Chapter 9: Rain Festival Misadventure

IF THE MEASURE of a successful Rain Festival is a pouring rain that drives everyone off the streets this year’s Festival was a total success. Saturday morning had dawned bright and sunny, but it was that kind of brittle sunshine that doesn’t last. In fact, the red sky at dawn had given its traditional warning, and the signal did not fail. By noon it was pouring and continued through the afternoon and into the evening.

Sofía was buoyant for some reason. She said it was because she liked the rain, which I had no reason to doubt, but I think it was also because she had some kind of agenda I wasn’t privy to, at least not yet.

“It will clear by tomorrow, Michael, and the Festival will resume. We’re used to this. This isn’t the first year we’ve been rained out on the first day, believe me.”

Sofía, her childhood friend Javier and I were gathered in my room at Sra. Martínez’ house, seated around the coffee table on the comfortable sofa and end chairs. I had the French doors open. At this time of year the rain could be warm or cold, it was spring, it was changeable, but this year, tonight, the rain was warm and we were comfortable enough inside. The awning outside kept most of the rain outside, although I noticed there were some drops on the flagstones closest to the window.

Javier spoke first. He hitched his right leg with his two hands, the unwieldy external brace a relic from the polio he’d suffered as a child.

“You read the document Sofía showed you, Michael, right?”

Several weeks before my visit she’d handed me a small manuscript, poorly printed, its binding beginning to shred. She refused to explain who it had belonged to or where it had come from.

“Here, read this before the visit,” she’d said. “It’s not the original. It’s a nineteenth century transcription, my friend Javier thinks. It’s not the only copy. Apparently it was something of a best-seller back then, even if it’s hard to find now.”

“I did read it, Javier. It was the most ghastly thing I’ve read in a long time. It seemed to be a cross between a very adult horror story and a sixteenth century precursor of a cheesy Hollywood B movie, and that’s being polite, if you know what I mean.”

“Understandable.” Javier laughed. “I hope you realize we do not practice human sacrifice at the Rain Festival any more. It no longer forms a part of any of our ceremonies, if in fact it ever did. Authorities do not agree even on that point, much less about the accompanying activities. Nevertheless, Sofía and I thought it important for you to understand the background.”

Javier ran a small news kiosk and bookstore, the only one in town. He’d taken over his father’s newspaper and magazine kiosk and added books. He also managed a small lending library, for which the village council paid him practically nothing. I don’t know how he made a living, but the small and growing community of artists and writers, refugees from the capital, were an important part of his customer base.

“There have been some modern developments that might interest you, however.”

He settled in.

“May I pour you a drink, Michael?”

When I nodded Javier filled three glasses with white wine and handed them around.

“It was certainly an extraordinary story, Javier, Sofía. Is it true?”

They laughed.

“We cannot know for certain, Michael,” said Javier. “It probably is not accurate in every single detail, but we know enough about these pre-Conquest ceremonies to think they may have involved human sacrifice, and to be fairly confident that if they did the sacrificial victims did not die in pain. That is, we believe they accepted their selection as an honor, as a requirement to satisfy the gods and an act essential to the well-being of the community, and, aside from whatever other activities might have preceded the final act, the drugs masked pain.”

He chuckled.

“Michael, the scholarship on this subject is mixed and the authorities do not agree on whether it existed and what form it took. The document is either a very vivid but authentic description of an extraordinary rite, or a fine example of early sixteenth century porn, take your pick.”

Sofía leaned forward.

“Michael, we also know the ceremonies involved the use of sedatives and hallucinogens to calm the victim before the sacrifice.” Here, she blushed, but she kept going. “And we know the sacrifices involved sex. It would appear the combination of drugs and sex and beautiful priestesses was enough for young men to go willingly to the altar. Of course, by the time they got there they probably were disoriented enough and aroused enough to care only about a climax, to the extent they were able to care about anything at all.”

Javier broke in.

“We know, too, those priests had something that acted both as an aphrodisiac and an early form of Viagra. We don’t have enough plant or other material to run tests to find out what exactly it was, but considering the age of some of the priests and the necessity of ensuring the boy was ready for intercourse at the critical moment, it seems pretty clear to us it was an effective one.”

He laughed.

“If anyone died happy it would be those boys. You read the account. If it’s at all accurate, what do you think?”

“I think you’re probably right, Javier.” I looked at Sofía, who had a small smile. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“We don’t know exactly what, if any part of it, applied to sacrifices involving young girls,” Javier said. “We suspect much the same, that is, a sedative coupled with some kind of aphrodisiac. The big difference was what happened before the final act.”

He looked at Sofía as though to ask her to go on. She did.

“What he means, Michael, is they fucked the girl before they sacrificed her. You read what happened with the priestess after the ceremony. Our understanding for now is that something similar happened with the girl, only before the knife came down rather than afterwards.”

