‘And you? Are you ever wrong?’
Ixtab touched her heart. ‘I was wrong about you. I thought you would welcome the ceremony. I didn’t see the fear in you. The justified fear. That is unforgivable.’
Sabir nodded, more moved than he cared to admit by her obvious concern. ‘I don’t want to be a shaman. I don’t know any secrets. I’ve just met the woman of my life. All I want to do now is to take her back home with me and see if I can shuck off twenty years of thinking I’m an introvert – of thinking I’m some sort of a recluse – of thinking I don’t amount to anything.’
Ixtab said nothing. She just looked at him.
Sabir found her silence awkward, just as he was meant to. He hastened to fill it. ‘This has all become a massive red herring, you understand? If I’m honest, I came into it strictly for the cash. I wanted to be the guy that published Nostradamus’s lost prophecies. I wanted all the celebrity crap that would have come with it. If things had panned out the way they were meant to, I’d have appeared in a raft of documentaries. Done a few signings. Maybe even sold a movie option. Made a wad of cash, in other words. Instead, it got ugly. My Gypsy friends and I were unlucky enough to become entangled with Lamia’s crazy mother and her family of Devil-fearing freaks – without realizing it, I fell personally foul of the super freak, Achor Bale. It got so I was swimming way out of my depth. Last May I was nearly killed. This past week we’ve been running just ahead of the whirlwind again, and I’m tired of it. I just want to go home.’ He could feel Ixtab’s chocah drink calming him. Paradoxically, though, it was also making him more garrulous than he had intended to be.
‘And Lamia? How is she taking this? She seems uncomfortable.’
Sabir shrugged. ‘She doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s like the rest of us. We’re taking each day as it comes.’
‘Are you sure?’
Sabir nodded his head in slow motion. He felt drowsy and relaxed. A sudden wave of self-confidence surged through him, surprising him with its vehemence. ‘Sure I’m sure. I know her. She’s hurting. So she’s withdrawn inside herself. She let me take her virginity today – after holding off for twenty-seven years – and that will have destabilized her too. The whole thing’s scarcely surprising.’ He stopped dead, stunned at his capacity for indiscretion. Stunned at what his mouth was saying. ‘I don’t know why I just told you that.’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘I didn’t mean to when I started out.’ He looked suspiciously down at the empty gourd, and then handed it back to Ixtab.
She shook her head in reaffirmation that the drink didn’t contain anything untoward.
Now that he’d let the cat out of the bag in such a spectacularly tactless manner, Sabir reckoned that he might as well call the beast by its true name. ‘All her life Lamia’s never let a man come near her because of her feelings about her face. You realize that, don’t you? But she let me. And then all of a sudden I start to go crazy. No wonder she’s feeling a little vulnerable.’
‘Don’t you think you owe it to her to put all this to bed?’
Sabir laughed at Ixtab’s inadvertent use of the American idiom. ‘Is that some kind of a Freudian slip? Or are you getting around to trying to persuade me to go inside your damned touj again?’
Ixtab ignored his false levity. ‘You’re carrying something inside you, Adam. A secret. Something you don’t know what to do with.’ Ixtab fixed him with her gaze. ‘This is a burden to you. This is why you do not sleep. Not the other thing. Not the claustrophobia. Not the memories.’
‘How do you know I don’t sleep?’
Ixtab sighed. ‘Must I explain?’
Sabir shook his head. ‘No. I suppose not. I sort of know.’
‘Only sort of?’
‘I know.’
‘Then you have mastered the first step. Now you need to pass on to the second step.’
‘Oh? And what’s that?’
‘To find out what you don’t know.’
Sabir burst out laughing. ‘Oh that’s cute. That’s very cute. That’s right on the button, that is.’
‘Cute? What is cute?’
