Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  My plan required me to go on from Pijijía across the mountain ranges into the Chiapa country. But, since my porters were so heavily laden, I saw no necessity for them to make that climb. We arranged a day and a place to regroup in the barrens of the isthmus of Tecuantépec; it would give them plenty of time to travel there at a leisurely pace. I told them to avoid villages and encounters with other travelers on the way; a train of loaded tamémime without a leader would have provoked comment, if not their detention for investigation. So, once we were well away from Pijijía, my seven men turned west, staying in the lowlands of the Xoconóchco, while I went north into the mountains.

  I came down from them finally, into the meager capital city of Chiapán, and went straight to the workshop of the Master Xibalbá.

  “Ah!” said he with delight. “I thought you would be back. So I have been collecting all the quartz possible, and making of it many more burning crystals.”

  “Yes, they sell well,” I told him. “This time I insist on paying you their full value and the full worth of your labors on them.” I also told him how my topaz, by enhancing my vision, had much enriched my life, and how grateful I was to him.

  When I had filled my pack with the cotton-wrapped crystals, I was carrying almost as much weight as each of my absent porters. But I did not stay to rest and refresh myself in Chiapán, because I could hardly have stayed anywhere but at the home of the Macoboö family, and there I should have had to fend off the advances of those two female cousins, which would hardly be polite behavior for a guest. So I paid the Master Xibalbá in gold dust, and hurried on my way.

  Some days later, after only a little searching about, I found the spot, remote from any inhabited area, where my men awaited me, sitting around a campfire and a litter of picked-clean bones of armadillos and iguanas and such. There we lingered only long enough for me to get a good night’s sleep, and for one of the old campaigners to cook for me my first hot meal since I had left them: a plump pheasant broiled over the fire.

  When we came through the eastern reaches of the city of Tecuantépec, we could see the marks of the Mexíca’s depredations, though most of the burned-over areas had already been rebuilt. In fact, the city had been rather improved thereby. There were decent and sturdy houses in the once squalid area where I had formerly seen only woebegone shanties—including the one that had been such a landmark in my life. When we made our way through the city to its western edge, however, we found that the rioting soldiers had apparently not carried their rampage that far. The familiar inn was still there. I left my men in the yard while I went in, shouting boisterously:

  “Innkeeper! Have you room for a weary pochtécatl and his train?”

  Béu Ribé came from some inner room, looking healthy and fit and as beautiful as ever, but her only greeting was to say:

  “The Mexíca are not very popular hereabouts these days.”

  I said, still trying for cordiality, “Surely, Waiting Moon, you make an exception of your own brother, Dark Cloud. Your sister sent me all this way to make sure of your safety. I am happy to see you were unharmed by the troubles.”

  “Unharmed,” she said in a flat voice. “I am happy that you are happy, since it was your doing that the Mexíca soldiers came here. Everyone knows they were sent because of your misadventures with the Zyú, and your failure to seize the purple dye.”

  That much was true, I admitted. “But you cannot blame me for—”

  “There is blame enough for me to share it!” she said bitterly. “I am blamed that this inn ever gave you shelter in the first place!” Then she seemed suddenly to droop. “But I have long been acquainted with scorn, have I not? Yes, you may have a room, and you know where to lodge your porters. The servants will see to you.”

  She turned and went back to whatever she had been busy with. Hardly a tumultuous or even sisterly welcome, I thought to myself. But the servants got my men and my goods stowed away, and prepared a meal for me. When I had finished it and was smoking a poquíetl, Béu came through the room. She would have kept right on walking, but I took her wrist and stopped her and said:

  “I do not deceive myself, Béu. I know you dislike me, and if the recent Mexíca riots made you love me even less—”

  She interrupted me, her winglike eyebrows haughtily high. “Dislike? Love? Those are emotions. What right have I to feel any emotion toward you, husband of my sister?”

  “All right,” I said impatiently. “Despise me. Ignore me. But will you not give me some word to take back to Zyanya?”

  “Yes. Tell her I was raped by a Mexícatl soldier.”

