by Will Forest
Chapter 11: Unpeeled
By the time I finished, it was late afternoon and Zé had returned. “Wait a second,” he said, after reading this last part. “We don’t know what happened next? Pilli’s in the waterfall, and then what? He just disappeared?”
“Well, right. Behind the waterfall... that’s where the codex ends,” I said. “Beautiful exit, don’t you think?”
“Yes, yes, very poetic. Cinematic, even. But then what?”
“Well, look what I hadn’t noticed until earlier today. You can see here the stubs of a couple pages ripped out from the back. Why? Who would have done that?”
“Porcaria! Sacanagem! This is extremely unsatisfying. We have to find the end of the story!”
It was the first I had seen him so upset. “It’s such a marvelous story, Zé. I want to know how it ends, too! There’s one scene on the codex that’s left over, right? It doesn’t correspond to any of the events in the narrative. We’ll have to piece together the ending from that.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s all we’ve got. It’s that scene with Pilli, and Bark Shield, and Jade Flower, at the beach, remember? It looks like a beach at a river delta, right? And there’s a canoe, and something Bark Shield is giving to Pilli. It looks like a bag or bundle, and whatever it is, it’s probably from this patroness they had, because it shows five stylized butterflies on it.”
“I admire your patience, Marisol. But there’s too much we don’t know. Which beach? Which river? Who is getting in the canoe, or has someone just arrived in the canoe? We don’t even know if that scene is the one that corresponds to the missing pages, necessarily. Frustração!”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’m frustrated, too. But it seems like Sun Prince’s story isn’t the only one that’s missing something. You haven’t been entirely forthcoming about your motives. Here you are naked, ‘nothing to hide’ and all that, and it’s time for you to tell me what’s behind all this.”
Zé scratched his chest and looked at the ceiling. “Fine. I have to know if Sun Prince gets in the canoe. If he went away… I have to know if he made it to Brazil.”
“What? Why? Kind of improbable, no? I mean, Brazil’s a long way to travel from the Mexican Gulf Coast with no horse, let alone cars, trains, planes…”
“There was plenty of travel throughout the ancient Americas. The trade patterns prove it. If goldsmithing made if from central South America to western Mexico, then Pilli—obviously a smart man with a gift for languages—could have made it to central South America.”
“Maybe. But so what? What is that going to prove?”
Zé sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. My brother Pedro’s assistant was doing some research for him on an old property title...”
“Property in Rio?”
“Não. Olha, look: We... I mean my family—we own several properties. In southeast Brazil, and here in Texas as you know, and in some other countries as well. The property title I’m talking about is for a parcel of land way out in western Brazil, in the state of Amazonas on the Colombian border. We don’t own that land, but my brother is interested in buying it and developing it.”
“Why?”
“Oil. Of course.”
“Of course.”
“So the research from my brother’s assistant led to some kind of document about an indigenous man named Sun Prince. That’s all I understood from what Pedro was telling me.”
I squinted my eyes at him. “Wait… what? You’re saying, basically, that you decided to kidnap me as soon as I mentioned Sun Prince’s name that day in the library basement?”
“No! I did not decide to kidnap you… I mean, not then, because... one thing led to another, and then we found the narrative, and it’s in Nahuatl.”
“Ah, yes. You needed me as a translator. As a Malinche.”
“Don’t go comparing me to Hernán Cortés. I am not a conquistador! This is for a good cause!”
I suddenly felt quite certain that Cortés had said the same thing to Malinche.
“But, so… wait a moment.” I was thinking about Malinche—the interpreter between Cortés and Moctezuma—and the question of languages. “Why wouldn’t there have been all kinds of indigenous men named Sun Prince? There were hundreds of different peoples and cultures throughout the Americas before the Europeans washed up. What are the chances that our Sun Prince is Pedro’s Sun Prince?”
“Sei lá. I have no idea. And now it looks like we’re never going to know.”
