The old people still tell the story in the Maya language, with all the details that legend has preserved, of the flower that sprang from the grave of the sinful Xkeban. That flower is the xtabentún, a beautiful yet humble little flower that grows wild by walls and roadsides and among the bare leaves of the agave. The juice of this flower produces a pleasant drunkenness, as sweet and intoxicating as Xkeban’s love must have been.

The tzacam, which is the flower of a cactus covered in sharp spines, with a foul odour, and thus doubly untouchable, is the flower that appeared on Utz-Colel’s grave, a beautiful flower that seems from a distance to have no smell but closer to gives off a repulsive odour, like the character of the falsely virtuous Utz-Colel.

Javier Arce