Sabir closed his eyes ecstatically. ‘The way girls’ bottoms stick out when they walk.’
Calque pinched the bridge of his nose with his forefingers, as if he had acquired a sudden headache. ‘ Putain. But you’ve got it bad.’
‘So you were awake, huh? I thought you might have been. Being a police officer and all that. Trained to spy on people.’
Calque shrugged. ‘What did you want me to do? Pipe up and spoil your moment? There are things called Chinese walls, you know. You must have known I was awake because I wasn’t snoring for once. At least according to your theory.’
‘No. You did right. And I thank you for it. You called it, but I was too dumb to listen. If Lamia hadn’t taken the initiative, I’d probably be sitting in some bar in twenty years’ time, wallowing in regret.’
‘What? Like me, you mean?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you thought it.’
‘Haven’t you ever thought of remarrying, Calque? Starting another family? As you made so clear to me the other day, you’re not too old to begin again. Have another kid. You’ll only be seventy-five or thereabouts when she waltzes off with a serial-killing truck driver.’
‘Thank you. That’s very encouraging. I’ll definitely consider your proposition. Any particular woman in mind? Lamia, excepted, of course.’
‘Of course. Give me a little time to think about it. I’ll come up with something.’
‘Ah, what joys and sudden enhancements to confidence the unexpected possession of a woman can bring. You’ve changed, Sabir. Within the space of twelve hours you’ve become a human being again.’ Calque’s attention began to wander. ‘But not an American, eh? This woman you are proposing for me? You wouldn’t suggest that, would you?’
‘No. Never that. I’m not a sadist. You being a Frenchman and all.’
‘Thank you.’
Sabir snapped his fingers together. ‘How about a Mexican woman? Mexican women value men. They know how to treat them properly. Not slice off their balls and serve them back with a topping of vanilla sauce.’
Calque looked at Sabir, his face aghast. ‘Now you may really be on to something. Apart from the testicular analogy, that is.’ He appeared to be lost in thought for a moment or two, as if he were pondering some great, but as yet little-known, truth. ‘You do realize, Sabir, that no woman in the history of this earth knows what she really wants? She only knows when she gets it.’
Sabir was preparing to respond to Calque’s apercu when Lamia emerged from the back seat of the Cherokee, stretching.
‘What are you two talking about? You woke me up.’ She looked suspiciously at both men, weighing up their mood. ‘At least you’re not arguing again.’
Calque put on his most innocent smile. ‘We were talking about women.’
Lamia flushed.
‘Not specific women, you understand. Just women in general. Except in one particular respect.’
‘And what respect is that?’
‘Sabir tells me he particularly likes how your bottom sticks out when you walk.’
Sabir aimed a pretend cuff at the back of Calque’s head. ‘Damn it, Calque. What are you trying to do to me?’
‘Did you really say that, Adam?’
‘He really did.’ Calque was grinning from ear to ear.
‘And you like that? That part of me? How it moves?’
Sabir hesitated, sensing a trap. Then he threw caution to the winds. ‘I love it.’ He glanced up at her, gauging her reaction.
‘I like your saying it, then.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. No one ever talked to me like that before. I like it.’ She turned back to the car, amused by their open-mouthed response to her statement. ‘Are you both coming? We could stop off for some breakfast before Kabah opens.’
‘No. We’ll just sit here and watch you, thanks.’
Lamia reached down and picked up a stick, which she brandished at them. ‘I don’t like it that much.’
‘Okay. Okay. We’ll go first. That suit you?’
‘No. I’ll go first. I think I’ve just decided I enjoy being admired.’
53
Acan Teul had been spending the entirety of every day at Kabah since the news about the eruption of the Pico de Orizaba volcano had reached the Halach Uinic.
