Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  A priest placed the fire block on the chest of the prostrate xochimíqui, and carefully fluffed the threads of tinder upon it. A second priest, on the other side of the stone, leaned over with the drilling stick and began to twirl it between his palms. All of us spectators waited anxiously; the gods could still deny us the spark of life. But then a wisp of smoke rose from the tinder. In another moment there was a glow of tentative smoldering. The priest holding the block steady with his one hand used his other to feed and coax the firefly spark: tufts of oily cotton, shreds of dry bark—and achieved a small, flickering, but definite flame. It seemed to wake the xochimíqui slightly; his eyes opened enough to look down at the awakening New Fire on his breast. But he did not look for long.

  One of the attending priests gingerly moved the fire-bearing block aside. The other produced a knife, and made his slash so deftly that the young man scarcely twitched. When the chest was laid open, the one priest reached in, plucked loose the throbbing heart, and lifted it out, while the other set the blazing block in its place in the gaping wound, then quickly but expertly laid upon it still more and bigger bits of cotton and bark. When there was a sizable flag of flame rising from the chest of the feebly stirring victim, the other priest laid the heart gently in the middle of the fire. The flames subsided momentarily, dampened by the heart’s blood, but they rose again with vigor and the frying heart sizzled loudly.

  A cry went up from all present, “The New Fire is lighted!” and the crowd, immobile until then, commenced a bustle of movement. One after another, in order of rank, the priests seized torches from the stack and touched them to the xochimíqui’s fast-crisping breast to light them in the New Fire, then bore them away at a run. The first one used his torch to ignite the waiting pyramid of wood, so that every distant eye fixed on Huixáchi Hill should see the great blaze and know that all danger was past, that all was still well with The One World. I fancied I could hear the cheers and laughs and happy sobs that went up from the rooftop watchers all around the lakes. Then the priests ran down the hill’s pathway, their torch fires fluttering behind them like hair aflame. At the base of the hill waited still other priests, gathered from communities near and far. They seized the torches and scattered to bear the precious fragments of the New Fire to the temples of the various cities and towns and villages.

  “Take off your mask, Nochípa,” I told my daughter. “It is safe now to do so. Take it off so you may see better.”

  She and I stood on the north side of the hilltop, watching the tiny flares and sparks of light explode away from beneath us, streaking off in all directions. Then there were other silent explosions. The nearest town, Ixtapalápan, was the first to have its main temple fire relighted, then the next-nearest town of Mexicaltzínco. And at each temple were waiting numbers of the town’s inhabitants, to plunge their own torches into the temple fires and run to relight the long-cold hearth fires of their families and neighbors. So each torch that streaked away from Huixáchi Hill first dwindled to a mere bright dot in the distance, then blossomed into a temple fire, then that exploded into an outflung burst of sparks, and each darting spark left a trail of motionless sparks behind it. The sequence was repeated over and over, in Coyohuácan, in great Tenochtítlan, in communities farther away and farther apart, until the whole vast bowl of the lake lands was fast coming again to light and life. It was a cheering, thrilling, exhilarating sight to see—and I tried hard to imprint it among my happier memories, because I could not hope to see such a sight ever again.

  As if reading my thoughts, my daughter said quietly, “Oh, I do hope I live to be an old woman. I should so like to see this wonder the next time, Father.”

  When Nochípa and I finally turned back to the big fire, four men were crouched near it in earnest consultation: the Revered Speaker Motecuzóma, the chief priest of Huitzilopóchtli, the seer, and the astronomer of whom I earlier spoke. They were discussing what words the Uey-Tlatoáni would speak, the next day, to proclaim what the New Fire had promised for the years to come. The seer, squatting over some diagrams he had drawn in the earth with a stick, had evidently just delivered himself of a prophecy to which the astronomer took exception, for the latter was saying mockingly:

  “No more droughts, no more miseries, a fruitful sheaf of years in the offing. Very consoling, friend sorcerer. But you see no imminent omens appearing in the skies?”

