by M. G. Harris
This is a conversation they’ve been having for some time.
Montoyo and my mum – they’ve been in touch with each other. By phone or who-knows-what. Since they met in Ek Naab around Christmas, they’ve got to know each other. They’ve become friends.
As I realize this, a wave of fury rises in my throat, tightening my chest.
He’s got some nerve. . .
Montoyo glances at me. In that moment I see that he knows. He can tell I’m angry – I don’t know how because I’m using all my energy to control my face. He purses his lips, narrows his eyes for a brief second.
“Tyler, Ixchel, I need to borrow your friend. We need to speak alone, Josh, if that’s OK with you. There’s Bakab business that you should know about.”
With that Montoyo whisks me off on to the sand, where the rhythmic slapping of waves on the shore will drown our words.
I’m guessing he expects me to lose my cool.
He’s right.
Montoyo and I head for the beach a few metres from the ocean. We walk in stony silence for a minute, put fifty metres between us and the beachside café where Ixchel, Tyler and my mum sit. Something about the way Montoyo gets me out of there – the very second he realizes I’m angry – makes me feel even angrier.
Almost as though it’s OK for me to react that way. Like Montoyo thinks I’m justified.
“You don’t seem happy to see me, Josh,” he begins. He speaks slowly, every word considered. “Or Ixchel. Not a very warm welcome for a girl who’s been . . .”
“I’m not marrying her,” I break in, speaking so mildly that it surprises even me.
Montoyo stops walking. His eyes widen. “. . . for a girl who’s been through some very tough experiences with you . . . is what I was going to say. Josh! What’s wrong with you? We’ve already explained – the arranged marriage only happens if you both agree.”
You always get me to do what you want, is what I’m about to say. But I bite my lip. At least I’m still keeping the Bracelet a secret from Montoyo.
He looks at me in silence. I stare back, pushing out my chest.
“You’re angry,” he says. He sounds disappointed. “About my friendship with your mother.”
In fact I’m so angry that I can’t speak. I want to yell at him but I’m suddenly scared that it might come out as a sob. So instead I gulp hard and keep it in.
“We’re just friends, Josh,” Montoyo says, very simply. “I like her. Eleanor . . . she’s a very interesting woman . . . very intelligent and cultured. We have had some nice conversations – principally about you. She’s been telling me about her life with you, about how Benicio is getting on in Oxford.”
There’s another long silence.
“You’re a credit to her and you should know – if you don’t already – that your mother is tremendously proud of you.”
As calmly, quietly as I can make myself speak, I say, “My dad’s been dead for three months. That’s all.”
“Maybe so, but Eleanor has already been mourning him for almost a year,” Montoyo says.
That does it. I let fly; I yell, right in his face, “So she can forget him, is that it? So she can move on . . . to you?”
Montoyo doesn’t flinch, I’ll give him that; he takes it on the chin.
“Maybe one day, if she decides. I would be the lucky one. But that’s not your decision.”
It’s all I can do not to punch him.
“She’s your mother, Josh, and I understand that you feel protective – even possessive – towards her. But women aren’t possessions. I should know,” he says, suddenly regretful. “I’ve made that mistake myself.”
“Why couldn’t you let her be?” I shout. I’ve barely heard a word he’s said. “She’s my mother! It’s my life! It’s like you have to be everywhere . . . Ek Naab . . . Oxford . . . here.”
“Let this go, Josh,” Montoyo says, very serious. “Or it’s going to become a problem between you and Eleanor. Between you and me. Your mother’s already worried enough about you.”
“You could have fooled me,” I say bitterly. “She’s not even that interested.”
Now that Montoyo’s here in Brazil, it’s suddenly obvious to me why Mum was so keen to come. Not to watch me do capoeira, after all.
He continues, “You’re wrong. Just because she doesn’t crowd you and coddle you as though you were a little boy. She respects you! She thinks of you as a young man . . . one who’s ready to take his role in the world. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t worry about you.”
I start to walk away from Montoyo, along the shore. Tears of fury are prickling in my eyes. I can’t afford to let him see.
Montoyo walks along beside me. He pulls something out of his shoulder bag, puts a hand on my arm.
“Before we get back to the others, I brought something for you.” He places a book into my hands. I recognize it immediately. What I see takes my mind right away from any worries about Montoyo and my mum.
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan Volume I, by John Lloyd Stephens.
It’s part of the same book that was stolen from my house . . . same book, different volume. A copy of my dad’s first-ever gift to my mum. The same edition that I tried to replace, the book I found in a bookshop in Oxford and had nicked right out from under me. All thanks to Simon Madison and the mysterious global network he works for – the Sect of Huracan.
