BOOK ONE
(Lucy)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We entered the passageway to the tomb where we had walked one other time, before the blue body, before the jail, before She of the Rainbow and K’inich Ahau. James repeatedly told me to “stay close.” Almost in spite of my otherwise sniveling dependence upon going wherever James led when we were in the tunnels, this time I found myself instinctively sniffing about as a reporter. Why would someone bring a dead body through this labyrinth—or, at the very least, an incapacitated body? James walked slowly, switching the flashlight to my feet as we made our descent through the same undulating tunnels and around the same dark corners we had traversed what felt like an eternity before. We lowered our heads. We stepped over holes. We navigated footing. We scraped jagged walls. James was more relaxed than I would have expected, given the circumstances. He assured me security had been doubled and that there was nothing to fear despite the killer remaining at large. James was always relaxed in the tunnels. And I was not afraid. I was, on the other hand, hounded. How had a dead body been navigated through all this? Or maybe the victim had been led here, and then murdered on site. Why here, in the location of the archaeologists’ most recent “tantalizing” discovery that had commanded international attention? Why hang the victim, as oppose leaving him dead on the ground? Why take the trouble to paint him blue? Why the day of the press conference? I did not speak these questions. I simply followed James, my head tilting oddly at various points, for second looks at this difficult step or that precarious drop. I lingered a bit longer when we came upon the same wheel barrel we had passed the last time. Could the ropes we saw bundled in it have been a hammock?
How? How? Unanswered questions hammered my mind as, at last, we came upon the tomb chamber and I was compelled to refocus. The site had been cordoned off as a “crime scene,” but James ignored it. As he did last time, he told me to hold the flashlight while he loosened the padlock. We entered the chamber and he flipped on the light. “Here,” he said, extending a hand to secure my footing. We stood on the same spot where we had been when it all began with the sweeping pull of the tarp.
“Wait.” He bent over and peeked under it. “No dead bodies.” This stole a smile.
He pulled back the tarp to expose the sunken chamber. There was the raised stone slab he had mentioned by Altar Q. The remains of Yax K’uk Mo’ himself had been removed for tests and preservation. James switched on the flashlight to point out a piece of jade that lay near where the skull had been. “These are his ear flares.” He passed the light over something else. “This is his pectoral,” the jade bead adornment engraved with a woven mat design that Altar Q depicts. “The image of Yax K’uk Mo’ on Altar Q also shows him wearing ear flares like these”—he jiggled the light. I looked, but couldn’t tell what I was seeing. “His teeth were filed to points and inlaid with jade. The fanged teeth and goggled eyes are Tlaloc imagery adopted by the Maya from Central Mexico. I said that, didn’t I?” He moved the light. “Here at the base is an early-classic cylinder tripod. It has residue inside, probably the remains of a ritual offering.”
Sweat poured from our faces. My shirt was as wet as it had been that first day when we were stranded in the rain. “Where did they find my film cartridge?”
He moved the light. “Back in here.” He pointed toward the corner near potsherds. “Mario pulled it out.”
I leaned to get a closer look. “Did it damage anything?”
“Nothing of consequence.” He switched off the flashlight. “Except you.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the tail of his shirt. “Let’s get out of here. We can do the interview outside where we can breathe.”
*
The sun’s early rays cast long shadows and the dew beneath our feet invigorated our steps. Dirtied and drenched in sweat after our trek to the underbelly of Temple 16, we ambled slowly in the brilliance of the morning’s light. We found a cool spot to sit on a ledge north of the ball court. The breeze against our faces, we settled comfortably onto the shaded stone. I looked about me and wondered what stories lay hidden in these temple walls, what dreams had been born and then died here. Everything in this world reaches skyward, the temple pyramids, the stelae, the stairways. Each in its own way seems an attempt to reach the thirteenth level of the Upper World. The mountains swathed in clouds, the mist rising over the valley, the river in its gentle and settling movement, and the trees in the wind, each seemed to carry voices of ghosts from behind these fallen houses. They labored and vanished like a turn in the road. I loved these mountains. Yet sadness had come over me.
I pulled from my backpack the photos of Berto and looked at them again with reference to the passage we had just traversed. I looked and looked. The answers to the questions that hounded my mind, I knew, was in those photos.
James stretched his legs and crossed them, pulling off his baseball cap, and he ran his fingers through his hair the way that had become so familiar to me. “You want your tape recorder? How do you want to do this?” He folded his hands casually on his lap.
How did I want to do this? That was an altogether different story to tell. But that was not this story. This story, it seemed, was writing itself.
I sat cross-legged, faced him, brushed the hair from my face and pondered why James refused to talk about the crime. I began the interview.
