Excerpt
I
I sensed that the world was a labyrinth, from which it is impossible to flee.
Jorge Luis Borges “Death and the Compass”
1 Death and the Compass
On the day she vanished only two people were left in camp. The August afternoon passed sluggishly, as stagnant heat rose off the rain forest. A tropical storm gathered over Belize and Guatemala to the east. All day long jagged black clouds had piled up, and now a massive wall of dark, swollen thunderheads dominated the eastern sky. To the west the sky was clear, but over the camp the clouds were low and ragged. The humidity was oppressive and left a thin film of moisture on everything, grass, leaves, and skin. Even the insects moved slowly in the thickening air of lowland Chiapas, Mexico.
Two graduate students stayed behind to look after the camp and the archaeological field collections. The rest of the crew drove the Land Rovers into San Javier to pick up supplies and have dinner. Jesse Salazar was in the field laboratory cleaning a skull. Kathryn Haden was walking out to the ceremonial plaza of the ancient Maya settlement looking for her compass.
Kathryn was anxious to find it because of its sentimental value. An old friend had given it to her some years ago, and she carried it on projects in Europe, Hawaii, and Central America, never losing it until that morning. She considered it her “lucky” compass, something like a talisman. Most archaeologists had similar beliefs in luck, in fact almost everyone she had ever known believed in it to some extent. They were a superstitious bunch.
Kathryn wondered if the archaeologists who had discovered the site, and classified it as a “minor ceremonial center” almost fifty years ago, had been superstitious. They had named the site Chanul Tzuk, which meant, “conjured spirit” in Maya, as part of a reconnaissance project for the Carnegie Institute. In 1946 they had spent a week doing some preliminary mapping and surveying, and then moved to Bonampak to the north, where some spectacularly violent, and well-preserved murals had been discovered. No further work had been done until 1993 when Chandler Bennett of the University of Oregon had started his project.
As she approached the partially cleared pyramids in the center of the site, thunder broke and rolled over the lagoon. The clouds seemed to have a greenish hue, and opened in torrents, as if cut open, drenching her in seconds. She ran to the nearest excavation trench, covered by long blue plastic tarps to protect the work in progress, climbed down a ladder, and took shelter at the main pyramid.
A flash of blue-white lightning lit up the plaza, and the thunderclap was so loud, and close, that stones fell out of the excavation walls. Kathryn thought about Dennis Puleston, a young professor from the University of Minnesota, who had been killed by lightning at Chichen Itza’s highest temple back in the 1970s. She sat with her back against the sidewall of the excavation trench, hoping to present a smaller target to the lightning. At least I’m out of the rain, she thought. The storm seemed to hit all at once, as if a switch had been turned on. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, and now the rain was pouring down hard.
Kathryn huddled in the trench against a back corner. She felt trapped, and hoped the rain would let up soon. Water was starting to pool in depressions in the tarp, causing it to droop. It would not hold the rain off indefinitely. Anxiously she watched, as the tarp sagged, and the lines to the poles and stakes tightened. The end of the tarp was like a waterfall. She thought about the pavement of limestone underneath her. People long dead had placed it there three thousand years ago, and now here she was waiting out a major storm, probably the first person to use the temple for protection since 900 BC. The rain fell in sheets as the wind blew sideways. She began to worry. What if the storm went on for hours? She could be trapped here for a long time, and she was at least three miles from the camp. Actually, Kathryn hated to admit to herself, but she was starting to feel a little claustrophobic, and apprehensive. She also felt a presence, as if something out in the jungle waited, was aware of her . . . was watching.
“Jungle fever.” Kathryn said out loud, just to hear her voice over the roar of the storm. “The jungle’s getting to me. My nerves. Happens to everyone eventually. Maybe I should just go ahead, get soaked, and head back in.” She looked out at the ancient plaza. The rain was blowing almost parallel to the ground. No way she was going out in that. At least the tarp was still holding up, and keeping the water out of the trench. “I wish I’d brought something to read.”
