The Xibalba Murders

LAMAT

It is the bottom of the eighth inning of the final ball game between the mythic Hero Twins and the Lords of Xibalba. It does not look good for our heroes. The evil lords have cut off Hunahpu’s head and have substituted it for the ball!

The other twin, Xbalanque, however, has a plan of his own. Taking a leaf from the Xibalbans’ book, he asks a rabbit to wait in the bushes near the edge of the ball court and then lobs his brother’s head in that direction.

The rabbit, in a star turn if ever there was one, bounds away right on cue. The Xibalbans think the rabbit is the head, of course, and run shrieking after it. With the Xibalbans thus distracted, Xbalanque has time to replace Hanahpu’s head. Victory over the Xibalbans is near.

Rabbits pop up everywhere in Maya mythology and history, I found as I worked my way through the reference library at the museo. It was a tedious process. The museo, a private institution, always suffered from inadequate funding, and while the office was the proud owner of a new computer, and the collection itself was gradually being cataloged electronically, the reference-library contents were still cataloged on little cards in little drawers.

Other rabbits I found that day: there is a ruin of a classic Maya structure called Muyil on the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, south of Tulum Pueblo. Muyil means the “Place of Rabbits.”

The Moon Goddess, a young woman sitting in the crescent of the moon, is often shown holding a rabbit, according to the texts. This is probably because the Maya discerned the outline of a rabbit in the dark areas of the full moon, just as we think we see a man.

Rabbits are also listed in Friar Diego de Landa’s Relation de las cosas de Yucatan, a document the infamous Spanish priest wrote in 1566 to defend himself against accusations that he had been too harsh in his treatment of the Maya—even for the times of the Inquisition! He describes the local hare as large and good to eat.

I even found a traditional recipe for rabbit cooked in sherry, tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers.

As far as I knew, none of these rabbits was known to have written anything.

The library at the museo was a dusty, airless old place with only one window, presided over by one Senor Dr. Antonio Valesquez.

Valesquez struck me as the quintessential librarian, a man with an obsession about order, procedure, and silence. I don’t expect anyone ever called him Antonio in that place.

I got an early start, and learning that Dona Josefina was still indisposed, due to the shock of Don Hernan’s death, made my way directly to the library when the museo opened at nine. Exactly at the appointed opening time of nine-fifteen, Valesquez opened the library doors, a most unusual occurrence in Mexico.

Considering the events of the last few days, this punctuality was particularly surprising, but Valesquez was not the type of person to let a murder or two disrupt the order of his day. Fiftyish, with a shock of gray hair and a habit of absentmindedly picking imaginary lint off everything, he looked at me over the tops of his reading glasses and stated quite firmly that this library was for serious research only, and not open to the general public.

Fortunately I had brought my University of Toronto student card, which identified me as a graduate student in Mesoamerican studies. That was enough to get me through the door, but not as a welcome guest.

“Senor doctor,” I began. I found myself whispering as he was, even though only two of us were in the room. “I am doing a research paper on natural symbolism in the Maya pantheon, and was directed to you as a possible source of material.”

“And who might have directed you here?” He sniffed.

“Dr. Hernan Castillo,” I lied. I’d rehearsed this lie, as usual, and it slid off my tongue with amazing facility. “Dr. Castillo has been most helpful with my research, which he felt was an unusual subject that held much promise. I’ve had several conversations with him from Toronto, and I hoped to be able to speak with him on this visit, but have been unable to reach him,” I continued.

It looked for a moment as if Valesquez’s composure would crack, but his library training took over.

“Dr. Castillo has met with an unfortunate accident,” he said, ignoring as I had the lurid headlines on the front pages of all the local papers. I made suitable noises of surprise and regret.

“While his expertise clearly exceeds mine manyfold,” he went on, “I will assist you in any way I can. What particular natural symbolism are you interested in?” he whispered.

“Rabbits,” I said.

He nodded gravely. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. I expect one gets all kinds of weird requests in a library such as this. He showed me to the card catalog and led me through it. As he spoke he patted any index card foolhardy enough to be even a millimeter out of line back into place.

“Everything here is cataloged by subject and author using the Dewey Decimal System. I am personally familiar with most of the books here, and can direct you to some to begin your work. Rare books and first editions are available only on special request, in writing, to my office. No book may be removed from the premises. And of course, no food or drink is allowed here,” he concluded.

He didn’t need to tell me this. There were signs everywhere.

I made my way to a table at the back of the room protected by the book stacks and pulled out a chair. It made a scraping sound as it slid against the marble floor, and brought the inevitable “look” from the librarian. I would obviously have to mind my library manners here.

After a couple of hours I had found the rabbits I’ve already mentioned, and had several more books to work through. It was laborious work hand-copying anything I wanted to remember. There was no photocopier in sight and I was afraid to ask if one might be available. Clearly I was here on sufferance, and I didn’t wish to wear out my welcome.

I still had not told anyone about the writing rabbit, and I would have dearly liked to ask advice from someone more knowledgeable in this field. My study had been restricted to the Mayan language, to hieroglyphics, and while one inevitably learns a great deal about a civilization this way, my studies were still at a very rudimentary level.

