Десмонд Бэгли - The Vivero Letter

The hillside was scraped clean to reveal the bare rock that had been hidden beneath the thin soil and, on top of the ridge, the temple of Yum Chac stood proudly against the sky very much as it must have looked when Vivero first saw it. I stepped back to get a better view of the whole ridge and looked past the ruined hut, and a great feeling of awe came upon me.

Because I saw Vivero’s sign written in burning gold in the side of the ridge. I am not, in any sense, a religious man, but my legs turned to water and I sank down upon my knees and tears came to my eyes. The sceptic, of course, would write it off as a mere trick of the sun, of light and shade, and would point to parallels in other parts of the world where some natural rock formations are famous and well known. But that sceptic would not have gone through what I had gone through that day.

It may have been a trick of light and shade, but it was undeniably real — as real as if carved by a master sculptor. The setting sun, shining fitfully through scudding clouds, shed a lurid yellow light along the ridge and illuminated a great figure of Christ Crucified. The arms, spread along the ridge, showed every tortured muscle, and the nail heads in the palms of the hands cast deep shadows. The broad-chested torso shrank to a hollow stomach at the foot of the ridge, and there was a gaping hole in the side, just under the rib cage, which a sceptic would have dismissed as a mere cave. All the rib structure showed as clearly as in an anatomical drawing, as though that mighty chest was gasping for breath.

But it was the face that drew the attention. The great head lolled on one side against a shoulder and an outcrop of spiky rocks formed the crown of thorns against the darkening sky. Deep shadows drew harsh lines of pain from the nose to the corners of the mouth; the hooded eyes, crowfooted at the corners, stared across Quintana Roo; and the lips seemed about to part as though to bellow in a great voice of stone, ‘Eloi! Eloi, Lama Sabacthani!’

I found my hands trembling and I could imagine what impression this miracle would have made on Vivero, a child of a simpler, yet deeper, faith than ours. No wonder he wanted his sons to take the city of Uaxuanoc; no wonder he had kept it secret and had baited his letter with gold. If this had been discovered in Vivero’s time, it would have been one of the wonders of the Christian world, and the discoverer might even have been revered as a saint.

Probably this effect was not a daily occurrence and might depend on certain angles of the sun and, perhaps, times of year even. The Mayas, brought up in a different pictorial tradition and with no knowledge of Christianity, might not even have recognized it for what it was. But Vivero certainly had.

I knelt entranced in the middle of that devastated camp and looked up at this great wonder which had been hidden for so many centuries under a curtain of trees. The light changed as a cloud passed over the sun, and the expression of that huge and distant face changed from a gentle sorrow to inexpressible agony. I suddenly felt very afraid, and closed my eyes.

There was a crackle of twigs. ‘That’s right; say your prayers, Wheale,’ said a grating voice.

I opened my eyes and turned my head. Gatt was standing just to one side with a revolver in his hand. He looked as though the whole forest had fallen on top of him. Gone was the neat elegance of the morning; he had lost his jacket, and his shirt was torn and ragged, revealing a hairy chest streaked with bloody scratches. His trousers were ripped at the knees and, as he walked around me, I saw that he had lost one shoe and was limping a little. But even so he was in better shape than I was — he had a gun!

He rubbed his hand over one sweaty cheek, streaking it with dirt, and lifted the other which held the revolver. ‘Just you stay right there — on your knees.’ He walked on a little further until he was directly in front of me.

‘Have you seen what’s behind you?’ I asked quietly.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen it,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Some effect, hey? Better than Mount Rushmore.’ He grinned. ‘Expecting it to do you some good, Wheale?’

I said nothing, but just looked at him. The machete was at my side and within reach of my fingers if I stooped a little. I didn’t think Gatt would let me get that far.

‘So you been praying, boy? Well, you gotta right.’ The cultivated accent had vanished along with the elegance of his clothes; he had gone back to his primitive beginnings. ‘You got every right because I’m gonna kill you. You wanna pray some more? Go right ahead — be my guest’

I still kept my mouth shut, and he laughed. ‘Cat got your tongue? Got nothing to say to Jack Gatt? You were pretty gabby this morning, Wheale. Now, I’ll tell you something — confidential between you and me. You got plenty time to pray because you’re not going to die quick or easy. I’m going to put a hot slug right in your guts and you’ll take a long, long time to join our pal over there.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘You know who I mean — Holy Jesus up in the sky.’

There was a maniac gleam in his eyes and a tic convulsed his right cheek. He was now right round the bend and beyond the reach of reason. Gone was any idea he might have had of making me dive for the treasure — all he wanted was the violence of revenge, a booby prize for being cheated.

I looked at the gun he was holding and couldn’t see any bullets in it. What I don’t know about firearms would fill a library of books, but the revolver I’d used had rotated the cylinder when the trigger was pressed to bring a cartridge under the hammer, and before the gun was fired that cartridge would be visible from the front. I couldn’t see any such cartridge in Gatt’s gun.

‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble,’ said Gatt. ‘More trouble than any man I knew.’ He laughed raucously, ‘Get it? I put that in the past tense because guys who cause me any kind of trouble don’t stay alive. And neither will you.’ He was relaxed and enjoying his cat-and-mouse game.

I was anything but relaxed. I was about to stake my life on there not being two kinds of revolver. Slowly I stooped and curled my fingers around the handle of the machete. Gatt tensed and jerked the gun. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Dr.op it!’

I didn’t. Instead, I started to get to my feet. ‘All right buster,’ shouted Gatt. ‘Here it comes!’ He squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell on an empty chamber with a dry click. He looked at it with startled eyes, and then backed away fast as he saw me coming at him with the upraised machete, turned tail and ran with me after him.

He scrambled over a tree trunk and became entangled in branches. I took a swing at him and a spray of leaves and twigs flew up into the air. Gatt yelped in fear and broke free, trying to make for the open ground and the forest beyond, but I ran around the tree, cutting him off, and he backed away towards the cenote .

He was still holding the useless gun which he raised and tried to fire again, giving me another bad moment, but it clicked harmlessly. I stepped forward again, manoeuvring him backwards, and he stepped back cautiously, not daring to take his eyes off me until he stumbled over the concrete foundations of the hut.

I will say he was quick. He threw the gun at me with an unexpected movement and I ducked involuntarily, and when I recovered he also was armed with a machete, which he had picked up from the floor of the hut. He squared his shoulders and a new confidence seemed to come over him as he hefted the broad-bladed weapon. His lips parted and his mouth broke into a grin, but there was no humour in his watchful eyes.

I automatically fell into the sabre stance — the classic ‘on guard’ position. As from a great distance seemed to come the ghostly voice of the maître d’armes crying. ‘Use your fingers on the cut, Wheale!’ I hefted the machete. This was no light sporting sabre to be twitched about by finger action as the Hungarian masters have taught; it could be more appropriately compared with a naval cutlass.