Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  Yes, I was still pursuing my untutored study in the arts of reading and writing, though my ever becoming a word knower now seemed hopelessly remote, and my moving to Tenochtítlan a dream that would forever come untrue. My father had likewise despaired of my ever becoming a dedicated quarrier, and I was now too old to serve only to sit at the empty pit and shoo away animals. So, for some while past, I had been earning my keep and contributing to our family’s support by working as a common farmboy.

  Of course, Xaltócan has no such thing as farmland. There is not enough arable topsoil for staple crops like the maize, which requires deep earth for its nourishment. So Xaltócan, like all island communities, grows the bulk of its vegetable foods on the wide and ever spreading chinámpa which you call floating gardens. Each chinámitl is a raft of woven tree limbs and branches, moored at the lake edge, then spread with load upon load of the richest soil, freighted out from the mainland. As the crops extend their roots season by season, new roots twining down old ones, they eventually clutch the lake bottom and hold the raft firmly in place. Other gardens are built and moored alongside. Every inhabited island in all the lakes, Tenochtítlan included, wears a wide ring or fringe of these chinámpa. On some of the more fertile islands, it is difficult to discern where the god-made land leaves off and the man-made fields begin.

  It takes no more than mole eyesight or mole intellect to tend such gardens, so I tended those belonging to our family and neighbors in our quarter. The work was undemanding; I had plenty of free time. I applied myself—and Chimáli’s gift of paints—to the drawing of word pictures: training myself to make the most complex symbols ever simpler, more stylized, smaller in size. Unlikely as it then seemed, I still nursed the secret hope that my self-education might somehow yet improve my lot in life. I smile pityingly, now, to recall my young self sitting on a dirt raft among the sprouting maize and beans and chilis—among the reeking fertilizer of animal entrails and fish heads—while I scribbled away at my writing practice and dreamed my lofty dreams.

  For example, I toyed with the ambition of becoming one of the pochtéca traveling merchants, and thus journeying to the Maya lands where some wonder-working doctor would restore my eyesight, while I should become rich from my shrewd trading along the way. Oh, I devised many a plan to turn a trifling amount of trade goods into a towering fortune, ingenious plans that I was sure no previous trader had ever thought of. The only obstacle to my assured success—as Tzitzi tactfully pointed out, when I confided some of my ideas—was that I lacked even the trifling amount of capital I reckoned I would need to begin with.

  And then, one afternoon when the workday was done, one of the Lord Red Heron’s messengers appeared at our house door. He wore a mantle of neutral color, signifying neither good news nor bad, and he said politely to my father, “Mixpantzínco.”

  “Ximopanólti,” said my father, gesturing for him to enter.

  The young man, about my own age, took only a single step inside and said, “The Tecútli Tlauquécholtzin, my master and yours, requires the presence of your son Chicóme-Xochitl Tliléctic-Mixtli at the palace.”

  My father and sister looked surprised and bewildered. I suppose I did too. My mother did not. She wailed, “Yya ayya, I knew the boy would one day offend the nobles or the gods or—” She broke off to demand of the messenger, “What mischief has Mixtli done? There is no need for the Lord Red Heron to trouble himself with whipping or whatever is decreed. We will gladly attend to the punishment.”

  “I do not know that anyone has done anything,” said the messenger, eyeing her warily. “I merely obey my order. To bring him without delay.”

  And without delay I accompanied him, preferring whatever waited at the palace to whatever my mother’s imagination might conceive. I was curious, yes, but I could not think of any reason to quake. If that summons had come in an earlier time, I would have worried that the malicious Pactli had contrived some charge against me. But the young Lord Joy had himself gone off, two or three years before, to a Tenochtítlan calmécac which accepted only the scions of ruling families, themselves rulers-to-be. Pactli had since come back to Xaltócan only on brief school holidays. During those visits, he had paid calls at our house, but always during the working day when I was not at home, so I had not even seen him since the days of our having briefly shared Offal of the Gods.

