Three hours later we are in the shiny, refurbished, much-expanded Cancún airport. We obtain our rented car and head inland toward Chichén Itzá, determined to avoid at all costs the ugly and crowded Miami-on-the-Caribbean that Cancún has become. It is pleasant to step out of the Hertz office into the warm, dry, summer air of peninsular Mexico, after the raw winter air we have left behind. It is the 19th of March.
We plan to spend the night in the little city of Valladolid, close to Chichen. One of the few hotels in this bustling town has two rooms reserved for us, but when we arrive only one is ‘ready,’ so we three camp in it, tired from the long day of flying and driving. I am undone by the usual hassles of travel: early rising, rush for the plane, inedible food, and arrival at a place unprepared to receive us. It is a two-hundred-year-old hotel, or at least it is that old in parts. The newer additions have unartfully been made to resemble the old arches and stones. In Mexico I have learned a lesson that one should not ever look closely at what pretends to be original. (‘Authentic reproduction’?)
In the early evening we walk about the town plaza to find the restaurant recommended to us as the best. Ted spots a dark, dirt-floored shop inhabited by a sandal-maker. His products have an elaborate name—alpargatas en campañas—and he says he can have them, made to order for Ted’s special needs, by tomorrow. They are interesting sandals: the straps are of very heavy leather and the soles are thick and unbending, made of pieces of rubber car tire. I wonder if they will be comfortable.
We are all very hungry, but it is so early that we are the only customers at the restaurant. It cannot be said that we are dining in solitary splendor, because we elect to sit at the front of the place, which is open to the busiest street in Valladolid. There is no emission control in Mexico, and most of the vehicles on the streets are old. We are at the mercy of the loud noises of very decrepit cars and their exhaust. But the food is good.
It is still early, so we sit in the plaza to watch the evening social life. Near us is a gathering of high school boys in their brown uniforms, their books in bags on their backs, acting foolishly for the high school girls clustered across the path. The boys laugh among themselves, their eyes always on the girls. Old men in spanking-clean, long white shirts—called guayaberas—and heavy black serge trousers (despite the heat) form small circles farther down the walk, their dark, expressive faces turned to each other in the privacy of their talk, nodding and smiling to each other. Ladies in their huipils, white embroidered dresses with wide bands of petticoat showing beneath, pull along little children in plastic sandals, talking as they walk. The square is a hive of conversation. Groups move about but never seem to intercept each other. Ted, Bob, and I are the only ones sitting still, watching, learning.…
Next morning I wake at six and go out to explore the early-day life of the plaza. I sit in an open-air restaurant, drink café con leché, and eat a sweet roll. I watch men at the tables around me eat huge breakfasts and, when pickup trucks stop in front, pile into the open flat beds at the back, ten workers to a truck, more than appears safe to me.
A stream of tricycles with oversized wheels come by, pedaled by young men, their wives riding in little rear cars, their children astride the single front wheel. The fathers’ white shirts and the mothers’ white dresses gleam in the sunlight. Little kindergarten-aged niños walk through the café, now carrying their book bags, their straight black hair cut squarely around their broad little heads. The girls come a little later, holding hands, their long black hair and coal-black eyes shining.
My breakfast over, I go back to the hotel to pack for the short trip to Chichén Itzá.
But it turns out to take most of the day, because we elect to make two good detours. Bob sees a photograph in a National Geographic of the beautiful, vast Dzitnup cenote (well). Cenotes and underground springs that feed wells have for centuries been essential to Mayan life, since there are no surface waters. We pay our pesos and make the long climb down the winding, steep, damp stone steps, I clinging both to the rope provided and Ted’s arm. We are in the Mayan version of a Gothic cathedral, at the bottom of which are the pure blue-green waters of the well. Stalactites of tree roots hang from the ceiling, almost reaching the water, and slim black fish swim near the edge of the water. The silence is absolute, broken only by the tiny flicker of their tails. We are alone, fortunately, for half an hour. The old mysteries, the worshipful spirit of long-gone Mayans who threw jade objects (and, it is claimed, human sacrifices) into these waters to propitiate the rain god Chac-mool, seem to be with us.
