He indicated a large, green area not a great distance from the plaza.
"The Alameda. In the afternoon the ladies wear their best silks in their carriages and the men dress as gallants upon their finest horses and parade up and down the Alameda. It is a place where many times men draw their swords and," he leaned closer to whisper to me, "women lift their dresses!"
If Mateo was not at the don's house when we arrived, I knew where I would find him.
We joined people on a main road leading to one of the causeways that stretched across the lake to the city. Foot, horse, mule, carriage, and litter traffic increased as we drew closer to the causeway. The largest number of people on the road were indios carrying fruits, vegetables, and handmade household items. As the indios approached the causeway, dozens of africanos and mulattos diverted them to an area off the side of the road where cargo was being piled and examined on the ground. An indio carrying a large sack of corn on his back tried to proceed around the men and was roughly shoved to the roadside with the others.
I asked Jose what was going on.
"Recontonería."
The word meant nothing to me.
"Africanos buy the fruits and vegetables from the indios and resell the goods in the city for two or three times as much."
"Why don't the indios take the stuff into the city themselves?"
"One who defies the Recontonería is found floating in a canal. Everyone, the bakers and innkeepers, all buy from them. Some indios try to bring the products into the city with their canoes, but few can slip by the Recontonería's boats."
These bandits and pirates robbed the indios through brute force. I was outraged. "Why doesn't the viceroy put a stop to this crime! It not only cheats the indios, but raises the cost of food for everyone. I shall complain to the viceroy personally."
"Everyone knows but nobody will stop it, not even the viceroy."
"Why not? A few soldados with muskets—"
Joaquin studied me with amused forbearance. I suddenly realized how stupid I must have sounded.
"Obviously, the scheme is not stopped because it is profitable to people besides the africanos, people high enough that even the viceroy tolerates the practice."
The Spanish blood in my veins told me that people who shared that blood would not permit africanos and the like—slaves, ex-slaves, and mulattos—to profit. No doubt many of the africanos involved were not freed men but slaves, who left their masters' homes in the morning to walk to the end of the causeway empty handed and return that night with a pocketful of money after buying vegetables cheap and selling them dear. Of course, it would be the masters who profited.
Indios hated and feared the africanos because of the way the Spanish used the blacks to intimidate them.
"It's sad," I told Joaquin, "that the indios and africanos, both of whom are maltreated by the Spanish, cannot find some common ground that would lessen their mutual suffering."
Joaquin shrugged. "It doesn't matter to us who takes our land, our women, and our money, anymore than which fox steals the chicken. They are gone anyway, are they not, señor?"
EIGHTY-ONE
We crossed the causeway and my heart beat faster. I had entered the greatest city in the New World. The avenue before me pulsated with people, sounds, and color.
"Do you know about the Arabian Nights?" I asked Joaquin.
"No, señor."
"A tale of brave men and beautiful women, gold and jewels, exotic places, fascinating people, and strange beasts. I will be satisfied if I die tomorrow, Jose, for I have seen the Arabian Nights today."
What sights! What color! What sounds!
Exquisite women in woven gold-and-silk dresses traveled in silver carriages that would not have shamed a duchess in Madrid; caballeros and caballos rode past, gallant men on magnificent prancing horses—reddish-brown sorrels, dark-stripped grays, black-and-white piebalds—with jingling silver spurs, silver bridles, and Joaquin told me, often even silver horseshoes. Uniformed bearers, africanos in livery, trotted not just beside carriages but could be seen behind men on horseback, stepping in the horse's droppings as they carried whatever items the men needed for business or social gatherings that day.
Four things in Cuidad Mexico are fair to behold—the women, the apparel, the horses, and the carriages. I had heard this saying many times in my life, but now I understood that it was not an old wives' tale. Not that all the pomp and display was necessary or a sign of good breeding.
