The Codex

32

Two and a half days after the snake attack, as they were poling along one more endless water channel, Tom noticed a brightening of the swamp, sunlight through the trees — and then with astonishing suddenness the two dugouts broke free of the Meambar Swamp. It was like entering a new world. They were on the edge of a huge lake, the water as black as ink. The late afternoon sun was breaking through the clouds, and Tom felt a surge of relief in finally being in the open, released from the green prison of the swamp. A fresh breeze swept away the blackflies. Tom could see blue hills on the far shore, and beyond them a faint line of mountains rising into the clouds.

Don Alfonso stood up in the bow of the boat and spread his arms, his corncob enclosed in one wrinkled fist, looking like a ragged scarecrow. “The Laguna Negra!” he cried. “We have crossed the Meambar Swamp! I, Don Alfonso Boswas, have guided well and true!”

Chori and Pingo lowered the boat engines and fired them up. The boats set off for the far end of the lake. Tom rested against the pile of supplies and enjoyed the delicious flow of air while his pet monkey, Hairy Bugger, climbed out of his pocket and rode on top of his head, eyes closed, smacking and chattering contentedly. Tom had almost forgotten what a breeze felt like on his skin.

They camped on a sandy beach at the far end of the lake. Chori and Pingo went hunting and returned an hour later with a gutted and quartered deer, the bloody chunks wrapped in palm fronds.

“Splendid!” cried Don Alfonso. “Tomás, we will eat deer chops tonight and smoke the rest for our overland journey.”

Don Alfonso roasted the loin chops over the fire while Pingo and Chori built a smoking rack over a second fire nearby. Tom watched with interest as they expertly sliced off long pieces of meat with their machetes and flipped them over the rack, then piled wet wood on the fire, generating fragrant clouds of smoke.

The chops were soon done, and Don Alfonso served them out. As they ate, Tom raised the question he had been wanting to ask. “Don Alfonso, where do we go from here?”

Don Alfonso tossed a bone into the darkness behind him. “Five rivers flow into the Laguna Negra. We must find out which river your father went up.”

“Where do they originate?”

“They have their sources in the interior mountain ranges. Some flow out of the Cordillera Entre Rios, some from the Sierra Patuca, and some flow out of the Sierra de las Neblinas. The Macaturi is the longest river, and it rises in the Sierra Azul, which is halfway to the Pacific Ocean.”

“Are they navigable by boat?”

“The lower parts are said to be.”

“ ‘Said to be’?” Tom asked. “You haven’t been up them?”

“None of my people have been up them. The country back there is very dangerous.”

“How so?” asked Sally.

“The animals are not afraid of people. There are earthquakes, volcanoes, and bad spirits. There is a city of demons from which no one ever returns.”

“A city of demons?” Vernon asked, suddenly interested.

“Yes. La Ciudad Blanca. The White City.”

“What kind of city is it?”

“Built by gods long ago, it lies in ruins.”

Vernon gnawed on a bone, then tossed it into the fire. Matter-of-factly, he said: “There’s the answer.”

“The answer to what?”

“Where Father went.”

Tom stared at him. “That’s a rather big leap. How can you know?”

“I don’t know. But that’s just the kind of place Father would go. He’d love a story like that. He’d check it out for sure. And stories like that are often based in reality. I bet he did find a lost city there, some big old ruin.”

“But there aren’t supposed to be any ruins in those mountains.”

“Says who?” Vernon pulled another roasted chop off the palm leaves and tucked in.

Tom remembered the very red-faced Derek Dunn and his breezy assertion that anacondas didn’t eat people. He turned to Don Alfonso. “Is this White City common knowledge?”

Don Alfonso nodded slowly, his face contracted into a mask of wrinkles. “It is talked about.”

“Where is it?”

Don Alfonso shook his head. “It has no fixed location but moves about the highest peaks of the Sierra Azul, always shifting and hiding in the mists of the mountain.”

“So it’s a myth.” Tom glanced at Vernon.

