Hunger's Brides (192 page)

Every last passenger is asleep. Severed arms, heads, splayed feet disembodied in the aisle. One seat left, second row, lucky me spared this gauntlet run of snore and loll and drool. My wide-awake eyes still awash in the day's wind and light show….

Bright morning. At last—Tulum of the pyramids on the sea!

No pyramid. No sea.

Along the highway a single scrawl of street under a white sift of flour dust. Strew of cinderblock cubes all missing their front, fourth wall. Two rows of open dollhouses, moviesets back to back, duel of musics across the dusty roadbed—west-side cumbia, reggae east.

¿Hamaca señorita, hamaca?

This is really Tulum? Sí sí, with a hammock you sleep not here but on the beautiful beach
a un kilometro
. Free, no hotels. Restaurants by the sea, bars discotheques. Everything you need, water fruit
mariscos
—fresh fish very cheap. The best
hamacas
in all México, made by my sisters. Here take a
Matrimonial
for the price of a
Doble
. How many only one? If you are on the beach tomorrow I will show you how to be comfortable. With hammocks there is a secret.

I limp down a whitedirt track through greygreen scrub. This heat, this airlessness. This bated breath, punctured arch. Limp on, ever on. Sun, seascent without sound … Ahead the shade of palms, a bend in the track—
the sea
. Lacquered tilt of a turquoise fan.

Blinding smear of sand, snow-white hourglass dust, uncanny coolness underfoot. Walk out and down into this pale impossibility of blue. Far far out, waves of indigo turn fleece collars against a shear of reefs.

Lean and strut of coconut palms prop puffs of cloud. An utter stillness seeps its white edges north, south … to each blank horizon. South through this still-life light I wade kneedeep into mindlessness. I wade past palm thatch parasols. Palapa huts. Under one or two a hammock droops … the chinstrap of a pith-helmet. Coolie hat.

Please in this stillness let there be rest.

[23 Jan. 1995]

Sameness, stillness, rest. I will not write this … her death. Each day fetches kindling to the new routine's cold ashes. Its flicker of pointlessness licks up as I get up hours before the dawn, walk the starlit strand north to Old Tulum.

Slip past the gate, the sleeping guard, weave through the serpent columns up the steps of El Castillo, clifftop Maya watchtower to the East. Look down. A gloam rises from the ground. Take a narrow ledge-shuffle round to the eastern face, seven storeys of tower and cliff straight down to the sea. Sit. Wait. Think of nothing. Not sunrises over distant cities, not other countries, not old lovers. Watch for nothing.

Slow turn of nothingness in its cage of stars.

Suffer now the dawn's blush deceptions, this sudden fetch of sun that kindles sea, kerosene reefs to molten gold. Glance left, north to the stone Temple of the Diving God—admire the brief illusion tricked in flame—the breakneck dive of stone into a shallow flood of fire. Look back now, west, back over precincts of old stone changed to rose … to dragon bones. Ruins charred on pure white light, to blackened blocks of chalky stone.

The dawn fades, the shallows turn the blue of glaciers. A long shelf of aquamarine spreading south … a shore of ice in a pale tremble of blue, as if melting under moonlight. Slow return to sameness, day.

In the distance the dapple of reefs, horseshoes of morning cloud stamped on sea….

Insidious calm. Soundless sea I crave and dread. No wind. This breathlessness.

Figures stir back at the gates. I stop to buy a ticket on the way down and out. The guard shrugs at the ticketseller. Return for sunset. Rewind. Repeat in reverse.

[25 Jan. 95]

Each afternoon one guide finds me at the top. The others all give up, turn away in disgust. His beautiful little smile, deep black eyes unfathomable. Dear, cotton shortpants of an immaculate confection, brilliant like the sand, little pedal pushers hemmed mid-calf. He wears a white cotton shirt, yoke embroidered red and gold and green. Red cottonbraid overshirt, belted jerkin.

Will you let me guide you,
señorita
, last tour of the day? No, I did not think so. Quiet smile.
Hubiera sabido, ¿verdad?
You always shake your head. Perhaps you do not speak. Wait, I know—you teach me your sign language, I will teach you mine. We have been working on ours for two thousand years.

You should say yes soon. I am only here another day or two, I have stayed too long already. Maybe you have also.

Tiny little man, no taller than me, childlike, strong. White palms muscular at thumb and heel. Delicate ankles, feet sandalled in
huaraches
. His age utterly unguessable—twenty, fifty, a thousand years.

You may as well see something, since you come every afternoon. They say you climb up here each morning too. But only here, to El Castillo. Never the Snail Platform. Never the House of Columns, the Dance Platform. The Oratory. Why is that? Are you only here for the view?

