Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  The Tlatocapíli interrupted once to murmur, “By the six fragments of the goddess, if the Mexíca have become all that grand, perhaps we ought to change the name of Aztlan.” Meditatively, he tried two or three new names: “Place of the Mexíca. First Homeland of the Mexíca …”

  I went on to give a brief biography of the Mexíca’s current Uey-Tlatoáni, Motecuzóma, then a lyrical description of his capital city of Tenochtítlan. The old grandfather sighed and closed his eyes, as if to see it better in his imagination.

  I said, “The Mexíca could not have progressed so far and so fast if they had not availed themselves of the art of word knowing.” Then I hinted heavily, “You too, Tlatocapíli Mixtli, might make of Aztlan a grander city—make your people the equals of their Mexíca cousins—if you learned how to preserve the spoken word in lasting pictures.”

  He shrugged and said, “We have not yet suffered by not knowing.”

  Nevertheless, his interest seemed to quicken when I showed him—using a slender frog bone to scratch the hard earth of the floor—how simply his own name could be permanently graven.

  “Yes, that is a cloud shape,” he conceded. “But how could it say Dark Cloud?”

  “Merely color it with a dark paint, gray or black. A single picture is capable of infinite useful variations. Paint that figure blue-green, for example, and you have the name Jadestone Cloud.”

  “Is that so?” he said, and then, “What is jadestone?” And the gulf gaped again between us. He had never seen or even heard of the mineral held sacred by all civilized peoples.

  I muttered something about the night getting late, that I would tell more on the morrow. My cousin offered me a pallet for the night, if I did not object to sleeping in a room full of some other probable male relations of mine. I thanked him and accepted, and concluded my evening’s discourse by explaining how I had come to Aztlan: tracking backward along my ancestors’ route of march, trying to verify a legend. I turned to old Canaútli and said:

  “Perhaps you would know, venerable Rememberer of History. When they left here, did they carry a sufficiency of supplies that they could have made provision for a necessary return?”

  He did not reply. The venerable Rememberer had fallen asleep.

  But the next day he said, “Your ancestors took almost nothing with them when they left here.”

  I had breakfasted together with the whole “palace family,” on tiny fish and mushrooms grilled together, and some kind of hot herb drink. Then my namesake had gone out on some civic business, leaving me to converse with the aged historian. But that day, unlike the night before, it was Canaútli who did most of the talking.

  “If all our Rememberers have spoken truly, those people who departed took only what belongings they could pack in a hurry, and only meager rations for the march. And they took the image of their villainous new god: a wooden image newly and roughly and hastily made, because of the urgency of their going. But that was untold sheaves of years ago. I daresay your people have built many finer statues to replace it since then. We of Aztlan have a different high deity, and only the one image of it. Oh, of course we recognize all the other gods, and have recourse to them when necessary. Tlazoltéotl, for instance, cleanses us of our sins; Atláua fills our fowlers’ nets, and so on. But only one reigns supreme. Come, cousin, let me show you.”

  He took me out of the house and along the city’s shell streets. As we walked, his birdlike little black eyes flung an occasional look sideways from their nests of wrinkles, a shrewd and humorous glance at me, and he said:

  “Tepetzálan, you have been courteous, or at least discreet. You have not spoken your opinion of us, the remaining Aztéca. But permit me to guess. I would wager that you consider us the dregs that were left in Aztlan when the more worthy ones went away.”

  True, that was my opinion. I might have said something to put a slightly better face on it, but he went on:

  “You believe that our forefathers were too lazy or listless or timid to raise their eyes to some beckoning vision of glory. That they feared the risk and so lost the opportunity. That your own ancestors, by contrast, ventured boldly forth from here in the certain knowledge that they were destined to be exalted above all other peoples of the world.”

  “Well …”I said.

  “Here is our temple.” Canaútli stopped at the entrance to a low building of the customary crushed-shell plastering, but with many fine shells of conch and other sea creatures inset entire. “Our only temple, and a humble one, but if you will enter …”

  I did, and with my topaz I looked at what stood there, and I said, “That is Coyolxaúqui,” and I said truthfully, admiringly, “That is a superb work of art.”

