The Jaguar

by A. T. Grant

  The muscles in Alfredo’s legs had stiffened to a point where he could barely move. Luis had to almost drag him across the room. Hugo led them through a small study into a comfortable sitting room. “Down the corridor on the left you’ll find a shower, Alfredo. Help yourself to towels. The room at the end is yours. By the time you’re ready, my wife will have sorted out some clothes for you. They’ll be a little old, I’m afraid. As you can see, good living has done nothing for my waistline. Shoes may have to wait until I can ask a favour of the neighbours in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Hugo,” responded Luis, appreciatively. The two men watched as Alfredo shuffled his way along the corridor.

  “Tell me, Luis,” Hugo frowned, the deep furrows beneath his shock of white hair revealing both his age and his previous life in the open air. “What has happened to your father? You wouldn’t be here unless something was seriously wrong.”

  Luis slumped into an old red armchair and stared at the rug on the terracotta tiled floor. For a moment it transported him home to El Paso and the dogs that would lie on a similar rug. “I’m sorry, Hugo, but my father is dead. So is Gennaro. My brother and I have only just found each other again, so he does not know. He was lucky to survive himself - the villa is no longer safe. Nobody knows we are here, but people will be looking for us soon.

  Hugo read his mind. “I would rather die than betray you, Luis. Your father’s responsible for everything good in my life.”

  “Yes, but we need to be out of here by the morning, for your sake, as much as ours. It was Eusabio who betrayed the family. He is responsible for their deaths. It won’t be long before he and his cronies come.”

  “Don’t worry, Luis, you sleep. I’ll hide the car and then stand guard. I’ll do nothing stupid if he turns up. After you’re gone, I’ll find a way to get to him. Eusabio always was a creep. Your family will be avenged.”

  “Be careful, Hugo, this is not the North. If the police aren’t already involved, they will be soon. If someone dies, they’ll want the perpetrator.”

  “I can take care of myself - and you would be surprised who eats in this restaurant.” Hugo sat down opposite Luis. His wife could be heard preparing food in the kitchen. He leant forward and put a gnarled, mole-speckled hand on the arm of Luis’ chair. “I’m sad about your losses, Luis, but you must understand that this is who they were and how they were meant to die. Could you imagine Gennaro, or your father, Don Paulo, wasting away in some nursing home? Neither would have wanted that.”

  Luis shook his head slowly. He didn’t know what to think.

  “Don Paulo was here only recently. He sat with me after his meal in this very chair and talked about you and your brother. It’s almost as though you were meant to be here now. He knew his health was failing. The only thing your father was ever afraid of was weakness. But he felt guilty about Alfredo, Luis. He said that you were a better father to him than he had ever been. He also regretted being so distant, when you two were children. Estella, your mother, was always his route to you. Then she was gone. This is what he would have wanted, Luis: you two together, looking out for each other. Do you remember when you would play tricks on me in the garden? Go and have children yourself, Luis, and let that be the worst thing they ever do.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Tulum road

  It was in the same place, but this was not the road which Mulac remembered. That road had burst with life and adventure, as he had done. This road smelled of death and he knew death was stalking him. He stopped and looked around, feeling the weight of the child asleep in his arms. A few yards behind him, his mother struggled under her heavy burden of food and precious possessions. His son trailed listlessly in her wake. This was now the sum total of his world: three fragile and totally dependent souls and a road from misery to misery. At least, he reflected, he had lived and loved, but what of the boy and the baby girl? Through their beauty and serenity lived on the two most extraordinary people that he had ever known: his wife, Emetaly and his priest and greatest friend, Ah Kin Lo. Everything he had ever strived for would now stand or fall on his children’s survival, but Mulac no longer knew how to fight, or even what to fight. The way now led not through the land of men, but through that of the gods - and the gods were vengeful and angry.

