Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  As we made a meal of one of the animal’s haunches, I made gestures of amazement at Tes-disóra’s speed and agility. He made gestures of modest dismissal, informing me that he was among the least of the Fast of Feet, that other hunters were far superior at running, and that in any case a mere doe was no challenge compared to a full-grown buck deer. Then, in his turn, he gestured amazement at the burning crystal with which I had lighted our cooking fire. He conveyed that he had never seen such a wondrously useful instrument in the possession of any other barbarian.

  “Mexícatl!” I repeated several times, in loud vexation. He only nodded, and we left off talking with either our hands or mouths, using them instead to feed hungrily on the tender broiled meat.

  Guagüey-bo was situated in another of the spectacularly vast chasms of that country, and it was a village in the sense that it housed some twenties of families—perhaps three hundred persons all together—but it contained only one visible residence, a small house neatly built of wood, in which lived the Si-ríame. That word means chief, sorcerer, physician, and judge, but it does not mean four persons; in a Rarámuri community all those offices are vested in one individual. The Si-ríame’s house and various other structures—some dome-shaped clay steam houses, several open-sided storage sheds, a slate-floor platform for communal ceremonies—those sat in the canyon bottom, along the bank of the white-water river streaming through. The rest of Guagüey-bo’s population lived in caves, either natural or hollowed out from the walls rising on both sides of that immense ravine.

  That they inhabit caves does not mean that the Rarámuri are either primitive or lazy, merely that they are practical. If they wished, they could all have houses as neat as that one of the Si-ríame. But the caves are available or are easily dug, and their occupants make them cozily habitable. They are partitioned by interior rock walls into several rooms apiece, and every room has an opening to the outside to admit light and air. They are carpeted with spicy-smelling pine needles, swept out and renewed every day or so. Their exterior openings are curtained and their walls are decorated with deerskins painted in lively designs. The cave dwellings are rather more comfortable, commodious, and well-appointed than many a city house I have been in.

  Tes-disóra and I arrived in the village moving as rapidly as we could with the burden slung on a pole we carried between us. Incredible as it may sound, in the early morning of that day he had run down and killed a buck deer, a doe, and a good-sized wild boar. We gutted and dismembered the animals, and hurried to get the meat to Guagüey-bo while the morning was still cool. The village was being plentifully stocked with food by all its hunters and gatherers because, Tes-disóra informed me, a tes-güinápuri festival was just about to begin. I silently congratulated myself on my good fortune in having encountered the Rarámuri when they were in a mood to be hospitable. But I later realized that only by ill chance could I ever have found any Rarámuri not enjoying some festivity, or preparing for it, or resting after it. Their religious ceremonies are not somber but frolicsome—the word tesgüinápuri can be translated as “Let us now get drunk”—and in total those celebrations occupy fully a third of the Rarámuri’s year.

  Since their forests and rivers so freely give them game and other foods, hides and skins, firewood and water, the Rarámuri do not, like most people, have to labor just to keep themselves supplied with the necessities of life. The only crop they cultivate is maize, but most of that is not for eating. It is for the making of tesgüino, a fermented beverage somewhat more drunk-making than the octli of us Mexíca and somewhat less so than the chápari honey liquor of the Purémpecha. From the lower lands east of the mountains, the Rarámuri also gather a chewable and potent little cactus which they call the jípuri—meaning “the god-light,” for reasons I shall explain. What with having so little work and so much free time on their hands, those people have good cause to spend a third of the year merrily drunk on tesgüino or blissfully drugged with jípuri and joyfully thanking their gods for their bounty.

  On the way to the village, I had learned from Tes-disóra some fragments of his language, and he and I were communicating more freely. So I will cease mentioning gestures and grimaces, and will report only the content of subsequent conversations. When he and I had given our load of venison to some elderly crones tending great cooking fires beside the river, he suggested that we sweat ourselves clean in one of the steam baths. He also suggested, with nice tact, that after we had bathed he could provide me with clean garments if I cared to throw my old rags into one of the fires. I was all too willing to comply.

