01 _ Xibalba Murders, The (2 page)

As I drifted off, however, I thought I heard an argument, two or possibly three men in the courtyard beneath my window, speaking in a language I didn’t understand. It was neither English nor Spanish, but probably one of the Mayan languages, of which there are many. It sounded like a serious argument, but I had no idea what it was about.

I awoke with a start, the phone ringing beside me. It was Dr. Castillo, telling me that he had been delayed and regrettably would be unable to meet me for dinner. He was heading out of town, he said, but would be in touch on his return to reschedule our meeting.

“I regret I must postpone our meeting this evening,
amiga,
but I assure you it is for a good purpose,” he said.

“I know that you will pass a pleasant evening with the Ortiz family, however.

“Let us just say the plot thickens!”

And with that he quickly rang off.

I had a shower to try to chase the cobwebs and the gloom away. My afternoon nap had not exactly been restful. I was depressed at the thought of having to eat alone, and annoyed to think I had dropped everything to fly thousands of miles to chase a writing rabbit!

I finished unpacking. One downside to having a successful fashion designer as a friend is that it does remind you, from time to time, of the inadequacy of your wardrobe. Mine these days relied rather heavily on denim, black, and khaki. I call it my student uniform. My neighbor Alex insists I dress like that to keep men away, and perhaps I do. I pulled out an off-white silk blouse and a pair of taupe gabardine trousers. They would have to do.

As I reached the top of the stairs leading down to the lobby, I saw Isa and her father, deep in quiet conversation, her dark head bent toward his. There was an air of tension about them both, somehow, but as I started down the stairs they broke off the conversation. She was smiling, but I could not help feeling something was not quite right with my friends.

Norberto led me to the candlelit veranda and a table overlooking the courtyard. It was the table, he told me, that Dr. Castillo had reserved for the evening, and that he had asked that I be brought a bottle of wine of my choosing, as an apology for his delay.

Sipping a glass of white wine, Calafia from Mexico’s west coast, I looked around at my fellow guests.

Despite my earlier gloom on the subject, I actually enjoy eating in restaurants by myself from time to time. I often amuse myself by speculating on the lives of the other diners.

There were a number of Mexicans in the dining room, many of them probably from the neighborhood, and a few of them possibly permanent hotel guests. Dr. Castillo was himself a permanent hotel resident, having moved there after his wife of forty-five years had died some two years earlier.

While the hotel is not well known to tourists from the north, it is something of a local legend. Dona Francesca is of Maya descent—married to Don Santiago, ex-diplomat of Spanish descent. Both are gracious hosts, perhaps because of the aristocratic upbringing of Don Santiago, or their many years in the diplomatic service.

But contrary to the usual custom in Mexico, where wives of the well-to-do do not learn to cook, and indeed would be horrified to do so. Dona Francesca is an accomplished chef. Her kitchen combines the traditions of Spanish cuisine with her own Maya culinary arts and is justly famous. One of her specialties is called
pescado borracho,
literally drunken fish, another, her
faisan en pipian verde de Yucatan,
pheasant in a green Yucatan-style sauce, draws not only hotel guests, but also people from the neighborhood.

This evening the pheasant was on the menu and word had clearly spread, because the dining room was filling up rapidly.

The permanent residents were easy to spot. Inclined to be older, as Dr. Castillo was, they each had a table in the dining room they considered their own. Each was greeted by name as they arrived, and acknowledged each other as they were led to their tables, which were set out to meet their particular requirements, sometimes with a bottle of wine uncorked and ready.

One in particular looked very interesting. Seated alone at the table next to mine, she was in her mid-eighties, I would guess. Aristocratic of bearing, she was clearly the product of a more formal time. She was dressed all in black, a widow most likely, and she wore a black mantilla over her white hair.

