There they were: circles, snakes, deltas, spirals and flying birds.
“Look,” said Traci behind me. “I drawed a rabbit.”
She was sitting on the floor with her cap turned sideways on her head, dark curls hanging out, pointing at her sketch. I sat down beside her. Her idea of a rabbit consisted of a circle for a face, big ears, big eyes, and big teeth. Above the rabbit was a moon. A half moon.
Rabbit Half-Moon?
I tore off the top sheet. “Can you draw me another rabbit?”
Her hand went straight to the center of the pad. Again she drew a rabbit, and she was working on a half moon when the spark in my brain ignited. Isn’t that what an incipient writer would do—start in the middle and work around it?
Didn’t the old couple tell me to ask the child?
I sprang to my feet and looked up at the plate in the center. On that one plate were eighty-one composite images. With my finger, I found the center image. And there she was:
Glyph Girl.
Chapter 75
Breathless, I examined the images around her. The one directly above looked like a Mayan bak’tun, the first symbol in the Mayan long calendar, meaning 144,000 days. It was significant because the Mayans usually began their stories with the subject—Glyph Girl—then the number of days since the beginning of time, which to the Mayans was the zero date of August 13, 3114 B.C. Gregorian. Could it be? Was I on the verge of cracking the code?
I looked for the next logical sequence in the calendar, a k’atun (7200 days).
Yes, it was in codex form to the left of the bak’tun.
Next came a tun (360 days), which I found beneath the k’atun, in spiral form.
Then it was the Mayan month, a winal. The date continued with k’ins–or days.
I examined it again. Rabbit Half-Moon had started his subject in the middle and continued around it in perfect counter-clockwise fashion. No wonder I’d been baffled. No wonder there was no apparent sequence. The author had written in counter-clockwise spirals. I plastered Traci with kisses, told her to draw another rabbit, grabbed a pencil, and started writing:
Glyph image 1. This is the story of Glyph Girl, the most desirable woman on the island.
Images 2-8. Her story begins in the time of 8.18.15.3.17. The day is 8 kawak of month 17 sip. It is ruled by the seventh Lord of the Night. In the modern calendar, this would be…
I checked my figures again, using the 584285 correlation favored by most epigraphers.
…A.D. July 7, 411 Gregorian.
I could hardly believe it. I’d found the secret.
Image 9. Glyph Girl is fashioning a pot. She is a pot-maker.
But then it ended. Another dead end.
What should have been the tenth image/scene in sequence was unrelated to Glyph Girl and her pot. What kind of logic was that?
Then it hit me. Rabbit Half-Moon had constructed his images/scenes in clusters of nine, all arranged in counter-clockwise fashion. Start in the middle of the plate, move up to a new cluster on the same plate. Then left, down, right, and up again to the end.
On paper, it looked simple. But in the actual text, Rabbit Half-Moon didn’t separate his clusters with lines, boxes or arrows. Again, I picked up the story:
Images 10-11. Glyph Girl lives in a stone and wooden shanty overlooking the lake. Every day she sits alone at the wheel spinning the pot. She is bored.
Damn, I was good at this.
I stared at the pot she was making. It wasn’t just a pot; it was the same water jug I’d recovered at the glyph site. The jug that now adorned a table in my living room.
12-14. Glyph Girl runs outside and sees her neighbors staring out at the lake. The volcano is throwing up black plumes of smoke.
15. It’s not the volcano they are watching. It’s a boat. Four oarsmen rowing a figure out of the sunset (or sunrise), a regal looking man playing a flute.
16-18. The volcano is angry. The natives pray to their crocodilian images.
19-20. The sky darkens. The water in the lake becomes turbulent.
21. Glyph Girl is more interested in Flute Man than the volcano. She stares at him, longingly. The flowers in her hair and around her neck multiply.
22. A clockwise spiral. A spiral! One look at the stranger and she’s in love.
I let out a whoop, jumped up and down with Traci, and danced into the kitchen. There I poured another Merlot and pumped up the volume on the Golden Oldies station. Out of it came Love Shack by the B-52’s, a shaking, raucous song with all the finesse of a rockslide.
