The Halach Uinic held up both his hands. ‘We are not going to force you, Mr Sabir. Please stay outside the touj if you so wish. It will be a tragedy for us, however, as I believe you have a further gift to pass on to us. A secret gift which Akbal Coatl says in his writings that you received via the prophet Nostradamus.’
Sabir’s eyes opened wide. ‘I don’t fucking believe this.’ He took a step backwards. ‘Calque. Did you tell them about Nostradamus?’
Calque shook his head. He looked as mystified as Sabir. ‘I never mentioned Nostradamus to them. Nor your claustrophobia, come to that. What would have been the point? And I don’t know about any secret gifts, either. And particularly not in your case, Sabir.’
Sabir turned back to the Halach Uinic. ‘Are you seriously trying to tell me that Akbal whatever-his-name-is mentioned me in his writings? And linked me to Nostradamus? You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘Not by name, no. Of course he did not. Our brother wasn’t a prophet – he was a scribe. He merely said that a messenger, guided by the writings that he and Nostradamus had devised between them, would come, following the eruption of the great volcano of Orizaba, to restore the thirteenth crystal skull to its rightful owners. Just as he wrote that a guardian – an elected ak k’u hun – an elected keeper of the sacred books – would return the sacred codex to us at the appropriate time. Here is the guardian.’ He pointed to the mestizo. ‘And here are you. You are both clearly members of Los Aluxes. You remember what Akbal Coatl said about them? That the Aluxes are enlightened beings who have been left behind by the gods to guard the magnetic spiritual places and objects of the earth, and that it is only via the intercession of these spiritual guardians that the destiny of the world may be secured? Do you remember this?’ The Halach Uinic couldn’t disguise his satisfaction at the outcome of proceedings. He pointed first to Sabir, and then the mestizo. ‘You and he.’
‘You don’t even know this guy’s name, for Christ’s sake. And if you do know it, you never bother to use it.’ Sabir waved at the mestizo, forgetting, for a moment, that he had never got around to finding out the man’s name either. ‘And yet here you are, busy trying to convince me that his coming was in some sense preordained. What is it with you people? It doesn’t make any sense.’
The Halach Uinic looked first at the Chilan, and then at Ixtab, as though in search of some much needed moral support. He seemed unaware that not everybody was privy to the minutiae of Maya religious custom. ‘But we don’t need to know his name, you see. For us he will always be the “guardian”. Just as a shaman loses his name and inherits a different one when he is dreamed of by a third party – for it is only then that he can begin to heal. When the “guardian” brought us the book, we recognized immediately who he was. Both Ixtab and I had dreamed of his arrival on the night following the eruption of the Pico de Orizaba. It had long been written that a revelation would be made to us in Kabáh. But I was scared to believe in the reality of my dream.’ He held his hands up, palms to the fore, in a gesture acknowledging his guilt. ‘Ixtab persuaded me of the dream’s truth, however, when she recounted all its details back to me without my having told her anything about it. It was then that I decided to station a man both day and night at Kabáh. And it was for this reason alone that we came so swiftly when you and your companion discovered the crystal skull. To find the “guardian” there as well reinforced for us the truth of the dream. This was why we were able to hold the ceremony so quickly. We had long prepared for it, you see.’
‘I am the “guardian”?’ The mestizo stepped forwards in response to Ixtab’s simultaneous translation of the Halach Uinic’s words. ‘This is what you call me?’
The Halach Uinic turned towards him. ‘You are the “guardian”, yes. You will be forever known amongst our people also as the “bringer of the book”. Whatever you need, you will have from us. A collection has already been made for you. Each has given according to his capacity. Tepeu has told us that you have no wife. That your mother is lonely in her hut. This is not acceptable to us. If you had sold the book, as was your right, you would have had untold sums of money in your possession from the gringos. But you chose not to do so. We cannot replace or match this money, as would have been just. But we can offer you enough to enable you to build another hut next to your mother’s – for you to afford a wife – for her to provide grandchildren to comfort your mother’s old age. This we can do for you. This you must accept.’
