The Mayan Codex (41 page)

Both Calque and Sabir were too wound up to sleep. Lamia had no such reservations. She drifted off right away, curled up on the back seat, like she always did, with her ankles drawn up beneath her, and her arms cradling her shoulders. But this time she was using Sabir’s jacket as a pillow.

The two men finally gave up the uneven struggle of the front seats. Without even discussing the issue, they both went outside to watch the sunrise.

‘You know what I love best in this world, Calque?’

Calque snorted in a lungful of fresh air. ‘No. But I suspect that you are going to tell me.’

Sabir closed his eyes ecstatically. ‘The way girls’ bottoms stick out when they walk.’

Calque pinched the bridge of his nose with his forefingers, as if he had acquired a sudden headache. ‘
Putain
. But you’ve got it bad.’

‘So you
were
awake, huh? I thought you might have been. Being a police officer and all that. Trained to spy on people.’

Calque shrugged. ‘What did you want me to do? Pipe up and spoil your moment? There are things called Chinese walls, you know. You must have known I was awake because I wasn’t snoring for once. At least according to your theory.’

‘No. You did right. And I thank you for it. You called it, but I was too dumb to listen. If Lamia hadn’t taken the initiative, I’d probably be sitting in some bar in twenty years’ time, wallowing in regret.’

‘What? Like me, you mean?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘But you thought it.’

‘Haven’t you ever thought of remarrying, Calque? Starting another family? As you made so clear to me the other day, you’re not too old to begin again. Have another kid. You’ll only be seventy-five or thereabouts when she waltzes off with a serial-killing truck driver.’

‘Thank you. That’s very encouraging. I’ll definitely consider your proposition. Any particular woman in mind? Lamia, excepted, of course.’

‘Of course. Give me a little time to think about it. I’ll come up with something.’

‘Ah, what joys and sudden enhancements to confidence the unexpected possession of a woman can bring. You’ve changed, Sabir. Within the space of twelve
hours you’ve become a human being again.’ Calque’s attention began to wander. ‘But not an American, eh? This woman you are proposing for me? You wouldn’t suggest that, would you?’

‘No. Never that. I’m not a sadist. You being a Frenchman and all.’

‘Thank you.’

Sabir snapped his fingers together. ‘How about a Mexican woman? Mexican women value men. They know how to treat them properly. Not slice off their balls and serve them back with a topping of vanilla sauce.’

Calque looked at Sabir, his face aghast. ‘Now you may really be on to something. Apart from the testicular analogy, that is.’ He appeared to be lost in thought for a moment or two, as if he were pondering some great, but as yet little-known, truth. ‘You do realize, Sabir, that no woman in the history of this earth knows what she really wants? She only knows when she gets it.’

Sabir was preparing to respond to Calque’s
aperçu
when Lamia emerged from the back seat of the Cherokee, stretching.

‘What are you two talking about? You woke me up.’ She looked suspiciously at both men, weighing up their mood. ‘At least you’re not arguing again.’

Calque put on his most innocent smile. ‘We were talking about women.’

Lamia flushed.

‘Not specific women, you understand. Just women in general. Except in one particular respect.’

‘And what respect is that?’

‘Sabir tells me he particularly likes how your bottom sticks out when you walk.’

Sabir aimed a pretend cuff at the back of Calque’s head. ‘Damn it, Calque. What are you trying to do to me?’

‘Did you really say that, Adam?’

‘He really did.’ Calque was grinning from ear to ear.

‘And you like that? That part of me? How it moves?’

Sabir hesitated, sensing a trap. Then he threw caution to the winds. ‘I love it.’ He glanced up at her, gauging her reaction.

‘I like your saying it, then.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. No one ever talked to me like that before. I like it.’ She turned back to the car, amused by their open-mouthed response to her statement. ‘Are you both coming? We could stop off for some breakfast before Kabáh opens.’

‘No. We’ll just sit here and watch you, thanks.’

Lamia reached down and picked up a stick, which she brandished at them. ‘I don’t like it that much.’

‘Okay. Okay. We’ll go first. That suit you?’

‘No. I’ll go first. I think I’ve just decided I enjoy being admired.’

Acan Teul had been spending the entirety of every day at Kabáh since the news about the eruption of the Pico de Orizaba volcano had reached the Halach Uinic.

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 Kabáh 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 Kabáh following the eruption. This has been predicted. But we do not yet know what it will be. You were once a guide at Kabáh, 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 Kabáh, 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 Kabáh were gringos of one sort or another. Most visitors to the Yucatan, however, chose the more famous tourist destinations of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal instead, leaving Kabáh 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.