He knew he’d have to tread carefully around Lamia – she was hypersensitive about her face for obvious reasons – but he couldn’t imagine her objecting that strongly to his interference. All he’d have to do was to make sure she didn’t think he was doing the thing just for himself – that some unconscious part of him found her face distasteful, perhaps, and wanted it changed to suit him. If she ever thought that, he’d be sunk.
Lamia and Calque ducked in under the shade of the plastic awning just as Sabir was perfecting his game plan. Sabir wondered what they’d found to talk about out there in the heat. Maybe Calque was doing his Big Daddy bit again and had been reassuring Lamia about her face and the guide’s weird reaction to it. Maybe he ought to consult Calque about his idea for the dermatology clinic? Calque could be a know-it-all asshole when he wanted to be, but he was also oddly wise in the ways of women.
Sabir ruefully acknowledged that for a man of his mid-thirties age range, he was wildly out of practice in terms of female psychology. Still. When he looked at Lamia and thought of her in his arms, his heart took a pleasant little turn around his chest – he hadn’t felt like that for years, and he found it a very satisfying emotion indeed.
Calque sipped from his can of Sprite, his eyes playing over Sabir’s face. ‘Give us the quatrain again.’
‘Do you want me to write it down for you?’
‘No. Write nothing down. The Corpus might catch up with us again. I’m sure they’d be more than happy to have everything presented to them on a plate.’
‘Okay. It goes like this:
“In the land of the great volcano, fire
When the rock cools, the wise one, Ahau Inchal Kabah,
Shall make a hinged skull of the twentieth mask:
The thirteenth crystal will sing for the God of Blood.” ’
Calque shrugged. ‘Well? What do you make of it? We’ve looked at the Temple of the Masks. By a sheer fluke we’ve established that there were originally 942 masks, just as there were 942 Nostradamian quatrains. My view is that this number linkage is just a ridiculous coincidence, and not worth wasting time on. Do you agree?’
‘Personally? No.’ Sabir glanced across at Lamia. He sensed that she did not have her entire concentration focused on the subject at hand.
He reached across the table and took her fingers in his. He kissed them, and then pressed them to his cheek. He saw the sudden change in her expression caused by his unexpected movement – she seemed to sway back into view again, as if returning from a faraway place.
Frankly, he was astonished at his own audacity. What deep wells had that come from? He had always considered himself inept with women, and here he was working from a part of himself that he had never hitherto known existed.
‘What do you mean, no?’ said Calque. ‘You think there’s some link between an obscure site in the Yucatan and a sixteenth-century French scryer?’
‘But, Calque. We already know there’s some link. You’ve heard the quatrain. It’s categorical. Nostradamus wasn’t making all that up about “Ahau”, “Inchal”, and “Kabah”. He even got the spellings right, give or take an acute accent – except when he was purposefully obfuscating, as with Inchal. Almost as if someone was looking over his shoulder when he was writing the verse and making sure he didn’t blow it. And remember this. The manuscript had been hidden for more than four hundred years in a waxed and sealed bamboo tube secreted in the base of a statue of Sainte Sara when we found it. Impossible to tamper with. Impossible even to know it was there without Nostradamus’s say-so. So yes. I think we need to take every possible connection between Nostradamus and this place seriously.’
‘So what’s our next move?’
Sabir shrugged. ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. We come back tonight, when it’s dark, and we lever out the twentieth mask in the wall with the help of a couple of tyre irons. What else can we do in the circumstances?’
56
‘They’ve come to a place called Kabah, Madame. It’s an insignificant site, well off the beaten track. This morning we watched them as they made a tour of the site. They seemed to pay particular attention to the Temple of the Masks.’
‘Were they alone? Or did they meet somebody?’
‘They were alone. Apart from a local guide who ran up and bothered them, and whom they subsequently employed.’
‘Have you talked to him?’
Abi hesitated, aware that danger loomed. ‘No. I didn’t think it necessary. It was obvious the man was employed by the site. He was lying there sleeping before Sabir and his little gang arrived.’
‘Maybe he was waiting for them?’
‘Madame, no. I really think not.’
‘Speak to him anyway. Do you understand me, Abiger?’
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Where have our trio gone?’
‘To a motel. Twenty kilometres down the road. But I have something else to tell you, Madame. Something of key interest, I believe.’
‘And what is that, Abiger?’
Abi cleared his throat. He didn’t know quite how the Countess was going to take this next piece of information. Still. He knew he had to give it up, or else one of the girls – Athame, maybe, who had always been close to Lamia – would simply get in there ahead of him and queer his pitch.
‘All the way down, the three of them have been sharing a room. Through fear, probably, of us breaking in on them’
‘Get to the point, Abiger.’
‘Now Calque, the policeman, has taken a room on his own.’
‘And Lamia?’
‘She is with the American.’
57
Lamia stood at the very centre of the small motel room and waited as Sabir got the fan going. The fan made a chopping sound, and then settled into a wheezing rhythm, thanks to its worn-out ball bearings.
She glanced at the twin beds. The late morning heat was already lurching in through the windows. She could feel the moisture gathering in the small of her back, then trickling down the gap between her underwear and the base of her spine.