‘I cannot accept.’
‘You must accept. Or we must return the book.’
The mestizo stared at the Halach Uinic. Then he turned to Ixtab. Then he turned to the Chilan who had read out the words from the book. All were waiting for his response. All were urging him with their eyes not to let the Halach Uinic down. Not to reject his offer.
The mestizo nodded. ‘I accept. My mother will be happy with me. She has despaired in the past of my bachelorhood. There is a young widow. Her name is Lorena. She lives in Miatlisco, which is the next village to ours. If I were to build her a house, she would come to live with me and be my wife. This she has told me. I have explained to her that I cannot do this. I have told her to search for another man. A man more suited to her needs.’
‘Now you can do it.’
‘Yes. Yes. Now I can do it. Now I can build her a house.’
87
Athame de Bale watched the group outside the sweathouse. When she cupped her hands behind her ears, she could make out about one word in every three of what they were saying. She clearly heard the words ‘Nostradamus’, prefaced by ‘secret’, and then ‘gift’ – all hidden amongst a pile of other dross.
She could feel her stomach churning in triumph. What was said to the mestizo didn’t interest her. She was only interested in Sabir. Would he have the balls to enter the sweathouse or would he not? Dare she make that assumption? Either way, she would only have the briefest window of opportunity to do what she needed to do.
For the time being the group seemed totally preoccupied with soft-flannelling the mestizo and persuading Sabir that he would really – no really, despite his hysterical protestations to the contrary – benefit from the sweat-lodge experience.
Athame offered up a silent prayer. If only the Maya woman with the spondylus necklace would move to another spot, she would have a free run of it. Lamia and the ex-policeman both had their backs to her, as did the Halach Uinic and the priest who had done the reading. Sabir was too wound up inside his own problems to notice anybody else, and the mestizo was pissing himself with joy at the thought of getting married, and wasn’t looking anywhere but at the big chief.
As if to order, Sabir abruptly twisted on his heel and began to stalk off back towards the pyramid. The Maya woman with the necklace made a ‘cool it’ sign to the Halach Uinic and hurried after him. For a moment, everyone was busy watching Sabir’s antics and not the sweat lodge.
Athame sprinted across the open patch of land between her hiding place and the sweathouse. Without daring to look behind her, she ducked down and slipped through the doorway. The narrow opening was no problem for one of her diminutive size, and she was soon comfortably out of sight of the assembly.
The lodge was in total darkness. Athame slipped a torch out of the side pocket of her backpack and cracked it on, shielding most of the glow with her free hand. She looked wildly around for a hiding place, still unsure whether anyone had caught a hint of movement out of the corner of their eye. A ring of small boulders had been constructed in the centre of the sweathouse in preparation for the coming of the heated stones. It was surrounded by a dozen or so fabric-covered cushions. The sweathouse was built like an igloo, with an internal circumference of maybe thirty feet, and a gap of perhaps seven feet between the circle of cushions and the retaining wall.
Snatching two of the cushions from out of the circle, she wriggled into the farthest corner of the lodge and adjusted the cushions so that they covered the entirety of her four-foot ten-inch frame. She could feel the hard edges of the
Walther P4 digging into her ribs through her backpack. Perhaps it was a message?
She reached behind herself and freed the Walther. At eight and a half inches in length, it was a very big gun for a very small woman. A P5 Compact would have been eminently more suitable. But Athame was happy with what she had, even though her tiny six-fingered hands could scarcely span the butt. Two-handed, she could handle it perfectly well.
She cocked the pistol and unhitched the safety. Then she switched off her torch, cradled the weapon against her chest, and settled down to wait.
88
Ixtab caught up with Sabir just as he was beginning to wind down from his snit. He was leaning against a tree, sucking in great lungfuls of night air, and staring at the distant pyramids as if he suspected that they might have something of great wisdom to impart to him.
