Nevertheless, he could tell that I wasn’t feeling that fabulous.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “You just relax. I’ve already ordered food—Armagnac … bread … those tasty little olives … two plates of rabbit in mustard sauce. It’ll be coming up any minute.”
I had showered and changed back into my sweats, and so had he. He sat next to me on the sofa, and we watched the sparkling fire very comfortably, though both of us were busy with our thoughts and did not speak for a few minutes.
“Maybe we should watch TV?” he asked, flicking on the contraption.
The dark screen lit up. On it appeared the smashed houses, flooded plains; army rescue helicopters dispatched to the remoter northern regions of the Motagua Valley, and by an area called Rio Dulce. Up high on the plateaus above the cracked banks of rivers were tarp-covered settlements of the new homeless, and here were some raw new graves. We even saw pictures, taken several days before, of terrified women and men and dogs and cats stranded on the roofs of their homes, surrounded by green rising water that flooded into the area my mother had planned on trekking into.
“Oh, Jesus God,” I said.
Erik flicked the television off and glowered down at his knees until another thought occurred to him. He snapped his fingers. “I know what to do.”
“What?”
“I know just what’ll fix you up. Or me up, at least.”
As he walked to his closet to fetch something, a knock came at the door and a short maid came stamping in, bearing the platter of mustard rabbit and Armagnac. The maid looked as if she were about forty years old and had a mass of shaggy black hair flying around her face. Her bent and wide-hipped frame was clothed in a blue uniform with white piping.
“Good evening, señor,” I heard her say, while I closed my eyes and fended off the afterimages of the destroyed homes and floods. She shuffled around for a bit and clattered the plates on the bureau, with her back turned to us, though we could hear her muttering complaints about her feet. She had an oddly masculine and wheezy voice.
“Wouldn’t that be better on the coffee table?” Erik asked.
The crone only glanced at him over her shoulder and grouched some more, then resumed rattling the crockery and in general making a nuisance of herself.
Erik shrugged and made his way over to his closet, where he dug out that stuffed knapsack of his. Crouching down to rummage through it, he extracted a squat, blocky book bound in red, a black-and-white decal from the UCLA library adhered to its spine.
“Ahh—the Narrative!” I said. “The purloined Von Humboldt. I was wondering if you might have that book in there.”
“You said you wanted to see it, and here it is.”
“You’re such a thief—you said your research assistant had it.”
“Yes. Sorry. Lied. I couldn’t let just anybody take my Von Humboldt.”
“And now?”
“And now—now—it’s fairly appropriate reading, considering we’re heading north,” he said. “Your mother’s read and practically memorized the same material, as I should know well enough from all those savage edits she gave me on my book. And those jade stones that they were showing on the television earlier—Von Humboldt wrote on similar stones when he described his Guatemalan travels, so we might want to look them up. And besides, you’ve been reading to me such awful things about de la Cueva and spinning such outlandish theories about the Stelae that are still twanging on my nerves that I’d like just to get back to some familiar territory, or I’ll never get to sleep. I’m tired of all those deranged Spaniards. I’d much prefer to spend my evening with a nice, romantic, weirdly fearless German. Wouldn’t you?”
I took one more look over at my mother’s duffel bag, which sat in a lump by the maid’s sneaker-shod feet. Then I thought about Yolanda’s face again, sad and harsh in the stone halls. But Erik was paging through the red book, finding the right place, and began to read to me with relish and much feeling.
The maid dropped a spoon, and with a great deal more cursing and complaining, she bent to whisk it up before she gathered her trays together, stamped out of the suite, and banged shut the door.
I leaned back and listened to Erik’s voice telling me Von Humboldt’s story, reassuring myself that Yolanda and the diary could wait.
“You see, Von Humboldt thought the Jade was a giant magnet, and he hired six Indian guides to help him find it, as well as a slave named Gomez, who was some kind of genius expert on the Stone,” he said. “Von Humboldt, for his part, thought that the Stone would have great scientific uses. But he almost died in the process—the Indians weren’t very amenable to the idea of Germans and Frenchmen tracking around their jungles. Still, I actually think that he was less interested in magnets or precious gems than simply going on an adventure with Aimé Bonpland—his closest friend.”
“Sounds like more than a friend.”
“Von Humboldt was in love with him.”
“And Bonpland?”
“I think he’d have to be in love with Von Humboldt to go racing through the jungles after him, wouldn’t he?”
“Well, if we don’t find Mom here, you just might be racing through the jungles with me—”
“Don’t interrupt. So both of them had this amazing curiosity in common—they went all over the Americas studying the fauna and the geology. Their search for the Queen Jade—that was in 1801—was probably their least successful expedition, on account of the jaguars and the poisonous snakes and the peevish Indians. But it makes for good reading.”
Erik and I spent the next hour leafing through Von Humboldt’s diary, focusing our attention on the chapter where he claims to have stumbled across the same Maze of Deceit described by de la Cueva two and a half centuries before.
“They were on the trail of the second labyrinth, the Maze of Virtue, when they ran into a little trouble,” Erik went on. “Von Humboldt believed he was very close to finding the stone … but he didn’t want to risk Bonpland’s life. Start here. This is where they find the first maze.”
