by A. T. Grant
Chapter Twenty
Rochas Blancas
Luis felt for his mobile on the bedside table. He had commandeered the main hotel in Rochas Blancas and removed the scattering of existing guests, para su proteccion. The building was secure, but still he had not been able to sleep. One future scenario after another queued for space in Luis’ mind and none came with a positive ending. Tense and angry, he had uncharacteristically resorted to downing the contents of the minibar. As expected, it was his brother calling.
“Hola, hermano, es bueno hablar contigo.”
Luis was surprised by the welcome and by the warmth of Alfredo’s tone, which instantly carried away much of his own distress. “Hello, brother, has London got any better?”
“London,” Alfredo almost spat, “it’s like purgatory here. The place is cold, the people are cold and the beer isn’t.”
Despite the harsh words, Luis sensed that his brother was only semi-serious and assumed he must have met another girl. He felt closer than usual to his brother. He didn’t want to upset Alfredo, but he also welcomed the opportunity to share his heavy burden. Then again, a part of him still harboured resentment, as it was Alfredo’s carelessness that had precipitated their family’s current crisis. He caught himself wondering whether he would have missed his brother more than he missed Felipe, had the dance-floor shooting proved successful.
“Alfredo, I’m sorry, I have very bad news: Uncle Felipe was killed in prison. It was Xterra and we think they also encouraged Marcelo’s brother to try to kill you.”
For a long time the phone remained silent. Luis held it as close as possible and thought he could detect Alfredo’s laboured breathing amongst the static. His tension rose again with each lost moment. He needed Alfredo to be strong and decisive to bolster his own resolve. To his considerable relief, he was.
“Don’t worry, brother,” responded Alfredo, at last. “Felipe will be avenged. Xterra are loco - they have no strategy but fear. You are far too clever for them and I’m in the mood to spread a little fear myself. How is Alex and how is Father?”
“I’ve sent Alex away. If Xterra are operating in El Paso then it is too dangerous for her. Papa is no better. I’ve never seen such frailty in him before. I’d rather he was golfing on the Riviera Maya, but he’s still in Juarez because there are things only he has the influence to do.”
“How will we hit Xterra?”
“We already have. Gennaro and I are in Rochas Blancas now. We started with the scum who betrayed our trust in the prison. Then a party of Xterra thugs turned up. They were spreading panic by kidnapping people. Now they are dead.”
“Well done, Luis. Is it safe for me to come home?”
“I’m not sure. We still don’t know how the US Authorities will react to what you did; assuming they know our family was responsible. Although we have money and muscle on both sides of the border - more money now, thanks to you - we’re in a weak position with Barrio Fuerte. We’ve had English weather in the mountains and much of the next crop is destroyed. If we have no product to offer them then they have even less reason to stay with us. Without them we have no supply chain across the border. If you return to Juarez, it may inflame the situation.”
“Then let me come home to Chihuahua, or even to Father’s house in the south. In Mexico I can help mobilise our forces. In this wretched country, I am nothing.”
Luis thought for a moment. “Don’t worry, Alfredo, Papa and I have already decided you must return, but there is one more thing I need you to do for me, before you leave.”
“As the English would say, you can count on me!” Alfredo made a particularly poor attempt at a southern English accent.
“Go to the bank as soon as possible. Withdraw as much as you need to get home then transfer whatever you can to El Paso.”
“OK Luis, but there won’t be much: the company here is not working well with the factory in Spain. There’s been little profit so far.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll probably sell both companies now, anyway. This war is going to be expensive.”
“Surely,” Alfredo reasoned, “when things heat up the Federales will get involved. Then even Xterra will have to back off? The last thing that either government wants is Xterra controlling more of the border.”
