The Falling Woman

9 Elizabeth

At dinner that night, Maggie sat beside John and kept up an animated conversation over the chicken and stewed tomatoes. I assumed that she had quarreled with Carlos and wondered how long it would take for them to make up. Diane and Barbara were talking quietly about the book that Diane was reading.

‘I read about the Mayan calendar today,’ Diane said to me. ‘It seems confusing: twenty days to a month, eighteen months to a year, twenty years to a…’ She stopped. ‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘A katun,’ I said. ‘It gets worse. From the sound of it, you were reading about the Long Count. There’s also the haab, a cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days divided into eighteen months, with five days at the end for bad luck. There’s the tzolkin, a cycle of two hundred and sixty days divided into thirteen months. And then there’s the cycle of the katuns, which repeats every two hundred and fifty-six years. But you don’t have to worry about the names and numbers. You just need to understand the intent. The calendar let the Maya follow the cycles of time and predict the future by knowing the past. Whatever happens at a particular time will recur when that time returns. If the last Katun 8 was a katun of upheaval and discord, this one will be too. A h’men, a Mayan priest, can determine which gods influence a certain day – and because he knows the gods, he can predict what will happen at that time. He can advise you on whether you should expect a particular day to be lucky or unlucky, good for planting corn or for hunting or for burning incense. The Maya looked for patterns.’

Diane nodded and smiled in a strange sort of way. We were in a little island of quiet: Tony was talking with Robin; Carlos was watching Maggie flirt, his face expressionless; Barbara was listening without comment. ‘It makes a sort of sense,’ Diane said. ‘They believed you must know and understand your past to understand your future.’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose so.’

She nodded again and said no more about it.

I stayed in the plaza to drink coffee after dinner. Barbara was discussing her survey plans with Tony. Tony nodded sagely and smoked his pipe. Diane had moved to the edge of the plaza. She sat in a folding chair in the fading light of the setting sun. She was reading a hardcover book – one of Barbara’s texts on the Maya.

I found myself watching my daughter. She had been swimming in the cenote before dinner and she had combed her hair out to dry. It flowed down around her shoulders. Her hands, holding the book open before her, were soft and slender, each nail perfectly shaped. She was leaning forward, and the collar of her loose shirt had fallen open to show the strong muscles of her neck. She lifted one hand to her head to push back the tide of hair, and I watched the muscles of her arm flex and shift.

She glanced in my direction and caught me watching her. Her eyes widened and a look of doubt crossed her face, but she smiled. I believe that she smiled in self-defense, using the open vulnerability of her smile as a shield, the way a puppy bares its neck to a stronger dog. The smile was a peace offering, made before the conflict began.

The inevitable card game had begun at the other table. Maggie, Robin, and John were playing. Carlos had not joined them. He was still at the dinner table, smoking a cigarette and looking pensive. A calculated pose, I was sure. He held the cigarette loosely in one hand and leaned back in his chair, his white shirt open at the collar and his head back to look at the sky.

I listened to the slap of the cards on the table, the soft mutter of conversation, and I watched as Carlos strolled across the plaza to where Diane was sitting. He stopped beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. I could not hear what he said. Diane tilted her head a little to one side and leaned back in her chair. I did not like the way Carlos smiled at my daughter. I had never liked Carlos much.

‘Tony,’ I said quietly across the table. He had been listening to Barbara, but now he looked to me. ‘What would you think of shifting a few assignments? John could use Carlos’s help on the southeast site for a few days. The house mounds are a bit far from the other excavation. And I’d imagine that with Diane on survey, Barbara has enough help.’

Barbara gave me a considering look, then nodded. ‘I wouldn’t miss him.’

Tony followed my gaze to Diane and Carlos. ‘You want to keep Diane on survey?’

I nodded.

He rattled the ice in his glass and nodded. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t notice the need myself.’

Carlos laughed and touched Diane’s shoulder again. Tony stood, taking his drink with him. ‘I’ll mention it to Carlos,’ he said, and headed toward the couple. I watched him join them, pulling up a chair and settling down as if he planned to stay a while. Tony would handle it well. He was very good with people. I watched for a moment as Tony spoke to Carlos. Carlos frowned, but nodded. I could not see Diane’s face.

That evening, I worked on notes for my next book. My hut was oppressively hot even though I had opened the door wide to let the evening breeze blow through. I worked by the light of a small candle lantern that was too dim to draw many moths. As I typed on my travel typewriter, a compact Olivetti that had served me well for the past five years, the wooden table wobbled and the candle wavered. I had completed a description of Zuhuy-kak when I noticed the figure that stood in the shadows just beyond the lantern light. I turned in my chair to face her. In the darkness, I could see the white shells on her belt and in her hair. I lit a cigarette from the stub of the one I had just finished and greeted her softly in Maya. She did not speak. She remained in the shadows. I could smell incense, a warm resinous smell like burning pitch.

