‘No. No. It’s nothing like that, Abi. It’s not that at all.’ Oni was so excited that he failed to pick up the customary sarcasm in Abi’s voice, or even to notice the new wave of mosquito attacks that were being unleashed against him. ‘You’ve still got all the roads out of here covered, haven’t you, Abi?’
‘Oni, get to the point.’
‘The point. Yes. Putain. The point.’ Oni was sweating even worse now – the perspiration was streaming off him in runnels, diluting the ‘Scoot’ until it was only fractionally better than useless. ‘You should have been here, Abi. It was like an Indiana Jones movie. Picture this. Sabir and Calque are standing out there in the moonlight, levering away at one of the temple masks, and trying to grab at something that is tucked away behind it. Then the mask they are levering at topples out of its niche and clatters down the temple steps like that bouncing bomb that flattened the dam in that stupid war movie the Rosbifs have.’
‘That’s two movies in one sentence, Oni. I can only take so many movies.’
‘Okay. Okay. No more movies.’ Oni slapped at a rogue mosquito that had broken away from the flotilla encircling him. ‘So then Sabir and Calque turn around like the idiots they are and stare at the mask as if it’s going to stop bouncing and magically swoop back inside its hole again. And that’s when eight Mayan guys appear out of nowhere, with our sister in tow, and cover them with rifles.’
‘What did they find, Oni? Calque and Sabir?’
‘What? But I was telling you about the armed men.’
‘Forget about the armed men, Oni. I already know about the armed men. You may find this impossible to believe, but you’re not the only fucking fish in the fucking sea. Now tell me what they found.’
‘Who’s telling this story, Abi? You or me? I was just building up to the punchline.’
Abi glared at his cell phone as if he intended to sink his teeth into the keyboard and chew it up. ‘Then you’d better get to the fucking punchline, Oni, or I’ll fucking flatten you just like that fucking dam you were fucking wittering on about.’
‘Yes, you and what man’s army? And you shouldn’t swear so much, Abi. Madame, our mother, says it’s a sign of a lack of imagination.’
Abi consciously reined himself in. It was either that, or swear out a contract on his brother. What was the point in working himself up over nothing? He knew what Oni was like. Had always known. He sometimes forgot that the idiot was only eighteen years old.
He had actually received reports of the coming of the armed men some little time before. For some reason the news had not surprised him. You don’t single-mindedly follow three people day after day without the expectation of some sort of violent payback. And here it was, beckoning to him like one of Homer’s sirens.
Abi had immediately ordered the others to stand by, and to follow when and where possible. Now all he needed was to get a little sense out of his humungous fool of a brother, and he would have the situation nicely back under control again. ‘I’m sorry, Oni. Continue in your very own time. I’m entirely at your disposal, as always.’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I know I get a little carried away sometimes. But this was special, Abi. Listen.’
‘I am listening.’
‘When the mask had finished bouncing, there was a sort of powwow, with everyone putting in their centime’s worth. Lots of hand-waving and rifle-shaking. Then a decision must have been made, because Calque turns around and leads everybody back up to the face of the temple. Then he stands there like a stage magician – like George Sanders as Svengali in that movie with…’
‘Oni…!’
‘…until he shoves his hand up inside the hole left by the mask and comes out with a…’ Oni stopped. He was grinning at his cell phone like a chimpanzee.
‘With a what? For pity’s sake, Oni, tell me what he came out with.’
‘A crystal skull, bro. A crystal fucking skull. Can you believe it?’ Oni shook his head at the cell phone, as though it might somehow jerk into life and be able to discern his thought processes. ‘It was more than a foot tall. With a jaw on hinges like a real skull. And something black for its eyes. Emeralds probably. Or maybe jade. I couldn’t make it out. Well the assholes with the guns take one look at this thing and drop to their knees like they’ve just seen the Pope. And what do Sabir and Calque do? Do they leg it? Do they leg it hell. Instead of sprinting back to their car, they stand there like they’re expecting to be given a gold medal at the Olympics for their trouble. Like they expect a pat on the back rather than the bullet in the head they’ll probably get when these bozos with the rifles come to their senses again.’
