Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Of course the gods give nothing absolutely free of payment, and from time to time they exacted tribute from us for the wealth of limestone we dug out of Xaltócan. I happened to be at my father’s quarry on a day when the gods decided to take a token sacrifice.

  A number of porters were hauling a tremendous block of new-cut stone up the long incline, like a curving shelf, that spiraled from the bottom of the quarry to the top. They did it by sheer muscle power, with a tumpline around each man’s forehead attached to the rope net that dragged the block. Somewhere high up on that ramp, the block slid too close to the edge, or was tilted by some irregularity in the path. Whatever happened, it slowly and implacably fell sideways. There was much shouting and, if the porters had not instantly ripped the tumplines from their heads, they would have gone over the brink with the block. But one man, far below in the noise of the quarry, did not hear the shouts. The block came down upon him, and one of its edges, like a stone adze, chopped him precisely in half at his waist.

  The limestone block had gouged such a deep notch in the quarry floor that it stayed there, balanced on its angular edge. So my father and the other men who rushed to the spot were able without much difficulty to topple it to one side. They found, to their astonishment, that the victim of the gods was still alive and even conscious.

  Unnoticed in the excitement, I came close and saw the man, who was now in two pieces. From the waist up, his naked and sweaty body was intact and unmarked. But his waist was pinched wide and flat, so his torso itself rather resembled an adze or a chisel. The stone had simultaneously severed him—skin, flesh, guts, spine—and neatly closed the wound so that there was not even a drop of blood spilt. He might have been a cotton doll that had been sliced across the middle, then sewn at the cut. His bottom half, still wearing its loincloth, lay separated from him, neatly pinched shut and bloodless—though the legs were twitching slightly, and that half of the body was copiously urinating and defecating.

  The massive injury must have so deadened all the cut nerves that the man even felt no pain. He raised his head and looked in mild wonder at himself in two halves. To spare him the sight, the other men quickly and tenderly carried him—the upper half of him—some distance away, and leaned him against the quarry wall. He flexed his arms, opened and closed his hands, experimentally turned his head about, and said in a voice of awe:

  “I still can move and talk. I see you all, my comrades. I can reach out and touch and feel you. I hear the hewing of tools. I smell the bitter dust of lime. I still live. This is a most marvelous thing.”

  “It is,” my father said gruffly. “But it cannot be for long, Xícama. There is no use even sending for a physician. You will want a priest. Of which god, Xícama?”

  The man thought for a moment. “I can soon greet all the gods, when I can no longer do anything else. But while I still can speak, I had better talk to Filth Eater.”

  So the call was relayed to the top of the quarry, and from there a runner sped to fetch a priest of the goddess Tlazoltéotl, or Filth Eater. Her unlovely name notwithstanding, she was a most compassionate goddess. It was to her that dying men confessed all their sins and misdeeds—quite often living men, too, when they felt particularly distressed or depressed by something they had done—so that Tlazoltéotl might swallow their sins, and those sins would disappear as if they had never been committed. Thus they did not go with a man, to count against him or to haunt his memory, in whatever afterworld he was headed for.

  While we waited for the priest, Xícama kept his eyes averted from himself, where his body appeared to be squeezed into a cleft of the rock floor, and spoke calmly, almost cheerfully, to my father. He gave him messages to impart to his parents, to his widow and orphaned children, and made suggestions as to their disposition of what little property he owned, and wondered aloud what his family would do when its provider was gone.

  “Do not trouble your mind,” said my father. “It is your tonáli that the gods take you in exchange for the prosperity of us who remain. In thanks for your sacrifice of yourself, we and the Lord Governor will make suitable compensation to your widow.”

  “Then she will have a respectable inheritance,” said Xícama, relieved. “And she is still a young and handsome woman. Please, Head Nodder, prevail on her to marry again.”

  “I will do that. Is there anything else?”

