It was a magical journey, and, sooner than Ix Zubin expected, the narrow roadway, used only occasionally by the most intrepid wanderers, dived into dense jungle where the upper limbs of towering trees interlocked to form a canopy which obscured the sun and sky. Then the travelers moved in perpetual twilight, with parasite lianas, thick as a man’s leg, drooping down from the trees like writhing snakes seeking to entrap them. Birds screeched as the men struggled to push aside the vines before taking their next steps, and the air was so heavy that bodies glistened with perspiration. Now Uncle Ah Nic came into his own, for as a man devoted to the natural world, he knew immediately which leaves and roots were edible, in which direction the hunters from Mayapán should venture if they wished to catch some animal whose meat would provide food, and which trees might be hiding combs of honey which Bolón could collect. As soon as the boy shouted ‘Bees!’ Ah Nic was first there to light the fires that would smoke them out and allow others to grab the honey. And it was he who distributed the food supplies to the women cooks, with instructions as to how they should prepare them. He was a fussbudget and the brains of the expedition.
Bolón was amazed that a major road to a place as important as Palenque had been should now be only this grudging track through jungle. But Ix Zubin knew that this experience with the power of the jungle to smother land would be the best preparation for what he would probably see at Palenque, if it remained as it had been when her grandfather described it; she doubted that the ancient city could provide anything equal to what Bolón had already seen in the drylands of Chichén Itzá.
There were, of course, a few small villages in clearings where the pilgrims could find food and water, but they were such mean affairs that Bolón asked the white-haired man: ‘How could Chichén be so grand and these places so miserable?’ and the old fellow replied in sorrow: ‘People and places know greatness for a while, then decline.’
‘Why are you making this long journey?’
‘To see, once again before I die, the greatness our people knew in the old days, and to mourn its passing.’
The man was so patient with Bolón that the boy stayed close to him, discussing ideas relating to temples and proudly explaining the important role played by his family in the Temple of Fertility at Cozumel. The old man listened attentively, but what really intrigued him was Bolón’s insistence that his mother really did know the secrets of astronomy and the manipulation of numbers, for he had never known a woman conversant in such matters. When he had heard Ix Zubin say earlier that she understood something about astronomy, he had assumed that she knew where the starry figures stood in the sky. Real astronomy? Never. But now, discovering that she really was learned, he sought her out.
The two conducted long talks, both as they traveled and when they rested, and the Mayapán man marveled at this woman’s facility. Once, when they came upon a small temple left in ruins, he led her to a broken stela whose bottom third remained upright and asked her to decipher its glyphs and carvings, and she did so with ease, evoking for him the long-dead events which had once so excited the people supporting this temple that they had carved this stela to commemorate them.
‘I wonder what the missing part would have told us?’ the man mused, but not even Ix Zubin was clever enough to reconstruct that.
On the long days when nothing happened except dull plodding through jungle, Ix Zubin and her son pursued different interests, the boy heading off with the other hunters to see what food he might find or catch, and Ix Zubin talking with the two women who had accompanied their husbands from Mayapán. One interested her especially. This strong-minded woman had a daughter of fourteen, Ix Bacal by name, who was especially beautiful by Maya standards in that her mother had carefully trained her to be conspicuously cross-eyed: ‘When she was four days old I kept a feather dangling before her eyes on a length of grass, and as she stared at it, day after day, her eyes began to cross rather nicely. Then, when she was older, I asked her father to get us a piece of bright shell, and this was hung so that light from the sun reflected into her eyes, and this too helped to train them inward, the way a mother wants them. Finally, when she could walk, I would stand before her and bring my finger from way back here straight to the point of her nose, and in time her eyes locked properly, the way you see them today.’
Then the mother apologized for her own inadequate eyes: ‘My parents did not take such pains, and you can see that my eyes barely cross, and for certain they’re not locked. Eyes that wander get a woman into trouble. Eyes that turn in bring illumination to her soul, and you can see that Ix Bacal has such eyes.’ So the two Maya women, as they rested in the jungle, congratulated themselves on the proofs of their maternal care—Bolón’s nicely sloping head and Ix Bacal’s lovely crossed eyes.
