The Seven Serpents Trilogy (55 page)

“A man of importance?”

She shrugged. “He buys many things. And he has many porters to carry them away.”

The trader's name was Zambac, Tzom Zambac, and he was one of the first traders I dealt with after the plague. He came in bouncing on his heels, the tassels on his sandals flapping merrily, and smiled and bowed twice before he was within speaking distance. He had two rolls of fat under his chin, two around his middle, and though he lacked one eye, had the jolliest face I have ever seen.

He bought a hat for each of his many servants and several for himself, not asking the price beforehand. All of this, however, was only a preliminary. He had come to talk business.

“I was here once before,” he said, speaking a dialect I had never heard and found difficult. “I saw you as you sat on a blanket and sold trinkets like a common Indian. I was puzzled. I had met a band of your people when they traveled through my province. They were proud people who bought trinkets but did not sell them.”

I was surprised to learn that the Spaniards had penetrated to the south of Quintana. “Did the white men come through the mountains or from the sea?”

“From the mountains. From Tenochtitlán. That is the city of the Azteca.”

“Was the leader called Cortés?”

“There was one they called
capitán.
Half the size of you, sir. He has a thin beard and thin hair. His face is very pale, like the bark of a ceiba. He limps along when he walks.”

Surely Zambac was describing Cortés. Not Pedro de Alvarado nor Cristoval de Olid nor any of the other captains I knew.

“Does he have a woman with him?”

“Yes, a woman who speaks with many tongues. Marina, they call her.”

Cortés, beyond doubt. Cortés!

“When he left your province, where did he go? In what direction?”

“He traveled…he traveled…” Zambac paused to think. “He went southward. I remember now. Out of Maya country, along the Mumpango trail to the south.”

Zambac frowned. He had not come to be questioned about matters he wasn't interested in.

“With your permission,” he said, “I will talk about you.” He waited for a moment and then bowed. “When I saw you squatting on a blanket I thought, There is a man who is white like this Cortés. But he is a poor seller of trinkets. A man of his size and whiteness, if he is a merchant in my country, would not be squatting in the sun like an Indian.”

He paused to glance around at my open-air stall and its rows of sombreros. “You are standing now. Out of the rain and sun. But you are still poor. In my country you would someday be—” Zambac knew the Spanish word for ‘rich person'—“a
rico.
But the two of us together would become big
ricos.
Not tomorrow, yet soon.”

“You're a
rico
already.”

“I wish to become more
rico
,” he said. “Then I could buy a jewel like that one you wear on your finger. How many cacao do you wish for it, sir?”

“I do not wish to sell it,” I said.

He moved closer. “I would like to put the ring on, sir, and see how beautiful it is on my finger.”

“It's a
talismán
,” I said. “A charm. An amulet. It is bad luck to take it off.”

Not in the least offended by my refusal, he took a last ad miring glance at the amethyst, gathered his servants, and backed away, his eyes on the floor. In the street, he bowed and called out in Spanish, “
Hasta luego.
Until then.”

Tzom Zambac was at the stall when we opened, soon after daybreak. He came with ten porters and lined them up out side. Except for their hands and feet, they were barely visible under enormous bales of merchandise. He opened the top of one of the bales and pulled out a handful of red feathers.

“Toucan,” he said and pointed to a second bale. “Yellow tanager. I also have hummingbird and five quetzals. Others also.”

He sent the porters away. Swaying under their light but cumbersome burdens, led by guards and servants, they disappeared along the road that followed the more southerly of the two rivers. He turned to me and bowed.

“I can see that you have thought much since I was here,” he said.

“I haven't thought at all. You talked about my being your partner. Partner in what?”

“On the Isle of Petén, where I live, you will be a partner in the selling of feathered cloaks. I have them made with the feathers you have seen. Beautiful cloaks. You go about and sell the cloaks to nobles.”

“Go about? Where? What nobles?”

“You go about to towns near Petén. There are many nobles in these towns. Many. They will see that you are a noble, too, a noble white man, and they will buy cloaks…”

“And pay more for them than usual.”