  Stunned, I let go of her wrist. I tried to think of something to say, but she laughed and went on:

  “Oh, do not say you are sorry. I think I can still claim virginity, for he was exceptionally inept. In his attempt to debase me, he only confirmed my already abysmal opinion of the arrogant Mexíca.”

  I found my voice, and demanded, “His name. If he has not yet been executed, I will see to it.”

  “Do you suppose he introduced himself?” she said, laughing again. “I believe he was no soldier of common rank, though I do not know all your military insignia, and my room was dark. But I did recognize the costume he made me don for the occasion. I was forced to put soot on my face, and to put on the black, musty robes of a female temple attendant.”

  “What?” I said, stupefied.

  “There was not much conversation, but I realized that mere virginity was not sufficient to excite him. I realized that he could only be aroused by pretending that he violated the holy and untouchable.”

  “I never heard of such a—”

  She said, “Do not try to make excuses for your countryman. And you do not need to commiserate with me. I told you: he was quite unsuited to be a violator of women. His—I believe you call it a tepúli—his tepúli was all knobby and gnarled and bent. The act of penetration—”

  “Please, Béu,” I said. “This telling cannot be pleasant for you.”

  “Neither was the experience,” she said, as coolly as if describing someone else’s. “A woman who must later endure being pointed out as a victim of rape should at least have been well raped. His maimed tepúli would penetrate only as far as its head, or bulb, or whatever you call that. And for all his heaving and grunting, it would not stay in. When he finally emitted his juice, it merely dribbled onto my leg. I do not know if there are degrees of virginity, but I think I can still call myself a virgin. I also think the man felt even more shamed and mortified than I did. He could not even look me in the eye while I undressed again and he collected those awful temple garments and carried them away with him.”

  I said helplessly, “He certainly does not sound like—”

  “Like the typical, virile Mexícatl male? Like Záa Nayàzú?” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Tell me truly, Záa, has my little sister ever really been satisfied in her marriage bed?”

  “Please, Béu. This is unseemly.”

  She said a profanity: “Gì zyabà! What can be unseemly for a woman already degraded? If you will not tell me, why not show me? Prove to me that you are a fit husband. Oh, do not blush and turn away. Remember, I saw you do it once, but my mother never said afterward whether it was good or not. I would be gratified to know, and from personal experience. Come to my room. Why should you have qualms about using a woman who has already been used? Not much used, of course, but—”

  Firmly, I changed the subject. “I told Zyanya I would bring you to Tenochtítlan if you were suffering or in any danger. We have a house of many rooms. I ask you now, Béu. If you find your situation here intolerable, will you come away and live with us?”

  “Impossible!” she snapped. “Live under your roof? How could I there ignore you, as you have suggested?”

  Unable to control myself any longer, I said loudly, “I have said and done all I know to say and do. I have spoken apology and contrition and sympathy and brotherly love. I have offered you a good home in a different city where you can hol
d up your head and forget what is past. But you reply only with sneers and mockery and malice. I will leave in the morning, woman, and you may come with me or not!”

  She did not.

  In the capital city of Záachilà, to sustain my pose as a trader, I again paid a courtesy call on the Bishósu Ben Záa, and he granted me audience, and I told my lie: how I had been roaming in the Chiapa country, how I had only recently learned of occurrences in the civilized world, and I said:

  “As the Lord Kosi Yuela will have guessed, it was largely at my instigation that Ahuítzotl brought his men to Uaxyácac. So I feel I owe some apologies.”

  He made a casual gesture of dismissal. “Whatever intrigues were involved are of no importance. I am satisfied that your Revered Speaker came with good intentions, and I was pleased that the long animosity between our nations might finally abate, and I do not at all object to receiving the rich tribute of the purple.”

  I said, “But then there was the reprehensible behavior of Ahuítzotl’s men in Tecuantépec. Simply as a Mexícatl, I must add my apologies for that.”

  “I do not blame Ahuítzotl. I do not even much blame the men.”

