The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  ‘I don’t understand, Abi. Why is that interesting? Why were you amused by that?’

  ‘Because it was a tic. And tics make people vulnerable.’

  ‘Vulnerable? Vulnerable to what?’

  ‘I left three full cups in there one day. Just before he came in.’

  ‘Yes. And so?’

  ‘I filled them with vodka, Vau. Pure vodka. Bulgarian Balkan 176 degrees proof – 88 per cent alcohol. Clear as a mountain stream. When de Gavillane threw them onto the furnace he started a fireball in the narrow space of the sauna cubicle you wouldn’t believe. Fourth-degree burns. The man came out looking like a peeled tomato. Blind. No ears, lips, or eyelids. His penis stripped like a papaya. He’s still in hospital more than fifty operations later. The man is so seized up with scar tissue that he can’t even scratch his own arse any more. That’s what I mean by coming at a thing from the side, Vau.’

  ‘It’s perfect, Abi. And no one can hold you responsible.’

  ‘The man did it all by himself. Any evidence got burned in the great flame-up. The club talked about nothing else for weeks. A lot of people had been pissed off by de Gavillane’s high-handed behaviour. Funny how someone else’s bad luck cheers people up.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, Abi? You usually have a reason.’

  Abi inclined his head. ‘Well you’re certainly on the button today, little brother. What I wanted to get over to you is that Madame, our mother, sometimes needs protecting from herself. She’s an old lady now. She’s not as with it as she used to be. If I sometimes seem to go against what she tells us, Vau, you mustn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Like in the case of de Gavillane?’

  ‘Exactly. She knew nothing about that. But when she heard what had happened to him, she was extremely pleased. She never asked me if I did it, but we both know she knew.’

  ‘She must have been really proud of you, Abi.’ Vau took a deep breath. ‘I wonder what that feels like?’

  Abi punched his brother on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Vau. You’ll know soon enough.’

  47

  ‘Looks like we lost them again.’ Sabir glanced down at the map. ‘We’ve got to decide fast. Do we want to take the coast road to Villahermosa, or do we risk the cuota? Put some more distance between us?’

  ‘What we do is stop this car right now and check for a tracker.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Calque. They haven’t been following us with any tracker. They just worked out which direction we were headed in, and spread out like a seine net to trap us. Lamia says that if Dakini’s here, all eleven of them are probably here by now. So they’ve more than enough manpower to do the job. Dakini just happened to luck into seeing us at Catemaco. They probably had her patrolling the coast road while the rest of them watched the cuota.’

  ‘I still think we should look for a tracker. Achor Bale used one on you and your friends during that trip you took down through France. So did we amateurs at the Police Nationale. The Corpus have doubtless all been trained in their use.’ He glanced at Lamia, but she contrived to ignore his leading question.

  Instead, she pulled the car over into a Pemex station, edging it around behind the shop so it wouldn’t be visible from the highway. ‘I need to wash and tidy up. I’ve just been driving for three straight hours over a cattle trail, through a mountain range, with my own family chasing after me, and I’m tired, and I’m irritable, and I probably smell. You both certainly do. If you men want to look for trackers, be my guest. But I’d appreciate it if you washed and changed into fresh clothes afterwards.’ She got out of the car, grabbed her overnight bag, and disappeared into the restroom.

  Sabir flapped his hand. ‘Women. It’s probably her time of the month.’

  Calque gave him a look.

  Sabir caught the look but chose to ignore it. It irritated the hell out of him when Calque grabbed the moral high ground for himself. ‘Come on then, Chief Inspector. Stop all your horse-arsing around. Let’s get this over and done with.’

  Calque groaned, and slid out of the passenger seat. ‘I’ll take the rear. It’ll most probably be in there. You take the front.’

  ‘You seriously think they broke into the car and planted a tracking device? And we didn’t notice or hear anything?’

  Calque straightened up from a stretch. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that they allowed us to get away just a little too easily, back there in Carlisle? And that they picked us up again, two and a half thousand miles later, just a little too easily too?’

