Aztec Autumn

by neetha Napew

  "Europe?"

  "It is a large and capacious continent, of which Spain is only one country. Rather as your One World used to be—a single sweeping terrain occupied by numerous different nations. However, all the native peoples of Europe are white."

  "Then are they all equal in quality to each other—and to you Spaniards? Are they all Christians? Are they all equally superior to people who are not white?"

  The notarius scratched his head with the duck quill with which he had been writing.

  "You pose questions, Cuatl Juan, that have perplexed even philosophers. But I will do my best to answer. All whites are superior to all non-whites, yes, that is certain. The Bible tells us so. It is because of the differences among Sem and Cam and Jafet."

  "What or who are they?"

  "The sons of Noé. Your instructor, Padre Diego, can explain that better than I. As to the matter of all Europeans being equal, well..." He laughed in a slightly self-mocking way. "Each nation—including our beloved Spain—likes to regard itself as superior to every other. As no doubt you Aztéca do here in New Spain."

  "That is true," I said. "Or it was heretofore. But now that we and all others are lumped together as mere indios, we may discover that we all have more in common than we formerly believed."

  "To your other question—yes, all of Europe is Christian—bar some heretics and Jews here and there, and the Turks in the Balkans. Sad to say, though, in recent years there has been disquiet and dissatisfaction even among the Christians. Certain nations—England, Germany, others—have been contesting the dominion of Holy Church."

  Astonished to hear that such a thing could be possible, I asked, "They have ceased to worship the four of the Trinity?"

  Alonso, preoccupied, evidently did not hear me say "four." He replied somberly, "No, no, all Christians still believe in the Trinity. What some of them nowadays refuse to believe in is the pope."

  "The pope?" I echoed wonderingly. I was thinking, but not saying aloud: A fifth entity to be adored? Is such queer arithmetic conceivable? A trinity of five?

  Alonso said, "El Papa Clemente Séptimo. The Bishop of Rome. The successor to San Simon Pedro. Jesucristo's vicar on earth. The head of the entire Roman Catholic Church. Its supreme and infallible authority."

  "This is not another santo or espíritu? This is a living person?"

  "Of course a living person. A priest. A man, just like you or me, only older. And vastly more holy, in that he wears the shoes of the fisherman."

  "Shoes?" I said blankly. "Of the fisherman?" In Aztlan, I had known many fishermen. None wore shoes, or was the least bit holy.

  Alonso sighed with exasperation. "Simón Pedro had been a fisherman before he became Jesucristo's most prominent disciple, the foremost among the Apostles. He is regarded as having been the first pope of Rome. There have been ever so many since then, but each succeeding pope is said to have stepped into the shoes of the fisherman, thereby acquiring the same eminence and authority. Juan Británico, why do I suspect that you have been idly daydreaming during Padre Diego's instruction?"

  "I have not," I lied, and said defensively, "I can recite the Credos and the Pater Noster and the Ave María. And I have memorized the ranks of the Church's clerics—nuns and friars, abades and abadesas, padres, monseñores, obispos. Then... uh... is there anything higher than our Bishop Zumárraga?"

  "Archbishops," Alonso snapped. "Cardinals, patriarchs. And then the pope over all. I strongly recommend that you pay closer attention in Padre Diego's class, if you wish ever to be confirmed in the Church."

  I forbore to tell him that I wanted nothing more to do with the Church than was absolutely necessary to my private plans. And it was mainly because my own plans were still so nebulous that I continued attending the class of instruction in Christianity. That consisted almost entirely of our being taught to recite rules and rituals and invocations, most of those—the Pater Noster, for instance—in a language that even the Spaniards did not pretend to understand. When the class, at Tete Diego's insistence, made visits to the church service called Mass, I went along with them a few times. That, too, was totally incomprehensible to anybody except, I suppose, the priests and acólitos who conducted the Mass. We natives and mestizos and such had to sit in a separate upper gallery, but still the smell of many unwashed Spaniards crowded together would have been intolerable but for the heady clouds of incense smoke.

