The Xibalba Murders

IMIX

A lot of people have asked me—and I suppose the next to do so may well be a Mexican judge and prosecutor—why I flew thousands of miles to help someone I didn’t know all that well look for a small furry creature with big ears, a pink nose, and literary aspirations.

A more pointed question would actually be why did I persist in the search when people kept turning up dead around me?

I blame my ex-husband, Clive, ex-spouses being convenient scapegoats for almost everything, since it was because of him that I had so much time on my hands.

The real reason, of course, is rather more complicated. In retrospect, I think it was because, having lost all that I thought really mattered—a business that I had built up over several years, and a painful marriage I had clung to—I felt I had nothing left to lose.

In the end it took a spiritual journey into darkness, and a personal encounter with people I have come to associate with the Lords of Death, to restore my sense of wonder at what the world has to offer.

The beginning of this journey was a phone call from Dr. Hernan Castillo Rivas, a scholarly gentleman whose enthusiasm and knowledge of the ancient civilizations of Mexico have inspired in me a lifelong interest in that part of the world. He had been the executive director of a private museum in Merida, Mexico, that specialized in Maya antiquities, and after his retirement, the Mexican agent for my company—former company, I should say—a shop that sold objets d’art, furnishings, and accessories, really wonderful stuff, from all over the world.

“Lara,” he began, “I understand from the Ortizes that you are studying hard and that you have chosen as your subject an area of great interest to me,” he said. The Ortiz family were longtime friends, and it had been they who had first introduced me to Dr. Castillo—Don Hernan, as I liked to call him.

“I have what I hope is an interesting proposition. If I am correct, your school term is ending, and you have a break for a month. I would like you to join me here in Mexico to assist me with a project I am working on. I need a partner.

“I cannot tell you more about it right now, but I can assure you that it is—what is that American expression?— right up your alley, and that it will interest and possibly even excite you?”

“You’ll have to tell me more than that!” I laughed.

“This is not a subject for discussion over the telephone,” he replied. “The risk is too great.”

And then, perhaps fearing I wouldn’t come on the strength of so little information, he relented a little.

“I will give you a hint, then, since you are a student of the Maya. We seek what the rabbit writes.” And that was all he would say.

It was a ludicrous request, so of course I went.

As I have already mentioned, I had the time. Several months earlier, finding myself in a period of forced inactivity, I went back to university to begin to study the Maya, an ancient Mesoamerican civilization that reached its peak in the fourth to tenth centuries in what is now Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Before that I had been one of two proprietors, my husband, Clive Swain, being the other, of a very successful shop called McClintoch and Swain located in Toronto’s fashionable Yorkville area.

Clive, whose interest in working for a living could most charitably be called, in my opinion, desultory, had unaccountably become most enthusiastic about the business in the dying days of our marriage.

The price of my freedom was half the proceeds of the sale of McClintoch and Swain, and the admonition from my lawyer to stay away from that, or any business, for at least a year.

“If you start a new business right away, Lara, he’ll be back for more,” she had warned. “He is trying to take you for everything you have!”

There was no question I could afford a year off. Half the proceeds of the sale would not make me rich, but with care I could survive a year or so. But it galled me to give Clive half the money for what I saw to be considerably less than half the work, and I was still smarting from the acrimony of the split-up and the embarrassment of admitting I had been wrong about him.

The one consolation was that the woman to whom I had sold the business, Sarah Greenhalgh, seemed to love it as much as I had.

I tried the life of leisure for a while, but the less I had to do, the more time I had to dwell on my situation. Hence the return to university. I found, though, that the academic life, as interesting as it might be, had not really served its purpose of keeping my mind off the emotional and financial wreckage of my life. I’ll admit the call from Don Hernan came as something of a relief. Within minutes of talking to him, I called my travel agent and bought a ticket to Merida.

It was on the day the Maya would have called Imix, the day of the Earth Being, that I locked the door of my little Victorian cottage, handed the keys to Alex Stewart, my neighbor, who promised to care for my house and my cat, an orange tabby who went by the name of Diesel. He had been the official “shop cat,” and was essentially, in my mind at least, all I had to show for twelve years of work.