  ‘With eleven of them potentially following us, according to Lamia’s calculations? No. That wasn’t the first thing that occurred to me.’

  Calque threw open the back hatch and began to feel his way around. Sabir did the same in front.

  After fifteen minutes, Lamia came back, holding a takeaway cup of coffee. She perched on the walkway watching them. ‘Any joy?’

  Sabir straightened up. ‘There’s no tracker in here. If they hid it, they hid it beneath the actual fabric of the car, and we’ll never get to it like this.’

  Calque shook his head. ‘No. They had neither the time nor the facility to do that.’

  ‘Then how about underneath?’

  Calque made a face. ‘People hide bombs underneath cars, Sabir, they don’t hide trackers. It’s not professional. The first major bump, the tracker would probably fly off. It’s just too great a risk. No. They’d have put it inside. And I’m convinced now that they didn’t do that. I think we’re in the clear again. For the time being, at least.’ Seeing Lamia eyeing up his shirt, Calque sniffed at his armpits, then flared his eyes, as if the smell had overwhelmed him. ‘They’ll be spreading out, though. Trying to edge ahead of us. All any of them has to do is look at a map, draw a few straight lines, and you can see which direction we’re headed in. It might as well be lit up by a strobe.’ He started to wipe his hands on his trousers and then thought better of it. ‘We probably should have zigzagged on our way down, but you can’t have everything. It’s taken us far too much time as it is. My view is that we should drive straight through the night and try to get to Kabáh in the morning. Lamia is exhausted. I’ll take the first four-hour stint, you take the second. The ones who aren’t driving, try and get some sleep.’

  Sabir nodded. ‘We’ll go and get washed up then.’ He cocked a finger in Calque’s direction, then picked at his own shirt with a mock sour expression on his face. ‘Lamia, will you buy us some junk to eat on the way? You know the sort of thing Calque likes. The stuff that normal, everyday people snack on. Chocolates, and crisps, and soft drinks with e numbers. Shit like that.’ Calque shuddered as if someone had just wiped their clammy hand down the small of his back. He stood watching Lamia as she made her way back to the tiendita. Then he cocked his head at Sabir. ‘Did you notice that, Sabir? She’s wearing make-up. And she’s put on a skirt and a fresh blouse and the closest approximation to a set of high heels I’ve ever seen her in. They’re called kittens, if I remember rightly. I’ve never seen her looking so feminine.’

  Sabir shrugged noncommittally. He was becoming adept at sliding out from under Calque’s elaborate traps. ‘Look. You were dead right to make us look for the tracker, Calque, and I was wrong. We’d have been made to look like complete fools if there was one in there. In fact you’ve been pretty much on the ball all the way along. I’m sorry, too, about what I said to you yesterday. All that shit about Lear complexes and daughter fixations. I don’t know what got into me. I was way out of line.’

  Calque gestured towards the tiendita with his thumb. Then he spread his hands expectantly, as if it were about to rain.

  Sabir followed Calque’s glance back towards the tiendita, a rueful expression on his face. He knew exactly where the conversation was heading. As usual, Calque had successfully set him up for the coup de grace. ‘I know you think that Lamia’s gone to all that effort just for me. But you’re wrong about us. I promise you that. We don’t hold out anything for each other. Lamia doesn’t even allow that I exist
most of the time.’

  Calque sighed. ‘Sometimes I think being a young man is the mental equivalent of snow blindness. How old is Lamia, Sabir?’

  ‘She’s twenty-seven. She told me so herself the other day.’

  ‘And how old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-four. Rising thirty-five.’

  ‘Still young enough to be a fool. Yet old enough to know better.’

  ‘What are you getting at, Calque?’