I called Sutter. “I did it!”
“Did what?”
“Get over here and I’ll show you.”
Chapter 76
My first committee meeting was held on a rainy Friday afternoon. All three dissertation members were present—Hosmer, Abby and Frieda—as well as Martha to take notes and Sutter as an observer. I thanked them, explained what I’d discovered, and passed around copies of a 42-page draft, my interpretation of the first glyph plate with its 81 images/scenes.
The room fell silent. I explained how Flute Man, an official of some sort, had come to the island to warn of an imminent volcanic eruption. Into the story came a holy woman—Moses, I called her—who said the villagers had brought doom on themselves by their wicked ways, which she illustrated by finger pointing at people engaged in idolatry, theft, murder and fornication.
Abby and Frieda started giggling like schoolgirls. Hosmer slapped his copy on the table.
“I’ve got some serious questions.”
“That’s why we’re having this meeting,” Sutter said, an edge to his voice.
Hosmer turned back to me. “Now, tell me something, Ms. McManus.”
“McMullen.”
“McMullen. How are we to know your interpretation is accurate? Couldn’t you just as well have put your own spin on it, made some romantic guesses?”
Abby rolled her eyes. Sutter reached for a bottle of Evian. I tried to keep contempt out of my voice. “Look, I didn’t concoct this story if that’s what you’re suggesting. When I was uncertain, I used interpolations and extrapolations. I tested it. The last eight pages are notes.”
“But you embellished?”
“No, Dr. Hosmer, I used flowery language, but I didn’t embellish.”
“Oh, no? What about this scene here, corresponding to the first instance of coitus?”
I picked up my copy. “Look, I could have just written, ‘He boinked Glyph Girl.’ But that’s obvious. It doesn’t consider ambience. So I wrote it this way: ‘In the shadow of a fiery volcano, on the beach beneath the palms, with Moses spying from the bushes, Flute Man eases Glyph Girl down on a log and enters her from behind, his engorged penis as large as a piece of firewood.’ What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong with that? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. It’s archaeo-schlock.”
I slammed my palm on the table. “Are you saying this is fiction?”
“Call it what you want. At Harvard they’d throw this stuff out the window.” Out the winder.
The saga continued in Plate 2, and before long I saw parallels with my own life. Lonely girl meets handsome stranger (Alan), but after a lunar cycle of lovemaking, the handsome stranger climbs back into his boat and leaves Glyph Girl behind—crying, sad, and pregnant.
In her grief, Glyph Girl prays to the snakes and alligators, and to the basalt idols, and to the spirits in the volcano. In time she turns to another man (Sutter?) though he’s a poor substitute for the first man. The islanders continue their carousing, sacrifice, and animalistic worship. Moses continues to rebuke them. Then one night beneath a half-moon, in the company of a rabbit, a child is born to Glyph Girl:
Rabbit Half-Moon.
And there, the analogy ended.
I wrote it into a 52-page draft, submitted it to my committee, and was working on the third plate in sequence when a surprising truth emerged:
Glyph Girl and Moses were the same.
It g
ot even more interesting when I noticed a star pendant around Glyph Girl’s neck.
Then came the most stunning development of all. Glyph Girl wasn’t a local. She’d washed up on shore from a distant land.
“She what?” Hosmer asked, slapping his copy on the table. “Are you saying your little trollop was Jewish? That she came from Europe and was doing a Moses impersonation?”
“No, Dr. Hosmer, that’s your interpretation. I’m just pointing out what’s in the story.”
I pulled out another sketch and laid it on the table. “Look at this; you’ve got a shipwreck on the shore, one survivor, a young girl in rags, pre-pubescent, wearing a star pendant.”
Abby Stern leaned forward. “How old do you think she is?”
“Nine or ten. She doesn’t speak the local language, so there’s no way for her to explain where she came from. But then you have her here, almost two years later. Now she’s taller than the locals. Speaks their language. She tells them what happened.”
