The Mayan Codex

64

‘I recognize you. You’re the guide, aren’t you? The one who told us about the 942 masks?’ Sabir was driving the Grand Cherokee. Acan was seated beside him, with Calque and Lamia taking up the back seats. ‘So you were out there watching us all the time? How come? Were you expecting us? But that’s impossible.’ Sabir turned his head sharply. ‘You’re not with the Corpus are you?’

Acan was still nervously watching the woman. Hoping she wouldn’t stare directly at him. Give him the evil eye. He was clutching his rifle between his legs, so he wasn’t able to make the appropriate countermovement to diffuse the curse. ‘The Corpus? What is that?’

‘Forget it. It’s not important.’ Sabir glanced at Lamia in the rear-view mirror. ‘Look. Do you have to keep staring at my girlfriend that way? You may not realize it, but it’s damned off-putting. What is it with you people? Isn’t kidnapping us enough?’

Acan blew out noisily between his lips. Now that the subject was out in the open, he felt better. ‘She has the evil eye.’

‘The what?’

Calque leaned forwards. ‘He thinks Lamia has the evil eye. On account of her face. That if she stares at him he will be cursed.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake…’

‘This is serious, Sabir. You need to explain it to him.’

Lamia reached forwards between them. ‘I will explain it to him. I speak his language. It is my face that is frightening him, not yours.’

Calque dropped back into his seat. Sabir turned his concentration back to the road. Both men were acutely embarrassed. The placation and the bringing to understanding of this young Maya man had become far more important than any half-baked ideas of getting themselves out of the spot they were in.

Lamia hunched towards Acan. She spoke softly to him in Spanish. He began a reluctant nodding of the head. At one point Lamia took Acan’s hand and held it to the side of her face. Acan snatched it away and crossed himself. Lamia watched him, sadness mingled with her desire to make him understand. Then, unexpectedly, Acan stretched out his hand one further time. This time Lamia did not attempt to influence what Acan could or couldn’t do.

Acan’s fingers were trembling. He had quite forgotten about his rifle.

Sabir instinctively sensed that he was in the perfect position to wrest the rifle away from Acan and take control of the situation again. True, he was top-and-tailed by two other vehicles, each with a number of armed men inside them, but he could see a side-turning looming half a mile further up the road. All he needed to do was to time his move to coincide with the arrival of the slip road.

Only then no crystal skull. No book. No answers. Sabir hesitated for a moment, his skin crawling with a sudden inner certainty which whispered ‘and no more Lamia, either’. She would never forgive him for abusing her tacitly given word.

So Sabir did nothing. For the very first time since his mother’s suicide, he realized that he was putting the welfare and happiness of another person before his own. The thought was a novel one. Was he really beginning to emerge from nearly ten years of emotional lock-down? He glanced possessively at Lamia in the rear-view mirror.

Acan reached out and touched Lamia’s face. Something changed in his eyes as he made the movement. The fear went out of them. He nodded, as if something had been successfully explained to him – some secret to which he had always wished to be privy.

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.