‘I dreamed of you,’ I said. ‘I dreamed of the day that they threw you into the cenote at Chichén Itzá.’

‘I did not know that shadows dreamed,’ she said. She took a step toward me and stopped at the edge of the lantern light. Though she stared in my direction, I do not think she saw me clearly. She lifted one hand, as if to shade her eyes.

‘I dream,’ I said.

She shook her head, as if to clear it. ‘I had enemies,’ she said in a soft voice, like a woman who is muttering to herself. ‘After the ah-nunob came, I had many enemies. I knew too much, you understand. I was too strong. The h’menob of the new religion did not approve of a woman who knew too much.’ Her hands fingered the conch shell at her belt, as if for comfort.

That dated her: I recognized the word ‘ah-nunob’ from the Books of Chilam Balam. It meant ‘those who speak our language brokenly’ and referred to the Toltecs from northern Mexico, who had invaded the Yucatán in about ad 900. As near as we could tell from the archaeological record, the invaders had displaced the Mayan nobility and modified the religion by adding Kukulcán, the feathered serpent, and other gods to the Mayan pantheon. The invaders had taken Chichén Itzá as their stronghold.

‘I served Ix Chebel Yax, goddess of the moon and the sea, the protector of women in labor and madmen, she who weaves the rainbow and brings the floods.’ One of Zuhuy-kak’s hands stroked the smooth inner surface of the conch shell. ‘When the ah-nunob came, they took my temple. They tore down the facades that honored the goddess and replaced them with serpents that twisted and curled around the arches.’ One hand gripped the conch shell as if to use it as a club. She remained silent for so long that I thought she might be fading into darkness again.

‘How did you come to be given to the gods?’ I asked, trying to catch her attention, to keep her talking.

She held her head proudly and straightened her shoulders like an aged general reminded of past battles. ‘The h’menob could not kill me. They feared bad luck. But they said I was one of the chosen messengers to the gods. Twelve were chosen by the gods to visit the well; one would survive. One would return with the prophecy for the coming katun, Katun 10.’

She was gazing into the distance as if unaware of my presence. ‘It was a long journey, seven days on foot to Chichén Itzá. On the day named Cimi, the women prepared me: anointing my skin with blue paint, dressing me in a feather robe, lacing quetzal feathers in my hair.

‘I walked from the women’s quarters to the mouth of the well. Priests of the ah-nunob walked on either side of me, their hands hot on my arms. The crowd parted before us; smoke from the incense burners followed. The sound of the tunkul led us on.

‘Some of the chosen ones were weeping. A slave from Palenque cried with a constant wearying whimper. The daughter of a nobleman who had fallen from power wept with short gasping sobs that rose and fell, almost stopped, then started again. There was a beautiful young boy, I remember, also a slave. He had drunk the balche that the h’menob offered us. He leaned on the priest beside him as he walked and sang a childish song that kept time with the tortoise shell rattles. I walked just behind him, listening to his song, saying nothing. The h’menob led us to the edge of the well and threw us in.’

She stopped speaking, as if she were remembering the howling of the crowd. Outside, I could hear the soft voice of the palm leaves, rubbing one against the other.

‘I fell for a long time.’ She was cradling the conch shell in both hands and running her finger along the smooth lip of the shell, stroking the polished edge. The shell’s interior was as smooth and pink as the skin of a baby. ‘The murmur of the crowd became the rush of the wind past me, dragging on my robes, tugging the quetzal feathers free of my hair and scattering them in the sky. Then the cold water slapped me. I remember rising to the surface like a bubble. And I remember that one leg ached with a fierce pain.’ She shifted her position, as if the remembered pain affected her now. Her voice had taken on a singsong rhythm. ‘For a time, I floated on the surface among the reflections of the clouds. For a time, I heard someone crying – one of the slaves, I think – but the whimpering grew weaker and weaker, then stopped at last. My leg was numbed by the cold water, and I floated in the sky among the clouds, considering the prophecy for the coming year. I could hear the tunkul and the rattles and the shouting of the crowd, coming to me from the earth far below.

‘The h’menob did not expect me to survive. They would have been glad to pull out one of the others – the slave, the noblewoman, the beautiful boy. But the others had not enjoyed floating in the sky. They were done with their crying and only I remained. At noon, when the sun rose over the lip of the well, I lifted my hands and welcomed it. The h’menob pulled me from the water, reluctantly, I thought, and roughly, considering how holy I had become.