  The messenger stayed a respectful few paces behind me as I entered the palace throne room and bent to make the gesture of kissing the earth. Beside Lord Red Heron sat a man I had never seen on the island before. Though the stranger sat on a lower chair, as was proper, he considerably diminished our governor’s usual air of importance. Even my mole vision could make out that he wore a brilliant feather mantle and ornaments of a richness that no nobleman of Xaltócan could flaunt.

  Red Heron said to the visitor, “The request was: make a man of him. Well, our Houses of Building Strength and Learning Manners have done their utmost. Here he is.”

  “I am bidden to make a test,” said the stranger. He produced a small roll of bark paper and held it out to me.

  “Mixpantzínco,” I said to both the nobles before I unrolled the thing. It bore nothing I could recognize as a test; only a single line of word pictures, and I had seen them before.

  “You can read it?” asked the stranger.

  “I forgot to mention that,” said Red Heron, as if he had taught me himself. “Mixtli can read some simple things with a fair measure of comprehension.”

  I said, “I can read this, my lords. It says—”

  “Never mind,” the stranger interrupted. “Just tell me: what does the duck-billed face signify?”

  “Ehécatl, the wind, my lord.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, my lord, with the other figure, the closed eyelids, it says Night Wind. But—”

  “Yes? Speak up, young man.”

  “If my lord will excuse my impertinence, that one figure does not show a duck’s bill. It is the wind trumpet through which the wind god—”

  “Enough.” The stranger turned to Red Heron. “He is the one, Lord Governor. I have your permission, then?”

  “But of course, of course,” said Red Heron, quite obsequiously. To me he said, “This is the Lord Strong Bone, Snake Woman to Nezahualpíli, Uey-Tlatoáni of Texcóco. Lord Strong Bone brings the Revered Speaker’s personal invitation that you come to reside and study and serve at the court of Texcóco.”

  “Texcóco!” I exclaimed. I had never been there, or anywhere in the Acólhua country. I knew no one there, and no Acólhuatl could ever have heard of me—certainly not the Revered Speaker Nezahualpíli, who, in all these lands, was second in power and prestige only to Tixoc, the Uey-Tlatoáni of Tenochtítlan. I was so astounded that, unthinking and unmannerly, I blurted, “Why?”

  “You are not commanded,” the Texcóco Snake Woman said brusquely. “You are invited, and you may accept or decline. But you are not invited to question the offer.”

  I mumbled an apology, and the Lord Red Heron came to my support, saying, “Excuse the youngster, my lord. I am sure he is as perplexed as I have been these several years—that such an exalted personage as Nezahualpíli should have fixed his regard on this one of so many macehuáltin.”

  The Snake Woman only grunted, so Red Heron went on, “I have never been given any explanation of your master’s interest in this particular commoner, and I have refrained from asking. Of course, I remember your previous ruler, that tree of great shade, the wise and kindly Fasting Coyote, and how he used to travel alone throughout The One World, his identity disguised, to seek out estimable persons deserving of his favor. Does his illustrious son Nezahualpíli carry on that same benign avocation? If so, what in the world did he see in our young subject Tliléctic-Mixtli?”

  “I cannot say, Lord Governor.” The haughty noble gave Red Heron almost as gruff a rebuke as he had given me. “No one questions the Revered Speaker’s impulses and intentions. Not even I, his Snake Woman. And I have other duties besi
des waiting for an irresolute stripling to decide if he will accept a prodigious honor. I return to Texcóco, young man, at tomorrow’s rising of Tezcatlipóca. Do you go with me or not?”

  “I go, of course, my lord,” I said. “I have only to pack some clothes, some papers, some paints. Unless there is something in particular I should bring?” I boldly added that, in hope of prying loose a hint of why I was going, for how long I was going.

  He said only, “Everything necessary will be provided.”

  Red Heron said, “Be here at the palace jetty, Mixtli, at the rising of Tonatíu.”

  Lord Strong Bone glanced coolly at the governor, then at me, and said, “Best you learn, young man, to call the sun god Tezcatlipóca from now on.”

  From now on forever? I wondered as I hastened home alone. Was I to be an adopted Acólhuatl for the rest of my life, and a convert to the Acólhua gods?

