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The Lost Treasures of Yucatan: A Belizean Saga

by Ben Maartman

99 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1865; ISBN 1-4120-1487-5; US$14.50, C$16.33, EUR12.00, £8.50

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

The lost treasures are historical artifacts and jewels from Montezuma's Aztec Empire. According to legend, during the 1848 Mayan uprising at the Battle of Bacalar in Mexico's Yucatan, the treasures were hidden in the upper reaches of the Rio Honda that forms the border between Mexico and Belize. Two boys, Ali, a Creole from Belize City, and Milo, a Mestizo from off shore Ambergris Cay, armed with an ancient map and diary, go into the Yucatan rain forests seeking the treasures. They find unexpected tangible treasures, but the real treasures they find are beyond their wildest imaginations

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About the Author

Ben was born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1924. Raised on farms, he served in the navy, and later attended UBC and became a correctional social worker and also took creative writing under Earle Birney and received the Brissendon creative writing scholarhip.

For many years he did radio and film scripts for the CBC, mainly on social themes. The Manipulator Series. Skidrow: Italia Award. The Dirty Thirties:Wilderness Award. Belize: one hour film documentary.

The family spent three school years in Belize.

Ben and Blanche live in rural Vancouver Island where they raised seven children. Since 1983 they have been low-budget world travellers, including a year teaching ESL in China.

Books by Ben Maartman

The Iron Bowl Blues & Other Peeks Behind The Bamboo Curtain
About the frolics and torments of a year teaching ESL in China. Plus China travel.
Fogduckers Press

The Strange Thing About Miracles & Other Stories
A correctional social worker's account of Canada's first hectic experiment in paroling recidivist penitentiary heroin addicts.
Fogduckers Press

Marco Polo On the O.A.S. - A Low Budget World Travel Guide For All Ages
How to travel the world on Old Age Security while banking money.
Fogduckers Press

The above books are distributed by U of T Press and are available at most bookstores or at:

Fogduckers Press
Box 144, Errington, B.C. V0R 1V0
Ph/Fax (250) 248 8325
email: bmaartman@bcsupernet.com
www.bcsupernet.com/users/benmaartman/

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Excerpts

Excerpt Page 9

''I have buried,'' Milo helped out. ''Here. Let me.'' His voice nearly broke with excitement. He took a deep breath and read the first two lines in Spanish, and translated the rest into English.

''El Ojo De Dios,
18 de Julio, 1867.

My old friend Alfredo,
Today I have buried my fears of the past many weeks. I received your message enclosed in yet another token of your kindness. And now I know the secret is in safe hands.

No, my friend Alfredo, although I cherish my God given gift, and struggle to fulfil it in His name, it is you who has the greater gift, the rarest gift of all: The Gift of Giving.

It is because you have this rarest of gifts that I have placed in your full trust the secret of The Lost Treasures of Yucatan.

Like me, Alfredo, you are an old man. Our treasures are our memories. I leave it to you to pass my secret on to one who has The Gift of Giving, as do you.

So rare is The Gift of Giving that you may know no one who has it. If this be the case, Alfredo, then leave a message, a token for posterity and the future eyes of one who must have The Gift of Seeing as well as The Gift of Giving. In a way they are one and the same.

You ask: Will we meet again? My dear old friend, we have never parted.

May God smile on you, as He has on me.
Now I wait His final bidding. Farewell my dearest friend.
Yours eternally,
Enrico Rivas.

''I have placed in your trust the secret of el tesoro perdido de Yucatan,'' Milo repeated slowly, his face puckered with thought. He looked up at Ali. ''You really think there was a lost treasure?''

Excerpt Pages 15 & 16

Ali felt a wave of hopelessness. He tucked the diary and letters into his shirt and looked up into old Demos's eyes. ''Por favor, Senor Demos, quien fue Alfredo Louis?''

The old man lifted his brown and wrinkled face to the sun and to the distant reef. His eyes remained on the reef or someplace or time far beyond it, as he spoke: ''Senor Alfredo Louis fue asisinado.'' As he spoke he raised his hands and gave the slightest shrug to his shoulders, not a shrug of indifference, but a shrug of doubt.

Assassinated! ''Pero porque, Senor Demos?'' Ali's voice was hushed. ''Why?''

''El secreto de Yucatan?'' The old man answered Ali's question with another question, but all the time with his eyes on the reef or some point miles or years further away.

Excerpt Page 40

Ali's eyes slowly and painstakingly sought the face of El Nino. With each lingering look came the repeated urge to reach into the painting and join hands and leap and laugh with the little boy, and send cries of joy echoing ever higher to the heavens above. But search as he might, Ali could find no clue, beyond his sense of elation, that could in even the remotest way seem to say anything about lost treasure.

Excerpt Pages 50 & 51

For the next two days they chose the same leisurely routine, letting the river carry them at its own speed. In the afternoons they kept an eye open for a stream to camp near, for here trout, bass and mackerel could be had for the trouble of capturing any colourful bug or beetle, and dropping it impaled on a hook into the meeting place of stream and river. They found a stalk of wild plantain to fry with their fish and the rice and beans they had brought. Wild grapes and plums, gineps and gindas were to be had for the picking to round off any meal. Each night they wielded their machetes to build a rough thatch shelter to ward off the pelting rain from the brief squalls that always seemed to arrive with the dawn of a new day. Safe under their nets from tarantulas and other crawly creatures, they lay in their night hammocks and watched the silvery twinkle of the fireflies magically writing their secret formulas all up and down the river. They knew that the smouldering smoke from their smudge fire would keep all wildlife at bay as they lay listening to the insects and night birds and the occasional scream of a hunting leopard.