She could not see the men in the jungle running along the trail. They wore backpacks, and carried picks and shovels. Their rain-soaked clothing clung to their bodies and glistened in the lightning flashes, as they ran, ignoring the storm.
Kathryn thought she heard something on the other side of the trench. Was something moving around out there in the rain? She stood up on her tiptoes but the excavation walls were over 6 feet, just barely too high for her to see out. A stake gave way at the top of the pyramid and one corner of the tarp flapped up with a loud rip, startling her, and exposing her to the rain. She moved to the dry area on the other side of the trench. The winds were getting stronger, and she wondered if the tarp would hold.
Two of the up-slope stakes came out and the tarp was flapping up and down in the wind. Rain stung Kathryn’s face, as she tried to get away from the opening. Some more loose rubble from the core of the pyramid fell, as the east wall slumped, and caved in. It occurred to her that all of the walls might collapse and she could be buried if she stayed there much longer.
Looks like it’s time to go, she thought.
At Penn, she played intramural basketball and she was in good shape. Good enough to run all the way back to camp. She steeled herself for running, when the last two stakes pulled out, and the tarpaulin blew up, floated down, and engulfed her.
As she struggled to free herself, a man leaped from the edge of the trench. Two more quickly followed. The first man grabbed her and she screamed. He silenced her when he threw her down hard to the limestone pavement. Kathryn weakly tried to pull off the tarp, but he grabbed her, picked her up, and rammed her head into the rock wall. Blood ruptured from her forehead. She was passing out. But she tried to fight it off.
The tarp fell off her head.
Kathryn looked up, in pain, dazedly blinking back the rain and her blood, and recognized one of her attackers. She tried to scream again, but could not. Another man raised his shovel and struck her in the face. He hit her again, but she ducked, and the next blow struck the top of her head. She clawed his wrist, and tried to get loose from the tarp, which had twisted around her legs. He hit her again harder, and she heard her skull crack. A blinding flash of pain. Blackness. She stopped thrashing. The thunder crashed down, and the wind whipped up—blowing the tarp off of her, and taking it somewhere in the direction of Guatemala.
* * * * * * * * *
In the camp, Jesse stopped cleaning the skull as water blew in through the window of mosquito netting. He turned off Radio Belize, which was playing “Oh a storm is threatening, our very lives today. If I don’t get some shelter, oh yeah I’m going to fade away.” Nice sense of humor he thought, and went about the lab and secured everything, before he made a quick dash for his hut. It was pointless. He ran as fast as he could, but was soaked instantly. When he got inside, he stripped out of his clothes and toweled off. He hung his towel on a nail and ruefully looked down at the lime dust sticking to his wet feet. “Ah yes,” he said to himself “the romance of archaeology.” A rudimentary examination of his stomach and arms showed half a dozen new swellings from the biting flies and mosquitoes.
Lightning struck nearby in the jungle, accompanied by a blast of thunder. A tree limb cracked nearby, and Jesse winced and ducked instinctively. Kathryn was out there, in the ceremonial plaza.
I hope she’s okay, he worried. She should be getting back now.
He lit a small, thin cigar, not because he enjoyed them, but because he had been told the smoke discouraged mosquitoes and flies. After pulling on a fresh pair of GI surplus fatigues, he sprayed his chest, with insect repellent, then his neck, back, legs, and feet.
A loud detonation of thunder, and a blazing white flash caused him to flinch and close his eyes. When he looked out toward the main plaza, boiling clouds obscured the tops of the pyramids. The storm was right on top of them.
He decided that he should go out and look for Kathryn. She had been gone for over two hours, and it was a three-mile walk out to the plaza. The storm was intensifying, water was pooling up in the low spots and it showed no signs of stopping any time soon. I’d better go out there now. Something might have happened, he thought, as he pulled on an old cut off sweatshirt, and looked for his rain poncho. Jesse dreaded going out, and knew he would get soaked, but he loved Kathy, more than she knew. He had to go see if she was all right. She would have done the same for him. He pulled on his rain poncho, put on his old cowboy hat, picked up his machete, and headed out into the rain.
