And now Fray Domingo leaves us, and precipitately. Odd, how one man can be adversely affected by some words, and another man by others. I think words conjure up different images in different minds. Even in the minds of impersonal scribes who are supposed to hear them only as sounds and record them only as marks on paper.
Perhaps, since that is so, I had better refrain from telling of the other things the girl and woman did during that long night. But finally they fell away from each other, exhausted, and lay breathing heavily side by side. Their lips and tipíli parts were exceedingly puffed and red; their skins shone with sweat, saliva, and other secretions; their bodies were mottled like jaguar hide with the marks of bites and kisses.
I quietly got up from my place beside the bed and, with shaking hands, gathered up the drawings scattered around my chair. When I had withdrawn to a corner of the room, Something Delicate also arose and, moving wearily, weakly, like someone just recovering from an illness, slowly put on her clothes. She avoided looking at me, but I could see that there were tears running down her face.
“You will want to rest,” Jadestone Doll said to her, and pulled on the bell rope over the bed. “Pitza will show you to a private chamber.” Something Delicate was still quietly weeping when the sleepy slave guided her from the room.
I said in an unsteady voice, “Suppose she tells her husband.”
“She could not bear to,” the young queen said with assurance. “And she will not. Let me see the drawings.” I handed them over and she studied them minutely, one by one. “So that is what it looks like. Exquisite. And here I thought I had experienced every kind of … What a pity my Lord Nezahualpíli has provided me with only aged and plain-faced servant women. I think I will keep Something Delicate on call for quite a while.”
I was glad to hear that, since I knew what the woman’s fate would otherwise and quickly be. The girl gave the drawings back to me, then stretched and yawned voluptuously. “Do you know, Fetch!, I truly believe it was better than anything I have enjoyed since that old Huaxtéca object I used to employ.”
It seemed reasonable, I thought, as I went to my own chambers. A woman ought to know, better than any man, how to play upon the body of another woman. Only a woman could so intimately know all the most tender, hidden, secret, responsive surfaces and recesses of her own body, hence those of any other woman’s. It followed, then, that a man could improve his sexual talents—could enhance his own enjoyment and that of his every female partner—by knowing those same things. So I spent much time studying the drawings, and fixing in my memory the intimacies I had witnessed which the pictures could not portray.
I was not proud of the part I had played in the degradation of Something Delicate, but I have always believed that a man should try to learn and profit from his involvement in even the most lamentable occurrences.
I do not mean to say that the rape of Something Delicate was the most lamentable event I ever knew in my life. Another was awaiting me when I went home again to Xaltócan for the festival of Ochpanítztli.
That name means The Sweeping of the Road and refers to the religious rituals performed to assure that the coming harvest of maize would be a good one. The festival was celebrated in our eleventh month, about the middle of your August, and consisted of various rites all culminating in the enactment of the birth of the maize god Centéotl. That was a ceremonial time entirely given over to the women; all the men, even most of the priests, were mere spectators.
It began with Xaltócan’s most venerable and virtuous wives and widows going about with brooms specially made of feathers, sweeping out all the island’s temples and other holy places. Then, under the direction of our female temple attendants, women did all the singing, dancing, and music playing on the climactic night. A virgin chosen from among the island girls played the part of Teteoínan, the mother of all the gods. The high point of the night was the act she did atop our temple pyramid—all by herself, with no male partner—her pretense of being deflowered and impregnated, then going through the pains of labor and of giving birth. After that, she was put to death with arrows, by women archers, who did the job with earnest dedication but with little skill, so she usually died an untidy and prolonged death.
Of course there was always a substitution at the last moment, since we never sacrificed one of our own maidens, unless for some peculiar reason she insisted on volunteering. So it was not really the virgin portraying Teteoínan who died, but some dispensable female slave or a female prisoner captured from another people. For the simple role of dying, it was not required that she be a virgin, and sometimes it was a very old woman who was dispatched on that night.
When, after having been clumsily chipped and minced and pierced by countless arrows, the woman was finally dead, a few priests participated for the first time. They came out from the pyramid temple in which they had been hidden behind her, and, still almost invisible because of their black garb, dragged the corpse inside the temple. There they quickly flayed the skin from one of her thighs. A priest put that conical cap of flesh on his head and bounded forth from the temple to a blast of music and song. The young god of the maize, Centéotl, had been born. He skipped down the pyramid stairs, joined the women dancers, and they all danced the rest of the night away.
