Traffic cop, is that iron in your gloves?
Here. Look at this warrior figurine. So small it fits in one palm—but all the detail. His mask, we call the Mosaic Monster. The Maya king becomes this god when he goes to war. It is good we speak openly. I have wanted to do this for some time.
At last the real tour, authentic jungle cruise. Anything you ask, just take off the mask.
Why do you let me talk to you this way?
There are things, señorita, I wanted to show you.
But why?
Will you not tell me how you are called?
You should know I’m going to fuck you now no matter what—but no more kindness. This stranger kind of kindness….
Beulah.
Yes?
Limosneros.
Is it only blood that interests you Beulah Limosneros? Is this the exotic film you came for? Come….
Sala Morada. Room of Wine-Red. Pine-scent of burning copal. Dimness like smoke, darkened walls, a tracklit string of panels, white stone sculpted in swirls of flowing chalk. Seated figurines, zoomorphs. Limestone lintels captioned in cartoon glyphs. Intricate markings of a calendar carved in yellow rock….
By 100 B.C. we had invented a system of writing. The Chinese had this also by then but were still busy perfecting paper. We had a calendar that used place notation, like your decimal system but never equalled anywhere, and no not even today.
Here. Has anyone seen a thing more beautiful and more terrible than this stone head from the eighth century and borrowed from Cleveland? Who were these Cleves, I hear there were Indians there once but what was their land? Why have I never seen their sculptures, their temples?
While this head was being carved in Copan, the Arabs were only just borrowing the Indian systems of decimals and numerals. Imagine the Romans counting barbarians at the gates using Roman numerals—perhaps they lost count, or only ran out of time. Do you know who this head depicts, Beulah? This is the Death God of the Number Zero. Carved before 800 A.D. By then we were the equals of China in printing, carving and calligraphy, of India in mathematics, architecture and medicine, of the Arabs in astronomy. And what was Europe’s greatest invention by this time? No, not the wheel. Our children’s toys had wheels for a thousand years. By 800, the best you could do was the water wheel. We have no rivers here, señorita. They flow under our feet.
Beautiful brown man, how gently you began. We should have met such a long time ago.
Ours is called a Stone Age civilization. Yet for five hundred years after our Classic Age began its decline, Europe does not have a single invention to impress us. Oh, I forgot. Steel. Our obsidian blades are still two hundred times sharper than the best modern scalpels. An edge one molecule wide. I am told you use them for brain surgery now, just as we did once. But you wanted to talk of sport. You see how his hair is bound, and his dress? The God of the Number Zero is a sportsman, a ballplayer. Captain of his team. And it is the captain who is taken captive once the outcome is decided. By the time Europeans first saw the Zero, Beulah, we had been killing its god for a thousand years. So it is a shame you are not interested in the Maya. You want my favourite form of sacrifice? This. They tore off his jaw. While he still lived. Is it because Zero has nothing to tell us, do you think, or too much? Señorita Beulah Limosneros we were never pacifists, but I wanted you to see my people were musicians too, and architects, and poets. See these carvings of the Monkey Scribes, their homely faces! Of all the gods, the ones we most admired—and the Hero Twins, who always defeated the stronger enemy by guile. Once, we worshipped creativity, genius, and especially its failures, mistakes guided by the hand of god … who jiggles your elbow like a child while you draw—I am sorry. I should not have touched you.
And I am sorry to be harsh. As I say, I have wanted to speak openly with one of you for some time now. You cannot know us by comparing us to anything. Not your Aztecas, not the Chinese, not the Egyptians.
There are lighter things I could have shown you, filled with laughter. The Jester God, the royal dwarfs—court jesters a little like those of Velázquez. Figurines taken from daily life. An old drunkard. A concubine with a client. These erotic works are very rare today. A favourite target of our Franciscan fathers. But I think that is enough tonight, señorita.
Jacinto how does this computer program work? I didn’t know the Maya had horoscopes.
This is garbage. We should go now.
What’s your birthdate?
All your calendars are toys. Time is your disease.
What?
The guards will be waiting.
What did you mean?
The tour is over.
But there’s one more room. Sala Turqueza. What’s in there?
