At the End of the World

by Mark Macpherson

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Yax K’in, is it far from here?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘No.’ Yax K’in hesitated, then added, ‘It’s not too far.’ As an afterthought, he said, ‘But we will need a car, it’s too far for an old man to walk.’ Yax K’in smiled. ‘I doubt I could walk there myself and it is much too far for you, my old friend.’

  Arthur left Michelle standing next to Yax K’in.

  Michelle wanted to query Yax K’in’s tenderness at the end of the balche session. After she had asked him he was silent for a long time before he answered.

  ‘Not now Michelle. It’s not the time. Today may, yet, not happen. Let’s wait and see.’ Yax Kin smiled at her and she knew no meaningful answer would be forthcoming.

  After ten minutes a car pulled up and Arthur emerged from the driver’s side. He opened the passenger door for Yax K’in. Hamish was in the back seat and Michelle got in next to him.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind but Hamish said he’d like to come along,’ Arthur said as Yax K’in pulled himself up and into the car by holding onto the door and the door frame.

  A single lane dirt road led out of the village and when they approached the first T-intersection Arthur slowed the car. He glanced at Yax K’in, to whom maps and directions meant little, Arthur knew, and then turned in the direction towards Yaxchilan.

  Arthur received no assistance at other intersections. Yax K’in appeared transfixed by the view out of his side window. The t’o’ohil was petulantly allowing the supposed inevitability to prove itself. He had decided to not help in the discovery process.

  They drove for half an hour traveling in broad circles.

  Arthur was exasperated and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He had not expected exact directions, he had expected some confusion but not neglect.

  ‘Do you know where this place is?’ he asked, almost in an unfriendly voice. His thoughts had been of Roberto and the dwindling budget while they had driven pointlessly. ‘Have you been there before?’

  ‘It’s not far from the village,’ Yax K’in said, as he peered out of the side window. ‘It’s the reason the village is where it is.’ Yax Kin was silent for a moment. ‘Keep going. If you wish,’ he said quietly.

  ‘If I wish? What does that mean?’ Arthur said angrily, in English. He knew Yax Kin would not understand.

  They drove on. Arthur randomly chose directions and did not query Yax K’in again.

  Hamish was enjoying himself, unconcerned by the tension in the front seat. He was pleasantly reminded of his childhood Sunday afternoon excursions, when his parents would drive their car through the New Zealand countryside, with no direction in mind, to explore and travel roads they thought were interesting. Their destination was irrelevant. They would return home in the late afternoon having passed the idle time of a Sunday afternoon together, as a family.

  Arthur turned at an intersection and recognized a road already travelled. He pulled the car over, again. Fields of maize stretched in all directions. Hamish was smiling with his reminiscences while Michelle’s face was drawn and angry as she thought of the wasted time.

  ‘I think we should go back,’ Arthur said unhappily. ‘That’s about all we can do. I don’t know what else to try.’

  ‘Good,’ said Michelle firmly. Hamish smiled vacantly at Arthur and nodded his agreement.

  Yax K’in faced forward and sighed.

  ‘We are here,’ he said.

  ‘Where are we?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘We are here,’ Yax K’in repeated.

  Michelle peered though her window. ‘There’s nothing here,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s get out and stretch our legs,’ Arthur said. He was tired from the balche session, the trip to Yaxchilan and by his broken sleep after Roberto’s visit. He did not want to say anything with real anger to Yax K’in.

  Arthur, Michelle and Hamish got out of the car and stood together in front of it.

  ‘Arthur, what do we do?’ Michelle said. ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’ She put both her hands on top of her head and pressed her hair in exasperation. She let her hands fall to her side.

  Hamish had nothing meaningful to contribute. He kicked a small stone from the side of the road out onto the tarmac. He had no expectations for Arthur’s project. He had done no work and it looked like he was about to return home. He began planning what to do with Jim when he returned to Boston. He assumed it would be soon.

  The distinct shades of purple of each, higher horizon of the Southern Mexican Highlands were finely chiseled. Hamish noticed a strangely familiar relationship between the different horizons. He followed what he thought was a logical pointer in the shapes of the mountain ridges that appeared to resolve at an ancient mound about a kilometer away. It was like the many he had noticed on the way to Yaxchilan, a hundred feet high and a regular pyramid-like shape. A clump of scraggly trees grew at the base, where there was a collection of shanty huts, roughly assembled to provide shelter for laborers in the maize fields. The huts were as abandoned as the temple mound that rose above them.

  ‘There’s something,’ Hamish said and raised his arm.

  Arthur laughed. He walked back to the car and opened the passenger door.

  ‘There’s nothing here. Except for an old mound in a maize field,’ Arthur said. He rested one arm on the door and the other on the roof of the car as he bowed his head to Yax K’in.

  ‘We must go there,’ Yax K’in said.