‘What happened then, Oni?’
‘Wait for it. It gets better. Much better. What happens then is that this guy I’ve been watching for the past three hours – the guy hiding behind the carob tree I told you about, Abi – this guy comes breezing out from his hiding place waving a book. “It’s all written down in here,” he shouts. “I can’t carry this thing about with me any longer. The volcano has spoken.” Or some shit like that. My Spanish isn’t too good.’ Oni was really getting into the swing of things now. ‘Well the gunmen nearly pissed themselves, I can tell you. They were lurching around, not sure who to cover, who to shoot, or whether they should throw themselves on their knees again and start worshipping Calque and Sabir as gods.’
‘How did it all end?’
‘Three of the gunmen got together and manhandled the busted mask back into its hole. Then they tidied up all the stone chips and made the whole place shipshape again, just like nobody had ever been there. Then the boss man gathers everybody up, they have another powwow – believe me, these guys are good at powwows – and then they head off to wherever they need to get to in three separate cars, including Sabir’s Grand Cherokee.’ Oni searched wildly for a suitable flourish with which to end his story. ‘Now there’s nobody left here but us chickens. And a few bloodthirsty fucking mosquitoes feeding on us. Can I come home now, Abi?’
64
‘I recognize you. You’re the guide, aren’t you? The one who told us about the 942 masks?’ Sabir was driving the Grand Cherokee. Acan was seated beside him, with Calque and Lamia taking up the back seats. ‘So you were out there watching us all the time? How come? Were you expecting us? But that’s impossible.’ Sabir turned his head sharply. ‘You’re not with the Corpus are you?’
Acan was still nervously watching the woman. Hoping she wouldn’t stare directly at him. Give him the evil eye. He was clutching his rifle between his legs, so he wasn’t able to make the appropriate countermovement to diffuse the curse. ‘The Corpus? What is that?’
‘Forget it. It’s not important.’ Sabir glanced at Lamia in the rear-view mirror. ‘Look. Do you have to keep staring at my girlfriend that way? You may not realize it, but it’s damned off-putting. What is it with you people? Isn’t kidnapping us enough?’
Acan blew out noisily between his lips. Now that the subject was out in the open, he felt better. ‘She has the evil eye.’
‘The what?’
Calque leaned forwards. ‘He thinks Lamia has the evil eye. On account of her face. That if she stares at him he will be cursed.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake…’
‘This is serious, Sabir. You need to explain it to him.’
Lamia reached forwards between them. ‘I will explain it to him. I speak his language. It is my face that is frightening him, not yours.’
Calque dropped back into his seat. Sabir turned his concentration back to the road. Both men were acutely embarrassed. The placation and the bringing to understanding of this young Maya man had become far more important than any half-baked ideas of getting themselves out of the spot they were in.
Lamia hunched towards Acan. She spoke softly to him in Spanish. He began a reluctant nodding of the head. At one point Lamia took Acan’s hand and held it to the side of her face. Acan snatched it away and crossed himself. Lamia watched him, sadness mingled with her desire to make
him understand. Then, unexpectedly, Acan stretched out his hand one further time. This time Lamia did not attempt to influence what Acan could or couldn’t do.
Acan’s fingers were trembling. He had quite forgotten about his rifle.
Sabir instinctively sensed that he was in the perfect position to wrest the rifle away from Acan and take control of the situation again. True, he was top-and-tailed by two other vehicles, each with a number of armed men inside them, but he could see a side-turning looming half a mile further up the road. All he needed to do was to time his move to coincide with the arrival of the slip road.
Only then no crystal skull. No book. No answers. Sabir hesitated for a moment, his skin crawling with a sudden inner certainty which whispered ‘and no more Lamia, either’. She would never forgive him for abusing her tacitly given word.