“Dear Alexander,” Aimé Bonpland said, when we reached the first threshold across the river Sacluc. “We must be very careful. This is a most magnificent find, but the Indians are beginning to exhibit a rather bad temper.”
“Never mind them,” I blurted out. “Look at this prodigy!”
For the Labyrinth of Deceit was, indeed, an architectural marvel of the first water. A colossally winding temple made of the most perfect blue jade, and once entered, seemingly endless, this maze proved the most astonishing of any discovery we had yet made. And also the most dangerous. We might enter one of the sapphire passages, grow confused by its signs, and become so baffled by its convoluted express that we could not take a single step forward. Once having braved this foray into the maze, however, we could discover ourselves not at the other end of the puzzle, but instead mired in a dangerous terrain of jaguars or floods or sinking marshes, from which we would never return.
Such hazards, then, were ours in the wood, as we, with our six Indians and mulatto navigator, stood before the Maze. And so it was well within our luck that when we traveled forward and gazed upon the worked rock, this Gomez, our friendly guide, attempted to explain to us some barbaric formula of the puzzle’s markings, based upon some combination of the “number zero” (so he said), and which did not make much in the way of sense. Better still, he mentioned in his next breath the nearby presence of an even more practical artifact than this labyrinth—that same masterful and Magnetic Queen Jade sought by the once and great Governor de la Cueva.
“I am only leading you on this path because you are a scholar like myself—-yes, believe it—I, too, have a scientific inclination, which has been fed by my slave owner’s library,” said our Gomez as he led us through the wood. “It is a rare thing for me to talk so candidly with a white man as yourself, but because we two are brethren in the Science, I must show you that I, the Great Gomez, have discovered the little plot of these Heathen. I believe that the St
one is up here, Señor Von Humboldt, through this passage of the Deceitful Labyrinth, and then past a second maze.”
He paused for a moment to point out the correct directions. And this was much to the apparent distaste of his colleagues, who began to speak to him in a brutal-sounding tongue.
“Alexander,” Aimé said. “We must be careful. I no longer know where we are going.”
Yet I tugged my friend along the Maze’s rough path, and we continued wandering until I too realized, with a shock to the nerves, that we had become quite lost.
All about us were what appeared to be an everlasting chain of identical shrubs, trees, bosks, heaths, fens, and quagmires, and this change in our conditions seemed aptly described by our Gomez when he began singing a curious tune:
I lost you
I lost you
I’m lost too,
my darling
“I told you!” Aimé Bonpland whispered, holding on to my hand.
“Do not worry, we are not lost, as I am making a joke,” Gomez said. “According to my calculations, we must only follow the Dwarf.”
“What?” I asked him.
“The Dwarf. Can you not understand good Spanish?”
I replied that I could, although it became evident almost immediately that I was not the sole man who had some skill with languages, for the Indians once more abused Gomez, clearly enough voicing their distaste at this important disclosure. Yet their protests came too late, for Gomez had led us to the place he had promised.
A tall, crumbled, fantastic blue city rose before our eyes, all spires and turrets, with great devastated keeps and eroded ramparts, even as it now sank into the muds and soughs.
“The kingdom of stone!” Aimé Bonpland cried, as the Indians continued their dark cursing. “The prison of the Witch, and the house of the jealous King. Just as de la Cueva wrote. You have done it, Alexander!”
I discerned a glint in Aimé’s eye—in the past hour he had become the more reckless of our pair, for I found myself less fascinated by the jade kingdom than the glowering of the savages.
“That’s all quite wonderful,” I said, “but perhaps we should be going now.”
“We are so close—we should brave death to discover the great Jade!” he shouted at me, flailing his arms about in excitement. “We need now find the dragon tree, then solve the Maze of Virtue, and then the Treasure will be ours!”
The Indians began emitting certain bird-like whistles, and queer calls, and a horde of primitives all at once emerged like a hallucination from the bush with their rude weapons drawn, to deter us from further investigation into their sacred jungle. Thereafter we were greeted with a volley of arrows, one of which found its way into the torso of our Gomez, who briskly died.
“I think not,” I said, then grabbed Aimé Bonpland by the arm and forced him to make a swift exit from that particular patch of the forest.
Though my companion was much disappointed in our failure to secure the Stone, I did not share his discontent. As we dashed past deadly snakes and man-eating swamps, and heard the fell sound of murderous Savages racing behind us, I reminded him that he might have shared the fate of our good Gomez. That he did not was my best fortune.
Those Readers who possess an agile heart will know what I mean.
Erik stopped reading the Narrative. He had read the entire chapter while I lay on the sofa, quietly listening. We had already drained the last of the Armagnac; the candles flickered and shed their light. The fire crackled and burned blue and diamond colors in the hearth.
“That last sentence is why I love Von Humboldt so much,” Erik said, and looked at me.
I looked back at him, too. Our eyes held.
To my great consternation, a queer and violent blush began to spread through my body, and despite nearly thirty years of intensive training in English, Spanish, Latin, Italian, and a bit of the German language, I found myself at an utter loss for words. I opened my mouth, closed it; I attempted to compose myself, but a wild erotic demon seemed to be controlling my limbs so that I very nearly swooned into the warm and capacious lap of the infamous Erik Gomara.
