Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  It may be of interest to you, young Señorito Molina, in your capacity of interpreter, to know that when you learned Náhuatl you probably learned the easiest of all our native tongues. I do not mean to scorn your achievement—you speak Náhuatl admirably, for a foreigner—but if ever you essay others of our languages, you will find them considerably more difficult.

  To cite an instance, you know that our Náhuatl accents almost every word on its next to last syllable, as your Spanish seems to me to do. That may be one reason why I did not find your Spanish insuperable, though it is in other ways so different from Náhuatl. Now, our nearest neighbors of another tongue, the Purémpecha, accent almost every word on the syllable third from the last. You may have observed it in their still-existing place-names: Pátzkuaro and Kerétaro and the like. The Otomí’s language, spoken north of here, is even more bewildering because it may accent its words anywhere. I would say that, of all the languages I have heard, including your own, Otomíte is the most cursedly hard to master. Just to illustrate, it has separate words for the laughter of a man and of a woman.

  All my life, I had been acquiring or enduring different names. Now that I had become a traveler and was addressed in many tongues, I acquired still more names, for of course Dark Cloud was everywhere differently translated. The Tzapotéca people, for example, rendered it as Záa Nayàzú. Even after I had taught the girl Zyanya to speak Náhuatl as fluently as I, she always called me Záa. She could easily have pronounced the word Mixtli, but she invariably called me Záa, and made of its sound an endearment, and, from her lips, it was the name I most preferred of all the names I ever wore….

  But of that I will tell in its place.

  I see you making additional little marks where you have already written, Fray Gaspar, trying to indicate the way the syllables rise and fall in that name Záa Nayàzú. Yes, they go up and down and up, almost like singing, and I do not know how that could accurately be rendered in your writing any better than in ours.

  Only the Tzapotéca’s language is spoken so, and it is the most melodious of all the languages in The One World, just as the Tzapotéca men are the most handsome men, and their women the most sublime women. I should also say that the commonplace word Tzapotéca is what other people call them, from the tzapóte fruit which grows so abundantly in their land. Their own name for themselves is more evocative of the heights on which most of them live: Ben Záa, the Cloud People.

  They call their language Lóochi. Compared to Náhuatl, it has a stock of only a few different sounds, and the sounds are compounded into words much shorter than those of Náhuatl. But those few sounds have an infinity of meanings, according as they are spoken plain or lilted upward or pitched downward. The musical effect is not just sweet sounding; it is necessary for the words’ comprehension. Indeed, the lilt is so much a working part of the language that a Tzapotécatl can dispense with the spoken noise and convey his meaning—to the extent of a simple message at least—by humming or whistling only the melody of it.

  That was how we knew when we approached the lands of the Cloud People, and that was how they knew, too. We heard a shrill, piercing whistle from a mountain overlooking our path. It was a lengthy warble such as no bird would make, and, after a moment, it was repeated from somewhere ahead of us, the same in every trill. After another moment, the whistle was almost inaudibly but identically repeated from far, far ahead of us.

  “The Tzapotéca lookouts,” explained Blood Glutton. “They relay whistles, instead of shouting as our far-callers do.”

  I asked, “Why are there lookouts?”

  “We are now in the land called Uaxyácac, and the ownership of this land has long been disputed by the Mixtéca and the Olméca and the Tzapotéca. In some places they mingle or live amicably side by side. In other places they harry and raid one another. So all newcomers must be identified. That whistled message has by now probably gone all the way to the palace at Záachilà, and it doubtless tells their Revered Speaker that we are Mexíca, that we are pochtéca, how many we are, and maybe even the size and shape of the bales we carry.”

