He turned back to the front. ‘It is all right now. I am very sorry.’ Then he began to cry.
Sabir stared hard at Lamia, and then at Calque. ‘What brought that on?’
Lamia shook her head. ‘It was nothing. I reminded him about the mark of Cain. I said that God had given me this mark because I had come of an evil cradling. And that I took the mark as a sign to me that I must turn my back on the evil represented by my family and stand on my own two feet. Like Herman Hesse’s Demian.’
‘Which he’d read, of course?’
‘Don’t laugh, Adam. I explained to him that the god Abraxas concatenates all that is good and evil in this earth, and that we each have to destroy a world if we wish to be reborn. I quoted to him from Hesse’s book. The original goes “ Der Vogel kampft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, mu? eine Welt zerstoren. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott hei?t Abraxas. ” I translated it for him like this: “The bird fights his way out of the egg. The egg is the world. He who wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God is called Abraxas.”’
‘Lamia, he’s crying, for Christ’s sake.’
‘My image of the egg. It meant to something to him. Over here they use the egg to rid themselves of evil thoughts. I think he understands about me now. He no longer thinks I have the evil eye.’
Sabir glanced furtively across at Acan. Then back at Lamia. He could feel Calque’s eyes burning into the back of his head.
Sabir felt uninformed and inadequate. Unworthy of Lamia’s love. What was he doing here? What right did he have to interfere in all these people’s lives? To act as some sort of unholy catalyst, uniting forces that he little understood, in ways over which he had even less control?
‘I’m sorry I made that crack about the Hesse book. I don’t understand my own motives sometimes. I felt possessive of you, and didn’t like the fact that you weren’t involving me in what you said to
…’ He hesitated, really acknowledging the man beside him for the very first time. ‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Acan.’
‘This is Lamia. Lamia de Bale. Back there is Calque. Joris Calque. And my name is Sabir. Adam Sabir.’
Acan smiled through his tears. ‘My name is Acan Teul. I am Maya. From the village of Actuncoyotl. My father is called Anthonasio – Tonno for short. And my mother is called Ixtab.’
Lamia smiled gratefully at Sabir. Then she turned back to Acan. ‘Ixtab. That is a beautiful name.’
‘Yes. She is named after the Rope Woman. Our goddess of suicide. In Yucatec Maya, suicide can be a positive thing. It can be an honourable way to end one’s life. Ixtab is the goddess who accompanies the person who has killed themselves to paradise, making sure that they are welcomed there, and given the respect that is their due.’
Sabir turned on him, his face instantly suspicious again. ‘Suicide? Why are you talking about suicide all of a sudden?’
Calque laid a restraining hand on Sabir’s shoulder. All of their nerves were on edge, and Sabir’s most of all. Calque knew that Sabir hadn’t been sleeping. During the past few days the man had been becoming more and more wound up – just as he’d been in the aftermath of his tangle with Achor Bale. It was as though Sabir lacked three or four of the normal protective outer layers of skin that ordinary people possess by default.
At first Calque had made the not unreasonable assumption that Sabir’s newly fledged relationship with Lamia might even serve to calm him down a little. But, paradoxically, the love affair appeared to have had the exact opposite effect, turning Sabir into an even more hyper version of himself. Calque decided that he and Lamia would have to tread very carefully indeed if Sabir was not to crack up on them. He measured his words carefully, therefore, like a schoolmaster addressing a room full of freshmen.
‘He means that the goddess Ixtab acts as a psychopomp, Sabir. A spirit guide. Escorting the newly deceased to the afterlife. Shamans can also fulfil this role, I understand. It’s a quite innocent pastime.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ Acan looked grateful for Calque’s intervention. ‘This is what my mother does. My mother is iyoma.’
‘ Iyoma?’
‘A female shaman. A midwife, really. It is she who tells, when a child is born, if he will become a shaman or not. Whether he is born with a separate soul, like a true shaman, and will give his mother much pain in the birthing. This can be a very bad thing for the mother. Sometimes the iyoma will not even tell the mother and father about their child for this reason, but only reveal what she has learned later on.’
‘Why was your mother called after the goddess of suicide?’ Sabir was still staring at Acan as if the young Maya was personally responsible for his mother’s death.
In his own heightened emotional state, Acan picked up on Sabir’s anxiety and didn’t feel threatened by it. He waved one hand in a downwards movement, as if calming a child, using the back of his other hand to brush away his remaining tears.
‘The old iyoma we had in the village at that time recognized my mother as a shaman at birth. She knew instinctively that my mother was connected by her umbilical cord to the goddess Ixtab. Without telling my father and mother, she went to the old people and suggested the name to them. In our village we respect our elders. We do what they ask of us. So my mother was named Ixtab. She has guided many people into the afterlife – and brought many others into this world as earth fruits. She is a very wise woman.’ Acan nodded, as if what he was saying was self-evident. ‘You will meet her, Adam. We are going to Ek Balam. Very near to my village. My mother will be there, waiting for you.’
Acan looked strangely at Sabir. For suddenly, without any warning, Sabir, too, began to cry.
65
The Halach Uinic had never known the like before. Who had dictated the events of the past few hours? Hunab Ku? Itzam Na? The maize god? The god who had no name? And what was their meaning?
Why, for instance, had foreigners been needed to find the thirteenth crystal mask – the mask without which the twelve other ritual masks would not sing? And why had it needed another foreigner – a man from Veracruz, of all places – to bring the Maya this incredible gift of a fourth complete codex, to stand alongside the Dresden, the Madrid, and the Paris codices, all of which had been stolen from the Maya by descendants of the conquistadors? The Halach Uinic realized that he was being told something – that voices were being carried to him on the wind, and that he urgently needed to listen to them.
The Halach Uinic turned to the mestizo who had brought him the book. His face in no way revealed the tenor of his inner thoughts. ‘We cannot take this book from you. It has been in your family’s possession for many generations. It belongs to you, and not to us. It would be wrong of me not to tell you what value this book has. If you were to take it out of the country – to the United States, for instance, or to England – the gringos would make of you a very rich man. You could buy cars, and houses, and make love to a different woman every day. You could travel on aeroplanes through the sky, and see things that most of us know nothing about. You must not give us this book, therefore. It is yours. You must do with it as you will.’
As the Halach Uinic said these words, he felt a pain in his lower back, as if a kidney stone had formed there and was struggling to get out. He knew that by saying the words he risked losing the greatest gift his people had ever received. Yet he also knew that he had to say them – and mean them – or the gift would be worthless.
The mestizo was looking ahead of himself, out of the car window. He seemed to be concentrating on the vehicle in front of them – the vehicle that was carrying the gringos.
He half-turned towards the Halach Uinic. ‘And the skull? The gringos found that, not you. Will you offer that back to them as well?’
The Halach Uinic felt the weight of fate descend upon him like the lid of a coffin. How was it possible that this campesino could see things with such clarity? Pose him such questions? The man must have been chosen by God. There was no other possible answer.
Before the Halach Uinic could address himself to the question, the mestizo turned to look at him face on for the very first time. ‘You are the High Priest, are you not? The one they call the Halach Uinic?’
‘So they tell me. I am not entirely in agreement with them on this subject, however.’
‘The other priests…’