  Arthur sighed and gently shut the passenger door. Yax K’in stared at Hamish as he kicked at stones like he was Jim’s age.

  Arthur called the others back to the car. They drove on, slowly, searching for a road through the maize that might bring them closer to the mound. They turned at the next road when they had failed to find a route. It wasn’t until they had turned again, and were on the far side of the mound, that there was a single lane dirt track leading into the field of maize.

  Arthur stopped the car. Yax K’in stared fixedly out of his side window again.

  ‘Shall we go on an adventure?’ he asked the occupants of the back seat. Neither of them answered. He moved the car forward.

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t get caught trespassing,’ Arthur said.

  Chapter 25

  Arthur drove slowly, the track was rough. The maize grew close so that passengers on either side could have opened their windows and touched the growing maize plants. The path did not lead directly to the mound but followed its own whim until it came tantalizing close and then circled around to the opposite side. It ended in front of the shacks where there was room enough for a car to turn around.

  Arthur got out, leant on the open door and shouted, ‘Ola!’, a number of times but there was no answer to his hello.

  ‘It looks like there’s no one here,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look around.’

  Arthur, Michelle and Hamish set off towards the summit of the mound. Yax K’in let them go. He strode away from the car and plunged into the field of maize.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Arthur replied.

  Hamish watched Yax K’in’s movement through the maize. The plants rose to his shoulders so his head appeared to part a way through a still, discontinuous green sea. Yax K’in stopped and looked back at the mound. Hamish almost waved to signal a hello. He turned away and resumed his climb towards the summit.

  Yax K’in’s eyes ran along the lines of the distant ridges. Each one was a familiar shape he had learned, the descriptions told and re-told over many generations. He moved a few steps sideways and then back for half a dozen more, all the time his eyes were fixed on the horizons and their relationship to the mound. He halted. The perspective matched the shapes he had committed to memory. He knew beyond doubt he was standing at the location burned into the memory of his ancestors. It was the place, so the stories told, where his first ancestor had heard the last words spoken by Hachakyum. Yax K’in’s eyes fell to the ground, a litt
le to his right. That is the place, he believed, where Hachakyum had stood when the fate of the world was decided.

  He was on holy ground. There had to be a reason the stories had lasted so many generations. His father and grandfather had never been to that place, he knew.

  Yax K’in noticed his two friends and Hamish at the summit of the mound.

  ‘Arthur will be happy,’ he thought. ‘He will have all the work he wants. And I hope, for his sake, that Michelle will be as happy.’ He was relieved. It was the beginning of the end, and the responsibility he and his ancestors had shouldered could now to be shared with his two friends from the Western world.

  Yax K’in returned and sat in the shade of one of the huts to wait for the others. He smoked a cigar and stared through the curls of smoke out over the green expanse of growing maize.

  The others returned. Michelle was again impatient. Arthur left her with Hamish and sat next to Yax K’in.

  Yax K’in broke the silence between them. Arthur knew that was unusual.

  ‘You must dig here.’

  ‘Why this place? It’s an unimpressive site. There are hundreds all over the lowlands.’

  Yax K’in stared at him with a searching, unfamiliar gaze. Arthur felt he was meeting Yax K’in for the first time.

  ‘There are ancient stories I have not told you,’ Yax K’in said.

  ‘I’ve heard most of them, I think,’ Arthur said, wryly. ‘There can’t be too many I don’t know.’ He picked up a broken piece of stone and turned it over. He peered closely at it looking for markings but it had none. He tossed it back onto the ground.

  ‘Yes. There are even stories you know that I haven’t heard,’ Yax K’in said. ‘That is true. But there are stories only I know. And that Pep’Em Ha now knows. They were told to me by my father. It was the same with my father and his father before him. The stories go back many generations, passed from one t’o’ohil to the next. They began with Hachakyum.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them to me, are you?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘No. I do not need to. They came from here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘While you were climbing I stood at a sacred spot. Hachakyum made this place so that it was forgotten but could be remembered by the t’o’ohil. I do not need to tell you the stories. They are here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘You must dig for them.’

  Chapter 26

  Pep’Em Ha, after she had delivered her message to Arthur, searched for Jim and her brother. She found them lounging outside Arthur’s hut, sitting at the white plastic table. Pep’Em Ha and her brother were dressed in Western clothes and the three of them would have not looked out of place as a mixed-race group of teenagers in Mexico City or Los Angeles.

  ‘What else is there to do?’ Jim asked as he leaned back into his chair. It wobbled, so he leant forward, worried that it may collapse on him. The chairs were old and worn.

  ‘What would you like to do?’ Pep’Em Ha asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jim put his forearms on the table and drummed his fingers. ‘You’ve never taken me into the jungle. I mean, right in.’

  ‘You haven’t been ready,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said.

  ‘Not ready?’ Jim exclaimed. ‘What do you mean?’ He rebelled at the idea of restrictions.