Mateo, who himself is not adverse to pomp, says that every cobbler with a helper and every muleteer with six mules will swear that he is a descendant from a great house in Spain, that the blood of the conquistadors runs in his veins, and now, though fortune has frowned upon him and his cloak is threadbare, he should be addressed with the honorific "Don" and his pompous airs recognized as good breeding. If that were so, Mateo said, New Spain boasts enough "great lords" to fill the ranks of every noble house on the peninsula.
Frays sweated in grays and black and brown habits, while lordly gentlemen strutted with swaggering arrogance under large, plumed hats and brandished silver-and-pearl hilt swords as a mark of their station in life. Ladies in hooped skirts and white petticoats, their faces layered with French powder and bright red lip coloring, carefully made their way over the cobbled stones in heeled slippers, followed by pages holding silk parasols to shade their mistresses' delicate faces from the sun.
Ponderously heavy, squeaking carts, world-weary oxen, baying donkeys, cursing muleteers—is there any other profession that knows more bad words? Wrinkled old women selling tortillas dripping with salsa, mulattas selling peeled papayas on a stick, whining, avaricious léperos beseeching alms—damn their larcenous souls! Why don't they work as honest people do like me?
Deeper into the city the evil smells attacked me, and I realized that the canals were open sewers, often so filled with refuse and God-knows-what—things that I didn't even want to guess the true nature of—that boatmen were having a difficult time making way with their canoes. But I didn't care if boiling lava flowed in the canals. I had so long smelled only hay and manure that the stench of a great city was a nosegay to me.
Like heroes of those sultry exotic nights in Arabia, I had found a green oasis, Allah's paradise on earth. I started to tell Joaquin my thoughts about Allah and his garden but quickly reined in my words. I had already blasphemed in mentioning the Arabian Nights. If any more profanation dribbled off my tongue, the next smell I suffered would be the Inquisition dungeon.
We crossed the main plaza. Two sides were lined with covered passageways to shelter merchants, government officials, and shoppers from the sun and rain. Grandees filled with smug importance carried papers to meetings with the viceroy, while household servants haggled with women squatting by mats covered with fruits and vegetables, and great ladies entered the shops of merchants who sold everything from Chinese silk to Toledo blades.
Across the square was the viceroy's palace and prison, the complex looking much like a stout fortress with its stone walls and great gateways.
To the left of the palace, was the house of God, a great cathedral that had been started long before I was born and was still rising in the rubble and dust accompanying its construction.
Despite the grandeur of the city, its buildings do not challenge the heavens like Babel's Tower. I commented to Joaquin that I saw few buildings more than two stories high.
He waved his hands up and down. "The ground shakes."
Of course, earthquakes. New Spain has as much passion in its earth—earthquakes that shake the world beneath our feet and volcanoes that spit fire—as in its people who blaze with the fires of love and hate.
The shops of merchants and government buildings slowly faded as we made our way toward the Alameda, the great greenway in the heart of the city where the caballeros and ladies showed off their clothes, horses, and smiles.
Our train of mules and the litter chairs of my two charges passed by houses so magnificent to call them
palaces is not to boast. In front of the great gates stood africano servants in finer clothes than any I possessed.
When we got to the Alameda, the parade of gallants and ladies had commenced. I was embarrassed to be leading a mule train. I was now a young Spanish gentlemen, in name if nothing else, and we did not soil our hands with work.
I pulled my hat down over my eyes in the hopes that later, when I returned as a caballero, I would not be remembered as a mule driver.
The greenway was pleasant, a place of grass and trees and a fine pond, but I barely noticed the natural surroundings—my eyes were on the men and women, on the sly and shy glances, the unspoken but communicated invitations, the flirtatious giggles, and masculine snorting of gallants and horses. Ah, what spirit, mettlesome steeds, mettlesome men, horse and man, high-spirited, fiery, sexually vigorous, stomping, pawing, rearing, a sword on the hip, love sonnets on the lips!