And then our dignities, such as they were, were saved. For my hot and irrational glance was diverted by an unnerving sight. Perhaps on account of some atavistic modesty, I had turned my cheek away from Erik, so that I looked over at the oak bureau by the communicating doors. I glanced down at the carpeted floor beneath this bureau, where I had, an hour before, placed the Hartmann duffel bag containing Mom’s diary and my maps and papers. This is where, also, that noisy maid with the stamping gait had been clattering around with our dinner plates.
My mother’s bag was gone.
CHAPTER 22
Slow down, Lola, slow the hell down,” Erik said, looking up from the pages spread out on his lap. He was trying to write on them by the illumination of a small flashlight, as it was still dark out.
It was five in the morning, and we were in the Jeep, on the Carretera al Atlántico, about seventy miles north of Guatemala City. A heavy rain slowed our progress as we chased Yolanda down through the Motagua Valley of central Guatemala. We hadn’t come across her, yet.
“You’re going to get us into an accident,” he went on. “I’ve been on this road plenty of times before—in far better conditions than these—and even then it wasn’t safe. There are potholes, gaps in the road. When I was about twenty years old, I drove the Atlantico when it wasn’t even flooded and almost broke my neck. And you don’t even know if you’re right. Maybe you lost the bag somewhere else, maybe that really was just a maid. Yolanda might not even be here. And we have to seriously consider if we want to find her in the first place.”
“I know that was her!” I howled. “My God, I can’t believe I fell for that bad wig. And she took it—the bag—and she’s bringing it up here. She’s got all our maps!”
“And your mother’s journal,” he said. Though I hadn’t wanted to mention anything about that book back at the hotel, once I realized that the duffel had been stolen, I broke like a dam. I’d told him everything about the diary.
“And my mother’s journal.” I pushed the Jeep through water and the shadows. “Yolanda thinks she’ll find the stone, and that’s up north. That’s the best guess that I have about where she’s run off to. So that’s where we have to go.”
The Carretera al Atlántico, known in English as the Atlantic Highway, stretched before us in our headlights. It peeled off from the Highway of Friendship after Guatemala City, where it would continue to push north through the Motagua basin and dip down toward a town called El Rancho and Rio Hondo, until it connected up with another road that leads to the Peten and Flores. We had been driving for more than four hours, taking turns at napping, and navigating the Jeep through onyx water and floating branches and wedges of trash that Mitch had hurtled from eastern villages down to the drain of the valley. Our headlights glittered over the flooded parts of the route, and when gusts of wind parted the showers, the unexpected starlight transformed the rain into sequins and the mountains into bronze and silver. Mud slid from the surrounding banks before us and into our wake. Deep ditches along the road were filled with rainwater and more mud. Other vehicles occasionally skidded past us, despite the insane conditions, though these were mostly huge olive-colored army trucks; we had learned from the news already that the military were making their way from the city to the Peten region to bring panicked evacuees armed order, food, and building supplies for the emergency encampments.
I glared out into the woolly air and still didn’t see a sign of that blasted Yolanda. I pressed my foot on the gas to speed our chase, but this was not a good idea, for I almost immediately heard a churning. The Jeep shuddered and slid to the left. Erik and I jerked in our seats, and his flashlight spattered light into my eyes. I coughed and righted the car again.
“Damn,”I said.”Sorry.”
He bent down to get the pen that had fallen to his feet. “I’m telling you, you’re going to get us killed.”
&n
bsp; “What are you writing?”
“I thought I’d take a look at what we were talking about before. I’m—working on the Stelae.”
“The Stelae?”
“To see if it’s encoded, like you were saying. It’s a very interesting idea, and I was just thinking, what if you’re right? What if it is a real code? Not an obscure language. Not wallpaper. A cipher.”
I had to fix my eyes back on the road. “That was just an idea. I think we’ve got more important things to think of right now. Like this high—medium—speed chase.”
“No—listen, like I’ve told you, there’s no evidence of the Maya ever using ciphers, but what if they did? I mean—the Stelae read so strangely, it might just be because they’ve been scrambled. Maybe they’re not supposed to be read, except by certain people. I’ve been trying to think of any kind of formula that might work, testing out a few lines in my head while I was driving. But I think I’d need a computer—and years, probably—not just a piece of paper and a pen. There’s no reference point, I don’t even know where to start. The only codes I could think of were European, Middle Eastern. Just for practice, I’ve been trying the Caesarian transposition code—the one that Caesar used in the Gallic wars, where he shifted every character up five times. I’ve tried stream codes, a more complex version based on Caesar’s, and I also gave a shot at atbash—I heard once of an ancient Roman practice, where no ciphers were used at all, but the real meaning of a message would be written on the shaved heads of servants, whose hair would later be allowed to grow in. Then they’d travel through enemy territory to their general or king, and shave their heads again so the words would be revealed. I’d shave my head right now if it would do any good. I just feel as if a light had been turned on in my brain when you said that—and then everything went dark again.”
The Queen Jade Page 13