  “You recognize her?” The old man sounded a trifle surprised. “I should have thought that your people would have forgotten her by now.”

  “I confess, venerable one, that she is now regarded only as a minor goddess among our many gods. But the legend is one of our oldest, and it is still remembered.”

  To tell it briefly, reverend friars, the legend was this. Coyolxaúqui, whose name means Adorned with Bells, was one of the godling children of the high goddess Coatlícue. And that goddess Coatlícue, though already a mother many times over, became gravid again when one day a feather floated down upon her from the skies. (How that could impregnate any female, I do not know, but such things happened in many old stories. And it would seem that the daughter-goddess Coyolxaúqui was also skeptical when her mother told of it.) Coyolxaüqui gathered her brothers and sisters and said, “Our mother has brought shame upon herself and us her children. We must put her to death for it.”

  However, the child in Coatlícue’s womb was the war god Huitzilopóchtli. He heard those words and he sprang instantly out of his mother, full grown and already armed with an obsidian maquáhuitl. He slew his scheming sister Coyolxaúqui and cut her in pieces and flung those dismembered parts to the sky, where their blood stuck them to the moon. He likewise threw all his other sisters and brothers to the sky, where they have since been stars indistinguishable from the older stars. That newborn war god Huitzilopóchtli, of course, was ever afterward the chief god of us Mexíca, and we accorded to Coyolxaúqui no importance whatever. We erected no statues of her or temples for her, and we dedicated no feast days to her.

  “To us,” said the old historian of Aztlan, “Coyolxaúqui has always been the goddess of the moon, and always will be, and we worship her in that guise.”

  I did not understand, and I said so. “Why worship the moon, venerable Canaútli? I ask in all respect. But the moon is of no benefit to mankind, except for its night light, and that is dim at its brightest.”

  “Because of the sea tides,” said the old man, “and those are of benefit to us. This lake of ours, at its western end, is separated from the ocean by only a low rock barrier. When the tide rises, it spills fish and crabs and shellfish into our lake, and they stay here when the tide waters recede. Catching those creatures for our food is much easier in this shallow lake than it would be in the deep sea outside. We are grateful to be so lavishly and punctiliously supplied.”

  “But the moon?” I said, perplexed. “Do you believe that the moon somehow causes the tides?”

  “Causes? I do not know. But the moon certainly gives notice of them. When the moon is at its thinnest, and again when it is at its full round, we know that at a determinable later time the tide will be at its highest, and its spill of provender the most bountiful. Clearly the moon goddess has something to do with it.”

  “So it would seem,” I said, and regarded the image of Coyolxaúqui more respectfully.

  It was not a statue. It was a disk of stone as perfectly round as the full moon and nearly as immense as the great Sun Stone of Tenochtítlan. Coyolxaúqui was sculptured in high relief, as she looked after her dismemberment by Huitzilopóchtli. Her torso occupied the center of the stone—of the moon—her breasts bared to view and hanging slackly. Her decapitated head was in profile at the top center of t
he moon; it wore a feather headdress, and on the visible cheek was incised the bell symbol from which she took her name. Her severed arms and legs were distributed around her, adorned with bracelets and anklets. There was no picture writing anywhere on the stone, of course, but it still bore traces of its original paint: a pale blue on the stone background, a pale yellow on the goddess’s various parts. I asked how old it was.

  “Only the goddess knows,” said Canaútli. “It has been here since long before your forebears went away, since time past all remembering.”

  “How do you pay homage to her?” I asked, looking around the room, which was otherwise empty except for a strong smell of fish. “I see no signs of sacrifice.”

  “You mean you see no blood,” he said. “Your forefathers also sought blood, and that is why they left here. Coyolxaúqui has never demanded any such thing as a human sacrifice. We offer to her only lesser creatures, things of the sea and things of the night. Owls and the night-flying herons and the great green moon moths. Also there is a small fish, so oily of flesh that it can be dried and burned like a candle. Worshipers light them here when they feel the need of communing with the goddess.”