Eh, this was the man I wanted to be—brave and arrogant, a fiery demon in a woman's bed, a deadly swordsman on the dueling field. To be outgoing and charming, a swan with a blade, contending for a lady's favor, drawing my sword and dagger to best a rival—or two—or three. I would fight a dozen of these perfumed dandies for a minute in the arms of a beautiful woman!
No actor of comedias could have put on more mystery or romance than these gallants and ladies. Each gentlemen had his train of africano slaves following the prance of their proud horse, some as many as a dozen waiting on them. Each lady had a like number by her coach, in brave and bright apparel, almost as garnish as her own clothes and coach.
"Before the night is over, someone will draw a sword in anger and jealousy," Joaquin said, "and blood will follow."
"Do the authorities punish such acts?"
"The viceroy's men make much ado, rushing toward the assailant with their swords drawn, telling him that he is under arrest, but there is never an arrest. The friends of the gentlemen surround him with drawn blades and escort him to a nearby church where he seeks sanctuary. Once inside the church, the viceroy's men cannot follow. After a few days all is forgotten. The blade is back on the Alameda, this time drawing his sword to defend a friend or fight off the viceroy's men."
I was marveling to myself at the wonder and justice of such a fine system of honor when a horseman suddenly came up beside me and slapped me on the back so hard I nearly fell off my horse.
"Mateo!"
"It is about time you got here, Cristóbal." In private he referred to me only as Bastardo, but Joaquin was in listening range. "I have many fine adventures to tell you. I spent the last three nights in a church. Does that tell you that I am ready to be a priest?"
"That tells me that you were one step ahead of the viceroy's men. What is that? A new woman?" I indicated a small but ugly gash on the side of his neck.
"Ahhh," he touched the raw wound. "This is Julia. For a moment in her arms, I braved a dagger thrown on the Alameda. The cowardly blackguard who threw it thought he could increase his life span by at least a few moments by wounding me."
"And Don Julio? Doña Isabella? They are well?"
"There is much to talk about, my young friend. The don has been anxiously awaiting your arrival. We have work to do!" He slapped me on the back again, hard enough to knock my breath away.
I noticed he was riding a horse that was different than the one he'd left the hacienda on. It was a fine sorrel, more red than brown. I was instantly envious that he had such a beautiful animal. I would need such a horse to prance about the Alameda.
"Is that fine animal part of the don's city stable?"
"No, I purchased it from my winnings at cards. I paid twice what any sorrel in the city would go for, but it was worth it. Its pedigree goes back to a famous sorrel of a conquistador. Ahh, my young friend, is it not true that even a woman cannot satisfy a man's pride and ego like a horse?"
He threw back his head and sang Balbuena's ode to the horses of New Spain:
Their glory here is such
that we're moved to declare
they must come from the stud farm of Mars...
Half the horses in New Spain are claimed by its owner to have a bloodline traceable back to one of the fourteen horses of the conquistadors who terrorized the indios during the conquest. And most of the nags had as much claim to such a grand bloodline as muleteers who struck it rich hauling supplies to the silver mines and started calling themselves "dons."
I clicked my tongue. "Amigo, you have been defrauded. Did you forget that there were no sorrels in the company of Cortes?"
He looked at me and his face turned so black that I felt fear down to my spurs.
"That knave who sold it to me shall be dead by sunset!"
He spurred his horse. In panic I shouted after him. "Stop! I was only joking!"
EIGHTY-TWO
Don Julio's city house, while not as magnificent as a palace, was more stately than the house at the hacienda. Like most fine homes in the city, it had a garden courtyard with bright flowers and fountains, vine-covered arched passageways whose shadows provided coolness even when the sun was high in the sky, a large stable for the carriages and horses, and, of course, in the main house, a grand, sweeping stairway.
A servant showed me to my room—over the stable, with heat and manure smell. Mateo grinned.
"My room is next to yours. Doña Isabella wants us to know our place."
Don Julio was waiting for us in his library, already instructing servants on the unpacking and shelving of his books. We followed him into a sitting room. He stood as he spoke to us.
