Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

There had been many occasions during that period when he had been tempted to bunk off and visit his girlfriend at her juice shack six kilometres down the road, but each time he felt tempted by the anticipation of the joy she would no doubt show at his presence, he allowed his thoughts to wander back to what exactly the Halach Uinic might do to him if he was caught abandoning his post, and he thought better of it. There were always the evenings to look forward to, when the Kabah site was shut.

The problem was that Acan didn’t really know what he was looking for. The Halach Uinic – who was the most important Maya priest in the whole of the Yucatan, or so people told him – had not exactly bombarded him with information.

‘We are expecting something to happen at Kabah following the eruption. This has been predicted. But we do not yet know what it will be. You were once a guide at Kabah, were you not, Acan? You will stay there during the day, therefore. If anything strange happens, you will use the security guard’s cell phone, and you will call me. Your brother Naum will keep watch during the night. After the first two weeks, you will both be allowed time off.’

‘Two weeks?’

‘You will be paid from the fund. More than you could earn from labouring. Isn’t it better to laze around drinking Coca Cola than to break stones for a cheating boss?’

As always, the Halach Uinic had put his finger straight on the meat of the matter.

‘I shall do as you say.’

‘Anything. Anything strange. And you will call me?’

‘I will.’

Now, eight days in, Acan was sitting under the shade of a carob tree, fantasizing about his girlfriend and wishing he was sitting in her fruit booth pinching her bottom. He loved the way she shrieked at him when he surprised her in this way. Sometimes she would even hit him with her towel, which afforded him great pleasure.

Just as he was beginning to doze off in the early morning sun, Acan’s attention was caught by a stranger – a mestizo, it looked like – arriving on his cousin Tepeu’s triciclo.

How did Tepeu, who spent his entire time hunting, ever get to know a mestizo? And, even more unlikely, give him a lift on his triciclo? Acan stumbled to his feet and shaded his eyes. Tepeu and the mestizo were negotiating with the man at the gate. Voices were briefly raised, and then Tepeu handed over a dead iguana, and the gatekeeper waved the mestizo through.

Acan watched as the mestizo walked towards the Palace of the Masks. The man stood for some time staring at the multitude of carved masks that adorned the wall, and then he shook his head, as if something puzzled him. After a moment’s further hesitation he turned around and walked down towards Acan. At first, Acan thought the man was going to talk to him, but then the mestizo chose a neighbouring carob tree, about twenty metres to Acan’s right, and sat down beneath its shade. Then he lay down, using his bag as a pillow, and prepared himself to sleep.

Acan glanced over at the gatekeeper’s lodge, but his cousin had already cycled away. Acan shrugged. What did it all have to do with him anyway? A mestizo turning up at Kabah, although rare, was not an event in itself. And the man was now clearly asleep.

Acan allowed himself to collapse back onto the ground again. He took a languid sip of his Coca Cola, and then set himself back to thinking about his girlfriend, Rosillo, and what he might do to her, come Saturday night, if he could only persuade her to drink just a little of his aguardiente stash.

Acan awoke from his doze at a little after ten o’clock in the morning. Gringos were coming – he could hear the confident boom of their voices from a hundred metres away.

The arrival of gringos was not, in and of itself, strange, as Acan knew that most of the small trickle of people who ever bothered to visit Kabah were gringos of one sort or another. Most visitors to the Yucatan, however, chose the more famous tourist destinations of Chichen Itza and Uxmal instead, leaving Kabah to wallow in its peaceful backwater isolation.

These gringos had a US registered car, though – Acan had very good eyes, and he could make out the number plate in the scant parking lot that serviced the site. And this was strange in itself. It meant that the gringos had driven many thousands of kilometres to reach here. Unless, of course, they lived in the country for part of the year, as some gringos did, and merely drove their car down for convenience sake.

Acan shook his head. He glanced over to his right. The mestizo was also interested in the gringos. As Acan watched, the mestizo took the bag that he had been using as a pillow, and hid it behind the trunk of the carob tree, as though he feared that the gringos might steal it. And that was also a strange thing. Why should the mestizo fear that the gringos might steal what he had? Surely, it would be the other way around? Mestizos were terrible thieves, or so his father had warned him when he became interested in a mestizo girl, one time.

‘Maya marry Maya,’ said his father. ‘If Maya marry half-Spanish thieves, they lose their souls and the nawal gets them.’

Acan had soon lost interest in the mestizo girl anyway, the first time he saw Rosillo working in her juice booth. Now she was a little piece of paradise, that girl. And Maya, too. His father wouldn’t dare call her a thief.

Acan decided to take a closer look at the gringos. He got up, stretched, and sidled over to where they were standing, admiring the Palace of the Masks.

‘Do you guys need a guide? I’m an expert on this place. I can tell you everything. If you pay me in US dollars and not pesos, I can tell you even more.’

The younger man laughed, and turned towards the woman, inviting her opinion. It was then that Acan saw the woman properly for the first time. He felt himself go cold, and his neck and arms prick up in goose-bumps.

One side of her face was covered in a veil of blood.

Acan grabbed hold of his shoulders for comfort, forcing his thumbs between the index and middle fingers of his hands – this phallic gesture, of the thumb as penis and the fingers as the vagina, had been taught to him by his mother as a talisman against curses.

Acan was briefly tempted to cross himself too, but then he remembered what the Halach Uinic always said about old Christian habits, and how they diluted true belief – true openness of mind. God was God. Hunab Ku was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was Itzam Na. God was Hunab Ku. Itzam Na was God. God was both Hunab Ku and Itzam Na. In other words God was the same God for everyone. He did not belong to one religion more than any other. You did not own Him simply by giving Him a name.

The woman was looking at him strangely, and Acan realized that he was still gripping his shoulders like a young girl trying to protect her breasts from public gaze. He dropped his hands and attempted to smile.

The woman sensed his fear, however. Sensed that his throat had dried up. That he could barely swallow. This much he knew. Please God his talismanic gesture of the thumb between the two fingers had worked, for he also knew from his mother that this movement represented the dried-out and impotent penis being restored to life by the moistness of the vagina. In this way only could the evil eye be counteracted by the natural scheme of the earth.

Acan shivered, and turned to the older man of the group. Perhaps he would make a decision for them all? Acan wanted to be back underneath his tree. He wanted to drink half a litre of Coca Cola, very quickly, and very cold. Then he wanted to go and find Rosillo and tell her all about the gringa with the bloodied face. Maybe he would even get Rosillo to pass a raw egg over him, then crack it into a bowl of water and examine it. In this way would the mal de ojo be absorbed into the egg. Later, Acan would cover the bowl with straw and sleep with it underneath his pillow.