Luis returned to the thoughts that had occupied him throughout the night. “Unfortunately, brother, I don’t think it is quite that simple. Both the Americans and Xterra may be looking to establish Barrio Fuerte on our side of the border. The Americans have agents in every state and federal prison in the USA. They would have no trouble keeping tabs on Barrio Fuerte. They would be a lot easier to manipulate than we are. They’re nothing more than a criminal organisation, whereas we can always hide behind our legitimate businesses. A lot of American entrepreneurs would like to buy our factories too. As for Xterra, Barrio Fuerte would be the perfect cover for extending their operations further west, whereas they know we will never do business with them.”
“Then we will stop Xterra on our own.”
Luis was drawn to Alfredo’s calm resolve. “Then we’ll stop Xterra on our own,” Luis repeated in solidarity. “Fly to Cancun. I’ll let Papa know and he’ll make sure everything’s ready for you down there. Then we’ll talk again.”
Each returned briefly to his thoughts. Alfredo was the first to speak. “I won’t let you down, Luis.”
“I know, Alfredo. Hurry home, brother. Time may not be on our side”
Chapter Twenty-One
Coba
“Why are you smiling?” Ah Kin Lo was looking quizzically at his friend.
Mulac glanced cautiously around him to ensure that nobody was watching then lay back against the carved stone column and stretched out his legs. The sun was now above the trees and he closed his eyes to concentrate upon the warmth it was beginning to convey. All over the temple complex people sat in small groups. Children wandered in and out of the forest and, here and there, thin trails from burnt offerings clawed weakly at the sky. Three hours previously the whole area had been packed, in anticipation of first light. Shamans chanted from the highest levels of every building and their incantations were punctuated by the screams of the living dead, as hearts and souls were ripped from living flesh.
“Do you realise that you are resting upon K’inich?”
Mulac jumped up, spun around and collapsed again to his knees, chanting loudly for forgiveness.
“You are lucky our jaguar god of the night is sleeping now,” Ah Kin Lo grinned, “otherwise our journey might be extended by a trip to the underworld. But now he is the sun and he still shines his light upon you, I notice, even though you dishonour him. So let us go and find breakfast.”
Mulac said nothing as he finished his nervous ritual. He still couldn’t come to terms with how the old man could be so serene - even affable - in the face of so much human suffering. He took a deep breath, which stank of death, and backed away from the carved column with his head bowed low. He stretched cautiously and put his hand on the old man’s shoulder.
“Priest?”
“Yes, Mulac?”
“Is it right that I still feel so sad?” He stared around him at the scattering of pyramids, each tipped with crimson from the blood let from its temple alter.
“Yes, Mulac, it is right. Your wife has found a place beyond the mountain. That world is for the gods and for the pure of heart. You cannot follow her, at least not yet, but you honour her by missing her in this one.”
Ah Kin Lo picked up his stick and the pair began to walk slowly across the main courtyard. Mulac stayed close to the priest, lest he should stumble. He could see the pain of walking etched into the old man’s features, but knew better than to offer to carry him. The journey from Tulum to Coba had taken nearly three days. It had cost Mulac a lot of money in porterage fees, but he did not doubt that he had done the right
thing. Ah Kin Lo had been desperate for one last chance to commune with the gods before he died. The pride and excitement that Mulac saw on his face, as his chair was carried amongst fellow pilgrims from village to village along the road to Coba, had been reward in itself.
“I will tell you now Priest, why I was smiling. I was smiling because of the pet name you gave to my wife, Emetaly: She-who-burns-the-dinner. There was a time, two years ago, when I could have cursed you for finding me such a young and inexperienced wife, Priest. But you know, more than anyone, how much I came to love her.”
“Mulac, you wanted not a wife but a servant. You wanted someone to look after your parents, when it was you they wanted to care for them. You wanted to sit in your chair and slip into middle age, when the gods still have work for you.”
“I know that now Priest and I thank you.”
“And you have a fine son, and now a daughter too who will grow up to be as beautiful and probably as difficult as her mother.”
Mulac smiled again. “In my son’s eyes I already see Emetaly. They are like dark jewels where the light burns deep and slow. Sometimes I can hardly bear to look at him.”
