The Jaguar (25 page)

It was cold and his mother was preparing a pot of thin gruel. His boy tottered around, picking up sticks and spinning them into the sky. His daughter was still asleep, tightly wrapped within the confines of a narrow wicker basket. It was only another hour into Muyil. The lengthening grey smudge of smoke on the horizon was not a good omen, but there was no other route south, other than through the town. The day had started still and sullen. For once Mulac took comfort from the large number of fellow travellers, although they seemed in an increasing hurry to clear the road. He would not rush. It was not as though there were any place to go, or anyone waiting for them when they arrived. Mulac knew the backstreets of Muyil where travellers sought lodgings. He remembered the drunken nights, the songs, the jibes and the heated conversations. Then he thought of the woman who, on more than one occasion, had let him share her bed. These memories were now no more than the taunts of a jilted lover.

There were shouts then a single scream and the sound of thunder pounding upon the road. They had come: the gods of chaos and plague and misery. The boy turned and stared and dropped his stick. The dull, metallic gleam of pale riders rose and fell and grew in number and in form. They sat astride their vicious beasts, whose long heads tossed proudly at the sky, sweat glistening from their muscular flanks. Mulac's mother and son ran in terror. They buried their frail, shaking forms into his. The gods wore hats of strange, other-worldly forms. They bore tall spears and flat sticks covered in leather sheaths, baked in the fires of hell to the texture and sharpness of glass. Looking neither left nor right, twenty beings of story and legend swept down the Mayan coast road, as if it had always been theirs. In their wake came slaves, roped and running in lines. They pulled litters full of plunder, which seemed to glide above the coral highway, like birds over the water, immense wooden prayer-wheels spinning curses from their sides.

In the midst of panic, Mulac found rage. Who were these devils who would not even look at him, who had ripped his family from its mooring and cast it into swirling waters? Before he could stop himself, he was shouting - cursing. The boy and the woman stared at him in despair, assuming he had been possessed.

Two gods turned their heads and then their mounts towards him. They were laughing. Mulac could feel the long bone knife against his side. As he drew it out, he was already running. He heard his mother screaming, “No!” He would drag these spirits with him back to the underworld, whatever the cost. Then he saw a face. It was the haggard face of an ordinary man, one who had lived in this world long enough to know suffering. What he saw in that face was fear. No demon would tug his mount from him in fear. These were no gods: these were men who could be brought to battle like any other enemy. Mulac noticed the long stick, raised and pointed and showering sparks, but he did not see the furnace-like flash, or hear the explosion. He was on fire, his heavy frame shaking in the grass. The two men on horseback were laughing again, although not so loudly as before.

Chapter Thirty-One

Tulum road

Marcus, Cesar and Carlos sat in the front of the minibus as it negotiated endless potholes and speed humps on the way back to the main highway. The mood that morning was reflective and Marcus was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the events of the night before. He and Dana had stolen back to the beach in the small hours, careful to keep their distance from David, who still sat alone by the failing embers of the bonfire. Dana clutched a bottle of red wine and two glasses, Marcus a rug and a torch. Giggling like children, they had made their way out of the chill breeze and into a quiet section of the dunes.

Marcus had crouched to arrange the rug then stood and turned, in anticipation of a glass of wine. Instead he gawped, open mouthed, as Dana's dress tumbled to her toes. Bathed in translucent moonlight she relaxed provocatively onto one hip and gave him a sly, come-on grin. He had stood, transfixed, until Dana held out a slender hand and drew him to her. She skilfully flicked open the buttons on his shirt and stretched to throw it from his shoulders. Marcus recalled the smooth progress of her nails across his back and the tender motion of her nipples against his chest. They had kissed wildly and greedily. Her mouth slipped to his neck, to his pecks, then lingered over the muscular tucks of his belly. Blood and oxygen drained to a single point, rendering Marcus incapable of speech, thought or motion. He had stood, weak-kneed, in a state of rapturous paralysis, as Dana relieved him, unhurriedly, of any last vestige of resistance.

