Читать книгу The City of the Sacred Well - T. A. Willard - Страница 8

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DON EDUARDO has described to me his first trip to Chi-chen Itza, and his impressions, which are somewhat as follows if my notes and memory do not err:

“I had traveled all of a hot and dusty day, on horseback, through the jungle and over animal trails. In many places my Indian guide, who went afoot, had to lead my horse over or around the huge stones that blocked our path. After the first few miles I was painfully aware that running blithely from my city into Mérida, for forgotten trifles or even for sorely needed supplies, was another of my pleasant fancies thoroughly punctured.

“Darkness overtook us ere we reached our journey’s end, and the ensuing coolness was delightfully refreshing even though the dark slowed our already snail-like progress. Just when I had abandoned all hope of making further headway, the moon sailed majestically into view—a gorgeous full moon in a perfect Yucatan night, lighting every object softly, gently, with a caressing touch so lacking in the masculine directness of Old Sol. A more lovely silver and black-velvet night I have never seen. Truly, the moon magic of Yucatan is no less than divine stage-craft which subtly wafts one completely away from the Land of Things as They Are and into the Realm of Enchantment. I should not have been surprised to meet the March Hare, Lancelot, Gulliver, Scheherezade, or Helen of Troy. In fact, I was prepared to stop and chat with any of them and offer a bite from the one remaining cake of chocolate in my pocket.

“Sometime, and most reluctantly, I suppose I must go the way of all flesh. If so, then by all means let it be in the full glory of a Yucatan moon and the going will not be unpleasant.

“For days I had been traveling, first by train, then by volan,—that satanic contrivance which leaves one bruised and bumped from head to foot,—and finally in the saddle, dozing over the head of a somnambulant horse.

“Even the witchery of the moonlight could not long hold alert my fatigued body and mind. On and on we plodded, hour after hour. Midnight passed and how many more hours I do not know, when I heard an exclamation in the vernacular, from my guide. Startled out of a half-conscious dream I came erect in the saddle.

“My Indian was earnestly pointing up and ahead. I raised my eyes and became electrically, tinglingly awake. There, high up, wraith-like in the waning moonlight, loomed what seemed a Grecian temple of colossal proportions, atop a great steep hill. So massive did it seem in the half-light of the approaching morning that I could think of it only as an impregnable fortress high above the sea, on some rocky, wave-dashed promontory. As this mass took clearer shape before me with each succeeding hoof-beat of my weary steed, it grew more and more huge. I felt an actual physical pain, as if my heart skipped a few beats and then raced to make up the loss.

“Thus for the first time I viewed the Great Pyramid of Kukul Can, now called El Castillo—the Castle. And I shall always be glad that I had the good fortune to get my first glimpse of it in this fashion. Times without number I have since passed and repassed this grand old structure, yet never have I walked in its shadow without a quickening of the pulse or without recalling undimmed the vision of that moonlit night. And, as I look back through my years of intimate companionship with my City of the Sacred Well, it seems to me that moonlit nights are linked inextricably with nearly all the important events that have there befallen me—or, at least, with those which are pleasant in retrospect.

“By the time I had dismounted and unsaddled my horse my Indian was already curled up and fast asleep. The poor horse was, I think, in sound slumber the minute his feet came to a halt. But for me, weary as I was, sleep was out of the question. I must see more of this magic city. Reaching the foot of the steep ascent, I crawled painfully up what had obviously once been a tremendous stairway, now overgrown with small trees and shrubs. At the end of a breathless climb I reached a narrow, level stone ledge eighty feet above the ground and faced the north door of the temple—the temple of the great god Kukul Can. This sheer pile of perfectly joined masonry pierced by a forty-foot doorway within whose sides I could dimly discern intricate and fantastically carved bas-reliefs; this time-grayed temple of a forgotten faith, viewed there in the silence and solitude of eerie moonlight—is it to be wondered at if my knees shook just a little and if I glanced apprehensively over my shoulder awaiting the terrible, majestic wrath of the god whose temple was profaned by the eyes of an unbeliever?