Tzom Zambac lightly touched my arm to assure me that this was exactly what he had in mind.

“Two times as much. Three times. Perhaps four times,” he said. “Because a white man, a noble white man like you, sir, brings good fortune to everything that he touches with his hands. The white man has powerful spirits around him. You can see them at night. They glow in the darkness around his body.”

“Did the man Cortés glow in the dark?”

“Like a jewel. Like a necklace of jewels,” Tzom Zambac said. “I will give you a part of what you sell, white noble.” He glanced at the jewel, the beautiful amethyst ring on my finger.

“What part?” I asked.

“After the costs, one half.”

I was not overwhelmed by the prospect of selling feathered cloaks to the nobles of Petén. But any day, at any hour, Cortés might appear in Quintana. I couldn't hide, as I had hidden in Chichén-Palapa, where everyone was my friend. Here, if Cortés were to offer an inducement in the form of gold, or a bout of Spanish torture such as hanging upside down, someone would surely betray me.

Above all, I was haunted by memories of Selka Mulamé. During the days, and at night in my dreams, I saw her gaze fixed upon me. I often heard the last trusting words she had spoken—“Dear friend, please remember Selka in your prayers.” Quintana was a dead place to me.

We left it the next morning. I turned over the stalls to the women to run as they saw fit until I returned, which would be never. I took little—my pearls, a pouch of cacao beans and triangular bits of copper to serve as money, and the wide-brimmed hat that Selka had made.

I left in the same spiritless mood that I had when I left the cove and Chichén-Palapa, without the least idea of what lay before me and not much caring—a godless wanderer, seek ing nothing. Deep down in my thoughts was the dire warning from Leviticus, “And ye shall flee when none pursueth you.”

We overtook the porters that night at a hostel of thatch and saplings open on all sides, owned by an elderly Indian who called it Ix Ykoki, or Evening Star, after his granddaughter. Zambac and I were given hot water for baths and fish for supper that tasted like pork. The granddaughter, who ran from chore to chore and hummed plaintive little tunes under her breath, reminded me of Selka.

We never found such a commodious hostel again, although there were many places along the trail, located a comfortable day's travel apart, where we could buy fire for our evening meal and fresh meat, usually tapir or opossum, occasionally dog, which the porters preferred.

We alternately baked and froze as our train climbed out of the hotlands into the high mountain passes and down through ravines that crisscrossed each other and still ran bank to bank with water from the rains. At all the crossings there were hanging bridges woven of vines that swayed and creaked over the rushing torrents. Zambac was now riding in a litter. Every step I took over the rough trail, I longed for the stallion Bravo.

My new partner was the politest man I had ever known. He greeted everyone we passed on the trail, displaying his open palms in the Maya greeting. On the other hand, he was the most suspicious. Everyone we encountered, whether a lone traveler, traders with a dozen porters, or a cacique accom panied by a horde of slaves, guards, and women, he sized up as potential brigands out to do him in.

Our line of porters and servants and guards wound toward the Isle of Petén at a snake's pace, scarcely five leagues each day, stopping often to rest those who carried Zambac. As the sun set I sang Ave Maria, surprised to learn that during the time Cortés had spent among them everyone had come to en joy it. But at dawn they all plucked thorns and greeted the rising sun, I among them.

 

T
HE LAKE OF
P
ETÉN WAS HIDDEN BY A BLUE MIST WHEN WE CAME TO
its shores early in the morning after ten days of hard travel from Quintana. The city of Petén was located on an island in the middle of the lake, so our caravan had to wait until the mist lifted and canoes were able to ferry us across.

I had been told by Zambac that it was the most beautiful of all the Maya cities, but had put no trust in his words, attrib uting them to his tendency to boast. I was wrong. When the mist lifted, the sun revealed rows of glittering temples that reached into the sky.

Noting my astonishment, Zambac said, “Petén was more beautiful before this man Cortés came. Cortés burned the god houses. Cortés tore down our stone idols. Cortés took the stones and did bad things with them.”