There had been many occasions during that period when he had been tempted to bunk off and visit his girlfriend at her juice shack six kilometres down the road, but each time he felt tempted by the anticipation of the joy she would no doubt show at his presence, he allowed his thoughts to wander back to what exactly the Halach Uinic might do to him if he was caught abandoning his post, and he thought better of it. There were always the evenings to look forward to, when the Kabah site was shut.
The problem was that Acan didn’t really know what he was looking for. The Halach Uinic – who was the most important Maya priest in the whole of the Yucatan, or so people told him – had not exactly bombarded him with information.
‘We are expecting something to happen at Kabah following the eruption. This has been predicted. But we do not yet know what it will be. You were once a guide at Kabah, were you not, Acan? You will stay there during the day, therefore. If anything strange happens, you will use the security guard’s cell phone, and you will call me. Your brother Naum will keep watch during the night. After the first two weeks, you will both be allowed time off.’
‘Two weeks?’
‘You will be paid from the fund. More than you could earn from labouring. Isn’t it better to laze around drinking Coca Cola than to break stones for a cheating boss?’
As always, the Halach Uinic had put his finger straight on the meat of the matter.
‘I shall do as you say.’
‘Anything. Anything strange. And you will call me?’
‘I will.’
Now, eight days in, Acan was sitting under the shade of a carob tree, fantasizing about his girlfriend and wishing he was sitting in her fruit booth pinching her bottom. He loved the way she shrieked at him when he surprised her in this way. Sometimes she would even hit him with her towel, which afforded him great pleasure.
Just as he was beginning to doze off in the early morning sun, Acan’s attention was caught by a stranger – a mestizo, it looked like – arriving on his cousin Tepeu’s triciclo.
How did Tepeu, who spent his entire time hunting, ever get to know a mestizo? And, even more unlikely, give him a lift on his triciclo? Acan stumbled to his feet and shaded his eyes. Tepeu and the mestizo were negotiating with the man at the gate. Voices were briefly raised, and then Tepeu handed over a dead iguana, and the gatekeeper waved the mestizo through.
Acan watched as the mestizo walked towards the Palace of the Masks. The man stood for some time staring at the multitude of carved masks that adorned the wall, and then he shook his head, as if something puzzled him. After a moment’s further hesitation he turned around and walked down towards Acan. At first, Acan thought the man was going to talk to him, but then the mestizo chose a neighbouring carob tree, about twenty metres to Acan’s right, and sat down beneath its shade. Then he lay down, using his bag as a pillow, and prepared himself to sleep.
Acan glanced over at the gatekeeper’s lodge, but his cousin had already cycled away. Acan shrugged. What did it all have to do with him anyway? A mestizo turning up at Kabah, although rare, was not an event in itself. And the man was now clearly asleep.
Acan allowed himself to collapse back onto the ground again. He took a languid sip of his Coca Cola, and then set himself back to thinking about his girlfriend, Rosillo, and what he might do to her, come Saturday night, if he could only persuade her to drink just a little of his aguardiente stash.
54
Acan awoke from his doze at a little after ten o’clock in the morning. Gringos were coming – he could hear the confident boom of their voices from a hundred metres away.
The arrival of gringos was not, in and of itself, strange, as Acan knew
that most of the small trickle of people who ever bothered to visit Kabah were gringos of one sort or another. Most visitors to the Yucatan, however, chose the more famous tourist destinations of Chichen Itza and Uxmal instead, leaving Kabah to wallow in its peaceful backwater isolation.
These gringos had a US registered car, though – Acan had very good eyes, and he could make out the number plate in the scant parking lot that serviced the site. And this was strange in itself. It meant that the gringos had driven many thousands of kilometres to reach here. Unless, of course, they lived in the country for part of the year, as some gringos did, and merely drove their car down for convenience sake.
Acan shook his head. He glanced over to his right. The mestizo was also interested in the gringos. As Acan watched, the mestizo took the bag that he had been using as a pillow, and hid it behind the trunk of the carob tree, as though he feared that the gringos might steal it. And that was also a strange thing. Why should the mestizo fear that the gringos might steal what he had? Surely, it would be the other way around? Mestizos were terrible thieves, or so his father had warned him when he became interested in a mestizo girl, one time.
