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The
Occasional
March 25,2002
Don
Victor
It wasn’t really Anibal’s fault. He drew the map and I
never asked for its scale. Turn right toward Merida and take the
first left and then drive to the town with the church and turn right.
I quickly got to the town with the church and turned right. The
road dead ended at a school. It occurred to me that maybe there
was another town with a church. I got to the next town. It had a
church. I turned right. I followed it until it ran out of pavement
and then was forced to turn back when barbed wire crossed the road.
It was then I employed the earlier logic… “maybe there’s
another town with a church.” I think you see where this is
going. Mexico is a Catholic country and a very religious one at
that. Before they would build homes, the people would erect the
edifice of the church. Every town has a church and a road leading
to the right of it.
I reminded myself that what I was actually after were the three
Cenotes, so I tried to shorten the process by driving up to the
church and waiting for someone to walk by so I could roll down the
window and point down the road to the right and ask “Cenotes?”
so that they could look puzzled and ask “que?” and I would
ask “Cenotes?” and they would demonstrate recognition
and say something like “oh, Cenotes” and I would say “si,
Cenotes" and then they take a long look down the road to the
right as if searching their souls and finally say “No. No Cenotes.”
At this point they would usually turn to me, lean into the window
and begin speaking Spanish at an dizzying rate, my three or four
words of mangled Spanish somehow having convinced them that I was
fluent in the language. I was required to do what the ignorant do
everywhere… smile, nod my head as if suffering some medical
affliction and say “gracias” a lot. Finally when they
determined that I was either on the right track, deaf or irretrievably
stupid they would push off from the car and turn back into the quiet
town. I would then employ the earlier logic; “maybe there’s
another town with a church.
I know that I’m writing a story and using a word (Cenote) which
is obviously very central to that story without defining it. This
would seem to be a cheap trick, but I swear it’s not. Please
understand I am in an utterly flat jungle, driving from town to
town and stopping at churches asking if there are any Cenotes nearby
without having any clear idea of what a Cenote is. Anibal told me
to go, and I did.
I had one other hint. Don Victor. Anibal had said to look for Don
Victor and that Don Victor would take me to the Cenotes in a “Trucko.”
I was not certain where Don Victor was, but wherever he was, he
was to lead me to the three circles on Anibal’s map once I
found him. I cannot tell you how many towns, villages and fields
I stopped in asking for Cenotes or Don Victor. I honestly think
it was something on the order of twenty-three. In one town a guy
drove up to me on a mountain bike and asked if I’d come to
see the Cenotes. Si, si, si, si Cenotes, Cenotes I said. He offered
what was clearly a monetary figure and I said, “No no, Don
Victor.” He glowered and rode away. The space that he had filled
in front of me was now occupied by a church which had a road leading
to the right. There was no reason to believe this would prove any
more fruitful than the others and I expected to be knee deep in
a pig farm in a matter of seconds. I turned right anyway.
The road miraculously continued to wind through old agave fields.
On the left appeared an abandoned sisal plant, a relic of the decaying
Banana Republic. I stopped to take a photo and as I did so a little
man appeared silently out of nowhere. I asked him if Don Victor
lived here. “Si,” he said, I am Don Victor. This was just
a bit too much like being in a Carlos Casteneda novel for comfort.
Still disbelieving I asked “Cenote?” "Si, Senior,
Cenotes, Tres Cenotes!” It felt like I’d found a sunken
ship of gold. Don Victor led me down the street a bit and I now
saw there were a few small houses and gardens. The requisite chickens
ran everywhere. We turned into a small yard just behind a square
white house. There were three horses, all looking directly into
the dirt. All three seemed to be determined to avoid work by avoiding
eye contact with Don Victor. It was the white horse which blinked
first and Don Victor walked over and put a harness on him. He then
went over to a small wooden platform on wheels, a miniature flatcar,
which Don Victor pushed forward across the dirt to the beginning
of a tiny set of railroad tracks just like the ones on which Margerita
hauled the guests at Hacienda Katanchel. Don Victor looped a rope
from the horse’s harness over a huge hook on the front of the
flatcar where he sat. There were no actual seats, just a big platform
of wood with an ancient square cushion which had been compressed
over the years to the thickness of worn shoe leather . I sat down,
Don Victor spoke to the horse by name, Careto, and we began to trot
past the few huts, goats and barking dogs of the village. Away we
went through miles of old agave fields and tumbling stone walls.
I learned later that these little railways ran everywhere throughout
the Yucatan and had supplied the workers to the fields in the morning
and had hauled the cut agave out in the afternoon. There must be
thousands of miles of these tracks still running through what are
now jungles in the Yucatan. Don Victor had figured out how to make
a living off of them once the sisal boom was over and little railways
had been abandoned by everyone else.
Perhaps forty minutes later I was in a reverie; lost in dreams of
this land in other times when the fields were productive and the
people had work and an economy… of a time before everything
fell asleep and returned to the jungle. Careto was slowing and we
came to a stop. Don Victor tied Careto to a tree and we turned into
the jungle and walked just a few feet before I saw the top of a
ladder disappearing into the earth. Don Victor motioned me to his
side. He stood over a hole in the ground, probably just big enough
for me, but not without scraping the rocky sides a bit. A rusted
metal ladder of questionable engineering projected out of the hole
for about three feet and disappeared in the darkness after about
ten rungs. Leaning out and grabbing the top of the ladder, I placed
my feet on the first rung and started down. A hot wind rose past
me as I descended. My eyes could make out nothing but the rungs
as I went down. But when my feet hit the earth again and I turned
to my left I was looking into a cave of incredible size and colors.
It must have been at least 100 feet across. The walls were white,
red, yellow and orange and stalactites of six to eight feet in length
hung from the roof. The scene was lit by a natural circular hole
in the ceiling which cast light directly onto the most impossibly
translucent light blue pool imaginable. The water was so clear that
it was literally impossible to tell where the surface began and
I had to throw a pebble into the water for its ripples to reveal
the surface. I was expecting that it would lie at least six feet
below me. For a moment I couldn’t even see the ripples until
my eyes comprehended the impossible and adjusted to a plane of concentric
ripples no more than six inches below me. Nor could I guess the
depth of the water. The stones on the bottom were so clear and revealed
such detail that I guessed it must be quite shallow, perhaps two
or three feet deep. Was it safe to dive in?, I pantomimed to Don
Victor. "Si," he said but I was not convinced. I held
my hands apart, and again pantomimed to Don Victor a question about
the depth. “Dies Metros” he said; ten meters, more than
30 feet! With my mind trusting Don Victor and my eyes telling me
otherwise, I dove deeply into the pool. The cool water washed over
me. I glided silently in the momentum of the dive and came up directly
below the shaft of light in the center. I came to the surface laughing.
I had come here not knowing what I was coming for. I had come here
with a map so vague that I had seen every village between here and
Katanchel and could write a book about the local churches. I had
come here on a little railroad behind a horse named Careto at the
side of a little man who must have known Don Juan. I felt very grateful.
I’m not going to tell you exactly where the Cenotes are. I
will give you one hint, however. Just turn right at the church.
Will
Just
Turn Right
Banana
Republic
Don
Victor and Careto
The
Railroad
Photos
by Will Ackerman
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