  He looked to the fields, where once the gods of sun and wind had danced between the sturdy stands of corn, and the goddess of the clouds had scattered her precious liquid jewels. Above a slurry of the dead and the diseased rose a few remaining stems. Battered and broken, they rested one upon the other, offering no other bounty than a visible symbol of the craving that clawed at the innards of every passing traveller. Mulac picked his way through the mess of husk and stalk, sweeping up a pile and placing the girl-child gently within. Staring back across the road, shadows of the forest fingered the rutted surface, as though to tear it from its base and steal it away into the trees. Mulac knew these dark limbs would soon be tearing at his soul as well, offering the doubts of night and the dread of unexpurgated memory. In dreams of the past, the forest had stood respectful, at a distance from the gleaming white way, as though daunted by its purpose and intensity. The homesteads, shrines and stalls, standing proud and boastful, had been slowly and stealthily stolen from sight, leaving only the forest to riot with the demons of the dark, and to suck the life from the day.

  Mulac’s mother sat beside him and began to cry in hunger and frustration. The volcanic intensity of love within her was being sucked back into deep chambers of the earth, hour after cloying hour. Mulac took her burden from her and tenderly swept the matted locks of grey from her eyes. She threw a brief, brave smile into an ocean of desperation then curled into a ball amongst the detritus. One arm reached out to touch the boy child, lest the lengthening shadows should get to him first. Seconds later she was lost to sleep.

  As he gathered the driest sticks, Mulac reminded himself that he must not stray far. If he lost sight of these three, he knew they would be gone. Loss was his spark and his flame. Loss was the veil that sheltered everything still decent and real. He thought of the priest and of his father, thought of them sitting together at their home in Tulum. They had smoked and laughed, casting him critical glances and each other knowing smiles. His father had gone back to the land of the spirits first. Beyond Mulac’s grief, it had almost felt like a blessing. His father had died of the wasting disease, in the arms of his wife and in the comfort of his old friend’s chants and incantations, whilst Mulac jostled the giggling boy upon his grandfather’s bed.

  With his father’s passing, Ah Kin Lo had grown fretful. Reports of the gods of the north had become more frequent and more florid, and seemed to trouble the old man more deeply with each recitation. There were tales of cities set upon by demons, tales of brave men standing their ground and fighting back, only for the gods to spray a spittle of pox to lay waste to their resolve. It was said they had set a curse upon this world. That their own world had been ravaged by war and hate, until they looked with greed, envy and empty hearts upon the fertile lands of the Maya. They could slip between worlds, but the Maya could only die. Perhaps this was at the heart of Ah Kin Lo’s predicament. He no longer knew the nature of each soul’s journey: how it might be received, or by whom.

  Ah Kin Lo’s passing had set them on their way, cut them loose from their anchors of stone and cast them upon the sea of lost souls. He had died from the curse - from the terrible plague that could reduce a healthy man to a leaking vessel quicker than the sun could fall from the sky. In his terror Ah Kin Lo had forgotten first his prayers and then his friends. He had spoken in the tongue of the devils as he died, and coughed as though the charnel of his being were gagging for release.

  Mulac set a fire then lay between his children and the mysteries roaming the night. Hunched figures still stumbled onwards. He could see their envious eyes in the flicker of flame and reminded himself that he must not sleep.

  Be
fore the gods had cast their vengeance upon Ah Kin Lo, he had talked in increasingly troubled tones of the jaguar, the great cat of darkness. It stalked the deepest, densest jungle, with eyes that burned without brightness but as intensely as the sun. It could see into the bleakest corners of a man’s soul. There were rumours that it now walked upon the earth in daylight, when the sun seemed to lose its way and the storm gods fought their clamouring battles in the sky. Some said it was angry with the gods of the north for upsetting the balance of the world, and would drag them back to the underworld to be punished. Others thought it in league with them and that it aimed to put an end to the age of men, still others that it was above such petty squabbles and walked between worlds, an impassive observer of the machinations of lesser beings, as it had always done.

  The priest had clutched at Mulac in a sweat and a panic, before the madness set in. Rasping, he recounted his fear that they had brought the wrath of the jaguar upon themselves, by treating him so casually in Coba. They prayed together on his deathbed, to the spirit of Emetaly and to her protector, Ix-Chel. This seemed to bring peace and strength of mind briefly back to Ah Kin Lo. In his last whispered words to Mulac he told him he could never regret that journey. He struggled to take off the heavy gold ring that marked him as a priest then closed Mulac’s fingers around it with a smile. Mulac was too stunned to protest. It was Quetzalcoatl, the Ouroboros, the giant snake wrapped around the world. It stretched across the night sky and guarded the entrance to the afterlife - the only thing greater than the jaguar, K’inich. Ah Kin Lo was offering him safe passage to the underworld. By the time Mulac regained his voice, his friend’s mind was gone. Mulac had shuddered as he prayed, scared for Ah Kin Lo, who jabbered incoherently as though being forced in the language of the gods to explain his sacrifice.