‘Maya marry Maya,’ said his father. ‘If Maya marry half-Spanish thieves, they lose their souls and the nawal gets them.’
Acan had soon lost interest in the mestizo girl anyway, the first time he saw Rosillo working in her juice booth. Now she was a little piece of paradise, that girl. And Maya, too. His father wouldn’t dare call her a thief.
Acan decided to take a closer look at the gringos. He got up, stretched, and sidled over to where they were standing, admiring the Palace of the Masks.
‘Do you guys need a guide? I’m an expert on this place. I can tell you everything. If you pay me in US dollars and not pesos, I can tell you even more.’
The younger man laughed, and turned towards the woman, inviting her opinion. It was then that Acan saw the woman properly for the first time. He felt himself go cold, and his neck and arms prick up in goose-bumps.
One side of her face was covered in a veil of blood.
Acan grabbed hold of his shoulders for comfort, forcing his thumbs between the index and middle fingers of his hands – this phallic gesture, of the thumb as penis and the fingers as the vagina, had been taught to him by his mother as a talisman against curses.
Acan was briefly tempted to cross himself too, but then he remembered what the Halach Uinic always said about old Christian habits, and how they diluted true belief – true openness of mind. God was God. Hunab Ku was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was Itzam Na. God was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was God. God was both Hunab Ku and Itzam Na. In other words God was the same God for everyone. He did not belong to one religion more than any other. You did not own Him simply by giving Him a name.
The woman was looking at him strangely, and Acan realized that he was still gripping his shoulders like a young girl trying to protect her breasts from public gaze. He dropped his hands and attempted to smile.
The woman sensed his fear, however. Sensed that his throat had dried up. That he could barely swallow. This much he knew. Please God his talismanic gesture of the thumb between the two fingers had worked, for he also knew from his mother that this movement represented the dried-out and impotent penis being restored to life by the moistness of the vagina. In this way only could the evil eye be counteracted by the natural scheme of the earth.
Acan shivered, and turned to the older man of the group. Perhaps he would make a decision for them all? Acan wanted to be back underneath his tree. He wanted to drink half a litre of Coca Cola, very quickly, and very cold. Then he wanted to go and find Rosillo and tell her all about the gringa with the bloodied face. Maybe he would even get Rosillo to pass a raw egg over him, then crack it into a bowl of water and examine it. In this way would the mal de ojo be absorbed into the egg. Later, Acan would cover the bowl with straw and sleep with it underneath his pillow.
The older gringo cleared his throat. He tried a few words in Spanish, and then shook his head when he realized that Acan could not understand him. The old gringo’s English, too, was very poor indeed, but at least one could make out his basic meaning.
‘Five dollars, then? And you take us around the site and explicate everything to us?’
‘Sure, papi. Sure. I do that. Only you give me what you want at the end. What you think I deserve. Maybe less than five dollars. Maybe more. Okay?’
The older man laughed. ‘Okay.’
Acan could see out of the corner of his eye that the younger man had his arm around the woman and was talking softly to her. He didn’t dare turn back and look at them directly. He couldn’t trust himself.
He pointed up at the great facade of masks confronting them. ‘Here you see the Codz Poop. Also known as the Palace of the Masks. It is dedicated to Chaac, the rain god of the Maya. It is he who splits the clouds with his lightning axe, and fills the cenotes throughout the dry season.’ Acan’s voice had taken on the sing-song automated note of the professional guide.
‘Do you know how many masks there are? Or at least were?’
Acan searched his memory – it was a long time indeed since he had guided anybody in this spot. ‘Before the destruction there were 942 masks. Or so they say. You can see where the second line of masks would have been. Now there are only 500 left. The number 942 held a special significance for the Maya.’
