THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It is perhaps that unhappy coincidence that those who employ disease in a cause of deception to benefit themselves may, thereby, lay themselves open to its wiles. Certainly the phantom garrapatas José had complained of were not heard from again, and the medicine was secreted in his saddlebags for a future application but, in the days following, he found his arms and thighs weakened, his body subject to fits of chills and shaking, even in the hottest hours of daylight, and his nights restless with fevers.

Finally he pulled himself up from his hammock and proceeded to the hospital, passing through the bitter orange grove whose fruits were offered to newly arriving prisoners as a sport. A demented woodpecker had attached itself to a dead branch and its hammering reverberated in José's tormented head like the labors of Lucifer's own smithery. Bending for a fallen orange to hurl at the bird he nearly collapsed; suns and galaxies whirled before his eyes and he stumbled the remaining distance at a crouch, for sharp pains had begun to rumble from his stomach to his bowels.

Dr. Rosario's examination was perfunctory. "There it is!" he said. "Unfortunately, I am again without quinine."

"No quinine?" José repeated with another shuddering of his innards. "What am I to do? Is it expected?"

"Three days," the doctor calculated, "three days ago... it will arrive when it is meant to, if the bandits at Peto have not chosen to steal it. We suffer, my friend, in that we are the last point of the supply line, and subject to every uniformed bandido between here and Merida."

"I suffer," José corrected.

"As you wish. As to the other part of your question, I can only suggest sleep and plenty of water, as much as you can hold. And perhaps you might suck one of our incomparable oranges, they are at least as bitter as quinine, if the cure lies in bitterness."

José rose to leave, a painful spasm snapping back his neck.

"There is one more possibility," the doctor suggested, "one that I would only mention to a friend, and a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut, especially around the General and our idiot priest. The old fool who hangs around Juliano... he's a kind of herb-doctor. I've seen samples of his so-called medicines... witchy stuff, but it seems to work. If the supplies don't come in another few days, you might want to take a chance, eh?"

A crate marked "Medical Supplies" did, in fact, arrive on the following Tuesday but, when Dr. Rosario pried it open, he found it to contain a score of wooden ducks on wheels from Massachusetts, U.S.A., gaily painted and complete with a string to pull the along the ground. He gave them to Padre Juliano, who distributed them to such children as best recited their passages of catechism and spent the rest of the day drunk. On Wednesday, he visited José, whose condition had worsened.

"It is believed these indians know how to make someone feel healthy or unhealthy, just by giving them the evil eye. That's not as uncommon as you would believe, the negroes in Belize talk the same way. Here, at least, these fellows help themselves along with plants and such, and if there is a medicine for fever, they may have chanced upon it. Quinine, after all, was only Peruvian tree bark until the chemists got hold of it."

José agreed that there was little that could worsen his condition, and consented to have word passed to Miguel Chankik. He gathered up those of his belongings worth stealing and brought them to one of the shanties behind the hospital that Rosario kept for the sick who could pay for their privacy. José had accumulated credit with the doctor by returning from occasional leaves in Merida or Idznacab with items which could not be found in Santa Cruz and, for this, he was given use of the small hut and a hammock to himself, as much for reasons of security as for recovery. Dr. Rosario did not want the curandero seen passing through the tents before the eyes of Mexicans.

"Here is the sacristan," he said an hour later, ushering Chankik into the hut. "As you know, these folks practiced human sacrifice whenever the mood arose, so the risk you take's entirely your own."

"Not upon any occasion," Chankik corrected. "At the time that Montejo came, this may have been so but, in the beginning, only one life was offered up in fifty two years. Hardly an intolerable request, no? The predilection to sacrifice for its own sake was brought to us from Mexico and, through yourselves, we suffer for it and shall suffer more."

"You see?" suggested the doctor, "he means that you are safe... unless the time for sacrificing is at hand."

"You have nothing to fear. Were the practice continued... which of course is not so... it would not occur for more than a decade and, even then, only if there was to be some event beyond our grasp, a drought, perhaps, or an eclipse." He mentioned this with a wink to José. "Are we not all Christian believers? Juan de la Cruz protects us; He died on the cross to free us from our sins. His sacrifice was for our salvation."

"There," Rosario said. "Nothing to worry about. Now, if you wish, I'll leave, although to tell the truth I'd rather stay. As one doctor to another, it's our duty to learn everything within our powers to aid the sick, no matter what the origin of the cure?"

"There is no need for you to leave," Chankik acquiesced, "I only ask that you not interrupt the healing and remain silent, unless I ask that you speak or perform a little service. If you have questions, I will answer them later. Open your hand," he directed José, removing a packet of brown paper from his shirt. "Don't be alarmed, it's only salt. Close your fingers about it and we shall wait for some time.

"I must make a prayer to Kinich Kabul," he informed the doctor, "a Christian prayer, so do not become alarmed." He recited a few phrases of the old language and bid José open his hand.

"It has not dissolved," he noted. "Shake it off. A question now, do you handle the bees?"

"Bees?" José wondered. "Strange of you to ask but our estanción, well, it is known for the honey that it produces." He had not intended to disclose anything that could give the indian a clue to his identity, but it was too late now. "As a boy, I was given hives to tend, but many of the bees died and the others flew away. There was an old beekeeper there who told my father I was not born to manage the hives, it was a talent that one has or lacks. My older brother, on the other hand, was successful. I remember, yes... and that's unusual because, by his own admission, he despises agricultural work..."