Full of laughter and wine they had coupled again later, embraced, as though in a threesome, by the fine white dust. Drifting, entwined, towards sleep under a reassuring blanket of stars, the whole universe was looking in. It sparkled as though the lights were an extension of their own tingling nerve endings. They were not lost or insignificant in the vastness of space, for it was barely big enough to contain what they were feeling.

Eventually the cold had driven them apart. Marcus settled for a bunk in the staff quarters, to avoid disturbing David. The morning found Dana gone before breakfast and Marcus left to strong coffee, a rare cigarette and an even greater sense of insecurity. Women in his life were as sure as the sea. That one would arrive was as certain as the next tide, but so was their subsequent departure, as though a jealous moon fought for their affection. He thought of his cousin, Isabel. She had died at twenty from blood cancer and remained the one true love of his life. Marcus had known that his feelings for her went well beyond the familial, but she was gone before he could declare himself. They had spent so much time together that she must have known, he reasoned, but somehow this was not the same. She died whilst he was away establishing himself with Tailwind, and so he had missed the only journey in his life that really mattered. Perhaps, he reflected, this was why he was beginning to resent Laura. Her expressions, her features and even certain snippets of conversation, were like communications from the grave.

David squirmed in his seat to avoid a broken spring, noticed Marcus looking glum and realised his own contentment. It had come to him by the bonfire that he was not in love with Culjinder. He had never been in love with Culjinder. But, for the brief period he had known her, he had been in love with life. Culjinder had opened his eyes, but it was Phoebe he wanted to see. David pondered the numbness and introspection that had prevented him appreciating her. He saw her look of poorly concealed disappointment which now sat, like an ill-judged punctuation mark, across his life's visual narrative.

David determined to squeeze every moment from the expedition. That's what Phoebe had wanted for him, after all. He would bide his time before phoning home, but was confident that, when the time came, he'd know what to say. He would also contact Culjinder, and again he'd know what to write. And when that letter was written he would await the polite reply which was sure to follow, place it in his photograph album and close the book for good. It was time for new pictures, in different albums, with a woman who could be so much more than a daydream.

The coast road ejected the van onto a main thoroughfare. It swerved and picked up speed across the broad, uneven concrete slabs. They left behind the beach bungalows and palm-trees jostling for space and a view, and the blousy layer of cloud that hung heavily over a grey, listless sea. The bus turned again and now they were in new territory, driving into the modern town of Tulum - some distance inland from its Mayan precursor. Sign after sign would entice them from their path, but they drove on, diverted only by one gaudy creation claiming Tulum to be the cave-diving capital of the world. John Tanner snorted loudly from one of the rear seats and proceeded to depress the group with lengthy details of his none-too-successful diving venture of the previous afternoon. David's thoughts drifted in and out of the conversation, but he gleaned that their qualifications had been insufficient to allow them into the caves. They had been forced to remain in open water around the base of the cenote, where the sediment had been stirred to such an extent by other divers that there was little to see. Darryl caught the mood of complaint, groaning under the weight of a headache, fuelled by too many margaritas. “They were showing us how to - to make cocktails,” he stumbled over his justification. Sharon had spent the night hugging a toilet bowl and now hid behind dark glasses, resting her head on John's shoulder.

They pulled into a gas station. Another sign, advertising the Aztec crafts shop next door, caught some of the group's attention. Hannah and Lloyd skipped across the forecourt, followed by Jackie, Ethan and Felicity. David decided to join them. Patterned rugs hung from the large external canopy, bleached to varying degrees by the elements, as though nothing ever got sold. Three local boys were sitting cross-legged beneath the curved, whitewashed wall of a water tank which stood off to one side. They appeared deep in some game of stones. Through the whitewash could be made out the pale reds and blues of a previous painted message. The wooden lid of the cistern lay broken and hung precariously above the children. Parts of old vehicles rusted in the shadows, adding to the air of careless abandonment.

