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“Francisco,” interrupted Maestra Filo, “didn’t you know that Marisol was my student? I must brag on her a bit and say that she is an excellent researcher and has a terrific career ahead of her. Her English is much better than yours or mine, and she’s become very proficient in Nahuatl.”

  “Yes, Marisol is our interpreter…” the friar began.

  “Nahuatl,” interrupted Zé Queluz, who turned to look at me. “The language of the Aztecs.”

  “Well, right,” I stuttered, “and it was the language of many other peoples too. It was something of a lingua franca in central Mexico.”

  There was an awkward pause, until the friar resumed. “Marisol is indeed very talented, and of my utmost confidence. Her linguistic skills are of great interest to me and may prove invaluable.”

  I stared stone-faced like this was old news, but in fact I had never heard him mention anything about my study of Nahuatl.

  “But what she does not know” he continued, “is the reason you are all here. Last week, we had a few tremors of the kind that so persistently plague us here in central Mexico. These temblores broke some pipes and flooded a portion of our basement storage room. Fortunately, not much was damaged, but many of us worked into the night to move our precious books from the lower shelves upstairs to the main floor, since we did not know how much higher the water would rise. When the plumbers came to make repairs, they had to remove a section of the wall in that storage room.”

  “Tell me, hermano,” Zé asked, “when these repairs were made, did you find any, um, shall we say… surprises? Books, scrolls, paintings?”

  Friar Francisco frowned. “It is a curious thing you ask, Sr. Queluz.”

  There was a long pause, until Zé added, “Please forgive my impertinence. I think I saw something like that in a movie once.”

  “Indeed,” said the friar, “you are correct. There were quite a few things found, yes. Some books, some not. All were registered in our collections, and all, save one, are here for you to view if you wish. In fact, these are the materials about which I would much appreciate your assessments. I have called you here, somewhat discreetly as you now understand, because I need your expert opinions on what was found behind that wall.”

  I was as surprised as they were.

  After an uncharacteristic pause, Dr. Gutiérrez finally opened his mouth. “You said, everything that was found is here for us to see, except one item. What happened to it?”

  Friar Francisco looked at his visitors one by one, then at me. He was clutching his robe at his chest rather obviously and yet absent-mindedly. I grew concerned—had he arrived late because he wasn’t feeling well? But then he dropped his hand and spoke again.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But perhaps you would like to see the rest of the recovered items? Come this way, please.”

  I saw Zé and Dr. Gutiérrez exchange curious looks, even as I tried to mask my own. Then we followed the friar down the back hallway to a locked door. This, I knew, was certainly not part of the regular tour.

  When Friar Francisco unlocked the door and flipped a light switch inside, we saw a pole-mounted spiral staircase of dubious strength. Its metal steps wobbled in protest as Dr. Gutiérrez hurriedly started to descend. Maestra Filo clutched the doorframe and turned to the friar. “Ay, Francisco, ¡ya me voy! I don’t like these kinds of stairs y además me dan miedo los espacios encerrados. Claustrophobia. I need to get back to Xalapa still today. Gracias, ¿eh? ¡Hasta la próxima!”

  “¡Está bien, Filo!” Friar Francisco took his leave with the customary kisses and embrace. “But, in that case, I need to give you something. Marisol, please, you and Sr. Queluz can go on downstairs as well. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  I gave my former teacher a hug and thanked her for coming. “¡Cuídate!” I remember saying. Zé was already navigating the middle of the spiral staircase and so I followed down behind him, but not without turning back quickly, curiously, and seeing that Friar Francisco and Maestra Filo had moved some distance back down the hall. He produced from his robe something that looked like a package—the length and width of a tie box—and gave it to Maestra Filo. I could not hear what he was saying to her.