  “No,” said Xícama. He looked about him and smiled. “I never thought I would regret seeing the last of this dreary quarry. Do you know, Head Nodder, even this stone pit looks beautiful and inviting now? The white clouds up there, then the blue sky, then the white stone here … like clouds above and below the blue. I wish, though, I could see the green trees beyond the rim….”

  “You will,” my father promised, “but after you have finished with the priest. We had better not chance moving you until then.”

  The priest came, in all his black of flaffing black robes and blood-crusted black hair and never-washed sooty face. He was the only darkness and gloom that marred the clean blue and white of which Xícama was sorry to take leave. All the other men moved away to give them privacy. (And my father espied me among them, and angrily bade me begone; that was no sight for a young boy.) While Xícama was occupied with the priest, four men picked up his stinking and still-quivering lower half, to carry it up to the top of the quarry. One of them vomited along the way.

  Xícama evidently had led no very villainous life; it did not take him long to confess to Filth Eater whatever he regretted having done or left undone. When the priest had absolved him on behalf of the goddess, and had said all the ritual words and made all the ritual gestures, he stood away. Four more men carefully picked up the still-living part of Xícama and carried him, as rapidly as they could without jostling, up the incline toward the quarry rim.

  It was hoped that he would go on living long enough to reach his village and say his own farewell to his family and pay his respects to whatever gods he had personally preferred. But somewhere along the upward spiraling ramp, his pinched body began to gape, to leak his blood and his breakfast and various other substances. He ceased speaking and breathing, and closed his eyes, and he never did get to see the green trees again.

  Some of the limestone of Xaltócan had long ago gone into the construction of our island’s icpac tlamanacáli and teocáltin—or, as you call them, our pyramid and several temples. A share of all the stone quarried was always set aside for taxes we paid to the nation’s treasury, and for our annual tribute to the Revered Speaker and his Speaking Council. (The Uey-Tlatoáni Motecuzóma had died when I was three, and in that year the rule and throne had passed to his son Axayácatl, Water Face.) Another share of the stone was reserved to the profit of our tecútli, or governor, to some other ranking nobles, and to the island’s expenses: building canoes for water freighting, buying slaves to do the dirtier work, paying quarry wages, and the like. But there was still much of our mineral product left over for export and barter.

  That earned for Xaltócan imported trade goods and negotiable trade currency, which our tecútli shared out among his subjects, according to their status and merit. Furthermore, he allowed all the island people—except, of course, the slaves and other low classes—to build their houses of the handy limestone. Thus Xaltócan differed from most other communities in these lands, where the houses were more often built of sun-dried mud brick or wood or cane, or where many families might be crowded into one large communal tenement building, or where folk might even live in hillside caves. Though my own family’s house was of only three rooms, it was even floored with smooth white limestone slabs. There were not many palaces in The One World that could pride themselves on being built of finer material. Our use of our stone for building meant, also, that our island was not denuded of its trees, as were so many other peopled places in the valley.

  In my time, our governor was Tlauquécholtzin, the Lord Red Heron—a man whose distant ancestors had been among the first Mexíca settlers on the island, and the man who
ranked highest among our local nobility. As was customary in most districts and communities, that guaranteed his lifetime tenure as our tecútli, as representative of the Speaking Council headed by the Revered Speaker, and as ruler of the island, its quarries, its surrounding lake, and every single one of its inhabitants—except, in some measure, the priests, who maintained that they owed allegiance only to the gods.

  Not every community was so fortunate in its governor as was our Xaltócan. A member of the nobility was expected to live up to his station—that is, to be noble—but not all of them were. And no pili born to the nobility could ever be demoted to any lower class, however ignoble his behavior. (He could, however, if his conduct was inexcusable by his pípiltin peers, be ousted from office or even put to death by them.) I might also mention that, though most nobles got that way by being born to noble parents, it was not impossible for a mere commoner to win elevation to that upper class.

