Death Dog traveled to the land of the dead where the God of death gave him the bone the human race was created with.
Scorpion uses his tail as a noose to lasso deer. Scorpion is a good hunter. He has a net bag in which he carries his fire-driller and fire-sticks.
The sign of the human hand = 2. The hand that holds the hilt of the dagger is plunged into the lower body of the deer.
Those cursed with the anguish, and the despairers, all were born during the five “nameless” days.
On the five nameless days, people stay in bed and fast and confess sins.
Black Zip whistles a warning. He is the deer god.
In the year Ten Sky, the principal ruler is Venus.
Big Star is a drunkard, a deformed dog with the head of a jaguar and the hind end of a dog with a purple dick. He staggers like Rabbit, who also is a drunkard. Nasty, arrogant liar! Troublemaker and experimenter in mutual hate and torture!
Venus. Color: red. Direction: east. Herald of the dawn and measurer of night.
Envious Ribald;
Sin in his face and in his talk; he had no virtue in him.
He is without understanding.
He had no virtue in him. Mighty carnivorous teeth and a body withered like a rabbit.
Deities return. Better get to know them.
Venus of the Celestial Dragon with eight heads; each head hurls shafts of affliction down on mankind. Europeans call Venus “Lucifer, the Bright One,” who fell from grace long ago. Venus resides in darkness until he rises as Morning Star. Dogface partially blackened, a fish in his headdress, he swims up from the dark underworld.
Error in translation of the Chumayel manuscript: 11 AHU was the year of the return of fair Quetzalcoatl. But the mention of the artificial white circle in the sky could only have meant the return of Death Dog and his eight brothers: plague, earthquake, drought, famine, incest, insanity, war, and betrayal.
Xolotol, the Death Dog, is playing his drum. He wears bird and snake earrings, which is a rebus for Quetzalcoatl. Xolotol, ribs and skull with a knife in the teeth.
Jade water = rain.
Dead souls travel branches and roots of the ceiba trees to reach the land of the dead. The outline of the tree’s roots and branches has the appearance of the outline of the lizard, Imix, earth monster, crocodile. The land of the dead is a land of flowers and abundant food.
Ik is three. Ik is wind on the edge of the rain storm; deity of the rain carries pollen; Lord of the night of the hollow drum, God of caves and conch shells. Earthquake is a scale off the back of earth monster Crocodile.
Kan is four. Kan is the lizard from whose belly sprang all the seeds for grain and fruit.
Chichan is five. Chichan is a giant snake half human and half feathered. The four chichans are the rain deities who live in the four directions.
Cimi is six and is called death, owl’s day. Lord of the underworld and Lord of death. Nonetheless day six, day of the skull, is a good-luck day.
Manik, the deer, is number seven.
Eight is the day called the Dog. Bloody pus pours from the ears of the dog. Persons born on the day of the dog will be habitual fornicators and will be obsessed by dirty thoughts.
[Numbers nine and ten are illegible.]
Eleven is the day of the monkey, whose head appears like the sun high in the trees. Jealous elder brothers sent the youngest brothers climbing high trees after monkeys so they’d fall to their deaths. The Big Dipper is the monkey constellation where the youngest brothers remain in the sky.
[Manuscript incomplete.]
Eb is the blackish mildew caused by too much rain or mist or dews and damps that ruin crops. A good day for obtaining advice concerning misfortunes. A good day for prayers for prosperity. The souls of the dead return as little gnats and bees. The souls of women who died in childbirth descend every fifty-two days to harm mankind, especially small children and babies.
Obsidian butterfly.
Seventeen is the number of Earthquake.
Nineteen is the day of flint knife.
[Manuscript illegible.]
the deer die: drought
maize in bud: women of sexual maturity
sprouting maize: marriage
Rain god sits on coiled snake enclosing a pool of water; the number nine is attached. Nine means fresh, uncontaminated water.
The snake god with the green symbol on the forehead means “first time,” “new growth,” “fresh.”
Dog = rainless storms. The dog carries a lighted torch: drought, great heat, heaped-up death.
Fine paper of bark cloth finished with lime sizing; a single, continuous piece of paper twenty-two feet long, folded like a Chinese screen, to be read from left to right. Ink of black and red; blue background, green, dark and light yellow. Short glyphic passages give the “luck” of the day planets and stars, ceremonial and sacrificial anniversaries, and prophecy.
A day began at sunset. “Reality” was variously defined or described.
Narrative as analogue for the actual experience, which no longer exists; a mosaic of memory and imagination.
An experience termed past may actually return if the influences have the same balances or proportions as before. Details may vary, but the essence does not change. The day would have the same feeling, the same character, as that day has been described having had before. The image of a memory exists in the present moment.
1. Bring the sun. Bear it on the palm of your hand. Bring the green jaguar seated over the sun to drink the sun’s blood. A lance is planted in the center of the sun’s heart. [The sun is a fried egg; the lance in its center is a green chili pepper.]
2. Bring me the brains of the sky so I may see how large they are. [The thick gray clouds of smoke from the copal incense suggest the gray mass of the brain.]
