The voices continued, muttering softly in a foreign tongue. I could see two men, standing in the bright sunlight and looking down at a carved slab of stone. They were dressed in white loincloths and their bare chests were decorated with intricate tattoos in great swirling patterns, like the waves of a turbulent sea. At their feet was an incense burner in the shape of a crouching cat. Smoke escaped from the cat’s mouth, white tendrils curling past sharp teeth and dissipating in the breeze.
I knew somehow, with the certainty of a dreamer, that the men were a threat to me. I did not like them. There was something cruel about their faces. They did not smile and their voices were harsh, hard-edged.
I sat very still, not even moving to wipe away the sweat from my forehead. If I did not move, perhaps they would not notice me, perhaps I could get away. I felt the same panic that had touched me on my father’s balcony.
A drop of sweat trickled down my forehead and dripped into my eyes. I blinked and the men were gone. The voices were gone. The temple was gone. I sat alone beneath a tree, staring out at the sunlight that filtered through the thin leaves. A twisted tree grew where the men had been standing. At its base was a fallen log, overgrown by creeping vines and thornbushes.
Disoriented, I stood and went to where the men had been standing. The air was as warm and stuffy as the air in an attic. The flies droned, flickering like spots before my eyes. Sweat trickled down my back, making my shirt cling to my skin. A vagrant branch, lined with thorns and eager to make mischief, grabbed at my shirt as I squatted beside the fallen shape beneath the tree.
It was not a fallen log. Thorny creepers had overrun a large block of limestone, covering the surface completely. I gingerly pulled one aside and caught a glimpse of the carved surface underneath. I looked around and saw Barbara, poking in the bushes on one side of the mound. ‘I’ve found something here,’ I called to her.
She picked her way slowly through the brush to reach my side. She knelt beside the limestone block and used the trowel that she carried at her belt to scrape away more vines. She cut away the branch of one bush with the edge of her trowel and held back another, careless of the thorns and of the black bugs that ran away from the sudden light. I could see the weathered surface of a carved slab of stone, half buried in dirt and debris.
‘It’s a stela,’ she said. I must have looked at her blankly. ‘A monument,’ she said. ‘They put them up to commemorate certain dates: religious festivals, historic events, astronomical happenings. Usually, they’re carved with glyphs. Some sites – like Chichén Itzá or Copán – had dozens of them. They’ve only found a few around here.’
The stone was worn by centuries of rain. I could make out the profile of a face, outlined by dark fragments of decayed leaves. Here and there, I could see the remnants of other carvings.
‘We’ll get a crew to raise it,’ Barbara said. ‘Maybe the other side is better preserved.’ She was grinning. ‘Good work. I was hoping to find something that can help date the outlying sites so I’d know whether they were inhabited at the same time as the main area. That’d help us get an idea of the population that this center supported.’ She stood up and looked around as if she expected to find more. ‘You’re as lucky as Liz at this game.’
We searched the rest of the area and found no more monuments. Maggie discovered a tree filled with stinging ants. I found a tree loaded with thorns and managed to forget about the two men in the dream. Nothing else of note. On our way back, we laid a transect line adjacent to the line we had laid going in.
9
Elizabeth
At dinner that night, Maggie sat beside John and kept up an animated conversation over the chicken and stewed tomatoes. I assumed that she had quarreled with Carlos and wondered how long it would take for them to make up. Diane and Barbara were talking quietly about the book that Diane was reading.
‘I read about the Mayan calendar today,’ Diane said to me. ‘It seems confusing: twenty days to a month, eighteen months to a year, twenty years to a…’ She stopped. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
‘A katun,’ I said. ‘It gets worse. From the sound of it, you were reading about the Long Count. There’s also the haab, a cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days divided into eighteen months, with five days at the end for bad luck. There’s the tzolkin, a cycle of two hundred and sixty days divided into thirteen months. And then there’s the cycle of the katuns, which repeats every two hundred and fifty-six years. But you don’t have to worry about the names and numbers. You just need to understand the intent. The calendar let the Maya follow the cycles of time and predict the future by knowing the past. Whatever happens at a particular time will recur when that time returns. If the last Katun 8 was a katun of upheaval and discord, this one will be too. A h’men, a Mayan priest, can determine which gods influence a certain day – and because he knows the gods, he can predict what will happen at that time. He can advise you on whether you should expect a particular day to be lucky or unlucky, good for planting corn or for hunting or for burning incense. The Maya looked for patterns.’
Diane nodded and smiled in a strange sort of way. We were in a little island of quiet: Tony was talking with Robin; Carlos was watching Maggie flirt, his face expressionless; Barbara was listening without comment. ‘It makes a sort of sense,’ Diane said. ‘They believed you must know and understand your past to understand your future.’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose so.’
She nodded again and said no more about it.
I stayed in the plaza to drink coffee after dinner. Barbara was discussing her survey plans with Tony. Tony nodded sagely and smoked his pipe. Diane had moved to the edge of the plaza. She sat in a folding chair in the fading light of the setting sun. She was reading a hardcover book – one of Barbara’s texts on the Maya.
I found myself watching my daughter. She had been swimming in the cenote before dinner and she had combed her hair out to dry. It flowed down around her shoulders. Her hands, holding the book open before her, were soft and slender, each nail perfectly shaped. She was leaning forward, and the collar of her loose shirt had fallen open to show the strong muscles of her neck. She lifted one hand to her head to push back the tide of hair, and I watched the muscles of her arm flex and shift.
She glanced in my direction and caught me watching her. Her eyes widened and a look of doubt crossed her face, but she smiled. I believe that she smiled in self-defense, using the open vulnerability of her smile as a shield, the way a puppy bares its neck to a stronger dog. The smile was a peace offering, made before the conflict began.
The inevitable card game had begun at the other table. Maggie, Robin, and John were playing. Carlos had not joined them. He was still at the dinner table, smoking a cigarette and looking pensive. A calculated pose, I was sure. He held the cigarette loosely in one hand and leaned back in his chair, his white shirt open at the collar and his head back to look at the sky.
I listened to the slap of the cards on the table, the soft mutter of conversation, and I watched as Carlos strolled across the plaza to where Diane was sitting. He stopped beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. I could not hear what he said. Diane tilted her head a little to one side and leaned back in her chair. I did not like the way Carlos smiled at my daughter. I had never liked Carlos much.
‘Tony,’ I said quietly across the table. He had been listening to Barbara, but now he looked to me. ‘What would you think of shifting a few assignments? John could use Carlos’s help on the southeast site for a few days. The house mounds are a bit far from the other excavation. And I’d imagine that with Diane on survey, Barbara has enough help.’