Only what the tourists come for … what is destroying our youth.
Jacinto wait, you asked why I came.
Destroying this coast.
Why I stayed.
You also, then. For drugs. The pretext the Mexican soldiers use to search us for guns. Only three kilometres inland from here is a cave with an underground river, so clear … A secret cavern big as a cathedral underground. A village hid down there for a week once while the Spaniards searched. You should go there. It is better than all the drugs you will buy here.
I came to learn about a recipe.
I know nothing about cooking.
El vino de obsidiana.
Ahh. Now Mexican garbage. Obsidian wine, the recipe for disaster.
So you know it.
It is part of our work at the Centro Cultural to teach our youth how primitive this drug hunger is. To teach the difference between vision and escape. Yes we had these things. The dancing, the trances. Steam baths, fasts. Fish toxins, snake venoms taken as snuff, smoked with wild tobacco—or in enemas. Some visitors find this last one most exotic, and you would not be the first to ask me to arrange this. But none of these was sacred on its own.
Then what was?
The main hallucinogen, very exotic, was massive blood loss. The sacred ingredient was the blood of a king. Blood fed the VisionSerpent, but blood burnt, made smoke. On its slow black coils the VisionSerpent rose. As it rose when they burned our books. Señorita—
Beulah.
You are upset. I understand. The boy. You are far from home. These things are frightening. Please listen to one thing. I will be back in about three weeks. I hope I still do not find you. Tulum is not a good place to spend time with nothing to fill it. The boy earlier should convince you of this.
Tell me at least what you meant about time.
The tour is over.
About our disease.
The guards will already be angry.
Then tomorrow.
I am leaving tomorrow. Señorita Beulah I know many scholars who come here from the North, from Europe. They are all strange people, as I say, like the tourists. Stars of some exotic film running in their heads. You are maybe the youngest and the most unusual yet. And among the most beautiful, but my answer to you as to them is No.
We walk out through the doors between the smoking guards. Faces glisten with sweat and smirk. Crickets … sickle glint of moon. One guard goes in, throws a deeper lever of night.
Last ember glow of the last smoking guard.
Don Jacinto, you should walk the young lady back to her hotel.
She is not staying at a hotel.
And how would you know?
Los mosquitos. You look like you have chicken pox.
Your ancestors thought bloodsuckers were holy.
My ancestors did not get everything right. Good-night, señorita.
Why do they always call you don Jacinto?
Terms of respect are common here in Yucatán. Buenas noches, Beulah. Ande con mucho cuidado.
He fades down the walk of crushed white coral, beautiful brown calves like the flanks of deer clench unclench in the garden lights lining the path.
Don Jacinto?
Falters, turns. Eyes invisible in the upcast light. Yes señorita Beulah Limos
neros.
How old are you?
Waits a moment, smiles, his inscrutable mask. Thirty of your years, señorita. Whatever that means.
Scrape and clatter of crushed coral. White cotton pedalpushers receding into gloom.
OBSIDIAN WINE
28 Jan [19]95
DEEP NIGHT. Peace. A whispering sea, milky light. At the shore, wavelets lap at their dish of hours. Night fades … muddles to grey. A quartermoon sets. North, four blondes stir. Match flare, emberglow. Giggles … a sliding scale, half-asleep to stoned. Two blondes swim out, naked in a sea of ink. Just before dawn a birdcry of ecstasy.
Two dim figures come out, hand-in-hand, shimmering hides of grey silk, salt. They stand close a moment, looking out to sea. Murmur, share a small white towel.
Mid-morning. Topless frolic in ice-blue shallows. Sharp calls in German maybe Swedish. Mid-day cookout in coconut oil—eight pink eggs sizzling sunnyside up, coppertipped. Out of nowhere—the whole fucking beach just yesterday deserted—the sex jackals homing now to the cook-out, flies to a butcherblock. More men skulking in the palms, sprawling in street clothes in the sand, watchful gun dogs.
Late afternoon mirage of a food vendor wavering south. Same skinny old stork as yesterday and days before. Red neckerchief, hat brim come undone—spill of plaid—a weave of straw and sea. Make a balanced meal of his random offerings. Empanadas de piña. Shark kebabs. Today he brings diced mango and lime.