Her eyes, which fixed on me from time to time, were very bright blue, unusual enough in this part of the world, and on the table beside her she had carefully placed a black lace fan and a pair of black lace gloves. She appeared to be graciousness personified, but I had a sense of iron will there. I noticed the busboys in the dining room were especially careful when they were waiting on her table. She apparently had exacting standards. She was too close to allow me to ask Norberto who she was.

Other than her and me, only two other people in the dining room seemed out of place in this old-world setting—two men at a table in the corner.

Both of them were quite attractive, although in very different ways. One was Mexican, dark, mid-forties, with fairly long dark hair and dark eyes. What set him apart from the rest of the crowd was his attire—black jeans and a black T-shirt, rather out of place in the elegant surroundings of the hotel dining room.

The other was fiftyish, well dressed in a sort of Ivy League way. Gray flannels, blue double-breasted blazer, white shirt, burgundy tie, and neatly trimmed hair streaked with gray and just a hint of a curl over the ears. I had a sense that I was as much the subject of their scrutiny as they were of mine, but after a few minutes the dark one left.

After surreptitiously observing the remaining man over the top of my wineglass and then my menu for a while, I tried to get a grip on myself and give the pheasant the attention it deserved. Inevitably, though, I looked his way again, and this time, rather than pretending that he had not been looking at me, too, he smiled.

Shortly thereafter he left the dining room, taking a slight detour to go by my table. There was just the hint of an acknowledgment, the slightest incline of the head as he did so. I was sorry he was leaving so soon.

Later in the evening I sat around the family table in Dona Francesca’s tiled kitchen with most of the family. Isa was there with her mother and father, and Norberto and his wife, Manuela. Missing were the two grandchildren, now in bed, and the younger brother of Isa and Norberto, Alejandro.

When I asked about Alejandro, I noticed once again the slight tension in the air as each paused just for an instant before answering the question. It was Isa who spoke. “We don’t see much of him these days. He has a life and friends of his own,” she said.

“He follows his own course,” agreed Norberto. “He believes in his own causes.”

Clearly this was all that was going to be said on the subject.

I suppose I was not really any more forthcoming myself on the subject of my divorce. But the evening passed pleasantly enough, and very late I went to bed.

That night, I had a most unpleasant dream, the first of what was to become a series of recurring nightmares. I was floating through space looking down at the earth, which metamorphosed into some kind of snakelike creature. The creature rose up as I flew over, and engulfed me. I began to fall through black space, and in the darkness I could hear angry voices. In my dream I knew what had happened. I had entered the maw of Xibalba, and the voices I heard were the Lords of the Underworld.

Prone to recurring dreams, I am nonetheless a little slow figuring out what my subconscious is trying to tell me. A couple of years earlier I’d had a series of dreams in which I was standing in a doorway, my luggage in front of me, with no idea of where I was or where I was going. It took five or six repetitions of that one before I got the message and packed up and left Clive for good. In retrospect, if I’d paid attention to that night’s dream and those that were to follow, at a minimum I might have avoided some poor personal choices. At best, at least one death might have been averted.

IK

Merida may well merit its reputation as the White City, the cleanest and most beautiful in Mexico, but for me it is a city whose beginnings, like many Spanish colonial cities, are steeped in blood. Even now it remains one where the tensions between the colonial and the Indian, while giving the place a certain energy, are never entirely laid to rest.

Take, for instance, the square where Isa and I met for
almuerzo,
late breakfast, the day after my arrival. We were sitting at a cafe“ on what Meridanos call the Plaza Grande, tucking into
huevos rancheros
and getting caught up on each other’s life.

We’d arrived just as a party of revelers left to sleep off the previous night’s festivities. Merida is one of the cities of Mexico that take Carnaval seriously, and while technically it is only celebrated the week leading up to Lent, some Meridanos get an early start on the festivities.

The plaza where we sat, officially the Plaza de la Independencia, is the heart of Merida, just as this same great space was once the heart of a great Maya city called T’ho. At one side is the cathedral, built in 1561 of stone taken from the razed buildings of T’ho. At the south side is Casa Montejo, now a bank, once the palace of Francisco de Montejo, the founder of Merida—and the destroyer of T’ho. In case anyone misses the point, the facade of the palace depicts the Spanish conquerors standing on defeated Maya warriors.