He made it as far as the tool shed, on the east edge of the site, when the storm stopped him. He could not see where he was going. The thunder was almost continuous, and the winds were blowing palm fronds, sticks, and leaf litter into his face. He could feel the storm strengthening, and hear tree limbs snapping and crashing in the forest. His pants were soaked, flapping in the wind, and he kept falling down, tripping over tree limbs, and rocks. Jesse was getting frustrated. He could not make any headway. From his hut he had gone nearly a mile, and it was starting to get dark enough that he would need a flashlight soon.
He could find no sign of her; maybe she had made it back to camp by now. At least he hoped so. She had probably reached the same conclusion he had that it was getting too dangerous to walk around in the storm. Both of them had been left to look after the camp. Now it was completely unguarded. He decided to go back and get a flashlight, hopefully Kathryn was on her way in, if she wasn’t already there.
* * * * * * * * *
The storm lasted until just before dawn. No one came back from San Javier. After going repeatedly out into the storm, unable to walk or see, Jesse was exhausted and returned finally to the camp to wait for Kathryn. He spent the night alone, worrying about her and whether the camp could hold up through the storm. The wind and rain lashed his hut, and the thatched roof leaked in a dozen places. The thunder detonated all around, and the echoing sounds played with his imagination. Several times he thought he heard people talking, and hoped it was the crew returning from San Javier. But no one showed up. From exhaustion, Jesse had drifted off a couple of times during the night, but he had tried to stay alert. He felt guilty about not helping Kathryn, but she was tough and had probably figured something out.
When there was enough light to see, he started toward the ceremonial plaza calling for her. The storm had uprooted a lot of trees, ceibas, palms, cohunes, and coconuts on the edge of the jungle, and by the lagoon. The storage hut was completely flattened, and most roofs in the camp were damaged. The excavation units were full of water. Not good. The water would cause artifacts to fall out of their context and information would be lost as a result.
So far all of the tarps were gone, blown far away. But maybe the one at the main pyramid was still up. That’s where Jesse would have gone. It would have offered the best protection.
As he approached the ceremonial plaza the sun was starting to break on the horizon and the jungle seemed to wake up. Birds were singing faintly. A flock of green parrots took off from a cohune palm and screeched overhead. The clouds were breaking and it looked like they might burn off. Jesse thought again about what a horrible night Kathy must have had if she was exposed out here in the storm. He just wanted to find her as quickly as possible.
When he entered the plaza, he called out for her again. No response. He rounded the edge of the Classic Period ball court and there was the main pyramid. The excavation trench had collapsed on all sides and it was full of rubble, water and mud. The tarps were gone. He hoped she had not gone here. She might have been buried alive.
Jesse quickly looked around the edges of the slumped trench walls. Not a trace of her. So much damage had been done to the excavation; it would take a team of laborers a week to clear it. Dr. Bennett would not be happy when he got back from San Javier. He tried to calm down, and concentrate on systematically searching every meter of the site, if it took all day or until the rest of the crew came back. Kathy had to be somewhere.
* * * * * * * * *
Four hours later, he still hadn’t found a trace of her anywhere in the plaza, or in the jungle next to it, or on the lagoon shore. He felt like crying as he searched desperately.
At around 11:30 he heard the Land Rovers up on the road and was glad the crew had made it back from San Javier. Jesse hoped that Kathy had gone to the village down the highway where the local Maya Indians lived. She knew many of them because they worked as laborers on the project. That would be the next place to look. Jogging back to camp, he ran by the main pyramid again, and saw something blue on the edge of the clearing, in a tree branch. He climbed up and pulled down a University of Pennsylvania baseball cap. It belonged to Kathryn.