‘What significance? I’ve never heard anything about the number 942.’ This was the younger gringo. The man holding the woman with the bloodied face. ‘We know 365 was a key number for the Maya, being the number of days in their solar year. Also 260, being the approximate span of parturition. But 942? It doesn’t make any sense.’
Acan felt raw and on the defensive after his unexpected reaction to the gringa’s mal de ojo. Why was this young gringo pushing him so hard? What did he want? Was he still angry about Acan’s reaction to his woman? ‘We no longer know. The secret has been lost with the destruction of nearly all our painted books.’
‘The codices, you mean?’
‘That word I do not know. But of all the books, only three, and the fragment of a fourth, are left intact. It is the greatest sorrow of the Maya people. These books contained our history. And the Spanish priests destroyed them.’
The older man with the strange accent was frowning at him. ‘Bishop Diego de Landa. July 1562. He tortured and killed all the Maya Chilans and notables. Then he destroyed five thousand cult objects and twenty-seven books. Thus the Black Legend. La Leyenda Negra.’
Acan looked away. ‘I know of no such Black Legend, Senor. All I know is that the Spanish priests tortured and killed any person they believed to have gone back to the old ways of thinking. And the Monsignor Bishop did not destroy twenty-seven books, Senor. He destroyed ninety-nine times twenty-seven books. The Halach Uinic has told me so, and he knows about such things. Later, the Catholic Church explained to us that the Monsignor Bishop was really being charitable when he destroyed the history of our people. He was trying to protect us from ourselves.’
Acan had no idea why he was describing all this to the gringos. Had he gone crazy? When he had been a guide here, five years before, he had never gone into things with such detail. But the stories of the Halach Uinic were fresh in his head, and the sight of the woman had unsettled him. At this rate the gringos would tip him one dollar, not five, and kick his ass into the bargain.
‘That is terrible.’
The woman had spoken for the first time. Acan could feel her gaze piercing through the back of his neck.
‘ Asi es la vida. My grandfather always said that to have the Spanish as friends was far worse than to have them as enemies.’ Acan shrugged, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh. Part of him knew that he was attempting to play down something that, if he ever truly acknowledged it, would probably overwhelm him.
The younger man came up and touched him on the shoulder. Acan jumped, as if he had been hissed at by a snake. Then he realized that it was not the woman, but the man
, who had touched him. And the man did not have the evil eye.
‘Let me get this right. You did say there were originally 942 masks on the Palace wall?’
‘That is what I have heard, yes. That is what the Halach Uinic has told me.’
‘The Halach Uinic? Who is this person you keep mentioning?’
‘He is the highest priest of all the Maya. He understands many things.’
‘And you know this man?’
‘Of course. Everybody knows him.’
The younger man turned to his companions and said something to them in a low voice. Acan could not completely make out what he was saying, but it had something to do with the number 942, and certain prophecies, and also the Halach Uinic.
Acan decided that, apart from the woman’s face, these gringos were unimportant. They were just as all the other gringos – hungry for knowledge that they would soon forget. He decided that he would wring as much money in tips as he could possibly get from them, and then go and share a cigarette with the mestizo, and find out what relationship the man had to his cousin Tepeu.
Now that was a real mystery.
55
Sabir sat on an upended barrel in the little shack that the Kabah gatekeeper had set up as an outlet for his soft-drink concession. He was still upset about the Maya guide’s response to Lamia’s face. He had never experienced anything quite like it. The man had taken one look at Lamia and then reacted as though he had seen a ghost. He had seemed truly terrified.
Sabir decided unilaterally that now Lamia and he were – how would one term it? – dating? – an item? – he would try to persuade her to go to Massachusetts General Hospital’s dermatology department in Boston once all this was over. He had a friend there, a senior consultant. He hadn’t seen the guy in years, but friendships were all about need, weren’t they? He’d call this person at home and seek his opinion about Lamia’s condition. Rekindle the friendship a little.
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