So Sabir did nothing. For the very first time since his mother’s suicide, he realized that he was putting the welfare and happiness of another person before his own. The thought was a novel one. Was he really beginning to emerge from nearly ten years of emotional lock-down? He glanced possessively at Lamia in the rear-view mirror.
Acan reached out and touched Lamia’s face. Something changed in his eyes as he made the movement. The fear went out of them. He nodded, as if something had been successfully explained to him – some secret to which he had always wished to be privy.
He turned back to the front. ‘It is all right now. I am very sorry.’ Then he began to cry.
Sabir stared hard at Lamia, and then at Calque. ‘What brought that on?’
Lamia shook her head. ‘It was nothing. I reminded him about the mark of Cain. I said that God had given me this mark because I had come of an evil cradling. And that I took the mark as a sign to me that I must turn my back on the evil represented by my family and stand on my own two feet. Like Herman Hesse’s Demian.’
‘Which he’d read, of course?’
‘Don’t laugh, Adam. I explained to him that the god Abraxas concatenates all that is good and evil in this earth, and that we each have to destroy a world if we wish to be reborn. I quoted to him from Hesse’s book. The original goes “ Der Vogel kampft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, mu? eine Welt zerstoren. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott hei?t Abraxas. ” I translated it for him like this: “The bird fights his way out of the egg. The egg is the world. He who wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God is called Abraxas.”’
‘Lamia, he’s crying, for Christ’s sake.’
‘My image of the egg. It meant to something to him. Over here they use the egg to rid themselves of evil thoughts. I think he understands about me now. He no longer thinks I have the evil eye.’
Sabir glanced furtively across at Acan. Then back at Lamia. He could feel Calque’s eyes burning into the back of his head.
Sabir felt uninformed and inadequate. Unworthy of Lamia’s love. What was he doing here? What right did he have to interfere in all these people’s lives? To act as some sort of unholy catalyst, uniting forces that he little understood, in ways over which he had even less control?
‘I’m sorry I made that crack about the Hesse book. I don’t understand my own motives sometimes. I felt possessive of you, and didn’t like the fact that you weren’t involving me in what you said to
…’ He hesitated, really acknowledging the man beside him for the very first time. ‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Acan.’
‘This is Lamia. Lamia de Bale. Back there is Calque. Joris Calque. And my name is Sabir. Adam Sabir.’
Acan smiled through his tears. ‘My name is Acan Teul. I am Maya. From the village of Actuncoyotl. My father is called Anthonasio – Tonno for short. And my mother is called Ixtab.’
Lamia smiled gratefully at Sabir. Then she turned back to Acan. ‘Ixtab. That is a beautiful name.’
‘Yes. She is named after the Rope Woman. Our goddess of suicide. In Yucatec Maya, suicide can be a positive thing. It can be an honourable way to end one’s life. Ixtab is the goddess who accompanies the person who has killed themselves to paradise, making sure that they are welcomed there, and given the respect that is their due.’
Sabir turned on him, his face instantly suspicious again. ‘Suicide? Why are you talking about suicide all of a sudden?’
Calque laid a restraining hand on Sabir’s shoulder. All of their nerves were on edge, and Sabir’s most of all. Calque knew that Sabir hadn’t been sleeping. During the past few days the man had been becoming more and more wound up – just as he’d been in the aftermath of his tangle with Achor Bale. It was as though Sabir lacked three or four of the normal protective outer layers of skin that ordinary people possess by default.
At first Calque had made the not unreasonable assumption that Sabir’s newly fledged relationship with Lamia might even serve to calm him down a little. But, paradoxically, the love affair appeared to have had the exact opposite effect, turning Sabir into an even more hyper version of himself. Calque decided that he and Lamia would have to tread very carefully indeed if Sabir was not to crack up on them. He measured his words carefully, therefore, like a schoolmaster addressing a room full of freshmen.