The only two people I knew who would know more about this than I, now that Don Hernan was gone, were Jonathan and Lucas.

And what did I know of them, other than that both were archaeologists? Jonathan Hamelin was British— Cambridge University, he had said—pale and aristocratic in bearing, wore nice shoes, and rented a nice little house. I also liked holding his hand.

Lucas May? The dark, brooding one. I knew even less about him. According to Isa, he didn’t have nice shoes, and I was inclined to agree with her low opinion of his conversational skills. I had no idea where he lived or where he’d studied archaeology. I had a sense of something hidden, something deep, but it was a feeling only. He also had a nicely ironic smile, infrequently though it appeared.

For a few minutes I was lost in reverie, watching dust motes floating in a beam of light from the lamp on the table. Dr. Valesquez appeared soundlessly at my table and whispered that he was regrettably closing the library, but would reopen between four and six p.m.

I was amazed that almost three hours had passed and dismayed that I was no closer to the writing rabbit. I thanked him for his assistance, for which I received a courtly bow, and told him I would return at four.

I made my way down the back staircase, and moments later was blinking in the now unfamiliar sunlight like some lizard whose dark hiding place has suddenly been uncovered.

I did notice, however, that while one might need a key to get in, one merely pushed a bar on the door to get out. So if you were up to any skulduggery after hours, you had only to hide in the museo until closing, then let yourself out at your leisure.

I wandered rather aimlessly to pass the time until the library reopened, and soon I found myself in the market area, absorbing the sights, sounds, and smells, as always almost overwhelmed by the colors, so intense to my northern eye.

It was the time of Carnaval, Ash Wednesday fast approaching, and brightly colored masks and capes were prominently displayed. Here once again the old and new worlds coexisted. While Carnaval may have Christian beginnings, the costumes were decidedly Maya—monkey beings, creatures of a previous Maya creation, and various representations of Xibalbans with grotesque horned masks. One enterprising shopkeeper was offering for sale a Children of the Talking Cross costume, complete with black bandanna and wooden rifle.

There were stalls piled high with fruits and vegetables, some familiar, others not; the heaps of dried peppers, large and dark, intense in flavor I knew; the Mexican tomatoes, tomatillos, small green fruits with a natural brown tissuelike wrapping; the prickly nopales, cactus-type vegetables whose needles must be removed before they can be used in salads and moles; the pungent spices—epazote, achiote, or annatto seeds, cumin, chili, and saffron.

Tired of wandering, I eventually stopped at a little cafe for a Mexican sandwich, a torta, stuffed with frijoles— refried black beans—avocado, and anejo cheese, and an order of jalapeno peppers, stuffed with cheese and shrimp and lightly fried.

The air was pleasantly hot, and as I sat there I tried to sift through the patterns within patterns in this situation in which I found myself.

A very public robbery and two murders, and there seemed to be threads, however tenuous, linking all three events.

First the robbery. Alejandro was surely involved. It took place in the bar of a hotel owned by Diego Maria Gomez Arias. The object stolen is a statue that Hernan Castillo and Gomez Arias had argued about in the recent past. It is stolen by a self-defined terrorist group called the Children of the Talking Cross. But whoever heard of a terrorist group that steals statues from bars? Bank heists, skyjackings, car bombs, maybe. But theft of pre-Columbian carvings?

The murder of Luis Vallespino. Luis’s brother is a friend of Alejandro, and Montserrat, Gomez Alias’s daughter, attends the funeral. And of course, Luis is found murdered on the roof of the museo, of which Gomez Arias is on the board of directors, as is Don Hernan, who was also a staff member and important benefactor.

Don Hernan’s murder. Occurring somewhere else, perhaps, but he ends up in his office at the museo with a jade bead in his mouth, the significance of which I did not understand. He’s looking for something, which is obviously Maya, since he made it clear that whatever it was fit in with my university studies, and it was important enough for him to ask me to come to Merida.

Don Hernan used to work with Gomez Arias, but they had an argument. Gomez Arias is a compulsive collector. Could the two men have been looking for the same thing? And if so, exactly how far was Gomez Arias prepared to go to get it?

There had to be something or someone linking all of these things. Right now that appeared to be me. I’d come here at Don Hernan’s request, I’d witnessed the robbery, I’d found Luis Vallespino’s body. I was actually becoming sympathetic to Major Martinez’s interest in me.

I wandered back to the museo, pausing once again for a few moments in the small rear garden, thinking about the times I had spent with Don Hernan. I was trying very hard to remember the good times, and put the sights and smells of our farewell, in the basement of the morgue, behind me.

As I stood there I saw Antonio Valesquez let himself in at the back door, the one I’d made use of a couple of times myself. I wondered how many people had a key to that door.

I once again wandered into the building and arrived just as Valesquez, punctual as ever, opened the library doors. A new stack of books was on the table at the back.