3. Son, go bring me the girl with the watery teeth. Her hair is twisted into a tuft; she is a very beautiful maiden. Fragrant shall be her odor when I remove her skirt and other garments. It will give me great pleasure to see her. Fragrant is her odor and her hair is twisted in a tuft. [A green ear of corn]
The unrestrained, upstart epoch is the offspring of the harlot, and a son of evil. The face of the Katun is covered with mud, trampled into the ground as he is dragged along.
The face of the Lord of the Katunsi is covered; he is dead. There is mourning for water, there is mourning for bread.
Bloody vomit of yellow fever.
Four piles of skulls: Spaniards, mestizos, Indian slaves, Africans.
The rope shall descend.
The poison of the serpent shall descend.
Pestilence and four piles of skulls; living men lie useless.
A dry wind blows. Locust years.
Bread is unattainable.
The sun shall be eclipsed.
Eleven Ahau is the Katun when the aliens arrived.
A beginning of vexation, a beginning of robbery with violence. This was the origin of service to the Spaniards and priests, of service to the local chiefs, of service to the teachers, of service to the public prosecutor by the boys, the youth of the town, while the poor people were harassed. There were the very poor people who did not escape when the oppressors appeared, when the anti-Christ had come to earth, the kinkajous of the towns, the coyotes of the towns, the blood-sucking insects of the town, those who drained the poverty of the working people. But it shall come to pass that tears will fill the eyes of God. Justice shall descend from God to every part of the world, straight from God, justice shall smash the greedy hagglers of the world.
Twenty-year drought: the hooves of the deer crack in the heat; the ocean burned so high the face of the sun was devoured; the face of the sun darkened with blood, then disappeared.
A time of dissolution.
Priests were called from distant towns.
Acolytes were seen carrying baskets full of small mummified creatures—lizards, toads, wrens, desert mice. Four years had seen grasshoppers devour bean and corn seedlings. Torrential rains that c
ame too late had caved in roofs of empty granaries and storerooms.
Priests sprinkle corn pollen and meal and bits of coral and turquoise on the stone snake’s forehead. They whisper to the stone snake leaning close so no one may see their lips.
Inside the cloudy opal, four years of grasshoppers devour bean and corn seedlings. Torrential rains arrived too late and caved in roofs of empty granaries and storerooms. Any children still alive were sent away with great sorrow.
Quetzalcoatl gathered the bones of the dead, sprinkled them with his own blood, and recreated humanity.
Marsha-true’ee, the Giant Plumed Serpent, messenger spirit of the underworld, came to live in the beautiful lake that was near Kha-waik. But there was jealousy and envy. They came one night and broke open the lake so all the water was lost. The giant snake went away after that. He has never been seen since. That was a great misfortune for the Kha-waik-meh.
1560
The year of the plague—intense cold and fever—bleeding from nose and coughing, twisted necks and large sores erupt. Plague ravages the countryside for more than three years. Smallpox too had followed in the wake of the plague. Deaths number in the thousands.
May 18, 1562—sickness and death still rampant at the end of the sixty-third year after the Katun was completed.
May 1566—between one and two in the afternoon an earthquake caused great destruction. Severe earthquakes lasted nine days.
1590
In the sixty-seventh year after the alien invasion, on January 3, 1590, the epidemic began: cough, chills, and fever from which people died.
In the sixty-eighth year after the alien invasion, the face of the moon was covered with darkness soon after the sunset. It was really a great darkness and the moon could not be seen. The surface of the earth could not be seen at all.
1594
Today, September 23, a land dispute between the Xevacal Tuanli is decided according to law.
1595
The mayor was struck by lightning. Ten days later lightning struck the church and main altar. In December, the great bell of Tzolola was begun. A thousand tostones were collected from community funds in order to pay for the bell.
1597
Thus, September 3, three days before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, there was an eclipse of the sun and the day became as dark as the night.
1600
Nine Ymox, Saturday, June 16, Mary, grandmother of the sun and all creatures.
1617-24
Smallpox.
1621
Five Ah, the plague began to spread. Great was the stench of the dead. People fled to the fields. The dogs and vultures devoured the bodies. Your grandparents died, we all became orphans. We were children and we were alone; none of our parents had been spared. The younger brothers were oppressed and baby boys were flayed alive. His face was that of the war capitán, of the son of God.
This shall be the end of its prophecy: there is a great war. A parching whirlwind storm. Katun 1 Ahau. There is a sudden end of planting. Lawsuits descend, taxes and tribute descend.
One day a story will arrive in your town. There will always be disagreement over direction—whether the story came from the southwest or the southeast. The story may arrive with a stranger, a traveler thrown out of his home country months ago. Or the story may be brought by an old friend, perhaps the parrot trader. But after you hear the story, you and the others prepare by the new moon to rise up against the slave masters.
THE GREAT INFLUENZA OF 1918
OLD YOEME HERSELF had added a number of pages to the almanac; Lecha easily recognized the handwriting:
Late in the summer, the pigs chew green corncobs, and I wait for execution in the Alamos Jail. I have been convicted of sedition and high treason against the federal government. They hate me because I am an Indian woman who kicked dirt in the faces of the police and army.