Sabir sighed. ‘Forget it.’ He gave a wry smile. He was slowly beginning to feel like a man again – the sort of man a woman like Lamia might conceivably have fallen in love with. He looked at Ixtab. He trusted her – there was no doubt about that. It was a deep instinct with him. This was a woman who would always choose the right path. Always guide you in the direction you needed to go. ‘I don’t know what was in that damned concoction of yours, but if you ever wanted to sell it on the open market, you’d make a fortune. I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I’m about ready to take a shot at your sweat-bath. If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m not sure. That’s why I reserve the right to make a second break for it anytime before I physically step inside the lodge. But this time around, you don’t follow me? Is that a deal?’
Ixtab returned his smile. ‘This time, if you run, I will not follow you. But you will not run, Adam. And later, you will sleep.’
89
The Halach Uinic shook his head. ‘ Datura? No. This is impossible. I may take it – or you, Ixtab – because we understand the extent of its toxicity, and know, too, how it has been grown, and the weather conditions that accompanied its growth. But for a gringo it is dangerous. The side effects can be extremely unpleasant and long-lasting.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘None of the others will do. We three must take it together. We need to communicate on the other side. We need to summon up the Vision Serpent.’
Sabir looked bewildered. The effects of the chocah were slowly wearing off.
The Halach Uinic turned to Calque and Lamia. ‘Here. Chew this peyote. Chew it for a long time. If you swallow it too quickly you will be very sick. Do not worry about the bitter taste – this is normal.’
‘Why should we take this?’
‘Because it facilitates transcendence. It will allow us to unify. To go on a collective journey. Ixtab has looked into your hearts. She feels that this particular substance is suitable for you both. Later on in the ceremony, you shall have another piece. The Chilan will drink from the cane toad mixture – this he has always done, so he is used to its effect. The guardian, because he is only part Indian, will drink the pounded seeds of quiebracajete, from the morning glory flower, which we shall mix with balche. He has told us he is accustomed to drinking pulque on market days in Veracruz – this will have no bad consequences for him, therefore.’
‘Why are you people taking something different from us?’
The Halach Uinic shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you because I do not know.’ He gestured towards Ixtab. ‘Ixtab is the midwife of our journey. We are in good hands. She has guided many people through the underworld. If any one requests it, she will give them syrup of ipecac , from the ipecacuanha plant, and they will vomit out anything that is left inside their stomach.’
‘Great. Excellent. We shall all become bulimics. This has been one of my ambitions for many years.’ Calque shook his head, as if he was standing amongst a group of madmen. He hitched his chin at Sabir. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?’
‘What do you think, Calque? Of course I’m not sure. But if I think about it any longer I’ll do another bunk. So here goes.’ Sabir glanced quickly at Lamia. Then he held his hand out to the Halach Uinic.
The Halach Uinic placed fifteen seeds in the palm of Sabir’s hand.
‘This is it?’
‘More would be dangerous. And unnecessary. When gringo kids take more, they end up schizophrenic. Their pupils enlarge for days, and they suffer from photophobia. Some become amnesiac. They are fools. They are simply concerned with gratification and not with knowledge.’
‘And this won’t happen to us?’
‘No. Not if you chew the seeds well. Not if you ask the right questions.’
Sabir poured the s
eeds into his mouth. The Halach Uinic did the same. So did Ixtab. Sabir saw that the guardian was drinking his mixture, as was the Chilan.
Calque shrugged and popped the peyote into his mouth. He began to masticate the pulp, a disgusted expression on his face, as if he were being forced to swallow a tablespoonful of castor oil.
Lamia was the last to make up her mind. She turned and looked into the darkness surrounding them for a very long time. Then, with a shudder, she placed the peyote on her tongue.
90
At first Sabir felt very little. It was almost as if the datura wasn’t working. Perhaps they’d given him a bunch of sunflower seeds to chew on by mistake? Every now and then he found himself stretching his hand out as if he were reaching for a cigarette. But he had never smoked. This fact struck him as strange.