At least you should go into the new Centro Interpretivo. It is why I have stayed some extra days.
Dioses de los Maya
. Travelling exhibit of the Maya gods. The best Maya art from all over the world. Together only a short time. Many Maya pieces I have only seen in books. They should be kept here, they have been taken from us. One day they again will be ours, I think. Not even this interests you? I am a very good guide.

Especially not this.

Ah, you do speak, but you have no curiosity. Tell me, do all tourists come here with their sunglasses and credit cards and rented cars only to be the stars of their own movie? You are disappointing, like the others.
Usually they just come once and stay half an hour. I did not see you wearing sunglasses…. He turns to go.

Is that why we come?

If I am wrong tell me. Let me share with you these things. The first time, you do not pay. If you like my work …

Bird bones, skin a softgloss mahogany. Pale full lips. Beautiful buddha man of an oriental elegance, features of a temple mask.

Do you even work here? Where's your badge and uniform, your rusty gun.

Ah, you are joking with me. I am not an employee if that is what you mean. I come once or twice a season to train the guides here and in Palenque. You should go there, have you been? From most pyramids it is with the sky we speak. But in Palenque the pyramids speak to the jungle all around. Some trees are much higher than the temple tops. Do you see the difference, does this interest you at all? You are lucky, I repeat the offer.

Yes why do you?—tell me.
Cuénteme
.

Pensé …
No, have a good day,
señorita
.

Wait … Please. What is your name?

Jacinto Ek Cruz,
a sus ordenes
.

He makes a formal little bow…. Jacinto, do you mock me too?

Jacinto, ¿a dónde va, de dónde viene?

Now?

When you're not training guides.

I come from the South. You will not know it. My family home is in San Andrés.

San Andrés …

A village. But I lived in Mexico City for a time. Teaching white Mexicans and foreigners to translate Maya languages. Very free translations, too free for me. I live down the coast now. Not far from San Andrés, in our capital of Carillo Puerto. Do you know it? I am
Director General del Centro Cultural Maya
. It is small, but we do good works. You should come one day. Ask for me. Jacinto Ek Cruz.

I must be going now. They are closing soon.
Señorita, adios
.

I leave the ruins without the sunset. Already a crack in the new routine, its dead perfections. Splayfoot Chaplinwalk back through the shallows. Hemmed mid-calf in turquoise, herding minnows. Sit in the bloodwarm
water to cool the blackfunk jeans. Soak in this sinister beauty of late afternoon, doctored, hyperreal. Airbrushed postcard in the round, the flesh.

I sit in this stillness, in the light's icy shimmer. Sea birds…. I am grateful for the sound. Sift the swift auspices of bird cries. Sit still for this, their aerial
misericordia
. A curlew's frantic pipe and skitter—numen cry!—its head-dip caesura.

Dart and spear of terns, blade voices shaped and turned on flight's white wheel.

Descent of gulls. Feral howl, jackals of the air. Contemptible squabbles….

Sunset. Moonless night. My subway penlight yellowing as I write this.

26 Jan

Endure another perfect sunrise from the stone tower. Mid-morning walk back from Tulum. Mid-day bask in a dot of shade. Under my palm parasol of home, the last in a long scatter south. The secret of the hammock,
señorita
, is to lie cross-wise. You see? It flattens everything. Makes it comfortable. Just watch … for scorpions in the thatch.

Two pairs of blond mirages waver down the beach. Towering backpack cowls, glinting pack frames, blue bedrolls. Of course, take the two parasols right next door a dozen others empty farther up. Company. Sororal littoral, cozy row of sisterhood—stop! can you spell s-o-l-i-t-u-d-e? So I leave early for the ruins, early afternoon. Four gold nods, bright smiles in quadruplicate. Upturned noses peeled and pink, dolleyes of palest turquoise. Eight little windows on a beyond of bright shallows. Perpetual sea view.

I sit on the watchtower and listen to the last tour bus retreating north to happy hour in Cancún. Sweet diesel croon that calls up my happy hour in Old Tulum. The light ebbs. I look down between my feet. Seven storeys down the dim foam rings the jagged stones like smoke. Still Jacinto Ek Cruz has not come. Minor distraction, very minor. Study the east for the first sign of dusk … a line traced in soft lead at the horizon, a contraction in the sea's cooling skin.

Pale lemon glows in a far anvil of cloud. The sky's cobalt softens with greens as if glimpsed through leaves.

Feel only a minor annoyance … the tiniest throb of hurt. He didn't come.

Footscuff on stone—too late Jacinto, too bad, no guide-sale after all—but no, a tall tall manboy, head down, gangle of arms—swift walk—furtive / mindless of the sheer drop of cliff, hungry rock-haloes of seafoam.