“I don’t want to record it. Just tell me the story of the kings.”
We sat beneath the shade of the deciduous forest while James spoke of the great Maya kings—their beginnings and endings—and I listened for the story. He said that Yax K’uk Mo’ saw clearly the role of the king as the divine sustainer of planetary movements and procurer of sacrifice and therefore, as he put it, was “big on blood rituals.” The successors of Yax K’uk Mo’ did not lack good ideas about how to continue the tradition. “Especially Yax K’uk Mo’s son,” who James said “went bananas.” He lifted his cap. UnderYax K’uk Mo’ Copán prospered as a cohesive political unit in the Middle Classic phase, “though several kings surpassed him in greatness and influence.” The key transitional figure that took Copán from the Middle Classic to the Late Classic period was the twelfth king, Smoke Imix God K. Having reigned for sixty-seven years, he was considered Copán’s greatest king. Copán reached statehood under him and the population reached between 8,000 and 12,000 by the end of his reign in C.E. 695. “We can infer he had wisdom and staying power,” James said. “He was tenacious and well-loved.”
Not to be outdone, 18 Rabbit emerged, acceding twenty-one days after Smoke Imix died, and reigned as Copán’s thirteenth king for forty-three years. Under 18 Rabbit, James said, “Copán reached new levels of aesthetic and technical sophistication in the arts.” In keeping with kingly tradition, he assigned himself supernatural authority and made sure his people understood the cosmos in a way that perpetuated his unique position. 18 Rabbit was particularly active in performing rituals, James said, and built a third version of the ball court—the one over our shoulders—which James repeatedly emphasized was integral to upholding the king’s divine status as keeper of the planetary movements. Some think 18 Rabbit was on a journey in search of captives to sacrifice for the dedication of his ball court when he was captured in C.E. 738 and beheaded at Quiriguá, a fiefdom located in present-day Guatemala. “I’ll take a sip of that.” He pointed to the water bottle. “18 Rabbit’s beheading was a seminal event for Copán, but you know that.” He paused and pulled the tail of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. Then he said, “Why are you going home today?”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
“Why did you say that to your father? We haven’t talked about it.”
“Why are you asking me this? I’m interviewing you.”
“You’re not running your recorder. You’re not taking notes. Why did you tell your father you were leaving today?”
“Your job is to answer my questions. What happened after 18 Rabbit lost his head?”
“I want you to stay another day, at least.”
“What did the people think when their great god-king didn’t come through?”
He sighed and tucked in his shirt. “The death of any king had a destabilizing effect on the society. The loss of 18 Rabbit was all the more traumatic because he lost his head to a subservient fiefdom. It was humiliating, to say the least.”
His successor, Smoke Monkey, Ruler 14, thought he could rally the spirits of the people if he shared power with lower lords and decentralized his rule. So he built what the archaeologists call the Mat House, Structure 22A, “in proximity to Structure 22, which was 18 Rabbit’s sacred mountain.” James emphasized that the two structures served two very different purposes and highlighted the distinction between these two dissimilar kings. “18 Rabbit’s Structure 22 rests on the mountain top overlooking the valley of maize, with two large molars flanking the entrance representing the mouth of the godking himself, who communed with his ancestors there,” he said. “The Mat House, in contrast, shifts the focus from the king to the people. Smoke Monkey still reigned at the top of the heap, but the emblematic mat weave design over both sides of the entrance represents unity and people power. Plus, he didn’t place his own image on the stela in front of the building, which says something. Despite an otherwise lackluster career, Smoke Monkey’s strategy enabled the city to survive the trauma of losing 18 Rabbit. His reign lasted eleven years.”
“Might one say Smoke Imix would be like Ronald Reagan and Smoke Monkey like Harry Truman and 18 Rabbit like Bill Clinton?”
He looked at me blankly. “Political dissent notwithstanding, kind of.”
He went on to describe how Smoke Shell, Ruler 15, feeling confident that the goodwill of the people had been revived thanks to Smoke Monkey’s Mat House, went in the opposite direction of his predecessor’s “people power” and reasserted the divine role of the god-king. He ordered the construction of Structure 26 and the Hieroglyphic Stairway, dedicating it to the great king Smoke Imix hoping to rekindle the spirit of the glory days of that great god-king. “It was like a revivalist movement,” James said.
“Images of all the kings abound on glyphs throughout the stairway and all are carrying shields. Some hold ropes, which represent the binding of captives for sacrifice. Some are wearing headdresses and holding lances. Smoke Shell intentionally portrayed Copán’s kings as great warriors,” he said.