The Halach Uinic’s voice droned on. He and the Chilan had been praying for over an hour now, and the sound had become like a sort of sonic wallpaper behind which Sabir could dimly make out the presence of other people. But the room was entirely dark – not a sliver of light entered from anywhere. Even the stones heating the air were dark – Sabir had assumed, for some obscure reason, that they would glow like household coal.
Thanks to the heat from the stones he was now sweating uncontrollably. He began to picture himself as a cold bottle of beer on a midsummer’s day. The thought of the beer made him want to salivate, but he found that he couldn’t produce any spit at all. He thought about asking for a glass of water and then decided against it. The idea of the seven of them sitting packed together around the stones and still not being able to see each other struck him as ludicrous in the extreme.
Every now and then there was a mild clattering and banging – the susurration of things being shifted and of liquid being poured. Sabir reckoned that this represented the sound of the Halach Uinic, Ixtab, and the Chilan arranging their offerings in the dark. Each had brought with them various vessels filled with deer blood, sacpom resin, and certain other accoutrements, while Ixtab, as usual, had been carrying her shamanic bag of tricks.
Sabir began to muse on what was secretly hidden inside Ixtab’s bag. A powder compact? A lipstick? A cell phone? He began to giggle at the thought of Ixtab as some sort of super-urban Maya princess. The idea was so absurd that he felt an overwhelming urge to communicate it to the assembly at large so that everyone else could appreciate it too. But for some reason he found himself unable to speak.
Slowly, Sabir began to realize the full enormity of what was happening to him. He no longer felt remotely claustrophobic. In fact he had not felt claustrophobic since entering the sweat lodge. This fact struck him as so absurdly unlikely that he began to search around inside his head in a vain effort to reclaim the comfortably ingrained emotions of fear he had now so palpably lost track of. But try as he might, he couldn’t reconnect with them. Was it someone else who had been claustrophobic, then, and not him?
He felt around with his fingers, anxious to know who was sitting beside him. The process was a difficult one, however, as he did not wish to invade anyone else’s privacy. By a process of elimination, he decided that the Halach Uinic was sitting directly opposite him, with the Chilan on the Halach Uinic’s left, and Ixtab on his right – the sounds of praying were coming from over there, and they were site specific. This left the guardian, Lamia, and Calque as his potential next-door neighbours.
Sabir lowered his nose and began sniffing. For some reason he felt that he ought to be able to tell who was sitting next to him simply by their smell. This seemed entirely reasonable, to his way of thinking, and he was surprised that more people didn’t use the procedure in the ordinary run of their lives. He had a sudden clear vision of approaching people on the street and sniffing at them. Of discovering their secrets that way. Whether they were menopausal, on heat, full of testosterone, angry, in love, etc., etc. Someone or something had come up with this theory before, but he couldn’t remember who or when.
‘It was dogs!’ he screamed, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice.
The Halach Uinic and the Chilan stopped their chanting.
‘I knew it. Dogs go around sniffing.’ Sabir raised one hand to his face in yet another cigarette-smoking movement. He swept the hand out in an arc, like an over exuberant actor, then stopped abruptly when he felt some resistance. But the resistance wasn’t physical. He was only inferring it. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ He had forgotten to use the person’s name, but he suspected it was Calque.
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘I knew it. I nearly hit you.’
‘You were a long way off. You were nowhere near me.’
‘Oh yes?’ Sabir allowed himself to flop backwards. He lay, looking up at where the roof was supposed to be – but it might as well have been the floor for all the evidence it gave of its existence. ‘Can anyone tell me why I’m here?’
The Chilan and the Halach Uinic began their chanting again.
Sabir decided that he would go to sleep.
91
Athame had been lying without moving for close on three hours. During the whole of that time, the Halach Uinic and the Chilan had only stopped their chanting once, when someone – she supposed Sabir – had shouted out something about dogs.
