The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  ‘Something sweet. A 7UP, maybe.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want a beer?’

  Lamia cocked her head to one side and watched him. ‘A beer. That would be nice.’

  ‘Sol? Corona? Dos Equis? Negra Modelo? Pacifico?’

  ‘You choose, Adam.’

  He hesitated, then headed for the door. As he passed her he stopped. He seemed about to say something, but then he just reached out and touched her arm. He retrieved his wallet from his discarded jacket. ‘I’ll be back soon, okay?’

  ‘I’m going to take a shower. Without the Pats.’

  He nodded absent-mindedly, not even picking up her attempt at a joke. ‘Sure you want beer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll get some potato chips, too. And maybe some peanuts.’

  She turned to him. ‘Adam. It’s all right. I came to this room of my own volition. I’m not regretting it. I’m not going to run away if you leave me alone for two minutes.’

  Sabir took a deep breath. He reached for the door. Then he turned back and strode across the floor to where she was standing.

  Lamia leaned forwards and rested her head against his collar bone.

  Sabir encircled her with his arms and squeezed her against him. ‘I love you. I want to tell you this now. Before anything else happens.’ He swallowed, but his throat didn’t seem to be functioning to quite its usual standard. ‘I’ve never said this to a woman before. I’ve never felt remotely like this.’ He buried his face in the valley between her neck and shoulder, breathing her in.

  ‘I love you too. I wanted to tell you in the car, early this morning, but I thought you might not like me that way. That you might just be drawn to me in the normal way, because we had been travelling together. You still might be.’ She looked up at him, a fleeting uncertainty on her face. ‘I would understand that. You can make love to me, if you want, and then decide how you feel. You can tell me afterwards.’

  ‘I’m telling you now.’

  ‘Adam. You don’t have to go down for the beers, you know. Or the potato chips. Or the peanuts.’

  ‘I know. I’m not going. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’ He led her slowly to the bed. They stood facing each other. Everything was all right again with the world. Sabir felt like a man on a plane watching a shed-load of passengers streaming expulsively out through the main exit after an inordinately long and claustrophobic delay on the tarmac. ‘I liked it when you put on that dress yesterday. And the make-up. And the high heels.’

  ‘Why? What’s so different about a dress, and make-up, and high heels?’ She was teasing him.

  He laughed. ‘You know very well why. Because they’re feminine. Because they draw attention to parts of your body that particularly please me.’

  ‘Parts of my body? Like what?’

  Sabir hesitated, gauging her mood. Then he turned her around, so that her back was to him. He liked the way she was letting him toy with her.

  He drew in a quick breath, like a surgeon faced with a particularly delicate stitching job. ‘The nape of your neck, for instance.’ He cupped her neck, enjoying the heft of her hair on the back of his hands. ‘And your shoulders. And your upper arms.’ He touched each element in turn.

  ‘What other parts of my body please you?’ She had a smile in her voice.

  ‘Hmm. Let me think. Your elbows. Your forearms.’ He touched each named part, taking pleasure in the feel of her weight against him – keenly aware, too, of the bed just below them, but in no hurry to urge her there.

  ‘What else? What else makes a woman different from a man?’

  Sabir gave it a moment or two’s thought. ‘A man has no hips to speak of.’ He ran his hands down Lamia’s flanks. ‘But you do. I like how your hips flare out from the narrowness of your waist. Like this.’ He touched the indentation on each side. ‘Like a violin. I like how a dress accentuates that.’ He reached around her and let his fingers travel lightly down her upper thighs, then up again in a more forceful sweep from the back of her knee to her buttocks. ‘This is an area I particularly value.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Lamia’s breath caught as she uttered the words.

  He went down on one knee behind her. ‘And then your calves.’ He allowed his fingers to trace the outline of her leg. ‘And those shoes you wore. With the high heels. I like the way they show off your ankles.’

  ‘My ankles?’

