The Vivero Letter полностью

'What about those who didn't come back?' 'Chac kept them for his own. Sometimes he'd keep them all and the people would become frightened and punish the cenote. They'd throw stones into it and flog it with branches. But none of the maidens would ever come back because of that.'

'You'd better be careful, then,' I said.

She splashed water at me. 'I'm not exactly a maiden.'

I swam over to the steps. The chopper should be coming back soon. Another batch of film to be processed.' I climbed halfway up and stopped to give her a hand.

At the top she offered me a towel but I shook my head. 'I'll dry off quickly enough in the sun,'

'Suit yourself,' she said. 'But it's not good for your hair.' She spread the towel on the ground, sat on it, and started to rub her hair with another towel.

I sat down beside her and started to flip pebbles into the cenote. 'What are you really doing here, Jemmy?' she asked.

'I'm damned if I know,' I admitted. 'It just seemed a good idea at the time.'

She smiled. 'It's a change from your Devon, isn't it? Don't you wish you were back on your farm -- on Hay Tree Farm? Incidentally, do you always make hay from trees in Devon?'

'It doesn't mean what you think. It's a dialect word meaning a hedge or enclosure.' I flicked another pebble into the pool. 'Do you think that annoys Chac?'

'It might, so I wouldn't do it too often -- not if you have to dive into a cenote. Damn! I don't have any cigarettes.'

I got up and retrieved mine from where I had left them and we sat and smoked in silence for a while. She said, 'I haven't played about like that in the water for years.'

'Not since the carefree days of the Bahamas?' I asked. 'Not since then.'

'Is that where you met Paul?'

There was the briefest pause before she said, 'No. I met Paul in New York.' She smiled slightly. 'He isn't the type you find on the beach in the Bahamas.'

I silently agreed; it was impossible to equate him with one of those Travel Association carefree holiday advertisements -- all teeth, sun glasses and suntan. I probed deeper, but went about it circuitously. 'What were you doing before you met him?'

She blew out a plume of smoke. 'Nothing much; I worked at a small college in Virginia.'

'A school teacher!' I said in surprise. She laughed. 'No -- just a secretary. My father teaches at the same college.'

'I thought you didn't look like a schoolmarm. What does your father teach? Archeology?'

'He teaches history. Don't imagine I spent all my time in me Bahamas. It was a very short episode -- you can't afford more on a secretary's salary. I saved up for that vacation for a long time.'

I said, 'When you met Paul -- was that before or after he'd started on this Vivero research?'

'It was before -- I was with turn when he round the Vivero letter.'

'You were married then?'

'We were on our honeymoon,' she said lightly. 'It was a working honeymoon for Paul, though.'

'Has he taught you much about archeology?'

She shrugged. 'He's not a very good teacher, but I've picked up quite a lot. I've tried to help him in his work -- I think a wife should help her husband.'

'What do you think of this Vivero thing -- the whole caper?'

She was silent for a time, then said frankly, 'I don't like it, Jemmy, I don't, like anything about it. It's become an obsession with Paul -- and not only him. Look at Fallon. My God, take a good look at yourself!'

'What about me?'

She threw her cigarette away half-smoked. 'Don't you think it's ridiculous that you should have been jerked out of a peaceful life in England and dumped in this wilderness just because of what a Spaniard wrote four hundred years ago? Too many lives are being twisted. Jemmy.'

I said carefully, 'I wouldn't say I'm obsessional about it. I don't give a damn about Vivero or Uaxuanoc. My motives are different. But you say that Paul is obsessed by it. How does his obsession take him?'

She plucked nervously at the towel in her lap. 'You've seen him. He can think or talk of nothing else. It's changed him: he's not the man I knew when we were married. And he's not only fighting Quintana Roo -- he's fighting Fallon.'

I said shortly, 'If it weren't for Fallon he wouldn't be here now.'

'And that's a part of what he's fighting,' she said passionately. 'How can he compete with Fallen's reputation, with Fallen's money and resources? It's driving him crazy.'

'I wasn't aware that this was any kind of competition. dc you think Fallon will deny him any credit that's due to him?'

'He did before -- why shouldn't he do it again? It's really Fallon's fault that Paul is in such a bad state.'