by Farris, John
She shrugged off my question and asked, "Has he been a good father to you?"
"The best. I love him."
"Of course. Otherwise you would not follow him, trust him—"
"I trust Daddy with my—"
Veronica rubbed her head in agitation. "Claro. Then how can I think—how could such a terrible thing be possible? But I know, I know, I know what I saw! The Marquise—" She began speaking then in Mayan, her head back; she was staring at the moon with animal eyes. I was afraid of her, in the night, speaking in a frenzy to the moon, but I moved closer, because I had to find out what she was carrying on about.
Suddenly she stopped, and snapped her head toward me.
"But I am so stupid! Because I never ask you—"
"Ask me what?"
"How old are you, Sharissa?"
"I'll be eighteen in June. I'm Gemini. What d-does that have to do with—"
"Answer one more question, then maybe I can go away and not bother you again."
I was trembling so badly she must have thought I was shaking my head no.
"Querida, try to understand me. This friend of yours, the one you say was murdered—"
"B-Bobby."
"You were his lover?"
I was filled with shock and then despair, thinking of the relationship Bobby and I would never have. Wishing that we had, just once, made love all the way. My eyes were burning. How could she ask such a question? Didn't she realize how much it hurt me?
"You must answer," Veronica insisted. "If not that friend, was there someone else?"
"There was only Bobby. And we never—oh, God!" She knew I was going to run, and she stepped into me, hooking an arm inside of mine, pressing her fingers so that the pain went streaking from elbow to wrist. "Are you a virgin, Sharissa? Tell me!"
"Yes!"
I put my free hand against her breast and shoved, hard. Veronica let me go, reached down and caught the chunky gold crucifix she wore on a chain around her neck. She pressed the crucifix to her lips. It had tiny rubies on it, representing Christ's wounds, and his tears.
"¡Ay Dios!"
Behind us, a howler monkey roared. It wasn't much, they all sound like someone with bad asthma gasping for breath, but I jumped about a foot.
"What's the matter with you! What difference does it make if I'm a—if I never—"
I had nerve ends dangling everywhere. Veronica sat down slowly on a stone bench, still clutching the crucifix, cherishing it, her fist on her breast. Behind her there was a garden enclosure with stelae inside, some badly worn carved columns up to ten feet high. I could make out faces on two of them. Stern brows, cruel mouths. Faces of the Maya. Kings who had lived almost fifteen hundred years ago. Veronica's face was so still and cold in the moonlight she could've been carved in stone herself. Crucifixes, eclipses, old stones. Superstitions. Ancient things. The world created, and destroyed. Death. Rebirth. My nerves were bad and my heart was beating so hard it hurt me. Flesh and blood, flesh and blood, we are not perfect. Only virgins are perfect, or supposed to be.
I sat down beside Veronica, crossed my arms to try to stop shuddering. After a while I felt her hand on my shoulder near my neck, not to make a prisoner of me, but for comfort.
"Veronica, can't you tell me what has you so upset?"
"I talk too much already. It is so hard to speak . . . what I know to be true, what I think is possible . . . but I am not a crazy person, even though there is much I have difficulty to esplain. So that you will believe me."
"I'll try to believe you, but you've got me so confused—"
"You are not Maya, so—that is a difficulty also. Matters of blood, knowing that which cannot be put into words. I am Catholic, but I understand that what is now a thing of horror was once a part of the natural order, ordained, demanded by the gods. Ritual bloodletting."
I stiffened. She stroked me. "Yes, it still goes on, in the hidden sacred places, but I only hear of such ceremonies, I have never seen one."
"Human sacrifice?"
"No, I am speaking of self-mutilation. But there was a time—as recently as a hundred years ago—when adolescent boys and girls disappear suddenly from the neighborhood of Cobían. For some evil purpose, perhaps. I have no knowledge of those times. I have only one story to tell, the truth that I know—the story of the Colon family, and the Hotel Itzá Maya. If you listen, and if you believe, then you must decide for yourself if the danger to you is real."