  When we undressed at the entrance to the clay steam house, I got a small surprise. Seeing Tes-disóra nude, I saw that he had small bushes of hair growing from his armpits and another between his legs, and I made some comment on that unexpected sight. Tes-disóra only shrugged, pointed to his hairiness, and said, “Raramuríme,” then pointed to my hairless crotch and said, “Chichimecáme.” What he meant was that he was no rarity; the Rarámuri grew abundant ymáxtli around their genitals and under their arms; the Chichiméca did not.

  “I am not of the Chichiméca,” I said yet again, but I said it absently, for I was thinking. Of all the peoples I had known, only the Rarámuri grew that superfluous hair. I supposed that it was induced by the extremely cold weather they endured during part of each year, though I could not see that a growth of hair in those places was any useful protection against the cold. Another thought occurred to me, and I asked Tes-disóra:

  “Do your women grow similar little bushes?”

  He laughed and said that of course they did. He explained that a sprouting of ymáxtli fuzz was one of the first signs of a child’s approaching manhood or womanhood. On males and females alike, the fuzz gradually became hair—not very long hair, and no nuisance or impediment, but undeniably hair. I had already noticed, in the very brief time I had been in the village, that many of the Rarámuri women, though well muscled, were also well shaped and exceedingly fair of face. Which is to say that I found them attractive even before I knew of that distinctive peculiarity, which set me wondering: how would it feel, to couple with a woman whose tipíli was not forthrightly visible, or faintly veiled by only a fine down, but darkly and tantalizingly screened by hair like that on her head?

  “You can easily find out,” said Tes-disóra, as if he had divined my unspoken thought. “During the tes-güinápuri games, simply chase a woman and run her down and verify the fact.”

  When I had first entered Guagüey-bo, I had been the object of some understandably wary and derisive glances from the villagers. But when I was clean, combed, and clad in loincloth and sleeved mantle of supple deerskin, I was no longer eyed with disdain. From then on, except for the occasional giggle when I made an outrageous mistake in speaking their language, the Rarámuri were courteous and friendly to me. And my exceptional size, if nothing else about me, attracted some speculative, even admiring looks from the village girls and unattached women. It seemed there were more than a few of them who would gladly run for me to chase.

  They were almost always running, anyway—all the Rarámuri, male and female, old and young. If they were beyond the age of mere toddling and not yet at the age of doddering, they ran. At all times of day, except for those intervals of immobility when they were occupied with some task, or were sodden with tesgüino, or dazzled by the god-light jípuri, they ran. If they were not racing each other in pairs or in groups, they ran alone, back and forth along the floor of the canyon or up and down the slanting canyon walls. The men usually ran while kicking a ball ahead of them, a carved and carefully smoothed round ball of hard wood as big as a man’s head. The females usually ran chasing a small hoop of woven straw, each woman carrying a little stick with which she scooped up the circlet on the run and threw it farther on, and the other women ran competing to catch up to it first and throw it next. All that frenetic and incessant commotion appeared purposeless to me, but Tes-disóra explained:

  “It is partly high spirits and animal ene
rgy, but it is more than that. It is an unceasing ceremony in which, through the exertion and sweat expended, we pay homage to our gods Ta-tevarí and Ka-laumarí and Ma-tinierí.”

  I found it difficult to imagine any god who could be nourished by perspiration instead of blood, but the Rarámuri have those three whom Tes-disóra named: in your language their names would be Grandfather Fire, Mother Water, and Brother Deer. Perhaps the religion recognizes other gods, but those are the only three I ever heard mentioned. Considering the simple needs of the forest-dwelling Rarámuri, I suppose those three suffice.

  Tes-disóra said, “Our constant running shows our creator gods that the people they created are still alive and lively, and grateful to be so. It also keeps our men fit for the rigors of the running hunt. It is also practice for the games you will see—or join in, I hope—during this festival. And those games themselves are only practice.”

