“A what?”
“Vacation.”
“But that doesn’t seem right. I didn’t think Sanchez took vacations.”
“Well—she went up there to see my father, too. Manuel Alvarez.”
“Alvarez? The curator at the museum? De Arqueología y Etnología.”
“Right.”
He stuck out his chin. “He’s your father?”
“Yes.”
“That means he and your mother … But he’s so little and shy—how did he survive?”
“What?”
“How—did—he—stay—alive?”
“She doesn’t bite the heads off her mates. Just you.”
“Ouch. Suppose I deserve that. Though they don’t live together—no? Divorced?”
“They were never married. My mother doesn’t believe in it. She thinks marriage is just ownership, and it’s more enlightened to love somebody without a contract. It’s kind of romantic, actually, I think.”
“Does your poor father think it’s romantic?”
“Aaaah—no. He’d like to see her in a wedding dress, but he’s used to her by now. He knows she’s crazy about him. And he visits us all the time.”
“He sounds nice.”
“He is. My dad, he’s—” I flicked my eyes over to him. “I’m not sure my mother would be entirely happy about my telling you our family history.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be a bore. Your father …”
“All right, all right. So, my dad—he’s kind of this magic person. He’s like an old nervous knight, he’s so courtly. He’s afraid of everything except for my mother, and she’s—”
“Terrifying.
“Anyway, he’s just great.”
He turned his head and stared at me. “Is he the one who helped her out with the thesis? Her work on the Flores Stelae—how the Maya carvings are meaningless?”
“Yes—yes—that’s him. They knew each other as kids in Mexico, and then they went to Princeton together. He helped her write the article—”
“But then de la Rosa trumped them with his own paper, right?”
“You know what? I’d rather talk about the fact that you’re driving with your knees.”
He was silent for a second, swerving on the highway. Then he said, “Sorry—all right, I won’t press. Though going back to the other question for a second—”
“About my dad?”
“No—about her being on vacation. I don’t buy it. I’ll bet she’s looking for something. A holiday’s just not like her.” He winked at me. “You wouldn’t happen to be—I don’t know—not telling the complete truth? Just to keep me off the scent?”
“I’m serious. She’s taking time off.”
“Just wanted to make sure she wasn’t trying to get one up on me.”
“Like that time you beat her to those ax heads in the jungle?”
“Oh, those jade pieces, yes. Those were great. Best finds of my life—nothing’s compared since then. But still, listen here: I told her I’d share credit—I was the one who did all the work! But no, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. And then, when I came back to her office to see if we could patch things up, and was very nice and confiding and told her that not only was she a real inspiration, but I’d already begun to regard her as a sort of role model of my own, not quite maternal—paternal, you know, as she isn’t so feminine—”
“You said what?”
“I thought she was going to use one of those ax heads on me.”
“It sounds like she really restrained herself.”
“Yes, okay. I know what she thinks—that I’m just a big, overly intelligent sexist who eats all the food at the faculty meetings, as well as most of the school’s funding—which I’ll admit that I am. But it’s much better to be like me than the timid pink-eyed bunnies who pee with submission every time she stalks past their office. And I’d say that she has too much fun yelling at me. ‘Professor Gomara, you are nothing but a large and ponderous ass!’***‘Professor Gomara, you have all the ethics of a roundworm.’ And so on. And I say, ‘Yes, Professor Sanchez, I am a large and ponderous ass with the ethics of a roundworm, but isn’t it fantastic how I won that medal from the Archaeological Society?’ And she seethes and seethes. But all the while, in her eyes, I can see she likes it.” He sniffed. “That is, I think.”
A few silent seconds passed.
“I wonder if I should go down there?” he said next. “See what she’s digging up, see if I might pick up a specimen or two. Watch her hair stand on end when she sees me.”
“It sounds like you miss her.”
“I do. Kind of. And I’d like to find out what she’s up to.”
“I’d advise against it.”