I tell all this now because I suppose that year’s ceremony proceeded as in all the years before. I have to suppose because I did not stay to see it.
The generous Prince Willow had again lent me his acáli and oarsmen, and I arrived on Xaltócan to find that others—Pactli, Chimáli, and Tlatli—had also again come home from their distant schools for that holiday. Pactli, in fact, was home to stay, having just then completed his calmécac education. That made me worry. He would now have no occupation at all, except to wait for his father Red Heron to die and vacate the throne. Meanwhile, Pactli could concentrate all his time and energy on securing the wife he desired—my unconsenting sister—with the help of his staunchest ally, my title-hungry mother.
But I had a more immediate worry. Chimáli and Tlatli were so eager to see me that they were waiting at the jetty when my canoe made fast, and they were dancing with excitement. They both began talking, shouting, and laughing before I had even set foot on shore.
“Mole, the most wonderful thing!”
“Our first summons, Mole, to do works of art abroad!”
It took me some time, and some shouting of my own, before I could sort out and comprehend what they had to say. When I did, I was appalled. My two friends were the “Mexíca artists” of whom Jadestone Doll had spoken. They would not be returning to Tenochtítlan after the holiday. They would be accompanying me when I went back to Texcóco.
Tlatli said, “I am to do sculptures and Chimáli is to color them so they seem alive. So said the message of the Lady Jadestone Doll. Imagine! The daughter of one Uey-Tlatoáni and the wife of another. Surely no other artists our age have ever before been so honored.”
Chimáli said, “We had no idea the Lady Jadestone Doll had ever even seen the work we did in Tenochtítlan!”
Tlatli said, “Seen it and admired it enough to summon us to travel so many one-long-runs. The lady must have good taste.”
I said thinly, “The lady has numerous tastes.”
My friends perceived that I was little infected by their excitement, and Chimáli said, almost apologetically, “This is our first real commission, Mole. The statues and paintings we did in the city were but adornments for the new palace being built by Ahuítzotl, and we were no more highly regarded or any better paid than the stonemasons. Now this message says we are even to have our own private studio, all equipped and waiting. Naturally we are elated. Is there some reason why we should not be?”
Tlatli asked, “Is the lady a female tyrant who will work us to death?”
I could have said that he had put it succinctly when he spoke of being worked “to death,” but I said instead, “The lady has some eccentricities. We will have plenty of time in which to talk of her. Right no
w, I myself am much fatigued by my own working.”
“Of course,” said Chimáli. “Let us carry your luggage for you, Mole. You greet your family, eat and rest. And then you must tell us everything about Texcóco and Nezahualpíli’s court. We do not want to appear there as ignorant provincials.”
On the way to my house, the two continued to chatter merrily of their prospects, but I was silent, thinking deeply—of their prospects. I knew very well that Jadestone Doll’s crimes would eventually be exposed. When that happened, Nezahualpíli would avenge himself upon all who had aided or abetted the girl’s adulteries, and the murders to hide the adulteries, and the statues to flaunt the murders. I had some slim hope that I might be acquitted, since I had acted strictly on the orders of her husband himself. Jadestone Doll’s other servants and attendants had acted on her orders. They could not have disobeyed, but that fact would earn them no mercy from the dishonored Nezahualpíli. Their necks were already inside the flower-garlanded noose: the woman Pitza, and the gate guard, and perhaps Master Pixquitl, and soon Tlatli and Chimáli….
My father and sister welcomed me with warm embraces, my mother with a halfhearted one—which she excused by explaining that her arms were limp and weary from having wielded a broom all day in various temples. She went on at great length about the island women’s preparations for the observance of Ochpanítztli, little of which I heard, as I was trying to think of some ruse to get away alone somewhere with Tzitzi. I was not just eager to demonstrate to her some of the things I had learned from watching Jadestone Doll and Something Delicate. I was also anxious to talk to her about my own equivocal position at the Texcóco court, and to ask her advice as to what, if anything, I should do to avert the imminent arrival there of Chimáli and Tlatli.
The opportunity never came. The night came, with our mother still complaining about the amount of work involved in The Sweeping of the Road. The black night came, and with it came the black-garbed priests. Four of them came, and they came for my sister.
