Chapter Nine
Flower changed clothes inside her new private tent, which had a tunnel leading directly to the Zephairi’s tent. The Egyptologist was happy with her work, in particular, her use of the brush to get rid of the dirt covering the artifacts she had found, which included a jade mask thought to represent a Mayan priest, a stone ax in the shape of corn, stone protective gear worn during the sacred ballgames, and a three legged vessel depicting the afterworld used to drink cocoa. As she made the discoveries, she typically showed them to Lanai before showing them to Zephairi, because the Malibu librarian was keen on learning more about the significance of each finding.
Zephairi was particularly interested in a pendant with a hieroglyphic inscription of a ritual that took place towards the end of a king's rule. Flower was proud to see that he loved the pendant. She could tell because shortly after she’d unearthed it, he’d given her a promotion in the form of a new tent, which was pitched very close to his. Flower took a small round mirror and took off her shirt, leaving only a yellow bra covering her breasts.
"Flower!"
The call from Zephairi startled the half-dressed ethnographer. She donned a rough canvass shirt bought in a shopping center in Cancún and placed the mirror back in place on the small cabinet that acted as dresser.
"Do you have that pendant?" Flower nodded, pulling it out of her neckline.
"I want to search the altar of the large pyramid tonight. I'd like you to come with me," he said to Flower.
"At night?"
"At night."
Not on your life, thought Flower. Or more exactly, maybe with her friend Clarity. She gave an indefinite ‘maybe’ to Zephairi, and walked over to seek Clarity in the poor tent area, with all the village people. Once there she spotted Clarity, then pulled her by the arm and brought her to her tent.
"Sure, I'll go with you," said Clarity. "Did he tell you why he wants to search the altar?"
"No. All right, I'll tell Zeph that you're coming with me."
That night, Clarity followed Flower up the steps of the large pyramid of Xuleiha. There was a near full moon out and the air was cool. They found Zephairi at the top, preparing an omelette. The girls had not eaten, and they were hungry. The Egyptologist also prepared a fire, and after a lavish meal that included honey-glazed Egyptian goose, and fresh black olives appreciated by Flower in particular, he explained that he had chosen Flower as an Egyptologist, because she was familiar with the idea of sexual alchemy, a way to modify the body and even emotions by performing the sexual act. He showed Flower the resume that she had used to apply for the position of assistant, which mentioned some of the practices that Lady Scafarel used on her in Bahrain aboard the Owens & Owell jet, the Air Fashion Jet.
He pointed to a large stone near the fire. Clarity could see four lines around the stone, representing the forces of creation. Zephairi explained that the name of God often had four letters, one for the woman, one for the man, one for the phallus, and one for the uterus. During his previous visit to one of the Mayan sites, a raider of tombs named Cole Gambi de Trot had mentioned a name he ignored, exiohari, saying that its meaning was held by a stela in another Mayan site yet undiscovered. That site could be Xuleiha.
"You think that the Mayas carried out practices of sexual alchemy?"
"Let's figure out what they did, by recreating the practice of the Adi-Buddha, the unknowable and unmanifested. To do that, we have to be naked, but we cannot see the others naked." Flower began asking questions.
"Are you sure the Adi-Buddha is Mayan?"
"It's all connected dear, at some point it is." He pointed to a column where Flower and Clarity could take off their clothes.
"Is this part of work?" asked Clarity.
"Yes, of course," said Zephairi, "learning how an adept thought and practiced the spiritual ritual of arousing the fire in them."
"I don't want to be an adept," said Clarity, whispering to Flower. The Ethnographer whispered back, while she took off her bra.
"I don't know what an adept is, but this is turning me on."
Once naked, Zephairi gave instructions to think about the four forces. The study of the eternal one eventually led to the ninth sphere, the sphere of sex. Clarity could tell that Flower was getting a tad too excited by her new facet of work, because she was letting go and fantasizing about a Mayan God depicted in the column which hid her from the view of Zephairi. Clarity felt a breeze flow through her most intimate places, and wondered what the meaning of the word exiohari was. They looked at the stone again and Zephairi, covered only by a small piece of cloth, which covered his genitals, pulled out his ipad and began to compare hieroglyphs from a stela in Copan with the stone in front of them.
"Look, the four lines in the stela of Copan translate as the crossing of the sexual cells of man and woman, I'm convinced that that's the meaning of exiohari."
According to Zephairi, the meaning of the philosopher's stone, sexual transmutation, couldn't be far from where they were. It was becoming clear to Clarity that Zephairi was looking for the missing codex of the Mayas, which was also the equivalent of the Taoist canons, books containing instructions for esoteric sexual practices.
"And so the meaning of the guacamayas in stela B is sexual," said Clarity.
"Yes, my dear, yes."
Clarity was beginning to feel cold. She donned a shirt, followed by Flower. Zephairi had no other choice but to follow what the two women were doing.
"Let's go back to our tent," said Clarity.
"Let's go back to our tent," said Zephairi, drawing an indecent look to Flower.
"I think I'll go back to my own tent," said Flower, "which is different from your tent."