The journey took me first to Miami, then on to Merida. It was a trip I used to do three or four times a year for business, but also because, for many reasons, I loved the place. This time, I suppose because of my studies, I found myself searching below me for signs of the enormous empire the Spanish conquistadores had found when they first arrived in the New World.

How surprised these early visitors must have been to find cities bigger than anything they had ever seen in Spain, or elsewhere in Europe, for that matter, since there were huge Maya cities when Paris was still a muddy village. Now the cities are largely gone, green mounds rising from the floor of the forest the only hint of their former existence.

If I could not find many physical remains of their culture, I was able to appreciate, from the vantage point of the aircraft, the imaginative way the Maya were able to describe their world. The Maya saw the earth as Imix, a water-lily monster, a reptilian kind of creature, sometimes a turtle, more usually a monstrous crocodile, lying in an immense pool of water, the earth resting on its curved back.

Under this creature is Xibalba, the underworld, the place of fear, its atmosphere the water in which the earth being, Imix, lies. Through this watery region, the sun has to pass during its nocturnal journey, becoming, in its passage through the underworld, the fearsome Jaguar God. Above the earth curves a double-headed serpent, the sky serpent whose markings are the signs of the celestial bodies.

Looking down from twenty thousand feet, it is not difficult to imagine the water-lily monster resting in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the sky serpent arching over it from horizon to horizon. In a way, I was disappointed when the aircraft left the forests of the Maya world behind and began the descent into Merida.

I deplaned rapidly, clearing customs without incident. Having done this several times before, on buying trips, I was quickly able to negotiate my way through the throngs of hawkers and hustlers promising everything from cheap lodgings to a good time, then was pleased to see Isabella, the Ortiz’s daughter, waiting for me. She must have flown down from Mexico City when she heard I was coming.

Isabella, Isa for short, and I have been friends for twenty-five years, ever since my father, who had spent his career with the United Nations, was posted into Mexico. We, my parents and I, spent two years there, and Isa and I, growing up together through a couple of awkward teen years, became fast friends.

Isa has built a highly successful business in Mexico City by adapting the classic women’s attire of her native Yucatan, the embroidered huipil, to more modern tastes. Her beautifully designed women’s clothing has struck a chord with Mexican women and her face and her fashions now regularly grace the covers and pages of haute couture magazines. She has a new partner in life, Jean Pierre, a French banker posted to Mexico, who is also her unofficial business manager.

“Bienvenidos, welcome, Lara.” She smiled, giving me a big hug and handing me a bouquet of birds of paradise. “We’re all so pleased you’ve come to visit.”

I dumped my ugly duffel bag into the back of her Mercedes convertible—clearly business was good—and we headed for her family’s little inn, the Casa de las Buganvillas, literally the house of the bougainvilleas. It is on a quiet little side street off the Paseo de Montejo, and the place I always stay when I’m in Merida.

One enters by way of a curved stone staircase lined with colorful tiles in blue and white, then through hand carved wooden doors into a cool and dark domed entranceway. The floors are tiled in terra-cotta, the walls textured plaster in the colonial style. Wooden ceilings are hand-painted in traditional designs and the halls and entranceway lit by large wrought-iron and blown-glass candelabras.

The inn is the ancestral home of the Ortiz family. Burdened by a house far too large to be practical, and with Santiago Ortiz Menendez away for much of the time for his work in the Mexican diplomatic corps, Francesca Ortiz began first to take in the odd lodger, then gradually to transform the house into the wonderful inn that it is today.

There are still reminders of the grander times. The reception desk is just that—a huge old carved desk that had been brought by the Ortiz ancestors on a Spanish sailing ship. Santiago Ortiz Menendez sat there now, smiling his welcome. He retired early from the diplomatic corps, felled by a debilitating degenerative muscular disease. He was now in a wheelchair, still managing to run the hotel from this post.

I leaned over to kiss him on both cheeks, European style. His many years in the diplomatic corps still clung to him with a kind of formality that he used in speaking with everyone, including his two small grandchildren.

“We are very honored to have you here with us again,” he said gravely, “and we look forward to catching up on news of your family and your work.

