The Babylon rite

53

The City Complex of Teotihuacan, Mexico

He kicked at the door; it barely budged; he pulled back and kicked again, hard, and the entire thing buckled, and collapsed, half of it swinging on broken hinges, the rest a mess of angry splinters and shattered planking.

Adam stepped over the debris, and there she was. Lying in a bath full of water, nude. She had a broken safety razor in her hand — the blade exposed. And it was poised and trembling just over the arteries of her upper wrist.

The way she was holding the blade told him enough.

‘Nina.’

She said nothing. Her head was bowed, she was staring at the razor blade in her white-knuckled hand.

‘Nina.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Please.’ He knelt. ‘Don’t. You’re nearly through it. I feel different now, better, the drug really does wear off. Jessica was right.’

Slowly she lifted her head, her beautiful white face soiled with tears and grief, and she said, staring hard into him, and also beyond him, ‘Why? It will never wear off. They are dead. Daddy. My sister. All dead. Why don’t I just fucking join them?’

She was holding the broken razor blade so hard that blood was seeping between her knuckles. Her hand trembled and prepared: poised, ready to slash and to kill.

‘Because you want to live,’ said Adam. ‘You told me, your father’s suicide made you want to live, this is just the drug talking.’

‘It’s not. I’ve always wanted this. The fucking end of. End of story. End.’

‘Nina-’

‘The woman is perfected.’

She was panting, and gasping. As if she was being waterboarded by grief and despair, gulping for air for a moment, then slammed underwater again. Drowning in hopelessness.

The blade touched her skin. She was going to do it. Adam moved close and reached a hand for her wrist. She yelled, ‘Don’t fucking touch me, Adam!’

He looked at her angry, desolate, whitely beautiful face, the lovely face he was too scared to love, because of Alicia. Yet this was the face and the body he loved, or desired, or wanted, more than anything, despite Alicia. Because of Alicia. Love defeats death. God is death and love. He loved Nina purely and truly.

There was a terrible pause. Then he moved his hand, and he touched her bare breast, he caressed the curve of her breast, soft and young and damp with bathwater.

Her eyes met his. Angry, yet yielding.

He reached for her, he reached into her and hauled her naked to her feet then he half-dragged and half-carried her over the broken door into the bedroom, and threw her on the mattress and tore off his clothes and opened her legs and it was as if she wanted it to be as violent as possible. She bit him and fought him and he scratched her, they scratched at each other, half-fighting, half-biting, scratching and coupling and fighting and kissing.

She bit him so hard on the shoulder he yelled; he reached out and grabbed at her slender white throat, and he realized he was killing her. She was staring up at him, choking, saying, ‘Go on, do it, Adam, do it!’

He let go of her and plunged his mouth to hers and they kissed again, and he was deep inside her again; they were both riding the same terrible waves, and then the storm began to subside: the bites became less fierce, she was pulling him closer, she was touching him softly, and he was just kissing her, and making love to her, and then it was just tender, and they were through it, and then they just looked at each other for what seemed like an hour, and the next time he gazed at the window it was black and quite starry and night.

Nina lay there in the bed. She leaned and kissed his shoulder. She said that she loved him. He didn’t need to reply. And then she cried for a few seconds and she shook her head and then she turned over and she closed her eyes.

Her breathing came slower, and longer. He watched her. A white marble angel, cold and warm at once, softly breathing, and sleeping deeply. Then he got up and dressed and went to buy some water from the machine in the lobby. It was the depths of the night. Four a.m. No one was around.

Something drew him outside. Into the night. He walked down the hotel path: and there he saw them, the great pyramids of Teotihuacan. Just over the fence. Ancient and moonlit and enormous and calm: purple ziggurats in the whispering darkness.

He went to a payphone at the hotel entrance. With his faltering Spanish he managed to get a call reversed: to London.

‘DCI Ibsen?’

‘Yes…’

He told the detective the story. The short version. Truncated to a few minutes. There would be time for longer explanations later.

‘So that’s it, Mark, we’re out, but we’re still stuck, we don’t have any money.’

‘Stay there. We’ll sort it. We’ll get this sorted: I’ll call the embassy right now, we will get you out of Mexico tomorrow. Give me the hotel details.’

Adam did as he was told and offered his thanks.

Ibsen said, ‘Incredible. Just incredible. You are one brave Aussie bastard. Or lucky. Or both.’

The call ended.

Replacing the receiver, Adam turned, shoving his water bottle in his back pocket, and he vaulted the little fence; and then he walked down between the great ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, down the vast, silent, deserted Avenue of the Dead.

The Pyramid of the Moon was on his right, the even larger Pyramid of the Sun was ahead of him. He stopped at one smaller temple, with feathered serpent gods carved in stone, forming the balustrades: biting the soft Mexican air, angrily, and for all time. Unwatched in the dark.

There was a carving here, a frieze in relief on a side-wall, with the detailing sharpened by the slanted light of a nearly-full moon. Adam regarded the artwork. It showed people dancing, and stylized jaguars, and priests in feathered headdresses. Wreathing lyrically between these figures were seven flowers.

Unmistakably, they were morning glories. Five-petalled and beautiful. Ulluchu. As he gazed at the flower Adam thought of all the places they had sought this drug and yet never quite found it: Scotland and England and Spain and France and Peru. Then he thought of Portugal, and that extraordinary round chapel where the Templars of Tomar took mass on horseback, sipping from the Holy Grail, drinking the very drug of the Lord, the liquor of the gods that took them closer to death, or to Christ. Or to both.

Adam pulled the water bottle from his pocket and drank the delicious cold water. He wondered how exactly they would get home. Then he stopped wondering. The embassy would find a way. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the mere fact they had survived. Everyone else was gone, everyone else was dead, but he and Nina: they were not. They had defied the drug. They had defied death. They were still alive.