“I suppose you’re right. It’s probably not worth it.” He thumped the steering wheel with his hands. “I hope she’s having fun, anyway. But—yes, it’s too much effort, for probably a whole lot of splintered bones and smashed pots. And if I did go down there, the dowager queen would really make me pay for it.”
“Dowager queen?”
Erik began to slow the car down at last. We were in the green and stately paradise of Pasadena at this point, just a few blocks away from the library. “Oh, don’t mind that. Only a pet name.”
I grinned at him. “That’s all right. She’s got a few for you too.”
At this, he let out a dark and silky chuckle. “I’ll bet she has.”
He pulled his creaking antique up to the parking lot of the inordinately well funded library. Past the lot, with its population of late-and mid-model cars, stood the Huntington like a gorgeous anachronism. Its white Georgian facade glittered in the sunlight, as did the lush and manicured trees, the bright banners advertising its shows: WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE ART OF THE BOOK, and IMAGES OF THE MODERN WEST. Within this refurbished nineteenth-century estate exists one of the world’s most expensive collection of octavos and folios, in addition to a teashop, a Charing Cross Road-like bookshop, and Japanese, Shakespeare, herb, and rose gardens. I climbed out of the car’s low seat and found Erik holding open my door. After yanking myself out of the close confines of the Jaguar and being relieved of my laptop computer by the professor, I pursued him across the asphalt, and we entered the building’s posh book-lined haunts together.
CHAPTER 5
I sat at one of the Huntington Reading Room’s leather-topped tables, where Erik examined the drawings in the nineteenth-century book Incidents of Travel in Central America, which he had called ahead to have placed on hold. Sitting in such close proximity, I could detect just a hint of his wood-scented cologne, and though I didn’t think he could yet be thirty-seven, I noticed he already had brisk brushings of white on his temples and throughout his bangs. His paisley tie had loosened, and his shirt buttons strained slightly around his stomach.
I glanced back down at the book in front of him. On each leaf of the folio were delicate etchings of Late Classic Maya picture writing. Page 261 showed a prince wearing an elaborate headdress, his mouth slightly open, his robes hanging about him in folds. He stood amid a crowd of intricately cross-hatched vipers, soldiers, plumed birds, and fanged monsters, the effect being something like a hieroglyphic version of Rodin’s Gates of Hell. I found these drawings so beautiful that I hovered at Erik’s elbow, waiting for him to turn to the next image.
He never did. I have said that Erik examined Incidents of Travel, yet though his thumbs rested upon the drawings, they did not flip the pages. Instead, the eyes that should have been fixed on the Maya drawings seemed more focused on other lovely things, such as one lady graduate student sitting across from us, as well as the second librarian, and another archivist who suddenly slinked toward us like a drugged cat. Erik hovered above the picture of the great prince and lobbed little soft-spoken but hot-blooded observations to the three women. “I like the way you’re wearing your hair these days, Sasha.” “Are you reading Casanova’s Memoirs again?” “I swear my concentration was perfect until I felt you walk into the room.”
The effects of all these bon mots on me were initially on the order of the gastric, yet a genial impulse mixed with my indigestion. According to my mother, I have a very bad habit of liking people—and though it would have given her the hives, I found that I was beginning to see some decent qualities in the immoral, ambitious, chauvinistic, orgiastically offensive Professor Gomara. Although his sexual politics were so neolithic that his knuckles dragged on the floor, I could tell from the way he burbled solicitations and chewed on his froth of mints that he had a happiness inside him, a quality I’ve always enjoyed in a person.
So I just rolled my eyes at him and affably whispered that he was disgusting, until the second librarian interrupted his fleshly efforts with the sound of her high heels.
“Miss? Here you go,” she said, and deposited a heap of books into my waiting hands.
The volumes had pages the color of saffron and wax, which were beautifully hand-stamped with type. I stacked them in front of me. The librarian had given me Von Humboldt’s Narrative, resplendent in green calf, as well as de la Cueva’s Letters, in a far more splendid burgundy binding than the foxed cloth 1966 edition I had at The Red Lion.
