The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (101 page)

Big Star is a drunkard, a deformed dog with the head of a jaguar and the hind end of a dog with a purple dick. He staggers like Rabbit, who also is a drunkard. Nasty, arrogant liar! Troublemaker and experimenter in mutual hate and torture!

Venus. Color: red. Direction: east. Herald of the dawn and measurer of night.

Envious Ribald;

Sin in his face and in his talk; he had no virtue in him.

He is without understanding.

He had no virtue in him. Mighty carnivorous teeth and a body withered like a rabbit.

Deities return. Better get to know them.

Venus of the Celestial Dragon with eight heads; each head hurls shafts of affliction down on mankind. Europeans call Venus “Lucifer, the Bright One,” who fell from grace long ago. Venus resides in darkness until he rises as Morning Star. Dogface partially blackened, a fish in his headdress, he swims up from the dark underworld.

Error in translation of the Chumayel manuscript: 11 AHU was the year of the return of fair Quetzalcoatl. But the mention of the artificial white circle in the sky could only have meant the return of Death Dog and his eight brothers: plague, earthquake, drought, famine, incest, insanity, war, and betrayal.

Xolotol, the Death Dog, is playing his drum. He wears bird and snake earrings, which is a rebus for Quetzalcoatl. Xolotol, ribs and skull with a knife in the teeth.

Jade water = rain.

Dead souls travel branches and roots of the ceiba trees to reach the land of the dead. The outline of the tree’s roots and branches has the appearance of the outline of the lizard, Imix, earth monster, crocodile. The land of the dead is a land of flowers and abundant food.

Ik is three. Ik is wind on the edge of the rain storm; deity of the rain carries pollen; Lord of the night of the hollow drum, God of caves and conch shells. Earthquake is a scale off the back of earth monster Crocodile.

Kan is four. Kan is the lizard from whose belly sprang all the seeds for grain and fruit.

Chichan is five. Chichan is a giant snake half human and half feathered. The four chichans are the rain deities who live in the four directions.

Cimi is six and is called death, owl’s day. Lord of the underworld and Lord of death. Nonetheless day six, day of the skull, is a good-luck day.

Manik, the deer, is number seven.

Eight is the day called the Dog. Bloody pus pours from the ears of the dog. Persons born on the day of the dog will be habitual fornicators and will be obsessed by dirty thoughts.

[Numbers nine and ten are illegible.]

Eleven is the day of the monkey, whose head appears like the sun high in the trees. Jealous elder brothers sent the youngest brothers climbing high trees after monkeys so they’d fall to their deaths. The Big Dipper is the monkey constellation where the youngest brothers remain in the sky.

[Manuscript incomplete.]

Eb is the blackish mildew caused by too much rain or mist or dews and damps that ruin crops. A good day for obtaining advice concerning misfortunes. A good day for prayers for prosperity. The souls of the dead return as little gnats and bees. The souls of women who died in childbirth descend every fifty-two days to harm mankind, especially small children and babies.

Obsidian butterfly.

Seventeen is the number of Earthquake.

Nineteen is the day of flint knife.

[Manuscript illegible.]

the deer die: drought

maize in bud: women of sexual maturity

sprouting maize: marriage

Rain god sits on coiled snake enclosing a pool of water; the number nine is attached. Nine means fresh, uncontaminated water.

The snake god with the green symbol on the forehead means “first time,” “new growth,” “fresh.”

Dog = rainless storms. The dog carries a lighted torch: drought, great heat, heaped-up death.

Fine paper of bark cloth finished with lime sizing; a single, continuous piece of paper twenty-two feet long, folded like a Chinese screen, to be read from left to right. Ink of black and red; blue background, green, dark and light yellow. Short glyphic passages give the “luck” of the day planets and stars, ceremonial and sacrificial anniversaries, and prophecy.

A day began at sunset. “Reality” was variously defined or described.

Narrative as analogue for the actual experience, which no longer exists; a mosaic of memory and imagination.

An experience termed
past
may actually return if the influences have the same balances or proportions as before. Details may vary, but the essence does not change. The day would have the same feeling, the same character, as that day has been
described having had
before.
The image of a memory exists in the present moment.

1. Bring the sun. Bear it on the palm of your hand. Bring the green jaguar seated over the sun to drink the sun’s blood. A lance is planted in the center of the sun’s heart. [The sun is a fried egg; the lance in its center is a green chili pepper.]

2. Bring me the brains of the sky so I may see how large they are. [The thick gray clouds of smoke from the copal incense suggest the gray mass of the brain.]

3. Son, go bring me the girl with the watery teeth. Her hair is twisted into a tuft; she is a very beautiful maiden. Fragrant shall be her odor when I remove her skirt and other garments. It will give me great pleasure to see her. Fragrant is her odor and her hair is twisted in a tuft. [A green ear of corn]

The unrestrained, upstart epoch is the offspring of the harlot, and a son of evil. The face of the Katun is covered with mud, trampled into the ground as he is dragged along.

The face of the Lord of the Katunsi is covered; he is dead. There is mourning for water, there is mourning for bread.

Bloody vomit of yellow fever.

Four piles of skulls: Spaniards, mestizos, Indian slaves, Africans.

The rope shall descend.

The poison of the serpent shall descend.

Pestilence and four piles of skulls; living men lie useless.

A dry wind blows. Locust years.

Bread is unattainable.

The sun shall be eclipsed.

Eleven Ahau is the Katun when the aliens arrived.

A beginning of vexation, a beginning of robbery with violence. This was the origin of service to the Spaniards and priests, of service to the local chiefs, of service to the teachers, of service to the public prosecutor by the boys, the youth of the town, while the poor people were harassed. There were the very poor people who did not escape when the oppressors appeared, when the anti-Christ had come to earth, the kinkajous of the towns, the coyotes of the towns, the blood-sucking insects of the town, those who drained the poverty of the working people. But it shall come to pass that tears will fill the eyes of God. Justice shall descend from God to every part of the world, straight from God, justice shall smash the greedy hagglers of the world.