Three Messages and a Warning (7 page)

“All right, let’s go now.”

We walked away slowly, and I felt as if we were two defeated soldiers, returning after losing everything. I took off her diaper, wet from the ocean, and dressed her in her dry clothes. She continued gazing at the palm trees. I told her to wait for me there, that I was going to hail a taxi. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but no car was ever going to drive by that remote place. I had to run quite a distance before I found a free taxi. When I got in, I ordered him to drive as quickly as possible to El Brujo Beach. She remained there, so fragile, so alone, so sad, waiting for me in the sand. We helped her into the taxi. She was cold. When we arrived home, I laid her down and served her hot tea. I caressed her face, and she took my hand and squeezed it hard. After a while, she said,

“Adela, it seems that death hasn’t forgotten about me after all.”

We invariably left my grandparents’ house at an hour much later than that which we had planned. The genteel old man always accompanied us to the gate. Our appearance, as we marched away, hardly ever varied. Chidra wore short pants, handed down to him from his older brother. Crispín and I wore long pants, purchased especially for us. Since Crispín was the smallest of the three, however, his physique prompted all sorts of jests about his frailty.

We hunted iguanas with a fair amount of regularity. But make no mistake about it: they are not an easy catch. The natural hues of the Yucatan jungle hide these reptiles as if they and their surroundings were intimate accomplices. We managed to actually catch an iguana only on the rarest of occasions. At such times we descended from the highlands jubilantly and sold our catch to that famous eatery known as the Xanadu. Turtledoves, wall lizards, and armadillos make for a much easier catch than iguanas, to give the reader a frame of reference.

That morning, as we advanced, we aimed our slingshots in the direction of anything substantial stirring in the brush, without ever striking our elusive targets or knowing if we had guessed correctly as to their presence. Chidra, who before his elders rarely divulged a word, assumed a completely distinct personality when he was with us in the highlands of the Yucatan. He became a consummate storyteller, ceaselessly spinning yarns about the fantastic adventures he had supposedly undergone during his extensive journeys in the jungle. Crispín chided Chidra mercilessly about the absurdity, stupidity, and downright impossibility of the contents of his tales. One of Chidra’s most fantastical stories recounted how a parade of elephants had made its way through the highlands before his very eyes.

“That must have been the same day you drank coffee for the first time,” remarked Crispín sarcastically. “I remember how you downed three or four cups in a row before you started bouncing off the walls.”

But Chidra took no notice of his critic. He kept telling his tales as easily as they came to him, each one more fantastical than the next. Chidra swore, for example, that one evening after having seen a movie in town, on the way back home, certain sounds began to emerge from the brush, calling to him, “psst . . . psst.” But he forced himself to ignore them since he suspected that they emanated from the Xtabay, the sinister femme fatale of Mayan mythology. He claimed that the Xtabay, having the torso of a goddess but the legs of an allegorical creature, employed her captivating voice to lure men to their doom. One of her favorite tricks involved hiding among the five-leaved silk-cotton trees and using her charming voice to lure men deeper and deeper into the thickets until they became irremediably lost. We had heard tales of the Xtabay before, but Chidra told them with such conviction that Crispín was the only boy in town who did not listen to them in awestruck silence. Chidra’s imagination knew no bounds. He boasted once of having discovered a hole in the jungle floor that led effectively to the molten core of the center of the Earth. Another of his favorite yarns concerned the legendary children of Zintzinito, errant souls who appeared in the most unlikely places before vanishing without a trace.

On this particular hunt, Chidra swore to us that the very day before, while searching for his father (a rubber tapper by trade) deep in the highlands, he had seen a naked woman of majestic proportions bathing in a lake: to which Crispín, with a mixture of contempt and curiosity, responded, “I suppose you’re going to swear she was the Xtabay.”

“Not exactly,” he said. “The Xtabay has the body of a woman and the feet of a rooster. But the woman I saw yesterday had the most beautiful white feet imaginable, long blond hair, and the body of a goddess.”

“Have you ever told a true story in your life?” inquired Crispín. “If so, it’s not this one for sure.”

“I swear on my soul,” said Chidra, making the sign of the cross and kissing the gap between his thumb and bent index finger.

“When exactly did you see her?” I demanded.

“At noon.”

“The Xtabay would never show herself in broad daylight,” I said.

“Enough chitchat,” interrupted Crispín. “Let Chidra lead the way to the spot where he claims he saw her, and we’ll put his tale to the test for once.”

“That’s fine with me,” retorted Chidra, “but I should warn you that it’s far from here, deep in the jungle.”