  When I told my waiting family what had occurred, my father said excitedly, “Night Wind! Just as I told you, son Mixtli! It was the god Night Wind you met on the road those years ago. And it is from Night Wind that now you will get your heart’s desire.”

  Tzitzi looked worried and said, “But suppose it is a ruse. Suppose Texcóco merely happens to need a xochimíqui of a certain age and size for some particular sacrifice …”

  “No,” our mother said bluntly. “Mixtli is not handsome or graceful or virtuous enough to have been specially chosen for any ceremony I know of.” She sounded disgruntled at this affair’s having got out of her management. “But there is certainly something suspicious in all this. Grubbing about in picture books and wallowing idly in the chinámpa, Mixtli could have done nothing to bring himself to the notice of even a slave dealer, let alone a royal court.”

  I said, “From the words spoken at the palace, and from that scrap of writing Lord Strong Bone carried, I think I can guess some things. That night at the crossroads I met no god, but an Acólhuatl traveler, perhaps some courtier of Nezahualpíli himself, and we have just assumed he was Night Wind. During the years since then, though I do not know why, Texcóco has kept track of me. Anyway, it now seems that I am to attend a Texcóco calmécac, where I shall be taught the art of word knowing. I will be a scribe, as I have always wanted. At least,” I finished with a shrug, “that is what I surmise.”

  “And you call it all coincidence,” my father said sternly. “It is just as likely, son Mixtli, that you really did meet Night Wind and took him to be a mortal. Gods, like men, can travel in disguise, unrecognized. And you have profited from the encounter. It would do no harm to give thanks to Night Wind.”

  “You are right, father Tepetzálan. I will do so. Whether or not Night Wind was directly involved, he is the dispenser of hearts’ desires when he chooses to be, and it is my heart’s desire I am about to realize.”

  “But only one of my heart’s desires,” I said to Tzitzi, when at last we had a moment together in private. “How can I leave the sound of small bells ringing?”

  “If you have good sense, you will leave here dancing and cheering,” she said, with feminine practicality, but not with any perceptible cheer in her own voice. “You cannot spend your life pulling weeds, Mixtli, and inventing futile ambitions like your notion of becoming a trader. However this all happened, you now have a future, a brighter one than has ever been offered to any macehuáli of Xaltócan.”

  “But if Night Wind or Nezahualpíli or whoever could send one opportunity my way, there might be others, even better. I always dreamed of going to Tenochtítlan, not to Texcóco. I can still decline this offer—Lord Strong Bone said so—and I can wait. Why should I not?”

  “Because you do have good sense, Mixtli. While I was still at The House of Learning Manners, the Mistress of the Girls told us that Tenochtítlan may be the strong arm of The Triple Alliance, but Texcóco is the brain. There is more than pomp and power at the court of Nezahualpíli. There is a long heritage of poetry and culture and wisdom. The Mistress also said that, of all the lands which speak Náhuatl, the people of Texcóco speak the purest form of our language. What better destination for an aspiring scholar? You must go and you will go. You will study, you will learn, you will excel. And, if you truly have won the patronage of the Revered Speaker, who knows what high plans he may have for you? When you talk of refusing his invitation, you know you talk nonsense.” Her voice dropped. “And only because of me.”

  “Because of us.”

  She sighed. “We had to grow up sometime.”

  “I always hoped we would do it together.”

  “We can still and always hope. You will be coming home at festival times. We will be together then. And when your schooling is done, why, you could become rich and powerful. You could become Mixtzin, and a noble can marry whomever he chooses.”

  “I hope to become an accomplished word knower, Tzitzi. That is ambition enough for me. And few scribes ever do anything to get themselves entitled -tzin.”

  “Well … perhaps you will be sent to work in some far Acólhua province where it is not known that you have a sister. Simply send and I will come. Your chosen bride from your native island.”

  “That would be years from now,” I protested. “And you are already approaching marriageable age. In the meantime, the accursed Pactli also comes home for holidays on Xaltócan. Long before my schooling is done, he will be back here to stay. You know what he wants, and what he wants he demands, and what he demands cannot be denied.”

