by Simon Levack
Skinny gave the gourd back to his wife. ‘The man says he wants to buy a piece of featherwork,’ he muttered.
Her frown etched a single straight line in the exact centre of her forehead, and was almost as pretty as her smile.
‘We had better sit down and talk about this. Can you bring some mats out, darling?’
Wordlessly he turned and went back into the room, emerging a moment later with three reed mats that he threw on the floor at our feet. As each one struck the earth it raised a little cloud of dust whose motes spiralled lazily in the bright still air. Again the slovenliness of the household puzzled me. In almost any other courtyard in Mexico the mats would not have been needed, unless it had been raining, because the ground would have been swept so clean you could have eaten off it. As I squatted and tried to make myself comfortable, I wondered what the gods, looking down from their niches in the walls, could possibly make of it all.
Skinny rested his buttocks on the mat next to mine. Butterfly knelt facing us.
‘You must think us very impolite,’ she said. ‘We’re in a terrible mess at the moment.’
I did not comment.
‘We live here with Skinny’s brother, Tlatziuhqui. He and his wife have that room over there. Her name’s Cempoalxochitl.’ Tlatziuhqui was a curious name: it meant ‘Idle’. Obviously he had shown even less promise as a little boy than his brother. Cempoalxochitl meant ‘Marigold’.
I followed her glance towards the doorway she and her husband had first emerged from, and then looked back at her, letting my expression pose the obvious question for me.
‘They aren’t here. They …’ For the first time she seemed unsure of herself, faltering and looking at Skinny for help.
‘Disappeared,’ he said shortly. ‘That’s why we aren’t doing any business at the moment. Too much to sort out. This house is really my brother’s, so we need to make sure the parish will let us keep it. Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’ A smile formed on his mouth but his eyes were still glowering at me. He was not sorry about my wasted journey and did not mind if I knew it. He wanted me in his house the way a gardener wants slugs, and he did not mind my knowing that too.
‘Disappeared?’ I echoed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘One day they’re here, the next they’re not. Don’t ask me why.’
I turned to the girl. ‘When did this happen?’
She gave me her discomfitingly sensuous smile. ‘Three nights ago, on Thirteen Snake.’
I frowned. Thirteen Snake was the night the costume had been stolen from Kindly’s house. ‘And they simply walked out? Your husband said this was Idle’s own house.’
She fidgeted on her mat. I kept my eyes at about the level of her chin to avoid becoming fixated by those slender brown knees.
‘We’ve been asking ourselves Why? ever since – haven’t we, love? But we can’t think of an answer. Nobody has seen them. We thought they might be with Marigold’s father, but he doesn’t know any more than we do.
‘We can only hope,’ she added, catching her breath, ‘that they haven’t met with an accident.’
It was difficult to imagine what sort of accident might befall two people at once, unless they were caught out on the lake in a canoe and swamped by a storm, or their house fell on their heads in an earthquake. If there had been any storms or earthquakes in the valley in the last few days, then I had slept through them.
Skinny said: ‘Joker isn’t interested in our troubles. We’ve already told him we can’t help him. Let’s not waste any more of the man’s time.’
‘You’re not.’ I was not sure that the featherworker’s brother’s disappearance had anything to do with what I was looking for but I was curious, to say the least. I glanced around quickly, to remind myself of my surroundings. The house was not large, but with just four adults living in it, it would not have been overcrowded. Aztecs were used to living on top of one another. I dismissed the idea that the vanished couple might just have wanted some space.
‘Does anyone else live here?’
‘No.’
I hesitated before asking my next question. Skinny clearly did not have the most even of tempers and I was not anxious to provoke him, but I could not leave without satisfying my curiosity on one point. ‘Forgive me, but … why are you here? This isn’t the featherworkers’ parish, it’s not even close. How come you ended up …’ I nearly concluded ‘in this hovel?’ but changed it at the last moment to ‘in Atecocolecan?’
‘I was born here.’ Not even Skinny’s lips were smiling at me now. ‘I think we’ve talked long enough. Thank you for coming. Sorry we can’t help. The street,’ he added pointedly, with a significant look towards the doorway I had first come through, ‘is over there!’
I did not move. His answer was as astonishing as anything I had heard. I thought about probing further, but in the meantime I found myself staring speculatively at his cheek, not troubling to hide my interest.
‘There was a fight, wasn’t there?’
‘What?’
‘How did you get that scratch?’
‘It was an accident,’ the woman snapped. She dropped her sultry tone for a moment and her voice suddenly had a shrill, nervous edge. ‘And it’s none of your business anyway!’
‘What sort of accident?’
They both started to get up. For a moment I wondered whether they were going to attack me. I tensed, ready to defend myself if they made a move to throw me bodily into the canal outside. I could probably have taken on the man, I thought, and I assumed the woman would be of no account in a fight by herself, but I was not sure about both of them together, and there had been a dangerous quality in her voice, a hint of something she had kept hidden, a reminder that I did not know for sure what she might be capable of.
Their eyes met, and some sort of unspoken signal seemed to pass between them. They both froze for an instant, and then relaxed. As quickly as it had come the danger seemed to pass and they resumed their former attitudes, he glowering at me from his mat, she smiling at me from hers.