  I must have looked surprised. He explained, “Your Revered Speaker moved quickly to stop the outrages. He ordered the worst offenders garrotted, and he placated the rest of the men with promises which I am sure he has kept. Then he paid to atone for the havoc, or as much of it as could be paid for. Our nations would probably be now at war, if he had not acted so swiftly and honorably. No, Ahuítzotl was humbly anxious to restore good relations.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard the choleric Ahuítzotl, Water Monster, described as anything like humble. Kosi Yuela went on:

  “But there was another man, a young man, his nephew. That one had command of the Mexíca while Ahuítzotl and I conferred, and that is when the outbreak began. The young man bears a name we Ben Záa have historical reason to detest—he is called Motecuzóma—and I believe he regarded Ahuítzotl’s treaty of alliance with us as a sign of weakness. I believe he wanted the Cloud People as subjects of the Mexíca, not as equals. I strongly suspect he fomented that riot in hope of setting us at each other’s throats again. If you do have Ahuítzotrs ear, young traveler, I suggest you insinuate a word of warning about his nephew. That new and upstart Motecuzóma, if he retains a position of any power, could undo all the good his uncle might seek to accomplish.”

  At the causeway to Tenochtítlan, where the city loomed before us luminous white in the dove-colored dusk, I sent my men ahead of me by twos and threes. By the time I set foot on the island, the night had come down, and the city was ablaze with firelight, candlelight, and lamplight. In that inconstant illumination I could see that my house was finished, and that it was a sightly one, but I could not make out all its exterior details. Since it was set on pillars about my own height above ground level, I had to climb a short stair to the entrance. There I was admitted by a middle-aged female I had never seen before, obviously a new-bought slave. She introduced herself as Teoxíhuitl, or Turquoise, and said, “When the porters arrived, the mistress went upstairs, that you might have privacy for the business of men. She will await you in your chamber, master.”

  The woman showed me into the lower-floor room where my seven companions were devouring a cold meal she had hurried to lay for them. When dishes had also been provided for me, and we had all allayed our hunger, the men helped me pivot the false wall of that room and secrete their packs behind it, where some others of my goods had already been stored. Then I paid the men the homecoming share of their wages, and paid them rather more than I had promised, for they had performed admirably. They all kissed the earth to me as they departed, after making me swear that I would summon them again if I should conceive any other projects that would be to the taste of seven elder warriors otherwise consigned to peace and stagnation.

  Upstairs, I found the sanitary closet exactly as I had told the architect it should be: as complete and efficiently self-emptying as those I had admired in palaces. In the adjacent steam room, the slave woman Turquoise had already heated and laid the glowing stones and, when I had finished my first bath, she poured water over them to make the clouds of steam. I sweated there for a good while, then returned to the bathing basin again, until I was satisfied that I had got all the dust and grime and smell of travel out of my pores.

  When, naked, I stepped through the connecting door to the bedchamber, I found Zyanya equally naked, lying invitingly supine atop the bed stack of soft quilts. There was only a dim red light from a brazier in the room, but it glinted on the pale streak in her hair and outlined her upthrusting breasts. Each of them was a beautifully symmetrical mound, with on top of it the smaller mound of her areola, exactly like the profile of Popocatépetl as you see it through the window there, my lords friars: a cone upon a cone. No, of course there is no need for me to regale you with such details. I only explain why my breathing altered as I moved toward Zyanya, and why I spoke only a few words:

  “Béu is safe. There is other news, but it can wait.”

  “Let it wait,” she said, and she smiled, and she reached for the nearest approaching part of me.

  So it was quite some time later that I told about Béu Ribé: that she was alive and safe, but dismally unhappy. I am glad that we had made love first. It gave Zyanya the usual lasting languor of pleasure and satisfaction which, I hope, softened the words I had to speak. I told of Béu’s unfortunate encounter with the Mexícatl officer, and tried to make it sound—as indeed Béu had made it sound—more of a farce than a tragedy.