  Anyway, since I had never taken a great deal of interest in my native religion—except for enjoying the many festivities it provided—I was no more interested in adopting a new one. I was particularly inclined to pick my teeth in disdain of a religion that seemed unable to count higher than three, since its objects of adoration, by my count, totaled at least four, maybe five, but were called a trinity.

  Despite that numerical eccentricity of his own faith, Tete Diego frequently inveighed against our old religion as overcrowded with gods. His pink face purpled perceptibly when one day I pointed out to him that while Christianity purported to recognize only a single Lord God, it actually accorded almost equal prestige to the worshipful beings called santos and angeles and arcángeles. They were easily as numerous as our gods, and several of them seemed as vicious and vindictive as those darker gods of ours that Christians called demons. The chief difference I could see between our old religion and Tete Diego's new one, I told him, was that we fed our gods, while Christians eat theirs, or pretend to, in the ritual called Communion.

  I went on to say:

  "There are many other ways in which Christianity is no improvement on our old paganisnio, as you call it. For example, Tete, we too confessed our sins, to the kindly and forgiving goddess Tlazoltéotl, meaning 'Filth Eater,' who thereupon inspired us to acts of contrition or gave us absolution, just as your priests do. As for the miracle of virgin birth, several of our deities came into existence just that way. And so did even one of the Mexíca's mortal rulers. That was the First Motecuzóma, the great Revered Speaker who was grand-uncle to the lesser Motecuzóma who reigned at the time you Spaniards came. He was conceived when his mother was still a virgin maiden and—"

  "That will do!" said Tete Diego, his entire bald head gone purple. "You have an antic sense of humor, Juan Británico, but you have made mock and jest enough for one day. You verge on blasphemy, even heresy. Leave this classroom and do not return until you have repented and made confession, not to some Filthy Glutton but to a Christian confesor sacerdote!"

  I never did that, then or since, but I did do my best to look chastened and repentant when I returned to class the next day. And I continued to attend the class, for a reason that had nothing whatever to do with comparing religious superstitions, or with plumbing the Spanish ways of thought and behavior, or with furthering my plans for revolution. I was now attending that class just to see and be seen by Rebeca Canalluza. I had not yet done the act of ahuilnéma with either a white female or a black one, and perhaps would never have a chance at either. But, in the person of Rebeca Canalluza, I could, in a sense, sample both kinds of female at once.

  That is to say, she was what Alonso had classified as a mulato—"mulish"—the offspring of a coupling between a Moro and a white.

  There being so very few black women, as yet, in New Spain, Rebeca's father had to have been the black party to the coupling, and her mother some sluttish or perversely curious Spanish woman. But the mother had contributed little to Rebeca's configuration, and that was hardly surprising; no more does coconut milk poured into a cup of chocólatl lighten it at all.

  At least the girl had inherited from her mother decently long and wavy hair, not the moss-kinks of a full-blooded Moro. But in everything else—ayya, she had the broad, flat nose with wide nostrils, the overfull and purplish lips, and the rest of what I could see of her was precisely the color of a cacao bean. Also, I had to assume that Moro females mature at a very early age, because Rebeca was only a child of eleven or twelve, and small even for that age, but she already had the curves of a woman, and estimable breast
s, and buttocks that could only be called protuberant. Furthermore, the looks she gave me were the covetous appraisals of a woman ripe for mating.

  Those things I could see for myself. What I could not divine was the reason for her name, which was derogatory, derisive and even demeaning. Not so much her Christian name, Rebeca. Among the edifying little Bible stories that Tete Diego told us from time to time, he had mentioned the biblical Rebeca, and the only bad thing I could remember about that one was that she seemed easily bribed with gold and silver trinkets. But the name Canalluza means "vagrancy, roguery, wantonness." If that was Rebeca's mother's surname, well, it had certainly fit her. But how, I wondered, would Rebeca's mother have acquired that name before she bedded with a black man?