  As I continued cautiously down the stairs, I saw that at the bottom was a storage room. It was windowless, and lined floor-to-ceiling with shelving. The shelves below waist level had been emptied when the pipe broke, but the higher ones were stuffed full of old volumes and scrolls. The floor was still dirty and damp with patches of drying mud. There was a rustic table with two chairs in the middle of the room, and an old chest on the tabletop. Zé and Dr. Gutiérrez were squatting, inspecting a hole in the wall that must have been the area where the plumbers had worked. I sat in one of the chairs.

  Friar Francisco soon came downstairs to join us. “Sí, compañeros,” he said, “you are looking at the hiding place of a very rare find, indeed. When the workers called me down here, they showed me a locked tin chest that had been sitting just inside that wall. That’s the chest, there on the table. I decided we should break the lock, and after we finally opened the chest, the first item I saw inside was the Registry of Births for the City of Puebla de los Ángeles for the final months of 1642, an album previously assumed to be lost.

  “But even more curious, and much more precious, at least to me, was the codex. As you know, there are so few codices that escaped destruction, and this one seems to be authentic. Let me show you.”

  Friar Francisco opened the metal chest. I was struggling to process what he was saying, hoping beyond hope it was true. A real, unknown codex? The codices were the picture-prints of ancient Mesoamerica. Learned people would use them to recite histories as they narrated from the illustrations. The Maya had most closely approached a system of phonetic writing, and along with the Aztec, Mixtec and a few other peoples, they used bark paper or deerskin to make accordion-folded, painted picture-stories as a way of recording events. Only with the arrival of Spanish clergy would Nahuatl—or any of the other indigenous tongues—become a “written” language in the sense of recording words more or less phonetically in the Roman alphabet.

  The rather small codex that Friar Francisco pulled from the chest was about the size of a large notebook. He placed it on the little table and opened it. In all my years of studying what few codices the Spaniards didn’t burn, I had never seen this before. Who had seen it, ever? Only its maker, and Friar Francisco, and doubtless some few others in between—but this codex that I was devouring with my eyes was completely undocumented in modern scholarship.

  It lay open to its first set of pages, or folios, but it looked like it extended for another four or five of these folds. The coloration was stunning, and somehow light-catching, iridescent. The shiny pictures showed a series of events, clearly dated according to the Nahua calendar, from the life of an unknown person whose name glyph I quickly interpreted to mean Sun Prince. He wore a distinct color-splashed robe, the style of which I had never seen before. Zé was gently turning the folios, and I could see that the illustrations were large, larger than I had ever seen, with each covering an entire folio. There was a scene with an eagle, and another at a temple. I was so enchanted I tuned out the friar for a moment.

  “… remarkable that it was not destroyed,” the friar was saying. “What do you make of it?”

  “This is absolutely wonderful, hermano. Out of this world!” Dr. Gutiérrez could barely contain his emotion. “We need to get this to our experts at the University of Texas as soon as possible and have it analyzed for authenticity. Have you digitized the pages yet?”

  “Por el amor de Dios,” replied the friar. “We have not been able to move that quickly. And I am not at all eager for it to leave the country.”

  Zé looked at me. “What do make of this, Señorita Aguilar? Can you tell what it’s about?”

  “It seems to be the story of someone named Tonatiuhpilli, or Sun Prince. The images are characteristically styled but much larger than other extant…”

  “Did you say ‘Sun Pr
ince’?” Zé interrupted.

  “Right. These glyphs here, that are repeated whenever the figure of this man appears, that’s what they mean: Sun and Prince. It could also be ‘Shining Prince.’ Probably his name.”

  Zé muttered something in Portuguese that I didn’t understand.

  Friar Francisco reacted quickly, too. “Sun Prince...” he exclaimed. “But… well, this is rather extraordinary. There is a sixteenth-century volume upstairs about someone of that name. That volume is very precious to me. It changed my perspective regarding many of the dear matters of this life…”

  As the friar was speaking, I remember that I started to feel queasy. I had just begun to think that I had not eaten enough breakfast, because it felt like the ground was melting and my chair had become a boat rocking on rough waves.

