse, or condemn her, or throw myself at her feet and beg for mercy.
After all it was I who had let the lion out of its cage.
We sat down together at the table and studied our cups.
“I miss my mother.” I finally said.
“Me too,” said Matilde. I did not know if she meant my mother or her own. Maybe in times of crisis all mothers are interchangeable. “Matilde…” I started. Outside there was a yell from the fields, cry of distress. We both got up from the table and went onto the veranda. In the distance a man was lying on the ground where the others ringed him. They waved their hats up at me and called out.
“They are calling for help,” Matilde said, though I could see that. I did not know what I could possibly do. It seemed the nature of men to call on anyone that had authority, but I had none, no weight whatsoever.
I hurried down to the field. The man, when I reached them was on the ground. He reached his hands toward me, out of the nimbus of pain that suffocated him and clawed his hands.
“My God what happened to him?”
“It is the spider,” one of the men explained to me stamping his feet and watching the ground nervously.
“A tarantula did this?”
“No, no… the banana spider…very deadly.”
The man was writhing on the ground now, flexing and arching and curling in on himself like a dying insect.
I backed away. “What do we do? Can he be taken to the village?”
“It is too late.” Julián knelt at the man’s side. Seeing the priest, the man renewed his efforts to survive. He thrashed and moaned and foamed blood, violently lashing out to repel the extreme unction.
Julián took the man’s hand and began to pray in Mayan, growling and purring under his breath.
He was not yet dead, but his nerves were frozen, paralyzed. We watched his unexpressed agony helplessly until his eyes were clouded over and finally empty. Julián spoke the last rites.
Death came into our midst, powerful, tangible, throwing its weight and authority around and we could do nothing but watch.
It was much easier to believe in Death rather than God.
Julián closed the man’s eyes and two of his fellows lifted him to carry him back to the village.
I stopped Julián, catching the hem of his sleeve. He was pale and the circles around his eyes seemed as black as the depths of them. “Did he have children…or a wife?” I asked.
Julián said, “No, he did not. But he had worth to himself I am certain.” He pulled his arm away and followed the bearers of the dead.
The other workers followed after them, leaving me alone in the unfinished field where death waited to be found again.
The banana men did not return to the fields that week, but Dante did. I awoke one morning to find him in a chair beside my bed, watching me sleep.
I opened my eyes into his.
“Confession is good for the soul but hell on the reputation,” he said.
I pressed my lips together, continued to watch him watch me. I tried to outlast him, to burn my thoughts right into his brain until they sizzled and ate it away.
He said, “You have several problems.”
“I know one,” I answered losing my resolve and turning away to face the window.
“I am the answer to those problems, and it is best that you don’t forget that.” I heard him shift in the chair, settle in. “First of all it appears your labor force has disappeared. I am not concerned by that…there are hungry men in the cities and other villages that I will bring here, but meanwhile some of my profits are ripening and rotting on the branch. Why did you not do something about this several days ago?”
“There was a spider,” I said, giving a Matilde answer, an indirectly related explanation.
“So a man died. It happens. You have no strength if you cannot persuade the workers to remain.”
“They think it is a bad omen.”
“They are foolish superstitious natives and you are falling into their delusions. Control is the only power out here.” he stood up and came round the bed leaning against the wall and facing me. “You could have gotten your priest to help if you had not run out in the middle of the night and thrown your lovesick self at his feet.”
“How do you know what I did? Did you follow me? You are a sick, sick man.”
“I didn’t have to follow you. I know you better than you know yourself Isabel Cordova. I know the power of those stones, and this jungle darkness, and your own swollen juicy heart. You wouldn’t bear your own silence much longer. Silence eats women.”
He crouched down, stroked my face gently as I had been wishing my mother was here to do. I could not pull away. “He spurned you didn’t he? Gave you some bullshit about his own love and the necessity of resisting. I have to admit he’s a stronger man than I thought. I would have thought he would have had you right there in the confessional, pushed you against the wall and left the imprint of the bars on your back.”
I pulled away from him, scrambled back to the other side of the bed, tangled myself in the sheets. “You are a monster.”
“I am a bearer of truth. It might have even gone that way if you had pushed just a little bit harder. I wonder what his limits are? Even I would not have been able to refuse you in that close hot space, and you are not to my taste at all. I prefer clean dry flesh, not the rich dark meat you keep hidden from the world.”
“Get out of my room!” The weakness and heat was sweating out of my pores making the sheets moist. I could smell myself, my own fear and capitulation. “I don’t want you here anymore.”