“No doubt, however, you have had a long day, and would like some time to rest and refresh yourself. I do hope we will have the pleasure of serving you in the hotel dining room? Yes? About nine we will expect you. Dr. Castillo has said that he will, with your permission, join you for the evening meal. The family would also be most pleased if you would join us for a late coffee in our private quarters. My wife is eager to see you and hear news of your parents.”

He handed me the key to my room. I was pleased to see that it was my favorite, the end room on the second floor overlooking the back courtyard. A young man I had not seen before, possibly one of the Ortiz extended family who get their start in the business world by helping out at the hotel, took my duffel bag and led the way up the stone staircase to the second floor.

Once the door had closed behind him, I crossed to the window and pushed the shutters back. The room overlooks a courtyard in the center of which is a small pool, presided over by a terra-cotta statue of a Maya god. Even in the fading light of early evening, I could see the glorious purple bougainvilleas after which the inn had been named climbing up the whitewashed walls of the courtyard.

Over to one side I could see the roof of the veranda, bleached oak trellis supported by columns of local cantera stone. The tables on the veranda were already set for cena, the evening meal, and Norberto, the Ortiz’s older son, was already there, checking every detail, even though dinner, in the Spanish style of eating late, was at least two or three hours away.

Sitting on airplanes and in airports must qualify as one of the most tiring activities one can undertake. In any event, knowing that dinner was a few hours away, I stretched out on the bed, and soon fell into a heavy sleep.

As I drifted off, however, I thought I heard an argument, two or possibly three men in the courtyard beneath my window, speaking in a language I didn’t understand. It was neither English nor Spanish, but probably one of the Mayan languages, of which there are many. It sounded like a serious argument, but I had no idea what it was about.

I awoke with a start, the phone ringing beside me. It was Dr. Castillo, telling me that he had been delayed and regrettably would be unable to meet me for dinner. He was heading out of town, he said, but would be in touch on his return to reschedule our meeting.

“I regret I must postpone our meeting this evening, amiga, but I assure you it is for a good purpose,” he said.

“I know that you will pass a pleasant evening with the Ortiz family, however.

“Let us just say the plot thickens!”

And with that he quickly rang off.

I had a shower to try to chase the cobwebs and the gloom away. My afternoon nap had not exactly been restful. I was depressed at the thought of having to eat alone, and annoyed to think I had dropped everything to fly thousands of miles to chase a writing rabbit!

I finished unpacking. One downside to having a successful fashion designer as a friend is that it does remind you, from time to time, of the inadequacy of your wardrobe. Mine these days relied rather heavily on denim, black, and khaki. I call it my student uniform. My neighbor Alex insists I dress like that to keep men away, and perhaps I do. I pulled out an off-white silk blouse and a pair of taupe gabardine trousers. They would have to do.

As I reached the top of the stairs leading down to the lobby, I saw Isa and her father, deep in quiet conversation, her dark head bent toward his. There was an air of tension about them both, somehow, but as I started down the stairs they broke off the conversation. She was smiling, but I could not help feeling something was not quite right with my friends.

Norberto led me to the candlelit veranda and a table overlooking the courtyard. It was the table, he told me, that Dr. Castillo had reserved for the evening, and that he had asked that I be brought a bottle of wine of my choosing, as an apology for his delay.

Sipping a glass of white wine, Calafia from Mexico’s west coast, I looked around at my fellow guests.

Despite my earlier gloom on the subject, I actually enjoy eating in restaurants by myself from time to time. I often amuse myself by speculating on the lives of the other diners.

There were a number of Mexicans in the dining room, many of them probably from the neighborhood, and a few of them possibly permanent hotel guests. Dr. Castillo was himself a permanent hotel resident, having moved there after his wife of forty-five years had died some two years earlier.

While the hotel is not well known to tourists from the north, it is something of a local legend. Dona Francesca is of Maya descent—married to Don Santiago, ex-diplomat of Spanish descent. Both are gracious hosts, perhaps because of the aristocratic upbringing of Don Santiago, or their many years in the diplomatic service.