"C-couldn't we go in? It's so chilly."
"No. Be patient a little while. We're alone here. No one can hear us."
Veronica turned her eyes to the hotel, three stories of tall, glowing windows on the hill three hundred yards from the heart of the garden. We heard footsteps on the stone path, a murmur of voices—some guests out for a stroll before bedtime—but no one came close to where we sat by the stelae and tree stones.
"I am from one of the poorer branches of a prosperous family," Veronica began. "My father was a lawyer and civil servant. He died when I was very young, barely knowing him. He left debts which were cleared up by my uncle Santiago Colon. My mother was educated woman, but she could not make a living for us—myself, my sister Miriam, who was four years older than I. After a while we came to Cobían, where my mother was given suitable employment as clerk, here at the Itzá Maya. I was ten years old. We lived in a house that has since been removed for more tennis courts. It was a small house, but with nice furniture. Miriam and I shared a room.
"My uncle was not only a provider, he took a real interest in us. He was as close to a father as I had, although when we are coming here I am certain he was at least one hundred years old."
Veronica looked at me for a reaction. I didn't have one, except to shrug.
She said sharply, "In this part of the wurl that is almost twice the life expectancy for any of us. Those who survive infancy, I mean. Not much better than the Middle Ages of Europe, if you know history. There is still too much disease, not enough food for all. So my uncle was exception, no? Have one hundred years, but a brittle old man, half blind and deaf, sleep eighteen hours a day? That is what you think? Listen. Don Santiago would play tennis every day, one, two hours in the hot sun. He was married once only, but he had many women, and who knows how many children by his women; even Francisco doan know. Santiago Jesús de Córdoba Colon took care of them all. And when he die last year, I swear to you he had two mistresses, one who was nineteen years, and pregnant by him. He went peacefully in his sleep. He must have been one hundred twenty years old when he die. What a man. Like his father before him, who lived as long, or longer, perhaps, and was the founder of the Itzá Maya Hotel in the year 1827."
"I didn't know the hotel was that old. It looks—"
"Very modern now. With air-condition. And always, the best food and drink. Equal to a five-star hotel of Europe, in spite of its isolation. The hotel was modeled after the Colonial buildings in the old capital, Antigua Guatemala. Built at no small cost, in this wilderness. Even the Spanish avoided the jungle north of the lake. In all of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, there was nothing here but Peténeco farming villages. The Maya adoratorios and temples had all been destroyed by their overlords. Then the loggers began to trickle in for the mahogany and sapodilla wood of the forest, and a few large landholders settled here. Yet . . . the Itzá from the beginning was a favorite of people who can afford it, and who in the old days could make the long and difficult journey, by ship and then on horseback, from the port of British Honduras, what is now Belize City. They would come, from the capitals of six continents, even when there was nothing much to see. Before the discovery of Kan Petén. In the rainy season, a handful still came. Not merely difficult but a real hardship, even for people with much money. I have seen their names in the old registration books that are stored in the hurricane cellar. Who would want to come here in the rainy season? Unless—"
"Unless what?" I asked her finally. She seemed to be in another mini-trance.
"They had to com
e," Veronica muttered. "No other explanation is possible."
"Why would anybody have to come here if they didn't want to?"
"Because here is a center of the Maya religion; or what remains of the religion, those rituals and observances now in the keeping of the cofradía, wearers of the sacred jade of prestige. Men destined to live long and prosper in their calling, like Francisco, Don Santiago's successor."
"Do your people still practice the old religion?"
"Many do."
"Does that mean the guests who've been coming to the hotel all these years are descendants of Maya?"
"Oh, no. But a few, that I believe is possible. By the end of the seventeenth century the exalted ones, ancestors of the truly great people of our society, were nearly all gone. Killed, driven away, by their conquerors. But I think some escape—maybe, if they were young women of royal blood, by becoming wives or mistresses of Spanish lords. Women who had great powers, necessary to their survival. Who sometimes bore special childrens with similar powers. Those children they would instruct in secret: passing on the mysteries that sustain our culture for two thousand years. They are the ones who find their way back, again and again, to Kan Petén."