Señor, why is there no wind here?
A good question, joven. This is the season of winds. Yet for days like this. Not a breath. Like in the season of storms.
Feel the lime burn scurvy lips and gums.
30 Jan
No more walks to Old Tulum. For the new routine salvage the bare essentials: Think of nothing, look for nothing. Not the sails of a caravel, not old lovers. Stare out over a sea of bluest torpor.
I have come for this. Exactly this. Silence, stillness. This breathlessness.
A biped bikinirack staggers up the beach ankledeep in sand, ambulant comedy. Fringed in pendulous cups and thongs—a tatterdemalion surge as she walks, this burly Maya lady in a comical hat of conical straw. All and only bikinis. She flutters to a discreet stop a few metres from the topless blondes, a stocky statuette of tattered decorum.
One takes the hint walks to the rack, all Yucatán her fitting room. She cups top after top over bare breasts of a goldpink perfection. The others join in, giggling, hooking unhooking straps, taking shy model turns. Four laughing gold towers above the Maya lady smiling now, walled in sisterhood.
Back from the beach the sex jackals quiver in their shade of fronds, throb in their palms to these intimacies neverglimpsed, beyond conceiving. Circle this day on your pin-up calendars, O scavengers, sing of this day at carrion feasts for generations.
All strain at their leashes. None approaches, not one.
The bikini lady flaps back up the beach eight pieces lighter, the blondes topless still. One pink bikini-top sprouts from a beach bag.
Study them, the golden ones. What movie are you in?
[2 Feb 95]
Pickup trucks coming and going. Each day more jackals arrive earlier, stay later. Earlyworm guts the bird.
Return of the bikini rack, but draped today over a rolling billiard ball—thick, muscular, purplish brown, the bikini lady’s son, must be—it’s in the genes, so very very enterprising. His long sparse hair kinked like the corrugated shanks of bobby pins. A thin moustache slips from the greasy corners of thick Tartar lips. Sleazesmirk—bikinis, muchachitas, bikinis? Two blondes fumble for sunglasses, turn face down.
Dauntless he comes, stands in the shade of my palm parasol. ¿Mucho calor, verdad? He sweats out sincerity.
I don’t speak Spanish.
¡Caray!—his call to the others. This one has green eyes!—¡pero increíble!
Of course you speak Spanish, amiga. Everyone hears everything here. No bikini? You don’t like the sea? How about yerba—marijuana? Anything you like just ask me. You like mushrooms, cocaina? Yes you like cocaina I think all in black from the city.
3 Feb 95
Mermaid picnics up the high strand. Little palm parasols, fashion shows, sand for tea. We are all here to make believe. Stars of our own movie. Rich and tanned healthy and thin. Learn to fit in. Study the tourists, not the locals.
Make a list:
Buy straw hat.
Sunglasses—myoptical purdah.
Jackal repellent, one gallon.
Long cotton dress, neck to ankles.
Black one-piece, plastic sandals.
Two masked mermaids fin out to the reef, angelfish trawling spun-gold shawls.
Please—you speak Spanish—on the reef! Mariana stepped on something. Will you help us, eyes wide blue. She needs a doctor.
Pufferfish foot, red tendrils reaching up the calf, vines of poison ivy searching out a heart to grow in. Stay calm stay calm call out to the billiard ball lounging in the shade. He sits at attention, sniffing opportunity. Call to them. Oigan, pisó algo en el agua. ¿No las quieren llevar al doctor?
Billiard ball’s slouch across the cool sand, casual.
So señorita you have remembered your Spanish. Let’s see—igua puta, look at that!—a sea snake maybe. ¡Muchachos véngense! Sudden yap-ring of diagnostical jackals. No no a sea urchin. Idiota, urchins are not poisonous! Pues, tiene una alergia. Or a ray, yes a stingray. All agree now. She stops crying. Whitelipped shock, laboured breath….
Are you taking her or not?—just go. Let the doctor decide. Apúrense por favor.
Sí sí por supuesto. Ya vamos. Anda mal, ella.