  “Denied, no, but possibly deferred,” she said. “I will do my best to discourage the Lord Joy. And he may be less insistent in his demands”—she smiled bravely up at me—“now that I shall have a relative and protector at the mightier court of Texcóco. You see? You must go.” Her smile became tremulous. “The gods have arranged that we be parted for a while, so that we shall not be parted forever.” The smile faltered and fell and broke, and she wept.

  The Lord Strong Bone’s acáli was of mahogany, richly carved, covered by a fringed awning, decorated with the jadestone badges and feather pennons proclaiming his rank. It bypassed the lakeside city of Texcóco—what you Spaniards now call San Antonio de Padua—and proceeded about one-long-run farther south, toward a medium-sized hill which rose directly from the lake waters. “Texcotzínco,” said the Snake Woman, the first word he had addressed to me during our entire morning’s journey from Xaltócan. I squinted to peer at the hill, for on the other side of it was Nezahualpíli’s country palace.

  The big canoe slid up to a solidly built jetty, the rowers upended their oars, and the steersman jumped ashore to make the boat fast. I waited for Lord Strong Bone to be helped out by his boatmen, then myself clambered onto the pier, lugging the wicker basket in which I had packed my belongings. The laconic Snake Woman pointed to a stone staircase winding uphill from the jetty and said, “That way, young man,” the only other words he spoke to me that day. I hesitated, wondering whether it would be polite to wait for him, but he was supervising his men’s unloading from the acáli all the gifts Lord Red Heron had sent to the Uey-Tlatoáni Nezahualpíli. So I shouldered my basket and trudged alone up the stairs.

  Some of the steps were man-laid of hewn blocks, some were carved from the living rock of the hill. At the thirteenth step I came to a broad stone landing, where there was a bench for resting and a small statue of some god I could not identify, and the next flight of stairs led off at an angle from that landing. Again thirteen steps and again a landing. I thus zigzagged up the hill and then, at the fifty-second step, I found myself on a flat terrace, a vast level place hacked out of the sloping hillside; it was riotous with the many-hued flowers of a lush garden. That fifty-second step had set me on a stone-flagged pathway, which I followed as it wound leisurely through flower beds, under splendid trees, past meandering brooks and gurgling little waterfalls, until the path again became a stairway. Again thirteen steps and a landing with a bench and statue …

  The sky had been clouding over for some time, and now the rain came, in the usual manner of the day
s of our wet season—a storm like the end of the world: many-forked sticks of lightning, drum rolls of thunder, and a deluge of rain as if it would never end. But end it always did, in no longer time than a man would take for a pleasant afternoon nap; in time for Tonatíu, or Tezcatlipóca, to shine again on a wet-sparkling world, to make it steam, to make it dry and warm again before he set. When the rain came, now, I had already taken shelter on one of the stair landings which had a bench protected by a roof thatch. While I sat out the storm, I meditated on the numerical significance of the zigzagging staircase, and I smiled at the ingenuity of whoever had designed it.

  Like you white men, we in these lands lived by a yearly calendar based on the sun’s traversing the sky. Thus our solar year, like yours, consisted of three hundred sixty and five days, and we used that calendar for all ordinary purposes: to tell us when to plant which seeds, when to expect the rainy season, and so forth. We divided that solar year into eighteen months of twenty days apiece, plus the nemontémtin—the “lifeless days,” the “hollow days”—the five days required to round out the three hundred sixty and five of the year.

  However, we also observed an alternate calendar based not on the sun’s daytime excursions but on the nightly appearance of the brilliant star we named for our ancient god Quetzalcóatl, or Feathered Serpent. Sometimes Quetzalcóatl served as the After Blossom which blazed immediately after sunset; at other times he moved to the other side of the sky, where he would be the last star visible as the sun rose and washed away all the others. Any of our astronomers could explain all this to you, with neat diagrams, but I have never been very good at astronomy. I do know that the movements of the stars are not as random as they would seem, and that our ceremonial calendar was somehow based on the movements of the star named for Quetzalcóatl. That calendar was useful even to our ordinary folk, for naming their newborn children. Our historians and scribes used it for dating notable happenings and the length of our rulers’ reigns. More important, our seers used it to divine the future, to warn against impending calamities, to select auspicious days for weighty undertakings.