A middle-aged man was selling coconuts from a pushcart. We watched him skillfully chop the husk from a nut, break the shell away, pierce the round white fruit, and insert a straw. We each bought a coconut and sipped the sweet milk as we walked.
I recognized the market but could not begin to remember the way through the maze of tiny stalls. We peered down long corridors that led into darkness. In the dimness beyond where the sunlight reached, I could see boxes of fruit and vegetables, crates of chickens, hanging meat. Barbara consulted her guidebook and dragged me to the corridor where clothing was sold. It was on the edge of the market and the sun shone in. Every stall was bright with hanging shawls, dresses, shirts, skirts.
‘I like that one,’ I said to Barbara, pointing out a very pretty burgundy-colored shawl with a painted floral border. The woman who sat in the stall called to us, smiling and beckoning. She had gold earrings that matched her gold tooth and she seemed fascinated by my hair and determined to sell me the shawl. I bargained in bad Spanish and, I think, ended up paying too much for the shawl. Barbara bought a white dress that was embroidered with a pattern of dark blue squares. It was just past three when we headed back to the hotel.
‘Time for a nap,’ I said.
‘Let’s stop at the cathedral,’ Barbara said. ‘It’s on the way and it’ll be cool inside.’
I put a coin in the hand of the beggar woman who sat just outside the arched door. She blessed me with the sign of the cross.
The interior was cool and dark. Light filtered down from high octagonal windows. White columns rose to a high vaulted ceiling, crisscrossed with stonework that was lost in the shadows. An emaciated Christ hung wearily on his cross at the far end of the hall. Old women knelt in the front pew. A young boy sat in the back, doing sums in a school notebook.
A few other tourists were wandering around the hall. I hesitated just inside the door. I felt uncomfortable – more than just awkward about entering an unfamiliar church, but somehow reluctant to move closer to the figure of Christ. But Barbara had already started up one of the side aisles, and so I followed her.
Plaques on the white stone walls depicted Christ’s suffering and death. I did not linger to look at them. I remembered my mother’s contention that Christianity was a religion of human sacrifice and I was inclined to agree. Halfway up the aisle, I paused to look at an elaborately carved statue of the Virgin Mary. Candles burned on a small table before the statue, and the warm air was thick with the scent of incense and burning wax. The candlelight flickered on the Virgin Mary’s carved wooden robes.
Mary’s hands were spread in acceptance; her mouth was curved in a half smile. But something about her expression seemed wrong to me. The artist who painted her features had tinted her skin several shades darker than the usual anemic white. Her eyes were dark; they caught the shadows. She lacked the delicacy that I had seen in other depictions of the Madonna; her features seemed more Indian than Spanish. She seemed older than the usual pale maiden Mary. Older and wiser. Her smile was knowing.
The candlelight on her cheeks cast spiraling shadows and her forehead seemed strangely flattened. I could smell incense more strongly now, a sharp resinous smell, like burning pine. The same smell had filled my mother’s hut. The Madonna was watching me from the shadows. She had gathered the shadows around her, and the burning candles shed just enough light to let me see her clearly. I recognized her then: her face matched that of the stone head in my mother’s hut.
I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. I looked away from her face, stepped back and put one hand on the edge of a pew for support. I closed my eyes and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass.
I opened my eyes when the stone floor felt steady beneath my feet once again. The Madonna was staring over my head, her features set in a benign expression of acceptance. She was not watching me. This corner of the cathedral was as well lit as any other.
I hurried to join Barbara on the far side of the hall. She was strolling toward the door. When we stepped out into the sunshine, I immediately felt better. I put another coin in the beggar woman’s hand and received her blessing once again.
‘You look pale,’ Barbara said. ‘You all right?’
‘I felt a little sick in there,’ I said. ‘Just for a minute.’
‘Touch of the touristas?’
‘Could be. I feel better now.’
‘You’ll be better after a siesta.’
Our hotel room was stuffy, but cooler than the outside. Barbara turned the ceiling fan to a faster speed, stripped to her underwear, and flung herself on one bed. ‘Siesta,’ she said, turned her back on me, and fell asleep immediately. I lay awake for a long time, watching the ceiling fan turn, listening to Barbara’s steady breathing.
Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler
Today is Saturday, March 17, 1984, by our reckoning of time. A simple set of numbers and names, designating the day but granting it no particular power, no special value.
In the Mayan system of dating, this day would be assigned a number and a day name in the tzolkin, or sacred almanac, a different number and a different day name in the haab, or vague year. In the Long Count, the system of dating used on stelae, this date would be written as 12 baktuns, 18 katuns, 10 tuns, 13 uinals, and 15 kins, designating this day as being 1,861,475 days since the starting point from which the Maya count time. By Mayan reckoning, each of these numbers and names has a meaning and an importance.
The tzolkin and the haab are part of a system of interlocking cycles, known to modern Mayanists as the Calendar Round. The haab is a cycle of 365 days: eighteen months of twenty days and one month of five evil days at the end of it all. The tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days: thirteen months of twenty days. The two cycles are interlocked: one can think of them as two great cogs – one with 260 teeth and one with 365. As one wheel turns, so turns the other. Every fifty-two vague years, both cycles begin a new year at the same time.
That’s one system for counting the passage of time. The other is the Long Count, a system for counting from an established date long ago. Our notation of the year 1984 indicates the number of years that have passed since the birth of Christ: one period of one thousand years, nine centuries of one hundred years, eight decades of ten years, and four years of 365 days. A Long Count inscription indicates how many days have passed since the beginning of the Mayan time count by noting the passage of baktuns, or periods of 144,000 days; katuns, or periods of 7,200 days; tuns, or years of 360 days; uinals, or periods of 20 days; and kins, or days.
All this is important, but the heart of the matter lies in the power of the days, not the methods used to calculate or record them. Many years ago, I learned of the importance of these numbers and names from a shriveled woman with a clubfoot, who, for reasons I never ascertained, had moved from a mountain village to the city of Mérida.
She was bargaining for herbs in the market when I met her; she glanced at me with bright sharp eyes and commented to the shopkeeper on my poor selection of produce, saying that gringas did not know how to shop. She spoke in Maya and I, hot and tired from a long day of shopping, spoke up in the same tongue, saying that I would gladly take lessons on how to shop if anyone would offer to teach me. She grinned and beckoned to me.
For the next hour I followed her as she trudged from stall to stall. She taught me to shake my finger to indicate disinterest, told me when to push for a better price, when to give a little, when to walk away, when to joke. The shopkeepers stared at us – an American and a Mayan crone – but no one commented. I thanked her at the hour’s end and bought her a Coke, which she drank with great enthusiasm.