David had little interest in souvenirs, but was curious about the Aztecs. He knew something of Hernando Cortes and the Spanish Conquistadors, but nothing of those they had defeated. With new found confidence, he decided to talk to the vendor. The interior proved to be a warren of narrow, dusty aisles piled unnervingly high with furniture, painted boxes and tapestry. In the shadows above barely visible pictures, mirrors with elaborately frames, and unsettling tribal masks fought for attention. David could initially find nobody to speak to and only Lloyd and Hannah's bickering betrayed the presence of other customers. He walked towards a patch of sunlight that marked out the back of the store. There, at a counter covered in fabrics and bric-a-brac, stood a typically broad, seemingly over-weight, middle-aged Mayan male. He sported a faded cream, patterned shirt and a worn-out, lemon-yellow baseball cap. Now somewhat intimidated, David had to steel himself to maintain his resolve.

“Hola. Buenos Dias. Como esta?”

The man appeared not to have heard and continued to stare at a tiny video screen, divided into even smaller panels covering four CCTV cameras. Clearly, he was scrutinising his other new arrivals.

“Hola. What can I do for you?” he enquired, at last. David caught the faint taint of liquor in the air.

“Nothing much, really,” began David, attempting to be casual. “I was just wondering if you could tell me anything about the Aztecs.”

“Are you Americano?”

“No, Ingles.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What happened to them when the Spanish came?”

“I am not Aztec, I am Mayan. There are stores like this one all over Mexico. All I know of the Aztecs is that they let the invaders into Tenochtitlan: Mexico City, believing them to be gods. Then their hospitality was betrayed. We, the Maya, were not a warlike people like the Aztecs. We traded with them and sometimes they would attack us, but we are a people of the rainforest, not the mountains. The trees have always been our protection. Today you will find many Maya, but few who are truly Aztec.”

The man had left his stool. He stood proudly, chest out, looking somewhat fiercely at David. Felicity came to the counter and enquired about the price of a decorated pot she had uncovered. David waited around, playing with a wooden toy that lay in a pile of similar items in front of him. He decided to persist.

“So did the Spanish come here?”

The man coughed, spat into a hidden spittoon and threw away the remains of his cigarette in disgust. “Yes. They came along the coast from one of our cities to the next, sometimes by ship and sometimes along our great trading routes. The road we are on now is Mayan. They said they wanted to trade, but our people thought them devils and often ran away. As they ran, they carried with them the Spanish disease.”

David nodded gravely.

“Some tried to hold on to our great ports, like Tulum, but these places were soon full of smallpox, so the defenders were too weak to put up a good fight. By the time the Spanish got to inland cities, like Chichen Itza and Coba, their plague had already done most of the work for them. Our people became fearful of crowded places and disappeared deeper into the jungle. That is how we survived. That is still the way many Maya prefer to live today.”

“At least the cities survived,” David interjected, naively.

The man spat again, this time in frustration. “That's the problem. You
turistas
think the Maya are the temples and the pyramids, but we are not stone. The Maya had culture, art and craftsmanship. We were poets and astronomers, engineers and musicians.” He paused, breathing deeply and rocking as though needing to sit down. Then he pulled himself up to his full, if unimpressive height and continued with a flourish of formality. “The Maya were hunters and fishermen, businessmen and politicians. We traded with many nations. When the Spanish came they saw only our weakness and our superstitions. They treated us with contempt. We were a literate people and all that was most precious to us was recorded in our books. Some of these survived the conquistadors, who were ignorant, not men of learning, but then the church came. There was a Bishop called Diego, who took from us nearly every book and had them burned. Today, only four remain, none in this country. With that burning went our ancestors' words and a part of our soul.” As if to emphasise the point the man collapsed onto his seat and cursed.

David did not know what to say. The shopkeeper looked genuinely upset, but unleashed an evil grin. “At least we Americans gave you Europeans our syphilis,” he observed.

Smiling back at him, David held out the wooden toy. He didn't want it, but he bought it anyway. He gave his thanks and turned to leave, but the man pushed back his cap and scratched his forehead.