A Signal Victory

by David Stacton

  The last boat put off from the shore. It contained Davila, the three Montejo’s, and an old priest who had been lifted through the surf with his arms around the neck of a barelegged sailor, his rosary clacking at his waist. The boat rowed out towards the ship, it grew smaller, and no one in it looked back. Perhaps they felt too bitter to look back. The cities of Yucatan still stood everywhere, a little battered, but still white and splendid. But all they had built, even the wretched churches, dismantled and already cracking, would wash away in the next rains.

  The sails billowed out, and the ship disappeared. The sea was empty again. It was as though they had never been.

  Though he knew it could not be this way for ever, Guerrero felt a thrill run up his legs, and a lump in his throat. It was good to have the world back again. Nachancan was dead, but there were many lords with whom, now, he could take service. He could even go back to Bacalar or Chetumal. The Maya would not rebuild them, for they did not rebuild cities which had been desecrated, but they would certainly build another nearby. With his elder son, he began the long journey, across the peninsula, in search of his wife and daughter.

  There was no hurry. Everything would be good now.

  And so he did not hurry.

  The provinces were now free, but it took a while for that flood of bellicosity to sink back into peace. With so many men in arms, there were small raiding parties everywhere, to stock the altars. One cacique was not above taking advantage of another. But Guerrero and his son now had the friendship, for a little while, of everyone. It was three weeks before they approached that hidden village where his family was.

  Guerrero felt shy. It was two years since he had seen his wife and daughter. His daughter of course would be unrecognizably older, but his wife as always would be the same. He was sure of that. But he was not the same. He was forty-seven and he had aged. He was still a handsome man, still muscular, he thought he could still please her. But simply because he wanted so much to please, he could not help but feel shy. It is the little boy locked up inside us who always wants to be welcomed home, and little boys in that state are almost always shy.

  Sometimes we are allowed to visit the human race. One is grateful for the favour, but doubly careful, therefore, not to overstay one’s welcome. Hospitality is so agreeable a thing that one does not want to see either its reasons or its other face. He had seen both, but did not care. One is always a stranger, but he had been allowed to stay on for life. He had had to change worlds to find his own, but he had found his own, and now for a while he might keep it. That made him very happy.

  He had sent ahead a messenger to warn Ix Chan, and had had no answer, but that did not worry him. The last two days he had moved so rapidly, that the messenger had probably not been able to find him, and besides, to see her again would be answer enough.

  The country was sparsely populated. He made rapid progress, slept, and early the next morning found himself on a hill behind the little bay. It had rained in the night. All the colours were crisp, the green, the white, the blues and zircons of the sea. The village was hidden from him, but there was a single fishing canoe, far out, towards the passage to the Caribbean at the head of the bay. The tide was coming in. He could see the darker colour pushing there, against the lighter shades within. The bottom was sand, so that the surface sparkled with a mottled, jewelled light. It was very still that morning. Even the tall dry forest was still.

  He started down the hillside trail. It was not until he reached the bottom, that both he and his son began to feel that something was wrong.

  There was no one about. There were none of the early sounds of a village. There was something definitely wrong.

  They came to the village itself. It was made of thatch, with one stone building. The building was where his wife would have been lodged. They went inside.

  It was empty and deserted. The fire was out. They looked at each other and hastily ransacked the other huts. In those fires still burned, though very low on their coals. It was quite clear what had happened, if not why. Everyone had fled.

  They went down to the beach. The sand was loose and dry. They could see the canoe approaching, borne back to shore on the tide. They could not see who was in it. They began to shout.

  The effortless waves lapped two inches high on the shingle. The canoe came closer. There was no one in it but an old woman.

  They seized the prow of the canoe, and helped her out, while she shrank away from them. She had been headed for the open sea, though she had a catch beside her, but the tide had turned her back, for she was too weak to paddle against it. She was very frightened. Clearly she knew who they were.

  At last they made her understand she would not be hurt. Then they got the story out of her.

  It was Lerma, with his need for slaves. His ship had appeared outside the reefs a month ago, and the villagers had watched its long boat come in. The place was obscure. They had not known what was happening. They had had only a moment to flee.

  The headman had not been able to flee. The Spaniards had caught him in his hut, into which he had moved, leaving the stone house to Guerrero’s wife.

  Every man has an enemy, no matter what he does, for some men are born for enmity. It is their only means of self-expression. The headman had been well paid. He had also had to move out of his house to make room for Ix Chan. He was a great man in his own village, but that did not please him. It only left him with a hatred of anyone bigger.

  Besides, it was a matter of sell others, or be sold himself. He knew what slavery meant. Lerma’s men had at last heard of that renegade and turncoat Christian, Guerrero. Besides, Guerrero was far away. A lot of things could happen, and the headman had his own villagers to think about. So he made a bargain. If they would go away, he would give them the renegade’s wife and daughter. The Spaniards accepted.

  The headman sighed with relief and moved back into his own house. And now, said the old woman, as soon as the messenger came, they had all fled.

