by Pat Murphy
‘Personally, I’d sooner be flung to the fishes than have my heart torn out with an obsidian blade,’ Carlos was saying. ‘If I had my choice, I—’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ Robin asked. Her request was ignored.
‘So,’ Tony said. ‘Why would you toss someone in a sacred well?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Robin said. ‘I don’t see why anyone would.’
I noticed that my mother had stopped in the act of slicing off a bite of chicken. She leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Robin, do you believe in ghosts?’
Robin shook her head.
‘Then why does it bother you that people have died in the cenote?’ Robin looked very uncomfortable. My mother watched her, waiting patiently for an answer.
‘It just makes me uncomfortable.’
‘You’re uncomfortable because you believe in the power of the dead,’ my mother said calmly. ‘If you didn’t, the bones wouldn’t bother you. The Maya who lived here also believed in the power of the dead. They tried to use that power to make rain, to placate the gods, to change evil prophecies to good. They felt that those people who had passed near death were changed – they knew more than ordinary people.’
I watched my mother’s face as she talked of death. Her voice was low and earnest, the confident tone of a person who knows her subject. One of her hands rubbed at a bandage on her wrist. I wondered what it would feel like to slash the thin skin of my wrists and watch the blood flow. How would it change me?
‘Have you read the Books of Chilam Balam?’ my mother was asking Robin. When Robin shook her head, my mother continued, ‘When you do, you’ll find a fairly extensive description of the sacrifices at Chichén Itzá. Each year, a few chosen people were thrown into the cenote. As John said, most of them died when they hit the water. But some survived. The survivors were hauled out of the well and treated as messengers who had returned from the world of the gods, bringing the prophecy of the coming year. Those who had come near death and survived had a new strength that set them apart from ordinary people.’ My mother regarded Robin steadily across the table. ‘You should make an effort to learn about the people you are digging up.’
‘I have a good translation of that account,’ Tony said quickly. ‘You are welcome to borrow it.’
Robin nodded.
‘Don’t mind all this talk of death and dying,’ Tony said to me. ‘We’re a little preoccupied with death around here. The dead teach us things.’
‘Speaking of dead people,’ Barbara said to my mother, ‘Tony says you may have found a burial site this morning.’
‘Looks likely,’ my mother said. ‘Won’t know what we’ve got for sure until we get the brush cleared away. With any luck, we’ll find a burial or two. We could use a few good burials.’ She used a piece of tortilla to mop her plate. ‘So far, our success has been severely limited.’
‘It’s only the third week,’ Tony said. ‘You’re too impatient.’
My mother shrugged. ‘True enough.’
Twilight faded to darkness. Tony lit two Coleman lanterns, which cast bright white light, made sharp-edged double shadows on the tables, and attracted moths and flying insects. Carlos, Maggie, John, and Robin moved to another table to play cards. 1 declined Carlos’s invitation to join them. Carlos brought a cassette player from his hut and put on a tape of top ten pop music. I stayed at the dinner table with my mother, Barbara, Liz, and Tony. Tony poured us each a gin and tonic.
‘So what will you be doing on Monday?’ Barbara asked me softly. With the coming of sunset, she had taken off her sunglasses. Her dark brown eyes were surrounded with circles of pale skin where the sunglasses had blocked the sunlight. Without the glasses, she seemed younger, more vulnerable. ‘Has Tony assigned you a job?’
I shook my head.
‘Want to come on survey with me? We tramp through the monte and look for mounds. Fight with the bugs and try to avoid heatstroke. Lots of fun.’
‘The monte?’
‘Second-growth rain forest,’ Barbara said. ‘All this.’ She waved her hand at the scrub beyond the huts. ‘The Maya divided the world into the col – the cultivated fields – and the monte – the wild lands. In a week on survey, you’ll learn more about the monte than you ever wanted to know. I’ll teach you how to read a compass and follow a transect.’
‘Sure. That sounds all right to me.’
‘Great.’ She looked at Tony. ‘What do you think? She’s on survey, all right?’