They stand outside my cell and gloat over my death. Soon I “must” die because I had “already lived too long,” I have blemished their “honor.” Me, “the short, square-shouldered woman with deadly aim,” that’s my title.
In twos and threes they come to stare at me. They relish the words they repeat again and again—their daydreams of my hanging and dismemberment.
My execution is delayed by their needs for pageantry. Elected officials from other jurisdictions arrive. I am on display, an example to all who dare defy authority. Postponement is due to the governor’s busy schedule. They don’t miss a day outside my cell.
The police chief carries a paper with days crossed off in charcoal. “Count them,” he tells me in low tones. He is outraged because an Indian can read and write, while he, a white man, can not. I laugh and call him “barbarian” in my language.
“You will die! That is certain!” All the others of my kind have already been sent to hell, he says. My death is certain. I am not afraid to die. I am sorry to leave the people I love when the struggle is only beginning. I pray to God for justice. For myself and all our people I pray for the success of the revolution.
The day before my execution the news reaches town. At first the officials refuse to believe the reports of so many sick and dead. Influenza travels with the moist, warm winds off the coast. Influenza infects the governor and all the others. The police chief burns to death from fever. The jailer leaves a bucket of water and a bowl of parched corn.
“The authorities want to keep you alive,” he says, “until they recover enough to hang you.” The jailer has bloodshot eyes. He says entire households have the dead lying next to the living, who are too ill to drag corpses outside.
I laugh out loud but the jailer reacts slowly.
“Someone will come to hang you,” he reassures me, but when I ask who, the jailer shakes his head. He is tired this morning or he would kill me himself. The town is silent. Church bells no longer ring the Angelus, and I listen with all my strength for the footsteps of my executioners.
I could hear the big buzzards and smell what they ate with such relish. I was still locked up. Human scavengers followed, and I heard the sounds of looting. I did not think anyone would come. But then they came to loot the jail’s guns and ammunition. The scavengers were afraid to open my cell because they saw my legs and wrists were shackled. But I told them the Blessed Virgin of the Indians had just worked me a miracle; I had been saved by the hand of God and they must set me free.
OLD YOEME’S ADVICE
THAT OLD WOMAN! Years after her death, Lecha still could not top her. The story of Yoeme’s deliverance had been carefully inserted among the pages of the old almanac manuscript. Why had Yoeme called the story “Day of Deliverance”? What good was the story of one woman’s unlikely escape from the hangman? Had old Yoeme known or cared that 20 to 40 million perished around the world while she had been saved? Probably not. Lecha could hear the old woman’s voice even now.
“You may as well die fighting the white man,” Yoeme had told them when they were girls. “Because the rain clouds will disappear first; and with them the plants and the animals. When the spirits are angry or hurt, they turn their backs on all of us.”
Of course the white man did not want to believe that. The white man always had to be saved; the white man always got the last available water and food. The white man hated to hear anything about spirits because spirits were already dead and could not be tortured and butchered or shot, the only way the white man knew how to deal with the world. Spirits were immune to the white man’s threats and to his bribes of money and food. The white man only knew one way to control himself or others and that was with brute force.
Against the spirits, the white man was impotent. “You girls will see someday. Look what happened to your grandfather. Those mine shafts into the earth turned against him, and his bones broke to mush.”
How fitting that Yoeme had required the single worst natural disaster in world history to save her. Nothing could change Yoeme’s view of her “deliverance.” She had had “a vision” that told her the influenza had saved
many others as well as revolutionists such as herself sentenced to die.
Yoeme had made margin notes after the pages describing her deliverance. Yoeme had believed power resides within certain stories; this power ensures the story to be retold, and with each retelling a slight but permanent shift took place. Yoeme’s story of her deliverance changed forever the odds against all captives; each time a revolutionist escaped death in one century, two revolutionists escaped certain death in the following century even if they had never heard such an escape story. Where such miraculous escape stories are greatly prized and rapidly circulated, miraculous escapes from death gradually increase.
It had been with Yoeme that Lecha had first seen rain clouds in the fat of sheep intestines. As children in Potam, Lecha and Zeta and their cousins had played with the lamb and pretended he was one of their make-believe herd. They stirred mud in tin cans and served it to him on plates of cottonwood leaves. He followed them when they ran. His long, woolly tail wagged while he nursed the black rubber nipple on a pop bottle. Later in the summer his tail was thick with fat and wool; burrs had tangled in his tail wool. Then one Saturday afternoon in August, old Yoeme had brought out her sharpening stone and long, curved butcher knife. She had also brought out the enamel dishpan. Uncle Ringo tied the big lamb’s legs together with rope, but the lamb did not struggle and lay on its side calmly as old Yoeme held a small tin pail under the lamb’s throat. Uncle Ringo pulled the lamb’s head back by the muzzle slit its throat. As its blood pulsed into the pail, the lamb made a weak struggle against the rope on its legs.
The Almanac of the Dead Page 68