A week after my tour of the market, I met her again, this time in the zocalo in the early evening. She sat alone on a green bench at the west corner of the square and she hailed me, beckoning. She had been drinking aguardiente – to stop the pain, she said. I do not know what caused her pain; she would not talk about that. She asked me the hour and the day, and when I told her, she gripped my wrist so tightly that her nails cut into my skin. I asked her what was wrong, but her answers made no sense. She wanted to talk about time. She said that this was the last day of an evil year; she was distraught, but I could not make out the reason for her agitation.
I bought her another bottle of aguardiente – her pain seemed real and that was the only help she would allow me to offer. Over the bottle, she began rambling, reciting something. ‘Imix, he is the first one: earth monster, dragon head, root of it all. He rules the corn; a very good day for planting. Ik, he is the second, and he brings the wind, a very good day. Akbal is dark, a prowling jaguar who devours the sun. He lives in the west, where he drinks the dark water, and the rain he brings is not good. He kills the corn. Offer him bebida and do not plant this day.’
I realized, as she continued, that the names she called, praising this one and warning against that, were the names of the days in the tzolkin. ‘Ben is lord of the maize, a good day for planting. Offer him atole, made of the best maize. Oc wears the head of a dog; he brings the sad rain that makes the maize rot in the ground and gives the children sickness. Cauac wears the head of a dragon; he brings thunder and violent rain.’ She shook her head, let her breath out in a great gasp, and gripped my hand more tightly. She was staring at me wildly, but I did not think that she saw me. She recited the almanac of days for an apprentice, a daughter, a son, a person who would learn and benefit from this knowledge. ‘You know them, do you not?’
‘Yes, grandmother,’ 1 said to calm her. ‘I know them.’
‘There is Lamat, the lord of the great star that rises with the sun. There is Muluc: give him jade and the rain that comes will favor the corn. You must remember these things!’
She gripped my hand with both of hers and breathed warm brandy-scented breath in my face. Around us, the square was quiet. The lovers and loiterers who strolled here favored the far side, closer to the café that sold sweet fruit ices.
‘You must know them alclass="underline" Etz’nab is the lord of the sacrifice; he carries a blade of sharp obsidian. Behead a turkey in his name; feast for him.’
The moon had risen. Its pale light filtered through the leaves of the shade trees to dapple the cement paths that crisscrossed the square. Somewhere across the square a guitarist played a ballad, doubtlessly for lovers who would rather have been left in peace. The old woman stared up at the moon as if she had never seen it before.
‘And you must know the day named Men, governed by the old woman moon goddess, Ix Chebel Yax. She is a trickster, that one, bringing rainbows and floods, healing and destruction. She gives children stomach pains, helps women in childbirth, teases madmen, brings sleep to the weary, snarls the thread of weaving women. On her day, you can divine the future, but you cannot trust her.’
‘Rest, grandmother,’ I said to the woman, laying one hand on hers. ‘I will remember this. But now you must go home. Let me take you there.’
‘That does not matter,’ she said. Her voice was softer now. ‘Today is the last day of the five unlucky days. Cimi is dark and deadly; he knows Ah Puch. When he flies to you, you never hear him coming; his feathers make no sound. On this day, you must burn the blood of a turkey with incense.’
‘Yes, grandmother. But now I will take you home.’
‘I will die this night,’ she said, standing like an obedient child as I tugged on her arm. ‘It is the end of the old year: the cycles have returned to the place that they were when I was born. The year is out and Cimi has come for me.’
She followed me to the curb and I hailed a taxi. Apparently she had finished the recitation of the days; she was quiet, acquiescent. She told me her address and I told the cabby to take her there, paid him in advance, paid him extra to help her inside. I stood under the full moon, listening to the distant guitar serenade. The hag’s fingernails had left marks beside the old scars on my right wrist. I rubbed them idly and watched the taxi drive away.
On the next day, which I called Sunday for lack of a better name, I took a taxi to the address that the old woman had given the cabby, a shabby house in a row of shabby houses. The woman who answered the door frowned when I asked after the old woman and said in Spanish, ‘She is dead now. What do you want here?’
I backed away, unable to tell her of the strange evening under the moon, unwilling to describe the feelings that had pulled me here. I needed to ask the old woman what day this was and what that day meant, but I said nothing. I caught the same taxi – he had waited for me at the corner – and went home to my hotel.
Today – the day I write this – is Saturday. I do not know its Mayan name and number. I do not know the gods that influence this day. I know very little.
11
Elizabeth
Gods that are dead are simply those that no longer speak to the science or the moral order of the day… every god that is dead can be conjured again to life.
On Saturday morning, before I woke, Diane and Barbara left for Mérida. Having Diane leave was a relief in a way. In the one week that she had been in camp, she had managed to interrupt my moments of solitude more than I could have imagined possible.
Every morning, at dawn and dusk, I wandered the site. I watched a potter – a young woman with glossy black hair that glistened in the morning sun – molding a vessel in the shape of a pot-bellied dog. I stood in the shade and listened to the scraping of an obsidian chisel on cedarwood: a withered old man was carving the statue of a god. I did not see Zuhuy-kak. At the times that I most expected to see the old woman, my daughter would wander by instead.
At dawn, as I sat on a fragment of wall by the Spanish chapel watching a stonecutter, Diane strolled toward me on the path from the cenote. At dusk, as I lingered by Structure 701, watching the shadows gather, I heard the sound of Diane’s boots on the path from camp and the shadows fled. In the early evening, I stood on the edge of the cenote, watching the bats skim low over the water. Diane waved cheerfully as she walked along the path from the camp.
She was willing and eager to walk with me and listen to me talk about the site. I talked a great deal. Sometimes, in the bright light of day, I thought that I talked too much.
During the week, excavation had continued on the house mounds, the Temple of the Moon, and the tomb site. Work went slowly; the dirt had to be cleared away from each boulder before it could be moved, and each bucket of dirt had to be sifted for potsherds and flakes of worked stone. Hot, tedious, and dusty work.
At the tomb site, the workmen had uncovered eight stone steps leading downward to the beginning of an underground passageway. The rubble they removed from the stairway had yielded little of interest: a few plainware potsherds, a few carved stones with glyphs too badly battered to decipher.
Early Saturday morning, I walked alone to the tomb site. As I crossed the open plaza, I saw a flash of blue by the excavation. Zuhuy-kak was standing beside the tarps that covered the open pit. Her eyes followed me as I walked toward her. She stood in the sunlight and cast a shadow of her own. I greeted her in Maya, sat in the shade by the excavation, and lit a cigarette. Zuhuy-kak remained standing, staring out toward the mound.