We climb back up the hazardous way. In the parking lot there is another car, full of Americans carrying bathing suits. They have come to swim in the holy waters. I feel resentful at their lack of reverence and, at the same time, regretful that I did not know this was permitted.
Then, on the map, we see a black triangle signifying a ruin on the way to Chichén. We cannot find the road to it, so we stop in a small village to ask a workman if he knows where Balankanche is. He grins, the wide, gracious Mayan smile, and says yes, he will lead us there. How far? Oh, not far, about half a kilometer. Okay, we’ll go. He is joined by a friend who has been working on a building with him.
We start out on a broad plain made of red dirt with outcroppings of limestone. It narrows to a footpath and then disappears into a tangle of unmarked underbrush and thorned brambles. We climb steadily. I hold Ted’s arm, stopping often to catch my breath. After more than an hour of hard climbing, we arrive at what appears to be the top of the hill, although it is so overgrown that I cannot be sure. Here and there in the brush we see small grey stones; nowhere is there evidence of a structure.
Sí, Pedro says, there was more here before, but gringos came in a big car and took away some carved stones to give to the museo. They said they would return to start uncovering the mound, but never did. I wonder: Did the historic stones, loaded into the trunk of the gringo’s Lincoln Continental, end up in an antique shop in Manhattan? Who knows?
We climb back down, rather more easily. Bob claims he was able to sense a structure up there, but I am less sure. Pedro tells us the story of a man who built a cabin at the top and then was driven off the mountain by the sound of a woman crying every night. I am driven off by bad scratches from the rough foliage, a myriad of mosquitoes, and thirst. We pass Pedro’s house, a Mayan choza, the one-room structure made of slender wooden poles holding aloft a thatched roof. Inside we can see hammocks, some stools, a table. His wife is at the doorless entry, and two stalwart boys. They wave to us. We go on to Pedro’s store, which he opens for us, and where, from his freezer, we buy Coca-Colas. I am so parched I hardly stop to breathe as I drink.
On the drive to Chichén, Ted devises a scenario: The two gentle Mayans observe our eagerness to find ruins and note our generosity at the end of the trek. Their wives are equally observant. They say to their husbands: See how these strange gringos come here, and pay, to see these, ah, holy places, these stones and jungle. We should build a road, clear the hill, put up some stones, one upon another, charge three thousand pesos for entrance, sell food and drink at the exit, straw hats and replicas of the Chac at the entrance.… We return a few years from now, and are struck with terrible guilt for having ruined yet another ‘undeveloped’ site.
On the other hand, I confess to having written a different scenario as we climbed the hill: The Mayans are weary of Americans interrupting the serenity of Balankanche. They will lead us farther and farther into the deep brush, separate us, and then strike us down. In this way, they will gain far more cash than the pittance we have agreed to pay them for conducting us to the ruin, in addition to suitcases crammed with useful objects and clothes, watches, rings, jewelry, and all the parts and tires of our rented car. They will drag our carcasses and the stripped-down body of the car into the far reaches of the dense scrub and thicket where no one has been for centuries, and no one will ever go again.
No one knows we have made this detour, far from the direct road between Valladol
id and Chichén Itzá. So this foolish, romantic jaunt into the wilds of Yucatán will end in the unsolved mystery of our disappearance.
Then I realize I have been populating gentle Balankanche with the thugs and street muggers of the city I have left behind.
The ruins: After many visits over a period of fifty-five years these places have become both more familiar and more distant to me. When I am permitted to be alone with a building—a rare opportunity—I feel what Rose Macaulay called the ‘pleasure of ruins.’ I sense their mystery, I realize more strongly than I am able to bear my own mortality, surely the emotion to which one’s presence at the ruin of a thousand-year-old civilization must most often lead.
