Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  “Excuse me, Lord Doctor,” I ventured. “It was not any of the binkizáka. It was a rabbit that bit him.”

  The physician raised his head so he could scowl down his nose at me. “Young man, I was holding his wrist when he said ‘binkizáka,’ and I know a pulse when I feel it. Woman!” I blinked, but he was addressing his wife. He afterward explained to me that he told her, “I shall need to confer with an expert in the lesser beings. Go fetch Doctor Kamé.”

  The crone scuttled out of the hut, elbowing through the craning crowd, and in a few moments we were joined by another elderly man. The Doctors Kamé and Maäsh huddled and muttered, then took turns holding Ten’s flaccid wrist and roaring “Binkizáka!” into his ear. Then they huddled and consulted some more, then nodded in agreement. Doctor Kamé barked another order to the old woman and she departed again in a hurry. Doctor Maäsh told me:

  “It is profitless to sacrifice to the binkizáka, since they are half beasts and do not understand the rites of propitiation. This being an emergency case, my colleague and I have decided on the radical measure of burning the affliction out of the patient. We have sent for the Sun Slab, the most holy treasure of our people.”

  The woman came back with two men, carrying between them what looked at first glance like a simple square of rock. Then I saw that its upper surface was inlaid with jadestone in the form of a cross. Yes, very similar to your Christian cross. In the four spaces between the arms of the cross, the rock had been bored completely through, and in each of those holes was set a chunk of chipílotl quartz. But—and this is important for the understanding of what followed, my lords—each of those quartz crystals had been ground and polished so it was of perfectly round circumference and smoothly convex on both its upper and lower sides. Each of those transparent panes in the Sun Slab was like a flattened ball, or an extremely symmetrical clam.

  While the two new men stood holding the Sun Slab over the prostrate Ten, the old woman took a broom and, with its handle, poked holes in the thatch of the roof, each hole admitting a beam of the afternoon sun, until finally she punched a hole that let a beam right down on the patient. The two doctors tugged at the cuguar pelt to adjust Ten’s position relative to the sunbeam and the Sun Slab. Then occurred a thing most marvelous, and I crept closer to see better.

  Under the doctors’ direction, the two men holding the heavy stone slab tilted it so the sun shone through one of the shaped quartz crystals and made a round spot of light on Ten’s ulcerated hand. Then, moving the stone back and forth in the sunbeam, they made that round spot of light concentrate down to one intense dot of light, aimed directly upon the sore. The two doctors held the limp hand steady, the two men held the dot of light steady, and—believe me or not, as you will—a wisp of smoke came from the ugly sore. In another moment, there was a sizzling noise and a small flame was there, almost invisible in the brightness of that intensified light. The doctors gently moved the hand about, so that the sun-made flame went all over the ulcer.

  At last, one of them said a word. The two men carried the Sun Slab out of the hut, the old woman began trying with her broomstick to rearrange the straw of the roof, and Doctor Maäsh motioned for me to lean and look. The ulcer had been as completely and cleanly seared as if it had been done with a fire-hot copper rod. I congratulated the two physicians—sincerely, since I had never seen the like before. I also congratulated Ten on having borne the burning without a sound.

  “Sad to say, he did not feel it,” said Doctor Maäsh. “The patient is dead. We might have saved him, if you had told me of the binkizáka’s involvement and saved me the unnecessary routine of going through all the major gods.” Even in his ragged Náhuatl, his tone came through as tartly critical. “You are all alike, when you need medical treatment. Keep a stubborn silence about the most important symptoms. Insist that a physician must first guess the affliction, then cure it, or he has not earned his fee.”

  “I shall be pleased to pay all fees, Lord Doctor,” I said, just as tartly. “Would you be pleased to tell me what you have cured?”

  We were interrupted by a small, wizened, dark-skinned woman who slipped into the hut at that moment and shyly said something in the local language. Doctor Maäsh grumpily translated:

  “She offers to pay all medical expenses, if you will consent to sell her the body instead of eating it, as you Mexíca customarily do with dead slaves. She is—she was his mother.”