  But then everything began to shake. Friar Francisco lurched to grab hold of the staircase. “Terremoto,” he wheezed, and suddenly Zé and Dr. Gutiérrez both ducked under the table. I managed to squeeze below, too, just as all manner of boxes and cartons and drawers and loose books and pages came spilling down onto the table above us.

  The shaking seemed to last forever—at least long enough for me to think about dying down there, buried, and what that would mean. Right in front of my face was a table leg, still dirt-streaked from the flood, and as I focused on it, there was plenty of time for me to repent for having ever fantasized about books falling off shelves. Plenty of time to reflect back on meaning in my life: did it really matter that I had spent so much time studying ancient Mexico? My mother’s voice answered in the affirmative, from deep in my memory: “¡Marisol Aguilar Xicoténcatl, no te olvides de tu pasado! Don’t forget your past!” But trapped under that table, my body pressing awkwardly against the seams of my strained clothes, there was plenty of time, ironically, for me to regret not having lived a freer life, not having spent more time with friends and family. Plenty of time to feel, as if in the reverberations of one massive bell peal, the entire compressed history of my biological clock.

  When the shaking finally stopped, I realized we were almost completely buried under the table. There was no light.

  Chapter 2: The Caballero

  We could hear Friar Francisco gasping and mumbling that he was hurt, that he was hurt in the heart. Dr. Gutiérrez, Zé, and I started pushing away books and boxes until we could begin to move out from under the table. We were all coughing, and when Zé got his cell phone out to use as a light source, we saw how the beam of light passed through a thick cloud of dust that had risen up, swirling all around us. I managed to keep moving things out of the way, as carefully as possible, until I had a path cleared to the friar.

  He was lying on the ground face up, and his robe had come up over his chest. I think we were all surprised to see he was naked underneath. Dr. Gutiérrez yanked his robe back down over his legs.

  I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. “Friar Francisco.” I said his name like a command, and found his hand to grasp in mine. “Padre.”

  He opened his eyes and saw me kneeling over him, the other two men standing behind me. “Marisol,” he struggled to say, “un parto.”

  A birth? That’s what it sounded like he said, un parto. As I looked at him, he said something similar, but this time it was “Me parto,” as in “I’m leaving.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Padre, vamos,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

  He started rolling his head back and forth, moving his arms as if he wanted to push himself up from the floor. Then he opened his eyes, for the last time, and said, “Hija, ayuda al caballero. Busca la luz…”

  “Padre, no…” I felt tears stinging my eyes as his arm fell back down and his head lolled to the side.

  Zé knelt down to feel for a pulse. I yelled for help, but there was no answer.

  Then Zé looked at me. “I’m sorry, Marisol. He’s dead.”

  Suddenly several chunks of plaster fell near Friar Francisco’s head. “Aftershock,” said Zé, and he moved to quickly pull the friar under the table for protection.

  “That poor man,” Dr. Gutiérrez began. “But at his age, better him than me. You have to be prepared. I read once that earthquakes bring on a lot of heart attacks. And you have to be really careful about aftershocks, too, because they can be just as danger...”

  Dr. Gutiérrez stopped abruptly, and then his eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the floor. Zé stood behind him, his raised hand brandishing a loose plank.

  I couldn’t believe this. I was already pumped full of adrenaline and panic and now this. “What the… What did you do that for?”

  “He’ll be fine. When he wakes up, he’ll think it was a chunk of plaster that hit him. I’m going to pull him under the table with the friar. He’ll be safe there.” Zé grabbed the professor under his shoulders and looked up at me. “A little help?”

  “What?! What are you talking about? Why did you knock him out?”

  “Look, Gutiérrez doesn’t know how badly I need this codex. With any luck, he won’t even remember anything about a codex.”

  I had no idea what was going on. Suddenly everything was crazy. I folded my arms, bluffing that I could stand there forever until I got more information.

  Eyeing my look of resolve, Zé gave up on my help and slid the professor around to shove him under the table. Between grunts, Zé spilled out something about the book that Friar Francisco had mentioned. “I think… it might have to do with the… codex and besides… he told you to help me, the caballero, didn’t he? His last words.”