  The seer snapped at him, “The skies are your affair. You make the maps of them and I will attend to reading what the maps have to tell.”

  The astronomer snorted. “You might find more inspiration if once in a while you looked at the stars instead of the foolish circles and angles you draw.” He pointed at the scratches in the dirt. “You read of no impending yqualóca, then?”

  The word means an eclipse. The seer, the priest, the Revered Speaker, all three repeated together, and unsteadily, “Eclipse?”

  “Of the sun,” said the astronomer. “Even this old fraud could foresee it, if he once looked at past history instead of pretending to know the future.”

  The seer sat gulping, speechless. Motecuzóma glared at him. The astronomer went on:

  “It is on record, Lord Speaker, that the Maya of the south saw an yqualóca take a hungry bite at Tonatíu the sun in the year Ten House. Next month, on the day Seven Lizard, it will have been exactly eighteen solar years and eleven days since that occurred. And according to the records collected by me and my predecessors, from lands north and south, such a darkening of the sun regularly happens somewhere in The One World at intervals of that duration. I can confidently predict that Tonatíu will again be eclipsed by a shadow on the day Seven Lizard. Unfortunately, not being a sorcerer, I cannot tell you how severe will be that yqualóca, nor in which lands it will be visible. But those who see it may take it for a most maleficent omen, coming so soon after the New Fire. I would suggest, my lord, that all peoples ought to be informed and forewarned, to make their fright the less.”

  “You are right,” said Motecuzóma. “I will send swift-messengers into all lands. Even those of our enemies, lest they interpret the omen to mean that our power is weakening. Thank you, Lord Astronomer. As for you …” He turned coldly to the trembling seer. “The most wise and expert of diviners is liable to error, and that is forgivable. But a totally inept one is a real hazard to the nation, and that is intolerable. On our return to the city, report to my palace guard for your execution.”

  In the morning of the next day, Two Reed, first day of the new year Two Reed, the big market of Tlaltelólco, like every other market in The One World, was crowded with people buying new household implements and utensils to replace the old ones they had destroyed. Though the people could have had but little sleep after the lighting of the New Fire, they were all cheerful and vocal, refreshed as much by the fact that they had resumed their best garments and jewelry as by the fact that the gods had seen fit to let them go on living.

  At midday, from the top of the Great Pyramid, the Uey-Tlatoáni Motecuzóma made the traditional address to his people. In part, he related what the late seer had predicted—good weather, good harvests, and so on—but he prudently diluted that oversweet honey with warnings that the gods would continue their benefices only so long as the gods were pleased with the Mexíca. Therefore, said Motecuzóma, all men must work hard, all women be thrifty, all wars be fought with vigor, all the proper offerings and sacrifices be made on ceremonial occasions. In essence, the people were told that life would go on as it always had. There was nothing novel or revelatory in Motecuzóma’s address, except that he did announce—as casually as if he had arranged it for a public entertainment—the forthcoming eclipse of the sun.

  While he was orating from the pyramid summit, his swift-messengers were already trotting out from Tenochtítlan to all points of the horizon. They carried to rulers and governors and community elders everywhere the news of the imminent eclipse, and they stressed the fact that the gods had given our astronomers prior notice of the event, hence it would bring
no tidings, good or bad, and should cause no unease. But it is one thing when people are told to pay no attention to a fearsome phenomenon; it is quite another thing when those people are exposed to it.

  Even I, who had been one of the first to hear of the impending yqualóca, could not regard it with yawning composure when it did take place. But I had to pretend to view it with calm and scientific disinterest, for Nochípa and Béu Ribé and both the servants were with me in our rooftop garden that day of Seven Lizard, and I had to set them all an example of fearlessness.

  I do not know how it appeared in other parts of The One World, but here in Tenochtítlan it seemed that Tonatíu was totally swallowed. And it was probably only for a brief while, but to us it was an eternity. That day was heavily overcast, so the sun was only a pale and moonlike disk at his brightest, and we could look directly at him. We could see the first bite taken from his rim, as it were from a tortilla, and then see the munching proceed right across his face. The day darkened and the springtime warmth fled away and a winter chill blew across the world. Birds flew about our rooftop, all confused, and we could hear the howling of neighbors’ dogs.