  ‘You have before you a beautiful woman who does not know that she is beautiful, Sabir. She is damaged. All her life she has seen how people look at her, and she has made some deductions about it for herself. And her deductions are these. I am not a normal woman, she says to herself, nor ever can I be. I am not worthy to be desired. If a man desires me it is because he feels pity for me, and I am a proud person, and I cannot tolerate this. So I will close myself down. Deny my femininity. Work on other aspects of myself that will make me feel valued instead. I shall learn languages. Read books. Study obsessively. Develop my brain. I will take the woman part of me and I will simply kill it off. That way I won’t be vulnerable. That way I can’t be hurt.’

  ‘Jesus, Calque. Where do you get all this stuff?’

  Calque jabbed at Sabir with his finger. ‘I have seen the way she looks at you, Sabir. You will be mindful of this one. You won’t hurt her. You will consider her feelings. It is not enough just to be a man, and follow your hormones, and not bother to feel the need to think. If you don’t care for her, show it. If you do care for her, show it. Or else I shall be very, very angry at you, and our friendship will be at an end.’

  ‘We have a friendship?’

  ‘Isn’t that what Lamia said we had?’

  ‘I guess it was.’

  ‘Then you would be a wise man to believe her.’

  48

  By the time you had passed through Santa Elena the hunger was giving you hallucinations. First you saw a small animal that looked like a dog, but which wasn’t a dog. It had a squared-off tail, and was grey all over. This animal watched you from the side of the road as you began walking. Then it followed you, darting in and out of the scrub at the edge of the highway. At one point you took out your machete and brandished it at the beast, but the creature lay hidden, perhaps anticipating your aggressive actions.

  Then, later, you saw a snake at the side of the road. It was emerald green. As you watched, it coiled itself back and tried to thrust itself towards you. But the snake didn’t move. This was such a curious thing that you edged closer to see what had happened to the snake. It was then that you saw that a vehicle had at some point driven over the snake’s tail. This had become glued to the road by the blood, leaving the snake both free and not free. It could curl itself and lash out, true, and act in every other way as a snake should. But the blood had long since dried, and the snake was effectively anchored to the asphalt until another vehicle happened by and completed the job that the first vehicle had started.

  This time you used your machete skilfully, as you used to do when you were cutting the pampas grass outside the cacique’s house. The snake assuredly felt no pain. But, nevertheless, you regretted its passing.

  You had already walked on some metres from the snake’s body when you realized that the creature contained meat. And that, freshly dead, it was of no use to anyone but the man who had killed it.

  You took the snake with you into the underbrush, and you made a small fire, and cooked the snake over the embers, spitted onto a stick. When you ate the snake, the meat was tender and soft, like a chicken’s flesh. You could feel the meat rushing through your body, overwhelming you with its protein. You stood by the side of the track down which you had taken the snake, and you vomited, your stomach spasming with the unexpected food.

  You stood for a long while, holding yourself. Then you reached down and picked up the parts of the snake that you had vomited out. Carefully, with great tenderness, you cleaned these parts and ate them a second time. On this occasion you managed to keep them in, for you knew that without food inside you, very soon you would die. And then the oaths sworn by your father, and your grandfather, and your great-grandfather, would come to nothing. Later, when it was time to be judged by the Virgencita, you would be found wanting, and she would get her son to condemn you to the purgatorio, where you would linger in the offal of your shame.

  After this thought you sat by the side of the road and you watched the cars flow past you for some little time. But eating the snake had not helped you. Neither had the vomiting. In fact you no longer had the strength even to raise your hand and ask for help. Dusk fell, and still you sat by the side of the road. You were seventeen kilometres from Kabáh, and you might as well have been seven hundred.

  Once, a Maya man walked past you, carrying a rifle. You raised your head. He stared at you strangely. These Maya were a curious-looking people, you said to yourself. Small, and round of face, with backward sloping ears, curved noses, and protruding bellies. Not thin and lanky like the mestizos from Veracruz. This man even wore his hair short, like a scrubbing brush. As you watched him the man sneezed, then cleared his nose onto the ground.

  ‘Jesus,’ you said, meaning it as a blessing.