  “The book that he said is upstairs, that might be about the same person, is that what you mean?”

  A hammer and a box of nails fell from a shelf and landed near my foot.

  “Another aftershock,” said Zé. “The building is unstable. No time to look for anything now. We’ve got to get out of here, quick.”

  “¡Ay! Let go of my arm!”

  “Sorry! Just… move! De pressa! These walls could fall at any moment!”

  “We’re just going to leave these guys?!”

  Zé was almost to the top of the spindly spiral already. He stopped just quick enough to yell, “There’s no way we can carry them up this staircase!”

  “Fine, but I have to tell the guard where they are! And what about the codex? It’s buried under all these books and junk on the table. I’ll just dig through here...”

  “I have the codex right here!” Zé patted his portfolio, hanging across his chest. “Hurry up and get up here already!”

  I was startled, but impressed, that he had grabbed the delicate document so quickly and instinctively when the earthquake started. I hurried up the stairs, which seemed even shakier than before. Just as I was about to reach the top, there was a cracking, shearing sound, and then the entire staircase lurched backward on its pole, away from the door.

  I yelled, throwing my weight forward as a counterbalance. From the hallway, Zé quickly reached over the threshold and grabbed my hand, the portfolio swinging wildly from his shoulder over the chasm where the landing had been. He pulled me with both arms, bracing his feet against the doorframe.

  We locked eyes. I saw confidence and strength in him, and maybe a bit of desperation. I don’t know what he saw in me: probably fear, but I hope also determination, because in that moment I had to trust him. Through the strength of our arms we found the balance to pull me to the door, riding the staircase like a pivot.

  I jumped to the hall, and instantly the staircase spun back around behind me, hitting a wall before rolling around to crash on top of the chaotic heap of books and dust and shelving and… bodies. The top stairs rolled to a rest against the edge of the table, but it looked like the friar and the professor were still protected underneath.

  “Vamos embora!” Zé yelled. I ran down the hall after him, stopping just to pull my purse from the drawer behind the front desk. There was no one in the foyer, but I could see lots of people outside on the street, including Gualberto, one of the security
guards. As we moved outside, Zé grabbed me again and started to duck away from the crowd, but he stopped when he heard me yelling for the guard. He kept his grip on my arm.

  “Gualberto! Friar Francisco—he’s… dead! I think he had heart failure!’

  The guard did a double take. “What?! Are you sure?”

  I looked at Zé for confirmation, and he said, “He didn’t have a pulse. Seems like the earthquake brought on a heart attack.”

  I clutched my arms over my abdomen, still in shock. “We had to leave him down in the storage room under a table with Dr. Gutiérrez, who has a head injury. But we rescued the co…”

  Instantly Zé’s mouth covered my ear, whispering, “Quiet. He doesn’t need to know anything’s missing.”

  “¿Señorita?” Gualberto called.

  “Fame,” whispered Zé. “Authority and respect in your field. Wealth to last long into the future.”

  I bit my lip. “No, nada,” I called back to the guard.

  “Qué barbaridad,” said Gualberto. “We will get both of them out of there as soon as we can safely re-enter the building.”

  “Now, come with me,” Zé said.

  “Stop squeezing my arm! We’re out of the building already. What is it with you?”

  He let go of my arm, but did not let up with his questions. “Do you have a key to the library?”

  “If I had a key to the library, I don’t think I’d tell you.”

  “Fine. Where do you live?”

  I stared him in the eyes. “Why?”

  “We need to get you home, no?”

  “No,” I huffed, “actually what I need to do first is call Doña Filo.”

  “Great! Tell her to meet us at La Posada del Virrey, where I’m staying.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Friar Francisco is dead, and I need to stick around and make sure that his family has been notified, and his friends like Filo, and also, as I hope you could imagine, I need to call mi mamá so she knows not to worry about me being crushed in the earthquake!”