I had come here to read the Von Humboldt, but I became so giddy at this glorious copy of de la Cueva’s correspondence that I turned to these first. I had recently mimeographed these letters for my mother, yet I had not read them closely in several years.
Opposite the Letters colophon, an illustration was protected by a thin sheet of tissue paper. I folded back this veil. Underneath was a posthumous portrait of Beatriz de la Cueva, who in 1539 assumed the governorship of Guatemala after the death of her predecessor and husband, the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. Though she made her reputation as a European despot in the New World, de la Cueva is just as famous for conducting that blundering quest for the Jade. Her over-reaching ambition was captured by the portrait’s painter, Bronzino. The woman’s sea-green eyes stared out at the observer with a challenging glare, and her ample lips neither smirked nor frowned but pouted, giving some hint of stubbornness as well as of her notorious sensuality. She wore a simple gossamer veil, a white ruffed collar, and a black velvet dress with puffed sleeves. The painter surrounded her with books, roses, a lump of blue jade, and the traditional vanitas symbol, the sign of earthly arrogance, a grinning skull that rested by her elbow.
I read through a decade of the correspondence. Among other missives to Philip I and Charles V, I also examined de la Cueva’s famous letter to her sister, in which she describes her lessons in the Maya hieroglyphs, her quest for the Jade, and her claimed discovery of the Maze of Deceit.
December 1, 1540
Dearest Agata,
Sister—I take great delight in scandalizing you with this letter! Know that at this moment I am lolling about in the sultry jungle, and as I put my pen to this page I am utterly nude, and having my feet rubbed by a very handsome man as he tutors me in the mysterious picture language of the Savages. Are you shocked? It gives me no end of delight to know that you ARE.
See here, Agata, one particular cipher, which my lover taught me to read during today’s voluptuous lesson.
“This is the word-sign for jade, my governor,” Balaj K’waill informed me (for that is his name), as he took my fingers and with them traced this queer mark.
“A jade is a bad word for a woman,” I teased him.
“Then all the better, my dear love—for truly you are the worst of women. You should take this as your crest.”And upon saying this he began kissing me in many strange places, and I enjoyed it so much I did have to agree with him that I am a wonderfully wicked lady.
When I returned to my senses and our lesson recommenced, it struck me that this symbol for the jade stone is most curious & beautiful. And I thought then that perhaps Balaj K’waill is right, and I should adopt this herald as my own. I believe, indeed, that it may be the mark of my future.
Let me explain why.
I have told you of the country’s great Story that my boy is helping me translate—the one that tells of a King who lived within a city made of blue jade, and the one perfect and giant Gem of heavenly power that made its owner invincible. No man alive has claimed it. The Talisman has for centuries been hidden by the old King somewhere in the Jungle, within a pair of Labyrinths—one known as the Maze of Deceit, the other as the Maze of Virtue. At the time I thought this rumor nothing more than a fairy tale, and I set out to explore this jungle purely on a lark. …
But I know now that the Queen of Jades truly exists, and so the King was real, too, and the beautiful duplicitous Witch once also lived—for yesterday our camp reached the door of this first Maze! The Maze of Deceit is a Colossus made of a clear blue stone, and proves a veritable wonder, like the Coliseum or the mysterious Sphinx. The architecture is most complex, with many kinked passages and dreadful dead ends. I will admit that I find this curious Maze a difficult bugger to scan. Yet my friend assures me I will succeed in conquering it.
And then, who knows what might happen? Who knows what kind of Sovereign I might become? And with what sort of king at my side?
Do not think me mad. You know I have always hungered to learn the great dark secrets of history. And look here. Look at the journey I have taken already! We have traveled from the Old City of Guatemala, up through the ruins, North, to the ancient forest, which is cut through by a little river, the Sacluc.
The Sacluc is a very refreshing and lovely creek, which I understand is changeable, but today runs as the thinnest line of crystal water. The Maze of Deceit sits at its very mouth.