Tony grinned at me over his drink. ‘She didn’t tell you that you’ll have to get up at six AM.’
‘That’s okay.’
Tony lifted his glass as if making a toast. ‘Barbara wins again. You’re on survey.’
At the other table, Carlos turned up the volume on the cassette player, and a Mexican version of a Beatles tune filled the plaza. Maggie made an inaudible comment, and Carlos reached over to touch her hand. My mother was drinking a gin and tonic and staring off into the darkness beyond the lantern light.
‘You’re in the same hut I’m in,’ Barbara was saying to me. ‘Want help setting up your hammock?’
‘Sure.’
We said good-night to my mother and Tony, and headed toward the hut.
‘I get tired of watching the courtship rituals,’ Barbara said as we left the plaza.
The sound of Carlos’s cassette player was fading in the distance. Barbara snapped on her flashlight and shone it on the path before us. ‘The first summer, it was an interesting sociological phenomenon. But you watch it four years running, and it gets tedious. The players change, but the moves never do. I steer clear of it.’
‘You’ve come here for the past four years?’ I asked.
‘Not this site. Last year I was at a site up by Mexico City; year before, I was at an Anasazi site in Arizona. Every site is a little different, but some things don’t change. You always feel filthy; there’s always a graduate student like Carlos who wants to play late-night games, and there’s always someone like Maggie who’s willing to play. I got a chance to watch Carlos in action last year. He’s smooth, but callous as hell. When he makes a play for you, watch out.’
I glanced at her face, but could not read her expression in the dim light. ‘Who says he will?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding. You’re pretty and you’re the new kid in town. It isn’t a question of whether he will; it’s only a question of when.’
She stopped by a large black rubber barrel equipped with a faucet attachment. On top of the barrel was a battered metal dishpan. A grimy bar of soap sat in a makeshift soap dish: an old temple stone with an oval indentation. Barbara set her flashlight beside the soap. ‘Welcome to the washroom,’ she said. ‘All the comforts of home. The outhouse is at the end of that path. It’s the best outhouse in this part of the country, though that doesn’t say a hell of a lot.’ She rinsed the dishpan, then filled it with water and washed her face. ‘You can hang your towel in the tree right here,’ she said, tugging her towel from a branch. ‘Like I said, all the comforts of home. The showers are down that path, past the outhouse and upwind of it. They remove very little of the dirt, but they do rearrange it a bit. You’re better off taking a swim in the cenote instead of a shower except when you want to wash your hair.’
I ran water in the basin and splashed it on my face. The water was lukewarm and even after rinsing I could feel soap on my skin. I guessed that Barbara was right; I never would feel clean. My eyes still felt hot and dry from crying.
In the hut, Barbara lit a tall white candle in a clear glass chimney. The flame cast a pool of yellow light on the footlocker where she set it; shadows wavered in the corners of the hut.
By the candlelight, I found the shelf where Tony had set my bag earlier. I dug through the bag for the oversized T-shirt I had brought to sleep in. Barbara undressed and, casually naked, rubbed herself with insect repellent. She offered me the repellent, advised me to use it, then instructed me on the best method for sleeping in a hammock.
‘There’s a knack
to it,’ she said, laying one hand on her hammock. She took a sheet from the shelf and tossed it to me, took another for herself. She wrapped the sheet loosely around her, held one side of the hammock away from her, spreading the webbing of cotton strings, then sat back in it, lying diagonally. She arranged the sheet around her, tucked one arm under her head, and smiled at me. ‘See. Comfortable as your own bed.’ She was rocking slightly. ‘Could you hand me my cigarettes?’
I took the cigarettes from the footlocker, used the candle to light one, and handed it to her. She puffed and silently watched me attempt to duplicate her maneuver. My own rocking motion was somewhat more frantic and the edges of the hammock tried to close over me.
‘Lie crosswise,’ Barbara suggested.
I managed to squirm around until the length of my body kept the webbing spread. I tucked the sheet around me.
‘Comfortable?’ she asked.
