The Falling Woman

Notes for City of Stones by Elizabeth Butler

Today is Saturday, March 17, 1984, by our reckoning of time. A simple set of numbers and names, designating the day but granting it no particular power, no special value.

In the Mayan system of dating, this day would be assigned a number and a day name in the tzolkin, or sacred almanac, a different number and a different day name in the haab, or vague year. In the Long Count, the system of dating used on stelae, this date would be written as 12 baktuns, 18 katuns, 10 tuns, 13 uinals, and 15 kins, designating this day as being 1,861,475 days since the starting point from which the Maya count time. By Mayan reckoning, each of these numbers and names has a meaning and an importance.

The tzolkin and the haab are part of a system of interlocking cycles, known to modern Mayanists as the Calendar Round. The haab is a cycle of 365 days: eighteen months of twenty days and one month of five evil days at the end of it all. The tzolkin is a cycle of 260 days: thirteen months of twenty days. The two cycles are interlocked: one can think of them as two great cogs – one with 260 teeth and one with 365. As one wheel turns, so turns the other. Every fifty-two vague years, both cycles begin a new year at the same time.

That’s one system for counting the passage of time. The other is the Long Count, a system for counting from an established date long ago. Our notation of the year 1984 indicates the number of years that have passed since the birth of Christ: one period of one thousand years, nine centuries of one hundred years, eight decades of ten years, and four years of 365 days. A Long Count inscription indicates how many days have passed since the beginning of the Mayan time count by noting the passage of baktuns, or periods of 144,000 days; katuns, or periods of 7,200 days; tuns, or years of 360 days; uinals, or periods of 20 days; and kins, or days.

All this is important, but the heart of the matter lies in the power of the days, not the methods used to calculate or record them. Many years ago, I learned of the importance of these numbers and names from a shriveled woman with a clubfoot, who, for reasons I never ascertained, had moved from a mountain village to the city of Mérida.

She was bargaining for herbs in the market when I met her; she glanced at me with bright sharp eyes and commented to the shopkeeper on my poor selection of produce, saying that gringas did not know how to shop. She spoke in Maya and I, hot and tired from a long day of shopping, spoke up in the same tongue, saying that I would gladly take lessons on how to shop if anyone would offer to teach me. She grinned and beckoned to me.

For the next hour I followed her as she trudged from stall to stall. She taught me to shake my finger to indicate disinterest, told me when to push for a better price, when to give a little, when to walk away, when to joke. The shopkeepers stared at us – an American and a Mayan crone – but no one commented. I thanked her at the hour’s end and bought her a Coke, which she drank with great enthusiasm.

A week after my tour of the market, I met her again, this time in the zocalo in the early evening. She sat alone on a green bench at the west corner of the square and she hailed me, beckoning. She had been drinking aguardiente – to stop the pain, she said. I do not know what caused her pain; she would not talk about that. She asked me the hour and the day, and when I told her, she gripped my wrist so tightly that her nails cut into my skin. I asked her what was wrong, but her answers made no sense. She wanted to talk about time. She said that this was the last day of an evil year; she was distraught, but I could not make out the reason for her agitation.

I bought her another bottle of aguardiente – her pain seemed real and that was the only help she would allow me to offer. Over the bottle, she began rambling, reciting something. ‘Imix, he is the first one: earth monster, dragon head, root of it all. He rules the corn; a very good day for planting. Ik, he is the second, and he brings the wind, a very good day. Akbal is dark, a prowling jaguar who devours the sun. He lives in the west, where he drinks the dark water, and the rain he brings is not good. He kills the corn. Offer him bebida and do not plant this day.’

I realized, as she continued, that the names she called, praising this one and warning against that, were the names of the days in the tzolkin. ‘Ben is lord of the maize, a good day for planting. Offer him atole, made of the best maize. Oc wears the head of a dog; he brings the sad rain that makes the maize rot in the ground and gives the children sickness. Cauac wears the head of a dragon; he brings thunder and violent rain.’ She shook her head, let her breath out in a great gasp, and gripped my hand more tightly. She was staring at me wildly, but I did not think that she saw me. She recited the almanac of days for an apprentice, a daughter, a son, a person who would learn and benefit from this knowledge. ‘You know them, do you not?’

‘Yes, grandmother,’ 1 said to calm her. ‘I know them.’

‘There is Lamat, the lord of the great star that rises with the sun. There is Muluc: give him jade and the rain that comes will favor the corn. You must remember these things!’

She gripped my hand with both of hers and breathed warm brandy-scented breath in my face. Around us, the square was quiet. The lovers and loiterers who strolled here favored the far side, closer to the café that sold sweet fruit ices.

‘You must know them all: Etz’nab is the lord of the sacrifice; he carries a blade of sharp obsidian. Behead a turkey in his name; feast for him.’

The moon had risen. Its pale light filtered through the leaves of the shade trees to dapple the cement paths that crisscrossed the square. Somewhere across the square a guitarist played a ballad, doubtlessly for lovers who would rather have been left in peace. The old woman stared up at the moon as if she had never seen it before.

‘And you must know the day named Men, governed by the old woman moon goddess, Ix Chebel Yax. She is a trickster, that one, bringing rainbows and floods, healing and destruction. She gives children stomach pains, helps women in childbirth, teases madmen, brings sleep to the weary, snarls the thread of weaving women. On her day, you can divine the future, but you cannot trust her.’

‘Rest, grandmother,’ I said to the woman, laying one hand on hers. ‘I will remember this. But now you must go home. Let me take you there.’

‘That does not matter,’ she said. Her voice was softer now. ‘Today is the last day of the five unlucky days. Cimi is dark and deadly; he knows Ah Puch. When he flies to you, you never hear him coming; his feathers make no sound. On this day, you must burn the blood of a turkey with incense.’

‘Yes, grandmother. But now I will take you home.’

‘I will die this night,’ she said, standing like an obedient child as I tugged on her arm. ‘It is the end of the old year: the cycles have returned to the place that they were when I was born. The year is out and Cimi has come for me.’

She followed me to the curb and I hailed a taxi. Apparently she had finished the recitation of the days; she was quiet, acquiescent. She told me her address and I told the cabby to take her there, paid him in advance, paid him extra to help her inside. I stood under the full moon, listening to the distant guitar serenade. The hag’s fingernails had left marks beside the old scars on my right wrist. I rubbed them idly and watched the taxi drive away.

On the next day, which I called Sunday for lack of a better name, I took a taxi to the address that the old woman had given the cabby, a shabby house in a row of shabby houses. The woman who answered the door frowned when I asked after the old woman and said in Spanish, ‘She is dead now. What do you want here?’

I backed away, unable to tell her of the strange evening under the moon, unwilling to describe the feelings that had pulled me here. I needed to ask the old woman what day this was and what that day meant, but I said nothing. I caught the same taxi – he had waited for me at the corner – and went home to my hotel.

Today – the day I write this – is Saturday. I do not know its Mayan name and number. I do not know the gods that influence this day. I know very little.