  ‘Yes. These.’ He reached down and encircled each one in turn with his hands. ‘But there’s more.’

  ‘More?’

  He turned her around so that her belly was parallel to his face. ‘This is your belly. When you wear a skirt, it shows the little bump you have down there – the woman’s bump, just above your pudenda. I like that. It’s suggestive.’

  ‘Bump? Pudenda? Adam, really. You sound like a biology professor.’ She hesitated, stopping well short of what she had meant to say – desperate not to change his mood. ‘Suggestive of what?’

  ‘Of other things.’ He smiled, and rested his head against her stomach. He could feel the warmth of her against his cheek. Catch the scent of her – a mixture of clean clothes, perfume, and her own special scent, which he had first recognized in the brief instant he had carried her in his arms while they were escaping from their motel in Carlisle.

  Lamia’s fingers wandered idly through his hair. ‘You like women, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you are wary of them?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  Sabir closed his eyes. He didn’t want to talk any more. Didn’t want to spoil the moment. But something forced him on. Some recognition that if he didn’t explain exactly how he felt, he would be cheating Lamia of something she had earned by right – his formal acknowledgment of a grace she had accorded him that no other woman had ever come close to providing. ‘Because of my mother. I watched her destroy herself, and take my father down with her. It hurt me every second of my life until she killed herself. Then it hurt more after that.’

  ‘Does it still hurt?’

  ‘Not when I’m holding you.’

  ‘Like now?’

  ‘Like now. I can’t think of anything but you.’

  Lamia crossed her arms below her upper thighs and drew her dress slowly over her hips – over the swell of her breasts – around her shoulders. Then she uncrossed her arms as the dress rode over her head, freeing itself from the temporary prison of her hair. She let the dress float gently down onto the bed beside her.

  Sabir stood up. They were still touching along the entire length of their bodies. He undid Lamia’s brassiere and let it fall onto her discarded dress.

  She sat down on the bed. Then she allowed herself to fall backwards, like a rag doll. She looked up at him expectantly, laughter in her eyes.

  He reached down and drew her panties over her hips – she had to wriggle a little to help him.

  Then she was lying naked in front of him. Not covering herself. Confident about her beauty. Wanting him to admire her.

  He consumed her with his gaze, and Lamia accepted it as nothing more than her due. Without taking his eyes off her, Sabir discarded his own clothes. Lamia’s eyes travelled quickly over his body as he undressed himself, and then up again to his face.

  Sabir slid onto the bed alongside her.

  They lay, facing each other, feeling the beat of the fan against their skin.

  It was a long time indeed before Sabir bent forward to kiss her.

  58

  Oni de Bale slapped at the mosquito which was hovering just above his right eye. He flopped backwards against the tree and lathered some more ‘Scoot’ on himself. He wondered if the others were being eaten alive too?

  They each had separate cars again now – Abi had taken advantage of Sabir and Lamia’s sex interlude that morning to send them all into Mérida, to the nearest Avis drop-off point.

  Now that was a strange thing. Never would he have dreamed of Lamia and Sabir getting it on together. Especially
with Madame, his mother’s, virginity hangup. What was that junk from the Bible she always used to quote at them in an effort to get them – well, particularly Aldinach, let’s be honest – to behave themselves?

  These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth … And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

  Of course in Aldinach’s case the target was both men and women – whichever was the opposite of whatever sex he had chosen to be that day. Convenient, that, when you came to think of it. It doubled the possible catchment area. Mind you, Aldinach wasn’t gay. Oni had to give the little nymphomaniac her due. She only worked on polar opposites. Never own sex. It was a sort of morality, when you came to think about it.

  Anyway, much good Madame, his mother’s, virginity imprecations had done them. Rocha had fallen for her line, though, and look what had happened to him. But he was the only one, apart from Lamia – the rest of them rutted like rabbits whenever they could. And now here was Lamia obviously deciding that enough was enough, aged twenty-seven, and reeling old Sabir into her bed. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. With a face like hers you needed all the luck you could get in the jiggy jiggy stakes.