  I concluded, “I think it is her stubborn pride that makes her stay on there, keeping the inn. She is determined to take no notice of what the townspeople may think of her, whether they think shame or sympathy. She will not leave Tecuantépec for any good reason or for any better life, because it might be taken as a sign that she had weakened at last.”

  “Poor Béu,” Zyanya murmured. “Is there nothing we can do?”

  Suppressing my own opinion of “poor Béu,” I meditated and finally said, “I can think of nothing but for you to suffer a misfortune. If her only sister needed her desperately, I believe she would come to you. But let us not tempt or provoke the gods. Let us not discuss mischance.”

  The next day, when Ahuítzotl received me in his grisly throne room, I again told my confected story: that I had gone to see that my wife’s sister had not suffered in the sack of Tecuantépec and, while there, had taken the opportunity to go farther south and procure more of the magical crystals. I again ceremoniously made him a present of one, and he thanked me without great enthusiasm. Then, before bringing up a subject which I expected would bulge his eyeballs and fire his irascibility, I told him something to sweeten his temper.

  “My travels, Lord Speaker, took me into the coastal land of the Xoconóchco, whence comes most of our cotton and salt. I spent two days among the Mame people, in their main village of Pijijía, and there the elders called me into council. They desired me to bring a message to the Uey-Tlatoáni of the Mexíca.”

  He said indifferently, “Speak the message.”

  “Know first, my lord, that the Xoconóchco is not a nation, but a vast extent of fertile land inhabited by various peoples: the Mame, the Mixe, the Comitéca, and even smaller tribes. Their territories all overlap, and their allegiance is only to such tribal elders as those in Pijijía. The Xoconóchco has no central capital or governing body or standing army.”

  “Interesting,” muttered Ahuítzotl. “But not very.”

  I went on, “To the east of the rich and fruitful Xoconóchco is the unproductive jungle country of Quautemálan, The Tangled Wood. Its natives, the Quiché and Lacandón, are degenerate remnants of the Maya. They are poor and dirty and lazy, and heretofore have been accounted beneath contempt. However, they have recently summoned the energy to emerge from Quautemálan and make raids into the Xoconóchco. Those scavengers threaten that their raids will increase in frequency, will become an unremitting
war, unless the Xoconóchco peoples agree to pay them heavy tribute of cotton and salt.”

  “Tribute?” grunted Ahuítzotl, interested at last. “Our cotton and salt!”

  “Yes, my lord. Now, we can hardly expect peaceable cotton farmers and sea fishers and salt panners to mount a fierce defense of their lands. But they do have spirit enough to resent those demands. They are unwilling to give to the Quiché and Lacandón what they have formerly and profitably sold to us Mexíca. They believe our Revered Speaker should be equally outraged at the idea.”

  “Spare us your emphasis of the obvious,” growled Ahuítzotl. “What did those elders propose? That we go to war for them against Quautemálan?”

  “No, my lord. They offer to give us the Xoconóchco.”

  “What?” He was honestly staggered.

  “If the Uey-Tlatoáni will accept the Xoconóchco lands as a new province, all its petty rulers will relinquish their offices, all its separate tribes will relinquish their identities, all will swear loyalty to Tenochtítlan as voluntary Mexíca. They ask only two things: that they be allowed to go on living and working as they always have, unmolested, and that they continue to receive a living wage for their labor. The Mame speak for all their neighbor tribes in requesting that a Mexícatl noble be appointed ruler and protector of the Xoconóchco, and that a strong garrison of Mexíca troops be established and maintained there.”

  Looking pleased for a change, even dazzled, Ahuítzotl murmured to himself, “Incredible. A rich land, free for the taking, freely given.” To me he said, more warmly than he had ever before addressed me, “You do not always bring annoyances and problems, young Mixtli.”

  I modestly said nothing.

  He went on, thinking aloud, “It would be the farthest dominion of The Triple Alliance. Put an army there and we would have much of the entire One World, from sea to sea, between two jaws. The nations thus flanked would evermore hesitate to be troublesome, lest those jaws gnash together and chew them up. They would be apprehensive, biddable, servile….”