I had a sudden hunch, and bit my lip. “Ow! Hang on a second—what color are the footprints? The footprints in that last scene on the codex.”
I shot out of my chair and rushed down the hall to the viewing room. Zé ran behind me, jumping over Pedrinho’s zoo on the hall floor and scaring the cat.
I beat him to the codex, and started gently flipping the pages while Zé watched. “What do you mean about the color?” he asked.
“It was almost universal in Mesoamerica that red was east, for example. The colors of the other cardinal directions varied a bit more from culture to culture, but these assigned colors were used for many purposes, including for footprints, to indicate direction of travel.” I flipped to the last page. “These footprints are... blue! Well, at least that’s the right direction! He was going south.”
Zé’s smile flickered. “Hmmm…. Brazil is south of Mexico, but also east. Wouldn’t he have had to go east first?”
“This picture shows him embarking already, probably from somewhere along the Gulf Coast. It makes sense that he would have hugged the shore going south toward the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.”
Zé sighed. “I know it’s a long shot. But we could be onto something. I need everything I can get to build a case against developing that land.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You must be very different from your brother. Something of a rivalry?”
“Don’t get me started.”
“Fair enough. Now, what was this I noticed on this other page?”
I flipped back to the unpeeled scene of the waterfall. “Look at this—these dancers. Speaking of blue, do you see this blue circle connecting them? Was that on the top layer, too?”
Zé walked to a desk along the wall and retrieved a laptop, then brought it back to the viewing table. It was still amazing to me how he moved himself through space, naked but unselfconscious. He pulled up the images of the wax layer-covered codex pages. “Here it is. Yes, the blue circle is here. Six people standing with their arms held out to the sides, all covered with butterflies.”
I looked again at the unwaxed image. “But look at this! This woman, here—she looks like just another butterfly dancer on the wax layer, but underneath she’s giving birth! Look at the baby’s head coming out!”
“Meu Deus… you’re right! Why? And the other women are not. And look, this man has an erection. This was all concealed by the borboletas.”
“Does that mean butterflies? See, we say mariposas in Spanish. Not alike at all.”
This time it was Zé who was not listening to me, lost in the fascination of the ancient imagery. “And what’s the blue circle for, anyway?” he wanted to know. “It looks like they’re standing around a lake.”
I smiled. “Yes. But it’s odd that the line seems to go by their heads, not their feet.”
“Verdade. And their eyes! Wait a second…” Zé consulted the original, unpeeled image again, “Look! Here their eyes are all looking forward. But underneath the wax layer, they’re looking every which way!”
It was true. The woman at the top of the circle—the one giving birth—was looking straight up. Clockwise, the next figure was the man with the erection looking almost straight up but slightly to the left, like the one o’clock position. The remaining four figures, clockwise, alternating women and men, were looking at three o’clock, four o’clock, six o’clock, and then the last was cross-eyed.
“What does this mean,” Zé asked me.
“I honestly have no idea,” I said. “And look at this—the woman in labor is wearing a necklace… and you can just barely make out six little figures.”
“Nossa! What is that called, like the Russian dolls?”
“Right. It’s meta!” I took a deep breath—so much new information. “Like one inside another, on and on and on…”
“Let me guess, dear specialist, that this is also unprecedented.”
“Totalmente.”
Zé sighed. “This is great, though. You’ve finished the translation. We need to print a few copies and back up the file, and then we’re ready to go to Xalapa tomorrow and see that necklace!”
I stared at him, unmoving.
“What?” he asked. “Am I forgetting something?”
I coughed for effect. “You said you gave me my complete freedom. That means, I don’t have to go with you.”
I was satisfied to watch the consternation play over his face. “Marisol, you are right. You do not have to go with me. I merely assumed that you would want to go. I was thinking of you as a partner in this discovery.”
I gave him my look of extreme severity. “You. Are. Not. Going to drug me. Or tie me up. Or take me somewhere against my will. Ever. Again.”