  As we stepped out of the fishy-smelling temple into the street again, the old man resumed, “Know now, cousin Tepetzálan, what we Rememberers have remembered. In a time long past, we Aztéca were not confined to this single city. This was the capital of a considerable domain, stretching from this coast high into the mountains. The Aztéca comprised numerous tribes, each of many calpúltin clans, and they were all under the rule of a single Tlatocapíli who was not—like my grandson-by-marriage—a chief in name only. They were a strong people, but they were a peaceable people, satisfied with what they had, and they deemed themselves well cared for by the goddess.”

  “Until some of those people showed more ambition,” I suggested.

  “Until some showed weakness!” he said sharply. “The tales tell how some of them, hunting in the high mountains, one day met a stranger from a far land. That one laughed in scorn to hear of our people’s simple way of life and their undemanding religion. The stranger said, ‘Of all the numberless gods there are, why do you choose to worship the one most feeble, the goddess who was so deservedly humiliated and slain? Why do you not worship the one who overthrew her, the strong and fierce and virile god Huitzilopóchtli?’”

  I wondered: who could that outlander have been? Perhaps one of the Toltéca of olden times? No, if a Toltécatl had wished to wean the Aztéca from their worship of Coyolxaúqui, he would have proposed the beneficent god Quetzalcóatl as the substitute.

  Canaútli went on, “Those were the first of our people to be evilly influenced by the stranger, and they began to change. The stranger said, ‘Worship Huitzilopóchtli,’ and they did. The stranger said, ‘Give blood to feed Huitzilopóchtli,’ and they did. According to our Rememberers, those were the first human sacrifices ever made by any people who were not outright savages. They held their ceremonies secretly, in the seven great caves in the mountains, and they took care to spill only the blood of expendable orphans and old people. The stranger said, ‘Huitzilopóchtli is the god of war. Let him lead you to conquer richer lands.’ And more and more of our people listened and heeded, and they offered up more and more sacrifices. The stranger urged, ‘Nourish Huitzilopóchtli, make him stronger yet, and he will win for you a life better than you could ever have dreamed.’ And the misbelievers grew more numerous, more dissatisfied with their old ways of life, more ready and avid for bloodshed….”

  He stopped talking and stood silent for a moment. I looked about us, at the men and women passing by on the street. The residue of the Aztéca. Dress them a little better, I thought, and they could be the Mexíca citizens on any street in Tenochtítlan. No, dress them a little better and put a stiffer backbone into them.

  Canaútli resumed, “When the Tlatocapíli learned what was happening in those fringe regions of his lands, he realized who would be the first victims of the new war god. It would be the Aztéca still peaceable and content with their unwarlike goddess Coyolxaúqui. And why not? What more available and easy first conquest for the followers of Huitzilopóchtli? Well, the Tlatocapíli had no army, but he did have a staunch and loyal body of city guardsmen. He and they went to the mountains and swooped down on the misbelievers, and took them by surprise, and slew many of them. All the rest he disarmed of every weapon they possessed. And he put the curse of banishment on all those traitor men and women. He said, ‘So you wish to follow your foul new god? Then take him and take your families and your children and follow your god far away from here. You have until tomorrow to be gone or to be executed.’ And by the dawn they had departed, in numbers not now remembered.”

  After a pause, he added: “I am glad to hear from you that they no longer claim the name of Aztéca.”

  I stood silent, stunned, until I thought to ask, “And what of the stranger who brought that banishment upon them?”

  “Oh, she was among the first slain, naturally.”

  “She!”

  “Did I not mention that the stranger was a woman? Yes, all our Rememberers have remembered that she was a runaway Yaki.”

  “But that is incredible!” I exclaimed. “What would a Yaki woman know of Huitzilopóchtli or Coyolxaúqui or any other Aztéca gods?”

