Psychic Detective 40 By: Jake Preston
This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!
Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com
Chapter 40 The Serpent and the Cenote, II
"What do you mean, "la pintura de los acróbatas de Papantla"?" Göran asked. It was just after an early breakfast in the hotel restaurant and he was caught by surprise when the acrobats said that they had to be at Chichen Itza's ceremonial ball-court by quarter to nine.
Pablo: "It's a traditional village ceremony in Papantla. We've revived it for the Spring Equinox pageant at Chichen Itza. Usually the acrobats wear colored tights and shirts: red for Earth and the East; black for Fire and the North; white for Wind and the West; blue for Water and the South. But for Spring Equinox we wear body-paint instead of uniforms; body-paint and a jockstrap and a sunga. To prepare for the pageant, we let some of the spectators apply the paint to our bodies. Except for Señorita María Santana. She'll be wearing tights. We don't want the spectators putting their hands on her."
"Which spectators?"
"Why, our benefactors, of course," Pablo said. "The body-painting takes place in a pavilion behind the ball-court. The cost of admission is 2500 pesos, or about 200 American dollars. That's how we raise money for our tours. The State of Yucatán pays us for our performances during Holy Week, but we have to cover our own expenses."
"What about you, Pablo? Do you get painted, too?" Göran asked.
"Sí, Señor," Pablo replied. "For the painting of Ometéotl-Omecíhautl the price is 5000 pesos, and it's an elaborate design."
While Pablo and Göran were speaking, Antón approached with a jar of white paint and Pablo stripped naked. With two fingers, Antón traced an evenly drawn line from the nape of Pablo's neck to his cleft. Then he traced a white line from Pablo's forehead downward, bisecting his torso down to his pubes.
"My left side is Ometéotl, the Father-God, because the heart is on the left side of the body," Pablo explained. "Antón will color the field with yellow, and after the yellow has dried, the spectators will paint symbols of the four elements and the four directions, all in red, black, white, or blue. The painters will be given instructions about the symbols they should paint.
Antón started applying yellow body-paint to the left side of Pablo's face and moved down to his neck and shoulders and arms. María Santana joined him and applied yellow to Pablo's legs and moved up toward his left thigh and buttock. Salvador and Jack and Göran seemed a bit squeamish about the attention that María was giving to Pablo's naked body, but the acrobats were used to it and for her it was part of the job.
"And your right side?" Göran asked.
"The right side is Omecíhautl, the Mother-God," Pablo said. "She gets painted with secondary colors that are mixed from the cardinal ones. Black and red make purple, for example, and red and white makes rose. The spectators get to mix their own secondary colors and paint my body with them, so I turn out rather paisley on the Omecíhautl side, and formally symbolic on the Ometéotl side."
"He's popular with señoras and señoritas," Antón laughed. "Some of the señores find him entertaining, too."
Salvador asked about logistics and wondered how he and Jack and Göran would be able to protect the acrobats in a crowd. What if one of them were attacked by Albino, or maybe by some unknown accomplice?
"As for logistics, we stand on five separate platforms, except that this time there will be four platforms, as the Señorita will not get her body painted," Pablo said. "At each platform, the spectators stand in a line and we admit them two at a time for ten minutes each. The gong in the ball-court is sounded every ten minutes, and then a new pair of painters take their turns. If a spectator wants another turn, she (or he) can get into another line. The painting-ceremony ends at 10:30, to give us time to prepare our minds for the performance, which begins at 11:00."
"These platforms, are they widely dispersed in the pavilion?" Salvador wondered.
"Sí, Señor, to prevent overcrowding," Pablo replied.
"What about security? Have you ever been robbed?" Salvador asked.
"We accept only credit cards, no cash or checks," Pablo said. "The spectators are allowed to leave tips in our jockstraps, and we split that money equally, including the Señorita, of course." He nodded toward María Santana. "We have two policemen at the entrance and they check everyone for weapons and alcohol. No guns, no knives, no alcohol," Pablo said, quoting a sign at the pavilion entrance. "In the last five years, we've never been robbed."
If Salvador had his way, the painting-ceremony would have been canceled. Jack proposed an alternative: "We could situate four platforms in a row at the far end of the pavilion. That way we could keep watch over all the acrobats at once."
María Santana protested: "We are artistes! If the spectators line up like a soccer game at half-time, what would that make the Papantlas?"
Salvador agreed to do it her way. They set four platforms in place like red squares on a checkerboard, one representing North for Antón, one East for Alfredo, one West for Arcaño, and one South for Pablo (it would have been José Castellano). So there were four lines of spectators like marks on a compass, each leading to the center of the pavilion where Salvador, Göran, Jack, Jésus, and Xiu guarded the acrobats while María stayed on Pablo's platform to supervise the elaborate painting of Aztec symbols on a yellow field on the left side of his body.