  “Kindly tell me,” I sighed, feeling rather wearied just by the talk of so much exertion. “Practice for what?”

  “For the real running, of course. The ra-rajípuri.” He grinned at the expression on my face. “You will see. It is the grand conclusion of every celebration.”

  The tes-güinápuri got under way the next day, when the village’s entire population gathered outside the riverside wooden house, waiting for the Si-ríame to emerge and command that the festivities begin. Everybody was dressed in his finest and most colorfully decorated garments: most of us men in deerskin mantles and loincloths, the females in deerskin skirts and blouses. Some of the villagers had painted their faces with dots and curly lines of a brilliant yellow, and many wore feathers in their hair, though the birds of that northern region do not provide very impressive plumes. Several of Guagüey-bo’s veteran hunters were already sweating, for they wore trophies of their prowess: ankle-length robes of cuguar hide or heavy bearskin or the thick coat of the big-horned mountain leaper.

  The Si-ríame stepped out of the house, dressed entirely in shimmering jaguar hides, holding a staff topped with a knob of raw silver, and I was so astonished that I raised my topaz to make sure of what I was seeing. Having heard that the chief was also sage, sorcerer, judge, and physician, I had naturally expected to see that luminary in the person of an extremely old and solemn-faced man. But it was not a man, and not old, not solemn. She was no older than I, and pretty, and made more pretty by her warm smile.

  “Your Si-ríame is a woman?“ I exclaimed, as she began to intone the ceremonial prayers.

  “Why not?” said Tes-disóra.

  “I never heard of any people choosing to be governed by any but a male.”

  “Our last Si-ríame was a man. But when a Si-ríame dies, every other mature man and woman of the village is eligible to succeed. We all gathered together and chewed much jípuri and went into trance. We saw visions, and some of us went running wildly, and others went into convulsions. But that woman was the only one blessed by the god-light. Or at least she was the first to awaken and tell of having seen and talked with Grandfather Fire, with Mother Water and Brother Deer. She indubitably had been shone upon by the god-light, which is the supreme and sole requirement for accession to the office of Si-ríame.”

  The handsome woman finished her chanting, smiled again, and raised her shapely arms aloft in a general benediction, then turned and went back into the house, as the crowd gave her a cheer of affectionate respect.

  “She stays in seclusion?” I asked Tes-disóra.

  “During the festivals, yes,” he said, and chuckled. “Sometimes our people misbehave during a tes-güinápuri. They fight among themselves, or they indulge in adulteries, or they commit other mischiefs. The Si-ríame is a wise woman. What she does not see or hear about, she does not punish.”

  I do not know whether it would have been regarded as a mischief, what I intended to do: to chase and catch and couple with the most delectable available sample of Rarámuri womanhood. But, as things happened, I did not exactly do that—and, far from being punished, I was rewarded in a way.

  What occurred was that, first, like all the villagers, I made a glutton of myself on venison of various sorts and atóli mush of maize, and I drank heavily of tesgüino. Then, almost too heavy to stand, almost too drunk to walk, I tried to join some of the men in one of their ball-kicking runs—but I would have been outclassed by them even if I had been in perfect competing condition. I did not mind. I dropped out to watch a group of females running a hoop and stick game, and a certain nubile girl among them caught my eye. And I mean my one eye; unless I closed the other, I saw two of the same girl. I walked weaving toward her, awkwardly motioning and thickly requesting that she quit the group to essay a different game.

  She smiled her acquiescence, but eluded my clutching hand. “You must catch me first,” she said, and turned and ran away down the canyon.