  Perhaps one of your Spanish soldiers on horseback, traveling swiftly and far across our lands each day, would find every village in which he stopped for the night to be distinctly different from the village of the night before. But we, traveling slowly on foot, had discerned no abrupt changes from settlement to settlement. Aside from noticing that, south of the town of Quaunáhuac, everybody seemed to go barefoot except when dressed up for some local festival, we saw no great differences between one community and the next. The physical appearance of the people, their costumes, their architecture—those things all changed, yes, but the change was usually gradual and only at intervals perceptible. Oh, we might observe here and there, especially in tiny settlements where all the inhabitants had been interbreeding for generations, that one people differed slightly from others in being just a bit shorter or taller, lighter or darker of complexion, more jovial or sour of disposition. But in general the people tended to blend indistinguishably from one place to the next.

  Everywhere the working men wore no garment but a white loincloth, and covered themselves with a white mantle when at leisure. The women all wore the familiar white blouse and skirt and, presumably, the standard undergarment. The people’s dress-up clothes did have their whiteness enlivened by fancy embroidery, and the patterns and colors of that decoration did vary from place to place. Also, the nobles of different regions had different tastes in feather mantles and headdresses, in nose-plugs and earrings and labrets, in bracelets and anklets and other adornments. But such variances were seldom remarkable by passers-through like ourselves; it would take a lifelong resident of one village to recognize, on sight, a visitor from the next village along the road.

  Or such had been our experience through all our journey until we entered the land of Uaxyácac, where the first warbling whistle of the uniquely lovely language Lóochi gave notice that we were suddenly among a people unlike any we had yet encountered.

  We spent our first night in Uaxyácac at a village called Texítla, and there was nothing especially noteworthy about the village itself. The houses were built, like those we had been accustomed to for some time past, of vine-tied upright saplings and roofed with straw thatch. The bath and steam huts were of baked clay, like all the others we had recently seen. The food we purchased was much the same as that which we had been served on many evenings previous. What was different was the people of Texítla. Never until then had we entered a community where the people were so uniformly good to look at, and where even their everyday garb was festive with bright colors.

  “Why, they are beautiful!” Cozcatl exclaimed.

  Blood Glutton said nothing, for he had of course been in those parts before. The old campaigner merely looked smug and proprietorial, as if he had personally arranged the existence of Texítla purposely to astound me and Cozcatl.

  And Texítla was no isolated enclave of personable people, as we discovered when we arrived at the populous capital city of Záachilà, and as we confirmed during our passage through the rest of Uaxyácac. That was a land where all the people were comely, and their manner as bright as their dress. The Tzapotéca’s delight in brilliant colors was understandable, for that was the country where the finest dyes were produced. It was also the northernmost range of the parrots, macaws, toucans, and other tropical birds of resplendent plumage. The reason for the Tzapotéca themselves being such remarkable specimens of humanity was less evident. So, after a day or two in Záachilà, I said to an old man of the city:

  “Your people seem so superior to others I have known. What is their history? Where did they come from?”

  “Come from?” he said, as if disdainful of my ignorance. He was one of the city dwellers who spoke Náhuatl, and he regularly served as an interpreter for passing pochtéca, and it was he who taught me the first words I learned of Lóochi. His name was Gíigu Nashinyá, which means Red River, and he had a face like a weathered cliff. He said
:

  “You Mexíca tell how your ancestors came from some place far to the north of what is now your domain. The Chiapa tell how their forebears originated somewhere far distant to the south of what is now their land. And every other people tell of their origins in some other place than where they now live. Every other people except us Ben Záa. We do not call ourselves by that name for any idle reason. We are the Cloud People—born of the clouds and trees and rocks and mountains of this land. We did not come here. We have always been here. Tell me, young man, have you yet seen or smelled the heart flower?”

  I said I had not.

  “You will. We grow it now in our dooryards. The flower is so called because its unopened bud is the shape of a human heart. The woman of a household will pluck only a single bud at a time, because that one flower, as it unfolds, will perfume the entire house. But another distinction of the heart flower is that it originally grew wild, in the mountains you see yonder, and grew nowhere else but in these mountains of Uaxyácac. Like us Ben Záa, it came into existence right here, and, like us, it flourishes still. The heart flower is a joy to see and to smell, as it always has been. The Ben Záa are a strong and vigorous people, as they always have been.”

  I echoed what Cozcatl had said, “A beautiful people.”

