The Jaguar (24 page)

Half an hour later, Alfredo was crouched on the verge of a watery ditch marking the edge of the main highway. He had stayed within it as far as he could. Now he must either walk under a large concrete bridge and across four lanes of fast moving traffic, or climb the exposed slip road. He decided on the former, but would wait until there was a large enough gap in the stream of passing cars to ensure he would not be caught in the headlights. Growing giddy with exhaustion, he could feel the puffy, throbbing flesh swelling under his threadbare left sock. He was almost too cold to shiver. At last, there was a break, so he limped awkwardly across. Following the hard shoulder now, his shadow stretched ahead as each vehicle sped past as though desperate to abandon him. An incongruous figure, shuffling through the night, Alfredo cared for nothing but getting to Luis.

He was almost upon the sign for the Blue Marlin restaurant before he saw it. The turning was unlit, the road a simple gravel track bisecting neighbouring tropical plantations. Alfredo almost cried with relief as he rounded the corner. Luis could not be far away and he had never appreciated his brother more. The profile of a vehicle lay ahead, tucked into a gateway. Behind it a burst of spikes marked a field of agave. Casting all caution aside and oblivious to pain, Alfredo began to run. The car door opened, Luis stepped out and Alfredo stumbled into his arms. He broke down in tears. Luis' shoulders were heaving too.

“Come on, brother.” Luis spoke at last. “I thought I'd lost you.” He put a supportive arm around Alfredo and helped him into the car. They drove slowly down the dark track. Luis cautiously turned on the headlights. He wondered how he could share his dreadful news, but decided not to try. “We're going to the restaurant. The owner's an ex-con who worked as a gardener for Father. I've already warned him we're on our way. You might remember him, his name is Hugo. Papa gave the money to buy his place. He's the only person we can trust and he certainly owes us a favour. You need clothes and medical attention. We both need weapons.”

“And a good meal,” Alfredo grinned through a fog of tiredness and pain.

The Blue Marlin was closed, the owner and his wife alone. Luis returned to the car to fetch Alfredo, finding him asleep. He tousled his brother's hair. It reeked of sweat and swamp. Even by moonlight Luis could tell that Alfredo was deathly pale - more than could be accounted for by his sojourn in the UK. As he stirred, Luis grabbed his arm. Alfredo cried out like a child and swung instinctively in his brother's direction.

“Good to see you haven't lost your fighting spirit,” Luis laughed, helping him up. “There'll be plenty of time for violence soon, but first you need to recover.”

The restaurant was lit only by moonlight, straying through patio doors which led out onto an expansive seaside terrace. Sky coloured tables, wicker chairs covered in cream cushions, and a bar and windows inlaid with blue glass fishes gave the room a cool and tasteful air. Large pot-plants cast ghostly shadows. Amongst the plants stood the stout, robust, moon-faced form of Hugo, the owner. “You two always were trouble,” he joked dryly, baring his yellow teeth. “Come on through.”

The muscles in Alfredo's legs had stiffened to a point where he could barely move. Luis had to almost drag him across the room. Hugo led them through a small study into a comfortable sitting room. “Down the corridor on the left you'll find a shower, Alfredo. Help yourself to towels. The room at the end is yours. By the time you're ready, my wife will have sorted out some clothes for you. They'll be a little old, I'm afraid. As you can see, good living has done nothing for my waistline. Shoes may have to wait until I can ask a favour of the neighbours in the morning.”

“Thank you, Hugo,” responded Luis, appreciatively. The two men watched as Alfredo shuffled his way along the corridor.

“Tell me, Luis,” Hugo frowned, the deep furrows beneath his shock of white hair revealing both his age and his previous life in the open air. “What has happened to your father? You wouldn't be here unless something was seriously wrong.”

Luis slumped into an old red armchair and stared at the rug on the terracotta tiled floor. For a moment it transported him home to El Paso and the dogs that would lie on a similar rug. “I'm sorry, Hugo, but my father is dead. So is Gennaro. My brother and I have only just found each other again, so he does not know. He was lucky to survive himself - the villa is no longer safe. Nobody knows we are here, but people will be looking for us soon.

