Seeing that it was only a little after eleven o'clock, Adam descended the spiral staircase and had himself driven into the city. His driver spoke fluent English and, having parked the car in the palm shaded square, accompanied him as his guide.
One side of the square was occupied by a long arcade above which rose the Governor's Palace and another by a still older Palace, both in the Spanish style. The latter was now a museum, its interior courtyard containing a number of stone images. Having seen so many in the museum in Mexico City, Adam went straight upstairs to see the antique jewellery, which the guide had described as fabulous. The finest of the items had been discovered in Tomb 7 at Monte Alban, which lay only a few miles away, and they were indeed very well worth seeing.
There were necklaces, ear rings, breast ornaments, also elaborately chased axes, spear heads and scepters inlaid with gold, which were triumphs of the goldsmith's art, and a superbly engraved crystal cup.
They then visited the Cathedral and the Church of St. Dominic, which Adam found much more impressive. Over the entrance of the broad porch there was a brilliantly coloured and gilded carved ceiling, among the elaborate embellishments of which were the life size faces of the leading Conquistadores. Along niches in the sides of the church there were many figures of saints, several of whom had Indian features; and one, with an ebony face, was obviously a Negro.
When Adam remarked on this, his well informed guide told him that as the Spaniards had found the Indians a comparatively feeble people, incapable of prolonged heavy work, many thousands of Negroes had been imported who, on being given their freedom, had intermarried with the Indians, and this accounted for many modern Mexicans of the lower classes having Negroid features.
Afterwards they walked back through the square and down a street to one side of the Governor's Palace, where there was a market. There were scores of stalls selling cotton garments, plastic goods and toys. Of the last there were such great quantities that Adam marvelled that the stallholders could make a living by selling them; but, as they obviously did, it argued that the Mexicans must be loving and generous parents.
Further down, on the right of the street, was the market proper a great, high roofed building along the narrow alleys of which hundreds of people were pushing past one another. The contents of the meat stalls looked revolting; but Adam was interested in the fish, many kinds of which he had never before seen. The fruits and vegetables were even more varied. There were great piles of every kind known to Europe and the tropics: the largest oranges Adam had ever seen and mandarins as large as ordinary oranges.
When Adam commented on this abundance, his guide said, `How our people would live without fruit and vegetables I do not know. But in that, God has been kind to Mexico. The land is so mountainous that fruits ripen in the lowlands many months before they do in the highland valleys, so we never lack for most kinds of fruit all the year round.'
Back at the hotel Adam had a late lunch, his siesta, then went downstairs for a swim. The floor below the big central lounge was occupied by a roomy bar and restaurant. After reading for a time while consuming a couple of Planter's Punches, he went in to dinner. As at lunch, he found the food passable but quite unpredictable. Sole Colbert was on the menu but, when it arrived, instead of being a whole fried sole split down the middle, with a big dab of parsley butter between the rolled back sides, it was bits some unidentifiable fish with a white sauce, served in a small round pot.
After his long day he went early to bed and by eleven o'clock is sound asleep. Shortly before midnight, he was roused by the opening of his door. Quickly switching on the light, he propped himself up on one elbow. To his amazement Chela, clad in a flowered silk dressing gown, was standing in the doorway. For a moment he thought he must be dreaming. But she closed the door behind her, undid her dressing gown and let it fall to e floor. Standing there now only in a transparent nightdress at revealed her magnificent figure, she smiled at him and said: `I've come to keep an appointment that we made only with our eyes nearly a thousand years ago.'
CHAPTER 8
The Sweet Cheat Gone
In a second Adam was out of bed and had her in his arms. He had never known such bliss as he experienced during the quarter of an hour that followed. Chela was not a virgin. Far from fearing his embrace, or displaying any false modesty, she met him eagerly, yet unhurriedly, in a prolonged loving, the mounting pleasure of which carried them out of this world to a superb and utterly satisfying climax.
For a while they lay silent, his arms still about her and his head pillowed on her shoulder. At length he murmured, `My beautiful, my wonderful one, how do you come to be here?'
`I drove down in my car,' she replied with a little laugh.
`But your father and family. Where do they think you are?'
`Here, although not for the special purpose of being with you. That our visits to Oaxaca should have coincided will be accepted as just a pleasant coincidence.'
`How clever of you, my sweet, to think of a plausible reason for your visit. Are you supposed to be staying with friends?'
They sat up and, after he had kissed her breasts, both lit cigarettes. Then she replied, `Darling, you really know very little about me. I'm not altogether the playgirl that you must imagine me to be. Had it not been that we are in the school holidays I wouldn't have been able to give you so much time, because I am a teacher.'
He looked at her in amazement, and she laughed at him. `Not a professional one exactly; but in term time, three times a week, I take classes in English and in Mexican history.'
`Well, I'll be damned! But that doesn't account for your being here.'
`No, there is another side to my voluntary work. I am one of the Board of Education's Inspectors and go to all parts of the country to report on conditions in the schools; so father is quite used to my going off for several days on my own. The reason I gave for making this trip was that I had been asked to inspect the schools in Oaxaca.'
`I take off my hat to you for giving your time to such work. Very few girls in your position would.'
`You are wrong about that. Several of my friends take junior classes two or three times a week; although as they haven't quite my er qualifications, they are not also Inspectors. You see, education in Mexico is terribly important, because such a large percentage of our people is hopelessly backward. It's so important that, a few years ago, the government made an appeal for every one who was literate to teach at least one other person to read and write. That helped, of course, but we are still tragically short of trained school teachers.'
Adam then put the question he had been burning to ask. `But tell me, beloved; how and when did you realise that we had known one another in a previous incarnation?'
`Immediately we got you into the car after we had knocked you own. Father is ordinarily so absorbed in his business affairs that he would have simply ordered that you should be given every care, sent you a fat cheque as compensation, then forgotten all about you. It was I who suggested that, instead of money, it would be better to give you an interesting time here. The moment I set eyes on you, I recognised you as Quetzalcoatl.'
He turned his head to stare at her. `But Quetzalcoatl was a god.'
`A Man God,' she corrected, `and you must know his story. He said to have been a golden haired white man who arrived on our coast about A.D. 960. He travelled inland to Tula, which was then the great capital of the Toltecs, and ruled there as Priest King for twenty years. Then the Toltecs were driven from Tula by my people from the north, and Quetzalcoatl migrated with his warriors down to Yucatan. After that he went back to the sea, sailing to the west on a raft composed of snakes. But he promised to return; and ever since the Indians have been hoping that he would, to become again their leader and King.'