"That old man was right. Doctor," Chankik now said, "help me to sit him up. I am going to measure his energy."

José was helped to a sitting position and his shirt was removed. The curandero pressed the nerves beneath his armpits and a cold wave spread across his shoulders, meeting and quenching the fever knotted at the back of his neck. Chankik pressed again, this time beneath the ribs. He directed José to put his shirt back on following what seemed to Dr. Rosario to be a curious treatment. Borrowing gauze, he took a piece of amber and a piece of glass from his pouch and pressed them against either side of his patient's stomach, binding them tightly against the skin.

"I must obtain certain medicines and will return tomorrow at noon. Before you sleep tonight, you shall eat turkey, with beans and chilis. These foods are cold, and will combat fever. Tomorrow morning, before the chills return, you will eat potatoes, beef and salt. They are hot."

"I think I can round up a plate of beans and chili," volunteered the doctor, "and there always is turkey to be found somewhere. Is that all?"

"For the present, yes," said Chankik. "If he can sleep, so much the better. The olahuob will treat his fever in the night. Tomorrow, when he is cold, I shall reverse them. Now, doctor, there is nothing more to do."

"Until tomorrow, then" said Dr. Rosario, still puzzled. He followed the indian outside and ordered one of the boys who always hung about the city looking for work to find the foods that Chankik had ordered, giving him a coin.

"Do you feel any better?" he asked, returning to José.

"Better?" The Captain stared up at the palm ceiling of the little hut. "No I cannot say, although when he pressed my arms and back, the feeling was... well, the sensation was different. It was as if he had called up two armies, little fighting men, one group hot and the other cold, coming together and destroying one another. The pain of their meeting over my back and my shoulders, it was indescribable, like a fire but cold, a cold fire. Can you understand? Perhaps it was delirium but, for a few moments, I am sure that the fever was gone. Now ahh... it is back, but at least I feel no worse than before."

"It's interesting that he used such terms as hot and cold," the doctor remembered, lighting a cigar. "Garrapatas?"

"Gone," José smiled weakly. "Those are indian beliefs. I'd all but forgotten them, but at the hacienda I would hear them mentioned from time to time. Once my brother, as a joke, suggested to a laborer that he should run away, that Rigoberto, my brother, would help to hide him. Of course it was a prank, which might have had a bad ending, now that I think of it. But the indian said that to escape was a very hot thing to do, and that he was too cold.

"Again, these people seem to have some sort of terror of imbalance, something to do with their religion which you will not find in any Bible, no matter where you may look. There was another very old man at the hacienda by the name of Mariano, whom the indians depended on to cater to their superstitions. My father allowed him to do so because he seemed able to keep them quiet. Anyway, a Jesuit from Merida, one of my father's acquaintances, took it upon himself to drive the Devil from this old man, for although all indians will swear that they are Christians, their faith is muddled by innumerable occult rituals and superstitions, to which they attribute aspects and works of Christian saints. This Jesuit was a dedicated scholar, and he had even learned some of the language of the indians so that this old idolater could not escape inquisition by pretending his ignorance of Spanish.

"Well, to be brief, the Jesuit hounded old Mariano day and night until the indian yielded up the secrets of his heresy - or some of them, at least - which proved confusing to the Jesuit, whose society is sophisticated above all, at the interpretation of the word of God. He thus pronounced the Mayan faith a derivation of that of the Jewish sorcerers, the Qabbalists who invest their language with subtleties of word and number as the Devil teaches them. And, because Satan is a liar and also impure, and that the doctrines of the Devil never consist entirely of lies but of a blend of truth and lies... the better to deceive the faithful... the Jesuit identified one of the deceitful truths of the indian sorcerers to be the balance of ambition and capacity or, as they say, of hot and cold. This admitted, not for its own sake but to conceal the larger lie, this Jesuit surmised these miserable indians to be one of the lost tribes who had fallen back into the worship of the Egyptian gods. Somehow they wandered across Africa and sailed or drifted to this place... these pyramids they built is evidence of that."

"Well it may be the Devil's teaching to seek balance between one's ideals and one's resources," said Rosario, "but a further trap the Evil One sets is that... by mixing truth into a lie to create a larger lie... we may be convinced to reject that part of the lie which our good judgement advises is truth." The doctor took another puff of his cigar. "In Mexico, I had a certain Senator as a patient; his illness was as loathsome as it was incurable and, as it had afflicted his mind, I had the prudence not to bill him for my services but, rather, to place myself under his protection, which proved to be of far more benefit than the few pesos I would otherwise have received. He died in the end, of course, and things did not fare so well for me afterwards. Balance, in consequence, may well have its place in the Devil's arsenal, but if it keeps one's mortal enemies at distance, well, it may not be so bad as the Jesuits hold. Ahh... dinner has arrived. Wait," he ordered the boy, "this looks like chicken. Did I not ask for turkey?"

"There was no turkey, doctor," said the boy, cringing against the wall as if in expectation of a beating.

"Bah," said Rosario. "This is what comes with trusting indians. Well, a bird is a bird is a bird... so eat your fill, keep your strength up. I'll see you again in the morning.

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