‘Do you want to move on from this fly tip?’ Sabir was pacing the bounds of the room as though he was trying to memorize it. ‘The drive from Ticul to Merida would only take an hour or so. We could get ourselves an air-conditioned room in a modern hotel. You might be more comfortable.’
‘I don’t want to drive any more.’
‘Okay.’ Sabir stopped his pacing. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘It’s too hot to eat.’ She turned her face up to the fan. ‘Can you make this go any faster?’
‘I hardly dare. Let’s see though.’ He tripped the mechanism. ‘Christ. I think it’s going to take off.’
She laughed, and eased her dress away from her skin so that the air could circulate and cool her.
Sabir checked inside the bathroom. ‘There’s a tiled shower you could fit the entire Pats Football Team in. And we’ve got clean towels and soap. Things aren’t as bad as I thought. Shall I order some cool drinks?’
‘That would be nice, Adam. But who are the Pats? And why would they want to come into our bathroom?’
Sabir closed his eyes. ‘You really don’t want to know. Pretend that I never said it.’ He opened his eyes and flared them at the ceiling. ‘Okay. Maybe you do. They’re the New England Patriots. They play American football.’ He knew he was talking too much, but he couldn’t stop himself. He moved over to the telephone, shaking his head at his own stupidity. He raised the handset to his ear, then let it fall back into place. ‘Doesn’t work. I’ll have to go downstairs and put in the order personally. What do you want?’
‘Something sweet. A 7UP, maybe.’
‘Sure you don’t want a beer?’
Lamia cocked her head to one side and watched him. ‘A beer. That would be nice.’
‘Sol? Corona? Dos Equis? Negra Modelo? Pacifico?’
‘You choose, Adam.’
He hesitated, then headed for the door. As he passed her he stopped. He seemed about to say something, but
then he just reached out and touched her arm. He retrieved his wallet from his discarded jacket. ‘I’ll be back soon, okay?’
‘I’m going to take a shower. Without the Pats.’
He nodded absent-mindedly, not even picking up her attempt at a joke. ‘Sure you want beer?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll get some potato chips, too. And maybe some peanuts.’
She turned to him. ‘Adam. It’s all right. I came to this room of my own volition. I’m not regretting it. I’m not going to run away if you leave me alone for two minutes.’
Sabir took a deep breath. He reached for the door. Then he turned back and strode across the floor to where she was standing.
Lamia leaned forwards and rested her head against his collar bone.
Sabir encircled her with his arms and squeezed her against him. ‘I love you. I want to tell you this now. Before anything else happens.’ He swallowed, but his throat didn’t seem to be functioning to quite its usual standard. ‘I’ve never said this to a woman before. I’ve never felt remotely like this.’ He buried his face in the valley between her neck and shoulder, breathing her in.
‘I love you too. I wanted to tell you in the car, early this morning, but I thought you might not like me that way. That you might just be drawn to me in the normal way, because we had been travelling together. You still might be.’ She looked up at him, a fleeting uncertainty on her face. ‘I would understand that. You can make love to me, if you want, and then decide how you feel. You can tell me afterwards.’
‘I’m telling you now.’
‘Adam. You don’t have to go down for the beers, you know. Or the potato chips. Or the peanuts.’
‘I know. I’m not going. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’ He led her slowly to the bed. They stood facing each other. Everything was all right again with the world. Sabir felt like a man on a plane watching a shed-load of passengers streaming expulsively out through the main exit after an inordinately long and claustrophobic delay on the tarmac. ‘I liked it when you put on that dress yesterday. And the make-up. And the high heels.’
‘Why? What’s so different about a dress, and make-up, and high heels?’ She was teasing him.
He laughed. ‘You know very well why. Because they’re feminine. Because they draw attention to parts of your body that particularly please me.’
‘Parts of my body? Like what?’
Sabir hesitated, gauging her mood. Then he turned her around, so that her back was to him. He liked the way she was letting him toy with her.
He drew in a quick breath, like a surgeon faced with a particularly delicate stitching job. ‘The nape of your neck, for instance.’ He cupped her neck, enjoying the heft of her hair on the back of his hands. ‘And your shoulders. And your upper arms.’ He touched each element in turn.
‘What other parts of my body please you?’ She had a smile in her voice.
‘Hmm. Let me think. Your elbows. Your forearms.’ He touched each named part, taking pleasure in the feel of her weight against him – keenly aware, too, of the bed just below them, but in no hurry to urge her there.
‘What else? What else makes a woman different from a man?’
Sabir gave it a moment or two’s thought. ‘A man has no hips to speak of.’ He ran his hands down Lamia’s flanks. ‘But you do. I like how your hips flare out from the narrowness of your waist. Like this.’ He touched the indentation on each side. ‘Like a violin. I like how a dress accentuates that.’ He reached around her and let his fingers travel lightly down her upper thighs, then up again in a more forceful sweep from the back of her knee to her buttocks. ‘This is an area I particularly value.’
‘Oh really?’ Lamia’s breath caught as she uttered the words.