2 Introduction to Anthropology
The zodiac floated on the ceiling. Holmes Hall had been the centerpiece of Harvard Medical School when it was built in 1799, but now it was used for large introductory courses. The medical school had moved across the river to Boston in 1810. The domed ceiling was forty feet above the floor. For reasons that were long forgotten, on its azure blue surface the signs of the zodiac were painted in gold, accurately rendered, as they would appear in the constellations of the evening sky.
Cordelia Bell was sitting in the last row, directly under the balcony overhang, checking Professor Mamett’s slides and projectors. They were her responsibility since she was Mamett’s head teaching fellow. She placed her coffee cup on the floor, stretched out her long legs, and looked up at her own birth sign, Libra, the scales of balance, an air sign floating above her on the ceiling. It was an odd lecture hall, no question about it, but Cordelia liked it because it was strange. She knew that in the 18th and 19th centuries, many of Harvard’s benefactors and alumni, had been members of various obscure and secretive Masonic orders, and the zodiac on the roof had something to do with the masons, but how it all fit together was unclear. Someday when she had the time, she intended to research it a bit, because the zodiac floating above Holmes Hall intrigued her. But that would not happen today-or tomorrow for that matter. Today was Wednesday. She had to be Dr. Mamett’s teaching fellow in ANT 120, Introduction to Anthropology, in the morning, and the rest of the day was reserved for the last twenty-four hours before her oral examination for the Ph.D. in archaeology.
The hall had just about filled with sleepy undergraduates, and why Mamett insisted on teaching at eight thirty in the morning was a mystery. Since her teaching partner Laurence Eikelmann, had not shown up yet, Cordelia gathered up lecture two’s handouts and walked down to the front row passing them out as she went. Mamett walked in, and as he reached the front row, he motioned her over.
“Hello Delia, how are you on this fine September morning?”
“Trying to wake up Dr. Mamett.” She handed him his obligatory cup of water, which he would sip from during the lecture.
“Well. I’m happy to see you here in light of your imminent rite of passage. Some graduate students on the eve of their orals have been known to call in sick and use every remaining moment to prepare. Of course for some students like Ward, yesterday…well, it was really too bad.” He waved his hand dismissively, and handed her another slide carousel. “Your assistance under such stressful conditions is greatly appreciated.”
Like many professors Mamett liked to talk—to the point of being long-winded. His comment about Phil Ward annoyed her. For one thing, a professor should not gossip about students with other students. It wasn’t proper. For another, Ward was a close friend, who after failing the exam yesterday afternoon, had simply disappeared. Ward would receive a “terminal” master’s degree for his five years at Harvard, a permanent stigma. Many of his fellow graduate students had written him off.
“I don’t think there is any more room in my brain. I am as ready as I will ever be.”
“I’m sure you will do fine. I predict total success.”
It was good to hear him say that since he represented one fourth of the examination committee. “Oh. Would you like one of these handouts?”
“Why? I wrote it. I’d better know what’s on it.”
Mamett walked up the stairs to the podium. He was barely six feet tall, and a little pudgy. His black hair was curly and unruly, and he needed a haircut, Cordelia thought. He straightened his tie, smoothed his beard, and began to lecture. Mamett’s approach to intro to anthropology was unique, but it was a difficult course to teach. Trying to cover all of the sub fields of anthropology and their respective contributions to social science in one semester was impossible to do well. Professor Patrick J. Mamett was unorthodox, and did not even try to provide such coverage. Instead, he presented his “greatest hits of anthropology” and engaged the student’s interest from the start.
Today’s lecture was the third of the new semester, since the undergraduates were still shopping courses it was designed to lure them in and keep them. The initial segment titled “Magic, Science, and Religion”, would occupy coverage for the first three weeks. During their organizational meeting Delia, Mamett, and Eikelmann, had met to plan the strategy of the course. Mamett offered his view on how teaching such courses would help him obtain tenure.