“The book. . .” I say in wonder, turning it over. I look up at Montoyo and notice that now, he’s hardly more than a couple of centimetres taller than me. “Is this supposed to be for my mum? Cos the one we had nicked was Volume II. . .”
He taps his shoulder bag with a hint of impatience. “Yes, yes, I have the second volume also. It’s the first volume that interests me. I remembered what you told me about the dedication in that book you found in the shop. From John Lloyd Stephens to Arcadio.”
I stare at him in disbelief. As if in a dream, I open the book to the flyleaf. In the top left-hand corner there’s a scribbled name.
J Arcadio Garcia, 1843.
“No way! This book belonged to Arcadio Garcia too . . . you think it’s the same Arcadio?” I mutter, amazed.
Montoyo nods. “Maybe.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Ever since you told me about the letter that Arcadio Garcia left for you with Susannah St John . . . I’ve thought it an interesting coincidence,” he replies. “It never occurred to you? A book dedicated to ‘Arcadio’ and then this strange letter from ‘Arcadio Garcia’?”
“A coincidence? It’s just the same first name.”
Montoyo taps the flyleaf. “But this book was owned by Arcadio Garcia. The same name as your mysterious correspondent, Susannah St John’s friend.”
Well, OK . . . except that . . . it couldn’t be the same guy. Could it?
“But the date. . .” I stammer. “1843? He couldn’t still be alive in the 1960s, when he met Susannah.”
Montoyo grins, showing his teeth. I get a little shiver, watching him smile like that. This must be how a mouse feels, being toyed with by a cat.
“Not unless he has a time machine.”
OK, Montoyo . . . you got me.
I don’t want him to see my excitement, so I pretend to stare closely at the book. But I can feel his eyes on me, watching me like a hawk.
Montoyo continues, “It struck me as an interesting coincidence, so I began looking out for that book in rare bookshops. Do you know what I found? There’s a collector in the USA who’s been collecting that same book. . .” He pauses for a minute, staring directly into my eyes. “All copies inscribed by J Arcadio Garcia.”
“Weird,” I agree, slowly. I don’t really follow . . . yet.
“But the dates, Josh. That’s the strange thing. The dates are all over the place. Nineteenth century, twentieth century. Always the same book. The collector has eight. He had nine; I persuaded him to sell one set of volumes to me.”
“I bet that cost you,�
� I say, flipping through the pages.
Drily Montoyo agrees. “He very nearly refused to sell. Now why do you suppose, Josh, that Arcadio Garcia had a collection of these books, all inscribed with different dates?”
I stare blankly. “No idea.”
Montoyo gives me a long, searching look. Eventually he nods at the book. “Look at the back.”
I turn to the back flap. There’s more of the same handwriting – is it Arcadio’s?
Curtly Montoyo says, “Read it.”
I read aloud: “I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts and each of these new facts brings with it its consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . .”
I stop reading, face Montoyo with what I hope is a vague expression.
He asks me, “You understand . . . what this is saying?”
Maybe I do. I can’t help but think these words have some kind of meaning for me.
But I don’t want to let Montoyo know that. Then he might guess that these days, all I think about is how I can do exactly that: to swim against the stream of time.
To go back in time and change the past.
So I shake my head. “Not really, no.”
“I looked this up. He’s quoting from a writer named Calvino. The character in the story makes a terrible mistake and longs for a way to turn back the clock, to alter what went wrong in the past.”
I force myself to shrug, act as uninterested as possible.
Montoyo taps the book. “Why do you suppose Arcadio is writing this?”
Mumbling, I reply, “I dunno.”
“The inscription of Arcadio’s name in the book says 1843. . .”
“So. . .?”
Montoyo gives me a quizzical smile. “And yet the quotation comes from a Calvino story . . . a story published in 1979. Over a hundred years later.”
“Arcadio’s a practical joker?” I suggest.
The smile doesn’t leave Montoyo’s lips. “You think so? What if I told you that I saw all the books in this collector’s possession? And every one of them has the same quotation at the back. What do you say to that?”
I scowl. “Why ask me? I don’t even know who this Arcadio is!”
“Who is Arcadio. . .?” Montoyo wonders. “Now that . . . that is really the question. Isn’t it?”
We climb the stairs to the paved promenade and stroll back to the café. Montoyo stops to buy some T-shirts from a stall. They look a little tight for his beefy shoulders. I don’t comment. Then he surprises me by handing me one – it’s yellow and green, shows the flag of Brazil.
“We’re going to a restaurant, Josh,” he says, tight-lipped. “So put on a shirt.”
We pick up Mum, Tyler and Ixchel from the beachside café and Montoyo leads us down to the main street on the seafront of Natal. The narrow palm-lined boulevard is packed with artists flogging their canvases, boys pushing wooden carts on wheels loaded with pirated CDs. Their loud sound systems blast out samba rhythms. The pavement crawls with fortune tellers, mystics, crippled beggars, guys touting buggy rides on the sand dunes. Opposite the sea there’s a solid line of restaurants and bars, half-filled with lazy-eyed tourists.