  Anyway, this little brown-black Rebeca Canalluza had long been following me with avid brown-black eyes, and when I first appeared at the Colegio in long-sleeved camisa, pantalones, and calf-high botas, her eyes became fervid—possibly because she had always worn Spanish attire and may have thought that I was now emulating her—and she began following me literally, sitting down beside me on whatever schoolroom bench I occupied, standing close to me on the infrequent occasions when I attended Mass. I did not mind. I had not enjoyed so much as a street-woman since leaving Aztlan, and aside from that, I was as perversely curious as Rebeca's mother must have been with her black, thinking, What would it be like? I only wished that Rebeca were a bit older and a lot prettier. Nevertheless, I returned her looks and then her smiles and eventually we were conversing, though her Spanish was much more fluent than mine.

  "The reason for my awful name," she said, when I asked her, "is that I am an orphan. Whatever were the names of my father and mother, I will never know. I was abandoned, as are many other infants, at the door of the Refugio de Santa Brígida, the convento de monjas, and there I have lived ever since. The nuns in charge of us orphans take some queer delight in bestowing on us undignified names, to mark us as children of shame."

  Here was an aspect of Spanish custom that I had not encountered before. Among us indios, there were of course children who suffered the loss of father or mother or both—to disease or war or some other disaster. But we had no word for orphan in any of the native languages that I knew. And that was simply because no child was ever abandoned or cast away or foisted upon the community. Every child was dear to us, and any one of them left alone in the world was instantly, eagerly adopted by some man and wife, whether they were forlornly childless or had a home teeming with other children.

  "At least I was given a decent first name," Rebeca went on. "But that 'drab' yonder"—she discreetly indicated him—"the pardo boy, the ugly one, being also an orphan living at the Refugio, was named by the nuns Niebla Zonzón."

  "Ayya!" I exclaimed, half laughing, half pitying. "Both his names mean 'dim, foggy, stupid'!"

  "And ay de mí, so he is," said Rebeca with a pearly grin. "Well, you have heard him stutter and stammer and flounder when he speaks here in class."

  "At any rate, the nuns provide you orphans with an education," I said. "If religious instruction can be called education."

  "For me it is," she said. "I am studying to become a Christian nun myself. To wear the veil."

  "I thought it was shoes," I said confusedly.

  "What?"

  "No matter. What does it mean—wearing the veil?"

  "I become the bride of Christ."

  "I thought he was dead."

  "You really do not listen very closely to our Tete, do you, Juan Británico?" she said, sounding as severe as Alonso. "I will become Jesucristo's bride in name. All nuns are called so."

  "Well, it is better than the name Canalluza," I said. "Will the ugly pardo Niebla Zonzón get to change his name, too?

  "¡Vaya al cielo—no!" she said, laughing. "He has not the brains to become a religious of any order. From this class here, poor witless Zonzón goes to a cellar room where he is training to be an apprentice tanner. That is why he smells so bad all the time."

  "Tell me, then," I said, "what does it entail—becoming a dead godling's bride?"

  "It means that, like any bride, I devote myself only to him for the rest of my life. I renounce every mortal man, every pleasure, every frivolity. As soon as I am confirmed and make my first Communion, I become a novice in the convent. From that time on, I am dedicated to duty, to obedience, to service." She dropped her eyes from mine. "And to chastity."

  "But that time is not yet," I said gently.

  "Soon, though," she said, her eyes still downcast.

  "Rebeca, I am nearly ten years older than you are."

  "You are handsome," she said, still without raising her eyes. "I will have you—to remember—during all the years of having no one else but Jesucristo."

  In that wistful moment, the little girl was very nearly lovable, certainly pitiable. I could not have refused such a shy and tender plea, even had I wanted to. So we arranged to meet in a private place, after dark, and there I gave her what she wanted to remember.