Hugo read his mind. “I would rather die than betray you, Luis. Your father's responsible for everything good in my life.”

“Yes, but we need to be out of here by the morning, for your sake, as much as ours. It was Eusabio who betrayed the family. He is responsible for their deaths. It won't be long before he and his cronies come.”

“Don't worry, Luis, you sleep. I'll hide the car and then stand guard. I'll do nothing stupid if he turns up. After you're gone, I'll find a way to get to him. Eusabio always was a creep. Your family will be avenged.”

“Be careful, Hugo, this is not the North. If the police aren't already involved, they will be soon. If someone dies, they'll want the perpetrator.”

“I can take care of myself - and you would be surprised who eats in this restaurant.” Hugo sat down opposite Luis. His wife could be heard preparing food in the kitchen. He leant forward and put a gnarled, mole-speckled hand on the arm of Luis' chair. “I'm sad about your losses, Luis, but you must understand that this is who they were and how they were meant to die. Could you imagine Gennaro, or your father, Don Paulo, wasting away in some nursing home? Neither would have wanted that.”

Luis shook his head slowly. He didn't know what to think.

“Don Paulo was here only recently. He sat with me after his meal in this very chair and talked about you and your brother. It's almost as though you were meant to be here now. He knew his health was failing. The only thing your father was ever afraid of was weakness. But he felt guilty about Alfredo, Luis. He said that you were a better father to him than he had ever been. He also regretted being so distant, when you two were children. Estella, your mother, was always his route to you. Then she was gone. This is what he would have wanted, Luis: you two together, looking out for each other. Do you remember when you would play tricks on me in the garden? Go and have children yourself, Luis, and let that be the worst thing they ever do.”

Chapter Thirty

Tulum road

It was in the same place, but this was not the road which Mulac remembered. That road had burst with life and adventure, as he had done. This road smelled of death and he knew death was stalking him. He stopped and looked around, feeling the weight of the child asleep in his arms. A few yards behind him, his mother struggled under her heavy burden of food and precious possessions. His son trailed listlessly in her wake. This was now the sum total of his world: three fragile and totally dependent souls and a road from misery to misery. At least, he reflected, he had lived and loved, but what of the boy and the baby girl? Through their beauty and serenity lived on the two most extraordinary people that he had ever known: his wife, Emetaly and his priest and greatest friend, Ah Kin Lo. Everything he had ever strived for would now stand or fall on his children's survival, but Mulac no longer knew how to fight, or even what to fight. The way now led not through the land of men, but through that of the gods - and the gods were vengeful and angry.

He looked to the fields, where once the gods of sun and wind had danced between the sturdy stands of corn, and the goddess of the clouds had scattered her precious liquid jewels. Above a slurry of the dead and the diseased rose a few remaining stems. Battered and broken, they rested one upon the other, offering no other bounty than a visible symbol of the craving that clawed at the innards of every passing traveller. Mulac picked his way through the mess of husk and stalk, sweeping up a pile and placing the girl-child gently within. Staring back across the road, shadows of the forest fingered the rutted surface, as though to tear it from its base and steal it away into the trees. Mulac knew these dark limbs would soon be tearing at his soul as well, offering the doubts of night and the dread of unexpurgated memory. In dreams of the past, the forest had stood respectful, at a distance from the gleaming white way, as though daunted by its purpose and intensity. The homesteads, shrines and stalls, standing proud and boastful, had been slowly and stealthily stolen from sight, leaving only the forest to riot with the demons of the dark, and to suck the life from the day.

Mulac's mother sat beside him and began to cry in hunger and frustration. The volcanic intensity of love within her was being sucked back into deep chambers of the earth, hour after cloying hour. Mulac took her burden from her and tenderly swept the matted locks of grey from her eyes. She threw a brief, brave smile into an ocean of desperation then curled into a ball amongst the detritus. One arm reached out to touch the boy child, lest the lengthening shadows should get to him first. Seconds later she was lost to sleep.