“First, no one recognizes how important these big introductory-level courses are. This is where we snag the undecided majors. I mean, how many students enter college saying they are going to major in anthropology? Not too damned many. You see it’s our mission to win them over and convert them to majors. Then with enrollments up, the administration increases funds to the department. More research gets done. More graduate research money is available. Everyone prospers. All because we take on the courses no one else wants to teach, and make them an asset.”
Implicit in Mamett’s strategy was the prospect that he would create his own following—a good source of free research labor and a good way to build up popular support within the department’s student community. By coupling this plan with his ongoing archaeological projects in Chiapas and Belize, Mamett averaged ten to twelve published manuscripts a year. Next year when he came up for review, he would be a strong tenure candidate. His plan seemed to be working, because enrollments were up and the number of anthropology majors had increased. Of course what all of these B.A.s in anthropology were going to do after graduation was not clear. The graduate students knew it was not exactly a growth field.
Having quickly dispensed with explaining the course requirements, textbooks, and grading system, Mamett launched into the lecture.
“Magic. Science. Religion.” Three very different topics at first glance, but are they really? They are all systems of belief. They are all ideologies. Yes, even science is ideological, talk to any devotee of Charles Darwin. Everyone on the planet today believes in at least one or more of these systems, and this is true of every civilization that has ever existed.
“Belief. How many of you believe in the supernatural?” About ten hands went up, scattered across the hall.
“I count approximately nine or ten people who are willing to admit they believe in the supernatural. Keep your hands up. No one else?” Heads turned in the seats to see who was foolish enough to put up their hands.
“Okay. So the rest of you don’t believe in God? Correct? Because you know, God is a supernatural being. Our Judaeo-Christian God, or any other god. You can’t see Him. You can’t analyze Him scientifically. He works in mysterious ways. He’s supernatural. He is the foundation of all religions, creator of heaven and earth, and apparently not all that popular in this class.”
This brought a scatter of laughter from the students.
“So even God has a tough time at Harvard.” Now almost everyone was laughing as Mamett paused for effect. “Let us reconsider the question. How many of you believe in the supernatural?”
This time hands went up all over the hall. Mamett smiled to himself.
“Good. Because you see, this part of the course is all about belief. The nature of belief, and the belief in nature. Why do all of the world’s religions show striking similarities to each other? Who is your God? Or who are your gods? In the first part, we will explore the relationships between belief systems, and their respective roles in the evolution of civilization. Magic, religion, art, science and politics were fused together in the early states, rooted in shamanism. Take for example, the pyramids of the ancient Maya.
“As you will see in the slides I’m going to show, they built them to represent the otherworld, as sacred mountains erected on the back of a mythic turtle floating in a primordial ocean. These beliefs are ancient, back to a time when Maya religion was shamanistic. The plazas and courtyards represented valleys, and the ball court symbolized a crack in the earth leading to the underworld. Royalty lived nearby in palaces built to glorify the rulers, and their lineages.
“Maya kings were thought to have supernatural powers gained by birth and maintained by the use of drugs and sacrifice. They would sacrifice their own blood, the blood of others, animals, art objects. These sacrifices occurred at public ceremonies held in front of the pyramids. The combination of blood loss, acute pain, and drugs induced hallucinatory visions in the royal practitioners of these mystic rituals. This is how the rulers transformed the landscape into sacred places of spirituality. These visions are depicted in the mythic art and architecture of the Maya.”
“Blood magic. Ritual sacrifice. It was all part of their religion—as were the pyramids, and the monumental art of the stelae. These monuments clearly show the supernatural bridge that the Maya lords provided to the heavens above, the underworld below, and the world of humans in the middle. Highly evolved shamanism. It’s all woven together and documented in the hieroglyphics, or as we archaeologists prefer to say, the glyphs.”
The lights in the hall dimmed and the slide show began.