  Even with her eager collaboration, however, our coupling did not come easily. First, as I should have expected, I found that Spanish-style clothes—both mine and hers—were difficult to doff with any grace. It required awkward contortions that considerably lessened the gratification of two persons getting themselves naked. Next, the size of her body and mine proved to be a disadvantage. I am rather taller than almost every other Aztécatl and Mexícatl man—according to my mother, I inherited my height from my father Mixtli—and, as I have said, for all her womanly proportions, Rebeca was a very small child. This was her first attempt at the act, and it might as well have been the first for me, so bumblingly did we go about it that night. She simply could not spread her legs far enough apart for me to get properly between them, so my tepúli could put no more than its tip end into her tipíli. After much mutual frustration, we finally settled for doing it rabbit-fashion, she on elbows and knees, I covering her from above and behind—though even then, her extraordinary buttocks were something of a hindrance.

  I did learn two things from that experience. Rebeca was even blacker of skin at her private parts than elsewhere, but when the black lips down there opened, she was as flower-pink inside as any other female I ever knew so intimately. Also, because Rebeca was a virgin when we began there was a little smear of blood when we were done, and I discovered that her blood was as red as that of anyone else. I have, ever since then, been inclined to believe that all persons, whatever their outer color, are made of the very same meat within.

  And Rebeca so delighted in her first ahuilnéma that we did it thereafter at every opportunity. I was able to show her some of the more comfortable and pleasurable expedients that I had learned from that auyaními in Aztlan and then had perfected in practice with my cousin Améyatl. So Rebeca and I enjoyed one another often, and right up until the night before the day that Bishop Zumárraga anointed her and several of her sister orphans in the rite of Confirmation.

  I did not attend that ceremony, but I did get a glimpse of Rebeca in her ceremonial gown. I have to say that she looked rather comical—the brown-black head and hands in stark contrast to the gown as white as the only white feature of Rebeca, her teeth, gleaming in a smile of commingled excitement and nervousness. And, from that day on, I never again touched her or even saw her, for she never again emerged from the Refugio de Santa Brígida.

  IX

  "¿Acuántos patos ha matado hoy?" I asked, with some diffidence.

  "¡Caray, cientos! ¡Y a tenazón!" he said, grinning proudly. "Unos gansos y cisnes además."

  Well, he had understood my asking how many ducks he had slain that day, and I had understood his reply: "Hah, hundreds! And without even aiming. Also some geese and swans."

  It was the first time I had tested my command of Spanish on anyone but my teacher and classmates. This young man was a soldier doing fowler duty at the lakeside, and he seemed amiable, perhaps because I was in Spanish garb and he took me to be a domesticated and Christianized m
anservant of some sort. He went on:

  "Por supuesto, no comemos los cisnes. Demasiado duro a mancar." And he took pains to make that clear to me, waggling his jaw in an exaggerated manner. "Of course, we do not eat the swans. Too tough to chew."

  I had come here to the lakeside on other occasions, to watch what Pochotl had called the "strange but effective means" employed by the Spaniards to harvest the waterfowl that descended onto the lake at every dusk. It was indeed a strange method, and it was done with the thunder-stick (properly called an arcabuz) and it was indeed effective.

  A considerable number of the arcabuces were tied firmly to posts sunk in the lake's bank, the weapons pointing straight out across the water. Another battery of arcabuces was similarly tied to stakes, but pointing upward at various angles and in various directions. All those weapons could be tended and set off by a single soldier. First, he pulled a string and the leveled arcabuces boomed their flashes and smokes directly across the lake surface, killing many of the birds floating there and frightening the rest into sudden flight. At which, the fowler pulled another string, and those severally aimed, uptilted arcabuces fired all together, knocking whole swarms of the birds out of the air. Then the soldier would go about to all the weapons, doing something at the front of their tubes and something else at the rear of them. By the time he had completed that task, the birds would have calmed and resettled on the water, and the twofold slaughter would commence again. Finally, before full darkness came, the fowler would send out boatmen in acáltin canoes to collect the drifts of dead birds.

  Though I had witnessed that procedure several times, this was the first time I had nerved myself to ask questions about it.

  "We indios never used anything but nets," I told the young soldier, "into which we drove the birds. Your method is much more rewarding. How does it work?"