A Signal Victory (27 page)

He was an old man. He realized it suddenly. Not middle-aged, though he had a youthful body, but an old man. It was because he did not want to be young any more.

He watched his son killing, and not altogether because he was paid to kill. Perhaps it was because he had been trained properly to do so, that he enjoyed it so much.

Then it was over. The high priest they had slain at the temple, separately. But hatred is less efficient than love. There were forty Xiu dead in that room. They lay about on the floor, gorgeous as crumpled pheasants. Even Nachi Cocom seemed taken aback at the sudden quiet.

But there was another Xiu, at Mani. The Spanish need only to get to him, to be able to win the war, when they were ready. Guerrero would not see Chichen Itza now. Nor would any vast procession ever again wind through that city.

His guards had let go of him. Nachi Cocom smiled at him. It was supposed to be a lesson in how to fight a war. Nachi was pleased with himself, or would be, once his priests had absolved him, and he had apologized to the gods.

Guerrero could not smile back. It was too much like congratulating an incipient corpse on the skill with which it had arranged for its own death.

He could only curse. Why do men, even more than their involuntary skill to destroy each other, make such an effort, and succeed so well, to destroy themselves?

And what can you do when it is over, except go with it, and never say a word?

For all the beauty, all the love, all the glory, all the splendour, and everything personal and touching in this world, is purchased out of the bigotry, the hysteria, the self interest, and the desperation of those whom we call, since, in transferring their squalid little desires into something outside themselves, they seem to have an interest beyond themselves, disinterested and selfless people.

And why not? Why complain about that? That is the way animals and plants, at enormous cost to their own numbers, still save their own generic being. They mutate, and then persecute the mutation that will survive them, almost unconsciously to try it out, to see if it will hold up. The concentrated hatreds of this world, by which the race perpetuates itself in order to have a moment to spare to devote to love, are only the laboratory conditions which reproduce the conditions of survival. And those who condemn us, do so (though they do not know it, for if they did know it, they would not co-operate in the survival of the species even that much) only in order that through us the race may be conditioned to survive.

But it was very saddening. For those who live to love, must regret the passing of that moment when love is possible, and must with a sigh settle down to assure the return of that moment which will be nice for others, but which they themselves, even while, and because, they fight for it, will never see.

It was time to get to Honduras, before his warriors learned what had happened and could turn on each other instead of the common enemy.

He had to move at once. He knew now the Cocom did not trust him, and knowing he had been there, neither would the Xiu. And if he was not trusted, neither would his son be. Nor was it wise to leave his son’s wife behind, to be mistreated
as a hostage, against who knows what civil war? His son could understand that.

They slipped out of the city before dawn, and got back to Bacalar in a week, travelling mostly at night. His son’s wife was in her eighth month, but sturdy. She scarcely retarded them.

There was no time to worry about the child.

News of the massacre had got to Bacalar before them, and demoralized everyone, for they knew what it meant. It was the one thing too much. The only thing to do was to embark at once.

Guerrero took both his son and his son’s wife in his own canoe. The flotilla headed out into the lake, Bacalar fell behind, they went down the river, reached the Bay of Chetumal, passed the ruins of the city, and fanned out into loose formation as they paddled down towards the open sea. There were drummers to keep up the stroke. The weather could not have been better. Fishing boats put out from shore, to cheer them on their way.

It could not have gone better, yet Guerrero refused to look back. His son’s wife had been doing so. She swallowed, gave him a wistful smile, settled herself as well as she could, and stared forward towards the currents of the open sea. Behind her the rowers bent their backs.

He knew he would never see Chetumal again. He did not know why.

At the entrance to the bay the water was almost purple, and quite abruptly cold. The current caught them, and the rowers relaxed. In a curving arc the canoes swung one after another into that wing of the returning Gulf Stream which had brought him to Yucatan in the first place. The drums were still, but to pass the time someone was playing a flute.

The coastline shimmered in that sparkling air. It was only a line of white, of ochre, and the 150-foot continuous towers of the rain forest, the blue-green tufted pile of the peninsula. It should not have been so moving. And yet he was moved.

They were not a sea people, but they knew their own shores, and how to manage both the currents and their canoes. At no time was that trip ever an easy one, but they had a better passage than Davila had had. There were no storms. The weather held, but still it took them weeks to navigate the irritable boredom of that sea.

Each night, if they could, for sometimes the current kept them offshore, they ate and slept on the beaches. There were no habitations, and very few natives. The region was poor, swampy, and impassable.

Slowly the shore on their right began to rise, until at last they saw the faint blue of hills above the line of the forest. They were exhausted, and had not even come half-way. Their passage was now more difficult, floating among islands, a few feet above vast submerged sand bars. They had to move swiftly, or the tide would strand them on one of them.

Off the mouth of what is now the Belize river, his son’s wife began to have labour pains. There was a settlement at Belize. He signalled to the others to follow, and then urging on his own rowers, peeled off from the flotilla, and headed for the shore.

It would be a good place to rest and get provisions, and the child could be born there.

To his surprise he was expected. The natives came out to meet them, bearing gifts of fruit and food. They had no news of Yucatan, but much of Honduras. Alvarado had arrived and founded two towns. Everyone knew what that meant.

The natives called a midwife and settled Guerrero and his relatives in the stone building of their chief. Where was their chief? He had gone to Tayasal. When would he be back? They did not know.

There was a reason for that welcome after all. Their leaders had all gone to Tayasal, for good. Their river led up country, to the uplands, and was the chief local means of getting there. Many travellers came through, and they hired themselves out as guides. There was a party here now, on
the way. Things were disturbed in Honduras. The caciques there had not been able to hold Alvarado. He was now in the valley of the Rio de Ulua, trying to defeat the cacique Coçumba. The Spaniards could not be held. Neither could they be borne. They pulled down the temples.