“On my eminence I turned slowly and gazed out over the dead city. Here and there, some near by and some at a distance, were a dozen other pyramids surmounted by buildings. A few seemed well preserved, others were in picturesque ruins, all ghostly white in the moonlight, except where a doorway or a shadow stood out in inky blackness. I could see the long shadow of that old temple we call the ‘Nunnery.’ The stillness was broken only by the monotonous hum of hidden cicadas; or was it the distant beat of phantom tunkuls, or sacred drums, warning that the ancient God of the Feathered Serpent did but sleep and might at any moment awake?

“And then my eyes were caught and held by a broad raised roadway leading straight away from the temple toward a vast black pool overgrown with trees. Breathless, frozen to the spot, I could only look and look, for in a blinding flash I realized that I was gazing at the Sacred Way, and at its end the Sacred Well in whose murky depths even then might lie the pitiful bones of many once lovely maidens sacrificed to appease a grim god. What untold treasures this grisly well might hide! What tragedies had been enacted at its brink!

“I descended and as I walked along the Sacred Way I thought of the thousands, millions perhaps, of times this worn thoroughfare had been trodden in bygone ages where all was now desolate. Here was I, a grain of dust moving where kings and nobles of countless centuries before had trod, and where, for all I know, kings and nobles may again tread long years after I am still a grain of dust but moveless.

“At the brink of the well I peered into the blackness and continued to gaze into its depths, picturing in my mind’s eye the awesome ceremonies it had witnessed. The chant of death begins, swelling softly over the slow pulsing of the drums. The solemn procession leaves the holy temple of Kukul Can and the funeral cortège advances along the broad raised avenue of the Sacred Way, toward the Sacred Well, the dwelling-place of Noh-och Yum Chac, the terrible Rain God who must be placated by human sacrifice. The corn in the fields is withering, crying for rain. If the anger of Yum Chac be not appeased famine will follow and the dread Lord of Death, Ah Puch—he of the grinning, sightless skull—will walk abroad in the land.

“Slowly, slowly the cortège draws near. At its head is the high priest, clad in ceremonial vestments and elaborate feathered head-dress, as befits the pontiff of the Feathered Serpent. And what is this embroidered bower borne so reverently by sturdy, sun-browned lesser priests? Is it a bier, a stately catafalque? Is the pitiful victim already dead? Ah, no! she moves, beautiful, flawless—the most lovely maiden to be found in the land. Through every city and village and country-side, for weeks and weeks, a thousand priests have sought her, this fairest flower of Maya maidenhood. Her face is pale. She knows the supreme honor that is hers—she who is to become so soon the bride of the Rain God. But there is terror in those lovely eyes, a benumbing, cold fear of the Unknown.

“And behind them, filling the whole of the Sacred Way, come the king, the nobles, the great warriors and many priests. Already on the far side of the Sacred Well is gathered a silent, grave-faced multitude, the whole populace of the city and pilgrims from afar.

“The high priest enters the little temple at the brink of the well. The dirge ceases, the drums are stilled. He performs his devotions to the Rain God. He lights the sacred incense-burners and the fragrant blue vapor floats, curling, upward. Again the slowly chanted dirge starts, to the muted beating of the drums. He lights a basket of sweet-smelling copal incense, holds it aloft, and casts it into the well. The chant grows louder, the drums beat faster.

“Two powerful nacons, or lesser priests, lift the maiden from her couch, their muscular brown arms forming a sling in which she lies as lightly as a leaf on the bosom of a stream. They advance with her to the edge of the well. The pitiless sun glares down into her upturned fear-stricken eyes and she throws one slender arm over her face. Her gauzy garments reveal the tender flesh and adolescent contours of a girl in her early teens.