  Guerrero let her go. She was not to blame. There was nothing to do. He could only look at the empty water. They had rowed Ix Chan out that way, with his daughter. They would not put her in the mines. There would be no point in that. But there are other things men can do to women. Where had they sold her, and to whom?

  Had they branded her, as the Spanish branded a thousand Maya, while the friars stood by to see the thing was done, never mind about the violated flesh, or their feelings, their pride, their integrity, with a proper respect for their souls?

  Or had she killed herself? A woman like that would not want to live in that condition. That was what she would have done, and to her daughter too.

  He stood there, and stood there, his eyes bulging, staring out at the water, which he could not even see.

  Her name had been Ix Chan. His daughter’s name was Ix Ceh, the deer who looks over its shoulder. When you see such a deer, it is an omen of parting and loss. And the little deer of Yucatan, who step so fastidiously through the underbrush, have soft muzzles and warm liquid eyes. When they look at you they are so confiding, so skittish, and so serious.

  He could not even cry.

  FOUR

  XXVIII

  It turned him into a madman. But then madness in a man of that calibre is not true madness, that bad inheritance which makes the defective so easy to tip over. It was instead a defence mechanism, a piece of self-indulgence, to protect him from the truth that life is not kind, that we are other men’s means, that we cannot act for ourselves, that we are the sum of what we do. For though there is no punishment in this world, and no original sin, still what happens to us is worse than any punishment, deserved or undeserved. If we are lucky, we are bored, and that is horrible, but if we are unlucky, we can no longer enjoy ourselves, and that is far worse.

  And yet there is a pleasure in pain. When we have lost the vigour to get rid of ourselves, in some seminal gush, then pain gives us that escape back again, as an implosion, muffled, but still exquisite. One cannot admire him
much during those years. And yet one can understand him. Madness gave him strength, and he needed strength, for he was forty-nine.

  It also made him a little vain. He now believed that he had seen through everything, as though any man had that much ability. That meant that life was no longer possible. He accepted that, for it was easier to accept it than to reject it. But there remained the imitation of life, and that was far, far better than nothing. Indeed it was all that stood between you and nothing.

  In short, like most of us, even in madness, he held on. It is an insight into our fundamental belief in the finality of death, that almost biochemical and involuntary urge to hang on, no matter what fairy tales we tell ourselves about the afterlife.

  We are quite willing to believe there is one. There is a heaven and a hell, we say. We shall meet in the afterlife.

  But we know perfectly well there is not one. Once the loved are gone, they are gone for good. So are the unloved. And so we hang on.

  We remember. Even when it is impossible, that makes life possible.

  He was alone now. His son had gone out to hunt down the headman. But there was no point in hunting down the headman, for he had lost everything. When you lose everything, you do not want revenge. You want the dark to hide in.

  He could not even have that. He was a hero. He was the only one remaining of an extinct, but once secure state. He had become Chetumal. He had also been their saviour. Everywhere he went he saw a new faint hope, which he found pathetic, but still, it was there.

  They did no building. They had lost both the impulse and the art. But they were busy putting life back where it had been before, dusting it off, seeing what it had really been worth, seeing it again as always, for the first time.

  He found it heart-breaking, because he could see the underlying timidity in it. History had lost them their assurance.

  Yet it did not break his heart. He understood it, he sympathized, but it no longer moved him, for there comes a time when we have felt too much and can feel no more. In self defence we outgrow the passions. We determine never to feel them again, and then discover, once that decision has been reached and then outgrown, that we are trapped by it. Simply because we did decide so, it is true, we cannot feel passion any more, even though once more we want to. For something has gone wrong. Our bottom has turned shallow. Our feelings no longer break over us in waves, they are instead a constant undertow, which, though nothing appears on the surface, waits there, to drag us down, should we ever break that surface again and try to breast our old emotions.

  For two years he wandered, from cacique to cacique. He had no purpose, no plan, except to fight the Spaniards, but there were no Spaniards to fight. It was all too much for him. He did not understand what life had become for him. Now when he sat eating or talking, he could see himself eating or talking, with a sort of detached horror, that made him wonder who he or anybody was.

  He drank too much. He tried not to see. But he could not help but see. Everywhere he went, he was accompanied by that imitation of himself, who ate, and drank, and talked, and advised, and seemed alive, but had nothing to do with himself, for he was not alive. Sometimes, these days, merely to go through the motions of living maddened him, as the irrational always maddens us. Simply to watch himself alive was like a taunt.

  For the first year he had no news of his sons. He did not even ask.

  And then one long afternoon, in what was perhaps 1535, he found himself on the bay, close to the ruins of Chetumal. The Maya had not rebuilt them. Only a few fishermen lived there now. He looked at them almost fearfully, and then went on.

  But something turned him back.

  Timidly, a little rheumatically, with a sense of wonder for what he had once been and was not now, he wandered into the city. That which the Spanish had not torn down still stood. That which they had built, was a heap of confused ruins.

  Here was the palace of Nachancan. It was already going back to the jungle. A tree had rooted behind the dais on which his father-in-law had sat, and already the sapling had pried apart the stones.

