Hunger's Brides (194 page)

Is there something here you are afraid to see?

The captive's job is simple enough. Inspire his killers to kill. Beautifully.

Why are you so uninterested in the Maya,
señorita?
Are we not bloodthirsty enough for you? We were not pacifists—in barely a
year
the Spanish broke the mighty Mexica. Two hundred kilometres inland over mountain passes. Five hundred Spaniards. A dozen horses. No reinforcements, no food. Against some say an army of a million Mexica soldiers. Do not tell me about cannons. How many cannon balls could they have carried from the coast?
Pacifists
—the Maya hardly let the Spaniards ashore. Two centuries later they still had not finished us. To this day there are villages that have never surrendered.

Traffic cop, is that iron in your gloves?

Here. Look at this warrior figurine. So small it fits in one palm—but all the detail. His mask, we call the Mosaic Monster. The Maya king becomes this god when he goes to war. It is good we speak openly. I have wanted to do this for some time.

At last the real tour, authentic jungle cruise. Anything you ask, just take off the mask
.

Why do you let me talk to you this way?

There are things,
señorita
, I wanted to show you.

But why?

Will you not tell me how you are called?

You should know I'm going to fuck you now no matter what—but no more kindness. This stranger kind of kindness…
.

Beulah.

Yes?

Limosneros.

Is it only blood that interests you Beulah Limosneros? Is this the exotic
film you
came for? Come….

Sala Morada. Room of Wine-Red. Pine-scent of burning copal. Dimness like smoke, darkened walls, a tracklit string of panels, white stone sculpted in swirls of flowing chalk. Seated figurines, zoomorphs. Limestone lintels captioned in cartoon glyphs. Intricate markings of a calendar carved in yellow rock…
.

By 100 B
.C
. we had invented a system of writing. The Chinese had this also by then but were still busy perfecting paper. We had a calendar that used place notation, like your decimal system but never equalled anywhere, and no not even today.

Here. Has anyone seen a thing more beautiful and more terrible than this stone head from the eighth century and borrowed from Cleveland? Who were these Cleves, I hear there were Indians there once but what was their land? Why have I never seen
their
sculptures,
their
temples?

While this head was being carved in Copan, the Arabs were only just borrowing the Indian systems of decimals and numerals. Imagine the Romans counting barbarians at the gates using Roman numerals—perhaps they lost count, or only ran out of time. Do you know who this head depicts, Beulah? This is the Death God of the Number Zero. Carved before 800 A
.D
. By then we were the equals of China in printing, carving and calligraphy, of India in mathematics, architecture and medicine, of the Arabs in astronomy. And what was Europe's greatest invention by this time? No, not the wheel. Our children's toys had wheels for a thousand years. By 800, the best you could do was the water wheel. We have no rivers here,
señorita
. They flow under our feet.

Beautiful brown man, how gently you began. We should have met such a long time ago
.

Ours is called a Stone Age civilization. Yet for five hundred years after our Classic Age began its
decline
, Europe does not have a single invention to impress us. Oh, I forgot. Steel. Our obsidian blades are still two hundred times sharper than the best modern scalpels. An edge one molecule wide. I am told you use them for brain surgery now, just as we did once. But you wanted to talk of sport. You see how his hair is bound, and his dress? The God of the Number Zero is a sportsman, a ballplayer. Captain of his team. And it is the captain who is taken captive once the outcome is decided. By the time Europeans first saw the Zero, Beulah,
we had been killing its god for a thousand years
. So it is a shame you are not
interested in the Maya. You want my favourite form of sacrifice? This. They tore off his jaw. While he still lived. Is it because Zero has nothing to tell us, do you think, or too much?
Señorita
Beulah Limosneros we were never pacifists, but I wanted you to see my people were musicians too, and architects, and poets. See these carvings of the Monkey Scribes, their homely faces! Of all the gods, the ones we most admired—and the Hero Twins, who always defeated the stronger enemy by guile. Once, we worshipped creativity, genius, and especially its failures, mistakes guided by the hand of god … who jiggles your elbow like a child while you draw—I am sorry. I should not have touched you.

And I am sorry to be harsh. As I say, I have wanted to speak openly with one of you for some time now. You cannot know us by comparing us to anything. Not your
Aztecas
, not the Chinese, not the Egyptians.

There are lighter things I could have shown you, filled with laughter. The Jester God, the royal dwarfs—court jesters a little like those of Velázquez. Figurines taken from daily life. An old drunkard. A concubine with a client. These erotic works are very rare today. A favourite target of our Franciscan fathers. But I think that is enough tonight,
señorita
.

Jacinto how does this computer program work? I didn't know the Maya had horoscopes.

This is garbage. We should go now.

What's your birthdate?

All your calendars are toys. Time is your disease.

What?

The guards will be waiting.

What did you mean?

The tour is over.

But there's one more room.
Sala Turqueza
. What's in there?

Only what the tourists come for … what is destroying our youth.

Jacinto wait, you asked why I came.

Destroying this coast.

Why I stayed.

You also, then. For drugs. The pretext the Mexican soldiers use to search us for guns. Only three kilometres inland from here is a cave with an underground river,
so clear …
A secret cavern big as a cathedral underground. A village hid down there for a week once while the Spaniards searched. You should go there. It is better than all the drugs you will buy here.

