13 March
The lacuna came back. In the afternoon the rock opened its mouth and swallowed the boy down its gullet. But it was hard to swim, the water was rushing out. It was the same as before, lungs bursting, turning back too soon. Leandro’s brother whispering, Come live with me here, but a brain hungry for oxygen loses courage and wants air.
Tomorrow will be the day.
Last Will and Testament
Let it be known. If HWS drowns in the cave, he leaves nothing
to anyone. His earthly possessions are stolen things: pocket
watch. This book. One year of good luck.
He leaves his body for the fishes to eat.
He leaves Leandro to wonder where he has gone.
He leaves Mother and Mr. Produce the Cash to enjoy the company
of the devil.
Dios habla por el que calla.
14 March
The cave has bones inside. Bones of humans! Things on the other side.
This is how it feels when you are nearly drowned: the brain pounds like a pulse in red and black. The salt water burns your eyes, and you nearly go blind following the light until you come to the air, breathing.
At the end of the tunnel the cave opens up to light, a small saltwater pool in the jungle. Almost perfectly round, as big across as this bedchamber, with sky straight up, dappled and bright through the branches. Amate trees stood in a circle around the water hole like curious men, gaping because a boy from another world had suddenly arrived in their pool. The pombo trees squatted for a close look, with their knobbly wooden knees poking up out of the water. A tiger heron stood one-legged on a rock, cocking an unfriendly eye at the intruder. San Juan Pescadero the kingfisher zipped back and forth between two perches, crying, “Kill him kill him kill him!”
Piles of stone blocks lay in a jumble around the edges of the pool, a broken-down something made of coral rock. Vines scrambled all over the ruin, their roots curling down through it like fingers in sand. It was a temple or something else very ancient.
The light through the trees was shadowy at midday, but the water was clear. Belly-dragged up on a flat stone, sitting at the edge looking back in, it was plain to see the bottom of the cave dropped down to make a sort of room down there, huge and deep. Stones were piled like a sand castle underwater, with bits of shining things mixed into the pile. Maybe yellow leaves, or gold coins. It was like coming up inside a storybook. An ancient temple in the forest, and a pirate’s treasure below. The treasure was mostly shells and broken pottery covered with sea moss, mostly too deep to dive down and reach.
It took hours to explore everything. Some of the broken blocks of the ruin had designs carved on them, a script of lines and circles or perhaps the portraits of gods. One looked like a skeleton, its arms flung open, the skull smiling wide. A water snake slipped off a rock and made a sliding S shape across the top of the water. The jungle vines were tangled like fishing nets. It was the type of forest with a watery floor, and no good way to walk out of there. And no good way to swim back out of that cave, either. No way back from this story, it seemed. Nothing left to do but slide like a turtle into the pool, sink down, and sit on slime-covered rocks and the treasure of ancient times.
That is where the bones were! Leg bones, wedged in the rocks. It made for such a shock, it was hard to breathe after seeing them. Floating in the pool was also not very easy because now the tide pulled downward, dropping lower and sucking against the stones around the edge of the hole, hissing a song of drowning: ahogarse, ahogarse. The ocean pulled hard, dragging a coward explorer back from the secret place, sucking him out through the tunnel and spitting him into the open sea.
Out there again gasping, it was plain that the tide had turned and gone out. Now it was extremely low. Coral knobs poked out like heads. A great round moon hung on the eastern horizon, just coming out of the sea, white as an oyster.
Then it seemed the bones and temple could not have been real, and this cave would vanish again. Only the moon was real, as big and whole as breathing.
A book in Don Enrique’s library says the pagans of old built their castles on this island. Not as tall as the great pyramids of the Azteca, but small stepped temples with platforms for sacrifice. They carved pictures of their gods, which were many in number. The book said the same things Leandro says, that the ancients watched light and signs to tell them when to plant corn, when to get married. But it also told more terrible things: they made sacrifices by throwing gold and sometimes girls (alive) into water holes in the forest. The cave must be that kind of hole, a cenote. Because of the bones.
The book was written by a priest, not very good, but interesting at some parts. Hernán Cortés sent an expeditionary force to destroy the pagan city here and build the cathedral in town. If the ruin in the jungle is really part of that ancient city, then for certain the cenote has gold and treasure in its depths, along with the bones of unlucky girls. Leandro might know something about it, but can’t be asked. There is no trusting his allegiance, he might tell Mother. So he will never know about going inside the lacuna.
24 March
First, the cave wasn’t there today. Or so it seemed. But really it was, nearly two meters down from the surface, buried by tide, with a strong current flowing out of it.
The last time, it was morning when the current inside the cave pulled inward toward the jungle-hole. During the hours of exploring the tide must have turned, so at evening it was easy to swim out. The moon was just rising then. The tides are the cause. The time to go in is just before the tide turns. Otherwise, more bones on that pile.
25 March
The tide was wrong completely, the current flowed out of the cave all day. On the day of the full moon, everything was right.
Don Enrique says a full moon pulls up the highest tides of the month, at midday and midnight. And it pulls them down to their lowest ebb when it is rising or setting. So says a man in a frock coat and breeches who, if he tried to row a boat, would fall out instantly and drown. But Leandro said the same thing about the moon and high tide, so it might be true.
How can you know if the moon is going toward full, or disappearing?
This evening the moon was half, and Leandro said it’s dying away. You can tell because it’s shaped like the letter C, not curved forward like D. He says when the moon is D like Dios, it is growing to fill God’s sky. When dying away it is C, like Cristo on the cross. So, no good tides again for many days.
12 April
Today was the full moon, perfect tide, and the bad luck of slicing the end of a finger with the kitchen knife. Blood everywhere, even in the masa, turning it pink. It had to be thrown out. Oh no, let’s serve it to Don Enrique and Mother! A clayuda of her son’s blood, like the Azteca sacrifices to their gods.