‘Hello? Who’s that?’ Diane called. My daughter had stopped in the shadows where the trail reached the pool’s edge. She was alone. ‘Who’s there?’
1 walked around the pool to stand beside her. ‘What are you doing here?’ My voice sounded strained and I fought to control it. ‘It’s late to be wandering around.’
She shrugged. ‘I thought I might go for a swim,’ she said. ‘I thought it might help me sleep.’
‘The water should be cool.’ I stood with my hands in my empty pockets, looking at the cenote.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Diane asked hesitantly.
‘Thinking,’ I said. ‘It’s cooler here. And quieter.’
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t know—’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’ Her eyes were large in the moonlight, like the eyes of a little girl. ‘I was just heading back to camp.’
‘All right,’ she said with a trace of relief. She turned away, kneeling by the pool to test the water with her hand.
And suddenly, I don’t know why, I was afraid to leave her there by herself. ‘I’ll wait for you,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk you back to camp.’
She frowned at me, puzzled. ‘That’s all right. I’m fine by myself.”
‘No, I’ll stay. I’d like to just sit here for a while anyway,’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘If you want.’
When she dove in, she shattered the silver moon that floated on the surface of the pool. The moonlight rippled around her. I think she shortened her swim because I was there. She ducked beneath the dark surface once or twice, did a slow breaststroke to the far end of the pool and back.
Walking along the dark path to camp with my daughter at my side, I realized that she frightened me. I am not used to caring. The breeze blew and I thought I heard laughter in the branches overhead.
That night, I dreamed of the city of Dzibilchaltún before the coming of the ah-nunob.
In the dream, I walked north along the sacbe that led from the outskirts to the city center. The city was quiet and still. Most houses were empty, but the desertion seemed temporary. I could see through the open doorways into the huts. In one, an old woman tended a fire and stirred a pot of atole. In another, a child cried, a sound as thin and lonely as a fingernail scraping on a classroom chalkboard an hour after school was out. In one solar, I saw tall water jars, elegantly painted with black on red. A woman hurried along the sacbe, glancing warily over her shoulder. I saw a man lying in a hammock, while a woman sat beside him, her head bowed, rocking his hammock as if he were a child. I guessed the date of the dream to be sometime near AD 900, sometime before the Toltec invasion.
The huts I passed grew more affluent as I approached the city center. First, the huts of well-to-do peasants; then, those of rich merchants. An effigy of Ek Chuah, the black-eyed guardian deity of the merchants, pouted at me from one yard. He was an ugly god, and the cedar carving portrayed him accurately, showing his misshapen lower lip, the black markings on his face, the burdens on his back. Finally, the huts of the nobility and priests. The solars around these huts were well tended and filled with flowers. But something was wrong. An evil smell hung in the air. The horizon was clouded with smoke.
I left the huts behind and entered the first ceremonial plaza. As I approached the far end of the court, three ravens flew up, shrieking and cursing. The black birds had been perching on a heap of sun-bleached coconuts, and that seemed odd, since coconuts did not grow in this part of the Yucatán.
The coconuts grinned at me and watched with hollow eyes.
The round objects were not coconuts, but the skulls of men. I suddenly realized what was happening: Dzibilchaltún was at war. These were the skulls of enemy warriors killed in battle. Scraps of dried flesh clung to the topmost skulls, the most recent additions. The other skulls had been there longer; they had been picked clean by birds, insects, and night-wandering rats. The faint aroma of dead meat hung in the warm air.
I was surrounded by the heavy scent of death. The sky was cloaked in clouds and the air was thick. From somewhere far away, I heard the slow beat of drums, growing louder with each beat.
When I woke, I was drenched in sweat. The hut was filled with darkness. I lit a candle, but that only pushed the shadows back; it did not chase them away. It was strange to walk through the dark camp and fear the shadows. They pressed too close, these shades of darkness. Something was wrong here. The smell of death clung to me.
I stood by the open door to Diane’s hut. I remembered a long distant evening, buried deeper than any jade mask, when I watched my four-year-old daughter sleep. She was covered by a quilt, surrounded by stuffed toys. Her red-gold hair fanned out over the pillow; her thumb had found her mouth under cover of darkness. The next day, I packed my bags and left for New Mexico the first time.
Now I listened to soft breathing in four voices: Diane’s breath was a husky whisper in the chorus. She was quiet in her hammock, at peace. I turned away from my sleeping daughter.
Zuhuy-kak stood in the shadows by the water barrel. She walked beside me as I strolled toward my hut. ‘You and I have much in common,’ she said to me. ‘I had a daughter once.’ She walked in the shadows and I could not read the expression on her face.
‘What became of your daughter?’
‘The ah-nunob came and she died. Many died.’ Her voice was very soft.
The uneasy residue of my dream lingered. ‘I dreamed of the time before the ah-nunob came,’ I said.
‘You dreamed of bad luck,’ she said flatly. ‘Bad luck is coming. You did not make a willing sacrifice to the goddess.’
I walked in silence for a moment, imagining what Tony would say if I suggested we take a holiday in the middle of the week because I feared bad luck. When I entered my hut, I was alone. I returned to my hammock, but it was a long time before I fell asleep.
The week began badly and got worse. On Monday, John spotted a rattlesnake on the trail to the tomb; Robin was afflicted with heat rash; Pich was bitten by a centipede, a nasty sting that quickly began to swell.
The students were growing restless. At breakfast and dinner, I heard talk of what they would do after the dig was over. They were as nervous as birds just before a storm, fluttering here and there with little purpose other than the movement itself. I think they felt the tension in the air, but they blamed it on isolation, on hot days and lonely nights.
On Tuesday, two workmen did not come to work and two others arrived late. I was in a bad temper when I drove the jeep to Mérida and tried to track down the chain hoist and winch that we needed to raise the stela. After much searching, I located a man who would rent us the equipment on Thursday of that week, later than I had hoped but better than nothing. On the way back, I had a flat tire, discovered the jack was broken, and finally put out my thumb and hitched a ride with a farmer. I arrived at camp crouched in the bed of a pickup truck with a mournful pig. I spent the evening with Tony, drinking aguardiente and calling curses down on the workmen who had not come.
And on Wednesday, the day Ix, our luck turned bad, very bad. Philippe, Maria’s younger brother, was working in the passageway when a large rock rolled down onto his right foot.
Philippe was young: a basketball player, a boxer, a university athlete who was earning a little cash doing work that he considered beneath him. Salvador had hired him, I believe, partly because Maria had asked him to do so. Certainly, the young man was strong, but he lacked the traits that make a good worker for a dig.
Older men make the best workers: they appreciate the virtue of a slow steady pace; they take advantage of delays to stand in the shade and smoke; they are wiry and enduring but not overly muscular. They know how to conserve their energy.