by Lyn Hamilton
One in particular looked very interesting. Seated alone at the table next to mine, she was in her mid-eighties, I would guess. Aristocratic of bearing, she was clearly the product of a more formal time. She was dressed all in black, a widow most likely, and she wore a black mantilla over her white hair.
Her eyes, which fixed on me from time to time, were very bright blue, unusual enough in this part of the world, and on the table beside her she had carefully placed a black lace fan and a pair of black lace gloves. She appeared to be graciousness personified, but I had a sense of iron will there. I noticed the busboys in the dining room were especially careful when they were waiting on her table. She apparently had exacting standards. She was too close to allow me to ask Norberto who she was.
Other than her and me, only two other people in the dining room seemed out of place in this old-world setting—two men at a table in the corner.
Both of them were quite attractive, although in very different ways. One was Mexican, dark, mid-forties, with fairly long dark hair and dark eyes. What set him apart from the rest of the crowd was his attire—black jeans and a black T-shirt, rather out of place in the elegant surroundings of the hotel dining room.
The other was fiftyish, well dressed in a sort of Ivy League way. Gray flannels, blue double-breasted blazer, white shirt, burgundy tie, and neatly trimmed hair streaked with gray and just a hint of a curl over the ears. I had a sense that I was as much the subject of their scrutiny as they were of mine, but after a few minutes the dark one left.
After surreptitiously observing the remaining man over the top of my wineglass and then my menu for a while, I tried to get a grip on myself and give the pheasant the attention it deserved. Inevitably, though, I looked his way again, and this time, rather than pretending that he had not been looking at me, too, he smiled.
Shortly thereafter he left the dining room, taking a slight detour to go by my table. There was just the hint of an acknowledgment, the slightest incline of the head as he did so. I was sorry he was leaving so soon.
Later in the evening I sat around the family table in Dona Francesca’s tiled kitchen with most of the family. Isa was there with her mother and father, and Norberto and his wife, Manuela. Missing were the two grandchildren, now in bed, and the younger brother of Isa and Norberto, Alejandro.
When I asked about Alejandro, I noticed once again the slight tension in the air as each paused just for an instant before answering the question. It was Isa who spoke. “We don’t see much of him these days. He has a life and friends of his own,” she said.
“He follows his own course,” agreed Norberto. “He believes in his own causes.”
Clearly this was all that was going to be said on the subject.
I suppose I was not really any more forthcoming myself on the subject of my divorce. But the evening passed pleasantly enough, and very late I went to bed.
That night, I had a most unpleasant dream, the first of what was to become a series of recurring nightmares. I was floating through space looking down at the earth, which metamorphosed into some kind of snakelike creature. The creature rose up as I flew over, and engulfed me. I began to fall through black space, and in the darkness I could hear angry voices. In my dream I knew what had happened. I had entered the maw of Xibalba, and the voices I heard were the Lords of the Underworld.
Prone to recurring dreams, I am nonetheless a little slow figuring out what my subconscious is trying to tell me. A couple of years earlier I’d had a series of dreams in which I was standing in a doorway, my luggage in front of me, with no idea of where I was or where I was going. It took five or six repetitions of that one before I got the message and packed up and left Clive for good. In retrospect, if I’d paid attention to that night’s dream and those that were to follow, at a minimum I might have avoided some poor personal choices. At best, at least one death might have been averted.
IK
Merida may well merit its reputation as the White City, the cleanest and most beautiful in Mexico, but for me it is a city whose beginnings, like many Spanish colonial cities, are steeped in blood. Even now it remains one where the tensions between the colonial and the Indian, while giving the place a certain energy, are never entirely laid to rest.
Take, for instance, the square where Isa and I met for almuerzo, late breakfast, the day after my arrival. We were sitting at a cafe“ on what Meridanos call the Plaza Grande, tucking into huevos rancheros and getting caught up on each other’s life.
We’d arrived just as a party of revelers left to sleep off the previous night’s festivities. Merida is one of the cities of Mexico that take Carnaval seriously, and while technically it is only celebrated the week leading up to Lent, some Meridanos get an early start on the festivities.
The plaza where we sat, officially the Plaza de la Independencia, is the heart of Merida, just as this same great space was once the heart of a great Maya city called T’ho. At one side is the cathedral, built in 1561 of stone taken from the razed buildings of T’ho. At the south side is Casa Montejo, now a bank, once the palace of Francisco de Montejo, the founder of Merida—and the destroyer of T’ho. In case anyone misses the point, the facade of the palace depicts the Spanish conquerors standing on defeated Maya warriors.
The significance of the setting was apparently not lost on Isa, either.
“If I had to describe the character of this city, in some ways I would describe it as schizophrenic,” she mused.
“To a certain extent Merida, and indeed the whole Yucatan peninsula, is cut off from the rest of Mexico geographically. This has allowed it to develop a distinctive character. Merida, for example, is a colonial city; just look at the buildings around this plaza.
