At the Heart of the Well

THE SACRED WELL AT CHICHEN ITZA
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Ancient Mayan Sacrifice
by archaeological painter, Herbert M. Herget (1885 - 1950)
for National Geographic Magazine (1936)
Artist's impression of Cenote [say-NO-tay] Sacrifice
~ not necessarily historically accurate ~

~ At The Mouth of the Well of Magic Water ~

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Picking up where we left off last time with
Margaret Atwood's story "The Resplendent Quetzel":
The story's focal point is an ancient sacrificial well, a pre - Columbian ruin whose imposing presence governs the private thoughts of both Edward and Sarah. Edward, for example, imagines "picking Sarah up and hurling her over the edge, down into the sacrificial well. Anything to shatter that imperturbable expression, bland and pale and plump and smug, like a Flemish Madonna's. . . . But it wouldn't work: as she fell she would glance at him, not with fear but with maternal irritation" (148).

Sitting in the shade near the well, Sarah hears a tour guide explain that "archaeologists have dived down into the well. They have dredged up more than fifty skeletons, and they have found that some of them were not virgins at all but men. Also, most of them were children. So as you can see, that is the end of the popular legend" (156). Before arriving at the village, Sarah had imagined that the well would be "smaller, more like a wishing well" (144), three coins in the fountain and all that. But, no, it is more impressive than she expected, much deeper, historically significant, part swamp yet part sacred orifice, repulsive yet mysterious. The mood of the vacation -- the myth - shattering well, the Mexican village, the shabby restaurant, the motley Nativity display, the misplaced baby doll -- has inspired Sarah to proceed with a purification ritual of her own.

Much to the reader's surprise, she withdraws from her purse the plaster Christ Child that, the narrator now reveals, she had stolen from the creche the night before. Even Sarah is surprised at herself: "It was inconceivable to her that she had done such a thing, but there it was, she really had. She hadn't planned it beforehand. . . . She'd just suddenly reached out her hand, past the Wise Men and through the door of the stable, picked the child up and put it into her purse" (156). Sarah's act of petty theft is motivated by an instinctive urge to categorize the doll as a miniature, inanimate replication of humanity. She lifts the doll from the manger in an impulsive moment of vision, and it becomes a participant in the drama of human existence.

Remembering how enormous the doll had looked in the sacred yet vulgar setting of the Nativity, she now perceives it differently: "Separated from the dwarfish Virgin and Joseph, it didn't look quite so absurd". She "placed the baby on the rock beside her . . . stood up . . . picked up the child and walked slowly towards the well, until she was standing at the very brink." The narrative shifts abruptly to Edward's perspective. He sees Sarah standing "at the well's edge, her arms raised above her head." He fears that she is preparing to jump in, "but she merely drew back her right arm and threw something into the well" (158).

The reader knows, as Edward does not, that the hurtled object is the Baby Jesus, sent to release them all -- father, mother, and stillborn child -- from the limbo in which they hang. As the tour guide explained previously, the early Mayans did not perform this ritual out of cruelty, nor does Sarah. She has sent the inanimate surrogate of her own child as a messenger to the liquid gods who live in the watery paradise at the bottom of the ancient well. Perhaps Edward and Sarah's quest for the Resplendent Quetzal -- the Holy Grail, the jewel, the precious feather -- has not been in vain.

Will all be well for Sarah? Not clear. She has looked into the abyss of abjection, the frighteningly deep sacrificial well, the land of oblivion. The story does not end optimistically, but somehow the unlikely grouping in the Mexican bar -- the headless Wise Man, the St. Nicholas night - light, and the whimsical Fred Flintstone -- have enabled her to confront the haunting memories of disappointment and loss. Mary and Joseph may be well out of their depth with their elephant - sized baby, yet the sight of this disproportionate Holy Family has shifted Sarah's sense of perspective.
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"On the bar beside the television set there was a creche, with three painted plaster Wise Men, one on an elephant, the others on camels. The first Wise Man was missing his head. Inside the stable a stunted Joseph and Mary adored an enormous Christ Child which was more than half as big as the elephant. Sarah wondered how the Mary could possibly have squeezed out this colossus; it made her uncomfortable to think about it. Beside the creche was a Santa Claus haloed with flashing lights, and beside that a radio in the shape of Fred Flintstone, which was paying American popular songs, all of them ancient." (152)

from "The Resplendent Quetzel"
in Dancing Girls and Other Stories
by Margaret Atwood (b 1939)
Canadian activist, novelist, poet

Previous Fortnightly Post
At the Heart of the Creche

Frosty and Abominable Bring Gifts for Colbert

[Click to see many more funny nativities]
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th

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THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ All ~Hallowed~ Nativities
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www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

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