Thirty or so volunteers were handing buckets up to each other on the main, father pyramid. First they hosed down the steps. Then they swept them clear of all their ceremonial detritus, in preparation, or so Sabir supposed, for next morning’s grand reopening to the tourist trade.
Ixtab came to a halt behind him. Sabir knew that she was there, but he refused to acknowledge her.
‘We have been waiting many years for your arrival. You know that.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Still. You know it to be true.’
Sabir inflated his cheeks and then blew out through them, like a child. ‘If you’ve come here to try and persuade me to go inside that fucking cabin of yours, you’re wasting your time.’
‘Drink this anyway. I made it for you. It will calm you down.’
‘You’ve laced it with one of the Halach Uinic’s concoctions, I suppose?’
Ixtab hardly registered the insult. ‘No. I would never do that. Everything in it is natural. There are no hallucinogens. The whole point of the Halach Uinic’s preparations is that people must take them voluntarily, in the correct frame of mind, and towards a spiritual end. They are not toys for gringos to play with. And you are in no frame of mind to take anything at the present time.’
Sabir accepted the gourd with a grudging inclination of the head. He hesitated a little, and then drank deeply from it, surprising himself with the sudden extent of his thirst. He felt churlish, and ungrateful, and angry, and small, all at the same time. ‘Thank you. I meant no offence, you understand that?’
She nodded. ‘We should have prepared you. Explained the purpose of the ceremony beforehand. But the Halach Uinic has the second sight. He is very advanced in these things. It was his instinct that we should continue right away. He senses something evil approaching. According to him, there is a deadline we must fulfil, or all will be lost. I have never known him to be wrong in these things.’
‘And you? Are you ever wrong?’
Ixtab touched her heart. ‘I was wrong about you. I thought you would welcome the ceremony. I didn’t see the fear in you. The justified fear. That is unforgivable.’
Sabir nodded, more moved than he cared to admit by her obvious concern. ‘I don’t want to be a shaman. I don’t know any secrets. I’ve just met the woman of my life. All I want to do now is to take her back home with me and see if I can shuck off twenty years of thinking I’m an introvert – of thinking I’m some sort of a recluse – of thinking I don’t amount to anything.’
Ixtab said nothing. She just looked at him.
Sabir found her silence awkward, just as he was meant to. He hastened to fill it. ‘This has all become a massive red herring, you understand? If I’m honest, I came into it strictly for the cash. I wanted to be the guy that published Nostradamus’s lost prophecies. I wanted all the celebrity crap that would have come with it. If things had panned out the way they were meant to, I’d have appeared in a raft of documentaries. Done a few signings. Maybe even sold a movie option. Made a wad of cash, in other words. Instead, it got ugly. My Gypsy friends and I were unlucky enough to become entangled with Lamia’s crazy mother and her family of Devil-fearing freaks – without realizing it, I fell personally foul of the super freak, Achor Bale. It got so I was swimming way out of my depth. Last May I was nearly killed. This past week we’ve been running just ahead of the whirlwind again, and I’m tired of it. I just want to go home.’ He could feel Ixtab’s chocah drink calming him. Paradoxically, though, it was also making him more garrulous than he had intended to be.
‘And Lamia? How is she taking this? She seems uncomfortable.’
Sabir shrugged. ‘She doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s like the rest of us. We’re taking each day as it comes.’
‘Are you sure?’
Sabir nodded his head in slow motion. He felt drowsy and relaxed. A sudden wave of self-confidence surged through him, surprising him with its vehemence. ‘Sure I’m sure. I know her. She’s hurting. So she’s withdrawn inside herself. She let me take her virginity today – after holding off for twenty-seven years – and that will have destabilized her too. The whole thing’s scarcely surprising.’ He stopped dead, stunned at his capacity for indiscretion. Stunned at what his mouth was saying. ‘I don’t know why I just told you that.’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘I didn’t mean to when I started out.’ He looked suspiciously down at the empty gourd, and then handed it back to Ixtab.
