THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK NINE: BOOK of the JAGUAR PRIEST

CHAPTER FORTY

The small rain ceremony, with animal sacrifice, had come and gone... and Quintana Roo still suffered. Pedro Yoac waited three days and then made his move. His campaign of whisperings had grown into a shout that issued from the very bowels of the parched earth. "We are hungry!" was its cry. No quantity of chicle, nor wheat, could satiate this hunger. And the deliverer of the hungry mazehualob could be none other than Miguel Chankik. The loudest defenders of the brujo were those who had never seen him, who were not even living at the time of his influence, the young men... those last of the Cruzob to have matured without education. They ridiculed their sons and younger brothers, but were also envious. Juan Kui had invited them to school, but none would go and sit among the children, for they were ashamed of their ignorance as poor men are of their ragged clothes.

They followed Pedro Yoac and placed their hunger and shame before the back door of the church in which the Cross was kept, asking that the brujo be invited to cleanse them. And when even those who resisted the blood sacrifice agreed the rain ceremony to have been futile, Pedro approached Moises Lum. "There is no rain, the nameless days are almost upon us. I am inviting all Oficiales and the village jefes to a meeting to be held tomorrow. General Kaak has not returned, nor replied to our telegraph. No doubt he has succumbed to some Mexican treachery. If we keep on waiting, it will be too late. It is my intent, Colonel, to ask that Miguel Chankik be invited here to hold the blue offering. If you oppose this... you shall have your chance to speak. And your fellow Oficiales shall determine."

Yoac stalked off with a grim smile of impending victory.

Moises Lum presented these facts to the teacher. "Here," he said, "is all which you have struggled against. Here is the ignorance of our past, which rears out of the monte to strike as the serpent, the cuatronarices or the cascabel whose bite is poison. Help us."

"Knowledge does not run precipitously into matters where it has not been asked to intervene." Kui's gestures of discomfort belied his words. "I have made my errors here, who hasn't? Were a way found to separate young from old, the innocent from the corrupt... but of course that is impossible. And I am wondering whether I have too easily given over the mazehualob to their past. It is a principle of education that it ceases when a boy becomes a man, except when one proceeds to university. But," he asked, "could it be that education would also benefit adults? I am always thinking of developments... special classes, perhaps by night, a change in diet - benefit hiding at the heart of what seems misfortune. Wheat is the sustenance of civilized men, whether fried Spanish bread, English porridge or the Italian macaroni. Corn is food for barbarians and cattle."

"The only developments if this drought is not broken," said Lum, "will be that Chan Santa Cruz will remain an outpost of barbarism in a civilized world. Knowledge without influence can be treacherous. The Mexicans have used their engineers to construct gallows, poisons, artillery cannons. Chankik is not without knowledge of his own arts, and you know... as well as I... how history is circular. There is the long climb out of ignorance, resulting in knowledge and progress, pride in achievement that leads to worship of the Devil, overreaching and the fall; oppression at the hands of foreigners, the struggle, liberation and the quest for knowledge again. Has this not been our weary road, to fall under the hand of the Ytza or Mexicans? Who will be the next invaders to whom Chankik delivers us... that one whom the ignorant and the knowledgeable alike call Juan de la Cruz, but whom I think to be another?"

"You have grown articulate, Colonel," the teacher said in a patronizing manner. "Since you don't believe in Miguel Chankik's powers, might you be a Catolico? Not one of our Christians, but a believer in the pure faith of the dzulob?"

"I am a freethinker," Lum objected, "and I follow that path which seems favorable to the mazehualob. If it turns out that I am mistaken, I accept the consequences. I will not stand paralyzed by self-importance or quieted by fear, though it is not true that I think the brujo to be without power. There is strength below," he said, and stamped the earth for emphasis.

Now Juan Kui could not contain his anger. "Very well," he sneered, "if these people need to be set straight, I shall do so, since you are clearly unable or unwilling. More is the pity that the General is not here."

"Aren't you afraid?" asked Moises Lum.

"Afraid?" the teacher shot back, blinking. "Why?" He leaned against the old wall of the cathedral. "I know the scientific explanations for this drought. It is a defect of the atmosphere, a thing of barometric pressures. Educated people have known how to predict the weather for centuries. Where Yoac and his witch doctor have superstitions, I reply with facts and observations."

The teacher leaned against the old church with a bodily ease that gave the Colonel confidence. "So you're not afraid of Chankik?" Kui reflected.

"No," said Lum. "Why do you ask?"

"From what I have heard of the man, I understand him to be afflicted with diseases that bend the body, as well as the mind. Loathsome diseases, parasites and lice and microbes of sexual uncleanliness... contagions that have no power to afflict the bearer but jump from his hair and fingers to infect the young, the old and those weak with the heat or hunger. From the way people describe Chankik, I think that our danger is more of a hygienic sort than of the spiritual."

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