The painting-ceremony was festive but not raucous, as the 2500-peso admission, or 5000 pesos for Pablo, excluded populares who might have inclined toward vulgarity. Still it was not without erotic moments, as when a young señorita stuffed ten 100-peso bills into Arcaño's jockstrap one at a time and it wasn't just money that bulged, as anyone could see because his sunga had dropped to his ankles. He was better than the other acrobats at flirting with the ladies, whilst Alfredo and Antón fared better with señores, Many señores and more than a few ladies left business cards wrapped in bills with three-figure denominations, upon which they had scribbled times and places to meet in Chichen Itza. "We're not hustlers," Pablo said, but he added that he might consider contacting a man or a woman who had left a card wrapped in a four-figure note, but Antón said he would do it only for American dollars.
Periodically, Jack checked the acrobats' jockstraps and collected the money when their bulges got too burdensome. Göran kept track of the business cards so the acrobats could decide what to do about their admirers at a later date. One of the cards in Pablo's stack read:
Howard Coleman, Ph.D.
Anthropologist
Universidad del Valle
Cuernavaca
"This is a new campus of Universidad del Valle," Jack said, mainly to Salvador. "Göran and I learned a lot about anthropology programs, and about academia in general, while investigating Albino. We suspected that if he found a job anywhere, it would be at a new college where the administrators wouldn't have much experience with background checks."
Göran transferred the card to a plastic baggie so it could be checked for fingerprints. He showed it to Jack and Salvador. They decided to keep it from the acrobats until after their performance.
"He's flaunting us," Salvador said. "He wants us to know he's here.
The ya'axche-pole and the safety-net were set up in the center of the ceremonial ball- court which seemed about the same width of an American football field, but a few yards longer. On two sides of the ball-court, the ancient stone bleachers were already crowded and the Chichen Itza officials allowed spectators to sit on the ground or on blankets as long as they didn't get close enough to interfere with the safety-nets. The acrobats picked their way through the crowd, accompanied by their guardians with Salvador in the lead. He and Jack and Göran wore their uniforms and badges. The acrobats wore loose white trousers and shirts but their matador-like capes were colored to match their faces: Alfredo's cape was red; Antón's was black; Arcaño's was black; María's was blue. Pablo's cape, as elaborate as Achilles's shield, was kaleidoscopic with secondary colors on the right side, and on the left side a yellow field, with Aztec symbols of the four elements and four directions inscribed in cardinal colors.
Xiu and Jésus sat in lawn chairs at the spectator's end of the ball-court where Xiu announced the acrobats in a microphone as they doffed their white trousers and shirts and got into position on four sides of the safety-net, Alfredo to the east, Antón to the north, Arcaño to the south, and María to the west. Then Pablo leaped bounded into the net and ignored the cheering crowd and within seconds he had scaled the ya'axche-pole and was pirouetting atop the platform which, Xiu explained to the crowd, was "Omexocan, the Place of Duality and the organizing principle of the cosmos in Aztec and Maya mythology."
The pageant was the same as Good Friday's azteca creación in Mérida - sometimes a graceful vision of flying colored figures dancing and at other times aerial combats enhanced by sexual energy and anatomical display. Body-paint and sungas took the event to a new height of eroticism even as Xiu's commentary emphasized its mythological and philosophical attributes.
The acrobats improvised a new idea in their performance: each time one of the gods was displaced from his perch on top of the ya'axche-pole, signifying the end of an Age, he was divested by his sunga and another acrobat tossed it into the crowd where it was caught by a lucky spectator as a souvenir. The first acrobat to perform in his jockstrap was Alfredo Tloxhuitl during his impersonation of Tlatlauhqui Tezcatilipoca, the god of Earth, East, and Redness, signifying the end of the First Age. During the Second Age, Antón González's black sunga went flying to the crowd, ending the age of Yayauhqui Tezcatilipoca, the god of Fire, North, and Blackness and then two acrobats could be seen butt-naked except for their jockstraps. During the Third Age, during Arcaño Xlachihuitl's defiant combat with the others, he removed his own white sunga and tossed it to the crowd and that was the end of the reign of Quetzalcóatl, the god of Wind, West, and Whiteness. María Santana was exempted from the strip-tease, as she was wearing blue tights as the impersonator of Quetzalcóatl's wife in the Fourth Age, of Water, South, and Blueness.
Pablo was an exception, too, but when he recovered his 'throne' atop the ya'axche-pole and pirouetted in triumph atop the ya'axche-pole, signifying the Fifth Age, the age of Ometéotl- Omecíhautl, and Pablo let his sunga drop to his ankles and kicked it into the crowd so the spectators could see that his buttocks were painted with the same designs of Duality as the rest of his body while Xiu exclaimed into the microphone, "O parure parée!" quoting from a poem by Paul Eluard.
By the end of the Fifth Age in the pageant, each spectator got the azteca creación that he (or she) desired or deserved: for some an erotic display, for others an athletic demonstration, for others a folkloric exhibition, for others a mythological pantomime, and for others a cosmological allegory, and then one-by-one the acrobats descended to the safety-net. Together they walked through the crowd to the far end of the ball-court and the four male acrobats gave dozens of spectators a close-up view of their figures in jock-straps. They ignored the crowd, exulting in their performance of the azteca creación which had been technically flawless, while Xiu announced to the crows that the ritual had brought forth Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent, who would make his Spring Equinox appearance at the Grand Pyramid.