“Slowly the nacons swing the feather-light body backward and forward to the beat of the drums and the rhythm of the dirge; forward and backward in an ever wider sweep, while the drums and chant swell to a roar. At a sign from the high priest the drums are suddenly stilled; the chant ends in a high-pitched wail. A last forward swing and the bride of Yum Chac hurtles far out over the well. Turning slowly in the air, the lithesome body falls faster and faster till it strikes the dark water seventy feet below.

“An echoing splash and all is still. Only the widening ripples are left. The child bride has found favor in the eyes of her lord, the great god Noh-och Yum Chac.

“Thus I imagined the sacrifice at the Sacred Well—a sacrifice enacted not once but hundreds of times through many centuries. Thus has it been handed down in a dozen Maya legends and I wondered whether this grim old well really held at its far murky bottom the relics of the ancient rites or, after all, the sacrifices were mere myths founded on some trivial event, which grew and grew with each telling.

“Granting that such sacrifices had been, every vestige of evidence might well have disintegrated into nothingness a thousand years before my time. Assuming even that at the bottom of this watery pit was all I sought, what a mad venture it was for one lone man with but a little money and no great mechanical skill to attempt to recover these evidences!

“And yet my faith was strong. I felt that my quest was not to be in vain and that somehow I would make the well yield up its treasures. At least I must attempt the feat or continue to be haunted by the idea all the rest of my life.

“My wearied brain could no longer sustain these speculations. My whole tired body knew but one desire—sleep. Yet I did not wish to sleep in this gruesome place. Half a mile farther on I should find the Casa Real, the old manor-house that was to be my home. Wearily I strove toward it in the failing moonlight.

“At last I approached the main arched gateway of the corral, built more than two hundred years ago. It was boldly outlined in the pale moonlight, while here and there were long jet shadows cast by some broken portion of a wall or by some partially burned but upright trunk of a great tree. All was desolation, as in the case of the ancient temples, but a newer desolation, for this manor had been built less than seventy years before. As I pushed my way over broken stones a cloud came over the moon and I stumbled full upon what seemed at first the vertebræ of a huge fish. The cloud passed as I halted and an involuntary shudder gripped me as I looked down on the whitened bones of a human skeleton. A little to one side on a slight elevation lay the severed skull; and just beyond was still another and yet another. Ah, yes! I knew the tragic story, but had not expected to be met with so brutal a reminder of it.

“The former inhabitants of this once beautiful hacienda had all been massacred, many years before, by the Sublevados, the untamed tribes of Maya Indians living some miles to the south. These savages had slain every living creature on the estate and had left the several buildings in smoldering ruins. Even at the present time the Sublevados are still untamed and I have often been warned of the menace of a similar fate.

“I turned and gazed at the old gateway under which I had so recently passed—a gateway, so the records say, built in June, 1721. Under it also had passed long lines of weeping captives, and there are men living who remember the event. These poor captives were laden with the booty taken from the villages of Tunkas and Dzitas as they were urged on by their Sublevado captors in their terrible journey to Chan Santa Cruz, the distant Sublevado stronghold. And only the vigorous men with trades and the young women were spared for the journey, while the other prisoners were ruthlessly murdered. Of the prisoners left alive for the journey those who fell by the wayside were despatched with a stroke of the machete and left where they fell. I later found many of their pitiful skeletons.

“Poor boys and girls! What heart-pangs they must have felt; what scalding tears must have fallen on the stone flags as they passed beneath this old arch! Their pangs were soon stilled and the tears they spilled quickly dried, for they all soon came to that tranquil rest which is for eternity. Their lives were like the meteor that flashes for a moment in the sky and is then forever snuffed out. ‘Cigar stubs that the God of Night tosses away’ is the native vernacular for meteors. The souls of these wretched youths and maidens seem to have been no less carelessly tossed away by the God of the Night.

“I sank down upon the corridor of my new-old home, too utterly fatigued in mind and body to care what army of horrid phantoms might there abide. Let graveyards yawn and specters dance, let witches ride; loose Beelzebub and all his imps, but let me sleep!

“And so I did until awakened by a torrid sun burning down upon me through what once had been a roof.”