The stairway itself represents an elaborate inverted jaguar head and all the kings on the various inscriptions are being belched forth from the open mouth of this beast, his lower jaw at the top. The stairway is flanked on its four corners and on the front and back doorways with large goggle-eyed masks of the Tlaloc jaguar deity, the patron god of the warrior and his sacrifices. The whole complicated picture is meant to symbolize that the rulers of Copán were consummate warriors, and the procurers of victims for sacrifice.
Just south of the stairway, he said, Smoke Shell added Structure 230, “a nasty structure” decorated with human skulls and fleshless human bones carrying the glyph sign na, for ‘house’ — the ‘house of human bones and skulls.’ “It was the locus for sacrificial rituals, for storage, dismemberment and embalming and other manipulations of human remains.”
“Manipulations?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He looked at his watch. “You getting tired?”
“No.”
He rubbed his eyes. Wearily, he spoke of the irony of the Hieroglyphic Stairway being the only major structure the Maya at Copán hoped would be an everlasting monument to the glory of the warrior-kings, and it was the first to collapse. “The fill they used to construct it was the weakest we’ve found in Copán. The stones were set in loose dry earth and were never completely consolidated.” Smoke Smell’s reign lasted about fourteen years. James looked at me. “He would be George Steinbrenner.”
“Carlos told me that toward the end of the eighth century the warfare changed and the Maya became more concerned with taking captives for sacrifice than with political expansion.”
“By the time we get to the last king, Yax Pasah, in 763, things were unraveling at Copán,” he said. The population was increasing and the urban nucleus expanding, swallowing up arable land that should have been used for farming. Added to this, Copán had become a regional center for the production of Copador polychrome pottery, which, he said, meant more and more people were coming and going to the Valley, including non-Maya peoples. “This disseminated Copán’s hold on the hinterland sites. It was losing its own power hold of centralized rule from within,” and, he said, Yax Pasah reacted “with extreme measures.” He undertook massive renovations of Temple 11 and Temple 16. The facade of Structure 11 was the largest anthropomorphic figure ever carved in the Maya area, with an enormous cosmogram on the north face that sent the message that the king was the one who controlled supernatural forces of the world. The renovation of Temple 16, where Yax K’uk Mo’ was buried, was intended to mimic Smoke Shell’s Hieroglyphic Stairway, only Yax Pasah’s version was a gruesome affair. “It became the most gory temple in Copán,” James said. “There is a final-phase stairway that’s got the big skull rack displaying the skulls that came from sacrificial victims mounted on poles. Really nasty.” He said Yax Pasah took desperate measures in the effort to try and keep things together.
His greatest gift to us, however, James said, was Altar Q. He called it “a compact version of the Hieroglyphic Stairway” since it carries the portraits of Copán’s sixteen kings, fifteen of whom are seated on their name glyphs. Yax Pasah’s glyph meant ‘lord.’ “Only Yax K’uk Mo’ was not seated atop his name glyph,” James said. “It took us the longest time to figure out who this guy was.” Finally, the epigraphers discovered that his name was in his headdress, the combination of the quetzal and the macaw. “So Yax K’uk Mo’, wearing his name in his hat, passes the scepter of office to Yax Pasah. The first king anoints the last.
“It had become evident that things were getting pretty messy under Yax Pasah. At the central axis of Temple 16 he constructed the world’s largest jaguar Tlaloc visage surrounded by ropes and a large skull, reminiscent of Structure 230, that gory building used for ‘manipulations’,” James said. “By the end of Yax Pasah’s reign, Temple 16 was the single most gory temple ever built in Copán.”
I reminded him he still hadn’t answered my question about Carlos’s comment.
He paused and rubbed his face. “It is clear the entire Maya area was deeply involved in warfare toward the end, as Carlos said. Tikál was trying to hold its own against Calakmul, and the conflict spilled over all the Maya lowlands. It seems to have gotten worse rather than better toward the end, and I now think warfare was a major factor in the collapse of the Maya civilization at the end of the Classic period. Everybody was involved in it. Like it or not, they got swept up in war. I have come to believe that the intense warfare of the late Classic period did have a cataclysmic effect on the fall of Copán’s dynasty. Other things did too, such as the loss of usable farming land and deforestation. But expanded warfare had more of an impact than I had previously thought.”
He took off his cap and wiped his brow and took a swig of water. “Their cosmology of the king-as-god, in the end, couldn’t provide the internal stability needed to sustain unity in the face of warfare and local rivalries. That, plus environmental deterioration, brought about the internal collapse of Copán. The last inscription we have is on an unfinished monument called Altar L, commissioned by a pretender to the throne. The fact that his accession monument was never finished shows the chaotic political environment of the moment.”
“So Yax K’uk Mo’s dynasty lasted a baktun?”
“It came within thirty years of a baktun completion.”
