Aztec Blood

by Gary Jennings

  Ay! What had I done? True, I had spoiled his sale, but it was Cervantes's name that had driven Mateo muy loco ciego, almost costing me my cojones and my head. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the madman might be the author of the ridiculous novel.

  Dios mio! Perhaps the fray can tell me about this church in India where one is punished for a past life's sins. I must have flung a thousand souls into hell's eternal furnace to have deserved this woe.

  The fray, of course, claims I bring this hell of woe on myself by continually speaking out. He blames himself for my loose tongue, and there is some truth in that. He introduced me to the works of that indefatigable skeptic, Socrates. He challenged everything and passed this loathsome habit onto me like a disease.

  Fortunately this lamp of truth seldom illuminates my own unrighteous life. One cannot tread the lépero path with truth as a guiding light; some truths no one can bear.

  I dusted myself off and went back to the fair with less enthusiasm than I had had before.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Then I met the Healer.

  The first time I saw him he stood on the remains of an ancient Aztec monument, one of many scattered around the area. The stone slab elevated him several feet above the assembled onlookers, allowing him to perform his magic and work the crowds.

  He was not old. He transcended such mundane concepts. He was ancient of days, a being of eons and millennia, not weeks or years.

  I did not know what time or place or people spawned him, but to me he was everything Aztec or, more properly, Mexica, since the word Aztec was more Spanish than indio. One could not tell by his speech. Like a jungle parrot, he addressed questioners in their own tongue. I soon suspected he could speak the speech of birds and snakes, of rocks and trees, of mountains and stars.

  The soothsayer I had encountered, the peruser of bones, was, in contrast, a charlatan. The Healer abjured conjury. Written in the wrinkles of that old man's face and in the shadows of his veiled eyes were the secrets of the grave.

  To me he was a god, not Greek or Roman replete with schemes and intrigues, but a darker deity, gentle in his wisdom but murderous in his scorn.

  His cloak—reaching from his shoulders to his ankles—was fashioned of flamboyant feathers, all the colors of a glittering rainbow. His snakeskin belt was festooned with turquoise. The rope laces of his leather sandals coiled up his calves to his knees. He looked as I imagined Montezuma had, only more ageless and wise and weary and venerable.

  He was "treating" a woman who was suffering from headaches. A mangy yellow dog, looking more coyote than hound, sprawled nearby on a frayed red blanket. The dog's head rested on crossed paws, his skeptical eyes taking in every movement, large or small, as if checking for enemies. I would soon learn much more about that strange animal and his even stranger companion.

  The woman told the Healer that evil spirits had penetrated her brain and were screaming for her soul. In earlier times indio priests would have treated her with healing herbs, and even Fray Antonio acknowledged the power of some of these sacred remedies. The botanical garden of the Emperor Montezuma, he told me, had over two thousand different medicinal herbs. Much of this knowledge was lost to the world because the priests following the conquest incinerated its library of picture-writing scrolls collected by the Aztec doctors.

  "They feared what they did not understand and burned what they feared," the fray once lamented.

  Of course, failing herbal remedies, the ancient priests would have drilled into her skull and summoned the demon to leave.

  The Healer was, of course, a tititl, a native doctor skilled in the use of herbs and chants; but unlike the Spanish herbalists called curanderos, a tititl used herbs, potions, and chants and magic ceremonies to heal. But that was the smallest part of the Healer's medical art. He had his own methods. At the moment he was whispering secret incantations into the woman's ears, designed to draw out her evil spirits.

  While I know that the course of an illness, anymore than a life, is not determined by dice throws, we are from time to time engaged by demons. I have never confessed this to the fray, but I have seen people discourse with the devil; and it is an article of indio truth that fiends can spirit themselves into the brain through ears, nose, eyes, and mouth.

  As I watched the old medicine man mouthing his sacred incantations, his lips brushed her ears. Suddenly, his eyes bulging, hand at his mouth, he jerked back. A writhing snake, which he'd sucked from her ear, thrashed in his teeth. The woman screamed, convulsing in his arms.