At Tayasal the temples could not be torn down. They stood in the middle of the lake. Even Cortés had had to turn back there.

Guerrero went to talk to the party on its way, small nobles from Honduras. They did not have much to say. They had had more of the Spaniards than they had yet had in Yucatan. Refugees are much the same everywhere, but the rich are exiles, and exiles are different. It is not so much that they have more to lose than the poor, but they have power to lose, and that makes them haughty. They wander over the face of the earth, trying to find someone who remembers who they were. They are much given to waiting, like birds ruffled in an unexpected storm. Unlike refugees, they have no now. That made them shiver in their pomps. It made Guerrero shiver. One does not have to die to become a ghost.

His son’s wife was in labour for eighteen hours. It gave him a long time to find out about Tayasal. At least the old life went on there, or something very like it. And something very like it is better than nothing, when we have been pushed too far.

But how long could they hold out there?

Longer perhaps than any other where, unless the Spanish could be defeated.

He went down to see his men. It was now twilight. There had not been room enough for them in the village, so they were bivouacked on the beach. Out there, somewhere, across the dark gulf, lay Honduras and the Spanish army, perhaps a week away.

When he got back to the chief’s house, the child had been born. A slave brought it out to show it to him. It was purple, wrinkled, and male. It made him feel angry. He knew now what must be done, for it contained a little bit of Ix Chan,
Nachancan, his son, and even of himself. The child, its mother, and his son must go to Tayasal.

For he knew now why they loved children and hated death so much. It was because they loved the world so much that they wanted someone else always to be there to see it too, even though they were dead and could no longer see it themselves. And indeed their world was beautiful. It must be allowed to go on. It was well worth the seeing. It would be some victory over the Spaniards if even this little of it could survive to be seen.

And what did men like Montejo and Alvarado see? The better of them marvelled at what they saw, but all the same they destroyed it.

This was something they should not have.

It took him a while to talk his son around. His son was eager to fight. But his wife and child could not make the journey alone, and someone would have to treat with the rulers of Tayasal. Guerrero was still a rich man. His wealth had shrunk to a bag of jades, but jade, for which the Spanish had no use, was to the Maya the most valuable of all substances. And a warrior of the prestige of his son would not be unwanted in Tayasal, for the city was, among other things, a heavily armed camp.

Guerrero went with them up the river, saying he would be back in a week. His men could use a week’s rest. They did not grumble. Something about his manner must have told them he would be back.

He did not go with Hun Imix all the way. There was not the time, and besides something inside him did not want to see Tayasal. The men of the village were excellent guides, and there were slaves along for portage, when the river turned into rapids and became impassable.

They passed out of the foothills, and came into the rolling mountain savannah country. The going here was easier. And here he left them. From the edge of the forest he watched them out of sight. They disappeared round a bend. Then he was alone, as he had been at the beginning, when first he had
come to this world. He had said he would send word to his son in a month or two, but he knew that no word would be sent. Instead he sent them on, into that future which to the Maya was always the past of their race come round again.

Perhaps, one day, he would come round again, but somehow he did not think so.

What does one say to a son? It is someone one sends into the future, to get things ready for the family worship of the gens. The gens is even more important than the lares and penates, which by and large are only superstitious vanities, of whom we ask the same profitless questions, generation after generation.

But though we think we are thinking creatures, thought is just one of the hard-bought little luxuries of the nature of the beast. Since usually our grandfather’s bought it we think it both our nature and our right. But if we buy it for ourselves, in our own lifetime, we see it differently, and understand it is nothing, beside the perpetuation and the unconscious worship of the gens.

Yet it is just that worship which alienates our children. We can never know them. They resent us too much, first for loving them, and second for refusing to let them be themselves. For we love in them not themselves, but the perpetuation of the gens and the repetition of ourselves. And since it is not until forty that they realize they do repeat us, or take any pleasure from the fact even if they do realize it before, since it will not be until then that they will feel about their own children and the gens as we do, then alas, there is always the barrier between. He might adore Ix Hun’s physical perfection, the muscular certainty of his calves, the open, innocent honesty of his chest, but these things he adored only as an idealized summary of his own lost youth.

So parents and children can never get along, except uneasily. And yet we love our children. We miss them. We always want to see them again. We never give up hope, that at least they will survive, and that one day, though the day never comes, we and they may be at ease because equivalent.

He had sent Ix Hun not to Tayasal, but to the future. It was what Ix Chan would have wished. Now he was left with the present. It seemed a little empty.

The guides and bearers left him alone. He was glad of that. He felt empty and torn to shreds. He had so much to remember, and so little, now, to do. But still, it is better to feel, even though it hurts, than not to feel. It was good to be alive, even though some men would say contrariwise. It was good to know that one would be continued, up there, at Tayasal.

But good or not, it did hurt. He had loved them all. He had even loved this son, who was half Ix Chan.

He had even loved the other one. For fool or not, the other one was also his.

So he did not go back at once. He had one last thing to do. The bundle of jade he had given to his son. But there was another bundle.

That night he spent in the ruins of Tikal, which was not far away. It was, though he did not know it, the oldest of the Maya cities, the one they had come from. The bearers did not like to be there very much. It was two thousand years old, and like all such places, was not exactly reassuring.

He had spent much time in their ruins, and always times like this, in between, just after or just before something. He sat up very late, beside a campfire, in the rustling clearing that had once been the main plaza. The tall narrow temples climbed up to the sky, confused with shrubbery and trees. The foliage seemed full of their gods, but they did not frighten him. Like himself, like forest animals, they were going away. There was only the sound, now and then, of a twig incautiously stepped on and so broken.