We were quiet for a few moments. I was still digesting this, even though I’d first read the document several weeks ago. To be honest, despite my disgust and horror I found it arousing, which wasn’t a surprise since the Reliable Observer who wrote it had an eye for detail and a good nose for what made a hot story.

“I need to think about it some more, Javier, Sofía.” I looked at each in turn and smiled. “But it is truly an extraordinary story, and I’m more than delighted that you shared it with me.”

I wondered what was next. I didn’t have to wait long. Sofía spoke first.

“Do you remember the politician who visited some years ago, Michael? The one who was running for president of your country and who got sick?”

Of course I did. It was in all the papers at the time. What I wanted to know now was what the connection was with the document I’d read describing the Rain Festival.

Javier spoke next.

“You’re wondering what the connection is, Michael, right?

I nodded. Javier’s chuckle had a rueful note, but his words stunned me.

“Actually, we’re not entirely sure there is one, but we can fill in some details about the death of the politician that you may not know.”

“He means, despite all the investigations by your FBI and your CIA and your NSA and who the heck else you had snooping around after it happened,” added Sofía.

I looked closely at Sofía. There was a new person starting to appear beneath the earnest but intelligent and scrappy young woman I’d grown used to talking with over the past year or so.

“And maybe Javier and I will share a little of our efforts to better understand the original ceremonies, too,” she said.

The sparkle in her eye promised something. I stretched and refilled our wineglasses.

“OK, I’m listening.”

He was not a popular figure in the U.S., Sofía recounted. It was an acrimonious election campaign, they could see that from their own vantage point, and the candidate’s frequent references to actions he planned to take, ostensibly to protect the security of the U.S., did not make many friends in this country.

“You know, Michael, we’re used to all sorts of election hype,” Sofía said. “Our politicians aren’t really any better or worse than yours, especially not this year.”

I remembered the campaign well. I’d just joined the diplomatic service and was posted on another continent at the time, but we all followed every twist and turn of the campaign. Our service had a reputation of impartiality at the professional level and no one wanted to see that disappear, but our official impartiality did not stop any of us from expressing our own views even if only to friends and family.

“But this was beyond what we’d heard,” Javier added.

In fact, Javier went on to say, the politician’s comments had so riled up some segments of the electorate there was a real question whether the politician would accept the prime minister’s invitation to come and visit and see for himself.

“We knew we weren’t really the target of his comments,” Sofía had a sour expression as she said this. “But it was getting a little tiresome, no, a lot tiresome, to hear the same garbage over and over again as he attempted to use us and those of our citizens who sought work in your country, Michael, as targets to generate support among his backers, especially those who had not been doing well for years now.

“I know,” I interjected. “You aren’t the only ones who reached that conclusion.”

At any rate, according to Javier, after a lot of backing-and-forthing the politician agreed to come for a visit. They never knew exactly why, but for whatever reason he chose to visit at the time of the traditional Rain Festival, and to visit this very village after he’d called on the prime minister in the capital.

“Some said it was because one of our prime minister’s advisors, the one charged with planning or recommending an itinerary to the politician’s staff, was a native of this village,” Javier continued. “He’d grown up here until his parents, well-known in this town, had moved to the capital. Even if he’d never returned to live permanently in the village, he visited regularly and his grandparents as well as some aunts and an uncle still live here.”

Between them Sofía and Javier sketched a visit that was routine in all its particulars. It wasn’t a state visit, far from it, but it was a visit by someone who might well end up as president of the United States. Given the close and complex relationship between our countries, I knew such a person would be received almost as a head of state. There was the reception at the prime minister’s residence, a formal dinner albeit not a state one, and the obligatory private session with the prime minister after photographs of the two men sitting comfortably or awkwardly, as the case may be, before the meeting began. There would be no call on the president, who was largely a figurehead in this country anyway.

The visit was too short for the obligatory stop at the national monument to the country’s founders, a combination tomb and altar, an echo of the pre-Conquest roots of the country. Indeed, I knew the shrine referred to the “painful birth” of the people of this country, pre-Conquest, colonial-era and the current mixture of both. The result of this mixing, despite its painful beginning or perhaps because of it, was a race of handsome men and women, dark, with clear smooth complexions, high cheekbones, and a somewhat exaggerated reputation for barely controlled sexuality. In fairness, I knew, that reputation had been fanned by enthusiastic visitors and writers in the footsteps of the author of the manuscript I’d read, with the assistance of screenwriters and movie directors.

Once released, the inhabitants of this land, male and female, were said to be firebrands in bed. Hollywood said so.

There was some truth here. I’d already witnessed it first-hand. I couldn’t help but wonder how Sofía might fit in. For that matter, I was pretty sure the hidden nature was not limited to the so-called lower orders. My guess, if I was reading Alejandra and her mother correctly, was it extended throughout every part of the culture.