  “Yes, as beautiful as they are vivacious,” said the old man with no affected modesty. “The Cloud People have kept themselves so, by keeping themselves pure Cloud People. We purge any impurity which crops up or creeps in.”

  I said, “What? How?”

  “If a child is born malformed or intolerably ugly, or gives evidence of being deficient of brain, we see that it does not live to grow up. The unfortunate infant is denied its mother’s teat, and it dwindles and dies in the gods’ good time. Our old people also are discarded, when they become too unsightly to be seen, or too feeble to care for themselves, or when their minds begin to decay. Of course, the old folks’ immolation is generally voluntary, and done for the public good. I myself, when I feel my vigor or my senses begin to wane, I shall make my farewells and go away to the Holy Home and never be seen again.”

  I said, “It sounds rather an extreme measure.”

  “Is it extreme to weed a garden? To prune dead branches from an orchard?”

  “Well …”

  He said sardonically, “You admire the effect but you deplore the means. That we choose to discard the useless and the helpless, who would otherwise be a burden on their fellows. That we choose to let the defective die, and thus avert their begetting still more defectives. Young moralist, do you also condemn our refusal to breed mongrels?”

  “Mongrels?”

  “We have been repeatedly invaded by the Mixtéca and Olméca in times past, and by the Mexíca in more recent times, and we suffer creeping infiltrations from lesser tribes around our borders, but we have never mixed with any of them. Though outlanders move among us and even live among us, we will always forbid the mingling of their blood with ours.”

  I said, “I do not see how that could be managed. Men and women being what they are, you can hardly allow social intercourse with foreigners and hope to prevent the sexual.”

  “Oh, we are human,” he conceded. “Our men willingly sample the women of other races, and some of our own women wantonly go astraddle the road. But any of the Cloud People who formally takes an outlander for husband or wife is, at that moment, no longer one of the Cloud People. That fact is usually enough to discourage marriage with aliens. But there is another reason why such marriages are uncommon. Surely you yourself can see it.”

  I shook my head uncertainly.

  “You have traveled among other peoples. Now look at our men. Look at our women. In what nation outside Uaxyácac could they find partners so nearly ideal for each other?”

  I already had looked, and the question was unanswerable. Granted, I had in my time known exceedingly well-favored examples of other peoples: my own beautiful sister Tzitzi, who was of the Mexíca; the Lady of Tolan, who was of the Tecpanéca; pretty little Cozcatl, who was of the Acólhua. And granted, not every single specimen of the Tzapotéca was unfaultably imposing. But I could not deny that the majority of those people were of such superb face and figure as to make the majority of other peoples seem little better than early and failed experiments of the gods.

  Among the Mexíca, I was reckoned a rarity for my height and musculature; but almost every man of the Tzapotéca was as tall and strongly built as I, and had both strength and sensitivity in his face. Almost every woman was amply endowed with womanly curves, but was lithe as a willow wand; and her face was fashioned for goddesses to imitate: large and luminous eyes, straight nose, a mouth made for kissing, unblemished and almost translucent skin. Zyanya was a shapely vessel of burnished copper, brimming with honey, set in the sun. The men and women alike stood proud and moved gracefully and spoke their liquid Lóochi in soft voices. The children were exquisite and lovably well behaved. I am rather glad that I could not step outside myself to see how I compared in such company. But the other foreigners I saw in Uaxyácac—most of them immigrant Mixtéca—alongside the Cloud People looked lumpy and mud-colored and imperfectly put together.

  Still, I am not entirely credulous. So, as we say, I took with my little finger the old interpreter Red River’s tale of how his people had been created: spontaneously, and whole, and splendid. I could not believe that the Cloud People had sprouted from those mountains full-formed, like the heart flower. No other nation ever claimed such a nonsensically impossible origin. Every people must come from somewhere else, must they not?