  I remember two Xaltócan men who were raised from the macehuáltin to the pípiltin and given an estimable lifetime income. Colótic-Miztli, an elderly onetime warrior, had lived up to his name of Fierce Mountain Lion by doing some great feat of arms in some forgotten war against some long-ago enemy. It had cost him such scars that he was gruesome to look at, but it had gained him the coveted -tzin suffix to his name: Miztzin, Lord Mountain Lion. The other man was Quali-Améyatl, or Good Fountain, a mild-mannered young architect who did no deed more notable than to design some gardens at the governor’s palace. But Améyatl was as handsome as Miztzin was hideous, and during his work at the palace, he won the heart of a girl named Dewdrop, who happened to be the governor’s daughter. When he married her, he became Améyatzin, the Lord Fountain.

  I have tried to make clear that our Lord Red Heron was genial and generous, but above all he was a just man. When his own daughter Dewdrop tired of her lowborn Lord Fountain and was surprised in an adulterous act with a blood-born pili, Red Heron commanded that both she and the man be put to death. Many of his other nobles petitioned that the young woman be spared her life and instead be banished from the island. Even the husband swore that he forgave his wife’s adultery, and that he and Dewdrop would remove to some far country. But the governor would not be swayed, though we all knew he loved that daughter very much.

  He said, “I would be called unjust if, for my own child, I should waive a law that is enforced against my subject people.” And he said to Lord Fountain, “The people would someday maintain that you forgave my daughter out of deference to my office and not of your own free will.” And he commanded that every other woman and girl of Xaltócan come to his palace and witness Dewdrop’s execution. “Especially all the nubile but unmarried maidens,” he said, “for their juices run high, and they might be inclined to sympathize with my daughter’s dalliance, or even envy it. Let them be shocked at her dying, that they may dwell instead on the severity of the consequences.”

  So my mother went to the execution, and took Tzitzitlíni. On their return, my mother said the errant Dewdrop and her lover had been strangled, with cords disguised as garlands of flowers, and in full view of the populace, and that the young woman took her punishment badly, with terrors and pleas and struggling, and that her betrayed husband Good Fountain wept for her, but that the Lord Red Heron had watched without expression. Tzitzi said nothing of the spectacle. However, she told me of meeting at the palace the condemned woman’s young brother, Red Heron’s son Pactli.

  “He looked long at me,” she said with a shudder, “and he smiled and bared his teeth. Can you believe such a thing, on such a day? It was a look that gave me gooseflesh.”

  I would wager that Red Heron did no smiling that day. But you can understand why all the island folk so esteemed our impartially fair-minded governor. In truth, we all hoped the Lord Red Heron would live to a great age, for we regarded unhappily the prospect of being governed by that son Pactli. The name means Joy, a misgiven name if ever there was one. He was an ill-natured and despotic brat long before he even wore the loincloth of manhood. That obnoxious offspring of a courtly father did not, of course, freely associate with any middle-class boys like myself and Tlatli and Chimáli, and anyway was a year or two older. But, as my sister Tzitzi flowered into beauty, and Pactli began to manifest increased interest in her, she and I came to share a special loathing of him. However, all that was still in the future.

  Meanwhile, ours was a prosperous and comfortable and untroubled community. We who had the good fortune to live there did not have to grind away our energies and spirits just for subsistence. We could look to horizons beyond our island, to heights above those to which we had been born. We could dream, as did my friends Chimáli and Tlatli. Both their fathers were sculptors at the quarries, and those two boys, unlike myself, aspired to follow their fathers’ trade of art, but more ambitiously than their fathers had done.

  “I want to be a better sculptor,” said Tlatli, scraping away at a fragment of soft stone which was actually beginning to resemble a falcon, the bird for which he was named.

  He went on, “The statues and friezes carved here on Xaltócan go away in the big freighting canoes unsigned and their artists unacknowledged. Our fathers get no more credit for their work than a slave woman who weaves mats of the lake reeds. And why? Because the statues and ornaments we make here are as indistinguishable as those reed mats. Every Tlaloc, for example, looks exactly like every Tlaloc that has been sculptured on Xaltócan since our fathers’ fathers’ fathers were carving them.”

  I said, “Then they must be what the priests of Tlaloc want.”