  The man smiled, and pointed to his rife. ‘I am going to shoot a pheasant,’ he said. ‘Or failing that, an iguana.’

  ‘An iguana?’

  ‘Yes. They are very good to eat. Except in August and September when we cannot kill them.’

  ‘Why? Why cannot you kill them then?’

  The Maya laughed. ‘Because they turn into snakes.’

  ‘Madre de Dios.’

  ‘And not only that,’ said the Maya. ‘If we kill one during this period and then we marry, our wives will be vipers.’

  ‘It is October now. You may kill one then?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I will try to do that.’ The Maya started away. Then he stopped. ‘I have a triciclo. When I have killed my iguana, I shall come back this way. If you are tired, you may sit in the front and I will cycle you.’

  ‘Why will you do that?’

  ‘Why not? You are a tired man. You have come a long way. I can see that in your face. When I come back with firewood and an iguana you will tell me where you are going, and then you will share my meal. I live the time it takes to smoke two cigarettes further up this road. You are a foreigner here. You will be my guest.’

  You dropped your head between your knees as the man walked away into the woods. So the Virgencita had indeed heard your cry. And she had answered it.

  You were blessed.

  49

  It was one o’clock in the morning. The Cherokee was approaching the outskirts of Campeche. Calque was fast asleep in the back of the car after his four-hour stint at the wheel, and Lamia was curled up on the passenger seat, watching Sabir.

  Sabir stretched his hand out to switch on the car radio, and then thought better of it. He fiddled a bit with the air conditioning vents, then he adjusted the rear-view mirror. The last thing he wanted was for Calque to wake up again, or to go into snoring mode.

  ‘You’re a beautiful man, do you know that?’

  Sabir turned towards Lamia, a quizzical expression on his face.

  ‘Your profile. It is very beautiful. Like Gary Cooper’s. That is the actor whose name I was trying to remember. That is who you look like from the side.’

  Sabir was at a loss for words. No woman had ever spoken to him in that way before.

  Lamia looked out of the window. The lights from the Cuota road played across her features, alternately darkening and lightening them every fifty metres. ‘I have never let a man kiss me. Did you know that also?’

  Sabir gave a silent shake of the head. He didn’t want to break Lamia’s train of thought.

  She turned to him. ‘Would you like to kiss me?’

  Sabir nodded.

  ‘Then, when you wish it, I will not push you away.’

  Sabir stared at her. Without even realizing he was doing it, he let the car slow down
to a crawl.

  He stretched out his right hand. Lamia snuggled herself towards him and rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair, and squeezed her tightly against him. He was speechless. Quite incapable of uttering a word. His chest felt as if it were about to burst apart.

  He drove like that for some time, with Lamia curled against him. He was aware that she was watching him. Aware that her eyes were playing over his face.

  ‘How did you know?’ he said at last.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said anything. You knew that too?’

  She nodded. Then she tensed inside the circle of his arm. ‘My face. It doesn’t disgust you?’

  ‘I like your face.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He raised his hand to touch her, but she shied away from him.

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t push me away.’

  Lamia gave a deep sigh. Then she nodded, and let him touch her. Let him cup her face with his hand.

  ‘I’m going to stop the car and kiss you.’

  Lamia glanced behind her. ‘And Calque?’

  ‘Fuck Calque.’

  Calque was watching them from the shadows in the back of the car, a half-smile on his face.

  50

  ‘I think you need to tell us about the names, Lamia.’

  It was three o’clock in the morning and they were thirty miles from Kabáh, at the Hopelchén intersection. Sabir was still driving, and Calque had chosen that moment to pretend to wake up.

  Lamia glanced back at him. Her pupils seemed unnaturally large in the car’s interior gloom. There were no street lights any more, and for some time now they had been cutting through a seemingly endless section of wood and scrub, interspersed with the occasional plantation of blue agave and maize, and the odd slash-and-burn clearing intended for assarting or swidden farming.