Everyone leaned over the table: Sutter with a bottle of Evian, Frieda and Abby behind their thick glasses, Hosmer with a crucifix dangling from his neck.
I traced my finger in counter-clockwise fashion. “Here you’ve got soldiers marching on a large city, death and destruction, locals fleeing, Glyph Girl and family escaping in a two-mast boat. Then a long voyage, a storm, and here she is, a wretched little girl on the shore-line, alone.”
“Proves nothing,” Hosmer said. “That city could be anywhere.”
“It could, but look at the date. It’s shown in Mayan numerology—eight, eighteen, fifteen, three, seventeen. That would make it July 7, 411 Gregorian.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning it’s exactly eleven months after the sack of Rome by the Visigoths.”
“Oh, please,” Hosmer said. “Where are the horses? The coliseum? The Roman numerals?”
“So what?” Abby said. “She was a child, no more than eight or nine.”
“Makes no difference. She’d have remembered horses.” He sat down, shook his head, and spoke to the others as if I weren’t in the room. “First Ms. MacMillan makes the case for a divinely-inspired New World Moses. Now she’s got a new theory. Imagine how this one is going to go over in academic circles: ‘Roman slut discovers America.’”
I wanted to slap the little bastard. Instead, I gathered my things and stormed out of the room. Behind me, Hosmer said, “Next week she’ll have Moses leading her people out of Nicaragua.”
Chapter 77
In spite of Hosmer, I worked day, night, and weekends, banging away on the keyboard, and managed to finish all nine plates before the end of the semester. I wrote it up as a 236-page dissertation—with sketches, footnotes, bibliography and appendices—turned it in to the committee, and scheduled the defense for early June.
It was over, finished, everything except the defense, and even that seemed like a formality. Hosmer was only one vote. What could possibly go wrong? So on the evening of Sutter’s reception for graduate students, I was ready to celebrate. It was a beautiful Saturday evening in late May, and we were heading out the door in our party clothes when the phone rang.
“Shouldn’t we get that?” I said.
“Nah, Ricardo’s waiting outside with a taxi. If it’s important they’ll leave a message.”
As soon as we were in the taxi, I took out my phone, punched in the number for voice mail, and heard Sutter’s voice. “Call me. It’s important.”
I tried his cell but got a busy signal.
“Makes no sense,” I said to Carla. “Why would he call when he knows we’ll be there shortly?”
“Maybe he wants us to pick up champagne.”
“No, I know Sutter. Something’s wrong.”
His building—one of those classy places on Morningside Heights with awning and uniformed door attendant—was about ten minutes away. We passed muster with security, took the elevator to his complex on the eighth floor, and were swept inside with more arriving guests.
“Hey, it’s Moses,” someone sang out.
This set off applause, cheers, and pats on the back. A crowd gathered around. Someone shoved a goblet of wine into my hand. Names like Champollion, Moses, and Glyph Girl buzzed around like magic. I was royalty again. I was Cinderella, Princess of the Glyphs. And for the first time since the Spanish Embassy party, I was the center of attention for a reason other than scandal or bloodshed.
I took a long sip of Zinfandel, excused myself, and went looking for Sutter.
“Hey, Jen, love that outfit.”
“Congratulations, Jen. You did it.”
The place was noisy, with more elegance and flair than I remembered from previous parties. Everything in his place smacked of Old World refinement—the grandfather clock in the corner, the Italian paintings, the classics in his book shelves.
Martha, who’d come in a crimson dress instead of her usual blazer, introduced me to her male friend as Dr. McMullen-to-be. Students I barely knew introduced me to their significant others as if I were their best friend. Abby, who rarely showed affection, gave me a big hug. Even Hosmer, stuffing his face at the hors d’oeuvres table, managed a smile.
“Where’s Sutter?” I asked Abby, thinking it strange he wasn’t greeting guests at the door.
“Try the kitchen.”
