They even find something to fit me.
“You look really nice,” Ixchel whispers to me as her turn comes to kiss my cheek.
“So do you,” I mumble. She does, too. Sleek black hair pouring over her shoulders, her eyes and lips lightly made up, she looks elegant. Talk about cleaning up well.
It’s the craziest scene, straight out of a Mexican soap opera. Everybody dressed to the nines and wearing fancy cologne. I can hardly believe that these are the same people who lined the underground streets of Ek Naab a few months ago in their traditional dress and watched me go to be installed as the Bakab Ix.
My mom looks amazing. She’s getting good at being the grieving widow. She and Susannah really stand out with their fair hair under the black mantillas. In front of all these strangers from Ek Naab, Mom is elegant and charming. Not a tear in sight.
Susannah is calm the whole time. I don’t expect her to be moved—she didn’t know my dad, after all. What’s a bit odd is that she also seems perfectly at home in these surroundings. I’ve never met anyone who could take so much weirdness in stride. Nothing fazes her.
The priest—a woman—even wears robes of liturgical purple. All a little bizarre. My mom doesn’t say anything, but I’m sure I notice her pursing her lips.
Inside, the church is crammed with hibiscus flowers. Pride of place in the church goes to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Statues of saints line the pews. Candles burn in hanging chandeliers. Dad’s coffin, draped in white, stands in front of the altar.
The service is in Latin, sung by the priest and two robed attendants, who stand with their backs to the congregation for most of the time. A choir chimes in with music that sounds just like the kind of thing you hear in the chapel of an Oxford college. I have to watch everyone else to know when to stand, sit, or kneel. It’s obvious to me that at least half the people there are as clueless as I am. Carlos Montoyo stands on the other side of my mother. I’m between Mom and Ixchel. I find myself wondering about Montoyo. Does he have a family? Does he do anything, apart from quietly run Ek Naab?
I’m strangely disoriented. The whole experience is so odd, it’s hard to believe this is actually happening. I seem to go through everything on automatic pilot. Sit, stand, kneel, listen to prayers; what is it all for? How can the guy in the coffin really be my dad? How can the choir be singing a mass straight out of sixteenth-century Spain? I feel like I’m existing in the past and in the present; in Mexico, Spain, and Oxford, all at the same time.
The priest talks about redemption. Whatever my father ever did wrong in his life, she says, his sacrifice at the end will redeem everything. He’s a hero in everyone’s eyes. I wonder why no one blames me, but they don’t.
As we process out of the church, the members of the choir, high in their stalls, throw hibiscus petals over the coffin. Falling on the simple white coffin drapings, they look like drops of blood against snow.
Outside, the sky is flat and gray, like a beach pebble. High above the clouds, the air stirs, preparing for a storm. We bury my father on the slope of the nearby hill, in the shade of a tree. It feels like reaching the end of a very, very long day.
As I watch the coffin being lowered into the ground, I clasp my hands together hard, to stop them shaking. It doesn’t work. Ixchel moves closer to me, her fingers reaching for mine. Her hand is small and hot. She’s trembling too.
At the touch of Ixchel’s hand, my mind flicks back to the memory of my dad in his hut on the slopes of the volcano, listening to Miles Davis on his iPod while Ixchel made the tea. How his eyes filled up with tears.
I sense Ixchel next to me, our shoulders touching. She turns to me, but I can’t bear to look at her. I blink rapidly; tears sting my eyes as I stare directly ahead. In my chest there’s an almost unbearable ache.
“You’ll get through this, Josh,” Ixchel whispers, and squeezes my hand.
I was desperate to have all my questions answered … I never imagined it would end like this. But I guess it has. Now I really do know how my father died … he was saving my life.
Meanwhile, pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place; the human race still has an appointment with the super-wave in 2012. As to how things will turn out for me and my family … I’m still in the dark.
On my wrist, under the sleeve of a crisp white shirt and the suit jacket, the Bracelet of Itzamna tingles gently against my skin. I find myself focusing on the sensation. It’s as though the Bracelet were communicating with me:
This isn’t over.