Excerpt Pages 60 & 61

The room beyond the central partition contained a huge bin of corn that rose the height of the walls, with the husked and dried ears piled high to the point of overflowing. Every few minutes one of the ladies grinding corn would reach to the bottom of the corn crib and select a fresh supply of corn ears. As the ladies worked steadily away they seemed to grow accustomed to the visitors. They started chatting, glancing occasionally at Zed and the two boys as they did, but not missing or even altering the rhythm of their grinding and kneading and patting.

Once in awhile a rooster would crow or a pig squeal from somewhere outside, but this, too, seemed to Ali to fit into the work rhythm. He realized that these were the sounds and smells and motions of the ancient Mayan civilization, all based on the ability to grow and mill corn into tortillas. Ali knew that had he arrived at this village one thousand or two thousand years ago, he would have seen and heard exactly the same things. He vaguely wondered if it would be the same one thousand years from now.

Except Pages 64 & 65

As they finished unloading their fronds onto the bank, Juan pointed to a teen-age boy perched near the top of the new structure, balancing on slender poles as he tied more poles together for bracing. ''One constructs the house of Antonio Mai,'' he said.

''The boy at the top?'' Ali asked in surprise.
''That is Antonio Mai,'' Pedro answered.
''He doesn't look very old,'' said Ali, dubiously, although it was hard to judge the ages of the Mayans, for very few of the adults were as tall as Ali.

''Antonio has seventeen years,'' said Juan gravely. ''His wife will bear him a child soon.'' Seeing the look of curiosity on Ali's face, he went on: ''It is the Mayan custom that when the girl has fourteen years, and a boy has sixteen years, that he may beg the parents for the girl. The boy will give the girl gifts. If she keeps the gifts, then her father will give the boy's father a pig and fowl and other gifts. If the father takes the gifts, then the girl becomes the wife of the boy, and goes to live in the house of the boy and his father and mother. When the wife tells her new mother that she is with child, then all the village do make for them a house and a milpa so that they may prepare for their child. It is the duty of the boy's father to supply the food for the days of building the house, and all the women of the village come to that house to prepare the food. This is our custom,'' Juan summed up.

Ali nodded and then smiled as he asked: ''How old are you, Juan?''

"I have thirteen years."

There was a sudden peel of laughter from Pedro as he pointed at Juan. ''And when he has his day of sixteen years he will beg the father of Avalia Cauich.'' His voice broke with laughter. Juan and Ali and Milo all joined in, as they pushed their dories back into the gentle river.

Excerpt Pages 84 & 85

Zed was not one to waste words. As he led the way the only sound was his machete testing the rock. The light from up ahead seemed to be slowly increasing. Ali watched Zed's head and shoulders and then the rest of his body slowly go from view as Zed was moving upwards. The boys followed close behind. Ali found himself climbing steps carved into the floor of another natural crevice that angled up from the one they had entered. It was a straight steep climb towards ever increasing light. Ali ducked down to all fours and followed Pedro's feet under a low hanging belly of rock. As he straightened to his feet he was standing with the others in a great circle of dancing, dazzling, kaleidoscopic light.

Excerpt Page 86

Ali looked down at the steaming village. A little girl emerged from the trees by the river and walked through the shining grass, a wooden bucket balanced on her head. She stopped and remained motionless, one hand holding the balance of the bucket. In that split second, the village, to Ali, was no longer a place called San Elas. It was a picture hung high on the wall in the Bliss Institute. Even when the little girl started to walk again, gave movement to the picture, it made no difference, for now Ali knew it as not merely a peculiar feeling, inside himself, that he had seen the village and the falls and the river sometime before. He knew, in that moment, that he had seen them before; but through the eyes of Enrico Rivas, who could make long dead people live forever on a sheet of yellowed paper; Enrico Rivas who with a paint brush could catch a little laughing Mayan boy forever pointing a finger directly at el ojo de Dios while in the act of swinging through the air before plunging into the pool below; Enrico Rivas who could make HULHA, the village of falling water, the whole countryside, and a lost century, live forever.

Excerpt Pages 91 & 92

Angelo and Stilts were not caught far off guard. As the bottle came shattering down they had both leapt back. As if materialising from mid-air, two switch blades clicked, the long narrow slivers of steel pointed at Zed's neck.

''El tesoro, mi amigo. Y pronto!'' Angelo's voice was low but deadly.

The wild defiance seemed to have left Zed as suddenly as it had arrived. He leaned back on a desk and began to laugh; not a defiant laugh, or his old bitter laugh, but a laugh of joy and relief and ringing freedom.

The laughter threw Angelo off for a moment. His face twisted with anger. The knife tilted up to Zed's jugular and then slowly lowered.

Excerpt Page 95

Tosh laid the letter amongst the paintings and sketches strewn about his shop. ''Well, boys,'' he smiled at Ali and Milo, ''it looks like your wild goose chase has made us all rich. We each own a Rivas masterpiece.''

''Not me,'' Milo said, and shook his head as he offered his wide smile.

''Nor me,'' said Ali.

Tosh laughed. ''Nor me, either.'' Then he added, ''And now we really do own them.''

To the perplexed look on the boys' faces, he again offered his little chuckle, and went on: ''For one can never own anything until one gives it away. Rivas knew that. Alfredo Louis knew that. Zed learned that, too. The Mayan people, who live by daily giving to one another, and strangers alike, have always known it.'' His large, bulgy eyes moved from one picture to another, and then up to Milo and Ali, as he added, ''And if we three have learned that simple truth‹then we are rich, indeed!''

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Catalogue Information

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