He heard my words and looked crushed. By that point, I believed he would never do something like that again, but he had to say it to me and mean it.
He did. “Please forgive me, Marisol. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. I will never do that again, or anything even close.”
He was looking straight into my eyes without blinking, and he was naked, after all. I stood up, and he squatted down.
“I’m very sorry. Peço perdão. Please come with me to Xalapa, and to Rio, of your own free will, Marisol.”
I smiled and touched his head with my fingertips. “Thank you for being honest with me. I want to gain trust in you, and I will go with you.”
I held up the golden frog amulet and kissed it. “Also, don’t forget: I gave you twenty-four hours. And they’re up. So we’re going to visit mi mamá.”
There was a pause. “Yes, yes, of course. Doesn’t she live in Puebla?”
“Yes, but it’s easy for her to take a bus and meet us in Xalapa. That’s where I was born, where we used to live, where I went to school. We have lots of friends and family there. I’m going to text her right now.”
Zé looked a little pale, and he was wringing his hands.
“Now, c’mon! Don’t be nervous,” I told him. “I’ve already met your mom, haven’t I? Why can’t you meet mine? You’re acting like we really did elope or something.”
“Go easy on me, Marisol. Kidnap, elope, or something… maybe they are not that different. But… I know I have treated you well, and so I will expect the same from you.”
We shook hands. It seemed an appropriate gesture.
***
There was a chilly rain that evening, so instead of swimming we all watched a family movie in Zé’s fancy home cinema. It was, of course, a nude-friendly home cinema, with towels draped over the theatre-style seats. The noisy film was about superheroes and guns in traffic and buildings falling down and saving the planet… I didn’t pay much attention, but Zé watched it all intently, explaining or translating parts of it to Pedrinho and Dora. Jota, in an apron, came and went, bringing snacks and drinks. I sat in the back, clothed, eating some popcorn and thinking about the codex. Were those people connected by the blue circle witnessing the childbirth? Why wasn’t there any mention of a woman giving birth in the narrative of the waterfall scene? And especially—could Sun Prince really have made it all the way to the Amazon?
Chapter 12: The Viceroy’s Secret
March 27, 2012
Xalapa, Mexico
Early the next day, the three of us touched down in Xalapa in Zé’s plane. “Jota goes with me everywhere,” Zé said. “I don’t know how I’d get along otherwise.”
I was wearing another new outfit, this time selected by Zé who had bought it for me the day before in Dallas. It was a pastel spring dress with a light jacket and sandals. Zé and Jota were dressed rather as they had been when I met them—slacks, loafers, and Oxfords with the sleeves rolled up.
When we stepped outside the little regional airport, I inhaled deeply the mix of aromas—gardenias, greasy street tacos, the chipi chipi drizzle that soaks the city in nostalgia, and ground coffee fresh from the harvest… All of these triggered my memories of the plazas, galleries, concerts, and picture-postcard cobbled callejones of my hometown.
“How is it that you’ve never been here before?” I asked Zé. “Given your interests, I figured you would have already visited Mexico’s second most important anthropology museum at least once.”
“It has always been on my list, and I’m glad to finally be here.” Zé squeezed my shoulder. “Especially with you.”
As a student I had visited the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, run by the university, more times than I could remember. But the museum’s architecture never failed to impress me. As we crossed the vast lawn and entered the building, I gauged Zé’s appreciative reaction to the massive Olmec heads now visible inside the foyer. When we reached the one on the left, and Zé realized that the museum hall makes a right turn at that point and continues down a slightly sloping series of levels beyond where the eye can see, I could tell he was inordinately impressed. Fortunately, we had a couple hours to peruse the endless statues, maps, models, and gardens that the museum contains.