  "Ahhhh!!!" rose from the crowd.

  I dismissed it as legerdemain. The Healer had slipped a snake up his sleeve, then secreted it in his mouth. How could I think otherwise? I was by training and predilection a truth-teller. I'd studied Socrates; his disciple, Plato; and in my heart of hearts, I detested the mendacity surrounding me at every turn. I worshipped at Truth's Altar. Part of me wanted to roar with skepticism and expose him as a fraud. He was an indio puro, without power or protection. Yet I remained silent. Why, I do not know.

  Then, as if reading my mind, his eyes picked me out amid all those faces in the crowd.

  "Come here, boy."

  Everyone stared at me—even the yellow dog.

  The next thing I knew, I was standing on the rock slab beside him.

  "You do not believe I drew the snake from her head?"

  I could have said nothing. Given the plethora of enemies I was rapidly accumulating, I didn't need anymore. Dissimulation was undoubtedly the better part of valor. Somehow I couldn't lie.

  "You hid the snake in your mouth or hand," I said evenly. "It was a trick."

  The Healer's hold over the crowd snapped, and they began to hiss.

  Still he was not chagrined. "I see indio blood in your veins," the old sage said, shaking his head sadly, "but you favor your Spanish ancestry."

  "I favor knowledge over ignorance," I said.

  "The question is," the old man said smiling, "how much knowledge can a boy bear?"

  Chanting quietly in Náhuatl, his hands passed over my eyes. Swaying, my face flushed fevishly, and my eyes teared. Breath whooshed out of me, and all my skepticism died.

  I was especially taken by his eyes. Black, bottomless wells filled with world weariness and tacit understanding, they gripped me like a vise. Helpless in their gaze, they wrung everything from me, knew everything about me, my people, my past, my blood—before the conquistadors, before the Aztecs, before the Mayans, time immemorial, time out of mind.

  Reaching for my crotch—as if he was about to grab my garrancha—he drew a long, black snake out of my pants, writhing and hissing and spitting. The crowd erupted into laughter.

  TWENTY-SIX

  After the crowd dispersed, I sat with him. Still dizzy from his magic spell, I now felt humbled. Handing me a piece of locust cake, a bit of maize, and a gourd of mango juice, he said gently, "Never forswear your indio blood," he told me. "The Spanish think they subjugate our flesh with whips and swords, with guns and priests, but there is another, separate world beneath our feet, above our heads, and dwelling in our souls. In this blessed realm, the sword slays not, and the spirit holds sway. Before the Spaniards, before the indio trod the earth, before the earth itself was blasted and forged out of the void, these sacred shades wrapped us round, nourished our souls, and gave us form. Forever they cry to us, 'Respect! Respect!' Forsake your blood, grovel before the Spaniard's inane gods, spurn the specters of our hallowed pale, you do so at your peril. Their memories are long."

  He gave me a black stone—two fingers wide, one long and iron hard. One side glistened, a gleaming ebony mirror. Its interior glinted eerily, and I could feel myself falling into its lightless depths, as if its center were not mere rock but the pit itself—an infinite abyss, eternal as time, its heart the heart of an ancient star.

  "Our indio ancestors traversed the stars," he said, "were the stars and carried in their hearts star-stones that foreordained our fate—all fate. Look into the smoking mirror, bo
y."

  I was no longer of this earth but staring into a world before light and time. My hand trembled at its touch.

  "It is yours," he said.

  He had given me a piece of a star.

  I dropped to my knees... overwhelmed.

  "It is your tonal, your destiny, to have it."

  "I am not worthy."

  "Really? You have not asked what you must give in exchange."

  "All I have are two reales."

  His palm passed over mine without touching it, and the money vanished as if it had never been.

  "The gift is immaterial. In the heart the blessing dwells, and your heart harbors the gods."

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I found Fray Antonio under the tree where we had set up camp. I told him of my experience with the Healer, including the snake concealed in my loins. He was singularly unimpressed.