“More rabbits,” was all he said. This dark little corner was beginning to feel like home, and soon I was attacking the books with renewed enthusiasm. While I worked, Valesquez continued his librarian tasks of bringing order to the room and discouraging visitors.

In 695 AD., I learned, 18-Rabbit succeeded Smoke-Imix-God K as king of the city state Copan in the southern Yucatan peninsula in what is now Honduras. An avid patron of the arts, 18-Rabbit spent the forty-two years of his reign, until his defeat and sacrifice at the hands of Cauac-Sky of nearby Quirigua, building some of the most glorious monuments of Maya civilization, with temple carvings and stelae unequaled elsewhere in the Maya world. His likeness can still be seen in the magnificent stone stelae around Copan, in which he had himself depicted as the reincarnation of the Hero Twins and as various other Maya gods.

Nonetheless, to be defeated by a rival king, particularly one installed on the neighboring throne some years earlier by 18-Rabbit himself, and then sacrificed, is about as ignominious an end as one could imagine. It took his great grandson Yax-Pac to rehabilitate his memory some three decades later.

After about an hour of frustrating research, I was about to call it a day when, on impulse, I asked Valesquez if he had anything on the War of the Castes and the villages of the Talking Cross.

As it turned out, Alex had been right about the miraculous Talking Crosses. In 1850, in a cave with a cenote in the town of Chan Santa Cruz, a cross carved in a tree spoke to the Maya, urging them to rise up against their oppressors, the Spanish, and defeat them once and for all. It was the first of many Talking Crosses, all carrying much the same message.

From this account I learned two interesting things. One was that the Maya had always known that the Talking Crosses were not really voices sent from the gods, but simply those of their neighbors. Some argued it was the gods, talking through their neighbors. Others were more machiavellian: they had known how to use these voices as a powerful symbol of resistance. In any event, the Maya began to build a capital of sorts in Chan Santa Cruz where the cross first presented itself.

The second item of interest was more complicated, and I wasn’t sure how relevant. I was skimming through an account of the various victories on both the Spanish and Maya sides, most particularly the advance of the Mexican army against the Maya in Chan Santa Cruz, when a name caught my eye: General Francisco May.

It seems that while the Mexicans were successful by the turn of the century in regaining ground lost during the War of the Castes, guerrilla raids continued, and eventually the Mexican army had to withdraw from the conflict in 1915 because of the Mexican Revolution.

After the Mexicans withdrew, a Maya general by the name of Francisco May rose to power and set up his headquarters in a town called Chan Coh Veracruz, Little Town of the True Cross.

In an act for which he is infamous in the annals of the Maya resistance, General May, who had become very rich from the chicle trade, made peace with the Mexican government.

The Mexicans returned and stripped May of his power, and the resistance moved on to other people and places.

May died in 1969 and a plaque commemorating his death, I learned, can be found in a town now called Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Once it was called Chan Santa Cruz, the original town of the Talking Cross.

Interesting name, Francisco May, and interesting association with the Villages of the Talking Cross. Remembering the look on his face as the Itzamna statue was stolen from the Ek Balam bar, I thought that perhaps I needed to draw Lucas May into the patterns within patterns of the last few days.

It was now very close to closing time and I packed up to leave. At the front desk I expressed my thanks to Valesquez, who asked me if I was planning to return.

“I regret that we will not be open tomorrow,” he said. He hesitated, then said, “I have not been entirely honest with you. Dr. Castillo has not just met with an unfortunate accident as I told you this morning. He has been brutally murdered. The museo will be closed tomorrow to permit staff to attend his funeral.”

I looked at this man with the mop of gray hair and the nervous gestures and thought I saw the beginnings of tears in his eyes.

“I’ve not been entirely honest with you, either,” I said.

“I, too, will be at the funeral tomorrow. Don Hernan was a friend of mine.”

He digested that information. “And are you really looking for rabbits?” he asked nervously.

“Yes,” I said. “But a particular kind of rabbit. And I’m doing it for Don Hernan.”

I paused, took a deep breath, and plunged on. “I’m looking for a rabbit that writes. I’d prefer no one else know about it, because I have a horrible feeling that it may be dangerous to look for it!”

This brought an orgy of imaginary lint picking from Valesquez, but he managed to nod his understanding of what I had said.

Night comes quickly this close to the equator, and it was dark when I exited by the back stairway once more. I looked toward the lights of the Paseo de Montejo a block or so away, but chose, as I had the night before, the back streets.

I had a sense of being, if not followed, then watched, as I made my way back to the Casa de las Buganvillas. A couple of times I turned, but saw nothing, except perhaps, a slight movement in the shadows, perhaps only a distortion in the darkness caused by distant headlights, or a lamp turned on in one of the houses along the route.

When I reached the hotel, I was greeted by more bad news. At some point during the day Francesca had become aware that the Empress’s bell had been still for several hours, and checking the room had found Dona Josefina unconscious, the victim of a stroke. She had been whisked to hospital, where her condition was said to be “guarded,” whatever that meant.

She was not able to speak, and could only see through one eye. Whatever she knew, she would not be telling anyone for some time—if ever.