“There is nothing like this in Brazil,” Zé kept saying. When I pressed him to elaborate, he said, “There were no pyramid-building societies that we know of. Hardly any indigenous statuary. But, recent satellite imagery shows that the Amazon rainforest may have been more populated, and its societies more sophisticated, than what we have been able to know so far. There’s still so much work to be done.”
“You know,” I said, “when we’re here in Mexico, I’m Mexican and you’re Brazilian. But in the US, we both become ‘Latino.’ Do you think we share much of a common culture?”
“I think Latin America is much more complex than most of our neighbors to the north can imagine. At least they are becoming more familiar with our cultures, especially yours.”
I sighed. “But a lot of what passes for knowledge are stereotypes. Or else ‘greatest hits.’ Very few Americans have heard of Mexican native peoples beyond the Aztec and Maya. This museum, for example, features the Olmec, Totonac, and Huastec.”
“But you and I are specialists,” Zé countered. “We can probably also name more native peoples of the US or Brazil than the average citizens of those countries can.”
We continued a very engaged and professional dialogue as we progressed slowly down the tiers, and I confirmed that Zé and I did indeed have much in common, even if the least of it might have had to do with being Latino. Or with being stubborn, for that matter.
When we arrived at a Totonac fertility idol, Zé suddenly changed the tone of our egghead conversation. “Look at this, Marisol. There are so many mysteries we do not yet understand about our own bodies. And giving birth, what a beautiful mystery! Why do so many parents, especially in the US, pull their babies away from the breast, and chop off a part of their baby’s genitals? These are abominations.”
I agreed with him, and welcomed the change of subject to ask a more personal question. “Do you have any children?”
He blushed and swallowed, which I thought was odd, and then he said, “One day, before I get much older, I hope to become a father. I fervently desire it. And you? Do you want children?”
“If.”
“If?”
“If I find the right father. He has to help me, because I do want children, but I want a career, too.”
Zé beamed. “My mom really admires you, you know. She says you are just as determined as I am.”
“That’s the precise word she used? ‘Determined’?”
“Yes, oh super-translator. She said ‘determinada.’ Why are you laughing?”
“Oh, no reason,” I said.
We had arranged to meet Filo at her office in the staff area of the museum. As we approached, we heard her speaking with someone, a male voice that sounded familiar. I knocked, we entered… it was Dr. Gutiérrez.
I looked at Zé. We had both recoiled, but I recovered quickly and shared a big hug with Filo, then shook the University of Texas professor’s hand, as did Zé. Zé managed to kiss the air next to Filo’s cheek in greeting, but then he tried to do the other cheek, too. In the confusion he excused himself: “In Brazil we kiss for each cheek.”
There was an awkward silence.
I decided to test the waters. “Dr. Gutiérrez, how are you feeling?”
He looked at me with his head cocked to one side. “Thanks for asking, Marisol. I woke up in the hospital, and felt awful. But, you know, the hospital staff there in Puebla were so kind to me, such professional care—really, just such wonderful people—and it’s just… odd. I feel so much better now. I feel like a new man.”
Zé covered his mouth. I sat down rather quickly and gracelessly.
“So when I recovered,” he went on, “and remembered everything I could about what happened before the earthquake, I looked for you all, but the only person I could find was Filo.”
My former teacher threw me a stern look followed by a raised eyebrow. “Yes, Bill called and I invited him to come here to meet up with you two. You can all see the necklace together, and Marisol, you and Zé can fill us in on the codex.”
Zé cleared his throat. “Bill, it is so good to see you again, and see that you are well. You really gave us quite a shock.”
I dropped my head to my hands, very glad to be sitting down.
Filo replied. “You must not have been able to contact him, right?”
I could tell she was making an effort to be diplomatic with Zé. She would have guessed from my texts something about the forced nature of my relationship to him. In fact, I suddenly realized that if I wanted to leave Zé, all I needed to do was to say so, at that moment, in front of my former teacher and her colleague as witnesses. Jota was off somewhere else, and the museum was full of visitors: Zé was vulnerable.