‘I knew the prophecy for the coming year. I smiled when I told them. “Give yourselves up, my younger brothers, my older brothers. Submit to the unhappy destiny of the katun that is to come. You must leave the cities and scatter in the forests. You must cast down the monuments and raise no more. That is the word of the katun that is to come.”’ Her voice had grown louder and more powerful, like a strong wind driving the rain before it. ‘I said to them, “Submit to the unhappy destiny. If you do not submit, you shall be moved from where your feet are rooted. If you do not submit, you shall gnaw the trunks of trees and the leaves of herbs. There shall come such a pestilence that the vultures will enter the houses. There shall be an earthquake over the land. There will be thunder from a dry sky. Dust will possess the earth, a blight will be on the face of the land, the tender leaf will be destroyed, and the people will scatter afar in the forest.”’

She smiled when she turned to look at me. ‘I spoke loudly so that the crowd could hear. And the h’menob wrapped me in soft cloths and rushed me away to the palace where the holy women lived. I think I fainted from the pain in my leg, and I don’t remember the journey to the women’s quarters. I woke on a soft pallet, tended by a frightened young woman who was sweet and attentive but told me nothing. The h’menob came and spoke to me, and I told them the prophecy again.’

She straightened her shoulders, still smiling. ‘It took some time for my words to be heard by all. The h’menob softened the prophecy, but they could not deny it or destroy me, for either of those would have meant bad luck. So the people began leaving the city, slipping away into the forest. Stoneworkers toppled the monuments that they had carved, workmen threw down their tools and left temples half finished. After the farmers left, the fields were poorly tended and there was famine. There was pestilence. It takes time for a city to crumble. But it happened, here and in the other cities. My enemies were destroyed because they had tried to destroy me. That was the order of the katun. That was what Ix Chebel Yax said would be.’

She laughed and the sound was like branches rattling against one another in a high wind. ‘The h’menob said I was mad. I was mad because I said words they did not wish to hear, because they could not control me, they could not drag me along like a tethered dog. And so they said I was mad.’

The Mayan empire was overthrown and the cities abandoned because of an angry prophecy from a vengeful goddess.

‘You know that I am not mad,’ she said. ‘You and I understand each other. We have much in common.’

Someone knocked on the lintel of the door to my hut.

‘I had enemies,’ Zuhuy-kak said softly.

‘Liz?’ I recognized the questioning tone as my daughter’s.

‘Yes.’ Zuhuy-kak was gone, vanished back into the shadows. ‘Come in.’

Diane stopped just inside the door, as if unsure of her welcome. Her hair was still down around her shoulders, and her eyes were large in the candlelight. She had the look of a lost child wandering in the night.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘I saw your light.’ She shrugged, then sniffed the air. ‘What’s that smell?’

I sniffed, smelling the lingering aroma of incense. ‘Candle wax,’ 1 said. ‘And a hint of insect repellent.’ I tapped a cigarette from my pack and lit it.

She kept standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable.

‘Sit down,’ I said.

She perched awkwardly on the corner of my footlocker. ‘I’m just feeling restless. It happens sometimes. If I sleep when I’m feeling like this, I have nightmares.’ She shrugged. ‘So I stay up. Why are you still up?’

‘I was planning to go to bed soon. After this cigarette.’

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. I mean, if you were working on something…’ She slurred the words ever so slightly. She had been drinking with Tony – that explained why she was brave enough to come visit me, yet still feeling awkward enough to require an invitation to sit down.

‘It’s all right. Has Barbara already gone to sleep?’

‘A while ago. The whole camp seems to be asleep.’

‘You never liked being in new places when you were a baby,’ I said, surprising myself a little by remembering. ‘You cried whenever we traveled. And when you were little, you had bad dreams.’

She would walk at night, a diminutive child dwarfed by her flannel nightgown. I would tuck her back in, rock her to sleep, curl up beside her, and listen to the whisper of her breath coming and going.

Diane shrugged a little, leaning forward. ‘I still have bad dreams. I always have trouble sleeping in a new bed. When I went to college, I was insomniac for a month. I told Dad about it and he prescribed sleeping pills. I don’t use them much.’

‘Robert always did prefer external remedies,’ I said dryly. ‘He always treated the symptom, not the cause.’ A pause. I took a puff on my cigarette and watched Diane’s face.

‘What’s the cause?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘If I knew that, I’d sleep better myself.’

She nodded, staring into the darkness, avoiding my eyes. ‘Tell me…’ she began, then stopped and started again. ‘Tell me what it was like when you started to go crazy.’