He wasn’t in the kitchen. Wasn’t on the glassed patio either, or in the library, though I found a bearded professor thumbing through his books. “Look at these,” he said. “I’ve always contended you can take the measure of a man by what he reads, and, by God, this man has class.”
He wasn’t in the great room, wasn’t in the dining room, and wasn’t in either of the downstairs bathrooms, which left only the upstairs. I glanced up the long curving stairway with its polished railing and the paintings along the wall and the Greek amphora on the landing.
A graduate student touched my arm. “Hey, Jen, I’d like you to meet my wife.”
Introductions followed. There were questions about Moses, and within moments I was backed against a potted plant. In the background, Helen Reddy was singing I Am Woman.
Somewhere amid the din, I heard a heated argument: a woman’s voice, shrill and angry.
“New York,” someone said, laughing. “People yell at each other.”
“Come on, Jen. Is she Moses or isn’t she?”
“Look, it’s in my committee’s hands. I’m sworn to secrecy. It’ll be public in a few—”
“Bastard!” a woman yelled, this time loud enough for all to hear.
Conversation died. Every eye in the room looked up the stairs. Sutter came bounding down in his dark blazer, his face the color of Martha’s dress. He hurried over, forced a weak hello to the people around me, took my arm, and led me toward the door.
“Trouble,” he said. “You’d best go.”
“But why, what is going—”
“Dear God, no,” Sutter groaned. He let my arm go and looked back up the stairs.
At the top stood an elegantly dressed woman in a green gown. Late forties, I figured, with red hair, sparkling jewelry, a face that had seen its share of plastic surgeons, and plenty of cleavage. She began her way down the stairs, gloved hands on the railing.
Except for the cigarette, which cheapened her appearance, she was beautiful.
Also drunk. She stumbled, collected herself, and waved away a professor who dashed up to help her. Stopping about halfway down, she glanced around until her eyes settled on me.
Ashes dropped from her cigarette. She pointed a tipsy finger at me.
“So you must be Jennifer,” she said in an English accent.
My heart seemed to fall right out of me.
I eased backward. Better to face Gonzales than a drunk wife.
Hosmer stifled a laugh. Helen Reddy kept on singing. Faces peered from the kitchen entrance. The woman on the stairs dropped her cigarette and ground it out with her foot.
“Well, are you or aren’t you the famous Jennifer?” Jenifuh.
I nodded but said nothing.
“Do you know who I am?”
Again, I nodded.
“Yes, of course, you know. I’m the wife, and you’re the one he’s bedding.”
I bumped against a table in my retreat for the door.
“Oh, please don’t leave,” she called out. “We should compare notes. Does he go down on you as well?”
Helen Reddy was still singing when I went out the door:
I am strong/ I am invincible/ I am woman…
Chapter 78
Tampa, Florida
Although I wasn’t scheduled to fly to Florida for a couple more weeks, I headed for the airport, got myself on standby, and was landing at Tampa International by daybreak, at the place called “Down Here” by northerners. I pulled out my cell to listen to messages, figuring Sutter had been trying to call, to explain, to apologize. Poor man, he was as miserable as I was.
There were no messages.
Struggling alone with my suitcase, I felt hopelessly defeated. I was exhausted from spending most of the night in the airport, and my clothes felt as dirty as my soul.
At length, I was in the back seat of a taxi in my old neighborhood, in the Hispanic area of neatly kept clapboard houses, spreading live oaks, and hibiscus-lined driveways. Smells of long ago entered the open window: Tampa Bay mud flats, freshly cut grass and sizzling chicharrónes. On the right was Restaurante Boriquen, where my dad used to take us on Friday nights, and there was Mt. Zion where I’d learned to fear the wrath of God. My eyes watered when I thought of my dad pointing a righteous finger and warning of the Second Coming, asking how each of us would measure up in the presence of Christ. Poorly, I had thought then—and, worse now.
A turn down Hernandez, and we pulled into the driveway of my teenage years.
After the explanations to my mom, after coffee, after a shower and change of clothing, I locked the bedroom door and called Carla.
The Girl in the Glyphs Page 24