Here is the map of our first leg:
Is it not thrilling? Are you not excited for me?
I will write you everything when I return. If my luck holds, and I crack both this puzzle as well as the Virtuous Labyrinth, I will be able to shower you with such riches & baubles and perhaps also lovely brown men like my Balaj K’waill—as you deserve, as you are my one true darling, Agata.
And as I am too your loving sister
Beatriz
After finishing the letter, I began to trace some of its more curious sentences with my finger.
How would one translate de la Cueva? I thought that she might have a more subtle temperament than initially appeared. It would take a feat of moral acrobatics to fall in love with one of your slaves and not set him free, for instance.
The same shrewd style proved true of her writing. It seemed lucid, but I thought I discerned some secret, capricious, and private meanings.
In the spotless and expensive library, my already piqued interest in de la Cueva was beginning to sharpen.
CHAPTER 6
Do you have any dictionaries?” I asked the librarian, after rereading the letter several times. I wanted to research a linguistic riddle that I’d found in it.
“We have an entire collection, ma’am.”
In her missive to Agata, de la Cueva writes of the labyrinth, “The architecture is most complex, with many kinked passages and dreadful dead ends. I will admit that I find this curious Maze a difficult bugger to scan.”
I found de la Cueva’s idiosyncratic use of the term escanear, or “scan,” intriguing; I thought I remembered that the word had more than one meaning. I asked the librarian for a stack of Spanish grammars and etymological glossaries, and just for fun a very nice copy of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. This last book explained that “scan” means not only to read, or “examine nicely,” but comes from the Latin scandere, “to climb.”
I leaned back from my desk and entertained an image of de la Cueva clambering through the jungles of Guatemala as she tried to reach a jade inside a deadly maze. Was that the image that she tried to convey? Or was she writing in metaphor? I toyed with my pen on my pad, trying to think of a lucid way that all of this could be translated without requiring a battery of footnotes. After a very happy hour of scribbling, I had run out of theories and boxed myself into an etymological corner. I exhaled and looked up.
While I was reading, a
nother woman had sat down two chairs from mine, and busied herself with a book of Rafael’s rose-colored sketches. And three chairs away, it appeared as if Erik had begun behaving himself. He had his head bent, his elbows propped. His hand cupped his cheek as he examined his volume of Maya picture writing with renewed attention. I should get something done too, I thought. Through the windows lining the Reading Room, the early afternoon was quickly darkening, and I decided to e-mail my language questions to my computer at The Red Lion before the library closed. When I plugged in my laptop and opened my screen, though, I saw that my mother had sent me an e-mail—over three days ago. Her letter read:
Hello Terrible Creature,
You will be happy for your old mother that this trip is not, as is usual, turning out to be a total failure.
When we landed in Guatemala City, I went straight to the Museo de Arqueología y Etnología. Your pops and I had a very fine reunion, with a picnic in the museum’s Jade Room, raising our glasses at least three times to toast our Flores Stelae. Now that my head is clear again, I am preparing to leave for the jungle. But I must tell you something before I depart.
You were right, my sweet Awful Thing. I did not come here for a vacation. I came to Guatemala because I think I have solved a mystery.
I think I have tripped across an old clue, to an old story.
There’s that legend I asked you to copy; and the correspondence. I asked you to do that, but I didn’t say why. The day after tomorrow, I am going to the far north of the country, out into the Peten forest, which fills the upper region of the country. There, I think I might find the location of the Mazes of Deceit and Virtue, as well as the Jade de la Cueva describes in her tale.
This may sound crazy, but I don’t believe any longer that the fable is a work of fiction.
I haven’t told anyone else—not even your father. And you must not either.
Tonight I’m leaving Guatemala City, and will travel down to Antigua to spend one quiet night by myself. From there I’ll make my way up to Flores, then I’ll drive and hike to the Peten, to a part of the forest cut through by the river Sacluc. After that, I’ll stake my way farther up, and see if I might be able to excavate anything.
The Queen Jade Page 3