He stood, wiped his hands on his pants, removing the residue of my touch. “We may come to some arrangement about that,” he said. “Meanwhile, I need you to stay out of the way for a few hours this evening. The stones are being removed. You have fulfilled your obligation toward them.”
He opened the door and considered it for a moment or two, making plans I could not decipher. “The only doors that do any good are locked ones,” he told me, and left me to myself.
I was out of the house before the stone bearers came, watching the sunset from a dock in Monkey River. The wood was soft, and warm, and smelled of fish. The men were bringing their days catch in, heaving nets and trawling lines. They filled ice boxes on the dock and put them in the back of pick ups, hung them on bicycles, or pulled them in makeshift wagons. They tied up their boats and went to Ichabod’s to buy ice and drink beer. Recently a jukebox had been brought by some city cousin and it churned scratchy music into the night air over the laughter of the patrons and the clink of glasses. At home their wives were just finishing stews, and beans, and roasts. The children had eaten and gone to bed by the time their weary fathers came home.
I felt my outsider status acutely, my utter aloneness, that cradle to grave emptiness we seek
to quell with everyone we meet.
I knew where Julián lived, though I had never been there. I followed the path in the semi- darkness, a bright moon illuminating white flowers like lemonade froth.
His windows were dark, as he did not need light, a fact I hadn’t considered until this moment. I supposed if he had had visitor he would light a lamp. I did not know if he were even home. I thought of what Dante had said, and the look on Julián’s face in the confessional, the utter horror of his own desires. I had no business here in this place in the dark. I had promised not to tempt him.
I was turning to go when a movement in the empty eyes of the cottage caught my attention. I could see him in the darkness, an apparition that seemed to be dancing. I crept forward and hid amongst the flowers and thick waxy leaves of a hibiscus bush, and cupped my hands against the glass.
Julián was unwrapping a block of clay, wet and primordial, lacking form or meaning. He set it on a pedestal and stared into his own personal darkness, seeking heat and hunger. The work seemed to grow from the heat we had carried, emerging from this fever it pulsed, and writhed, and ached under the tutelage of his hands. It swelled, and soared, and loosed itself glistening with the sweat of his brow.
My breath made little clouds of condensation on the glass, fast hot steamy whorls from my panting lungs.
He stilled. I was keenly aware that he sensed me. I felt disembodied hidden among the flowers. His eyes blankly searched the darkness for a long penetrating moment until at last he returned to his work.
I turned and ran, trampling blooms and snapping branches. I hurried up the road , all my ill intentions were chasing me. My bedroom door was open and the stones were gone. I was alone in the house. I crawled on top of the blankets and slept the quick protective sleep of the guilty.
When I woke in the morning there were loose blossoms on the pillow and tangled in my hair, their petals crushed and translucent, their perfume inescapable.
I stayed in bed, hidden from myself and the world in lethargic and unhealing sleep. Matilde left plates of food on the other side of the door I had locked. I ate at midnight when the house was quiet and the banshee jungle screamed beyond my window. I ate sitting in bed, dropping food on the sheets and simply sweeping the crumbs away when I lay down again. I took off my soiled clothes and lived naked, standing sky clad in my window at night, watching the moon grow bloated and pregnant with light.
On the third day Dante unlocked the door and opened my shutters to the merciless noon sun. I lay naked on top of the sheets and watched him reproachfully, daring him to comment or care.
“Absolutely disgusting,” he said. He left the room and returned a moment later with a bathrobe that he lay over me like a shroud. “Your new employees are here today, get yourself clean and dressed so they will not be ashamed to work for you.”
I dripped my newly baptized hair across the tiles to the kitchen after my bath and sat at the table in my robe while he served me a platter of cheese and fruit, and made weak coffee. I could smell limes and soap and knew that Matilde was already at work in my room.
The fruit was overripe, too sweet and musky; I could only stand it just beyond green, when it had bite and resistance.
“What’s gotten under your skin?” he asked. “Did you miss me darlin’?”
I barked a harsh laugh. “I’ve discovered who I am when I am alone.”
“You are much more appealing in the company of others.”
“It’s all pretend, isn’t it?”
He took the fruit from my plate, nibbled it in thick juicy lumps. “Perhaps that is your problem. I am who I am alone or among others. I see no reason to adapt one way or the other…but I do have to admit that if that is the real you,” He waved his hand toward my bedroom as if I had left my naked slovenly self in there. “well then, it is a good thing you have found enough virtue to spare the good Father the sight.” He chuckled under his breath, and stood before I could muster a response.