  Though I had not expected to excel as a runner among the Rarámuri men, I was sure that I could run down any female alive. But that one I could not, and I think she even slackened her pace to make it easier for me. Perhaps I would have done better if I had not been so full of food and drink, especially the drink. With one eye closed, it is hard to judge distances. Even if the girl had stood still before me, I would probably have missed when I grabbed for her. But with both eyes opened, I saw two of everything in my path—roots and rocks and such—and in trying to run between each two things I invariably tripped on one of them. After nine or ten falls, I tried to leap over the next doubly seen obstacle, a fairly large rock, and fell across it on my belly, so heavily that all the breath was driven from my body.

  The girl had been watching me over her shoulder as she did her pretense of fleeing. When I fell, she stopped and came back to stand over my clenched body, and said in a voice of some exasperation, “Unless you catch me fairly, we cannot play any other game. If you know what I mean.”

  I could not even wheeze at her. I lay doubled up, painfully trying to gasp some air back into me, and I felt quite incapable of playing any further games whatever. She frowned peevishly, probably sharing my low opinion of me, but then she brightened and said:

  “I did not think to ask. Have you partaken of the jípuri?”

  I feebly shook my head.

  “That explains it. You are not so very inferior to the other men. They have the advantage of that enhanced strength and stamina. Come! You shall chew some jípuri!”

  I was still curled into a ball, but I was almost beginning to breathe again, and her imperious command allowed of no refusal. I let her take my hand and haul me upright and lead me back to the village center. I already knew what the jípuri is and does, for small quantities of it were imported even into Tenochtítlan, where it was called peyotl and where it was reserved for the exclusive use of the divinatory priests. The jípuri or peyotl is a deceptively meek-looking little cactus. Growing close against the ground, round and squat, the jípuri seldom gets larger than the palm of a hand, and it is scalloped into petals or bulges, so it resembles a very tiny, gray-green pumpkin. For its most potent effect, it is best chewed when fresh picked. But it can be dried for keeping indefinitely, the wrinkled brown wads threaded on strings, and in the village of Guagüey-bo many such strings hung from the rafters of the several storage sheds. I reached to pluck one down, but my companion said:

  “Wait. Have you ever chewed jípuri?”

  Again I shook my head.

  “Then you will be a ma-tuáne, one who seeks the god-light for the first time. That requires a ceremony of your purification. No, do not groan so. It need not long delay our … our game.” She looked around at the villagers still eating or drinking or dancing or running. “Everyone else is too busy to participate, but the Si-ríame is unoccupied. She should be willing to administer the purification.”

  We went to the modest wooden house, and the girl jangled a string of snail shells hung beside the door. The chief-woman, still wearing her jaguar garments, lifted the door’s deerskin curtain and said, “Kuira-bá,” and made a gracious gesture for us to
enter.

  “Si-ríame,” said my companion, “this is the Chichimécame named Mixtli who has come to visit our village. As you can see, he is of some age, but he is a poor runner even for one of his advanced years. He could not catch me when he tried. I thought the jípuri might enliven his old limbs, but he says he has never before sought the god-light, so …”

  The chief-woman’s eyes twinkled with amusement as she watched me wince during that unflattering recital. I muttered, “I am not of the Chichiméca,” but she ignored me and said to the girl:

  “Of course. You are eager that he have the ma-tuáne initiation as soon as possible. I will be happy to do it.” She looked me appraisingly up and down, and the amusement in her eyes gave place to something else. “Whatever his years, this Mixtli seems an estimable specimen, especially considering his base origins. And I will give you one bit of advice, my dear, which you would not hear from any of our males. However rightly you are expected to admire a man’s racing competence, it is his middle leg, so to speak, which better demonstrates his manliness. That member may even dwindle from disuse when a man devotes all his attention to developing the muscles of his other appendages. Therefore be not too quick to disdain a mediocre runner until you have examined his other attributes.”

  “Yes, Si-ríame,” the girl said impatiently. “I intended something of the sort.”

  “You can do so after the ceremony. You may go now, my dear.”

  “Go?” the girl protested. “But there is nothing secret about the ma-tuáne initiation! The whole village always looks on!”