  I ground my teeth and said, “Kindly inform her that we Mexíca do no such thing. And I freely give her son back to her. I only regret that we could not have delivered him alive.”

  The woman’s woebegone face became a little less so as the physician spoke. Then she asked another question.

  “It is our custom,” he translated, “to bury our dead upon the pallet on which they died. She would like to buy from you this smelly skin of a mountain lion.”

  “It is hers,” I said, and for some reason I lied: “Her son killed the beast.” I made the doctor earn his fee as an interpreter if for nothing else, for I told the whole story of the hunt, only casting Ten in Blood Glutton’s role, and making it sound as if Ten had gallantly saved my life at peril of his own. By the end of the story, the woman’s dark face was glowing with maternal pride.

  She said something else, and the disgruntled doctor translated: “She says, if her son was so loyal to the young lord, then you must be a good and deserving man. The Macoboö are indebted to you forever.”

  At that, she called in four more men from outside, presumably Macoboö kinsmen, and they carried Ten away on the accursed pelt that he would not now ever be rid of. I emerged from the hut behind them, to find that my partners had been eavesdropping. Cozcatl was sniffling, but Blood Glutton said sarcastically:

  “That was all very noble. But has it occurred to you, good young lord, that this so-called trading expedition has given away rather more of value than it has yet acquired?”

  “We have just now acquired some friends,” I said.

  And so we had. The Macoboö family, which was a big one, insisted that we be their guests during our stay in Chiapán, and lavished on us both hospitality and adulation. There was nothing we could ask that would not be given, as freely as I had given the dead slave back to them. I believe the first thing Blood Glutton requested, after a good bath and a hearty meal, was one of the comelier female cousins; I know I was given a handsome one for my own use. But the first favor I asked was that the Macoboö find me a Chiapán resident who spoke and understood Náhuatl. And when such a man was produced, the first thing I said to him was:

  “Those quartz crystals in the Sun Slab, could they not be used instead of the tedious drill and tinder for lighting fires?”

  “Why, of course,” he said, surprised that I should find it necessary to inquire. “We have always used them so. I do not mean the ones in the Sun Slab, for the Sun Slab is reserved for ceremonial purposes. Perhaps you noticed that its crystals are as big as a man’s fist. Clear quartz of that size is so rare that naturally the priests appropriate it and proclaim it holy. But a mere fragment will serve for fire lightings, when it is properly shaped and polished.”

  He reached under his mantle and extracted from the waist of his loincloth a crystal of that same clamshell convexity, but not much bigger than my thumbnail.

  “I need hardly remark, young lord, that it only functions as a burning instrument when the god Kakál shines his sunlight through it. But even at night it has a second use—for looking closely at small things. Let me show you.”

  He demonstrated how it could be held at just the proper distance between eye and object—we used the embroidery on my mantle hem for the purpose—and I almost jumped when the pattern loomed so large to my sight that I could count the colored threads of it.

  “Where do you get these things?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from sounding overeager.

  “Quartz is a fairly common stone in these mountains,” he was frank to admit. “Whenever anybody stumbles upon a good clear b
it, he saves it until it can be brought here to Chiapán. Here live the Xibalbá family, and only that family has known through all its generations the secret of fashioning the rough stone into these useful crystals.”

  “Oh, it is no profound secret,” said the current Master Xibalbá. “Not like a knowledge of sorcery or prophecy.” My interpreter had introduced us, and did the translating as the crystalsmith casually went on, “It is mainly a matter of knowing the proper curvature to impart, and then merely having the patience to grind and polish each crystal exactly so.”

  Hoping I sounded equally casual, I said, “They make interesting novelties. Useful, too. I wonder that I have not yet seen them copied by the craftsmen of Tenochtítlan.”

  My interpreter remarked that there had probably never before been any reason for the Sun Slab to have been exhibited in the presence of anyone from Tenochtítlan. Then he translated Master Xibalbá’s next comment:

  “I said, young lord, that there is no great secret to making the crystals. I did not say it is easy, or easily imitated. One must know, for example, how to keep the stone precisely centered for the grinding. It was my greatest-grandfather Xibalbá who first learned how.”