Outside trucks were rumbling up, foreign and disruptive. I went onto the veranda and watched as they drove right through the yard and into the fields, squashing bushes, ruining the circular path I had walked with my father. “Stop!” I shouted down to them. Dante put his arm around me, holding my arms to my sides. “Be quiet,” he admonished. “What is the matter with you?”
“They are going to ruin everything.”
“They are going to save this plantation and make it prosperous.”
The trucks kept coming and then several small buses which opened their doors in my driveway and disgorged a motley collection of men. Black, brown, caramel, a box of chocolates.
“Where did you get them…they are not Maya…not most anyway.”
I was glad when he dropped his arm and put space between us again, trusting my question to reflect a return to reasonable behavior.
“Garifuna, Kriol, Mestizo…they are whoever needs the work. They’re not as industrious as the Mayans, but they will cause less trouble. A divided ethnic group breeds a better workforce; it discourages solidarity and movements that we don’t want.”
“So instead they’ll fight.”
“It does not matter to me or to you what they do to each other, as long as they work.”
“But why so many?”
“We are expanding. They’ll have tents to sleep in until the crews can put together some housing, an infirmary, a commissary.”
I studied the new workers, befuddled in the sunshine, huddled in sullen and uncomfortable groups. There must have been two hundred men, more than the population of Monkey River. “They will trip over each other.”
Dante took my hair in his hand, ran his fingers through the tangled tresses, smoothing them. “I told you we are expanding.” He indicated the land beyond the fields with his other hand, stretching out toward the Mayan temple.
“The land I wanted for the Maya. You’re going to raze and destroy it?”
“I will tame and subdue it. I will create a greater kingdom for you and me. We will dedicate it to the banana gods.”
I pulled away from him, left a snarl of hair twined in his thick fingers.
There was nothing I could say. I had created this problem. I had become mistress to his plans.
I was owned. I was alone.
They began that very day yanking the jungle out by the roots with their snarling machines. A carnage of vines, and trunks, and bird feathers lay in heaps. In the evening I escaped to the village to Ichabod’s, where I was given wide berth and an even wider silence. I drank a home brew and stared into the water rings on the bar until the moon was snuggled into the sky for the night and the stars were brazen.
I slipped over to Julián’s cottage, but tonight the lights were on and voices drifted through the open door. I stayed and listened though I did not know what they were saying. They’re voices were serious, low tones full of puffs and fricatives. I pretended I was inside, warm and well lit and part of the conversation. I waited, deciding as I sat in pensive silence that I would tell him about Dante and the destruction of the land…I would beg for his help. Perhaps the Archbishop could intercede. But whoever had come to visit was lingering, and I was afraid I would fall asleep where I sat under the bushes, that I would be discovered in the morning sleeping in the dirt outside of the Father’s house.
I walked slowly home listening to the dark. My land felt different, the wind blew with less resistance, carried the smell of sawn lumber and crushed fauna. The fields were dotted with tents lit by kerosene lamps, and wreathed with the sound of sleepless men.
I was surprised to find Matilde curled up on the cushions her eyes heavy but her posture alert and watchful.
“What are you doing here? It’s very late.”
“I know how late it is. I am here to ask questions of you.”
“What questions?”
“My questions, the questions of the whole village.” She uncurled herself and leapt from the sofa. “They say your father was a just man. He had a small farm and employed sma
ll people and with that brought a measure of happiness to the village and himself. Why have you overreached his grasp...why have you aligned yourself with this devil Dante? Is it greed? Is it lust?” She stopped then, blushed, remembering her own crime.
I saw my chance to expose the trap that Dante had set for me, she too understood his power. “I have been coerced,” I told her. “Just the way you were.”
“No, you are not like me at all. What I did was human, forgivable, but what you are doing is against God, against the future. It will hurt many people.”
“He owns me Matilde,” I told her helplessly. “Dante owns this land and this house. He owned my father too; I have just inherited his legacy.”
She blinked a couple times, gathered her skirt up in bunches in her fists. “What are you giving him in exchange?”
I told her then, about the artifacts and the deal I had struck, and how I hoped that in time he would finish with me, leave me in peace.
“It will be too late then,” she said. “He will have already destroyed the Maya’s land, pillaged our things, and he will probably destroy you too while he is at it. I told you he is a Nahuales. He is not an ordinary man.”
I spread out my arms in surrender. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Pray,” she said. “I am taking my hands off of you and this place.” She lifted her small pink and brown palms in the air and brushed them together. “There is an obeah on you, you are cursed, and I do not want it to touch me anymore.”
And then she was not there, she had vanished. Perhaps it was a trick played by my traitorous eyes. I blinked prisms and she was gone.
Godhead Page 10