“Oh no, Tomás, it’s real. They say it can only be reached by crossing a bottomless gorge. Those who slip and fall die of fright, and then their bodies keep falling until they are bones, and the bones keep tumbling until they fall apart. In the end there is nothing left but a plume of bone dust, which will fall in the darkness for eternity.”

Don Alfonso chucked a piece of wood into the fire. Tom watched as it smoked and then caught fire, the flames eating up its sides. The White City.

“There aren’t any lost cities in this day and age,” said Tom.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Sally. “There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, in places like Cambodia, Burma, the Gobi Desert — and especially here, in Central America. Like Site Q.”

“Site Q?”

“The loot has been pouring out of Site Q for thirty years now and it’s driving the archaeologists crazy. They know it must be a great Mayan city, probably somewhere in the Guatemalan lowlands, but they can’t find it. Meanwhile the looters are taking it apart stone by stone and selling it off on the black market.”

“Father hung out in bars,” Vernon said, “buying rounds for Indians, loggers, and gold prospectors, listening for gossip about ruins and lost cities. He even learned some Indian language. Remember, Tom, how he used to launch into it at dinner parties?”

“I always thought he was just making it up.”

“Look,” said Vernon, “think about it for a moment. Father wouldn’t build a tomb from scratch to bury himself in. He’d simply reuse one of the tombs he robbed long ago.”

Nobody said anything for a moment, and then Tom said, “Vernon, that’s brilliant.”

“And he got the local Indians to help him.”

The fire crackled. There was a dead silence.

“But Father never mentioned anything about a White City,” Tom said.

Vernon smiled. “Exactly. You know why he never mentioned it? Because that’s where he made his big discovery, the one that got him started. He came down here dead broke, and he came back with a boatload of treasure and started his gallery business.”

“It makes sense.”

“You’re damn right it makes sense. I bet you anything that’s where he went back to be buried! It’s a perfect plan. There must be any number of ready-built tombs in this so-called White City. Father knew where they were because he had robbed them himself. All he had to do was go back and install himself in one of them, with the help of the local Indians. This White City is real, Tom.”

“I’m convinced,” said Sally.

“I even know how Father bought the Indians’ help,” Vernon said, with a growing smile.

“How?”

“Remember those receipts that the Santa Fe policeman found in Father’s house for all that fine French and German cookware that Father ordered just before he left? That’s how he paid them: cooking pots for the natives.”

Don Alfonso cleared his throat loudly and ostentatiously. When he had their attention, he said, “All this talk is silly.”

“Why?”

“Because no one can go to the White City. Your Father never could have found it. Even if he did, it is inhabited by demons who would kill him and steal his soul. There are winds that would drive him back, there are mists that confuse the eyes and the mind, there is a spring of water that erases the memory.” He shook his head vigorously. “No, this is impossible.”

“Which river do you take to get there?”

Don Alfonso furrowed his brow. His big eyes behind the dirty lenses of his glasses looked very unhappy. “Why do you want to know this useless information? I am telling you it is impossible.”

“It’s not impossible, and that’s where we’re going.”

Don Alfonso spent a long minute staring at Tom. Then he sighed and said, “The Macaturi will take you partway, but you cannot go father than the Falls. The Sierra Azul lies many days beyond the Falls, beyond the mountains and valleys and more mountains. It is an impossible journey. Your father could not have done it.”

“Don Alfonso, you don’t know our father.”

Don Alfonso filled his pipe, his troubled eyes on the fire. He was sweating. His hand holding the pipe was shaking.

“Tomorrow,” Tom said, “we’re going up the Macaturi, and we’re heading for the Sierra Azul.”

Don Alfonso stared into the fire.

“Are you coming with us, Don Alfonso?”

“It is my fate to come with you, Tomás,” he said softly. “Of course, we will all die before we reach the Sierra Azul. I am an old man, and I am ready to die and meet St. Peter. But it will be sad for me to see Chori and Pingo die, and Vernon die, and to see the Curandera die, who is so pretty with many fine years of lovemaking ahead of her. And it will be very sad for me to see you die, Tomás, because you are now my friend.”