“An explanation.”
“What is there to explain?”
Cirilo busied himself with a pillow, trying to make himself more comfortable, and then deciding that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t do it, gestured for his grandson to finish the task. It was the kind of request that Casiopea would have fulfilled, but she was gone. Martín placed another pillow behind the man’s back, frowning.
“Grandfather,” Martín said when he was done, hoping the man would deign to answer his question. Cirilo looked irritated, but he spoke all the same.
“I was a nobody, with no prospects, minding my own business and carrying on as best I could, when one day this woman came to see me. She was very beautiful, unhumanly beautiful, and she told me I’d been born on the appropriate day, of the appropriate month.”
“Appropriate for what?”
“Sorcery. A spell to trap a god.”
“And you agreed?”
“Not immediately. I thought she was mad. Then I met her associates, and it turned out they were all legitimate. A pair of sorcerers, the Zavala brothers. And Vucub-Kamé, of course. All conspiring against the Lord of Xibalba.”
“What happened?” he pressed on.
“What do you think? I played my part. It was simple. I was merely supposed to serve as bait, they were busy with the rest. And they managed it, lopped his head off, stuffed his body in a chest.” The old man snapped his fingers twice. “Pour me another drink.”
Martín obeyed, carefully grabbing the decanter and filling his grandfather’s glass. “Why would they leave the chest with you? Here? In Uukumil?”
“Vucub-Kamé couldn’t take it with him. The chest needed to remain above ground. Hun-Kamé was a Lord of Xibalba, and the earth was his mother, so burying it was impossible. But Middleworld is not the land of the Xibalbans. Middleworld owes them no favors and no blessings.”
Cirilo wet his lips with the brandy before continuing. “He could have given it to one of his associates, but he didn’t. Anyway, it needed to remain here, in Yucatán, and he entrusted it to me. It was not as if there are bandits in Uukumil. I thought it would be safe enough. Until your cousin opened it.”
“You could have taken better precautions,” Martín replied.
For a moment Martín thought his grandfather was going to get up from his bed and beat him with his cane, like he’d done when he was little. He wouldn’t put it past him. But instead the man glared at him.
“I took the damn precautions,” he sputtered. “First two years I slept with a shotgun by the bed, in case intruders came at night. I hardly did anything except watch the damn thing. But then more years went by, and it became obvious it was a wasted effort. No one was looking for it.”
Grandfather had leaned forward as he spoke, clutching the glass tightly. He relaxed his grip and tossed the glass on his side table as if it were a cheap jug made out of coarse clay.
“Vucub-Kamé came by in those first few years. I don’t know if to gloat or why. But then he stopped visiting, and after a while…well, after a decade had gone by, I began to think I’d dreamed it.”
“You thought you’d dreamed it,” Martín repeated.
“That’s what I said. I did not open the damn chest, so it’s not as if I could refresh my memory about what was inside.”
“If you thought you’d dreamed it, why didn’t you open it?”
“It’s best not to know certain things, and besides, it no longer mattered. Real. False. Life was what it was.”
Martín, who had a rather atrophied imagination, incapable of considering for long periods of time anything that was not directly in front of him as worthy of interest, could understand this reaction.
“What did you get in exchange for your assistance?”
“What do you think?” Cirilo replied, extending his arms and pointing to the cabinet, the curtains. “All of this. He paid me off. I was nobody and then I was someone.”
“You might have told me.”
“Told you what? That I had a strange dream? That I believed in sorcery? I know you all, you vipers, you’d have had me committed.”
Martín thought about his aunts and his father. He wouldn’t put it past any of them to drag Cirilo to the insane asylum if he gave them the chance. His father was meek and soft, but he had never gotten along with the old man. As for Martín’s sisters, their husbands, and his assortment of cousins, they were all vying for power, clawing at each other.
“Well,” he said. “It didn’t do you any good to keep quiet about it. Not with that traitor running around. You gave her access to this room, to your things, and she’s not even a real Leyva.”