She had taken to working on one part of her body at a time. Small movements. Flexions and tensions. Tiny spasms of the muscles designed to keep the blood flowing around her body and to protect her from cramp. She wondered how much longer she would have to suffer this torment for the sake of – well what? Nobody had said anything worth missing supper for so far.
At one point her cell phone began to vibrate. Fortunately for her, the bass-baritone droning emanating from the Chilan and the Halach Uinic, with the occasional contralto interjection from the witchdoctor woman, more than compensated for its sound, and Athame was able to dampen it with her hand until it switched itself off. She had arranged with Abi that he only let any of his calls run for two rings – if she didn’t answer, it meant that she was otherwise engaged. This foresight had now saved her from the embarrassment of premature discovery – a discovery which would have forced her to act in a manner directly contrary to Madame, her mother’s, wishes. Athame was sufficiently level-headed to realize that in those circumstances Abi would gleefully have fed her to the dogs, transferring all responsibility for his own maverick actions onto her head.
Once, when the chanting became especially raucous, Athame achieved a partial change of position, turning from facing the wall to facing outwards. What were these people thinking of? Why were they all sitting in a pitch-dark space chanting nonsense? She began to regret her super-smart, on-the-hoof idea of sneaking inside. Now, given the impossible situation she had contrived for herself, she knew that she would have to see the thing through until the bitter end.
She silently prayed that Abi might somehow be able to deduce what had happened to her, and detail one of the others for skull and codex duty.
92
The temporary camp had gone quiet. People were either curled up on the ground or sleeping in hammocks they had strung up between the trees. Some had attempted to build bivouacs out of palm fronds and plastic sheeting, but most seemed content to lie out beneath the stars.
Abi had the entire area covered. With Oni and Berith back at the warehouse, he still had Vau, Rudra, Aldinach, Alastor, Athame, Asson, Dakini and Nawal to police the temporary camp. Each was in contact with him via their cell phone, and each was covering one particular section of the camp.
Thanks to Aldinach – who was in fully female distaff mode at the moment for reasons best known to himself – he knew to an inch where the skull and the codex were. Thanks also to Aldinach’s intuitive genius in policing areas he was not directly responsible for, he also knew that Athame was hidden somewhere inside the sweat lodge, cosying up to all the major players.
He had cursed Athame’s impetuosity at first – what had she been thinking of, putting herself in imminent danger of detection? But once he’d calm
ed down and began to think rationally about the whole thing, he started to feel better. He’d tried her once on the phone, moments before Aldinach had told him where she was hiding, and if that degree of buzzing hadn’t give her away to the sky pilots, he reckoned nothing else would.
Madame, his mother, had also telephoned earlier. Sensing that the whole affair was now entering its final phase, she had recently taken to calling him every hour on the hour. Abi felt a deep sense of satisfaction, therefore, that he had been in a position to tell her pretty much the entire truth about their situation. They were doing exactly what she had asked them, after all – monitoring events with no direct intervention. No one, bar Athame, had made anything like a proactive move. No one was going against her wishes. Yet.
Abi knew that the Countess was disturbingly adept at discerning lies. He had stuck to the strict letter of the truth, therefore, in a desperate effort to stave off the evil day. He wanted to be able to report total success to her: the securing of the Maya codex and the thirteenth crystal skull; the identity and geographical location of the Second Coming and of the Third Antichrist; and the gruesomely drawn-out murder of Adam Sabir, for which he had already earmarked Aldinach and her deliriously transformational scalpel – then, and only then, might he expect to be forgiven. The deaths of Joris Calque and Lamia would simply add an extra layer of icing to the celebratory cake.
He looked at the time on his cell phone – 2.30 in the morning. He’d better get on with it. People woke up early here, and he reckoned some might be moving by as soon as four o’clock, if they needed to get to distant places of work.
He began the necessary round of telephone calls.
93
The snake was approaching him again. The same snake he had seen whilst imprisoned in the cesspit below the Maset de la Marais safe house waiting for Achor Bale’s return.
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