To Ix Zubin’s dismay, her son seemed unaware of the beautiful girl, and since he was soon to be seventeen, she was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to discover the other sex, for to have an unmarried priest in charge of a fertility temple would be unacceptable if not preposterous.
When they were about two-thirds of the way to Palenque, with the tropic moon verifying their progress each night, they came upon a clearing occupied by a gang of ugly, dirty men who were tapping a grove of wild rubber trees to collect the precious sap which could be used in so many ways. Bolón saw that the blackness on their hands and faces came not from ordinary dirt but from the soot that accumulated when they heated the sap over slow fires to cure it and convert it into the rubber he had known when playing the ball game.
He noticed also that the Mayapán travelers treated these workmen with considerable deference, but even this recognition of their power did not prevent the ugly fellows from trying to grab at Ix Zubin, for they had not seen women for many days. When this happened, Ah Nic cried out in protest and Bolón leaped forward to defend his mother. But the men’s gestures had been a ruse, for what they really wanted was the young girl of fourteen, Ix Bacal, but when they tried to drag her away, Bolón heard her screams, and he and two of the travelers leaped at her attackers and drove them off while Ah Nic tried to hit them with a switch. Hurriedly, Ix Zubin and the man with the spade beard collected the pilgrims and fled the area of the malevolent rubber gatherers, who jeered at them as they left.
Back in the safety of the arched-over jungle trail, Bolón found himself trapped in an enticing mental problem: What would the ugly men have done with Ix Bacal if they had made away with her? and he now looked at the girl in a new way. No more long conversations with the old man, no more consultations with his mother. In his spontaneous leaping to the defense first of his mother and then of the girl, he had unknowingly taken the subtle step from boyhood to young manhood, and it was a development that Ix Zubin approved. She knew that her son’s ultimate effectiveness as a priest at their temple would depend in part upon the kind of young woman he would have as his partner. Her famous grandfather had been helped in many subtle ways by his good wife, and she herself had been of inestimable value to her husband, therefore, there was good reason to hope that Bolón would find himself a worthy mate.
So she took as much interest in this young girl as did her son. In appearance Ix Bacal was already a superior girl and gave promise of becoming an even finer-looking woman, but when Ix Zubin attempted to engage her in conversation, she quickly learned that the girl was ignorant and not interested in any aspect of Maya life, not even in her potential role as a mother. She was a pretty nothing, and for a young man as promising as Bolón, that was not enough.
But Ix Zubin was a wise woman—this astronomer who understood not only the heavens but the human heart—and she realized that she must not in any way openly oppose young Ix Bacal, for Bolón had reached the age when he must begin to make his own decisions, and when she saw her son lead the girl into the darker edges of the forest she was sensible enough to leave them alone. But she did wonder how, when she and Bolón returned to Cozumel, she could help him find a proper wife.
After many days the pilgrims rea
ched the edge of the once-great religious and political center of Palenque, and both Ah Nic and Ix Zubin, knowing the disappointment the others in the group were about to experience, prepared to soften the blow. Ix Zubin moved close to her son, but this did no good, for when he looked at Palenque, all he could see were trees, in a jungle of such profusion that nothing was visible more than six lengths in any direction. ‘Where is Palenque?’ he asked fretfully, for this had been a long journey to end in so little, and his mother said: ‘Climb that tree and look about you,’ but when he did he called down: ‘I still see nothing,’ and she cried: ‘Bolón, look at the clotted mounds!’ and when he did he began slowly to see that the area was covered with spots where the trees leaped upward as if they were hiding something below, and he called down: ‘It’s like the waves on the sea at Tulúm,’ and indeed it was. There were great temples below him and scores of revealing stelae and beautiful palaces too, but none were visible, for human beings had left the area nearly a thousand years earlier, leaving the jungle free to confiscate the place, and it had.