  Oni knew all about it. The size he was, most females ran a mile, scared that he would squash them. All right, he wasn’t a disgusting fat pig like Asson, whom he had once seen consuming four pitchers of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream at a single sitting, but he was upwards of seven feet tall, and most women reached just about as far as his navel. As a result, Oni had taken to hiring professionals, who weren’t put off by the – what did Aldinach call it? – outsize aspects of his persona.

  Now Abi had ordered them all into the forest to watch the site at Kabáh, and here was Oni, with his extra-large body surface – wasn’t it the Cathars who said that human skin connected us to the Devil? – serving as dish of the day to a particularly virulent variety of mosquito. Fuck it. Fuck it all to hell.

  He reattached his night-vision goggles and focused them on Sabir’s back. The guy was busy counting the masks on the facade of the temple. Each time he came to one he liked, he fetched a sheet of paper out of his backpack and taped it over the mask. He’d covered five sections in this way already – only the single remaining upper section still to go. The paper shone up in the moonlight very well indeed – Oni had to allow the bastard that much.

  Oni now reckoned, by dint of careful counting, that Sabir was choosing the twentieth mask in each separate mask section. Must be some significance to that, wouldn’t you say? He punched his cell phone and passed on the information to Abi.

  Sabir had snuck in to the Kabáh site not half an hour before, just as Abi had said he would, wearing a rucksack and carrying two tyre irons. The policeman had snuck in beside him. Lamia wasn’t with them. Probably recovering from her orgy, out in the car. Oni grinned. Bet she was sore. She’d probably be walking splay-legged for days. Serve the bitch right for leaving it so long to get started.

  That footman who got himself squished – Philippe, yes, that had been his name – he’d been dogging her for ages. But Lamia had brushed him off like a cobweb. And now he was dead, propping up the walls of a girls’ school in Cavalaire-sur-Mer. Did people still have sex in hell? Oni shrugged. Only one way to find out. On second thoughts, though, maybe he’d leave that little task to Philippe.

  Oni swung around and focused his night goggles back on the Indian. Yes, the man was still hiding behind the tree, watching Sabir’s every move. Next, Abi swung his goggles over to the courtyard on the left of the Temple of the Masks. Yup. The night watchman was still lurking in a doorway there. The guy was whispering into his cell phone like he was making love to it.

  It seemed pretty much impossible that Sabir and the policeman weren’t aware that they were being watched by at least three separate parties, but then Oni had to accept that they didn’t have the advantages he had – his night-vision goggles turned the whole of the scene in front of him into a sort of pallid, moonlit playground, where everything took on the surreal shape of one of Salvador Dali’s dream landscapes.

  Oni could hardly wait to find out what would happen when whoever the night watchman was calling – cops? museum archivists? eco-warriors? – would come piling in through the front gates like the 7th Cavalry in a John Ford movie. The expression on Sabir’s face would be worth the price of entry alone.

  Oni whispered once again into his own cell phone, bringing Abi up to date, and ending up with, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Stay where you are. Watch. And wait. Don’t – I repeat don’t – interfere.’

  Oni grunted, and slapped at another damned mosquito. Easier said than done. He squirted out another palm full of ‘Scoot’ and plastered it all over his face. ‘Fucking buzzers!’

  59

  You watched the two gringos with a sinking sensation in your heart. What were they doing? Why were they here in the middle of the night? The younger gringo was counting the masks in each section, and then taping sheets of paper over the ones he chose. A strange procedure, surely? And no doubt illegal. Otherwise why would they come here at dead of night rather than during the daytime, when their activities would have been open to the public gaze?

