The Babylon Rite. Tom Knox

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СКАЧАТЬ almost a total ingénue, unprepared for the shock she was about to encounter: the high weirdness of pre-Inca Peru, most especially the Moche. And their infamous ‘naughty pottery’.

      It was time to visit the sala privada.

      Taking out the smaller key, she opened the creaking side-door. A further, darker, tinier room lay beyond.

      Few people came to the tiny Museo Casinelli, fewer still entered la sala privada. Even today a distinct aura of embarrassment surrounded the principal contents: the Moche sex pottery, the ceramicas eroticas. They were certainly too shocking and explicit to be shown to children, and conservative Peruvian Catholics would regard them as obscene works of the devil and be happy to see them smashed. Which was why they were kept in this dark and private antechamber, deep inside the secret museum.

      Jess knelt, and squinted, preparing to be shocked all over again.

      The first row of pots was asexual, merely distressing: on the left was a finely-crafted pot of a man with no nose and no lips, fired in exquisite black and gold. In the centre was a delicate ceramic representation of human sacrifice, with dismembered bodies at the foot of a mountain. And over here was a man tied to a tree, having his eyes pecked out by a vulture. Carefully, she took a photo of the last example.

      Disturbing as these ceramics might be, they were just normal mad Moche pottery. The next shelves held the real deal: the ceramicas eroticas.

      Working her way along them, Jess fired off dozens of photos. Why did the Moche go to the trouble of crafting erotic pottery like this? Sex with animals. Sex with the dead. Sex between skeletons. Perhaps it was just a metaphor, maybe even a joke; more likely it was a dreamtime, a mythology. It was certainly repellent, yet also fascinating.

      Jessica took some final photos, using the camera flash this time, which reflected off the dusty glass of the vitrines. As she concluded her task, her thoughts whirled. The Museo Casinelli had done its job, as it always did; and the feeling was very satisfying. It really had been a good choice of hers, last year, to come out to north Peru, one of the final frontiers of history, maybe the last great terra incognita of archaeology and anthropology, full of unknown cultures and untouched sites.

      Jessica shut off the lights and retreated. Upstairs, Pablo was trying to text something into his phone. He abandoned the effort, and smiled at her. ‘You are finished?’

      ‘Si! Gracias, Pablo.’

      ‘Then you must go and have some glucosa. You are my friend and I must look after you. Because you are the only scholar who comes here!’

      ‘That’s not true.’

      ‘Well. It is nearly true! I had some visitors last week, they were quite uncouth! Philistines seeking out … thrills. And they were unpleasant. Asking stupid questions. Everyone always asks the same stupid questions. Apart from you, Señorita, apart from you!’

      Jess smiled, returned the keys, and stepped out into the polluted grey air of Truijllo.

      The city greeted her with all its noise and grime. Guard dogs howled behind fences of corrugated iron; a man was pushing a glass trolley full of quails’ eggs past a dingy tyre shop; a blind beggar sat with a guitar on his lap – it had no strings. And above it all hung that endless grey depressing sky.

      It should really all be lovely, Jessica thought, here at the equator. It should be tropical and sunny and full of palm trees, but the strange climate of north Peru dictated otherwise: this was a place of clouds and chilly sea-fog.

      Her cellphone rang; immediately she reached into her bag. She’d expected it to be Steve Venturi but the screen said it was her boss at the dig at Zana, Daniel Kossoy, who was also the overall leader of TUMP, the Toronto University Moche Project. And, as of last month, also her lover.

      ‘Jess, hi. How’s Trujillo?’

      ‘All good, Dan. All fine!’

      ‘Where are you now, then?’

      ‘Museo Casinelli. Just left—’

      ‘Ah, the sex pots!’

      ‘The sex pots. Yes.’ She paused, wondering why Danny was ringing. He knew she could handle herself in the big bad city. Her silence invoked his real purpose.

      ‘Jess, have you heard anything from Venturi? I mean, we’re all on tenterhooks up here. Were you right? About the vertebrae? It’s like being in a cop show – the tension and excitement!’

      ‘Nothing yet. He did say a week at least, and it’s only been eight days.’

      ‘OK. Well. OK.’ A brief sigh. ‘OK. Keep us informed? And …’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Well …’ The pause implied unspoken feelings. Was he about to say something intimate, something personally revealing? Something like I miss you? She hoped not; it was way too soon in their miniature romance for any such declaration.

      Briskly, Jessica interrupted, ‘OK, Dan, I gotta go. I’ll see you in Zana. Bye!’

      Pocketing her phone, she walked to a corner to hail a taxi. The traffic was intense: fuming trucks loaded with charcoal growled at the lights; mopeds weaved between dinged Chevrolet taxis and crowded buses. Amongst the urgent chaos, Jessica noticed one particular truck, speeding down the other side of the road.

      Going way too fast.

      Jess shook her head. Peruvian driving wasn’t the best. It was normal to see trucks and buses tearing down highways as if they were the only vehicles in the world, taunting death. But this was something different.

      She stared: perplexed. The truck was speeding up, accelerating, leaping over a kerb, horribly dangerous. Somewhere a woman screamed. It was heading straight for – straight for what, what was it doing? Where was it going? It was surely going to plough into the grimy houses, the tyre shop, the tired glass kiosk of the quails eggs seller—

       The Texaco garage.

      The truck was heading straight for the garage. Jessica gazed – rapt and paralysed. The driver leapt from his cabin; at the last possible moment someone grabbed hold of Jessica and pulled her to the ground, behind a low wall.

      The crash of glass and exploding gasoline was enormous. Greasy fireballs of smoke billowed into the air. Jess heard dire screams, then frightening silence.

      ‘Pablo,’ Jessica said to herself, lying, shaking, on the cracked Trujillo sidewalk. ‘Pablo …?’

      2

       Rosslyn Chapel, Midlothian

      Everything you could read about in the guide books was here, in Rosslyn chapel, the great and famous fifteenth-century chapel of the Sinclairs, ten miles south of Edinburgh. The bizarre stone cubes in the Lady Chapel, the eerie carvings of exotic vegetation, the Dance of Death in the arches, the inverted Lucifer bound in ropes, the Norse serpents twined around the Prentice Pillar. And all of it was lavished with alluring detail, teasing symbolism and occult hieroglyphs, creating a splendid whirl of conspiratorial intrigue in weathered old stone. Right next to a gift shop, СКАЧАТЬ