Aluxes

By Ben Leib

The pueblecito was laid out just as we’d come to expect and rely on. We parked in front of la catedral and approached one of the pastor vendors operating at the perimeter of the plaza. Colin inquired in Spanish if there were any cenotes close by that we could swim in. The vendor answered that there was one nice cenote about six or seven kilometers outside of town, but the roads were very bad and we’d never make it in our rental car. No, if we wanted to see the cenote, it would be necessary to either rent scooters or hire a truck. “Where can we rent a scooter?” Colin asked. The vendor replied that first we must find a person who owned a scooter. Then we’d have to offer money. He was vexed when Colin asked about a truck, and waved us off. “Why don’t you go talk to the police officers over there?” He gestured toward el palacio, which, typical of Yucatecan pueblecitos, was the government building that faced the plaza opposite la catedral.

A dozen officers lounged in the shade of the palacio awning. They smoked cigarettes, looked authoritarian, and spoke little. Perhaps the heat of the day had drained the language out of them, but out in the lawn of the plaza, without any protection from the sun, the antojito vendors conversed spiritedly with their customers.

Colin approached one of the officers and explained that we were passing through town and hoped to swim in the cenote, which we’d heard was quite beautiful. We had been told that maybe the officers knew someone with a truck who could take us, because our car couldn’t make the drive. The officer was short and dark complexioned, nearly indistinguishable from the Mayan population who must have shared heavily in his bloodline. He was a grinning and turned to his partner, who was taller but more tacit. Their discussion was too rapid for me to follow. Then both policemen stepped from the shade of the palacio awning and gestured that we should follow them.

The short officer’s pickup truck was parked beside one of the official police trucks, and was in far worse condition than the official vehicle, though neither was too lovely. The passenger-side handle was broken, and the officer had attached a wire hanger to the inner mechanisms of the door. The two policemen climbed into the cab of the truck and indicated that Colin and I should ride in the bed. I had a bottle of water, a towel, and a few hundred pesos folded into the inner pocket of my board shorts. I wore sandals and a t-shirt ripped at the shoulder: I looked like an asshole.

The road didn’t vanish suddenly. We drove through town and it was as if the paving faded gradually and then crumbled into dirt and rock, narrowing to little more than a hiking trail. Our economy sedan wouldn’t have survived. When I stared into the cab of the truck, the two Mexican policemen were smiling and joking with each other. The shorter man drove, focusing on the topography as he swerved around rocks and craters. I turned to Colin: though we never reached speeds higher than ten kilometers an hour and rarely higher than five, I could have been watching a rodeo. Colin sat flat on the grooved steel bed, his long legs splayed, his arms gripping the walls behind him. He was lurpy and wide-eyed, and I prayed I possessed more composure. I sat atop the wheel well, where I got pummeled by the dust that blew over the cab of the truck and coagulated in my sweat. I could feel a deep burning as the sun beat through layers of skin.

We drove for half an hour and then the truck pulled to a stop facing a bower of fecund trees huddled in a field, marking a fresh water source beneath. Colin and I jumped from the bed of the truck and followed the uniformed men. Between the trees was a hole in the ground, two meters in diameter. We stood around it, looking ten meters into the cenote beneath. A shaft of light shined through the mouth of the cavern, hit the surface of the underground lake at a diagonal, and continued into the turquoise blue. Massive root networks hung beneath the trees: wooden dreadlocks that ended an inch into the water.

Colin and I discussed if we were supposed to jump from the mouth of the cavern – we could survive the ten meter fall – but when he put the question to the officers they laughed and shook their heads. They led us thirty meters, to an open shaft through which we could descend to the lake’s surface. We followed them down the shaft and into the cavern. One of the officers lit up a smoke and warned us of the mosquitos that rested like a film along the water’s surface. The cavern was a perfect dome, but the bell-shaped walls continued their outward slant, so who knew how broad the room grew beneath us? Who knew how deep?

A ledge of rock lined the cavern. The policemen gestured that we could walk along the wall, and if we jumped into the water, we would be able to climb back out at the far end. Colin and I made our way along the ledge. I looked into the abyss. It was black except for where the light shone into it. There it was turquoise, and in the light a breed of black catfish swam like illusory plays of light. They fed on mosquitos, which fed on of the blood of birds and small children who swam in the underground lake. Nothing else lived in the water.

Colin jumped in feet first and I dove behind him. The water was shockingly cool after battling the heat. We swam the breadth of the cavern, exploring the root networks. I waved my hand back and forth across the surface as I swam, clearing the mosquitos out of the way. When my movements were subdued, the catfish would get curious and nip at the dead skin on my legs and feet.

The police leaned against the rock wall and smoked cigarettes. Colin and I swam in the shaft of sunlight and were able to see five meters into the water beneath us. We talked about the drive we’d be making to Koba that afternoon. Our trip was coming to an end after a month of driving. I’d soon be travelling to Halifax and embarking for work from the Scotian shores. I felt as if all my endeavor was an attempt to recreate something nostalgic.

Colin and I made plans for our return to the coast. We would jump into the Caribbean no matter what time we arrived, before even finding a guesthouse. It was imperative.

When we got tired we swam to the platform and climbed out. The rock ledge sat three or four meters above the surface, and I jumped from it many times. I inhaled and dove. I opened my eyes under water and swam down until the light faded to darkness. My heart beat as if the world were disintegrating. Panic set in. I turned toward what I thought was the surface, and saw the shaft of light still visible above me. The sun light no longer illuminated my hand in front of my face, but existed as a solid mass hovering in the space overhead. Even the black catfish remained close to the shaft of sunlight in order to survive. I dove again and again, each time with the consciousness that the abyss continued indefinitely beneath me. I wondered what kraken might emerge from that wormhole.

When the officers got bored they climbed back to the surface. Colin and I swam until we couldn’t tread water anymore. We wanted to make the most of a difficult journey by glorying in our rewards, though the journey itself, in accordance with all clichéd literature on the matter, was more valuable than the destination. Hell, the cenote was just a place between Izamal and Koba, just a place we’d happened upon and we made the most of our good fortune. And when we were too exhausted to swim any longer, we dried ourselves before ascending to ground level.

Looking toward the mouth of the cavern, I saw the officers were speaking to two Mayan men. They wore tattered clothes and each had a bindle slung across his shoulder. The four men stood around that giant hole in the ground, and I imagined they’d been watching us swim. When the shorter of the two officers turned toward us, I saw the rifle in his hands. I looked at Colin, who’d gone pale. “Dude, what the fuck?” he muttered. He was less used to guns, though my heartrate doubled just then, and I didn’t know where the rifle had come from or what to make of it. The officer didn’t have it when we arrived. I could tell it was old and well used. There was little patina on the gun metal, which was well-maintained, but the wooden stock had lost its finish where it’d been touched too often by human hands.

The officer didn’t notice that he’d frightened us. He smiled, turned back towards the mouth of the cenote, leveled the gun skyward, and fired a round. A brief ribbon of smoke coiled from where the hammer had tapped the bullet, something fluttered in the trees, and then a bird fell, flapping all the way down, through the hole and into the water beneath. Colin and I joined the other men looking down into the cavern. We watched the wounded bird struggling at the surface, flapping her wings but unable to turn from her back. The officer smiled at his marksmanship, and I marveled at the smallness of the bird and of the caliber of the bullet: a miniscule creature with an even smaller hole into it. It struggled, not dying, but without a chance of survival. One of the Mayan men took a sling shot from his hip, loaded the cradle, aimed, and fired downward. The water exploded around the bird, and the animal stopped moving. Then the police nodded to the Mayan men, and we turned back toward town.