As he gathered the driest sticks, Mulac reminded himself that he must not stray far. If he lost sight of these three, he knew they would be gone. Loss was his spark and his flame. Loss was the veil that sheltered everything still decent and real. He thought of the priest and of his father, thought of them sitting together at their home in Tulum. They had smoked and laughed, casting him critical glances and each other knowing smiles. His father had gone back to the land of the spirits first. Beyond Mulac's grief, it had almost felt like a blessing. His father had died of the wasting disease, in the arms of his wife and in the comfort of his old friend's chants and incantations, whilst Mulac jostled the giggling boy upon his grandfather's bed.

With his father's passing, Ah Kin Lo had grown fretful. Reports of the gods of the north had become more frequent and more florid, and seemed to trouble the old man more deeply with each recitation. There were tales of cities set upon by demons, tales of brave men standing their ground and fighting back, only for the gods to spray a spittle of pox to lay waste to their resolve. It was said they had set a curse upon this world. That their own world had been ravaged by war and hate, until they looked with greed, envy and empty hearts upon the fertile lands of the Maya. They could slip between worlds, but the Maya could only die. Perhaps this was at the heart of Ah Kin Lo's predicament. He no longer knew the nature of each soul's journey: how it might be received, or by whom.

Ah Kin Lo's passing had set them on their way, cut them loose from their anchors of stone and cast them upon the sea of lost souls. He had died from the curse - from the terrible plague that could reduce a healthy man to a leaking vessel quicker than the sun could fall from the sky. In his terror Ah Kin Lo had forgotten first his prayers and then his friends. He had spoken in the tongue of the devils as he died, and coughed as though the charnel of his being were gagging for release.

Mulac set a fire then lay between his children and the mysteries roaming the night. Hunched figures still stumbled onwards. He could see their envious eyes in the flicker of flame and reminded himself that he must not sleep.

Before the gods had cast their vengeance upon Ah Kin Lo, he had talked in increasingly troubled tones of the jaguar, the great cat of darkness. It stalked the deepest, densest jungle, with eyes that burned without brightness but as intensely as the sun. It could see into the bleakest corners of a man's soul. There were rumours that it now walked upon the earth in daylight, when the sun seemed to lose its way and the storm gods fought their clamouring battles in the sky. Some said it was angry with the gods of the north for upsetting the balance of the world, and would drag them back to the underworld to be punished. Others thought it in league with them and that it aimed to put an end to the age of men, still others that it was above such petty squabbles and walked between worlds, an impassive observer of the machinations of lesser beings, as it had always done.

The priest had clutched at Mulac in a sweat and a panic, before the madness set in. Rasping, he recounted his fear that they had brought the wrath of the jaguar upon themselves, by treating him so casually in Coba. They prayed together on his deathbed, to the spirit of Emetaly and to her protector, Ix-Chel. This seemed to bring peace and strength of mind briefly back to Ah Kin Lo. In his last whispered words to Mulac he told him he could never regret that journey. He struggled to take off the heavy gold ring that marked him as a priest then closed Mulac's fingers around it with a smile. Mulac was too stunned to protest. It was Quetzalcoatl, the Ouroboros, the giant snake wrapped around the world. It stretched across the night sky and guarded the entrance to the afterlife - the only thing greater than the jaguar, K'inich. Ah Kin Lo was offering him safe passage to the underworld. By the time Mulac regained his voice, his friend's mind was gone. Mulac had shuddered as he prayed, scared for Ah Kin Lo, who jabbered incoherently as though being forced in the language of the gods to explain his sacrifice.

The flames cavorted and twirled over the ashes of someone's crop. The harder he stared, the more the light entwined and burst inside Mulac's brain. An intense headache burned behind his eyes. Slowly the brightness faded to pitch and he fell into fitful slumber. He was back on the road, but this time as a child following behind his parents. He called out to them, but they would not stop and he could feel himself being left ever further behind. Mulac was torn between his parents and his shadow, which was lagging at an ever greater distance behind him. It called to him weakly as he, in turn, called to his parents. In its fading voice he heard first Emetaly and then Ah Kin Lo. It wanted him to stop. Every time he ran to catch up, when he looked back it had weakened. Eventually it left him. He sensed it out of a corner of his eye, slipping over the vegetation to be consumed by the trees. Mulac cried and raged at his parents for not slowing down: “I want my shadow, I want my shadow.” He woke up.