  He said that with pride. He might seem casual about the secrets of his craft, but I was sure that he would never reveal them to any but his own progeny. That suited me perfectly; let the Xibalbá remain the only keepers of the knowledge; let the crystals remain inimitable; let me buy up enough of them….

  Pretending hesitation, I said, “I think … I believe … I might just possibly be able to sell such things for curiosities in Tenochtítlan or Texcóco. I could not quite be sure … but yes, perhaps to scribes, for greater accuracy in doing their detailed word pictures …”

  The master’s eyes gleamed mischievously as his comment was relayed to me. “How many, young lord, do you think you believe you might possibly but not quite require?”

  I grinned and dropped the pretense. “It would depend on how many you can provide and the price you ask.”

  “You see here my entire stock of working material as of this day.” He waved at the one wall of his workroom which was all shelves, from thatch to ground; on every shelf, nestled in bolls of cotton, were the rough quartz stones. They were distinctive only for the angular, six-sided shapes in which they came from the earth, and they ranged in size from that of a finger joint to that of a small maize cob.

  “Here is what I paid for the stock,” the artisan went on, handing me a bark paper bearing numerous columns of numbers and symbols. I was mentally adding up the total when he said, “From this stock I can make six twenties of finished crystals of varying sizes.”

  I asked, “How long would that take?”

  “One month.”

  “Twenty days?” I exclaimed. “I should have thought one crystal would take that long!”

  “We Xibalbá have had sheaves of years in which to practice,” he said. “And I have seven apprentice sons to help me. I also have five daughters, but of course they are not allowed to touch the rough stones, lest they ruin them, being females.”

  “Six twenties of crystals,” I mused, repeating his provincial mode of counting. “And what would you charge for that many?”

  “What you see there,” he said, indicating the bark paper.

  Puzzled, I spoke to the interpreter. “Did I not understand correctly? Did he not say that this is what he paid? For the rough rock?” The interpreter nodded, and through him I again addressed the crystalsmith:

  “This makes no sense. Even a street vendor of tortillas asks more for the bread than she paid for the maize.” Both he and the translator smiled indulgently and shook their heads. “Master Xibalbá,” I persisted, “I came here prepared to bargain, yes, but not to steal. I tell you honestly, I would be willing to pay eight times this price, and happy to pay six, and overjoyed to pay four.”

  His answer came back, “And I would be obliged to refuse.”

  “In the name of all your gods and mine, why?”

  “You proved yourself a friend of the Macoboö. Hence you are a friend of all the Chiapa, and we Xibalbá are Chiapa born. No, protest no more. Go. Enjoy your stay among us. Let me get to work. Return in one month for your crystals.”

  “Then our fortune is already made!” Blood Glutton exulted, as he played with the sample crystal the artisan had given me. “We need not travel any farther. By the great Huitztli, you can sell these things back home for any price you ask!”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But we have a month to wait for them, and we have a surplus of goods we still can trade, and I have a personal reason for wanting to visit the Maya.”

  He grumbled, “These Chiapa women are dark of skin, but they far excel any you will find among the Maya.”

  “Old lecher, do you never think of anything but women?”

  Cozcatl, who did not think of women at all, pleaded, “Yes, do let us go on. We cannot come this far and not see the jungle.”

  “I also think of eating,” said Blood Glutton. “These Macoboö lay an ample dinner cloth. Besides, we lost our only capable cook when we lost Ten.”

  I said, “You and I will go on, Cozcatl. Let this lazy ancient stay here, if he likes, and live up to his name.”

  Blood Glutton groused a while longer, but, as I well knew, his appetite for wandering was as strong as any of his other appetites. He was soon off to the marketplace to procure some items he said we would need for jungle travel. Meanwhile, I went again to the Master Xibalbá and invited him to take his pick of our trade goods, as an earnest against my paying the balance of his price in harder currency. He again mentioned his numerous offspring, and was pleased to select a quantity of mantles, loincloths, blouses, and skirts. That pleased me as well, because those were the bulkiest things we carried. Their disposal unburdened two of our slaves, and I had no trouble in finding ready purchasers right there in Chiapán, and their new masters paid me in gold dust.