He went down on one knee behind her. ‘And then your calves.’ He allowed his fingers to trace the outline of her leg. ‘And those shoes you wore. With the high heels. I like the way they show off your ankles.’
‘My ankles?’
‘Yes. These.’ He reached down and encircled each one in turn with his hands. ‘But there’s more.’
‘More?’
He turned her around so that her belly was parallel to his face. ‘This is your belly. When you wear a skirt, it shows the little bump you have down there – the woman’s bump, just above your pudenda. I like that. It’s suggestive.’
‘Bump? Pudenda? Adam, really. You sound like a biology professor.’ She hesitated, stopping well short of what she had meant to say – desperate not to change his mood. ‘Suggestive of what?’
‘Of other things.’ He smiled, and rested his head against her stomach. He could feel the warmth of her against his cheek. Catch the scent of her – a mixture of clean clothes, perfume, and her own special scent, which he had first recognized in the brief instant he had carried her in his arms while they were escaping from their motel in Carlisle.
Lamia’s fingers wandered idly through his hair. ‘You like women, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you are wary of them?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
Sabir closed his eyes. He didn’t want to talk any more. Didn’t want to spoil the moment. But something forced him on. Some recognition that if he didn’t explain exactly how he felt, he would be cheating Lamia of something she had earned by right – his formal acknowledgment of a grace she had accorded him that no other woman had ever come close to providing. ‘Because of my mother. I watched her destroy herself, and take my father down with her. It hurt me every second of my life until she killed herself. Then it hurt more after that.’
‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Not when I’m holding you.’
‘Like now?’
‘Like now. I can’t think of anything but you.’
Lamia crossed her arms below her upper thighs and drew her dress slowly over her hips – over the swell of her breasts – around her shoulders. Then she uncrossed her arms as the dress rode over her head, freeing itself from the temporary prison of her hair. She let the dress float gently down onto the bed beside her.
Sabir stood up. They were still touching along the entire length of their bodies. He undid Lamia’s brassiere and let it fall onto her discarded dress.
She sat down on the bed. Then she allowed herself to fall backwards, like a rag doll. She looked up at him expectantly, laughter in her eyes.
He reached down and drew her panties over her hips – she had to wriggle a little to help him.
Then she was lying naked in front of him. Not covering herself. Confident about her beauty. Wanting him to admire her.
He consumed her with his gaze, and Lamia accepted it as nothing more than her due. Without taking his eyes off her, Sabir discarded his own clothes. Lamia’s eyes travelled quickly over his body as he undressed himself, and then up again to his face.
Sabir slid onto the bed alongside her.
They lay, facing each other, feeling the beat of the fan against their skin.
It was a long time indeed before Sabir bent forward to kiss her.
58
Oni de Bale slapped at the mosquito which was hovering just above his right eye. He flopped backwards against the tree and lathered some more ‘Scoot’ on himself. He wondered if the others were being eaten alive too?
They each had separate cars again now – Abi had taken advantage of Sabir and Lamia’s sex interlude that morning to send them all into Merida, to the nearest Avis drop-off point.
Now that was a strange thing. Never would he have dreamed of Lamia and Sabir getting it on together. Especially with Madame, his mother’s, virginity hangup. What was that junk from the Bible she always used to quote at them in an effort to get them – well, particularly Aldinach, let’s be honest – to behave themselves?
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth… And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of Go
d.
Of course in Aldinach’s case the target was both men and women – whichever was the opposite of whatever sex he had chosen to be that day. Convenient, that, when you came to think of it. It doubled the possible catchment area. Mind you, Aldinach wasn’t gay. Oni had to give the little nymphomaniac her due. She only worked on polar opposites. Never own sex. It was a sort of morality, when you came to think about it.
Anyway, much good Madame, his mother’s, virginity imprecations had done them. Rocha had fallen for her line, though, and look what had happened to him. But he was the only one, apart from Lamia – the rest of them rutted like rabbits whenever they could. And now here was Lamia obviously deciding that enough was enough, aged twenty-seven, and reeling old Sabir into her bed. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. With a face like hers you needed all the luck you could get in the jiggy jiggy stakes.
Oni knew all about it. The size he was, most females ran a mile, scared that he would squash them. All right, he wasn’t a disgusting fat pig like Asson, whom he had once seen consuming four pitchers of Ben amp; Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream at a single sitting, but he was upwards of seven feet tall, and most women reached just about as far as his navel. As a result, Oni had taken to hiring professionals, who weren’t put off by the – what did Aldinach call it? – outsize aspects of his persona.
Now Abi had ordered them all into the forest to watch the site at Kabah, and here was Oni, with his extra-large body surface – wasn’t it the Cathars who said that human skin connected us to the Devil? – serving as dish of the day to a particularly virulent variety of mosquito. Fuck it. Fuck it all to hell.
He reattached his night-vision goggles and focused them on Sabir’s back. The guy was busy counting the masks on the facade of the temple. Each time he came to one he liked, he fetched a sheet of paper out of his backpack and taped it over the mask. He’d covered five sections in this way already – only the single remaining upper section still to go. The paper shone up in the moonlight very well indeed – Oni had to allow the bastard that much.
The Mayan Codex as-2 Page 26