‘As long as I don’t move.’
‘Want a cigarette?’
‘No thanks.’ I felt more comfortable than I had felt for many months. I had seen my mother and survived the meeting. ‘Hey, who’s going to blow out the candle?’
‘I can get it from here,’ she said. She leaned over and blew the candle out.
I propped up my head on my arm and my hammock rocked furiously. ‘Seems like a tough place to make love,’ I said, thinking of Carlos and Maggie.
‘It can be done,’ Barbara said. ‘Trust me.’
‘You sound like an expert.’ I could see only the glowing tip of her cigarette, rocking slowly in the darkness. For a moment, she was silent, and I thought perhaps I had said too much.
‘Stick around here, and you can find out firsthand,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m sure Carlos would be delighted to help you learn.’
‘That’s all right. I think I’ll pass.’ I watched her cigarette glow brighter as she took a puff.
‘You married?’ she asked.
‘No. I’m just out of a bad breakup.’ I tried to sound casual. ‘That’s one reason I’m down here. He was the art director at the advertising agency where I worked.’ I could visualize his face clearly: dark hair with a touch of gray, blue eyes.
‘He was married?’
‘Sure enough.’ I managed to keep my voice light. I was glad the hut was dark.
‘Aren’t they always,’ Barbara said. Her voice had softened. ‘I had an affair with a professor of mine. He was married and had two kids. He finally said it was over, cut me off, wouldn’t have anything to do with me. When I was sure it was all over, I changed schools. I couldn’t stand seeing him, up there in front of his classes, so very sure of himself.’
‘I quit and left town.’ It felt good to tell someone about it. Especially someone who did not know Brian, did not judge me to be a fool.
‘I know how it goes,’ Barbara said. ‘Well, if you’re looking for a place to escape and forget, this is a good one. They’ll never find you here.’
‘Thanks for helping me with everything,’ I said awkwardly.
‘No problem,’ she said. ‘Any time you need to talk, let me know.’
I watched her silhouette lean over and stub the cigarette out in the dirt on the hut floor. I heard the sheet rustle as she turned over. ‘Better get to sleep now,’ she advised.
‘Good-night,’ I said.
‘’Night.’
I lay awake for a long time, listening to unfamiliar sounds: footsteps, insects, rustling leaves, the loud ticking of a clock inside the hut. It seemed strange to be able to lie still, not to worry about what would happen when I reached my destination. It seemed that I had spent the last few weeks in constant motion. Pacing up and down the long corridor of the hospital, waiting for the doctor’s verdict. Staring out the window of the limousine as my father’s funeral procession moved slowly to the cemetery. Wandering in my father’s house, confined by four white walls, aimless, unable to settle. Moving slowly, but always moving. Thinking about my mother, remembering my mother. She was shorter than I remembered. Her hair had more gray than I remembered.
The hammock rocked beneath me and I felt like I was still moving, traveling toward an unknown destination. I was just drifting off to sleep when Robin stumbled in and fumbled about in the dark. Finally, she was quiet. I slept.
Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler
Robin, one of my students, is a reasonably intelligent, well-educated, young woman. Yet she claims that she sees no reason for human sacrifice. Her attitude, when she speaks of the ancient Maya and their sacrifices to the gods, implies that we are civilized now, we have left that nonsense far behind.
Robin forgets, I think, that her own religion involved human sacrifice. She is a practicing Christian. She partakes of Holy Communion, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the human son of God who died and rose from the dead to bring back the word of his Father. She believes in the Resurrection, but only as something that happened long ago in a distant land, far removed from her day-to-day life. She believes in God, the Father Almighty. On the other hand, if her next-door neighbor were to claim that God had spoken to him in a vision, she would think him eccentric and possibly dangerous. Her God is a distant patriarch who demands that she attend church and follow a set of ten rules, but he does not deign to pass along new rules through common people. She is accustomed to a God who keeps his distance.