The whole place pulses with a warm, steady rhythm, a rhythm that lies somewhere between relaxing and energizing.
As I pass one mystic’s tent, he breaks off his conversation and stares at me from under a silky purple turban, a white fringe and thick black eyebrows. His expression is so piercing that I glance around to see if he’s looking at something behind me. When I turn back he gives me a knowing smile.
Tyler notices him looking at me. “Check out the weirdo in the turban and cloak.”
My eyes lock with the guy in the turban for one second before I look away. Something about the mystic makes me feel uneasy. He reminds me vaguely of the bus driver I met in Catemaco, the one who offered to interpret my dream for cash.
The dream, I remember with a shudder, which led me right to the Ix Codex.
Tonight, though, I don’t want to think about the past. It’s a warm, sultry night and Ixchel’s here. So I ignore the weird vibe I get from the mystic and walk faster, catching up to Tyler and Ixchel.
Montoyo seems to know what he’s doing. He picks a café, shakes hands with the owner and guides us upstairs. We take a table next to the concrete dance floor, by the stage. Talking directly to the owner, Montoyo orders plates of seafood, rice, beefsteak, chips, all without asking any of us what we want.
I glance slyly at my mum. Montoyo has decided that she’s sharing a mixed seafood platter with him and drinking a caipirinha – the local lime-based, sugar cane spirit cocktail. Mum doesn’t seem to mind having her food and drink chosen for her.
I sit quietly and seethe, then lean across to the waiter just as he’s leaving and change my drink order from guarana to grape-flavoured Fanta.
Tyler and Ixchel have stopped talking. In fact, I notice they keep giving me these little glances – who knows what they mean. If they’re bored with chatting to each other already, that’s fine by me.
I’m wondering whether or not to tell Ixchel about the book I’m holding. I can see she’s curious about why I’m carrying a famous old travel book about the Mayan ruins. She’s smart enough to work out that Montoyo gave it to me on our walk just now. Aside from that, it won’t mean much to her.
Then Tyler speaks up. “Oi, isn’t that the same book we were after in Jericho that time?”
I glance at him, taken aback. “Actually. . .”
The stage comes to life then – musicians start up on the conga drums. Two capoeiristas emerge from the edges and burst across the smooth concrete floor, flying head over heels in a series of spectacular criss-crossing somersaults.
The words freeze in my mouth as I watch. Tyler’s just the same – eyes riveted to the stage.
More capoeiristas follow, bouncing on to the stage in pairs. They fly at each other with cartwheels and backflips and then perform a couple of swift, basic moves before moving aside to let others join them on stage.
When the entire group has assembled, they pair off and begin to spar, whirling in a blur of yellow and green abada trousers. The musicians on stage sing the same capoeira songs that Tyler and I have learned. I notice that like me, Tyler sings along quietly, under his breath.
The players perform within metres of us. Their moves become faster and more violent with every turn they take. Within moments all the men gleam with a shiny film of sweat, whilst the two girls still look daisy-fresh. By the end of the show I know for a fact that I’m watching the best capoeira players I’ve seen in my life. The students at the championship aren’t going to be a patch on these guys. When they’re really going for it, their kicks have the power and speed to kill . . . and yet every move is intricately timed. They miss each other by the breadth of a hair, laughing with delight, clapping as they land from another daredevil handstand and backflip.
Tyler and I are speechless. We’re clapping along with everyone else in the audience. I notice Montoyo watching me.
You like this, don’t you, Josh? he seems to be saying. I finally found a way to put a smile on your face.
Well, OK, Montoyo. Maybe this time. . .
On stage, the berimbau player hands the instrument to another guy and then he bounces lightly, lands barefoot on the dance floor. They start playing “Happy Birthday” to a capoeira rhythm. Everyone grins happily as the capoeiristas take turns sparring with Birthday Guy.
At the table next to us, two women in their twenties remove their flip flops and line up to dance with the birthday guy. The capoeira moves are now the slow, light-hearted, easy moves that two beginners might play. If anybody accidentally lands a kick it’s dodged, blocked and laughed away like an old joke between friends.
Tyler stands up.
�
��I’m gonna have a go,” he says.
Ixchel smiles. “Go on – Eddy G! That would be so great!”
Just like that – he does. Tyler steps in, touches hands with Birthday Guy, and without a word, they begin. Birthday Guy can handle more than the easy moves he’s been playing so far. When Tyler moves the pace up a notch, so does he. Their movements speed up rapidly. I can see that Tyler is being pushed right to the edge of his abilities.