“But the Maya roots are never very far below the surface and, quite frankly, are what give this place its very special feeling. It is quite a compelling mix. In a sense, Mexico’s culture is the only one in the Americas where the old world and the new truly meet and mix.
“Sometimes there is an easy balance between the two, sometimes not.
“Sort of like my family.” She smiled.
I told her of my sense the day before that all was not entirely well with the Ortiz family, and about the argument I thought I might have heard below my window.
“I am reasonably sure it was a Mayan language I heard, probably Yucatecan. But perhaps I just dreamed it.”
She looked troubled for a moment. “I can’t tell you about the argument—I didn’t hear anything, and perhaps as you say, it really was a dream.
“As far as my family is concerned—perhaps my comparison between Merida and us is very apt. Alejandro has discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, his Maya heritage.
“It is a cause for some friction in the family. He accuses Mother of selling out to the Spanish. Presumably that means by marrying my father.” Again she smiled.
“Oh, I know we all go through stages as we are growing up when we are not exactly enamored of our parents, of course, but Alejandro seems to have gotten involved with a group of young people at the university we’re not crazy about. He makes a lot of speeches, when he deigns to speak to us at all, that is, about fighting injustice, and there is a tone to it that worries parents a great deal.
“I’m sure his talk of rebellion is just youthful posturing, a phase all university students go through. But there is no question the Indigenas suffered greatly because of the conquest, and that disaffection is often very close to the surface. You may recall the riots in Chiapas not that long ago.”
Indeed I did. I had been there, in fact, on a buying trip. The riots had occurred over the New Year, and had lasted several days.
“If I remember correctly,” I said. “The riots were the work of a group called the Zapatista National Liberation Army, planned to coincide with the day the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, came into effect.”
“That’s right. It is said that the Zapatistas trained for ten years in the jungle before coming out that New Year’s,” Isa said. �
�There were rumors, of course. We all heard them. You couldn’t plan something like this for ten years in complete secrecy. But when it happened, it seemed to take the government completely by surprise. There had been nothing seen like this in Mexico since the Revolution.
“It was all over pretty quickly, but since then there have been flare-ups. Sometimes the Zapatistas and the government are talking, sometimes they aren’t. But the possibility of violence always seems to be there.
“Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that our family problems mirror in some way the tensions that exist in our society. Alejandro talks a lot about injustice and hints at revolution.
“Mother is distraught of course,” she continued. “Alejandro is her baby, the son born late in life. I was well into my teens when he was born, and I confess that while I thought he was an adorable baby, there was too much of a gap in our ages for me to find him very interesting. I guess I just find him irritating now, despite the fact I agree with him about many things.
“For example, Alejandro despises me because, like many of the children of the well-to-do in Merida, I went to university in the United States. He has chosen to go to university here in Merida, and I admire him for it, actually, although he is so tiresome on the subject that I have never told him.”
“I’m sure he’ll grow out of it,” I said. “After all, when I was at university, I was the most conservative person on the campus, and that was only because my mother seemed embarrassingly flaky to me at the time. Now I realize she was just ahead of her time—she never let any of the rules about what women could, and could not, do influence her in any way.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Isa replied, and with that we parted company, she to visit her small factory where her designs were manufactured, I to prowl the museum—the Museo Emilio Garcia, named for its founder, a wealthy Merida philanthropist. The museo was housed in a former monastery a few short blocks from the Plaza Grande.
I had hoped, I think, to run into Dr. Castillo Rivas, who had an office there. Santiago Ortiz had told me that Don Hernan had not returned to his room the previous night, but as that was not an unusual occurrence, no one gave it much thought. Don Hernan was often hot on the trail of some treasure or other, and when he was, he tended to get a little distracted, more so as the years went by. I had always regarded this as a sign of his genius, the absentminded-professor type. His wife, if I remember correctly, had found it less endearing.
I sneaked past the “Prohibido Entrar” sign on the staff door on the top floor of the museo and checked at his little office. It was dark and locked up tight.
I decided to try to solve the puzzle he had given me—the one about writing rabbits. I thought it a little coy of him, but Don Hernan and I had spent many a wonderful day together searching for goods for my shop, and I was determined to get into the spirit of the thing.
Because it had been Dr. Castillo who had first introduced me to the Tzolkin, the Maya count of days, I thought of that first. It was he who had explained to me that there are twenty name days, and thirteen numbers associated with them. Each day is linked to a number, 1 Imix, 2 Ik, 3 Akbal, and so on. Because there are more names than numbers, the fourteenth name is given the number one again. With thirteen numbers and twenty names, it is 260 days before the original day and number, 1 Imix in my example, comes round again.
Several visits earlier, sitting over a cup of very strong Mexican coffee in the darkened dining room at the Casa de las Buganvillas late one evening, Don Hernan had begun to explain all of this to me.