Macaulay, in Pleasure of Ruins, writes: ‘…ruin is part of general Weltschmerz, Sehnsucht, malaise, nostalgia, Angst, frustration, sickness, passion of the human soul; it is the eternal symbol.’ Ancient Mayan cities, deserted for reasons no one seems to understand, strike terror into me, push me down to the knees of my habitual despair, make me long for death and then for further life, as these places disappeared and then were restored. I worship my God there, and theirs. The magnificence of these places seems greater because it is only partial (‘This broken beauty is all we have of that ancient magnificence’), my despondency greater. Macaulay says we take a morbid pleasure in decay, and surely this is what I do, because it seems to match my innate pessimism.
But there is another thing. The Mexican ruins are now blackened by acid rain and pollution emanating from tourist buses and cars. Sculptures on the columns at the Temple of the Jaguars in Chichén Itzá are so dark that the tigres and feathered serpents are almost invisible. What is being rapidly obliterated, on the one hand, is being fraudulently restored on the other. At three smaller sites, Labná, Sayil, and Kabáh, you can watch restoration being accomplished from trucks that bring foreign stones to the sites. They are hoisted up over broad strips of concrete, in such a way that the newly erected places are yellow and machine-cut, and bear little resemblance to the original stone structure.
These places now suffer from inaccuracy and haste, aimed at quickly pleasing the hordes of tourists who arrive late in the morning and stay until the buses honk for them in early afternoon. The ruins seem to be sinking into modernity, to be backdrops for the many shops that have sprung up at their entrance. Years ago I walked in through narrow footpaths; now there are grandiose entrances and boutiques to the major sites.
At the edge of the hacienda where we are staying there is an orange tree. We ask an attendant when the oranges come out.
He replies: ‘Whenever they want to.’
Last year, when we passed a little shop in Playa del Carmen without entering, the shop keeper called out to us: ‘Come on in and let me rip you off.’
After a siesta and a swim in the late afternoon, we go back to the great pyramid at Chichén to find that it has been taken over by climbers. Today, in these places, appreciation of archaeological splendors is shown athletically. Mystery has given way to sport. From afar the temple resembles an ant hill; close up it is a slanted column of human bodies which move up fast and then come down more cautiously, many of them clinging to the iron chain that goes from top to bottom, screaming, calling, laughing as they come. The holy air of the place has been supplanted by the overheated, noisy atmosphere of a gymnasium or a boxing arena.
I retreat from this display of muscular prowess, walk the hot path to where we are staying, and stand in the shade of a banyan tree, whose surface roots are more widespread and convoluted than its branches. It is one of those spectacles of the natural world that reverses the expected. The roots, like the adventitious roots of the mangrove tree, refuse to be buried. They roll about on the ground like ocean waves and display themselves as if in competition with their leafy crowns. The rebellious roots of the banyan tree are refreshing.
One magical evening Ted finds a secret footpath into the site grounds. The moon is covered, the second light show, that terrible evening violation of the grey stones that is put on for the tourists, has not yet begun. We sit on a wall in the shadow of El Caracol (the shell-shaped observatory), sensing the presence of long-dead spirits. We say nothing to each other for almost an hour. Then the moon is suddenly uncovered; we walk in silence and without our flashlights into the empty chambers at the foot of El Caracol and then turn back. My heart beats fast, from the pressure of awe and from the more immediate fear that we will be caught by the Mexican guards and put in prison for illegally invading the site.
I feel the urge to write a travel piece full of advice to someone planning to visit Maya. I probably will never do it, but if I did, it would go like this:
1. Leave your camera at home. Use your eyes, and work at committing to memory what you see. The sun is usually in the wrong place for picture-taking, film is exorbitantly expensive here, it is too hot to carry heavy equipment. Most of all, the optic nerve, retina, cornea, and crystalline lens are more reliable that the Kodak and its complex successors.
2. Leave your camcorder at home. Standing still for a long time, in one place, and fixing your attention on one object at a time will serve you better than moving pictures of your fellow travelers and crowds walking in front of the camera.
3. Politely refuse the services of guides. Their knowledge of languages (English, French, German, even Spanish) is often rudimentary, and their acquaintance with history, archaeology, and the Mayan sciences such as astronomy and mathematics is not only slight, but replete with error.
