`When?' Adam asked.
Father Lopez spread out his plump hands. `Many of them must come from distant places. The ceremony cannot take place until
they have all arrived. But most of them are already in hiding in the neighborhood and the rest should soon complete their journeys; so it will not be long.'
`And the second ceremony?'
`Again, I cannot say. Time must be given for the leaders to return to their districts, and further time for them to spread the word so that it reaches even the remotest villages.'
`What is to happen then?'
`The Man God will appear again to a chosen congregation. That will be the signal for five million men to rise, proclaim their faith and launch the crusade that is to drive the wicked from the seats of power. But let us return to the immediate future.' Drawing a sheet of paper from his pocket, Father Lopez went on:
`It is known that the Man God can speak Nahuatl, but that, although understood by a greater number of 'our Indians than any other, is only one of scores of languages that are their only tongue in many parts of the country. Indeed, tens of thousands of them are still so backward that they can comprehend only their own dialect. In what language the Man God should address the congregation that is to assemble here has, therefore, been a problem.'
`So I am expected to speak,' Adam said, a shade dubiously.
`That is essential. And as we are in Yucatan, where the Man God was last seen in his earlier incarnation, it has been decided that he should speak in Maya.'
Adam frowned. `But that is impossible. I don't know it.'
`No matter.' The priest handed him the sheet of paper. `Here is the speech. It is quite short, so can be learned by heart without difficulty. I speak Maya fluently, and my services as a coach in pronunciation will be available.'
Taking the paper, Adam quickly ran his eye down it. There were only some twenty lines of Maya typescript and beneath each was another, giving the phonetic pronunciation of the words above. As he stared at it, he suddenly realised that some of the expressions were familiar and that during his dreams he must at times have spoken Maya as well as Nahuatl.
`Very well, Father,' he said, pocketing the paper. `Perhaps we could try it over after dinner tonight.'
The priest bowed. `I should be honoured to be of assistance.'
There seemed no more to be said; so they walked back up the slope to the hotel and, perspiring from the heat, went to their rooms for their siesta.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, Adam read through the speech more carefully. After reading it three times he could make out its sense. In effect it said:
`In my person is reincarnated the Man God Quetzalcoatl. A thousand years ago I left your ancestors to sail away to the east. But I promised that I would return and I now redeem that promise. In the past I brought you rain to ensure you good harvests every year. I gave you wise laws and kept the peace among you. In those days the fields and the fruits of the earth were yours. You have been wickedly dispossessed of a great part of them and I have grieved for you. Now I am come again to restore to you all that you have lost. The day is not far distant when I shall call upon you to rise in your might and destroy the evil doers. Have no fear. Obey your priests, have faith in the Holy Virgin and our Lord Jesus Christ, whose representative I am, and you cannot fail to triumph.'
Again Adam's mind turned to Ramon and that he ought to be informed of what was afoot. But to get in touch with him was not going to be easy. In Mexico long distance calls often took an hour or more to get through and in no circumstances must Chela become aware that he was secretly selling out her friends to her half brother. If she learned that he had put through a call to Mexico City she would want to know why. And what explanation could he give? But during the siesta he might get a call through without her knowledge.
Making up his mind to risk it, he put on his shirt again, with the intention of going along to the office. As he was doing so, the communicating door leading to Chela's room opened and she came in. With a smile she said:
`Hello, darling. I'm afraid it's too hot for us to lie embraced, but as there is a double bed here I thought I'd come and lie down beside you.'
That, for the time being, put an end to any possibility of Adam's telephoning Ramon. Before he was much older he was to have cause to rue it.
CHAPTER 12
At the Pyramid of the Magician
In the cool of the evening, they walked the half mile to see the Uxmal ruins. Unlike those at Chichen Itza, these were on hilly country; they did not cover so great an area, but were almost as impressive. The sight of them again stirred memories in Adam, and he felt certain that some important event in his past life had occurred there.
The nearest to the road was the Pyramid of the Magician. It was very high and the steepest in Mexico. The flat roofed temple on the top was only partly in ruins, and the lintels over the doorways were huge balks of wood, showing it to be pure Maya and very old.
Down in a hollow, some way behind it, there was a large, square court, on all four sides of which there were long buildings about twenty feet in height. They faced inward, stood on terraces well above the level of the court and had a number of doorways and beautifully carved facades. The Spaniards had christened this well preserved ruin `The Court of the Nuns', because the stonework in the upper half of one of the buildings has been carved in the form of a grille; but Adam knew it to have been the university at which Maya priests were educated in the mysteries.
On much higher ground, a third of a mile to the left of the pyramid stood another long and quite lofty building, known as the Governor's House, because it was the biggest of its kind in Mexico. Over each of the doorways and at the corners there were many carvings, several times larger than life, of the `Plumed Serpent' a man's head looking out from the distended jaws of a crested snake which was Quetzalcoatl's symbol.
Behind the Governor's House, the ground fell away sharply, almost in a precipice, and across the valley from it stood another large building, now a ruin. The upper structure consisted of a row of gables, which gave it the appearance of a thick toothed comb. In the gables there were many square holes which had purposely been left unfilled, to let in air. For this reason it was now called `The House of the Pigeons'.
Scattered about in the area there were several other ruins and fallen monoliths which Adam could recall in the days of their
splendour as temples and palaces with crowds of brightly clad priests and warriors moving about among them.
The sun was just setting as they returned to the hotel, but it was still blissfully warm; so they again swam before dinner. Afterwards they went out into the garden with Father Lopez, and, Adam recited his piece.
The priest was far from happy about Adam's rendering of it and declared that, as pronounced by him, it was hardly recognizable as Maya. Adam thought he knew the answer to that every language is constantly changing. When practicing that afternoon, he had ignored the phonetic spelling under the typed sentences and, as more and more of his past acquaintance with Maya returned to him, said the speech over as he would have done a thousand years earlier.