I remembered that I had been equally dazzled by my first view of the City of the Seven Serpents. I likewise remembered my disappointment when I entered the city and found it a col lection of ruins. These memories sobered me as I stood there on the shore gazing across the waters at the shining towers.

I was surprised, therefore, when we crossed to the island and came upon the central plaza. Petén was, indeed, a beauti ful city.

On two sides of the plaza and raised from the level where people walked were stone structures of varying heights painted in raw shades of blue and yellow and red. Facing each other were the temples I had viewed from the shore, towering stark white and, like those I had seen in Tenochtitlán, washed with glistening mica. Broad streets that rayed out from the plaza like spokes in a wheel were planted with flowers, and flowering vines trailed down from the rooftops. There were crosses everywhere.

My eye was caught by a gigantic statue of red sandstone that rose from the center of the plaza. It was roughly hewn but unmistakably the figure of a riderless horse, with flowing tail and two hooves pawing the air. According to Zambac, it was the pride of Petén and all the countryside.

“Cortés,” he said, “rode into the city on the back of a red animal. The beast had a bad injury in its foot, and when Cortés went away, he left the horse behind him. My people loved the beast. They offered it flowers to eat and fruit and savory stews of dog and turkey to cure its bad foot, but the animal grew pale and died. So the people made a statue of the beast. Now they worship it as the god of thunder and lightning. What do you believe, sir? Do you believe that it has the power of a god?”

“If the people believe it does, then it does.”

“What do you believe, sir?”

“I say that it has power.”

“What would Cortés say if he returned? He burned all the idols and warned the people not to worship anyone except the God in heaven.”

People were bringing flowers, lying prone before the effigy while we talked.

“What would this man say if he returned, sir?”

“He would say nothing, Zambac. He would shake his head, fall to his knees in prayer, then get up and burn the city to the ground and put a thousand to the sword.”

“The statue?”

“He would break it into small pieces and throw it in the lake.”

“Do you feel like doing the same, sir?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

Zambac smiled and rubbed his palms. “I see that you will do well with our nobles. They will like you, sir, and you will sell many cloaks at excellent prices. We will become
ricos
very soon, sir.”

Zambac was a prophet, as well as a good businessman. Before a month had passed, I sold fifteen hummingbird cloaks without leaving the city and took orders for nine more at triple the prices commanded in the past. The cloaks were works of art, like those made in Zambac's shops long before I came. But the fear in which all Spaniards were held, the reverence they inspired, the awe caused by my blond hair and great height—I was two heads taller than Cortés—and above all the belief in the mysterious powers of the white man, made it possible for me to meet the noblest of the nobles, the important
batak
, who collected taxes, the high priest, the
nacom
, and the leader, the
halach uinic
himself.

Zambac's enterprise, located in an alley near the central plaza, consisted of a series of small rooms surrounded by a courtyard planted with flowering jacaranda trees. In each room there were three women. They chose the designs and sketched them on the best cotton cloth stretched drumhead tight over hardwood panels. They could show any of a dozen different pastoral scenes, such as deer grazing beside a mountain brook, or a martial scene of warriors with banners flying under a canopy of stars and clouds.

The design was important. Much time was spent patiently listening to customers who wanted a scene they had devised themselves. But in the end, whatever the design, it was the workmanship that counted. Zambac was an artist and he hired only artists. The women were more skilled than the best goldsmiths. They were like fine painters who used feathers instead of pigments to create their masterpieces.

Zambac allowed neither short cuts nor cheating. In a cloak that had six thousand feathers, none larger than a frond of maidenhair fern, some as small as a mayfly's wing, not so much as one feather was tinted to suit the color desired. Not one was trimmed to fit a certain space. The
goma
that fastened the feathers to the cotton backing was transparent, faintly and pleasingly aromatic.

I was enthralled by the beauty of these shimmering cloaks. I had no twinge of conscience when I demanded and received triple the price they once had sold for. At that, considering the mysterious powers I added to the transaction as a white man, the nobles got a bargain.