  The flames cavorted and twirled over the ashes of someone’s crop. The harder he stared, the more the light entwined and burst inside Mulac’s brain. An intense headache burned behind his eyes. Slowly the brightness faded to pitch and he fell into fitful slumber. He was back on the road, but this time as a child following behind his parents. He called out to them, but they would not stop and he could feel himself being left ever further behind. Mulac was torn between his parents and his shadow, which was lagging at an ever greater distance behind him. It called to him weakly as he, in turn, called to his parents. In its fading voice he heard first Emetaly and then Ah Kin Lo. It wanted him to stop. Every time he ran to catch up, when he looked back it had weakened. Eventually it left him. He sensed it out of a corner of his eye, slipping over the vegetation to be consumed by the trees. Mulac cried and raged at his parents for not slowing down: “I want my shadow, I want my shadow.” He woke up.

  It was cold and his mother was preparing a pot of thin gruel. His boy tottered around, picking up sticks and spinning them into the sky. His daughter was still asleep, tightly wrapped within the confines of a narrow wicker basket. It was only another hour into Muyil. The lengthening grey smudge of smoke on the horizon was not a good omen, but there was no other route south, other than through the town. The day had started still and sullen. For once Mulac took comfort from the large number of fellow travellers, although they seemed in an increasing hurry to clear the road. He would not rush. It was not as though there were any place to go, or anyone waiting for them when they arrived. Mulac knew the backstreets of Muyil where travellers sought lodgings. He remembered the drunken nights, the songs, the jibes and the heated conversations. Then he thought of the woman who, on more than one occasion, had let him share her bed. These memories were now no more than the taunts of a jilted lover.

  There were shouts then a single scream and the sound of thunder pounding upon the road. They had come: the gods of chaos and plague and misery. The boy turned and stared and dropped his stick. The dull, metallic gleam of pale riders rose and fell and grew in number and in form. They sat astride their vicious beasts, whose long heads tossed proudly at the sky, sweat glistening from their muscular flanks. Mulac’s mother and son ran in terror. They buried their frail, shaking forms into his. The gods wore hats of strange, other-worldly forms. They bore tall spears and flat sticks covered in leather sheaths, baked in the fires of hell to the texture and sharpness of glass. Looking neither left nor right, twenty beings of story and legend swept down the Mayan coast road, as if it had always been theirs. In their wake came slaves, roped and running in lines. They pulled litters full of plunder, which seemed to glide above the coral highway, like birds over the water, immense wooden prayer-wheels spinning curses from their sides.

  In the midst of panic, Mulac found rage. Who were these devils who would not even look at him, who had ripped his family from its mooring and cast it into swirling waters? Before he could stop himself, he was shouting - cursing. The boy and the woman stared at him in despair, assuming he had been possessed.

  Two gods turned their heads and then their mounts towards him. They were laughing. Mulac could feel the long bone knife against his side. As he drew it out, he was already running. He heard his mother screaming, “No!” He would drag these spirits with him back to the underworld, whatever the cost. Then he saw a face. It was the haggard face of an ordinary man, one who had lived in this world long enough to know suffering. What he saw in that face was fear. No demon would tug his mount from him in fear. These were no gods: these were men who could be brought to battle like any other enemy. Mulac noticed the long stick, raised and pointed and showering sparks, but he did not see the furnace-like flash, or hear the explosion. He was on fire, his heavy frame shaking in the grass. The two men on horseback were laughing again, although not so loudly as before.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tulum road

  Marcus, Cesar and Carlos sat in the front of the minibus as it negotiated endless potholes and speed humps on the way back to the main highway. The mood that morning was reflective and Marcus was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the events of the night before. He and Dana had stolen back to the beach in the small hours, careful to keep their distance from David, who still sat alone by the failing embers of the bonfire. Dana clutched a bottle of red wine and two glasses, Marcus a rug and a torch. Giggling like children, they had made their way out of the chill breeze and into a quiet section of the dunes.