  "Describe to me what happened—every detail."

  I told him of the Healer's incantation, his hand sweeping by my face, my feeling of being both elated and dizzy—

  "Ha! Your head went around in circles, you almost lost your balance, your eyes watered, your nose itched, you felt wonderful."

  "Sí! From his incantation!"

  "It was yoyotli, a powder that Aztec priests used to subdue sacrificial victims. Cortes first learned of it during the battle for Tenochtitlan, when he saw his indio allies, who had been captured by the Aztecs, singing and dancing on their way up temple steps where priests would rip out their hearts. Earlier the prisoners had been given a drink called obsidian knife water, a concoction made from cocoa, the blood of sacrifice victims, and a debilitating drug. Before they mounted the steps to the top, yoyotli dust was thrown in their face. Yoyotli makes one have visions. It is said that the warriors to be sacrificed not only went willingly but thought they were in the arms of the gods."

  He explained that it was a trick known by enchanters. "Your 'Healer' had a little of it in his pocket. When he chants his incantations, he sweeps his hand in front of you so the dust flies in your face."

  "No, I saw nothing."

  "Of course. Only a tiny bit of dust is necessary. You were not going to be sacrificed. He just needed to stun you a little, weaken your mind, so you believed everything he told you."

  "But he gave me the heart of a star!"

  "Chico, Chico," the fray tapped his temple, "what have I taught you? Do you really think he steals stars from the sky? Or that he flew down to earth with Andromeda in his hand?"

  I examined the black stone with the polished side.

  "It is a shadow mirror," the fray said, "obsidian from a volcano, burnished until it blazes with a deep gloss. The indio magicians tell fools it foretells their tonal, their fate. If one breaks, they peddle the pieces to other idiots, saying they sell them the hearts of stars. You could buy mountains of them for a reale—or gather them by the wagonful on volcanic slopes. What did you offer the fraud for it?"

  "Nothing," I lied.

  The Healer was not at the stone slab, nor the spot where he robbed me of my dinero. I went looking where indios camped, ready to threaten him if he didn't return my money. I had never been so angry. Or embarrassed. Did this indio faker think he was a picaro? That was supposed to be my job.

  Ay! I could not find the scoundrel. He was gone. With my two reales. My wounded pride would mend, but the money, the money was more sacred to me than the papal throne.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  An hour before sunset, I went to watch the play.

  The play was put on in a tree-enclosed clearing with blankets hung to conceal the players from illicit onlookers. The sloped terrain allowed the players to occupy the high ground.

  I didn't have a silver reale, the price of admission, but I found an affordable vantage point. Climbing a nearby tree, high above the blankets, I had my own private balcony, gratis. The dwarf taking admission at the entrance naturally shot me irate glances, but I was picaro-born and ignored him. After all several priests took up positions outside the blanket wall, folded the blanket drapes over their ropes and robbed the troupe of the admission fee as ruthlessly as I. And naturally no one challenged them.

  Before the play began, the two attractive picaras hustled the mostly male audience, purveying sweetmeats. Flirtation went with the vending. Spanish men outnumbered Spanish females twenty to one in New Spain; and these Spanish women, though picaras, spellbound these hombres. I sometimes wondered if these Spaniards were as entranced with their women at home.

  The dwarf ascended the grassy "stage."

  "Poland, an ancient kingdom by the sea, lies northeast of our sunny Spain. The Alamanians, Danes, and Ruskies abut this arctic realm.

  "Before our story begins, a prince is born to the king of Poland. His beloved queen dies in childbirth. Soothsayers at the court foretell of hellish wars enshrouding the king's enthronement; bloodtime, swordtime, destruction engulfing all until the king himself lies prostrate at the prince's feet.

  "What was the king to do?" the dwarf asked the audience, his voice a stage whisper. "Should he have the babe killed? His blood-son of his beloved bride?"

  The dwarf paused to quaff a goblet of wine. I already knew from Mateo's recital of "El Cid" that acting was a thirsty business.