“Pain is life, Mulac. Pain reminds us we are still of this world and fate has plans for us. Emetaly knew great pain, but only as your daughter was born. As she slipped from this world, she was peaceful and still.”
Mulac remembered the blood that had spread across her bed and Ah Kin Lo’s high-pitched chanting, at the moment of birth and renewal. He had been the first to realise she was passing from this world into the next. He had held her hand and talked joyously of life amongst the gods, as she began to slip away. Mulac had stood at a distance, crippled by a greater range of conflicting emotions than he had ever felt before. Eventually, at Ah Kin Lo’s insistence, he had held her hand too. She smiled weakly and lovingly up at him for as long as her failing strength allowed her to hold his gaze. In that moment Mulac discovered a new depth of being. Never had he stopped to think that he was loved. His mother cut the cord and swaddled her new granddaughter. She placed her, still covered in blood and mucus, in Mulac’s arms. Holding her aloft, he had dedicating her life to the Mayan god of the highest heaven, and then placed her next to his wife on the bed. With Emetaly’s last vestige of strength she had turned and kissed the crying baby. She looked up again as Mulac squatted beside her, tears of joy in her eyes.
“Now she will be Emetaly,” his wife had whispered, “and you will not be free of me so soon.”
As Mulac returned her smile she had slipped into unconsciousness. Within minutes she passed her final breath beside the crying child. Mulac was paralysed. His mother made an offering of the afterbirth and then took care of the baby. Ah Kin Lo chanted and wrapped the body in the blood-stained sheets. Mulac stared helplessly towards the whitewashed wall and the narrow window that looked out onto the alley beyond. Everything else was the same as before, but everything else meant nothing. For all his adult life he had cherished his independence and the freedom of the open road. Now he realised he was no longer that person.
Eventually Ah Kin Lo had finished the first part of his ritual. The gods would know that Emetaly was coming, because he had sung to them of her fine qualities. He tottered over to Mulac and led him by the hand to the body. From a bowl he poured corn into Mulac’s cupped hands. The corn was blessed and then placed and bound in a small square of linen. Mulac lifted a corner of the shroud and tucked the bag carefully within: food for the journey to the land of spirits. Ah Kin Lo had carefully parted the covers from Emetaly’s face. Now drained of blood, it had turned the colour of old ivory and her lips that of unpolished jade, as though she was already a temple deity. He had pushed down on her fragile chin to open her mouth and rummaged in a cloak pocket for a bead of darkest obsidian. Placing it within, he made one last appeal to the gods to accept the offering as payment for her journey. Then he had retired, in sudden exhaustion, to his chair. Mulac studied his wife’s features one last time. How he wished he had done so in life, as she slept. She had been no less restless by night as by day, so usually he had turned away from her, or moved across to another bed in an attempt to get some rest. Now she was at peace.
They had reached the small temporary market that sprang up with every festival. A single row of stalls wound along a muddy path between the temple complex and the royal apartments. There was, as always, a road of crushed coral limestone connecting these two main venues, but it was guarded by soldiers and reserved solely for dignitaries and ceremonial purposes. They shuffled slowly past brightly coloured stalls selling offerings; blessings carved in stone; feather head-dresses; costumes, toy birds and whistles for the children. The food stalls were a little further on, centred upon a conflagration of steam, smoke and tongues of fire. Mulac shook his head at the corn-seller’s loud appeal. Today he would treat his friend to a feast of fresh eggs and salty bread.
Ah Kin Lo carefully removed the sashes of chord that held a fine leather bag to his back. They sat cross-legged at a table hewn from a rainforest giant. The priest blessed the contents of the bag and placed it carefully between their plates of food. Mulac looked out into a small unkempt field beyond the market. A pair of buffalo stood impassively, tied to a post, whilst a group of youngsters circled, playing chase.
As, a few minutes later, they mopped their plates with the remainder of the bread, chanting drifted upon them. Mulac looked enquiringly at the priest.