Someone appeared on the path from behind a clump of tropical broom, scaring off a couple of the peacock-like turkeys that roamed the hotel grounds. Veronica tensed until she recognized him; one of the night patrol. He was carrying a stubby machine gun on a sling. He paused to light a cigarette. Then he waved at us and walked away on his rounds
Veronica had turned and was looking at one of the stelae in the fenced area behind us.
"Don Santiago could read the stelae, as easily as one reads a newspaper. He was a humble man, of less than average size, dressed always in a black suit and white shirt, but so powerful in prestige I have seen other powerful men of our country tremble in his presence. No one wronged him and lived. No one. Not even my sister Miriam. Who, I am sure, he loved even more than me."
Her cold, flat tone shocked me as much as her words. "Veronica—"
She made a sound, part sob, part inhalation, a wounded sound.
"Afterward he had all pictures of her destroyed. We were forbidden to speak her name. We bore her disgrace like a brand from a hot iron that could never heal. But although I burn for her I still love my sister. Because I know I would have done what Miriam did."
I couldn't say anything. But my heart was jumping again.
"I am no beauty. My sister—even when she is fourteen, the year we are coming to Itzá Maya, men of means stare, they fall in love, they would have paid anything to possess Miriam. How can I describe her? A small face, almost catlike, with very large eyes. Of course her body was perfect. And she had a quality that was more than virginal, she glowed with paleness, the purity of a young saint. She was shy but not backward, she seemed to have been born with a sense of calm, the conviction all of us seek that we are worthy. Thoughtful, pious, a treasure; someone who could never offend. Yet she compromised the prestige of Don Santiago. And without a qualm he had her killed." She drew a long, shuddering breath. "There are . . . evils in this wurl no one can hope to understand."
"Veronica, what did Miriam do?"
Her smile was one of the saddest I've ever seen.
"She had the bad fortune to fall in love."
With a guest at the hotel?"
Veronica nodded. But for a few moments she seemed so despondent I didn't think she was going to continue. Then she lifted her head.
"He was a guest. His name was Gerard. That is all I ever know about him, his name, his age. Sixteen, one year older than Miriam when . . . they come in the spring to Itzá Maya, just before the rainy season, in the month of another eclipse."
"Sixteen? And Miriam had a crush on him?"
"'Crush'? If you want to say it like that, okay. And Juliet's feelings for Romeo, a passing fancy, you think? No. She was not a stupid flirty girl. Her feelings were deep and true. His, the same. I know they could not help themselves. It was their fate."
"Was your uncle . . . jealous of that boy? Was it one of those things?"
"Oh, no, it was not sexual jealousy. Nothing as simple as that. And I am certain Gerard was not the lover of the woman with whom he lived, his . . . guardian. She was the Marquise de Rochaude—a strange, beautiful woman, very rich, and a widow. I think they were not lovers because, although she was affectionate with Gerard, it was like the affection one has for a pet, something sleek and gorgeous but kept on a leash so that it cannot stray. She and Don Santiago appeared to be old friends. It is possible that she had traveled to Cobían many times in the past. I do not know her age. But I heard her speak in the Itzá tongue when they thought no one was listening. They argued. I had never heard anyone speak sharply to my uncle. I was amazed. He was firm with her. He would be accommodating, he said, within reason, but she could not have everything she demanded. I didn't know at the time what they were arguing about. Soon it became clear.
"The Marquise, like so many guests of the Itzá Maya, was fascinated with Miriam. She could not take her eyes off my sister. They were hungry eyes. I said that she was strange. Uninterested in the manliness of her young traveling companion, but Miriam . . . enflamed her. She gave my sister gifts—small gifts at first, a silk mantilla, a ring with semiprecious stones. She invited Miriam to dinner. It was just the three of them, for appearance's sake, no doubt. But that was her big mistake. Once Miriam and Gerard had spent an hour together, there was no keeping them apart. Ay Dios. Sixteen, fifteen . . . two young virgins. But not for long, such was their passion for each other."
