The Mayan Codex

by Mario Reading

  Acan allowed himself to collapse back onto the ground again. He took a languid sip of his Coca Cola, and then set himself back to thinking about his girlfriend, Rosillo, and what he might do to her, come Saturday night, if he could only persuade her to drink just a little of his aguardiente stash.

  54

  Acan awoke from his doze at a little after ten o’clock in the morning. Gringos were coming – he could hear the confident boom of their voices from a hundred metres away.

  The arrival of gringos was not, in and of itself, strange, as Acan knew that most of the small trickle of people who ever bothered to visit Kabáh were gringos of one sort or another. Most visitors to the Yucatan, however, chose the more famous tourist destinations of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal instead, leaving Kabáh to wallow in its peaceful backwater isolation.

  These gringos had a US registered car, though – Acan had very good eyes, and he could make out the number plate in the scant parking lot that serviced the site. And this was strange in itself. It meant that the gringos had driven many thousands of kilometres to reach here. Unless, of course, they lived in the country for part of the year, as some gringos did, and merely drove their car down for convenience sake.

  Acan shook his head. He glanced over to his right. The mestizo was also interested in the gringos. As Acan watched, the mestizo took the bag that he had been using as a pillow, and hid it behind the trunk of the carob tree, as though he feared that the gringos might steal it. And that was also a strange thing. Why should the mestizo fear that the gringos might steal what he had? Surely, it would be the other way around? Mestizos were terrible thieves, or so his father had warned him when he became interested in a mestizo girl, one time.

  ‘Maya marry Maya,’ said his father. ‘If Maya marry half-Spanish thieves, they lose their souls and the nawal gets them.’

  Acan had soon lost interest in the mestizo girl anyway, the first time he saw Rosillo working in her juice booth. Now she was a little piece of paradise, that girl. And Maya, too. His father wouldn’t dare call her a thief.

  Acan decided to take a closer look at the gringos. He got up, stretched, and sidled over to where they were standing, admiring the Palace of the Masks.

  ‘Do you guys need a guide? I’m an expert on this place. I can tell you everything. If you pay me in US dollars and not pesos, I can tell you even more.’

  The younger man laughed, and turned towards the woman, inviting her opinion. It was then that Acan saw the woman properly for the first time. He felt himself go cold, and his neck and arms prick up in goose-bumps.

  One side of her face was covered in a veil of blood.

  Acan grabbed hold of his shoulders for comfort, forcing his thumbs between the index and middle fingers of his hands – this phallic gesture, of the thumb as penis and the fingers as the vagina, had been taught to him by his mother as a talisman against curses.

  Acan was briefly tempted to cross himself too, but then he remembered what the Halach Uinic always said about old Christian habits, and how they diluted true belief – true openness of mind. God was God. Hunab Ku was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was Itzam Na. God was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was God. God was both Hunab Ku and Itzam Na. In other words God was the same God for everyone. He did not belong to one religion more than any other. You did not own Him simply by giving Him a name.

  The woman was looking at him strangely, and Acan realized that he was still gripping his shoulders like a young girl trying to protect her breasts from public gaze. He dropped his hands and attempted to smile.

  The woman sensed his fear, however. Sensed that his throat had dried up. That he could barely swallow. This much he knew. Please God his talismanic gesture of the thumb between the two fingers had worked, for he also knew from his mother that this movement represented the dried-out and impotent penis being restored to life by the moistness of the vagina. In this way only could the evil eye be counteracted by the natural scheme of the earth.

  Acan shivered, and turned to the older man of the group. Perhaps he would make a decision for them all? Acan wanted to be back underneath his tree. He wanted to drink half a litre of Coca Cola, very quickly, and very cold. Then he wanted to go and find Rosillo and tell her all about the gringa with the bloodied face. Maybe he would even get Rosillo to pass a raw egg over him, then crack it into a bowl of water and examine it. In this way would the mal de ojo be absorbed into the egg. Later, Acan would cover the bowl with straw and sleep with it underneath his pillow.

  The older gringo cleared his throat. He tried a few words in Spanish, and then shook his head when he realized that Acan could not understand him. The old gringo’s English, too, was very poor indeed, but at least one could make out his basic meaning.

  ‘Five dollars, then? And you take us around the site and explicate everything to us?’

  ‘Sure, papi. Sure. I do that. Only you give me what you want at the end. What you think I deserve. Maybe less than five dollars. Maybe more. Okay?’

  The older man laughed. ‘Okay.’

  Acan could see out of the corner of his eye that the younger man had his arm around the woman and was talking softly to her. He didn’t dare turn back and look at them directly. He couldn’t trust himself.