  The crescent bitten out of Tonatíu got bigger and bigger, until at last his whole face was swallowed and it became as dark a brown as the face of a Chiapa native. For an instant, the sun was even darker than the clouds around it, as if we looked through a small hole in the day and into the night. Then the clouds, the sky, all the world darkened to that same night darkness, and Tonatíu was gone entirely from our sight.

  The only comforting lights to be seen from our roof were the few flickers of fires burning outside temples and a pink tinge on the underside of the smoke hanging over Popocatépetl. The birds ceased to fly about, except that one scarlet-headed flycatcher fluttered down between me and Béu and perched in one of our garden shrubs, tucked its head under its wing and apparently went to sleep. For those long moments while the day was night, I almost wished I could hide my own head. From other houses on the street, I could hear shrieks and moans and prayers. But Béu and Nochípa stood silent, and Star Singer and Turquoise were only quietly whimpering, so I suppose my attitude of staunchness had some reassuring effect.

  Then a slender crescent of light showed again in the sky, and slowly broadened and brightened. The arc of the swallowing yqualóca slid reluctantly away, letting Tonatíu emerge from its lips. The crescent grew, the bitten segment diminished, until Tonatíu was a disk again, and entire, and the world was again in daylight. The bird on the branch beside me raised its head, looked about in almost comical puzzlement, and flew away. My women and servants turned pale faces and tremulous smiles on me.

  “That is all,” I said authoritatively. “It is over.” And we trooped downstairs to resume our own several activities.

  Rightly or wrongly, many people later claimed that the Revered Speaker had deliberately told an untruth when he said that the eclipse would be a matter of no ill omen. Because, only a few days later, the entire lake district was shaken by an earthquake. It was a mere tremor compared to that zyuüù which Zyanya and I had once lived through, and, though my house shook as others did, it stood as sturdily as it had during the great flood. But, trivial though I accounted it, the quake was one of the worst ever felt in these parts, and many buildings did fall in Tenochtítlan, in Tlácopan, in Texcóco, and in smaller communities, and in their falling crushed their occupants to death. I believe some two thousand people died, and the survivors’ wrath against Motecuzóma was so loud that he had to pay heed to it. I do not mean he paid any reparations. What he did was to invite all people to The Heart of the One World to see the public garrotting of that astronomer who had predicted the eclipse.

  But that did not end the omens, if omens they were. And some of them I say flatly were not. For example, in that single year Two Reed, more stars were seen to fall from the night sky than had been reported in all the years, all of them together, during which our astronomers had been keeping count of such things. Throughout those eighteen months, every time a star fell, everyone who saw it would come or send a message to the palace to report it. Motecuzóma did not himself see the obviously erroneous arithmetic involved and, since his pride would not let him risk another accusation of having misled his subjects, he made public announcements of that seeming deluge of stars, as the count mounted alarmingly.

  To me and others, the reason for the unprecedented total of dying stars was evident: ever since the eclipse, more people were watching the skies, and more apprehensively, and every single one of them was eager to announce anything unnatural that he saw there. On any night of any year, a man standing outdoors with his eyes on the sky, for only the time it takes to smoke a poquíetl, will see two or three of the more fragile stars lose their feeble grip on the sky and fall dying to earth, trailing a shroud of sparks. But, if great numbers of watchers see and report just those two or three, the combined reports must make it seem as if every night is constantly and ominously raining down stars. And that is what our people remember of that year Two Reed. Had it truly been so, the sky would have been blackly empty of all its stars by year’s end, and ever since.