  “By the time she got here she had traveled far, and no doubt had heard much. Of a certainty she had learned our language. Some of our Rememberers have suggested that she could have been a sorceress, as well.”

  “Even so,” I persisted, “why should she preach the worship of Huitzilopóchtli, who was no god of hers?”

  “Ah, there we can only conjecture. But it is known that the Yaki live mainly by hunting deer, and their chief god is the god who provides those deer, the god we call Mixcóatl. Whenever the Yaki hunters find that the herds are thinning out, they perform a particular ceremony. They seize one of their more dispensable females and truss her as they would truss a deer caught alive, and they dance as they would dance after a successful hunt. Then they gut and disjoint and eat the woman, as they would eat a deer. In their simpleminded, savage belief, that ceremony persuades their god of hunting to replenish the deer herds. Anyway, it is known that the Yaki behaved so in the olden time. Perhaps they are not quite so ferocious nowadays.”

  “I believe they are,” I said. “But I do not see how it could have caused what happened here.”

  “The Yaki woman had run away from her people to escape that fate reserved for women. I repeat, it is only conjecture, but our Rememberers have always supposed that the woman burned with a desire to see men suffer the same way. Any men. Her hatred of them was indiscriminate. And she found her opportunity here. Our own beliefs may have given her the idea, for do not forget: Huitzilopóchtli had slain and dismembered Coyolxaúqui with no more remorse than a Yaki would have shown. So that woman, by pretending to admire and exalt Huitzilopóchtli, hoped to set our men fighting against each other, killing and spilling each other’s blood and entrails, as hers might have been spilled.”

  I was so appalled that I could only whisper, “A woman? It was some unimportant and nameless female who conceived the idea of human sacrifice? The ceremony that is now practiced everywhere?”

  “It is not practiced here,” Canaútli reminded me. “And our supposition may be a total misjudgment. After all, that was long, long ago. But it sounds a typically feminine notion of vengeance, does it not? And evidently it succeeded, for you have mentioned that, in the world outside, men have not ceased slaughtering their fellow men, in the name of one god or another, during all the sheaves of years since.”

  I said nothing. I could not think what to say.

  “So you see,” the old man continued, “those Aztéca who left Aztlan were not the best and the bravest. They were the worst and the unwanted, and they went because they were forcibly expelled.”

  I still said nothing, and he concluded:

  “You say you search for the stores your ancest
ors might have secreted along their route from here. Give up the search, cousin. It is futile. Even if those people had been allowed to leave here with any possessions of use or value, they would not have stored them for a possible retreat along that route. They knew they could never come back.”

  I stayed not many more days in Aztlan, though my cousin the other Mixtli would have had me stay for months, I believe. He had decided that he wished to learn word knowing and picture writing, and he bribed me to teach him, by giving me a private hut and one of his younger sisters to keep me company in it. She was in no way comparable to a sister once known as Tzitzitlíni, but she was a pretty girl, a sufficiently obliging and enjoyable companion. Nevertheless, I had to tell her brother that word knowing could not be learned as quickly as, say, the art of frog spearing. I taught him how to represent physical things by drawing simplified pictures of them, and then I said:

  “To learn how to utilize those pictures to build written language, you will require a teacher dedicated to such teaching, which I am not. Some of the best are in Tenochtítlan, and I advise you to go there. I have told you where it lies.”

  He growled, with some of his earlier surliness, “By the stiff limbs of the goddess, you simply want to get away. And I cannot. I cannot leave my people leaderless, with no excuse except my sudden whim to have a bit of education.”

  “There is a much better excuse,” I said. “The Mexíca have extended their dominions far and wide, but they have yet no colony on this northern shore of the western ocean. The Uey-Tlatoáni would be delighted to learn that he has cousins already established here. If you were to present yourself to Motecuzóma, bearing a suitable gift of introduction, you might very well find yourself appointed the ruler of an important new province of The Triple Alliance, a province much more worth ruling than it is now.”