  You recognized them both from earlier on in the day. Only now the woman that had been with them, the one with the blood-soaked face, the one the guide had thought had the mal de ojo – yes, you had noticed him making the phallic gesture with his hands to ensure that the mal de ojo did not turn into the more dangerous ojo pasado – this woman had gone away. Maybe, being a woman, she did not approve of what these men were doing?

  Earlier that evening, Tepeu had tried to persuade you to travel home with him on his triciclo. Tepeu was an estimable man. A man to honour. You had told him that you needed to stay here, near to the temple, and he had not questioned your motives, or tried to dissuade you. Instead he had arranged for a blanket for you, and also that you would be brought some iguana stew from the wife of the gatekeeper.

  This woman and the gatekeeper lived in a hut about half a kilometre from the site. At eight o’clock Tepeu had cycled over and he and you had eaten the stew together, and shared a litre bottle of beer. You had told Tepeu that you could not repay him, but he had brushed your protestations aside like a man who flaps his hand at a hornet.

  Now the gringos were here, and you did not know what to do. Did they intend to steal, as all gringos did? And why would they steal the masks? What could they hope to do with them? Sell them? Impossible, surely. The authorities would discover them, and then they would face prison.

  As you watched, the younger gringo retrieved an implement from his rucksack and started to lever at the first of the stones. The older man took a similar implement and began to work at the stone from the other side.

  You stood up behind your tree to get a better view of what they were doing. It was nearly full moon, and the two men were bathed in the reflected light off the white face of the temple.

  What should you do? Speak to them? Run off and fetch Tepeu? Or the gatekeeper? Yes, maybe that would be the correct thing to do in the circumstances. The man lived only half a kilometre away, and you knew where his hut was situated, thanks to Tepeu’s description.

  For some reason, however, you did nothing, and simply watched the gringos as they levered and struggled with the masks.

  60

  ‘Do you think we’re crazy doing this? I mean, we’re standing here in a foreign country, at night, on a protected archaeological site, destroying one of their ancient monuments. If they catch us at it, they’ll toss us into prison and throw away the key.’ Sabir’s face had taken on a livid tinge in the moonlight – he did, indeed, look half mad.

  ‘We’re putting the stones back, Sabir. Nobody will know the difference.’

  Calque and Sabir were onto the third of the marked masks. Each time they succeeded in levering one of the stone masks partially
out of its sconce, one of them would hold the torch while the other felt around in the space behind the mask, pretending not to be worried about scorpions, biting spiders, and snakes.

  ‘Maybe Mexico doesn’t have scorpions?’

  ‘Of course they do. They’re strictly nocturnal creatures, though. And they only get angry when disturbed.’

  ‘Thank you, Calque. Thank you very much indeed.’ Sabir was feeling around behind one of the sconces with his hand. ‘They’re not deadly, are they?’

  ‘Just the Centruroides. The rest are okay.’

  Sabir snatched his hand out of the hole. ‘Nothing there.’ He shivered, as if someone had just walked over his grave. ‘Where the heck do you come up with this sort of information, Calque? Do you just gen up for the fun of it? Or is it a nervous tic?’

  ‘Yes to both.’

  ‘You’re doing the next hole, then.’ Sabir’s cell phone buzzed. He slapped at his pocket as if he thought there might be a scorpion lurking in there too. ‘Yeah?’ He listened. Then he nodded. ‘Okay. Thanks. We’re fine here. No luck yet. Three to go. Then we can all go back home and have a holiday. The Caribbean, preferably. I’ve already got the double-hammock and the rum punches lined up. And there are no scorpions over there to leap out at you.’ Sabir pocketed the cell phone and turned to Calque. ‘Lamia says the roads in each direction are clear. She’ll continue to run interference for us until we call her in.’

  ‘The Caribbean is full of scorpions. You really are an ignorant man, Sabir.’

  Sabir pointed at him. ‘Okay then, how’s this for ignorant? The Maya write from left to right, just like us. Except that everything’s in pairs with them. Glyph blocks, and suchlike. You told me that yourself, didn’t you?’