Palenque, as Bolón saw it from his tree that October day in 1489, was nothing but a vast collection of mounds buried under a sea of trees, twisted roots and creeping lianas. Not even a vestige of the grandeur that once characterized the site was discernible, and as he climbed down to rejoin the other pilgrims waiting amid the jungled mounds, the site of one lost building rarely visible from another, all were overcome with a sense of mourning for past glories.
Then the man with the spade beard began, in whispering voice, to explain what had happened: ‘In its time, thousands of moons ago, this was a place of noble range, but it lived its day. Its people lost their enthusiasms. Its proud message was moved to other centers, and it perished.
‘ “Why, then, do we come here?” you ask. To remind ourselves of what we stem from, and to uncover our past. Yes, to uncover.’ And he explained that when he had been here, years ago, he and his group had fixed upon one mound and had torn away the trees and matted vines to reveal the treasure hidden below, and that in the morning this group would do the same. Pointing to two of the men and Bolón, he said: ‘Choose the mound and we’ll see what it hides,’ and the committee of three spent some hours prowling among the mounds that hid the monuments. But as they were about to settle upon an imposing one that seemed certain to hide something of merit, the man with the spade beard came to them with a caution: ‘Not something too big. There’ll be too much digging before we come to the walls,’ so they chose a small, clearly formed mound not overburdened with tall trees.
In the morning they hurried to their exciting task, but they had worked for only an hour when everyone realized that it would be impossible to clear the entire mound; that would take a moon of effort, but they could, as others had done on visits past, clear a tunnel of sufficient size to allow reasonable inspection of some portion of what lay hidden below, and to this more limited task the diggers applied themselves.
On the second day Bolón was deep in the tunnel, ripping away roots that clung avariciously to some hidden object, when, with a mighty pull of his arms, he tore the last roots free and cried: ‘It’s here!’ and the others rushed up behind him to finish enlarging the passageway so that their companions could stoop and walk through to see at least this remnant of Palenque’s greatness. Then, when a substantial surface of the buried temple had been cleared, all could examine the exquisite workmanship that had characterized Maya building at its zenith.
‘Look!’ the bearded man cried, his eyes alight with wonder. ‘See how each stone fits exactly every other, on all sides. And how the surfaces are polished. And if we could locate a carved stela, we’d see real wonders.’
This challenge so excited Bolón and the two other diggers that they scrambled about among the debris, shoving and hauling, until they uncovered not a traditional stela but a carved portion of wall, and when it had been cleaned, the pilgrims saw revealed what their man had promised: a piece of carving so fine that the figure of an ancient chieftain who had accomplished something of merit seemed to leap off the wall to resume command. ‘Why did they always dress themselves in those tremendous head adornments?’ Bolón asked as he stared at the fantastic crown composed of serpents, leaves, flowers and the head of a snarling jaguar with teeth bared.
‘Our ancestors knew that a man was a limited creature,’ the bearded man explained, as if he were living at that time, ‘so they adopted a headdress that made them taller, that brought all mystical powers to their support.’ Then he smiled and added: ‘Also, it impressed and even frightened the ordinary people.’ Turning to the others, he asked: ‘Can you imagine standing before that judge, with those snakes and jaguar teeth staring down at you, and admitting that you’d done something wrong?’ The headdress of the life-sïze figure was three feet high.
Only a corner of the little temple had been cleared by the diggers, but now Bolón and another man decided to probe just a bit farther, and in doing so, came upon the blocked entrance to an inner room. When this was opened and torches brought, Ah Nic led them inside to the true miracle of Palenque, for there in the dim and gloom, protected by thick outer walls from the inquisitive roots, rose an inner wall some seven feet high and twelve feet long, covered completely with glyphs and scripts and figures of the most beautiful composition, some carved, some painted, summarizing an account of what must have been a heroic action in times long past.