The hut was very quiet, a crystalline silence that seemed ready to shatter. A pool of darkness had gathered at her feet. ‘Robert called me crazy,’ I said softly. ‘I never agreed.’

‘You don’t think you were?’

‘I think that a great many people we call insane are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ I shrugged. ‘I opposed the societal norms, so I was crazy by Robert’s definition. Out here, no one calls me crazy.’ I studied her in the dim light. Her head was bowed and her hair hid her face. ‘Why do you ask?’ I wanted to go to her, to touch her on the shoulder and stroke her hair, but I could not make myself move.

‘I think… I thought before I left that I might be going crazy. I thought coming here was crazy.’ Her voice was low. ‘After Dad died and I quit my job, I didn’t know what to do. I kept walking and walking – pacing from one room of the house to another, moving a knicknack from a shelf to a side table and back. Just walking and walking, with no purpose.’ One of her hands rubbed the other, scratching a mosquito bite and raising a red welt. ‘I thought about killing myself, just so I could rest.’

I took a long drag on the cigarette. ‘When Robert had me committed, the doctors at the nuthouse had to tend to my feet. I had infected blisters, all over the bottoms and sides of both feet. The doctors asked me why I hadn’t stopped walking when my feet hurt.’ I shrugged. ‘I wanted to leave and I couldn’t. Walking seemed like a reasonable reaction.’

She was looking at me now. ‘Was coming here a reasonable reaction for me?’

‘I suppose it was,’ I said.

Her smile was tentative. ‘Last night was the first time I slept a night through in weeks. I had dreams, but I slept the night through.’

I glanced at the clock on the shelf. The luminous dial showed midnight. ‘I’ll walk you to your hut,’ I said. ‘Survey comes early tomorrow.’

She nodded slowly but did not move. ‘You and Tony took Carlos off survey.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We thought that Barbara had a large enough crew and John needed a little help.’

Her expression did not change. ‘I wanted to tell you: I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time now. I’m not stupid.’

‘I know that. I—’

‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate your concern. But you made me feel like a fool.’ She was watching my face.

‘I didn’t intend that.’

I could not read the expression in her eyes. ‘All right.’

‘I’ll walk you to your hut,’ I said.

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’ She ducked through the door and left me alone with the shadows.

Tony and I walked out to the plaza by Structure 701 on Tuesday morning. We walked slowly, and the shadows of Mayan women passed us on the path. They carried gifts to the temple: baskets filled with maize, pots of freshly brewed balche, woven cloth, cured deer skins. Preparations for a festival, no doubt. I tried to eavesdrop on two old women who were chatting about the misbehavior of their neighbors – particularly about the bad housekeeping of one woman. But the women spoke quickly, and Tony kept interrupting with comments about the weather and the dig, and I could not follow their conversation.

The shadows faded before we reached the plaza. The sun was hot. The three workmen who had levered the stone from its place stood in the shade, smoking and sharing water from a gourd, while Tony and I squatted by the upturned slab, brushing away the loose dry dirt that clung to the stone surface. On its underside, the slab was carved with a series of glyphs.

The stones on all four sides of the area that the slab had covered looked like they could have been walls. The center was a tumble of boulders and fill. I sat back on my heels. ‘A corridor, I’d guess. Intentionally filled.’ I looked at Tony. ‘Leading to a burial filled with pottery, jade, and obsidian artifacts.’

‘I suppose that you want to take some men from the house mounds to continue the excavation,’ he said.

‘I suppose so.’

He frowned.

‘Jade masks,’ I said. ‘Discs of beaten gold. Pottery in a known context.’

‘An empty chamber and a lot of wasted time,’ he said gloomily.

I reached in my pocket for my lucky piece. ‘I’ll flip you for it,’ I said. ‘Heads, I get two men from the house mounds and two from Salvador’s crew. Tails—’

‘Forget it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I always lose when we flip. If I hadn’t made that coin myself, I’d swear it was rigged.’ He shrugged. ‘Take the men and see what you find.’

I grinned at him. ‘That sounds like a fine idea.’

In the afternoon, I hiked out to the fallen stela and made plans to raise it, a project that would require additional equipment and workmen who were currently excavating the house mounds. Tony would complain, but I would convince him.

That evening, I worked with Tony on deciphering the glyphs that I had copied from the face of the stone that had covered what I insisted on calling the tomb. The glyphs gave a date in the Mayan Long Count corresponding to ad 948, around the time that the Maya had abandoned the cities. That fit with Zuhuy-kak’s story.

The men began the excavation and I sat back and did the thing I found most difficult: waiting to see what we would find.