The Falling Woman

8 Diane

Even at six in the morning the air was warm. Lizards basked on the rocks, running a few feet as we approached, then stopping to watch us.

Barbara led the way and I walked beside her, wearing the hat my mother had given me. Carlos, Maggie, and Robin trailed behind.

‘We’re walking on history,’ Barbara told me, stamping one boot on the ground beneath our feet. ‘This is a limestone causeway, built by the Maya. They built miles of them all over the place. God knows why. Trade, religious ceremonies…’ She shrugged. Her mannerisms and speech reminded me of someone, but for a moment I could not place them. Then I remembered walking with my mother to the Temple of the Seven Dolls. Barbara had adopted the same staccato style: abbreviated and to the point. ‘They called the roads sacbeob. The singular form of the word is sacbe. Plural is sacbeob. We’re using this one as a reference line for the survey.’

Trees crowded close on either side. Grasses and scrub had grown underfoot, but the way was clear compared to the monte around us.

Like my mother, Barbara did not wait for questions. She assumed that I was interested. ‘Aerial surveys are just about useless here,’ she said. ‘They give you a great view of trees, but that’s it. The only way to map a site is to walk it and get personally acquainted with every tree, rock, stinging bug, and thorn. This causeway runs east. We’ll be mapping the quadrant between here and a line due south. That means we’ve got to walk over every square foot and note every ruin, mound, and monument. Maybe we sample some of the ones that look promising.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I figure out a theory based on what we find, get my Ph.D., and you call me Dr Barbara.’ She stopped beside a tree marked with a blaze and waited for the others to catch up. When they did, she turned into the monte, following what looked like a deer trail to another blazed tree.

The concept of the survey, as Barbara described it, was simple enough. The survey team spread out, leaving about twenty paces between people. Carlos was on one end of the line and Barbara was on the other. Carlos made a blaze on trees as he passed them; Barbara followed the line of blazes from the previous day. We were to follow a compass course due east. Barbara instructed me on the use of the compass and put me in the middle of the line.

It was hot work, sticky work, boring work – trudging through the monte, ducking branches, climbing over rocks, shouting out when I stumbled over something of interest, and then waiting while Barbara carefully noted its location on her map. The first three mounds we found had already been noted by the Tulane University crew several years before, but Barbara methodically checked location and noted minor corrections.

Flies hovered just in front of my eyes, dancing and buzzing, a constant irritation. I trudged through the heat, listening to the shrill cries of insects, the rustling of small animals and birds, the sound of footsteps, the occasional crash when someone blundered into a low-slung branch and the curses that followed. At regular intervals, the sounds of the monte were punctuated by the solid impact of Carlos’s machete against the innocent trees. I stabbed myself several times before I learned to watch for thorns. It took a great deal of effort to keep looking for the lines of rocks that Barbara said marked where walls had once been, the overgrown low mounds that had once been huts or temples.

Conversations grew shorter as the day grew hotter. Even when we were waiting for Barbara to complete corrections on her map, we maintained our positions in line, unwilling to move together just to move apart again. Early morning was hot; midmorning was hotter. At about eleven, beside the largest mound we had yet encountered, Barbara called a lunch break.

We sat in the thin shade of a ceiba tree, saying little, drinking water, and eating the tortillas and cheese that Maria had packed. Maggie was still pissed off at Carlos, I think. She and Robin sat a little way apart from us, sharing food and laughing at private jokes. Carlos tried to start up a conversation with me and Barbara, but Barbara ignored him and I was too tired to be drawn into talk.

I leaned back against the solid trunk of a tree and, drowsy from the heat, let my eyes droop closed. Such a peaceful place, I thought. I was still tired from my sleepless nights in Los Angeles, and I was at peace for the first time in weeks. I relaxed.

The bark of the tree at my back had a strong sweet aroma, like the smoke of incense carried on the breeze. In the distance, a bird called with a long low breathy note, like the sound of a child blowing across the top of a bottle. The call ended, then came again, a hollow tone that rose in pitch. The buzz of the insects seemed to grow louder and harsher, as if in response to the bird’s call. A warm breeze fanned my face, and the sweet smell was stronger.

I dreamed that I heard voices, unfamiliar voices. In the private darkness behind my closed eyes, I listened, but I could not understand the language that the voices spoke.

I opened my eyes, but I was still dreaming. Across from me, a temple built of carved limestone blocks glistened in the afternoon sun. I squinted against the reflected light.

The voices continued, muttering softly in a foreign tongue. I could see two men, standing in the bright sunlight and looking down at a carved slab of stone. They were dressed in white loincloths and their bare chests were decorated with intricate tattoos in great swirling patterns, like the waves of a turbulent sea. At their feet was an incense burner in the shape of a crouching cat. Smoke escaped from the cat’s mouth, white tendrils curling past sharp teeth and dissipating in the breeze.

I knew somehow, with the certainty of a dreamer, that the men were a threat to me. I did not like them. There was something cruel about their faces. They did not smile and their voices were harsh, hard-edged.

I sat very still, not even moving to wipe away the sweat from my forehead. If I did not move, perhaps they would not notice me, perhaps I could get away. I felt the same panic that had touched me on my father’s balcony.

A drop of sweat trickled down my forehead and dripped into my eyes. I blinked and the men were gone. The voices were gone. The temple was gone. I sat alone beneath a tree, staring out at the sunlight that filtered through the thin leaves. A twisted tree grew where the men had been standing. At its base was a fallen log, overgrown by creeping vines and thornbushes.

Disoriented, I stood and went to where the men had been standing. The air was as warm and stuffy as the air in an attic. The flies droned, flickering like spots before my eyes. Sweat trickled down my back, making my shirt cling to my skin. A vagrant branch, lined with thorns and eager to make mischief, grabbed at my shirt as I squatted beside the fallen shape beneath the tree.

It was not a fallen log. Thorny creepers had overrun a large block of limestone, covering the surface completely. I gingerly pulled one aside and caught a glimpse of the carved surface underneath. I looked around and saw Barbara, poking in the bushes on one side of the mound. ‘I’ve found something here,’ I called to her.

She picked her way slowly through the brush to reach my side. She knelt beside the limestone block and used the trowel that she carried at her belt to scrape away more vines. She cut away the branch of one bush with the edge of her trowel and held back another, careless of the thorns and of the black bugs that ran away from the sudden light. I could see the weathered surface of a carved slab of stone, half buried in dirt and debris.

‘It’s a stela,’ she said. I must have looked at her blankly. ‘A monument,’ she said. ‘They put them up to commemorate certain dates: religious festivals, historic events, astronomical happenings. Usually, they’re carved with glyphs. Some sites – like Chichén Itzá or Copán – had dozens of them. They’ve only found a few around here.’

The stone was worn by centuries of rain. I could make out the profile of a face, outlined by dark fragments of decayed leaves. Here and there, I could see the remnants of other carvings.

‘We’ll get a crew to raise it,’ Barbara said. ‘Maybe the other side is better preserved.’ She was grinning. ‘Good work. I was hoping to find something that can help date the outlying sites so I’d know whether they were inhabited at the same time as the main area. That’d help us get an idea of the population that this center supported.’ She stood up and looked around as if she expected to find more. ‘You’re as lucky as Liz at this game.’

We searched the rest of the area and found no more monuments. Maggie discovered a tree filled with stinging ants. I found a tree loaded with thorns and managed to forget about the two men in the dream. Nothing else of note. On our way back, we laid a transect line adjacent to the line we had laid going in.