  Marcus had crouched to arrange the rug then stood and turned, in anticipation of a glass of wine. Instead he gawped, open mouthed, as Dana’s dress tumbled to her toes. Bathed in translucent moonlight she relaxed provocatively onto one hip and gave him a sly, come-on grin. He had stood, transfixed, until Dana held out a slender hand and drew him to her. She skilfully flicked open the buttons on his shirt and stretched to throw it from his shoulders. Marcus recalled the smooth progress of her nails across his back and the tender motion of her nipples against his chest. They had kissed wildly and greedily. Her mouth slipped to his neck, to his pecks, then lingered over the muscular tucks of his belly. Blood and oxygen drained to a single point, rendering Marcus incapable of speech, thought or motion. He had stood, weak-kneed, in a state of rapturous paralysis, as Dana relieved him, unhurriedly, of any last vestige of resistance.

  Full of laughter and wine they had coupled again later, embraced, as though in a threesome, by the fine white dust. Drifting, entwined, towards sleep under a reassuring blanket of stars, the whole universe was looking in. It sparkled as though the lights were an extension of their own tingling nerve endings. They were not lost or insignificant in the vastness of space, for it was barely big enough to contain what they were feeling.

  Eventually the cold had driven them apart. Marcus settled for a bunk in the staff quarters, to avoid disturbing David. The morning found Dana gone before breakfast and Marcus left to strong coffee, a rare cigarette and an even greater sense of insecurity. Women in his life were as sure as the sea. That one would arrive was as certain as the next tide, but so was their subsequent departure, as though a jealous moon fought for their affection. He
thought of his cousin, Isabel. She had died at twenty from blood cancer and remained the one true love of his life. Marcus had known that his feelings for her went well beyond the familial, but she was gone before he could declare himself. They had spent so much time together that she must have known, he reasoned, but somehow this was not the same. She died whilst he was away establishing himself with Tailwind, and so he had missed the only journey in his life that really mattered. Perhaps, he reflected, this was why he was beginning to resent Laura. Her expressions, her features and even certain snippets of conversation, were like communications from the grave.

  David squirmed in his seat to avoid a broken spring, noticed Marcus looking glum and realised his own contentment. It had come to him by the bonfire that he was not in love with Culjinder. He had never been in love with Culjinder. But, for the brief period he had known her, he had been in love with life. Culjinder had opened his eyes, but it was Phoebe he wanted to see. David pondered the numbness and introspection that had prevented him appreciating her. He saw her look of poorly concealed disappointment which now sat, like an ill-judged punctuation mark, across his life’s visual narrative.

  David determined to squeeze every moment from the expedition. That’s what Phoebe had wanted for him, after all. He would bide his time before phoning home, but was confident that, when the time came, he’d know what to say. He would also contact Culjinder, and again he’d know what to write. And when that letter was written he would await the polite reply which was sure to follow, place it in his photograph album and close the book for good. It was time for new pictures, in different albums, with a woman who could be so much more than a daydream.

  The coast road ejected the van onto a main thoroughfare. It swerved and picked up speed across the broad, uneven concrete slabs. They left behind the beach bungalows and palm-trees jostling for space and a view, and the blousy layer of cloud that hung heavily over a grey, listless sea. The bus turned again and now they were in new territory, driving into the modern town of Tulum - some distance inland from its Mayan precursor. Sign after sign would entice them from their path, but they drove on, diverted only by one gaudy creation claiming Tulum to be the cave-diving capital of the world. John Tanner snorted loudly from one of the rear seats and proceeded to depress the group with lengthy details of his none-too-successful diving venture of the previous afternoon. David’s thoughts drifted in and out of the conversation, but he gleaned that their qualifications had been insufficient to allow them into the caves. They had been forced to remain in open water around the base of the cenote, where the sediment had been stirred to such an extent by other divers that there was little to see. Darryl caught the mood of complaint, groaning under the weight of a headache, fuelled by too many margaritas. “They were showing us how to - to make cocktails,” he stumbled over his justification. Sharon had spent the night hugging a toilet bowl and now hid behind dark glasses, resting her head on John’s shoulder.