  But I could believe, from the evidence of my own eyes, that the Tzapotéca had haughtily balked at interbreeding with any outlanders, that they had preserved only their prime bloodlines, even when it meant remorselessness toward their own loved ones. Wherever and however the Cloud People truly originated, they had ever since refused to become a nation of less than the best. I could believe that, because there I was, walking among them: the admirable men and the desirable women. Ayyo, the eminently, irresistibly, excruciatingly desirable women!

  As is our practice here, Your Excellency, the lord scribe has just read back to me the last sentence I spoke, to remind me where we left off at our last session. Dare I suppose that Your Excellency joins us today expecting to hear how I ravished the entire female population of Záachilà?

  No?

  If, as you say, it would not surprise you to hear it, but you do not wish to, then let me really surprise Your Excellency. Though we spent several days in and around Záachilà, I did not once touch a woman there. Uncharacteristic of me, yes, as Your Excellency remarks. But I do not claim to have enjoyed any sudden redemption from my libertine ways. Rather, I was then afflicted by a new perversity. I did not want any of the women who could be had, because they could be had. Those women were adorable and seductive and doubtless skillful—Blood Glutton wallowed in lechery all the time we were there—but their very availability made me decline them. What I wanted, what I desired and lusted for was a real woman of the Cloud People: meaning some woman who would recoil in horror from a foreigner like me. It was a dilemma. I wanted what I could not possibly have, and I would settle for nothing less. So I had none, and I can tell Your Excellency nothing about the women of Záachilà.

  Permit me to tell you a little about Uaxyácac instead. That land is a chaos of mountains, peaks, and crags; mountains shouldering between mountains; mountains overlaid on mountains. The Tzapotéca, content in their mountain protection and isolation, have seldom cared to venture outside those ramparts, just as they have seldom welcomed anyone else inside. To other nations, they long ago became known as “the closed people.”

  However, the first Uey-Tlatoáni Motecuzóma was determined to extend the Mexíca trade routes southward and ever farther southward, and he chose to do so by force, not by diplomatic negotiation. Early in the year in which I was born, he had led an army into Uaxyácac and, after causing much death and devastation, finally succeeded in taking i
ts capital by siege. He demanded unhindered passage for the Mexíca pochtéca and, of course, laid the Cloud People under tribute to The Triple Alliance. But he lacked supply lines to support an occupying force, and so, when he marched home with the bulk of his army, he left only a token garrison in Záachilà to enforce the collection of the levy. As soon as he was out of sight, the Tzapotéca quite naturally slaughtered the garrison warriors, and resumed their former way of life, and never paid so much as a cotton rag of tribute.

  That would have brought new Mexíca invasions which would have laid waste the country—Motecuzóma was not named Wrathful Lord without reason—except for two things. The Tzapotéca were wise enough to keep their promise that Mexíca merchants could traverse their land unmolested. And in that same year Motecuzóma died. His successor, Axayácatl, was sufficiently satisfied with Uaxyácac’s concession to commerce, and sufficiently conscious of the difficulties of defeating and holding such a faraway country, that he sent no more armies. So there was no love, but mutual truce and trade between the two nations, during the twenty years before my arrival and for some years afterward.

  Uaxyácac’s ceremonial center and most revered city is the ancient Lyobáan, a short journey eastward of Záachilà, which old Red River one day took me and Cozcatl to see. (Blood Glutton stayed behind to disport himself in an auyanicáli, a house of pleasure.) Lyobáan means Holy Home, but we Mexíca have long called the city Míctlan, because those Mexíca who have seen it believe it is truly the earthly entrance to that dark and dismal afterworld.

  It is a sightly city, very well preserved for its great age. There are many temples of many rooms, one of those rooms being the biggest I have ever seen anywhere with a roof not supported by a forest of columns. The walls of the buildings, both inside and out, are adorned with deeply carved patterns, like petrified weaving, endlessly repeated in mosaics of white limestone intricately fitted together. As Your Excellency hardly needs to be told, those numerous temples at the Holy Home were evidence that the Cloud People, like us Mexíca and like you Christians, paid homage to a whole host of deities. There was the virgin moon goddess Béu, and the jaguar god Béezye, and the dawn goddess Tangu Yu, and I know not how many more.