Like some modern-day Lady MacBeth, I felt as if my hands were covered in blood. As indeed they were. In my fervent cleaning of the blade, I had cut one hand quite badly. This was not a good start.
I looked for a public washroom, and found one several long blocks away in the bus station. I washed my hand, telling the attendant that I was suffering from too much Carnaval, a lie she found amusing. She was kind enough to find me some iodine and a length of gauze, and soon I was on my way again.
As I passed the ticket window I thought of the ticket stub I had found among Don Heman’s belongings, and I watched as people picked up their tickets. They seemed to match the stub in appearance.
I went to the board that listed departures, looking for somewhere that ended in olid, and found one that seemed to fit the bill. There was a bus leaving almost hourly, every two hours during the night, for Valladolid, some one hundred miles to the east of Merida. I bought a ticket, then melded back into the Carnaval crowds while I waited for the appointed hour of two a.m.
I had very little cash left, only traveler’s checks, but I found an all-night exchange that demanded an exorbitant surcharge, but was not picky about things like identification, a good thing since Major Martinez still had my passport.
When the hour came, I waited until the last possible minute, then boarded the bus. No one seemed to think a tall woman dressed all in black with mantilla and mask out of place here. Perhaps they assumed I had gone to Merida for the evening to enjoy Carnaval and was now returning home.
I moved to an empty seat at the back of the bus and hoped the driver would be turning the lights out as soon as we departed. He did, and I hunkered down in the darkness.
I was very tired and soon drifted off. The bus stopped once at Piste, but soon enough it arrived in Valladolid. Valladolid is much smaller than Merida, and not quite the Carnaval town that Merida is, so I quickly removed my mask and mantilla, and hiked the skirt up as best I could.
I didn’t think I could check in at a decent hotel, with so little luggage and not wanting to use credit cards with my name on them, so just as dawn was breaking, I found a fleabag hotel not far from the bus station where once again they were not too picky about things like proper identification. I paid cash for a two-night stay.
It was a walk-up, a dingy little place. There was only a sink in the room, the bathroom was down the hall, and the bed creaked horribly. I was afraid to take my clothes off, so pulled back the bedspread, a very nasty green color, checked carefully for bugs, and lay fully clothed on top of the sheets. Not since my student days, and maybe not even then, had I stayed in such a place.
I had only a hazy notion of why I had come here, perhaps because Don Hernan had done so, but even then I didn’t know if it had been a recent trip. I was operating on automatic pilot right now, just going on instinct. Two things I knew for certain: that I had to get away from Martinez, and, more importantly, whoever it was who had tried to choke me the night before; and that all of these events, the robbery, the murders, the disappearances of all these pre-Columbian masterpieces, the jade bead in Don Hernan’s mouth, even Dona Josefina, were all linked in some way I could not yet understand.
I knew I needed to rest, and while I did not think I could sleep in such surroundings, I soon found myself dozing off. As I did I thought that in the Maya calendar this very long day had been Men, a day associated with the eagle, a day that was supposed to be one of wisdom.
If I was any wiser at the end of this day than I had been the day before, it was not immediately apparent to me.
CIB
In 1846, Yucatan seceded from Mexico, and wealthy hacienda owners, fearful of attack from Mexico or from the United States, armed their Maya laborers, virtual slaves on their henequen and sugar estates, thinking the laborers would protect them.
In 1847, however, the Maya used their masters’ arms to sack Valladolid, killing every European they could find, thereby avenging the destruction of their sacred city of Zaci, and the subjugation of its inhabitants by Francisco de Montejo almost exactly three centuries before.
It was the first strike in what came to be known as the War of the Castes.
Valladolid, pronounced Bay-ah-doh-leed, should you ever get there, is now a sleepy little agricultural market town, built around a central square, like Merida its bloody past well hidden by its colonial ambience.
I was forced from a heavy sleep by a slamming door and voices out in the hallway. I opened one eye just in time to see a very large cockroach scuttle for cover in the darkness under the bed.
The room was hot, and I felt as if I had been drugged. My watch showed it to be after noon, which I found hard to believe, even considering the late hour I had arrived in this horrible place.
I had not intended to sleep this long. I assumed Major Martinez would show up at the hotel in Merida at some point during the day, later rather than earlier, I hoped, and the search would be on. I had much to do before that.
I had a sponge bath of sorts from the sink in the room, casting a wary eye out for the cockroach and any other insects that happened to be about, then pulled on jeans and a shirt and went out into the heat and sunshine of the early afternoon.
I reasoned that if Martinez was already looking for me, he’d be looking in Merida. Or perhaps thinking I would be trying somehow to get out of the country, which I might be if I had my passport, he’d be watching the airport. I didn’t want to take any chances, though.
The central square where I headed is not far from the area around the bus station, and feeling like a fugitive, which I guess I was, I kept my head down and walked in the shadows wherever I could.
In the central square, I looked longingly at the pleasant hotels and then found my way to the Bazar Municipal, an arcade on the main square where food vendors put out tables and chairs at mealtimes. It was now about two p.m., time for comida, the main meal of the Mexican day, which can be taken anywhere between two and 5 p.m. The little tables were filled with businesspeople and workers on their afternoon break.
There were few menus to be had, none in English. One simply looked at the food as it was being prepared and pointed at something that looked appealing. I tried to blend into the crowd, and sitting under an awning, facing the square so no one could come up behind me, I ordered a sopa de elote con pimientos, a corn soup with sweet red peppers, and a rice dish with the hot sausages for which Valladolid is famous.
Normally one is expected to order a meat or fish dish after this, and then have dessert, but I wasn’t that hungry, nor was I keen on staying in one place too long. Besides, I had work to do.
I made my way back to the bus terminal by another route, trying to ensure that I had a good idea of the lay of the land in case I needed to make a run for it again.
I had brought the picture of Don Hernan with me. He had been a distinctive-looking man, and I was hopeful that someone would have seen him. I asked anyone who looked to be a permanent fixture about the place—the boy in the newsstand, the man who shined shoes on the corner, bus-line personnel. No luck.
A woman selling flowers about a block from the station thought she remembered selling him a carnation for his lapel. That sounded like the dapper Don Hernan to me, but she had no idea what direction he had come from, nor which direction he had headed to. All she did was give me the slight hope that I was on the right track.
I went into a couple of hotels not far from the bus station. No luck there, either. I hadn’t thought to inquire at mine, but it was unlikely Don Hernan would have stooped so low even on his worst day.