"The city suffered flood damage during the heavy rains because cave-ins occurred, fouling the tunnel. A tunnel, like a piece of pipe, will only conduct as much water as its narrowest portion."
More for my benefit than Mateo's, who already had some knowledge of the tunnel project, he went on to tell us about it.
The city is set upon a lake, or what many people thought of as a series of five interlocking lakes. The lake is on a flat plain, deep in a vast valley, over seven thousand feet high, shouldered by mountains, many of which are a league high. Tenochtitlan was originally built on a soggy island and was slowly expanded by the floating gardens that took root in the shallow lake. Because the city was so low to the waterline, the Aztecs built an elaborate system of canals and dikes to protect the city from floods.
Almost from the time of the conquest, the city began to suffer periodic flooding. The indios thought of the flooding as having a spiritual source. In revenge for the Spanish defilement of Aztec gods, Tlaloc, the blood-thirsty god of rain, brought torrential precipitation that threatened the city. To build a large city on the footprint of Tenochtitlan, the Spanish deforested the tree-covered slopes. It was said that Cortes's palace alone absorbed nearly ten thousand trees.
With the slopes stripped of vegetation, water cascaded off the mountains, carrying soil to fill the lakes, raising the waterline. The first floods led to reconstruction of the Aztec dikes. But as the lake beds filled with more and more dirt from the mountainsides, the dikes could not keep back the rising water.
"Every decade since the conquest has seen torrential rains and flooding of the city," the don said. "Most of the valley went underwater during one unusually wet season a few years ago, and the city was nearly abandoned—only the cost of rebuilding an entire city kept us from moving Mexico to higher ground."
It had long been envisioned that a canal and tunnel be built through the mountains to drain off the rainwaters before the city floods. Don Julio, noted for his engineering skills, was commissioned to design the project.
"As you both know, I drew up the plans for the project, a canal that ran six miles from Lake Zumpango to Nochistongo, with four miles of it cut through the mountains."
"Were those plans followed?" Mateo asked.
"The size and position of the canal and tunnel were to my specifications. But instead of shoring up the tunnel with iron-supported timbers and lining it with masonry-hardened brick, the walls of the tunnel w
ere composed of mud-and-straw bricks similar to those used to construct a house." Don Julio's face twisted with grief. "We did not know the constitution of the mountain, which turned out to be subject to cave-ins. I did not get involved in the actual construction, but I am told many indios died digging the tunnel. Their smothered screams will haunt me when I am burning in hell for my part in this disaster."
Unfortunately for the indios, the mountain was not composed of rock but of loose and crumbling earth. I had heard that fifty thousand indios had died digging the tunnel, but rather than increase Don Julio's grief and guilt, I merely looked away.
"As you know, the rains were high this year, not as bad as they have been in the past, but above the normal rainfall. There was minor flooding."
I felt instant relief. "Minor flooding! Then the situation is not as drastic as we thought."
"It is worse. Because of the cave-ins, the tunnel was unable to carry waters that were only slightly above normal. A severe storm may result in the whole city flooding."
"What can be done?" Mateo asked.
"That is what I am working on. There is already an army of indios clearing the debris from the cave-ins and patching the violated areas with masonry bricks and using wood beams to shore up. But by the time we attack one weak point, there is a cave-in a few feet away."
"What can we do to assist?" Mateo asked.
"At the present, nothing. I need to know more about how the tunnel was constructed, and I do not need your help in doing the tests. It will be months before I know anything, and even then I may never be able to determine exactly what went wrong. But if what I suspect is true, I will have need of your skills. In the meantime, I have received a commission from the Council of the Indies to investigate possible insurrection against His Majesty's authority.
"The viceroy contacted the council and requested assistance in regard to rumors of a plot by africanos, slaves, mulattos, and the like to revolt and kill all of the Spanish and make one of their own choosing king of New Spain."
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