  ‘Yax K’in asked us to wait and to not take you or your grandfather into the jungle,’ Pep’Em Ha said.

  ‘Why not?’ Jim asked defiantly.

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother shrugged his shoulders. ‘How would we know?’ he said. ‘If my father says you’re not ready then, you’re not ready.’

  Jim stood up and pushed his chair back out of his way. He was annoyed. ‘Well, I think I am. Where is Yax K’in? I’ll go and ask him what’s his problem.’ He put his hands on the table as he waited for one of his friends to reply. He did not really want to confront the t’o’ohil.

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother laughed. ‘You would get lost in the jungle and be eaten by a jaguar. Or scared by a howler monkey.’

  ‘Jim has told me about his jungles in New Zealand,’ Pep’Em Ha said to her brother, in Jim’s defense. ‘I’m sure he would be all right here.’

  ‘Do they have jaguars in New Zealand?’ her brother asked Jim.

  ‘No. But neither do you anymore,’ Jim’s face broke into a broad smile. Pep’Em Ha’s brother laughed.

  ‘Yax K’in’s not here this morning,’ Pep’Em Ha said. ‘He’s gone with Arthur and Michelle.’

  ‘Is Hamish with them?’ Jim asked. He had an idea.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pep’Em Ha said.

  ‘Hamish wouldn’t miss out on a trip with Arthur,’ Jim said. He hung his head as he thought, his hands remained on the table. The table surface was a dirty off-white color with mottled darker stains from spilt food and drink and from the smoke of kerosene lamps.

  ‘Let’s just go then. Why couldn’t we?’ Jim said.

  ‘I could show you how to hunt for jaguars,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said.

  ‘Yeah right,’ Jim said laconically, in English. The two KulWinik understood and laughed.

  Yax K’in had asked Pep’Em Ha to ‘not take Jim into the jungle yet’. However, she thought, enough time had passed and Yax K’in’s ‘yet’ directive was no longer applicable. It made perfect sense to her.

  ‘But we should change,’ she said to her brother.

  ‘Why? It makes no difference,’ her brother replied.

  ‘Changed? Into what?’ Jim asked.

  ‘We should go dressed as KulWinik,’ she said.

  Jim did not understand.

  ‘It’s a respect thing,’ she said.

  ‘Should I dress like you?’ Jim asked. ‘Do you think?’

  Pep’Em Ha’s brother laughed. ‘You have a good KulWinik nose but your red hair would scare the jungle gods if they saw you dressed like us. It would make them angry and they would set the jaguars on to you.’

  Jim laughed too. ‘That would be good wouldn’t it?’ he said. ‘Then you could show me how you hunt them.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said, in English.

  ‘You don’t have to get dressed like us,’ Pep’Em Ha said.

  ‘I’m not getting changed,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother said petulantly. ‘There’s no point. You get changed if you want,’ he said to his sister. ‘I’ll wait here with Jim.’

  ‘Everyone wore tunics at the balche session. What’s the difference?’ Jim asked Pep’Em Ha’s brother.

  ‘My father is not here. That’s all the difference in the world.’

  ‘Would you like me to change, Pep’Em Ha?’ Jim asked, concerned for how she might feel.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly and stared angrily at her brother who ignored her. She left the boys and returned in ten minutes.

  ‘Your grandfather went in the car as well,’ she informed Jim.

  ‘Great. No interruptions,’ Jim said.

  Pep’Em Ha had dressed in the white KulWinik cotton tunic that covered her from her neck to below her elbows to below her knees. Her black hair was tied into a single ponytail that fell to her lower back. She wore simple open toed sandals and carried a sheathed machete that she wore diagonally across her back.

  Jim raised an eye at the weapon.

  ‘That’s for the jaguars,’ Pep’Em Ha’s brother laughed.

  Pep’Em Ha carried three water bottles. She gave one to Jim and another to her brother.

  The main path into the jungle, used by tourists mostly, began as a track wide enough for a four wheel drive vehicle. It narrowed imperceptibly as the three walked side-by-side until Jim had no room and he fell back to walk behind the others. The track narrowed further, and they were forced to walk single file, with Pep’Em Ha leading.

  The jungle path, at the beginning of their odyssey, let in some sunlight. It beamed onto the ground in patches of brilliance or highlighted the broad leaves of the undergrowth. However, the canopy closed over them as they continued and the bright
light retreated. The air became still, the humidity difficult. The path branched often and each time Pep’Em Ha chose the least used way. After they had walked for forty minutes the path had become a rarely used, arbitrary way through the forest.

  Jim asked her brother why Pep’Em Ha led the way.

  ‘She knows the way. And she can see things I can’t,’ her brother said. He quickly added, ‘Of course, I can see things that you can’t.’

  ‘Like what?’ Jim said incredulous. He thought they had been walking through jungle devoid of life.