It was a work of majestic art, a communication from the heartland of the Maya composed in the days before the new religion came in from the west, and Ix Zubin especially was staggered by its size and magnificence, but when her son asked: ‘What does it say?’ she had to confess that neither she nor Ah Nic nor anyone living that day could read the old writing. This was tantalizing, because obviously it conveyed a specific message about events of consequence which the writers wanted to record for posterity. ‘It’s infuriating,’ Ix Zubin grumbled, ‘that not one of us is able to read that message,’† but though she was frustrated, she did find satisfaction in solving the date, comparable to Thursday 14 June A.D. 512.
While she was doing this, Bolón was mesmerized by the carvings, for they were so grand in their gray-white purity, with colors applied sparingly here and there, that he could not fathom how they had been made. ‘What is this?’ he appealed to the others, knocking his knuckles against what he took to be a stone, but unlike any he had known.
Ah Nic knew the answer. ‘The hills near here gave them a remarkable stone, easy to crush, easy to mix with sand and broken pebbles and lime and just enough water. It formed a plaster, not solid, not liquid, and it was easily worked. As it dried it could be carved, but when it hardened …’ Picking from the floor a small rock, he banged it mightily against the carved face of a ferocious god, and the pebble cracked while the god’s cheek remained unscarred. ‘We call it stucco,’ Ah Nic said, ‘and it accounts for the beauty of Palenque.’ When Bolón inspected this little treasure room he saw that the walls, the ceiling, the decorations and the statues were all of stucco, and when he left, reluctantly, looking back till the last flare died, he realized that the first figure he had admired had been constructed in the same way: a pillar had been covered with wet stucco which, when hardened, could be carved into fantastic configurations.
As the time approached to start the return journey, Ah Nic led the group through a jungle morass to the edge of a massive mound reaching high into the air and covered by a literal forest of trees: ‘If that little corner of such a minor temple revealed such wonders, can you imagine what grandeur will be seen when great mounds like this are uncovered?’ Then he allowed his voice to fall to a whisper: ‘And as we have seen, there are scores of such mounds, scores of temples lying hidden all around us,’ and in the silence that followed, Bolón understood why his mother had insisted on this pilgrimage, for he knew that knowledge of the past gave men courage to face the future.
When Ix Zubin led her son, now a proven man, back to the point on the mainland where they would catc
h the ferry to Cozumel, they found confusion, for the men who customarily sailed the large canoes were nowhere to be seen, nor were their craft. Instead, a group of catch-as-catch-can little craft were swarming around in the hands of men who knew little about them. When the three travelers chose one in which they had scant faith, the young fellow in charge told them a doleful story: ‘Much bad this year. Nobody in Mayapán to give orders. Nobody in Cozumel to set rules.’
‘What’s happened?’ Ah Nic asked, sensing that it would not look right for a woman to be seen asking political questions, and the doleful young man said as he propelled them inexpertly homeward: ‘Much burning in Cozumel. Many old buildings gone in the fighting.’ None of the three wanted to query the fate of the Temple of Fertility, but without being asked, the man volunteered: ‘No more pilgrims coming to our temples. Too much trouble in Mayapán. No more big canoes here to carry them.’ He paused, studied Ah Nic, whom he did not want to offend, then added tentatively: ‘Maybe all people … not believe priests anymore.’
When they landed, ignoring people who might want to interrogate them about having been absent for more than half a year, they walked benumbed toward their temple, and wherever they looked they saw scars and things torn away. Then Bolón, running ahead, stopped aghast, for the Temple of Fertility which he should have inherited had been wantonly destroyed, its walls torn down, its cluster of supporting buildings burned. Even its detestable Chac Mool had been carried off to a more exposed site where human sacrifices could be staged with greater spectacular effect.
But what appalled Ix Zubin beyond consolation was that the precious papers on which her grandfather had computed his calculations on the planet Venus had been burned, along with his predictions of eclipses for centuries to come. She was enraged when she learned of this savagery, but she did not confide her feelings to Bolón lest he react spontaneously as he had when the rubber tappers assaulted her. She did, however, caution him: ‘We may have caused the destruction of our own temple … going on pilgrimage without their permission … Beware, son. They may have other punishments awaiting us. Beware.’ And she monitored whatever he did, trying to keep him away from his superiors in hopes of protecting him.