Free Caribbean by James A. Michener Page B

no attempt had been made to achieve a finish. The buildings showed façades that were inherently ugly and were so oriented that no lovely vistas resulted. A few apertures did look out upon the Caribbean but they were very small, as if the priests inside had been afraid to face the frightening sea, preferring instead the scrub woodland which attacked from the west and with which they were familiar. The principal temple did serve one useful purpose: it was convenient as a pilgrimage center for those who could not afford the longer journeys to Cozumel or Chichén Itzá, but the men who served it were as uncouth as their building. The temple had as its prized adornment an exceptionally hideous Chac Mool whose reclining body was so cramped and distorted that it seemed hardly human and whose brutal scowl was terrifying. There was little else that might awaken spiritual understanding, and Ix Zubin was harsh when she helped her son evaluate what he was seeing: “It’s a hodgepodge. No beauty. No lifting of the spirit. No inner sense of majesty inspired these architects and sculptors. No reason, really, for the temples at all, except maybe to serve a population that couldn’t afford the trip to a real one.”
    Her son, acquainted only with the temples on Cozumel, could not agree: “Tulúm’s twice as big as anything we have. I like the way it overlooks the sea. It’s high, too, up on this cliff, much higher than any of ours.”
    Ix Zubin was impatient with such limited reasoning: “Big is no measure, Bolón. Look at that Chac Mool. Horrible though ours is, in comparison to this it’s a work of art. Ours is well carved, properly finished, and the boots and headdresses are handsomely done. It’s a real statue, and if you can tolerate Chac Mool, which I can’t, ours must be considered effective. But this one!” and she scorned its manifolddefects. “What’s most irritating, Bolón, it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do.”
    “What is that?”
    “Create a sense of awe … a feeling of mystical power.”
    “When I see that stone saucer resting on his belly and imagine what’s to go in it, I feel awe,” Bolón said, but she would not accept this: “Bolón, look at the hideous thing. It offers nothing but shock,” and she elaborated on the principle that had guided both her grandfather and her in their service to their island: “Whenever you do a job, do it right in its essentials, but then add something to make it more important than it would otherwise be. I hate our Chac Mool, you know that, but I admire the way the sculptor took pains to make the boots so perfect, the helmet so right. Let that be your guide when you become High Priest of our temple.”
    As they prepared to leave Tulúm for the journey to Chichén Itzá, Ix Zubin had an opportunity to study her son, and the more she saw of him as he stood on the verge of manhood, the more pleased she was. “Look at him!” she whispered to herself as he marched ahead. “What a handsome body, what a quick mind in its own way.” And she saw with motherly satisfaction that the countless nights she had spent binding boards against his forehead had borne fruit, for his face sloped backward in a perfect unbroken line from the tip of his nose to the top of his head in the way a Maya head was supposed to. No forehead bone interrupted that unblemished sweep, and with such a profile her son was assured of being judged one of the most handsome young men in any community. She could not understand why some mothers, and she could name a few in the better families of Cozumel, failed to train their son’s heads properly, for all it took was patience and the application of pressure every night for the first six years.
    There was a haphazard, poorly tended trail from the temple at Tulúm to the congregation of great buildings at Chichén Itzá, but it could not be called a proper road. However, along it did come, now and then, some important personage riding in a chair covered