‘He means that the goddess Ixtab acts as a psychopomp, Sabir. A spirit guide. Escorting the newly deceased to the afterlife. Shamans can also fulfil this role, I understand. It’s a quite innocent pastime.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Acan looked grateful for Calque’s intervention. ‘This is what my mother does. My mother is iyoma.’
‘ Iyoma?’
‘A female shaman. A midwife, really. It is she who tells, when a child is born, if he will become a shaman or not. Whether he is born with a separate soul, like a true shaman, and will give his mother much pain in the birthing. This can be a very bad thing for the mother. Sometimes the iyoma will not even tell the mother and father about their child for this reason, but only reveal what she has learned later on.’
‘Why was your mother called after the goddess of suicide?’ Sabir was still staring at Acan as if the young Maya was personally responsible for his mother’s death.
In his own heightened emotional state, Acan picked up on Sabir’s anxiety and didn’t feel threatened by it. He waved one hand in a downwards movement, as if calming a child, using the back of his other hand to brush away his remaining tears.
‘The old iyoma we had in the village at that time recognized my mother as a shaman at birth. She knew instinctively that my mother was connected by her umbilical cord to the goddess Ixtab. Without telling my father and mother, she went to the old people and suggested the name to them. In our village we respect our elders. We do what they ask of us. So my mother was named Ixtab. She has guided many people into the afterlife – and brought many others into this world as earth fruits. She is a very wise woman.’ Acan nodded, as if what he was saying was self-evident. ‘You will meet her, Adam. We are going to Ek Balam. Very near to my village. My mother will be there, waiting for you.’
Acan looked strangely at Sabir. For suddenly, without any warning, Sabir, too, began to cry.
65
The Halach Uinic had never known the like before. Who had dictated the events of the past few hours? Hunab Ku? Itzam Na? The maize god? The god who had no name? And what was their meaning?
Why, for instance, had foreigners been needed to find the thirteenth crystal mask – the mask without which the twelve other ritual masks would not sing? And why had it needed another foreigner – a man from Veracruz, of all places – to bring the Maya this incredible gift of a fourth complete codex, to stand alongside the Dresden, the Madrid, and the Paris codices, all of which had been stolen from the Maya by descendants of the conquistadors? The Halach Uinic realized that he was being told something – that voices were being carried to him on the wind, and that he urgently needed to listen to them.
The Halach Uinic turned to the mestizo who had brought him the book. His face in no way revealed the tenor of his inner thoughts. ‘We canno
t take this book from you. It has been in your family’s possession for many generations. It belongs to you, and not to us. It would be wrong of me not to tell you what value this book has. If you were to take it out of the country – to the United States, for instance, or to England – the gringos would make of you a very rich man. You could buy cars, and houses, and make love to a different woman every day. You could travel on aeroplanes through the sky, and see things that most of us know nothing about. You must not give us this book, therefore. It is yours. You must do with it as you will.’
As the Halach Uinic said these words, he felt a pain in his lower back, as if a kidney stone had formed there and was struggling to get out. He knew that by saying the words he risked losing the greatest gift his people had ever received. Yet he also knew that he had to say them – and mean them – or the gift would be worthless.
The mestizo was looking ahead of himself, out of the car window. He seemed to be concentrating on the vehicle in front of them – the vehicle that was carrying the gringos.
He half-turned towards the Halach Uinic. ‘And the skull? The gringos found that, not you. Will you offer that back to them as well?’
The Halach Uinic felt the weight of fate descend upon him like the lid of a coffin. How was it possible that this campesino could see things with such clarity? Pose him such questions? The man must have been chosen by God. There was no other possible answer.
Before the Halach Uinic could address himself to the question, the mestizo turned to look at him face on for the very first time. ‘You are the High Priest, are you not? The one they call the Halach Uinic?’
‘So they tell me. I am not entirely in agreement with them on this subject, however.’
‘The other priests…’
‘The Chilans and the Ah Kin?’
‘They will do as you say?’
‘No. They will do as their spirit tells them.’
‘But still. They listen to you?’
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