‘I suppose that you want to take some men from the house mounds to continue the excavation,’ he said.
‘I suppose so.’
He frowned.
‘Jade masks,’ I said. ‘Discs of beaten gold. Pottery in a known context.’
‘An empty chamber and a lot of wasted time,’ he said gloomily.
I reached in my pocket for my lucky piece. ‘I’ll flip you for it,’ I said. ‘Heads, I get two men from the house mounds and two from Salvador’s crew. Tails—’
‘Forget it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I always lose when we flip. If I hadn’t made that coin myself, I’d swear it was rigged.’ He shrugged. ‘Take the men and see what you find.’
I grinned at him. ‘That sounds like a fine idea.’
In the afternoon, I hiked out to the fallen stela and made plans to raise it, a project that would require additional equipment and workmen who were currently excavating the house mounds. Tony would complain, but I would convince him.
That evening, I worked with Tony on deciphering the glyphs that I had copied from the face of the stone that had covered what I insisted on calling the tomb. The glyphs gave a date in the Mayan Long Count corresponding to ad 948, around the time that the Maya had abandoned the cities. That fit with Zuhuy-kak’s story.
The men began the excavation and I sat back and did the thing I found most difficult: waiting to see what we would find.
Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler
A society defines what is normal and what is crazy – and then says anyone who challenges the definition is crazy. In our society, for instance, self-destructive acts – self-mutilation or suicide – are considered mad. If you slash your wrists, you are locked up as a crazy person.
In Mayan society, suicide was a perfectly respectable act. The patron goddess of suicide was Ixtab. She is generally pictured as a woman dangling over emptiness, supported only by the noose around her neck. Her eyes are closed, her hands are relaxed, and her expression is calm, as if she were raptly contemplating an inner vision. Ixtab escorts people who die by suicide or sacrifice directly to paradise. Self-mutilation was also an essential part of many rituals: piercing the ear-lobes, lips, and tongue so that they bled profusely was an act of worship.
The gods of the Maya were demanding, much more demanding than the distant patriarch of a God that most Christians worship. Mayan gods governed each day’s activities, and each day a different set had to be praised and propitiated. And a Mayan who ignored the dictates of the gods and decided to behave as he pleased would be as mad, relative to his society, as a resident of Los Angeles who ignored the traffic regulations and decided to drive as he pleased.
You may consider the comparison a frivolous one. Maybe you believe that traffic laws are for your protection and ignoring them would be dangerous. If you asked an ancient Mayan, he would explain that the rules for behavior laid down by the gods are for your protection. Ignoring them would be very dangerous. It would be dangerous, for example, not to offer a share of the honey to Bacab Hobnil, god of the bees; foolish to offend the Yuntzilob by hunting on the wrong day.
We find the Mayan pantheon peculiar. By our standards, suicide and human sacrifice are unacceptable. We tend not to notice the peculiarities of our own culture. We accept the thousands of children who wear braces to correct their teeth, yet we consider the Maya odd for filing teeth to beautify them. Each culture defines its own idiosyncracies and then forgets that it has done so.
10
Diane
‘The twilight is the crack between the worlds.’
When I went to my hut, I crawled into my hammock, bone-tired after the long day of hiking. I remember scratching a few mosquito bites, thinking about getting up to get a drink of water, then falling into a darkness as quiet and deep as the bottom of the cenote. I woke to the blare of a horn. In the warm bright dawn, I did not remember my dreams.
The second day on survey was much the same as the first. We searched a new transect on the way out to the site where we found the stela. We were hot and sticky, plagued by flies, set upon by stinging ants. Dutifully, we mapped the site where we had found the stela. Using a rope line and small wire flags for markers, we divided the area into squares and Barbara designated certain squares to be searched for potsherds and worked stone: a random surface sample. I had the bad luck to draw a square that was covered with thornbushes that fought me at every turn. By the time I finished the search, my arms were laced with bright scratches.
We were resting in the shade when my mother arrived at the site, tramping cheerfully through the monte, knocking aside thorny branches with her walking staff, fanning away her escort of flies with the other hand. A workman followed her and they were chatting in Maya about something as they walked. ‘Hello,’ she called out.
Barbara opened one eye and peered out from under her hat. ‘It’s too hot to be so cheerful,’ she said.
‘I came out along the sacbe,’ my mother said. ‘It’s much easier going.’
Barbara grunted. ‘I know. But we have to go back through the monte. So I don’t really care.’
‘I take it you haven’t made any wonderful finds today,’ my mother said.
‘We decided to limit ourselves to one wonderful find every other day,’ Barbara said. ‘We didn’t want to overdo it.’ Barbara opened the other eye and went to show my mother the stela. Through eyes half-closed against the brightness of the day, I watched them. I could not hear the words of their conversation, only the sound of their voices rising and falling in the distance. My mother used her staff to hold back the branches and stooped beside the fallen monument. I wanted to get up and join them, but I felt as if I would be intruding. Barbara and my mother seemed to get along well. They did not need my help.
I heard them laughing about something, high laughter like exotic birds in the trees, and I closed my eyes against the sun, jealous of Barbara’s ease with my mother, jealous of her knowledge of archaeology. She was my mother’s daughter, and I was a city dweller who was misplaced here among the flies and the thorns.
A shadow fell over my face and I opened my eyes. My mother stood beside me. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked hesitantly.
I opened my eyes and propped myself up on one elbow. ‘Fine. Just fine.’
‘You’ll want to put some antiseptic on those scratches when you get back to camp,’ she suggested.
I glanced down at my lacerated arms. ‘It’s not so bad.’
Barbara was still out by the stela, taking several pictures with the camera that my mother had carried with her. Maggie was giving her advice that she did not want. Robin was napping on the other side of the clearing.
‘You’re doing very well for someone who has never been on a dig before,’ my mother said quietly. She was not looking at me. She seemed to be watching something on the far side of the clearing, but when I followed her gaze I saw only sunshine and trees. ‘Don’t compare yourself to Barbara. She’s been doing this for years.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Remember that.’ She touched my shoulder lightly. ‘Come to my hut for the first-aid kit when you get back to camp.’
Several hot and dusty hours later, with new bug bites and lacerations, I went to my mother’s hut. She was alone, sitting at the table that served as her desk, examining a few typewritten pages.
‘I came for the first-aid kit,’ I said. ‘Sorry to bother you.’