“It must be the palace monastery.” Ah Kin Lo listened for a few moments. “This is not something I have heard before. I wonder if something is wrong?”
A mason sat next to them, easily identified by the compacted white dust beneath his finger nails and around the roots of his hair. Beside him rested a bulging sack of stone tools. He leant conspiratorially in their direction. “There is a rumour going around Coba that the gods have landed in the north. According to what I was told last night at an inn, they arrived in giant canoe houses. They had command of the wind god and ordered him to push their ships across the sea, like leaves blown by the wind across a stream.”
Both Mulac and the priest were shocked. They examined the man’s lined and sun-beaten face closely for any hint that he was joking. Mulac remembered the vision he glimpsed upon the ocean, just after he had married. He felt the same panicky sensation that this world might not be all that it appeared.
“I was told they looked like men. Their clothes shone like sunlight and were enchanted, so they could not be pierced by any blade. They had with them strange creatures on four legs that stood as tall as a house, but were as fast and agile as the deer. The gods sat upon these beasts and could command them to do their will. Some say they feed upon people, others that they eat only grass, like beasts of the field.”
Mulac suddenly wanted to go home.
“Priest, let us do what we must do then depart,” he appealed. “Let us honour the ashes of Emetaly, but then honour her more by raising her children to be fearless and strong. I am just a simple man and I want to go back to what I know and understand. I was not meant to parlay with the gods.”
“I fear that these are not the gods I know, either,” replied Ah Kin Lo. “These gods are not of heaven. They must come from the deepest layers of the underworld: places that no man can know, unless he is cursed or mad. I am frightened by what I have heard and worry that these creatures may come for my soul. I also would like to go home. Perhaps you will set a fire for me alongside your parents, when we are each too old and weak to do our chores. I will watch over your children and teach them the ways of our ancestors.”
“What do you have in your bag, Priest” The mason was curious.
“He has the ashes of my wife,” Mulac responded bluntly.
“Then I understand why you are here and think that I may be able to help you. I would like to do so, because I know that I have upset you. My words were careless and they may not be true.”
“But th
ey were truly spoken,” observed Ah Kin Lo, “and I sense that you are a man of your word.”
“I am a man of stone. My words are stone and stone does not change. Gods may walk upon the Earth, but if they come for me it will only be for me to build for them in stone. When the gods return to the underworld, my stone creations will still be here.”
The priest nodded, sagely. “What is your name, stonemason?”
“My name is Acan.”
“How can you help us, Acan?”
“Let me take you to the new temple for Ix-Chel. You could bury your wife’s ashes there, where both I and the goddess of fertility can watch over her.”
“My wife died in childbirth.”
“Then the goddess must be working through me, your wife is twice blessed, and this plan is meant to be.”
Mulac looked at Ah Kin Lo, who nodded his silent approval.
“Come quickly then: we will need to do this before my overseer and the temple priests return from their own breakfasts.”
“Carry me now, as I have carried your wife,” Ah Kin Lo appealed to Mulac.
Trusting the ashes to the stonemason, Mulac knelt before the priest so he could climb upon his back. Many were carried in this fashion so, as they pushed their way through the now crowded market, their strategy went unnoticed and unmarked. Soon they were following a trail that wove its way between the trees behind the temple complex. The path was long, they had to circle to the far side of the site, and the rising heat and humidity levels meant that Mulac was soon sweating profusely.
“Here,” Acan eventually gestured to his left. Crows squabbled overhead and seed pods fell from the trees, as they broke out into a clearing littered with piles of sand and cut stone. Two men sat on a particularly large block, drawing tobacco smoke through a shared pipe. Both acknowledged their colleague briefly, but they seemed more interested in their game of dice than in his guests. Finding a patch of shade at the base of the new pyramid, Mulac carefully lowered Ah Kin Lo onto the lowest step. The stonemason passed the priest his bag, from which he carefully drew a forearm-sized cylindrical pot, thickly wrapped in bandages.