The significance of the setting was apparently not lost on Isa, either.

“If I had to describe the character of this city, in some ways I would describe it as schizophrenic,” she mused.

“To a certain extent Merida, and indeed the whole Yucatan peninsula, is cut off from the rest of Mexico geographically. This has allowed it to develop a distinctive character. Merida, for example, is a colonial city; just look at the buildings around this plaza.

“But the Maya roots are never very far below the surface and, quite frankly, are what give this place its very special feeling. It is quite a compelling mix. In a sense, Mexico’s culture is the only one in the Americas where the old world and the new truly meet and mix.

“Sometimes there is an easy balance between the two, sometimes not.

“Sort of like my family.” She smiled.

I told her of my sense the day before that all was not entirely well with the Ortiz family, and about the argument I thought I might have heard below my window.

“I am reasonably sure it was a Mayan language I heard, probably Yucatecan. But perhaps I just dreamed it.”

She looked troubled for a moment. “I can’t tell you about the argument—I didn’t hear anything, and perhaps as you say, it really was a dream.

“As far as my family is concerned—perhaps my comparison between Merida and us is very apt. Alejandro has discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, his Maya heritage.

“It is a cause for some friction in the family. He accuses Mother of selling out to the Spanish. Presumably that means by marrying my father.” Again she smiled.

“Oh, I know we all go through stages as we are growing up when we are not exactly enamored of our parents, of course, but Alejandro seems to have gotten involved with a group of young people at the university we’re not crazy about. He makes a lot of speeches, when he deigns to speak to us at all, that is, about fighting injustice, and there is a tone to it that worries parents a great deal.

“I’m sure his talk of rebellion is just youthful posturing, a phase all university students go through. But there is no question the Indigenas suffered greatly because of the conquest, and that disaffection is often very close to the surface. You may recall the riots in Chiapas not that long ago.”

Indeed I did. I had been there, in fact, on a buying trip. The riots had occurred over the New Year, and had lasted several days.

“If I remember correctly,” I said. “The riots were the work of a group called the Zapatista National Liberation Army, planned to coincide with the day the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, came into effect.”

“That’s right. It is said that the Zapatistas trained for ten years in the jungle before coming out that New Year’s,” Isa said. “There were rumors, of course. We all heard them. You couldn’t plan something like this for ten years in complete secrecy. But when it happened, it seemed to take the government completely by surprise. There had been nothing seen like this in Mexico since the Revolution.

“It was all over pretty quickly, but since then there have been flare-ups. Sometimes the Zapatistas and the government are talking, sometimes they aren’t. But the possibility of violence always seems to be there.

“Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that our family problems mirror in some way the tensions that exist in our society. Alejandro talks a lot about injustice and hints at revolution.

“Mother is distraught of course,” she continued. “Alejandro is her baby, the son born late in life. I was well into my teens when he was born, and I confess that while I thought he was an adorable baby, there was too much of a gap in our ages for me to find him very interesting. I guess I just find him irritating now, despite the fact I agree with him about many things.

“For example, Alejandro despises me because, like many of the children of the well-to-do in Merida, I went to university in the United States. He has chosen to go to university here in Merida, and I admire him for it, actually, although he is so tiresome on the subject that I have never told him.”

“I’m sure he’ll grow out of it,” I said. “After all, when I was at university, I was the most conservative person on the campus, and that was only because my mother seemed embarrassingly flaky to me at the time. Now I realize she was just ahead of her time—she never let any of the rules about what women could, and could not, do influence her in any way.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Isa replied, and with that we parted company, she to visit her small factory where her designs were manufactured, I to prowl the museum—the Museo Emilio Garcia, named for its founder, a wealthy Merida philanthropist. The
museo
was housed in a former monastery a few short blocks from the Plaza Grande.