  He pointed up at the great facade of masks confronting them. ‘Here you see the Codz Poop. Also known as the Palace of the Masks. It is dedicated to Chaac, the rain god of the Maya. It is he who splits the clouds with his lightning axe, and fills the cenotes throughout the dry season.’ Acan’s voice had taken on the sing-song automated note of the professional guide.

  ‘Do you know how many masks there are? Or at least were?’

  Acan searched his memory – it was a long time indeed since he had guided anybody in this spot. ‘Before the destruction there were 942 masks. Or so they say. You can see where the second line of masks would have been. Now there are only 500 left. The number 942 held a special significance for the Maya.’

  ‘What significance? I’ve never heard anything about the number 942.’ This was the younger gringo. The man holding the woman with the bloodied face. ‘We know 365 was a key number for the Maya, being the number of days in their solar year. Also 260, being the approximate span of parturition. But 942? It doesn’t make any sense.’

  Acan felt raw and on the defensive after his unexpected reaction to the gringa’s mal de ojo. Why was this young gringo pushing him so hard? What did he want? Was he still angry about Acan’s reaction to his woman? ‘We no longer know. The secret has been lost with the destruction of nearly all our painted books.’

  ‘The codices, you mean?’

  ‘That word I do not know. But of all the books, only three, and the fragment of a fourth, are left intact. It is the greatest sorrow of the Maya people. These books contained our history. And the Spanish priests destroyed them.’

  The older man with the strange accent was frowning at him. ‘Bishop Diego de Landa. July 1562. He tortured and killed all the Maya Chilans and notables. Then he destroyed five thousand cult objects and twenty-seven books. Thus the Black Legend. La Leyenda Negra.’

  Acan looked away. ‘I know of no such Black Legend, Señor. All I know is that the Spanish priests tortured and killed any person they believed to have gone back to the old ways of thinking. And the Monsignor Bishop did not destroy twenty-seven books, Señor. He destroyed ninety-nine times twenty-seven books. The Halach Uinic has told me so, and he knows about such things. Later, the Catholic Church explained to us that the Monsignor Bishop was really being charitable when he destroyed the history of our people. He was trying to protect us from ourselves.’

  Acan had no idea why he was describing all this to the gringos. Had he gone crazy? When he had been a guide here, five years before, he had never gone into things with such detail. But the stories of the Halach Uinic were fresh in his head, and the sight of the woman had unsettled him. At this rate the gringos would tip him one dollar, not five, and kick his ass into the bargain.

  ‘That is terrible.’

  The
woman had spoken for the first time. Acan could feel her gaze piercing through the back of his neck.

  ‘Asi es la vida. My grandfather always said that to have the Spanish as friends was far worse than to have them as enemies.’ Acan shrugged, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh. Part of him knew that he was attempting to play down something that, if he ever truly acknowledged it, would probably overwhelm him.

  The younger man came up and touched him on the shoulder. Acan jumped, as if he had been hissed at by a snake. Then he realized that it was not the woman, but the man, who had touched him. And the man did not have the evil eye.

  ‘Let me get this right. You did say there were originally 942 masks on the Palace wall?’

  ‘That is what I have heard, yes. That is what the Halach Uinic has told me.’

  ‘The Halach Uinic? Who is this person you keep mentioning?’

  ‘He is the highest priest of all the Maya. He understands many things.’

  ‘And you know this man?’

  ‘Of course. Everybody knows him.’

  The younger man turned to his companions and said something to them in a low voice. Acan could not completely make out what he was saying, but it had something to do with the number 942, and certain prophecies, and also the Halach Uinic.

  Acan decided that, apart from the woman’s face, these gringos were unimportant. They were just as all the other gringos – hungry for knowledge that they would soon forget. He decided that he would wring as much money in tips as he could possibly get from them, and then go and share a cigarette with the mestizo, and find out what relationship the man had to his cousin Tepeu.

  Now that was a real mystery.

  55

  Sabir sat on an upended barrel in the little shack that the Kabáh gatekeeper had set up as an outlet for his soft-drink concession. He was still upset about the Maya guide’s response to Lamia’s face. He had never experienced anything quite like it. The man had taken one look at Lamia and then reacted as though he had seen a ghost. He had seemed truly terrified.

  Sabir decided unilaterally that now Lamia and he were – how would one term it? – dating? – an item? – he would try to persuade her to go to Massachusetts General Hospital’s dermatology department in Boston once all this was over. He had a friend there, a senior consultant. He hadn’t seen the guy in years, but friendships were all about need, weren’t they? He’d call this person at home and seek his opinion about Lamia’s condition. Rekindle the friendship a little.

  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 Kabáh, 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 Mérida 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?’