  "The king, knowing the prince would reduce his kingdom to ruin, erected a soaring, impregnable, windowless tower."

  The dwarf's voice became darkly sinister. "In the bowels of this bleak and lightless bastion, the boy was raised in chains, swathed in animal skins. Only one mortal attended the boy, an aged sage who schooled him in arts and letters and in the ways of beasts and birds, but instructing him naught in the wiles and guiles of men."

  "Some education," an audience wit groaned.

  "Some play," another grumbled.

  "Where's the marauding pirate?" another critic complained. "Where's the dauntless hero?"

  "Mateo Rosas, whose name most of you know from the great theaters of Seville and Madrid, has personally selected Pedro Calderón de la Barca's masterwork for your delectation. As we all know, Calderón is second only to Lope de Vega as a master of the stage."

  From the audience's grumbling I had the distinct impression that Mateo's august name meant nothing to them. Nor did I understand their antipathy to the drama. A prince imprisoned in a dark tower stirred my fertile, if fevered, imagination. I wanted to know how he would feel when he got out—and confronted both his father and life. I was on tenterhooks.

  The dwarf continued, undismayed.

  "As our story opens, the king of Poland is near the end. But who will succeed him? His legitimate heir has languished in chains his whole life long. If he dies, the next in line is the king's nephew, the duke of a land called Moscovy, a bitter, ruthless place at the edge of the world to the east of Poland.

  "The king, the duke, and all the great men of the kingdom meet at the palace to debate the problem: Shall the prince be permitted to rule or be put to death because of the prophecy? The king decides to test the prince, who is now a grown man, to see if he is ruled by reason or by savage rage. To ensure he is kept under control—remember, not only have terrible things been prophesied, but he has been rigidly sequestered—the king sedates the prince and orders his tutors to tell him that his memories are but dreams.

  "Also, Rosaura arrives, but she comes to avenge her honor's loss at the duke of Moscovy's hands. Disguised as a man, she plans to run the miscreant through herself.

  "Now, amigos, we begin at the tower prison on a craggy mountain where Prince Segismundo languishes."

  The dwarf waved his hand to where Mateo and the other actors were waiting "off stage." The actors, except Mateo, wore false beards, and the two actresses wore wigs.

  "Mateo Rosas will play the prince and several other key roles. Now for your pleasure, La Nómada players present Pedro Calderón's comedia, Life Is a Dream."

  With a sweep of his hat, Mateo addressed the audience as Segismundo, prince of Poland.

  "I try, oh heavens, to understand what
crime I committed... but since I was born, I understand my crime... for man's greatest crime is to have been born at all.

  "I have less liberty than birds and beasts and fish. As I reach this pitch of anger, like a volcano, an Aetna, I could tear pieces of my heart from my own breast. What law, justice, or reason can deny to man so sweet a privilege, a freedom God has given a brook, a fish, a beast, and a bird?"

  Other actors tell us that the king orders the prince released from the tower and brought to the palace to see if he is fit to rule or is a mad beast. If he fails the test, he will be put to death, and the duke of Moscovy will marry the beautiful Princess Estrella and assume the throne. But the king pleas with those around him to give the prince a chance. The king was being played by the dwarf with the powerful voice.

  In the palace, for the first time unchained and interacting with people, the Prince considers vengeance on a servant who was cruel to him while he was held captive in chains. Another man tells him it's not the servant's fault, that he obeyed the king's orders.

  But Segismundo thunders, "Insofar as the law was not just, he was not bound to obey the king."

  A murmur went through the audience and I heard the word "treason" muttered. Even at my young age, disobedience to any king, even a bad one, was unthinkable.

  But the evil servant challenges the prince, baiting him to fight him.

  The prince struggles with the wrongdoer and throws him off of the balcony.

  The prince is drugged and returned to the prison tower, where he is told by his tutor that all that occurred was nothing more than a dream, that he had never left the tower.

  I could see the audience was constantly stirring and restless. "Where's the pirate?" a man yelled.