The man let out a long sigh while the woman said: ‘Forgive us. We don’t mean to be discourteous but we’re both under a lot of strain at the moment.’
‘It was a copper knife,’ Skinny added. ‘It slipped while I was trimming a pattern on the cutting-board. Happens all the time. Look, here’s another one.’ He held up his hand. Across the palm was an ugly gash, a much deeper wound than the one on his cheek, but no older; the edges had been stitched together with hair and the stitches were still there.
‘There was no fight,’ the woman said earnestly. ‘If there had been, and Idle and Marigold had run away, they’d have gone to her father, but I told you, he hasn’t seen them.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Cuehmoliuhtoc,’ said Skinny, rubbing his wounded hand absently. A corner of his mouth twitched as though at a private joke. ‘My chief rival, the great featherworker. There’s no love lost between us, anyone will tell you that.’ This was only to be expected if the man’s disposition matched his name, since Cuehmoliuhtoc meant ‘Angry’. ‘Of course, he’d be the first person his daughter and my brother would run to if there were a problem between us – but there isn’t!’
I decided to drop the subject for the time being. If the costume had disappeared with the vanished couple then I would have to look elsewhere for it. If it had not, then I still had some bargaining to do. ‘Listen, you still don’t know what I came here for.’ I looked from one to the other, finally settling on the man, because I thought his face was more likely to give something away when I told them my story. ‘Kindly the merchant sent me.’
Skinny had been on the point of picking up the water gourd again. It lay neglected on the ground beside him, while his hand froze in the air above it. His eyes narrowed.
‘Go on,’ he said eventually.
I glanced slyly at the woman. Her face was impassive, but the last trace of the flush had left her cheeks.
‘He bought something from yo
u recently. A costume of Quetzalcoatl. He has, um, mislaid it.’ I laid as much emphasis on ‘mislaid’ as I dared and paused to let the words sink in. ‘Now he would like to replace it. He would like very much to get another one, exactly the same. Exactly the same.’
I had given a good deal of thought to this. Somebody had come to Kindly’s house knowing that he had something of great value, and meaning to steal it. The person most likely to have that knowledge was the person he had got it from. I might well be looking at the thief, and if all I had wanted was to find the merchant’s stolen goods, it seemed to me that my task could not be much simpler. I had no assurance that Kindly would pay a ransom to get his property back but I was certain he would. It was not as if he could not afford to. I did not much care whether he could afford to or not, anyway: compared to my own plight, the knowledge of what had almost certainly happened to my son, I thought the old merchant’s troubles were trifling.
I sat back and waited for Skinny to name his price.
The man glared at me more fiercely than ever.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he growled dangerously.
I sighed wearily. ‘Yes you do. All Kindly’s asking is, how much do you want?’
‘To make a feather costume? I told you, we aren’t in business at the moment. I’m sorry to disappoint you and your master, but I can’t help!’
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. I looked at the woman again. She was watching her husband intently and did not seem to be paying any attention to me.
‘I suppose you expect me to make you an offer,’ I said at last. ‘Very well. We will give you what Kindly paid you the first time. That’s in return for not reporting the matter to the chief of your parish, not to mention the featherworkers’ elders.’
‘Reporting what?’
‘The theft of the bloody costume!’
In the silence that followed, my exasperated cry seemed to bounce back at me off the walls of the courtyard.
Skinny and his wife both stared at me, their expressions as cold and unmoving as those of the idols on the walls around us. I began to wonder whether I might be wrong, and whether it was possible that the featherworker had not stolen the costume from Kindly after all.
It was the woman who spoke.
‘I really think you ought to leave now, Joker.’ She hissed the words at me between clenched teeth, but followed them with a deep sigh and a reminder of her smile. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve made a mistake. Things are hard for us. You must understand.’
Skinny scowled at me. I scowled back, but plainly pulling faces was not going to do me any good.
I got to my feet. ‘You know where to come if you change your mind!’
I spoke to the man, but I let my eyes linger for a moment on the woman. I did not care if it seemed ill mannered. I had had enough of playing games with the two of them, and besides, she was beautiful, and I did not expect to see her like again soon.
2
My son’s knife jarred against my hip as I walked back towards Amantlan. Each time the hard smooth metal knocked against my skin it reminded me of him. Each jolt was like a faint cry, a distant sound of despair and pain and fear which I could never answer, and each imagined cry seemed fainter and more plaintive than the last.
I felt an impulse to take the knife out and look at it, to talk to it even, as if it were the only thing I had left of its owner. I fumbled inside my breechcloth for it but came to my senses just in time. There were too many people about, any of whom might have noticed a thin, ragged slave clutching a unique bronze knife. Boatmen poled their canoes nonchalantly through canals that, here at least, were regularly cleaned and dredged by work details made up of the parish’s common folk. Little children, their cloaks flapping over their naked loins, followed their mothers from house to house, the women bearing food or hot coals to light a failed hearth or just going to gossip. A small group of men was working its way along the canal towards me, their calf-length cloaks, stone-pillar hairstyles, cudgels and set, determined expressions giving them the look of a war party.
