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We hurried back to the truck and found the men already sitting in the cab and impatient to go home. “You young ones almost got left. You’re lucky that I, too, was once in love. I remember how time flies,” Pacal shouted.. If he only knew the things we had been doing!
It was a quiet ride back to Izamal. Yaxche` looked worried, and when it was time to part, she said, “We need to talk. Tomorrow. By the big Ceiba tree where I surprised you. Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” I replied. We did not hug as we parted.
That night my dreams were filled with an unending procession of secretive faces, wild vistas of warriors in battle, shamans and cenotes, all of it tinted blood-red. I awoke and felt more tired than I had in a long time.
At 10 o’clock I met with Yaxche`. I spoke my mind right away: “Who are you, Yaxche`?”
She looked at me, with a surprised look.
“I mean ‘who are we,’ the people of this place,” I corrected.
“I’m not sure of who I am. Am I a Mexican man? Am I a Mayan man? Am I a Spaniard? Why do I speak Spanish? Did we not have a language of our own before the conquest? Why is everyone, everyone a Catholic? Why have our customs not been carried on? Something is missing. Something is not right.”
Yaxche` spoke in a slow, measured way. “I am a woman of Izamal. I don’t care about what has gone before. I live now ! All of your questions lead nowhere. We have food to eat. We have a roof over our heads. I can make pottery. Let’s be happy and forget the past.”
Itzam`na screamed in my ear, “We are warriors. We are not a race of servants. We must fight. We must fight the invaders. We will never forget what has gone before. We will have revenge!”
“Yaxche`,” I said, “I have to do this. I will meet with the group in Merida again.”
“Then you will do it alone. I won’t go back,” she said. “There is danger there—I feel it.”
I was disappointed with her. “Maybe your blue eyes choose to look the other way. Maybe your mixed blood has all of the spirit gone from it.” I was sorry as soon as I said it. She turned away from me and walked towards town. I watched her until the Mayan landscape obscured her movement. I was alone in the forest.
The days passed slowly. I wondered when I would return to Merida. The seeds of my desire to learn more had been growing. I awoke early one day, just before daylight, and I heard a strange thud near my door. I looked out but saw no one. I threw open the door and found a page of a magazine weighted down with a large rock sitting in front of the door. On the back side of that page, in the margin, were penciled the words “Clock face—11 a.m. tomorrow.” I knew immediately what that meant.
I had to get to Merida any way I could. No one I knew was heading there that day. A friend of mine had a bicycle, and he said I could use it. So off I went. I pedaled furiously. The kilometers fell away behind me. I dodged potholes and crazy taxi drivers. I pushed myself to the point of exhaustion, and I made it to Merida in just under 3 hours. I was hot and sweating profusely, but I made it on time. I went directly to the alley and the iron door. I pushed on the door and it gave way, squeaking a little on its hinges.
Truth
”Put the bolt through the hasp. Everyone is here,” came a voice from the middle of the room. It was the same group of men as last time, all sitting in the same positions as before. That same book was now open in the middle of the table. “Today we begin a journey. Today we will see the truth,” Number 5 said.
He went on. “Did you know that when the Spanish landed here in the Yucatan, the first act was to pronounce this land and all of the people and all of the riches to be the personal property of the King of Spain? Of course, they said it in Spanish, so no one understood. And they actually made this proclamation whether anyone was there or not! We were not savages. We had an advanced culture. But the Spanish had gunpowder and metal armor. When our kings decided to resist, many battles ensued.”
“Why didn’t the people run away and hide?” I asked.
“Some did just that,” Number 7 explained.
Picking up the book from the table, Number 11 said, “Friar De Landa went throughout the region. He recorded every facet of Mayan life. He gained the trust of many villages. In the end, he tried to recreate from memory all the things that, much earlier, he had meticulously set down on paper. It was called ‘The Yucatan, Before and After the Conquest.’ We have the scholar Gates to thank for his translation. It was published in 1937, but except for students of history, it has largely gone unnoticed.”
I think the men saw the crestfallen look on my face. “It’s complicated, I know,” Number 3 said. “It’s a lot to take in at once.”
“But, why is what De Landa did not a good thing?” I asked.
“Next time, maybe you will learn more,” Number 5 said.
At this point, the men rose as one, and they began to recite these words: “We are the core of the Mayan family. We will not forget the injustices of the past. We will not forgive those who brought unspeakable pain to our land. We will seek our revenge against those responsible. By all the Gods, this will be done.”
Hovering above us, Itzam`na smiled.
The instruction was in-depth and mind-numbing. The men threw facts out in rapid succession. I learned that only four of the original codices, the genuine, handmade books which detailed our history, our customs and beliefs, still survived. What had happened to the rest? De Landa, in his zeal to bring about the second coming of Christ, had held his own inquisition! All books of the Maya had been gathered and burned.
“We’ve only scratched the surface of this story,” Number 9 explained. “There is more to come.”
In the weeks that followed, I learned much of Friar De Landa. None of it was good. I now understood why, so long ago, Kanyeb had seized that portrait of Diego De Landa and had become overwhelmed with the monstrous acts that had been done in the name of God. And I was saddened by this knowledge. The shaman had been right. His words came back to me: “The knowing of something will only make you sad and angry.” And, yes, I was getting angry.
About Wes Oldham