“To understand the Maya, you must understand their concept of time,” he had told me.
“Like us, the Maya devised ways of recording the passage of time. Like us they gave names to days, but unlike us they attributed characteristics to those days.
“While most of us have forgotten these vestigial origins of our days—your Thursday was the Norse Thor’s Day, Wednesday, Woden’s Day, for example— many of the Maya have not.
“For the Maya, everything is influenced by the characteristics of the day, the number of the day, the character of the Haab or what we would call the month sign, and the character of the quadrant sign, four gods each characterized by a color, red for the east, black for the west, white for the north, and yellow for the south. Each of these gods, called Kawils, rules a quadrant of eight hundred and nineteen days.”
“I suppose this is not dissimilar to our applying human characteristics to astrological signs and judging events by the cycles of the planets. Even American presidents have been known to do this,” I said. “And the number-day-name correlation is not unlike our Friday the thirteenth.”
“Yes, but as you will learn, theirs is a much more complex system, moving back and forward over enormous periods of time. While we measure time in years, decades, centuries, and so on, the Maya measure time in katuns, or twenty-year cycles, and baktuns, twenty times twenty, or four-hundred-year cycles.
“And while our largest unit of time is a millennium really, the Maya have much longer ones. They have, for example, a calabtun, a one-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-year unit. And they measure time from the beginning of what they consider to be the current cosmos, the fourth one to exist.
“There are dates and numbers carved on Maya temples that would predate the big bang many times over, and they predict dates millennia into the future. I think what I am trying to say is that for the Maya, the past is still with us, still alive.”
Remembering that conversation as I walked through the museo, I tried to find a link with the riddle. The current day was Ik, the day of wind, breath, and life. Nothing to do with a rabbit. I mentally ran through the twenty day names. The day Lamat, six days hence, had some association with a rabbit and the moon or the planet Venus, but if there were a connection, I didn’t know what it might be.
Perhaps, I thought, it is a play on words, perhaps a translation to Spanish. But nothing came to mind.
Thinking that the answer might lie somewhere in the museum, I spent a good part of the afternoon wandering through the exhibits looking in vain for a Maya rabbit.
I was bent over an exhibit of artifacts taken from a sacred cenote when I heard the voice behind me.
“I say, didn’t my eyes meet yours across a crowded room?” the very British voice asked.
I turned. It was the fellow from the dining room the evening before, looking every bit as good, I might add. Behind him lurked his dark friend.
“Ms. McClintoch, I believe,” he said, extending his hand.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I replied.
“Sorry. Jonathan Hamelin and my associate, Lucas May. I managed to convince Norberto that I thought I knew you from school or something, and was able to pry your name out of him.
“Since we obviously frequent the same places, might we presume to invite you for a drink? A coffee, a tequila? If you don’t mind a bit of a walk, I know a wonderful bar on the Paseo de Montejo.”
He had such an air of assurance that I soon found myself being escorted from the building and propelled along several blocks toward the paseo, a tree-lined avenue, very European in character, that Meridanos somewhat optimistically refer to as their Champs-Elysees. There was a time, at the turn of the century when fortunes were being made by the Spanish in the henequen trade, when Merida was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The paseo was its centerpiece, the place where the wealthy lived in houses, palaces really, of blue, pink, buff, and peach, with wrought-iron gates and elaborately carved moldings modeled more on the style of Paris than the Americas, more Belle Epoque than colonial.
The houses are still there, but by and large the families have moved on, the upkeep too much, perhaps, for diluted family fortunes. The houses stand, some lovingly restored and home to banks and other corporations that can afford them, others sinking, either gracefully or drearily, into decay.
We entered one of these old homes, painstakingly restored to its former glory, now the lobby and entrance-way of the Hotel Montserrat
. Behind and adjoining it is a stucco-and-glass tower where guest rooms are located, designed to complement the original building. We headed for the bar, a large room at the front of the original house. Jonathan Hamelin was obviously well known there, and a table with a very nice view of the paseo materialized quickly.
Jonathan looked very comfortable in this setting. Even in more casual clothes, he was very nattily attired. His associate, however, was dressed very much the same as the night before, except that now he wore a black jacket. Once again, he looked rather out of place.
The bar was called Ek Balam, the Black Jaguar. Maya motifs featured prominently in the decor. At one end were two discreetly lit glass cases in which were displayed what appeared to be, at this distance at least, authentic pre-Columbian pieces.
But here any local references ended. Rather too large to be a conventionally cozy bar, the decor tended to cool peaches and aquas rather than the brilliant colors of the tropics. No mariachi or flamenco nouveau assaulted the delicate ears of the patrons. Instead, a string quartet at one end of the large room displayed what I think is called salon music: Ravel, Haydn, Copland, Strauss.