I peered at the soldiers, looking nervously among them for a green uniform or the peculiar glitter of sunlight on the blades of the captain’s vicious club. I tensed, with my fingers curled tightly around the hilt of the knife. If the Otomies had managed to extricate themselves from the chaos I had left behind me in Tlacopan, they might well be after me, to punish me for misleading them.
These were not the captain’s warriors, however. From the casual way they spoke to passers-by, they seemed to be locals, and it was easy enough to guess what they were about. Somebody must long since have gone behind that screen by the canal and found the remains among the stinking pots there, and these men were making routine enquiries.
I let go of the knife, pulling my hand out of my breechcloth just as a young woman, a passenger in a canoe, shot me a disgusted look.
I lowered my eyes self-consciously before turning quickly away.
I dared not go back across the bridge between Amantlan and Pochtlan. Anyone seen near where the body had been found was liable to be stopped and questioned, and as a runaway slave I could not contemplate that.
I wanted to go back to Kindly, to tell him what had transpired at Skinny’s house, and to question him about it too. Kindly had told me that Skinny’s father and brothers had worked for him. At the time that had not made sense, because I had assumed that Skinny was from the featherworkers’ parish. What kind of labour could a family of featherworkers provide for a merchant? Atecocolecan, on the other hand, was the sort of impoverished place that would breed field hands, day-labourers and porters. I could have understood Kindly hiring men from there. But then how had Skinny become a featherworker in the first place? How had he gained admittance to a trade so jealously guarded by the families that had practised its secret arts for generations?
However, I would have to postpone my conversation with Kindly. It would mean a long detour through the neighbouring parishes. In any event, I thought a call on Skinny’s rival would be just as valuable, especially if his daughter and son-in-law had run off with the stolen costume. If there was any chance that Idle was the thief, then I had to find him. He might know what had happened to my son.
I had no trouble finding Angry’s house. In the parish of the featherworkers everybody knew where their chief craftsmen lived, and the first person I asked, an old beggar pretending to sell withered-looking chillies out of a broken basket, pointed the place out to me straight away. He wished me better luck than he had had, which I took as a reflection on my appearance.
‘What is it now? Not that bloody chilli seller again? I thought we’d kicked his arse into the canal!’
Angry’s voice was as loud as it was fierce. He was shouting over his shoulder at the man who had let me into his house, a wizened little man with an undistinguished commoner’s short cloak and tonsured head, probably a needy relative whom the master featherworker employed as a favour. This servant stumbled meekly after the craftsman, mumbling and plucking at his cloak, while the great man strutted about his busy courtyard like a turkey cock surveying his hens.
Angry himself was a tall, portly man, whose cloak hung limply about him with the air of having despaired of ever being able to conceal his stomach. His hair was white and his face deeply lined. He was older than his rival, Skinny, perhaps as much as a bundle of years old. As he walked his arms waved clumsily. They seemed to move independently of each other and the rest of his body. I had always thought of featherworkers as artists, whose delicate fingers manipulated the materials in their grasp as carefully and tenderly as a midwife washing a newborn’s face. It was hard to reconcile this image with Angry, whose hands ended in tuberous growths that looked like rolls of dough.
He was the kind who could draw the eye to him irresistibly, so that at first I barely noticed what else was going on in his courtyard. Only when his servant finally managed to attract his attention again and get him to pause, stooping and frowning, while the
little man explained who I was and why I had come, did I think to look around and take in my surroundings. They were remarkable.
The courtyard had a bare look. It was clear of anything that was ornamental or that did not obviously serve an immediate practical purpose. Even the idols were fewer in number than usual, although there clearly had been many more, for the walls were covered with bare plinths and empty niches. Curious though these were, I barely spared them a glance before gaping at the people. The place was crowded. It throbbed with so much activity it put me in mind of a beehive.
In one corner, boys stirred steaming pots of glue: liquid turkey fat whose vile smell suffused the whole space. They doled the stuff out into wide tortoiseshell bowls, which smaller boys carried to the women pasting freshly carded cotton on to maguey leaves, to the men who stuck broad, coarse heron and parrot and molted spoonbill feathers together to form the bases of patterns, and to a little group in the far corner who sat apart from everyone else. These last were the true craftsmen, whose task it was to select and place the most precious plumes, those plucked from the green trogon, the red spoonbill and the hummingbird, and the most prized and coveted of all, the long, shimmering tail feathers of the resplendent quetzal.
There were others whom the boys ran straight past, because their part of the process did not require glue: the women who carded the cotton, creating layers so thin that a picture could be traced through them; the men who laid the cotton over the pictures the scribes had drawn, to trace their designs on to it; and those who carefully peeled the painted and glued cotton away from the leaves that had been used as backing.
From all this industry would emerge the fabulous, radiant, shimmering feather mosaics that were Angry the craftsman’s speciality.
He was striding in my direction now, his face dark and his brow creased in a frown that matched his name. Incongruously, two small, fat dogs trotted silently at his heels. They came and danced around my legs, growling at one another and sniffing and pawing at a loose thread hanging from the remains of my cloak while their master glared down at me.