  That unprofitable game of collecting fallen stars might have gone on unabated, except that in the following year, Three Knife, our people were diverted by a different sort of omen, and one that more directly involved Motecuzóma. His unmarried sister Pápantzin, the Lady Early Bird, chose that time to die. There was nothing remarkable about her death, except that she died rather young, for she supposedly died of some typical and unremarkable female ailment. What was ominous was that, only two or three days after her burial, numerous citizens of Tenochtítlan claimed to have met the lady walking about by night, wringing her hands and wailing a warning. According to the report of those who encountered her—and those multiplied nightly—the Lady Pápan had left her grave to bring a message. And her message was that, from the afterworld, she had seen great conquering armies advancing upon Tenochtítlan from the south.

  I privately concluded that the rumormongers had seen only the familiar and tiresome old spirit of the Weeping Woman, who was forever wailing and wringing her hands, and that they had either wrongly or willfully misinterpreted her weary old complaint. But Motecuzóma could not so easily disown the purported phantasm of his own sister. He could quell the rising gossip only by ordering that Pápan’s grave be opened, and at night, to prove that she lay quiet therein and was not wandering about the city.

  I was not among those who made the midnight excursion, but the lurid story of what happened on that occasion became well known to all in these lands. Motecuzóma went in company with a number of priests, and some of his courtiers for witnesses. The priests dug away the covering earth and lifted the splendidly shrouded body to the surface of the ground, while Motecuzóma stood fidgeting nervously nearby. The priests unwound the swathings of the dead woman’s head to make positive her identification. They found her not yet much decayed, and they found her to be certainly the Lady Early Bird and certainly dead.

  Then, it is said, Motecuzóma gave a terrified shriek, and even the impassive priests recoiled, when the lady’s eyelids slowly opened and an unearthly green-white light shone from where her eyeballs had been. According to the story, that glare fixed directly upon her brother, and he, in the grip of horror, addressed to her a long but incoherent speech. Some said it was an apology for disturbing her rest. Some said it was a guilty confession, and they also later said that the illness of which Motecuzóma’s supposedly maiden sister had died was in fact a fatally miscarried pregnancy.

  Gossip aside, it was attested by all the witnesses present that the Revered Speaker finally turned and fled from the open grave. He fled too soon to see one of the glowing green-white eyes of the corpse begin to move, to uncoil and to ooze down her shrunken cheek. It was nothing unnatural, only a petlazolcóatl, one of those long, leg-fringed, nasty-looking centipedes that, like the glowworms, are peculiarly and brightly luminous in the dark. Two of the creatures had evidently
burrowed into the cadaver through the portals most easily chewed, and had curled up, one in each eye socket, to live comfortably and dine leisurely inside the lady’s head. That night, disturbed by the commotion, they slowly, blindly crawled out from where the eyes had been, and, squirming between her lips, disappeared again.

  Pápantzin made no more recorded public appearances, but other strange events were noised about, causing so much trepidation that the Speaking Council appointed special investigators to seek the truth of them. But, as I remember, none could be corroborated, and most were dismissed as the fabrications of attention seekers or the hallucinations of heavy drinkers.

  Then, when that hectic year had ended, and its hollow days were over, and the succeeding year of Four House began, the Revered Speaker Nezahualpíli unexpectedly arrived from Texcóco. It was told that he had come to Tenochtítlan merely to enjoy our celebration of The Tree Is Raised, he having seen his native Texcóco’s version so often over the years. The truth is that he had come for a secret consultation with Motecuzóma. But the two rulers had been closeted together for no longer than a small part of a morning before they sent to command a third consultant to join them. To my surprise, it was me they sent for.

  In the prescribed robe of sacking, I made my entrance into the throne room, and made it even more humbly than was demanded by protocol, since the room contained two Revered Speakers that morning. I was slightly shocked to see that Nezahualpíli had gone nearly bald of head and that his remaining hair was gray. When I at last stood upright before the dais and the two icpáltin thrones side by side between the gold and silver gongs, the Uey-Tlatoáni of Texcóco recognized me for the first time. He said, almost with glee:

  “My former courtier Head Nodder! My onetime scribe and picture maker Mole! My once-heroic soldier Dark Cloud!”

  “Dark Cloud indeed,” growled Motecuzóma. That was his only greeting to me, and he gave it with a glower. “You know this wretch, then, my lord friend?”