But contrary to the usual custom in Mexico, where wives of the well-to-do do not learn to cook, and indeed would be horrified to do so. Dona Francesca is an accomplished chef. Her kitchen combines the traditions of Spanish cuisine with her own Maya culinary arts and is justly famous. One of her specialties is called pescado borracho, literally drunken fish, another, her faisan en pipian verde de Yucatan, pheasant in a green Yucatan-style sauce, draws not only hotel guests, but also people from the neighborhood.

This evening the pheasant was on the menu and word had clearly spread, because the dining room was filling up rapidly.

The permanent residents were easy to spot. Inclined to be older, as Dr. Castillo was, they each had a table in the dining room they considered their own. Each was greeted by name as they arrived, and acknowledged each other as they were led to their tables, which were set out to meet their particular requirements, sometimes with a bottle of wine uncorked and ready.

One in particular looked very interesting. Seated alone at the table next to mine, she was in her mid-eighties, I would guess. Aristocratic of bearing, she was clearly the product of a more formal time. She was dressed all in black, a widow most likely, and she wore a black mantilla over her white hair.

Her eyes, which fixed on me from time to time, were very bright blue, unusual enough in this part of the world, and on the table beside her she had carefully placed a black lace fan and a pair of black lace gloves. She appeared to be graciousness personified, but I had a sense of iron will there. I noticed the busboys in the dining room were especially careful when they were waiting on her table. She apparently had exacting standards. She was too close to allow me to ask Norberto who she was.

Other than her and me, only two other people in the dining room seemed out of place in this old-world setting—two men at a table in the corner.

Both of them were quite attractive, although in very different ways. One was Mexican, dark, mid-forties, with fairly long dark hair and dark eyes. What set him apart from the rest of the crowd was his attire—black jeans and a black T-shirt, rather out of place in the elegant surroundings of the hotel dining room.

The other was fiftyish, well dressed in a sort of Ivy League way. Gray flannels, blue double-breasted blazer, white shirt, burgundy tie, and neatly trimmed hair streaked with gray and just a hint of a curl over the ears. I had a sense that I was as much the subject of their scrutiny as they were of mine, but after a few minutes the dark one left.

After surreptitiously observing the remaining man over the top of my wineglass and then my menu for a while, I tried to get a grip on myself and give the pheasant the attention it deserved. Inevitably, though, I looked his way again, and this time, rather than pretending that he had not been looking at me, too, he smiled.

Shortly thereafter he left the dining room, taking a slight detour to go by my table. There was just the hint of an acknowledgment, the slightest incline of the head as he did so. I was sorry he was leaving so soon.

Later in the evening I sat around the family table in Dona Francesca’s tiled kitchen with most of the family. Isa was there with her mother and father, and Norberto and his wife, Manuela. Missing were the two grandchildren, now in bed, and the younger brother of Isa and Norberto, Alejandro.

When I asked about Alejandro, I noticed once again the slight tension in the air as each paused just for an instant before answering the question. It was Isa who spoke. “We don’t see much of him these days. He has a life and friends of his own,” she said.

“He follows his own course,” agreed Norberto. “He believes in his own causes.”

Clearly this was all that was going to be said on the subject.

I suppose I was not really any more forthcoming myself on the subject of my divorce. But the evening passed pleasantly enough, and very late I went to bed.

That night, I had a most unpleasant dream, the first of what was to become a series of recurring nightmares. I was floating through space looking down at the earth, which metamorphosed into some kind of snakelike creature. The creature rose up as I flew over, and engulfed me. I began to fall through black space, and in the darkness I could hear angry voices. In my dream I knew what had happened. I had entered the maw of Xibalba, and the voices I heard were the Lords of the Underworld.

Prone to recurring dreams, I am nonetheless a little slow figuring out what my subconscious is trying to tell me. A couple of years earlier I’d had a series of dreams in which I was standing in a doorway, my luggage in front of me, with no idea of where I was or where I was going. It took five or six repetitions of that one before I got the message and packed up and left Clive for good. In retrospect, if I’d paid attention to that night’s dream and those that were to follow, at a minimum I might have avoided some poor personal choices. At best, at least one death might have been averted.