  In his own wing, the tattered curtains still hung at the doorways. He ripped them down. Ix Chan had lived here. His sons and his daughters had been born here. Their coming of age had been celebrated with music in this court. Now it was dusty. There was no music.

  He fled outside.

  It was the same everywhere in the city. And yet he could not leave.

  He was determined to sleep in the room he had always slept in that night. After all, there are such things as ghosts. Perhaps the dead do come back.

  But he could not bring himself to sleep. He wandered until dusk fell. It became dark. And if only he had seen somewhere in all those weed-choked streets, even a silly fat plump hairless dog, sitting in the midst of nothing, waiting, it would have helped a little, for they were all here, even though they were not here. It would take the presence of something living to abolish them.

  Then he saw a light. It was pale, and indistinct, and wavering, but it was there, high up, on the platform of the main temple, facing the sea.

  He stared at it for a long time. Then, hesitantly, he put his foot on the first riser and began to climb. They were cunning, those stairs. He had forgotten. They were designed to straighten the spine, and they did. For a moment he felt like a younger man, in an earlier year. He began to climb more rapidly. The bay sparkled in the moonlight as it always had, but in all that city he saw no other light.

  He went on up, and reached the platform.

  Though the temple had been too well built to tear down, the Spanish had smashed the idols and scrawled crosses on the walls. They had even rolled the sacrificial stone out of place, and it rested, teetering, on the edge of the platform. He had no idea why they had not cast it down.

  It wobbled there, on the edge of space, in the balance, and yet somehow it did not pitch over. Out of sheer despair he kicked it, and listened while it plunged below. As soon as he had done so he felt sorry, and looked fearfully towards the shrine. One should never harm any of the good. It is too much like throwing a scene in a sick room. Though ill, they were still powerful, and no matter what happened to them, they would have heirs. They always have heirs.

  He could hear the crackle of burning incense, and, as the wind shifted, caught its acrid smell. He went into the shrine and found it empty. A low lamp was burning, and the incense ball glowed in its brazier. Not all the statues had been smashed. The stone image of Ah Puch was still in place. The Spanish had stolen his golden bells, but had not been able to move him. Crouched, his figure rose up, palms outward, above the smashed fragments of terra cotta and stone, still the master of Mitnal the ninth and lowest underworld. He was the god not of ritual sacrifice, but of inevitable death. Who could be worshipping him now?

  The coals in the brazier subsided and collapsed and then flared up again. They gave only a little warmth, but they had not been deserted long. Guerrero walked round the platform.

  On its sea side, in shadow, huddled against the wall, he saw a tattered priest, dressed as though to perform a sacrifice, and painted. He would not answer but drew away. Guerrero hauled him to his feet, and saw that it was his own younger son. He let go of him at once.

  But the boy did not seem to recognize him, and would not leave the shrine. He seemed dazed. There was nothing Guerrero could do. He could not even make him speak.

  It was a shock. The Maya did not go mad. That was not one of their diseases. Neither could they bear any physical uncleanliness, and the boy was filthy, his ears ragged and bloody with daily sacrifice. He even smelled of stale blood. European priests went mad that way, ascetic and filthy. But the boy had never heard of Europeans.

  What did he want? What was he praying for?

  There was nothing to do but leave him there. Guerrero went down the temple stairs, and wandered back across the deserted plaza to the palace. His skin prickled and he was worn out. Loneliness had become such a familiar ache that nowadays he only noticed it when he was in compa
ny. He did not notice it when he was alone any more.

  He went into Ix Chan’s quarters, and at least, when he was asleep, he could lie there with a memory. He would never see her again. Most of the time he did not even think of her any more. But he would never not see her, either.

  Outside the slippery magenta-thighed tree frogs began invisibly to chirp. The night was so empty and so wide.

  The sunlight woke him, and though he had moved about mechanically now for over a year, it was damp here. He could not rise. He was hungry, and yet he did not want to eat. He wished he had brought a servant. Even the mechanical giving of an order made it possible to keep face. He lay staring at the sunlight, the weeds on the terrace outside, a spider web hanging in a corner. It took so long these days to make the body move. One could no longer move oneself. One was reduced to telling the body to move for one.

  He went to the doorway, and looked out, one arm against the jamb. And then, there was no reason to stay. He went down to the court, remembered his son was out there, somewhere, and sat heavily down on a stone. Even the sunlight was not yet warm.

  He did not know how long he sat there. The court had been whitewashed just before they had had to abandon the city. The whitewash was powdery, but thick, and still reflected a hard glare. The sun struck full against it.

  The surface of the wall was irregular. As he watched, part of it rocked, and began to move. A very small part, no bigger than a knuckle-bone, edged out and began to climb slowly down. He stared, not quite understanding. Where it had been was a dirty spot on the whitewashed glare. The little knob moved painfully down, and something behind it glistened.

  He jerked awake, got up, and went over. The blob was a foot from the ground. He reached out and picked it up, turning it over in his hand. He must have looked at it for a long time, while something clicked into place inside him.