4. Do not purchase guidebooks sold at the sites. Look up a good bibliography before you leave home, and study authoritative books like John Stephens’s account (1842) of his travels, the first and still most vivid such work, and writers like Michael Coe and Eric Thompson,
5. Be prepared to spend time examining the carvings on the stelae and the glyphs, by studying first their meanings, in a book like the recent The Blood of Kings. It will teach you how to read the codices and what the carvings mean. The book is too heavy to carry. Learn as much as you can from it at home. Take notes.
6. Rent a car if you can. Arrive at the ruins a few minutes before they open and have a few blessedly quiet hours to explore before the buses and cars come. It is the only undisturbed time you will have to try to get a feeling for the past. On the other hand, visiting ruins is, as Henry James has said, ‘a heartless pastime, and the pleasure … shows a note of perversity.’ Enjoy your own private perversities.
7. Get there soon, before it all disappears under the weight of pollution, crowds, noise, and guesswork reconstruction, and before the spirits of its Mayan builders and worshipers vanish into the jungle.
I have a feeling this may be my terminal visit. It is very likely I will not go back to Mexico. I cannot see the Museo Arqueológico in Mexico City again because that city is too high and too polluted for me. I regret this. It would be good to have a last look at Palenque, and to go to Copán and Tikal, but perhaps ending it here is as well. Eventually one needs to let go of one’s passions and assign them to the realm of memory. I have grown too demanding of these ruins, too impatient with the behavior of everyone but myself and my traveling companions.
I feel very much like the little boy I saw the last afternoon at El Castillo. He stood at the bottom, grabbed the chain, that runs from top to bottom of the pyramid, and began to wave it vigorously. People climbing down who felt their hold threatened screamed. He had to be dragged away by his mother. I want to shake everyone off the buildings, sweep clean the great plains between them of touring groups and guides, and pass a law forbidding conversation within the confines of the ancient cities. Short of all that being made into law, I’ll stay at home.
At month’s end, in Washington, I browse through my shelves and find Willa Cather’s copy of George Santayana’s Obiter Scripta. Out of it falls a note in her handwriting containing two quotations she took from Santayana’s essay ‘Turn of Thought’:
‘To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.’ And: ‘Literary art demand
s a subject matter other than the literary impulse.’
On the back of the book jacket is an advertisement for Santayana’s The Last Puritan, with its subtitle, ‘A memoir in the form of a novel.’ I hold to my theory that all memoirs, like this one, are in the form of a novel or fictional in impulse and concept, and surely in execution.
April
Life can only be understood backward.
—Kierkegaard
April 1 in Washington is cold, wintry, windy, not so much cruel as it it is disappointing. Mexico accustoms you to warmth, but spring has not come here yet. I require more layers of clothing to stay warm and need to bury my suntan under heavy sweaters. Still, there are virtues to city life. Today I went to the Seventh Street flea market and found a fine carved wooden plover. At the Mission Traders around the corner, a place that carries only imported objects from Central and South America, I bought a cloth macaw, mounted on strings. You pull one end and his great wings flap gently. I am planning to take both birds to Maine, and set them free, figuratively, into the circumambient air.
In the pile of mail that came while I was away is a volume from Villard Books called Sweet Revenge. It is written by ‘the celebrated socialite’ Sugar Raubord and accompanied by elaborately printed publicity. The book is described as being about ‘High Fashion. High Finance. Hot Sex.’ It is, the publicist assures me, the ‘year’s most tantalizing novel.’ What is tantalizing is that I cannot even guess what that implies. Raubord, a ‘real-life member of the upper-class elite,’ ‘takes us into her world—a high society whirl of glamorous parties, steaming affairs, high-stakes business deals, and secret intrigues!’ (The exclamation mark is the publicist’s.)
The heat of those words! Whirl, glamorous, intrigue, steaming! And written by a society lady whose first name is Sugar! I find myself overusing the exclamation point as I write this—punctuation I rarely resort to—in order to add fuel to the warmth of the description. This is the secret of all romantic writing: to use words that burn on the page, setting fire to the susceptible reader’s imagination.
Extra Innings Page 18