“I knew he’d chicken out once we asked him to prove it,” alleged Crispín.

“If you insist, then I’ll take you,” said Chidra.

Chidra knew the highlands better than any of the boys in town, not only because he lived on the outskirts but because his father could be found in the jungle on any given day tapping rubber, and Chidra’s responsibilities included bringing him food and drink, and anything else he might require.

Naturally, once we had penetrated the jungle beyond the usual boundaries, Chidra assumed the task of guiding us. The town and country properties had long since faded from view. The jungle enshrouded us. We pushed our way through the thickets, treading carefully. Chidra, scouring the terrain, writhed though the jungle like a predator. Every so often, he spoke: “Over here, this way.”

Something was amiss. Summer skies in the Yucatan tend to be clear, blue, and sultry, but that morning the sky was overcast. Just when the vegetation had grown so dense that we were on the verge of losing sight of the misty sky above, we came to a clearing in the brush, and an ancient Mayan sacred site emerged before our astonished eyes. It had been abandoned long ago, but its temples remained in impeccable condition. Crispín and I stood there, enthralled.

“We’re close now, this way,” commanded Chidra, breaking the spell that had overcome Crispín and me.

My eyes met those of Crispín. A mixture of fear and fascination united us. Chidra could wait no longer. He took the lead through the thickets, vigorously hacking away at the vegetation with his hands. All thought of hunting iguanas had vanished from our minds. The slingshots and stones in our pockets ceased to make their presence felt. All our senses were attuned to the task of discovering whether Chidra’s story could possibly be true. We soon discerned the lake of which Chidra had spoken. We occupied a perfect vantage point in the thickets from which we could not be spotted. Time passed. No one appeared. Chidra’s imagination, it seemed, had produced the only beauty ever to have bathed in that lake. Crispín, repeatedly accusing Chidra of being a contemptible liar, insisted that we turn back. His altercation with him was on the verge of turning violent when a person appeared at the opposite end of the lake and we all fell silent.

Not a woman, unfortunately, but a man appeared: middle-aged, dressed as an explorer, blond, graying beard, bespectacled, smoking a pipe. A frying pan in hand, he headed toward the basin where he squatted and set himself to washing the object in the water. Just as he was finishing, a woman appeared, similarly dressed, carrying more dishware. We could see them perfectly, but we could not make out what they were saying.

“That’s her! There she is!” Chidra exclaimed.

As much as we hated to admit it, it was true. Chidra had described her, in her absence, just as she appeared before us that fateful morning: tall, white, blonde and divine. Once she had finished cleaning her utensils, she arose and disappeared from view to the place from where she had come.

“What the hell is making me itch so bad?” asked Crispín, abruptly, raising his shirt to show us where it hurt.

“Ticks,” said Chidra.

“Goddamn it,” Crispín replied, unbuttoning his shirt.

“If you’ve got them then so do we,” said Chidra, scrutinizing his ankles and scratching away. Chidra took off his shirt in imitation of Crispín.

I followed suit without a thought. The three of us stripped nude. We examined our clothes, shaking them violently to rid them of the ticks. There must have been as many ticks on our clothes as on our bodies. The vermin had even nestled in poor Crispín’s armpit hair. We were infested with them—on our backs, necks, legs. In the midst of our agony, however, Chidra surprised us by returning to the subject of the lady of the lake. More confident than ever in his narrative’s credibility, he retold the tale of how, while venturing through the jungle in search of his father, he had sighted the lady, completely nude, blonde, bathing her divinely white flesh in plain view of his ravenous but imperceptible gaze. Completely absorbed in this erotic fable, I noticed—first to my shame, then to my relief—that we all had begun to manifest outward signs corresponding to the rising flame within us.

Still crawling with ticks but thoroughly exhausted, we finally headed back to town. By the time we arrived, it was well past sunset. We said our farewells, and I passed through the gate of my grandparents’ farm. I opened the front door to the house, my eyes heavy with drowsiness. My thoughts remained with the lady of the lake, but my body no longer responded to her, rather to the itch of the vermin, which had taken possession of it.

I hurried to my grandmother and complained about the ticks that besieged me. She helped me undress and remove the vermin while simultaneously making light of my anguish: “They’re ticks, not black widows!” Realizing that stronger measures might be required to achieve complete victory over the vermin and to set my mind at ease, she hastened to the kitchen to heat some wax. Obeying her orders, I awaited her in bed.

I lay face down on the bed while my grandmother applied hot wax to my back and asked me: “What the devil were you boys up to today?”

“Today we saw the Xtabay, Grandma,” I answered contentedly.