She shook her head in reaffirmation that the drink didn’t contain anything untoward.
Now that he’d let the cat out of the bag in such a spectacularly tactless manner, Sabir reckoned that he might as well call the beast by its true name. ‘All her life Lamia’s never let a man come near her because of her feelings about her face. You realize that, don’t you? But she let me. And then all of a sudden I start to go crazy. No wonder she’s feeling a little vulnerable.’
‘Don’t you think you owe it to her to put all this to bed?’
Sabir laughed at Ixtab’s inadvertent use of the American idiom. ‘Is that some kind of a Freudian slip? Or are you getting around to trying to persuade me to go inside your damned touj again?’
Ixtab ignored his false levity. ‘You’re carrying something inside you, Adam. A secret. Something you don’t know what to do with.’ Ixtab fixed him with her gaze. ‘This is a burden to you. This is why you do not sleep. Not the other thing. Not the claustrophobia. Not the memories.’
‘How do you know I don’t sleep?’
Ixtab sighed. ‘Must I explain?’
Sabir shook his head. ‘No. I suppose not. I sort of know.’
‘Only sort of?’
‘I know.’
‘Then you have mastered the first step. Now you need to pass on to the second step.’
‘Oh? And what’s that?’
‘To find out what you don’t know.’
Sabir burst out laughing. ‘Oh that’s cute. That’s very cute. That’s right on the button, that is.’
‘Cute? What is cute?’
Sabir sighed. ‘Forget it.’ He gave a wry smile. He was slowly beginning to feel like a man again – the sort of man a woman like Lamia might conceivably have fallen in love with. He looked at Ixtab. He trusted her – there was no doubt about that. It was a deep instinct with him. This was a woman who would always choose the right path. Always guide you in the direction you needed to go. ‘I don’t know what was in that damned concoction of yours, but if you ever wanted to sell it on the open market, you’d make a fortune. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I’m about ready to take a shot at your sweat-bath. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m not sure. That’s why I reserve the right to make a second break for it anytime before I physically step inside the lodge. But this time around, you don’t follow me? Is that a deal?’
Ixtab returned his smile. ‘This time, if you run, I will not follow you. But you will not run, Adam. And later, you will sleep.’
89
The Halach Uinic shook his head. ‘Datura? No. This is impossible. I may take it – or you, Ixtab – because we
understand the extent of its toxicity, and know, too, how it has been grown, and the weather conditions that accompanied its growth. But for a gringo it is dangerous. The side effects can be extremely unpleasant and long-lasting.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘None of the others will do. We three must take it together. We need to communicate on the other side. We need to summon up the Vision Serpent.’
Sabir looked bewildered. The effects of the chocah were slowly wearing off.
The Halach Uinic turned to Calque and Lamia. ‘Here. Chew this peyote. Chew it for a long time. If you swallow it too quickly you will be very sick. Do not worry about the bitter taste – this is normal.’
‘Why should we take this?’
‘Because it facilitates transcendence. It will allow us to unify. To go on a collective journey. Ixtab has looked into your hearts. She feels that this particular substance is suitable for you both. Later on in the ceremony, you shall have another piece. The Chilan will drink from the cane toad mixture – this he has always done, so he is used to its effect. The guardian, because he is only part Indian, will drink the pounded seeds of quiebracajete, from the morning glory flower, which we shall mix with balché. He has told us he is accustomed to drinking pulque on market days in Veracruz – this will have no bad consequences for him, therefore.’
‘Why are you people taking something different from us?’
The Halach Uinic shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you because I do not know.’ He gestured towards Ixtab. ‘Ixtab is the midwife of our journey. We are in good hands. She has guided many people through the underworld. If any one requests it, she will give them syrup of ipecac, from the ipecacuanha plant, and they will vomit out anything that is left inside their stomach.’
The Mayan Codex Page 36