I came to learn about a recipe.

I know nothing about cooking.

El vino de obsidiana
.

Ahh. Now Mexican garbage. Obsidian wine, the recipe for disaster.

So you know it.

It is part of our work at the Centro Cultural to teach our youth how primitive this drug hunger is. To teach the difference between vision and escape. Yes we had these things. The dancing, the trances. Steam baths, fasts. Fish toxins, snake venoms taken as snuff, smoked with wild tobacco—or in enemas. Some visitors find this last one most exotic, and you would not be the first to ask me to arrange this. But none of these was sacred on its own.

Then what was?

The main hallucinogen, very exotic, was massive blood loss. The sacred ingredient was the blood of a king. Blood fed the VisionSerpent, but blood burnt, made smoke. On its slow black coils the VisionSerpent rose. As it rose when they burned our books.
Señorita
—

Beulah.

You are upset. I understand. The boy. You are far from home. These things are frightening. Please listen to one thing. I will be back in about three weeks. I hope I still do not find you. Tulum is not a good place to spend time with nothing to fill it. The boy earlier should convince you of this.

Tell me at least what you meant about time.

The tour is over.

About our disease.

The guards will already be angry.

Then tomorrow.

I am leaving tomorrow.
Señorita
Beulah I know many scholars who come here from the North, from Europe. They are all strange people, as I say, like the tourists. Stars of some exotic film running in their heads. You are maybe the youngest and the most unusual yet. And among the most beautiful, but my answer to you as to them is No.

We walk out through the doors between the smoking guards. Faces glisten with sweat and smirk. Crickets … sickle glint of moon. One guard goes in, throws a deeper lever of night.

Last ember glow of the last smoking guard.

Don Jacinto, you should walk the young lady back to her hotel.

She is not staying at a hotel.

And how would you know?

Los mosquitos
. You look like you have chicken pox.

Your ancestors thought bloodsuckers were holy.

My ancestors did not get everything right. Good-night,
señorita
.

Why do they always call you
don Jacinto?

Terms of respect are common here in Yucatán.
Buenas noches, Beulah. Ande con mucho cuidado
.

He fades down the walk of crushed white coral, beautiful brown calves like the flanks of deer clench unclench in the garden lights lining the path.

Don Jacinto?

Falters, turns. Eyes invisible in the upcast light. Yes
señorita
Beulah Limosneros.

How old are you?

Waits a moment, smiles, his inscrutable mask. Thirty of your years,
señorita
. Whatever that means.

Scrape and clatter of crushed coral. White cotton pedalpushers receding into gloom.

O
BSIDIAN
W
INE
        

28 Jan [19
]
95

D
EEP NIGHT
. Peace. A whispering sea, milky light. At the shore, wavelets lap at their dish of hours. Night fades … muddles to grey. A quartermoon sets. North, four blondes stir. Match flare, emberglow. Giggles … a sliding scale, half-asleep to stoned. Two blondes swim out, naked in a sea of ink. Just before dawn a birdcry of ecstasy.

Two dim figures come out, hand-in-hand, shimmering hides of grey silk, salt. They stand close a moment, looking out to sea. Murmur, share a small white towel.

Mid-morning. Topless frolic in ice-blue shallows. Sharp calls in German maybe Swedish. Mid-day cookout in coconut oil—eight pink eggs sizzling sunnyside up, coppertipped. Out of nowhere—the whole fucking beach just yesterday deserted—the sex jackals homing now to the cook-out, flies to a butcherblock. More men skulking in the palms, sprawling in street clothes in the sand, watchful gun dogs.

Late afternoon mirage of a food vendor wavering south. Same skinny old stork as yesterday and days before. Red neckerchief, hat brim come undone—spill of plaid—a weave of straw and sea. Make a balanced meal of his random offerings.
Empanadas de piña
. Shark kebabs. Today he brings diced mango and lime.

Señor
, why is there no wind here?

A good question,
joven
. This is the season of winds. Yet for days like this. Not a breath. Like in the season of storms.

Feel the lime burn scurvy lips and gums.

30 Jan

No more walks to Old Tulum. For the new routine salvage the bare essentials: Think of nothing, look for nothing. Not the sails of a caravel, not old lovers. Stare out over a sea of bluest torpor.

I have come for this. Exactly this. Silence, stillness. This breathlessness.

A biped bikinirack staggers up the beach ankledeep in sand, ambulant comedy. Fringed in pendulous cups and thongs—a tatterdemalion surge
as she walks, this burly Maya lady in a comical hat of conical straw. All and only bikinis. She flutters to a discreet stop a few metres from the topless blondes, a stocky statuette of tattered decorum.

One takes the hint walks to the rack, all Yucatán her fitting room. She cups top after top over bare breasts of a goldpink perfection. The others join in, giggling, hooking unhooking straps, taking shy model turns. Four laughing gold towers above the Maya lady smiling now, walled in sisterhood.

Back from the beach the sex jackals quiver in their shade of fronds, throb in their palms to these intimacies neverglimpsed, beyond conceiving. Circle this day on your pin-up calendars, O scavengers, sing of this day at carrion feasts for generations.