"Did Miriam tell you?"
"She didn't have to. We shared a room. The look in her eyes, dazed from lovemaking, a crumpled handkerchief with a little blood on it, Miriam's blood . . . I knew. I was scared for her, scared of that woman. 'You better not see him again,' I said. Miriam just look at me, with love and pity. No fear. 'I have to,' she said."
Veronica was quiet, slumped, barely breathing until the tears began running down her cheeks. I was jittery and cold from sitting on the stone bench. I got up and thought I saw, about a hundred feet away, someone watching us from behind a screen of lianas and orchids cascading from the thick limbs of a mahogany tree. He was barely visible by the torchlight of a tall brazier on the path. On the short side, portly. I saw a glint of light that could have been reflected from one of the lenses of his glasses. I looked away, blinking, and back again, but this time I didn't see anyone there. There were no footsteps on the flagged path. Little to hear except for the metallic background noise of tree frogs. Even the spider and howler monkeys were silent in their cages."
"Did she see him again?"
"They ran away together. I doan know how Gerard persuade my sister to accompany him. I think he was desperate himself. Afraid of what the Marquise would do to him, once she knew of their affair. But she did nothing. She was not able to. She died, a few hours following the culmination of the eclipse. She died in a convulsion that snapped the joints of her bones, a terrible thing. I have not forgotten her screams, and her curses.
"Don Santiago closed the hotel immediately. He sent the other guests away. He called for my mother, and spoke to her. She never told me what he said, once she was able to speak at all. But she was in shock. She prayed for three days at the Basilica Iluminada. By then . . . their clothing had been discovered next to the cenote at Río Pasión. A popular place for lovers. In the past the cenote was often used for sacrifices. The water is deep there. But their naked bodies, joined at the wrists by a heavy ceremonial chain of gold, had risen to the surface."
"They committed suicide?"
"Never! They were murdered. Probably they were forced to take poison. Even today, if their bodies were removed from the unmarked crypts where they lit, it could be proven by scientific analysis. Once they were dead, or dying, they were thrown into the cenote. The chain that bound them together was very old, made of links fashioned in the likeness of the harpy eagle. I had seen it before, among the ancient
treasures in the vault of the hotel. It belonged to Don Santiago. The chain joining their wrists on their journey through Eternity was his signature, acknowledgment of retribution for the wrong done to him by Miriam."
"I still don't get it, Veronica. Why did the Marquise die? What happened to her?"
"Her death throes began with the passing of the eclipse. That is all I can tell you. And I believe Gerard was a virgin when he came here. No way to prove that, of course. But once he and Miriam became lovers, he was no longer of value to the Marquise. And perhaps by the time she learned of his . . . disloyalty, it was too late for her to find another virgin to take his place."
"What's this?" Daddy said. "Girl talk?"
Neither of us had heard him coming. Veronica's head jerked up and around. He looked from her face to mine, smiling quizzically, then walked closer and bent to kiss my forehead.
"Hi, Daddy."
"You're cold. Don't you think you should come in?"
"I . . . guess so. Where've you been?"
"Veronica didn't tell you? Francisco and I had a chess game going. Oh, I was able to get through to Usumucinta tonight on the missionary band. Had a nice chat with Reg and Cora Randall. Everything's set for Saturday."
"That's good." I said vaguely. He smelled like cigar smoke. I knew Daddy never smoked, so it must have been one of Francisco's cigars. The lingering strong odor made me feel queasy, and I was having a hard time pulling myself back from the grip of Veronica's lurid story. My first thoughts were that it was totally unbelievable, but there was no denying she believed everything she'd told me. How old had Veronica been at the time? Ten, eleven years old? Maybe over the years the facts of her sister's tragic death had become mixed up with a lot of superstition. I didn't think she was just putting me on, passing some boring time by finding out how gullible I was.
Daddy held out a hand and I took it; he pulled me to my feet.
"How about a couple of sets of tennis?" he asked me. "One of the courts was available when I came by them."
