My beauties, Maria called them, leaning forward to brush a speck of ash from her son’s worn shirt, then gently boxing his good ear. “The only importance is beauty.”

The light here at the window is good, and the view is a satisfying distraction. The street stays busy at all hours, this apartment is only a short walk from the central plaza, the markets and old stone cathedral. It must be the oldest part of Mérida, judging by its charm and conspicuous fortifications.

In the afternoon when the sun lights the stucco buildings across the street, it’s possible to count a dozen different colors of paint, all fading together on the highest parts of the wall: yellow, ochre, brick, blood, cobalt, turquoise. The national color of Mexico. And the scent of Mexico is a similar blend: jasmine, dog piss, cilantro, lime. Mexico admits you through an arched stone orifice into the tree-filled courtyard of its heart, where a dog pisses against a wall and a waiter hustles through a curtain of jasmine to bring a bowl of tortilla soup, steaming with cilantro and lime. Cats stalk lizards among the clay pots around the fountain, doves settle into the flowering vines and coo their prayers, thankful for the existence of lizards. The potted plants silently exhale, outgrowing their clay pots. Like Mexico’s children they stand pinched and patient in last year’s too-small shoes. The pebble thrown into the canyon bumps and tumbles downhill.

Here life is strong-scented, overpowering. Even the words. Just ordering breakfast requires some word like toronja, triplet of muscular syllables full of lust and tears, a squirt in the eye. Nothing like the effete “grapefruit,” which does not even mean what it says.

Our young lord Jesús today found the right track to Chichén Itzá. What a marvel. The Temple of Warriors, the Ball Court, the tall pyramid called the Castle. Magnificent limestone buildings glare at one another in silence across the grassy plaza. Everything is dazzling white, a timeless architecture of pale limestone. Elegant and remote. Whatever I came here looking for is hiding, holding its breath. No crime and punishment present themselves in bloodstained hallways. Unlike the grisly Azteca with their gods sticking out their tongues, the Maya seem serenely untouchable. What they’ve left behind is in every measure as grand and elegant as the white marble temples of the Greeks.

In the fringe of forest surrounding the plaza we found more temples crumbling quietly into themselves, sleeping under green blankets of vine. Like the ruin in the forest on Isla Pixol, beside the hole in the water, at the end of the lacuna. That one had a smiling skeleton carved on a stone. Here, footpaths through the trees led away in all directions, to different parts of a partially excavated city: the marketplace with its carved columns. The steam bath in a shady grove, its dark stone chamber like a womb, entered through a tiny triangular doorway. The vault inside was a high, inverted V shape, punctuated at each end with a round hole for venting steam. Maybe the story begins here, lit by a dim, steamy ray of light streaming through that hole: the setting for a love scene, or a murder, better yet. Political intrigue. But the place feels bloodless.

The enormous central pyramid stands high and heroic, dominating the plaza. It seems taller than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, though memory can play tricks in matters of heroism. We felt compelled to climb its immense stone stairs to the very top, just as it was with Frida all those years ago, dragging her miserable leg all the way. But Mrs. Brown managed the climb without sending a single soul to the devil.

Today we drove south through villages of Mayan farmers, most beginning with X—pronounced “ish.” X-puil, X-mal, Jesús revealed the secret of the Mayan tongue: shhh. X does not mark the spot, it marks a hush. The Mayans speak their language everywhere in the countryside, and it sounds like whispered secrets. Women stand together in doorways, muttering: shhh, shhh. Fathers and sons walk along the roadside carrying ancient-looking hoes, quietly making a plan: shhh.

Another day driving, this time to the east. We stopped at a town and walked out an ancient stone roadbed to the mouth of a lacuna. A cenote, it’s called here: a deep, round hole with limestone cliffs for its sides and blue water at the bottom. A kingfisher darted through foliage, calling: Kill him! Kill him! The view from above was dizzying, down the sheer rock face of the hole to the water far below. No handrail stood at the cliff’s edge to prevent our falling in. Or diving in, swimming down deep to see what is there, the devil or the sea.

It is fresh water here, many kilometers from the ocean. The Mayans built their towns and civilization on these cenotes, because no sacred thing is more holy than a water source. The entire Yucatán Peninsula has not a single river or stream running on its surface, only these water caves running below, with round mouths opening here and there to the light above. Chi-chen means “mouth of the world,” and so it is, these gasping mouths are as old as human dread. The ancients fed them as best they knew how, throwing in jade and onyx, golden goblets, human remains. Without a thought to what they might be doing to their drinking water.

Jesús claimed that many valuable artifacts had been dredged from this cenote, but all had been carried off to Harvard and the Peabody Museum. He actually named those places, so it likely could be true. Colonial ransacking in the scientific age.

On our walk back through the jungle we looked but could find no trace of the ancient farms and villages that must have been here. Thousands of ordinary people were part of this metropolis, but their homes would have been perishable wattle and thatch, stuccoed with lime and mud. Every trace of their living has returned to the earth now, except for the limestone temples of art and worship. The things made of ambition, which rise higher than daily bread.

Our automobile parked in the village had attracted a crowd. The tallest boy introduced himself (Maximiliano), and demanded pay for having guarded the vehicle during our absence. “From whom?” we asked, and Maximiliano pointed to the gang of small thugs he claimed would have damaged or even dismantled it. “They are very crafty,” he said in English. His payment, a handful of coins, he instantly distributed among all the vandals, their alliance thus perfected. Even morality is a business of supply and demand.

Some older boys had lurked back, distancing themselves from piracy, but came forward then with woodcarvings to sell. Mrs. Brown took one in hand, turning it carefully. They were figures of ancient warriors in elaborate headdress, very much like my little obsidian fellow. It was striking how the wide, slant faces of the figures resembled the faces of the boys who made them. Mrs. Brown paid the sculptor his price, only a little more than the extortion had cost us. A good day for young men standing on the stone and bones of their ancestors to make their way.