“Did the Maya cannibalize themselves?”
He looked at me. “Can we talk about something else?”
“One more question.”
James sighed.
“Why did Yax K’uk Mo’ choose the Copán Valley in the first place to establish his regal ritual center?”
James Fee perked up, answering happily despite his fatigue. He liked talking about the geological composition of the Copán Valley and its “distinct environmental zones.” He spoke in a gentle monotone, with lavish descriptions that flowed like a peaceful river from his ocean of knowledge. Steep hills. Gently rolling foothills. Ancient high river terraces. Fertile low river terraces. The floodplain. The way he said “ancient high river terraces” and “fertile low river terraces” —particularly the word “terraces”— made me wish I had my pen. He described the sacred importance of the hills and caves, which were considered the passageway to the Underworld. “The bat is the denizen of sacred caves,” he said. “That is why the hieroglyph that names the ancient kingdom of Copán is the leaf-nosed bat.” He frequently attached the words “that is why” to what he was explaining and this oddly consoled me. It made me feel safe in this otherwise bewildering world. He mentioned the granite outcrop in the eastern valley and the kaolin used for pottery in the north. He made a passing reference to small limestone outcrops and the geographically stable green volcanic tuff. I liked the way he said those words. “The Maya used it for their dressed stone,” he said. “That is why so many sculptures have remained in such good condition.” He spoke of jade and obsidian and the hydration layer on obsidian tools that helped archaeologists date things.
He made a clear distinction between the Copán Valley and the Copán pocket, a ‘pocket’ being a tributary formed by a river in sharp descent, “cutting through deep escarpments before leveling out.” When he said the word “escarpments,” I wanted to write it down. He said people wrongly refer to the ‘valley’ when they really mean the ‘pocket.’ I thought it must annoy him when people did that. “The Principal Group and adjacent settlements are in the ‘pocket’.” I wanted to write down “adjacent settlements.” The various pockets in the valley contained some of the richest soil in Central America, high in nitrogen content, which is optimal for growing tobacco. “The Maya were big smokers,” he said. “The flooding of the bottomlands renewed the soil, which was fertile to begin with.” But it was when he said, “the rolling hillsides and the alluvial bottomlands made the pocket an attractive location to settle” that I started to weep.
It was the words “alluvial bottomlands.” I wanted to write them down. I wanted to hear him say them again. I looked into the face of James Fee, bronzed by the sun with his brooding eyes and sculpted brow. I measured the cadence of his voice and felt mesmerized by its gentility. When he said “alluvial bottomlands,” I realized I loved his National Geographic voice. I thought, What if I never hear the words “alluvial bottomlands” again from that voice? What if I never again hear him talk about limestone outcrops or green volcanic tuff? Dressed stone or the obsidian hydration layer? Or about alluvial plains and the river’s descent through deep escarpments, the difference between a pocket and a valley? What if this is the last interview I conduct with James Fee? What if I never again see that chiseled brow, that hair, those Jesus eyes? What if I walk away with two hundred lines and never come back to this place that feels to me so much like home?
I looked at him and he looked at me. Everything I wanted to become rose up into my face. Everything he, too, had been and wanted to become, rose up in his. He was saying something about the pocket being distinguished by the bottomlands and expanses of foothills with steep slopes higher up, and tears rolled down my face. I wiped my cheek. His eyes never left mine. I knew, as he knew, that everything between us hung in this moment. “The foothills contain ancient alluvial terraces,” he said. “The bottomlands are like alluvial fans formed by tributary streams”—he lifted his hand and held it to me. “The diverse land forms, soil types, and distinct precipitation regimes of the Copán drainage basin made for a great deal of variation in the pre-Maya vegetation cover.” Without a conscious act of will, I found myself there, under his arm, my wet face against his, my tears in his beard. “The sheer beauty of the lush and tropical bottomlands, defined by crests of mountains and rolling hills” —he lifted my chin— “made it a desirable location for an agriculture-based population.”
Then he stopped talking about environmental zones. I remember little about what we did and said in the next moments. I touched a finger to his lips and closed my eyes. I listened to his breathing and the beating of his heart. His face smelled like sweat and Lifebuoy soap. I knew the smell of Lifebuoy soap from the barrels of supplies we received in the jungle. Lifebuoy soap came wrapped with birthday candles and peanut butter. His shirt smelled like pressed cotton. The string holding his sunglasses was tied in a square knot, the same knot Gabe had taught me to tie. Right over left, left over right, the strongest knot you’ll ever tie, Bu. Only my fingers on his beard and his touch of my hair, the smell of Lifebuoy soap hung over this moment. That, and my longing to hear the words “alluvial bottomlands.”