  “Nínotlancuícui in tlamacázque,” growled Tlatli. “I pick my teeth at the priests.” He could be as stolid and immovable as any stone figure. “I intend to do sculptures different from all that have ever been done before. And no two, even of my own, will be alike. But all will be so recognizably my work that people will exclaim, ‘Ayyo, a statue by Tlatli!’ I will not even have to sign them with my falcon symbol.”

  “You want to do a work as fine as the Sun Stone,” I suggested.

  “Finer than the Sun Stone,” he said stubbornly. “I pick my teeth at the Sun Stone.” And I thought that audacity indeed, for I had seen the Sun Stone.

  But our mutual friend Chimáli gazed toward even farther vistas than did Tlatli. He intended so to refine the art of painting that it would be independent of any sculpture underneath. He would be a painter of pictures on panels and murals on walls.

  “Oh, I will color Tlatli’s lumpy statues for him, if he likes,” said Chimáli. “But sculpture requires only flat colors, since its shape and modeling gives the colors light and shade. Also, I am weary of the same old unvarying colors other painters and muralists use. I am trying to mix new kinds of my own: colors that I can modulate in tint and hue so that the colors themselves give an illusion of depth.” He made excited gestures, modeling the empty air. “When you see my pictures you will think they have shape and substance, even when they have none, when they have no more dimension than the panel itself.”

  “But to what purpose?” I asked.

  “Of what purpose is the shimmering beauty and form of a hummingbird?” he demanded. “Look. Suppose yourself to be a priest of Tlaloc. Instead of dragging a huge statue of the rain god into a small temple room, and thereby cramping the room even more, the priests of Tlaloc can simply have me paint on a wall a portrait of the god—as I imagine him to be—and with a limitless rain-swept landscape stretching away behind him. The room will seem immeasurably larger than it really is. And there is the advantage of thin, flat pictures over gross and bulky sculptures.”

  “Well,” I said to Chimáli, “a shield usually is fairly thin and flat.” I was making a joke: Chimáli means shield, and Chimáli himself was a lean and lanky boy.

  At my friends’ ambitious plans and grandiose boasts I smiled indulgently. Or perhaps a little enviously, for they knew what they wanted eventually to be and do, and I did not. My mind had yet conceived no notion of its own, and no god had yet seen fit
to send me a sign. I knew only two things for sure. One was that I did not want to hew and haul stone from a noisy, dusty, god-menaced quarry. The other was that, whatever career I essayed, I did not intend to pursue it on Xaltócan or in any other provincial backwater.

  If the gods allowed, I would take my chances in the most challenging but potentially most rewarding place in The One World—in the Uey-Tlatoáni’s own capital city, where the competition among ambitious men was most merciless, and where only the worthiest could rise to distinction—in the splendid, the wondrous, the awesome city of Tenochtítlan.

  If I did not yet know what my life work would be, I did at least know where, and I had known since my first and only visit there, the visit having been my father’s gift to me on my seventh birthday, my naming day.

  Prior to that event, my parents, with me in tow, had gone to consult the island’s resident tonalpóqui, or knower of the tonálmatl, the traditional naming book. After unfolding the layered pages to the book’s full length—it took up most of his room’s floor—the old seer gave prolonged and lip-moving scrutiny to its every mention of star patterns and godly doings relevant to the day Seven Flower and the month God Ascending and the year Thirteen Rabbit. Then he nodded, reverently refolded the book, accepted his fee—a bolt of fine cotton cloth—sprinkled me with his special dedicatory water, and proclaimed my name to be Chicóme-Xochitl Tliléctic-Mixtli, to commemorate the storm that had attended my birth. I would henceforth formally be known as Seven Flower Dark Cloud, informally called Mixtli.

  I was sufficiently pleased with the name, a manly one, but I was not much impressed by the ritual of selecting it. Even at the age of seven, I, Dark Cloud, had some opinions of my own. I said out loud that anybody could have done it, I could have done it, and quicker and cheaper, at which I was sternly shushed.