All clamber into an old grey pickup, pale swimmer in the truck box, head on a towel.
Won’t you come with us please? I’m sorry I don’t know your name. In case the doctor has no English? Please come.
Hypo squirt of clear bright drops. Anti-histamina. We will watch her for a couple of hours. Perhaps you will explain to your friends about these painkillers….
My friends.
Two hours later, all bundle into the truck. Blondes encased in macho airbags, collision proof up to 50 k.
Don’t you want a ride back? Shortcropped blond, wide mouth and teeth perfect as her English, asking me.
I have things to buy.
We could ask them to wait. Playful smile. They seem very helpful.
I’ll walk.
Walk back from Tulum town on trembling knees. Have I gotten so weak? Sunset. Horizon of palest rose and lavender. Half-moon half-risen.
We wanted you to have some of this papaya. We wanted to thank you. May we join you? Just for a minute?
Mariana, Renata, Brigit, Margo. Golden opportunity to study the golden ones up close.
Beulah, would you like to do a joint with us?
Coughlaugh into a cloud of smoke. No, not sisters. Brigit and I are Dutch. These two are Swiss. We travel together because of the Mexican men—I mean, we are friends but with four of us we handle them pretty well. Long smokestream, joint tweezered between long pink nails. Well, Mariana and Renata can. Brigit and I don’t handle men.
Not if we can help it.
You look beautiful in that dress. Did you just buy it in town?
Evening cook-outs on little blue gas bottles. Packaged soup all the way from Switzerland. Pork sausage skewered on a driftwood fire.
Will you eat with us?
I ate in the village.
Liar.
[4 Feb 95]
The sex entrepreneurs are bringing their ice chests. Yesterday’s grey ambulance converted now into a delivery truck, backed up to a big palapa hut a hundred metres south. Bucket brigades of beer and ice and silver bottles. A generator sputters—blasts reggae in its first bawling breath. Welcome to Jamaica west.
One Samaritan ride breaks the ice, shatters the cool blue distances all around us. Smiling jackals are close among us everywhere now, muzzles in crotches, getting to nose us, one big happy family.
Tell your friends we have decided t
o open the bar for them. Same prices as Tulum. Fresh fish anytime, french fries, clean salads. Taxi service to the discos at night. We know they like marijuana, tell them I can get anything—mescalina, peyote, mushrooms. Very safe. For you free, if you translate. For you free anyway, preciosa.
The billiard ball is called Diego. Sex jackal #1. Alpha dog.
Practise new manoeuvre: slip black one-piece on under long cotton dress. Take refuge in the sea. Vamp Ophelia in a sea of aquamarine.
[6 Feb 95]
Hola, buenas tardes, joven.
Red neckerchief, bob of Adam’s apple. Grizzled stork, bringer of random offerings. Feed your babybird, she eats only what you bring, only when you come to her. Yesterday you didn’t or the day before, just so now I can forgive you absolutely everything.
Afternoon. Sheltering under my palm parasol, my veil of flowered cotton, purdah of mirror-shades. All watch this beauty of girls. Silver squeal and slap of a water fight. Mermaid naval battle at the shores of Valhalla. Duelling houris. Renata, skinny ribs, bladed hips, high little breasts. One blue eye, sleepy, skewed. Brigit all legs all day all angles. Mariana of the full-wide breasts, nipples pale sand-dollars, tiny paunch. Margo’s wide-shoulders and narrow-hips, wide witchery of mouth, hair of cropped straw. A furious strawberry thatch presses out from her white g-string—crazed red wig of a balding clown as she runs past.
We are stars of our own movie, in an abandoned movie house. Ready on the set, stand by … 5-4-3-2-1. All lurch into action: Drawn down to the water fight, the sex pack flexes, vogues, beams white teeth. Pathetic pick up lines, beachboys in polysester pants, they call up to me, ask for translations.
8 Feb 95
Diego the purple-brown muscleman kneels in the sand, his dewy muscle-gut blocks all sea due east. What are you writing amiguita, are you a poet a journalist, what? Are you here to tell my story? Why do you buy food only from the old man? He has not come for two days now. Why do you not come to the bar with the others?
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