The gods of the ancient Maya are closer and more demanding. At the turning of the katun, the time comes for fasting and drinking balche, for cleansing the sacred books, for dancing on stilts and burning incense. At that time, the people gather at the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá, a city fifty miles from Dzibilchaltún. The well is a place of power, home of many gods. At the turning of the katun, priests fling jade ornaments, gold bells, copper rings, painted bowls, and incense into the Sacred Well.
With these gifts, they send messengers to the gods. If the messengers do not wish to visit the gods, they are sent – hurled over the edge by muscular priests who only wish to do them honor. The messengers fall, bright feathers fluttering in the sunlight, their voices smothered by the shouting of the crowd, the processional music, the chanting of the priests. Far below, they float, specks of silent color on the jade-green water.
At noon, when the disc of the sun fills the well with light, only one messenger floats on the water. The others are gone, taken down by the Chaacob to the submarine rooms beneath the water’s smooth surface. The priests draw out this survivor, who has returned to tell the message of the gods, bringing the prophecy for the coming year.
It is not a simple thing, this human sacrifice, any more than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a simple execution. The messengers who do not return are among the gods; the one who does return is the oracle, the interpreter for the gods.
The archaeologist Edward Thompson dredged human bones from the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá. The bones that Thompson found belonged to messengers who failed in their duty.
5
Elizabeth
I tapped a cigarette out of the pack and watched the bright point of Barbara’s flashlight move across the plaza to the women’s hut. Barbara and Diane were shadows in the distance.
This daughter of mine was as cool as if she were encased in glass, shielded from the world by an invisible protective barrier. She was not unfriendly: during dinner she had smiled and joked with the others. But she seemed cautious, wary, and even when she removed her sunglasses, I could not begin to guess what she was thinking. I lit my cigarette, cupping my hand to protect the flame from the evening breeze, then shook the burning match to blow it out. Tony sat beside me, nursing a drink. I think it was his fourth.
In the corner of the plaza, not far from the table where the students played their interminable game of cards, a loincloth-clad Toltec priest was scraping remnants of flesh from the hide of a newly killed jaguar. A smoking torch cast red light on his bare back and shoulders; at his side, incense burned in a pottery vessel shaped like a jaguar. As he worked, he chanted incessantly, and his voi
ce competed with the rock-and-roll tapes playing on Carlos’s cassette player.
‘Your daughter is a very nice young woman,’ Tony said. ‘I think she’ll fit right in.’
I said nothing. The priest chanted and the rock-and-roll band sang about love.
‘Did you have a nice chat when you took her around the site?’
‘Curious, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He leaned back in his chair. The hand holding his glass of gin was propped up on one knee; the empty hand on the other. He was waiting. A moth was battering its head against the glass chimney of the lantern. I dimmed the light and moved it to the other end of the table, but the insect circled, found the lamp again, and continued its efforts to die.
‘I don’t understand what she wants from me,’ I said finally.
‘Didn’t you ask her that?’ Tony said.
‘I did. She said she wanted to dig up the past and see what was under the rubble.’
He nodded.
For a moment we listened to the slap of the cards, the low murmur of the students’ conversation, and the soft whir of the cassette player rewinding. The priest had stopped his wailing and I could hear the scrape of the obsidian knife against the hide. I realized that I was holding the burning cigarette, but not smoking. I took a long drag and exhaled slowly.
‘I don’t understand what she’s doing here,’ I said abruptly. ‘It’s all past history. I left her. Why should she look to me for comfort now?’
‘Is she looking to you for comfort?’
‘She’s looking for her mother. I’m nobody’s mother.’
‘Then she’ll figure that out,’ he said. ‘And then she’ll go. Is that what you want?’
I shrugged, unable to say what I wanted. ‘That would be fine,’ I said. ‘Just fine.’
‘All right,’ Tony said. ‘Maybe that will happen.’
We sat quietly for a while. The priest resumed his chanting, but the card game seemed to be winding down. Carlos had his arm around Maggie’s shoulders and the two of them were laughing a great deal. ‘She seems to have hit it off with Barbara,’ I said.