The next day Fahibian came for a second visit with her girlfriend Casey at her side. The former champ of twelve mud wrestling belts was interested in seeing the large pyramid because it could become an interesting wall to climb. Casey was a rock climber, and Zephairi agreed with Fahibian to build a rock-climbing wall on one of the walls of the pyramid, before dismantling it. Clarity saw Kish overhear the conversation, and the craftsman immediately reacted.
"This is appalling. A rock climbing wall is not a traditional Mayan pyramid, it's a joke to our ancestors," said Kish. Fahibian snapped his fingers and called on Duldu, who brought Kish to his fence.
"This is where you live, this is your home. Your job as bellboy is ringing closer," said Duldu, "you are headed for Belize."
"My loom is my guarantee, and my home is here." Feeling somewhat unsure and unsafe, Kish looked at his home, which looked like an ideal target for the several excavators that were hovering around it. The shade of the gondola carrying soil flew over him, as if confirming what was going to happen to the home he had known for decades.
Fahibian dropped a piece of paper and Clarity picked it up. The letterhead said Mexican Institute for Ethnoconservation and Ecology. Fahibian rushed to lift the paper out of Clarity's hands, nearly shrivelling it inside his pocket. Clarity knew she had found something important. She rushed to Flower's tent during her lunch break.
"I need access to the web," said Clarity. Flower turned on her ipad, which Zephairi had provided as part of her salary as assistant.
Clarity quickly drew a series of web searches on the Institute. According to several articles by local journals on the web, the Institute for Ethnoconservation and Ecology was not on good terms with Fahibian's real estate company 'Mangrove Barrier Resorts'. It was the Ethnoconservation group, which was behind the idea of the ecovillage in the private Environmental Impact Report that she had seen in Zephairi's tent. They needed the support of that group to carry out what seemed impossible: to turn a commercially viable real estate project into a sustainable ecovillage, whose project was being kept secret from the local inhabitants of the village which was perfect for it. Another report interviewed one of the members of the Ethnoconservation group, who was casting a doubt upon the honesty of the award procedure of the project to Mangrove Barrier Resorts.
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sp; Clarity sought Ms. Morales and found her listening to Kish complaining, while she examined the marble toucan that Flower had found. On the belly of the toucan, there was a wheel depicting a small Mayan calendar, which had indications on them, indications which only Ms. Morales, a genuine shaman, could understand.
"This sign here means that the pyramids found here should be preserved." She pointed to an oval shaped depiction of several cities.
"All these cities were linked at some point. This point here is Tikal and this line connects Xuleiha with it."
Clarity peeked over the shoulder of Lanai to look at the pink marble toucan.
"Are you saying there was a road between Tikal and Miradorcito in earlier times?" asked Clarity.
Ms. Morales nodded.
"Yes, and that's what our ancestors want us to build, a road linking the Costa Maya and Mayan Riviera with other Mayan cities in Guatemala and Belize."
Clarity apologized to Ms. Morales about her attitude to change things without getting her or the rest of the village completely onboard.
"I think I may have been too insistent on the idea of the ecovillage."
"It's not an easy idea to carry out."
Clarity explained that she had found the name of the advocate that Miradorcito needed. Her eyes beamed because it was a real avenue for sustainable change. But Ms. Morales remained stern.
"It's all nice and good," said Ms. Morales, "but the project here has been allotted to Fahibian's Real Estate Company. I don't have any power to change the mind of the governor of Campeche and Zephairi has an official permit."
Ms. Morales looked discouraged. Clarity knew that the woman had the strength to change the course of events at Miradorcito, but she ignored how to let her know that she was stronger and more resourceful than she thought. Ms. Morales left with Kish to meet the rest of the village. The villagers were growing restless because food supplies were scarcer as a result of a bottleneck created by Duldu, the official gatekeeper of food and water. According to Duldu, the stock of food had to last weeks, because of stringent cost budgeting adopted by Fahibian's development project. Ms. Morales had only a few pesos with her, but she used the money to buy food outside the village, at the local market in Xelha, and brought some food back to those who had chosen her as head of the village. Clarity noticed that her strength came from her integrity, and her integrity came to her from the previous head of the village, a peasant known as Kino, the man who arranged the building of the dam in exchange for some land upstream, which was sold to the province of Campeche.
"These people are so poor," said Flower, "I could never be so poor."
Clarity was dismayed at how insensitive Flower could be at times. For the first time, she saw clearly how attached to comfort her friend was. She wasn't planning on staying in Miradorcito all of her life, she liked her own comfort and she did think that the villagers and Ms. Morales deserved better than what they had. Did money really rule the world to such an extent; she wondered? Following Flower's suggestion, Clarity had begun reading the seven laws of money by the founder of MasterCard, and she knew that money was, among other things, a store of value. The ecovillage was a possible source of value for the village, and to her, its potential way out of poverty. That night, she slid inside her sleeping bag thinking of ways to fund the ecovillage of Miradorcito, which was now the archaeological site of Xuleiha. After several minutes, she dismissed the idea, letting her mind yield to the fact that she didn't have access to any significant source of funding.