  “Now we visit the physician again,” said Blood Glutton. “I was long ago given my protection against snakebite, but you and the boy have not yet been treated.”

  “Thank you for your good intent,” I said. “But I do not think I would trust Doctor Maäsh to treat a pimple on my bottom.”

  He insisted, “The jungle teems with poisonous serpents. When you step on one, you will wish you had stepped into Doctor Maäsh’s hut first.” He began to tick off on his fingers, “There is the yellow-chin snake, the coral snake, the nauyáka …”

  Cozcatl paled, and I remembered the elderly trader in Tenochtítlan telling how he had been bitten by a nauyáka and had cut off his own foot to keep from dying. So Cozcatl and I went to Doctor Maäsh, who produced one fang apiece of each of the snakes Blood Glutton had mentioned, and three or four more besides. With each tooth he pricked our tongues just enough to draw blood.

  “There is a tiny dried residue of venom on each of these fangs,” he explained. “It will make you both break out in a mild rash. But that will vanish in a few days, and thereafter you will be safe against the bite of any snake known to exist. However, there is one further precaution you must bear in mind.” He smiled wickedly and said, “From this moment for ever, your teeth are as lethal as any serpent’s. Be careful whom you bite.”

  So we departed from Chiapán, as soon as we could pry ourselves loose from the insistent hospitality of the Macoboö, and of those two female cousins in particular, by swearing that we would soon return and be their guests again. To continue eastward, we and our remaining slaves had to climb another mountain range, but the god Tititl had by then restored the weather to the warmth appropriate to those regions, so the climb was not too punishing, even though it took us above the timberline. On the other side, the slope swept us precipitously down and down—from the lichened rock of the heights, to the line where the trees began, then through the sharp-scented forests of pine and cedar and juniper. From there, the familiar trees gradually thinned, as they were crowded out by kinds I had never seen before, and those app
eared to be fighting for their lives against the vines and lianas that climbed and curled all over them.

  The first thing I discovered about the jungle was that my limited eyesight was no great handicap in there, for distances did not exist; everything was close together. Strangely contorted trees, giant-leafed green plants, towering and feathery ferns, monstrous and spongy fungus, they all stood close, they pressed in and hemmed us about, almost suffocatingly so. The canopy of foliage overhead was like a green cloud cover; on the jungle floor, even at midday we were in a green twilight. Every growing thing; even the petals of flowers, seemed to exude a warm, moist stickiness. Though that was the dry season, the air itself was dense and humid and thick to breathe, like a clear fog. The jungle smelled spicy, musky, ripe-sweet and rotten: all the odors of rampant growth rooted in old decay.

  From the treetops above us, howler and spider monkeys yelped and countless varieties of parrots screeched their indignation at our intrusion, while other birds of every conceivable color flashed back and forth like warning arrows. The air about us was hung with hummingbirds no bigger than bees and fanned by fluttering butterflies as big as bats. Around our feet the underbrush was rustled by creatures stirring or fleeing. Perhaps some were deadly snakes, but most were harmless things: the little itzam lizards which run on their hind legs; the big-fingered frogs which climb trees; the multicolored, crested, dewlapped iguanas; the glossy brown-furred jaleb, which would scamper only a short way off, then stop to peer beady-eyed at us. Even the larger and uglier animals native to those jungles are shy of humans: the lumbering tapir, the shaggy capybara, the formidably claw-footed anteater. Unless one steps incautiously into a stream where alligators or caymans lurk, even those massive armored beasts are no hazard.

  We were more of a menace to the native creatures than most of them were to us. During our month in the jungle, Blood Glutton’s arrows provided us with several meals of jaleb, iguana, capybara, and tapir. Edible, my lords? Oh, quite. The meat of the jaleb is indistinguishable from that of the opossum; iguana flesh is white and flaky like that of the sea crayfish you call lobster; capybara tastes like the most tender rabbit; and tapir meat is very similar to pork.