When the serpentine image appeared on the side of the Pyramid facing the greatest number of spectators, two dark red-crested vultures appeared with him at the top of Quetzalcóatl's head. No one had seen them swoop down from the sky. They came out of nowhere. This caused a sensation and when images of it were shown on television, everyone in México talked about Quetzalcóatl, the vultures, and the Papantla acrobats.
Pablo, Alfredo, Antóon, and Arcaño got into fresh color-coded sungas. Accompanied by María Santana and their guardian-companions - Salvador, Göran, and Jack in police uniforms, and Jésus and Xiu in civvies - they walked through the crowds, spoke to admiring spectator, posed with them for photographs, and signed autographs. It wasn't part of the show, but it was good for public relations. Slowly they made their way to the boundary between Chichen Itza and the forested gully. Most of the spectators were watching the Spring Equinox vision of Quetzalcóatl, who still had believers, even among Spanish mexicanos who discerned not contradiction between this Aztec-Maya god and the faith of the Catholic Church. Then another wonder occurred: the two turkey-vultures flew upward and disappeared into a cloud which came out of nowhere on a cloudless day.
The acrobats and their guardian-companions strolled at the edge of the gully until they reached the sacred cenote. That's when a madman, a tall lean man with scraggly features and snow-white hair, jumped from the crowd and ran after Pablo wielding a knife, and separated him from his companions. Göran ran after them and lunged between Pablo and Albino. Pablo escaped unharmed, and now the struggle was between Göran and his old enemy.
Albino drew blood with a knife to Göran's left thigh. It was a serious wound though not a fatal one. Göran gouged Albino's right eye until its eyeball dislodged from its socket and dropped to his cheek, suspended by two bluish stings, one on each side of the eyeball which bobbed on the surface of his face like a boiled egg liberated from its cracked shell, according to lex talionis, the law of return, an eye for a thigh, injury for injury, wound for wound, and now the monster was Polyphemus the one-eyed giant. He roared inarticulately, this Albino-Polyphemus roared at the edge of the cenote, calling on fellow Cyclops for aid against a mortal enemy. From out of nowhere, it seemed, a vulture swooped down and delivered a fearsome peck to his remaining eye. It blinded him. A second vulture swooped and severed the two blue tendons and then the swinging eyeball dropped to the hardened ground, plopped twice like a marble, and rolled over the edge and into the cenote. The first vulture attacked Albino's remaining eye again. Albino swung his arms wildly and swiveled round and round, and then his dying roar could be heard as he dropped headlong into the cenote.
Xiu attended to Göran while Salvador and Jack stood at the edge of the cenote and looked down but in the unshaped darkness they saw neither a body nor the bottom. "There's nothing to see down there but an underground river," Xiu said calmly. "The current will have swept the body away. Soon enough it will be a skeleton and then the disarticulated bones will float to the sea." He spoke without emotion, as if it were Moïra or Manitou speaking through him and then Göran knew that Xiu was the Maya magician who had built the Temple at Uxmal over a thousand years ago.
Two vultures perched on the branch of a ya'axchte overhanging the cenote. They ignored the cenote and Salvador and Jack who were looking down into it. They fixed their gaze on Göran whose thigh was bleeding, and almost-naked Xiu who was binding the wound with a trouser-leg that he had ripped at the seam, he having stepped out of his trousers for this purpose.
One of the vultures croaked an elegy: "How the colonizing nations come and go: first the hatchet-bearing Mexica who exacted tribute from the Maya; then the spear-bearing Aztecs who exacted heart-sacrifice; then the Conquistadors with horses and muskets who enslaved them and shipped all the Aztec gold to Spain where the Hapsburgs squandered it on wars against the Protestants; then the Dominicans with Bibles and stakes for burning magicians; then the governors sent from Spain who decimated villages with smallpox; then the governors sent from Mexico City; under their benign rule the Yucatecans became a minority in their own country."
"The rulers are of no importance," the second vulture croaked. "The Maya spirit lives in Yucateca and in twenty-three other nations."
"Which one of those birds is Craig Clark and which one is Red Cloud?" Jack wondered. (He meant the Lakota shaman.) He directed his question to Göran, who must have known. Göran started to speak but fainted from blood-loss.
An ambulance came to transport Göran to Cancún. "Can't we take him to Mérida?" Jack asked. The ambulance said it had to be Hospital General de Cancún, but they would find an American doctor if that's what Göran wanted. Jack and Salvador offered to go follow behind in the car, but Xiu said "No, I'll ride with Göran in the ambulance. He's my responsibility. Besides, I have Yucatecan friends in Cancún. We'll be fine."
Salvador and Jack spent the rest of the day preparing news releases in Spanish and English. From their computer database they were able to tell the whole story of Albino and his two accomplices. In the Spanish version, they emphasized Salvador's role in the capture of an American serial killer who had been killed while resisting arrest in Chichen Itza. This version was sent to newspapers in Mérida and México (the city). They prepared two English versions. One of them emphasized Jack's role in the narrative. They sent this one to the Lakota Times. The second version emphasized Göran's role. It was sent to the North Country Advocate and to the Ashawa News Herald.