Without so much as a “Mixpantzínco” to the head of the house—priests were always contemptuous of the common civilities—one of them demanded, addressing nobody in particular, “This is the residence of the maiden Chiucnáui-Acatl Tzitzitlíni?” His voice was thick and gobbly, like that of a gallipavo fowl, and the words hard to understand. That was the case with many priests, for one of their penitential diversions was to bore a hole through their tongue and, from time to time, tear the hole wider by drawing reeds or ropes or thorns through it.
“My daughter,” said our mother, with a prideful gesture in her direction. “Nine Reed the Sound of Small Bells Ringing.”
“Tzitzitlíni,” the grubby old man said directly to her. “We come to inform you that you have been chosen for the honor of enacting the goddess Teteoínan on the final night of Ochpanítztli.”
“No,” said my sister, with her lips, though no sound came out. She stared at the four men in their ragged black robes, and she stroked a trembling hand across her face. Its fawn skin had gone the color of the palest amber.
“You will come with us,” said another priest. “There are some preliminary formalities.”
“No,” said Tzitzi again, that time aloud. She turned to look at me, and I almost flinched at the impact of her eyes. They were wide, terrified, as bottomlessly black as were Jadestone Doll’s when she used the pupil-dilating drug. My sister and I both knew what were the “preliminary formalities”—a physical examination conducted by the priests’ female attendants to ascertain that the honored maiden was indeed a maiden. As I have said, Tzitzi knew the means to seem impeccably a virgin, and to deceive the most suspicious examiner. But she had had no warning of the sudden swoop of the raptor priests, no reason to prepare, and now there was no time to do so.
“Tzitzitlíni,” our father said chidingly. “No one refuses a tlamacázqui, or the summons he brings. It would be rude to the priest, it would show disdain for the delegation of women who have accorded you this honor, and, far worse, it would insult the goddess Teteoínan herself.”
“It would also annoy our esteemed governor,” our mother put in. “The Lord Red Heron has already been advised of the choice of this year’s virgin, and so has his son Páctlitzin.”
“No one advised me!” said my sister, with one last flash of rebellion.
She and I knew now who had proposed her for the role of Teteoínan, without consulting her or asking her permission. We also knew why. It was so that our mother might take vicarious credit for the performance Tzitzi would give; so that our mother might preen in the applause of the whole island; so that her daughter’s public pantomime of the sex act would further inflame the Lord Joy’s lust; and so that he would be more than ever ready to elevate our whole family to the nobility in exchange for the girl.
“My Lord Priests,” Tzitzi pleaded. “I am truly not suitable. I cannot act a part. Not that part. I would be awkward, and laughed at. I would shame the goddess….”
“That is totally untrue,” said one of the four. “We have seen you dance, girl. Come with us. Now.”
“The preliminaries take only a few moments,” our mother said. “Go along, Tzitzi, and when you return we will discuss the making of your costume. You will be the most brilliant Teteoínan ever to bear the infant Centéotl.”
“No,” my sister said again, but weakly, desperate for any excuse. “It is—it is the wrong time of the moon for me….”
“There is no saying no!” barked a priest. “There are no acceptable pretexts. You come, girl, or we take you.”
She and I had no chance even to say good-bye, since the presumption was that she would be gone only a brief time. As Tzitzi moved to the door, and the four malodorous old men closed about her, she flung one despairing look back at me. I almost missed seeing it, for I was looking about the room for a weapon, anything I could use for a weapon.
I swear, if I had had Blood Glutton’s maquáhuitl at hand, I would have slashed our way through priests and parents—weeds to be mowed—and we two would have fled for safety somewhere, anywhere. But there was nothing sharp or heavy within reach, and it would have been futile for me to attack barehanded. I was then twenty years old, a man grown, and I could have bested all four of the priests, but my work-toughened father could have held me back without much effort. And that, for sure, would have caused suspicion, interrogation, verification, and the doom would have been upon us….
I have often since then asked myself: would not that doom have been preferable to what did happen? Some such thought flickered through my mind at that moment, but I wavered, I hesitated. Was it because I knew, in a cowardly corner of my mind, that I was not involved in Tzitzi’s predicament—and probably would not be—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? Was it because I held to some desperate hope that she could yet deceive the examiners—that she was not yet in danger of disgrace—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? Was it simply my immutable and inescapable tonáli—or hers—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? I will never know. All I know is that I wavered, I hesitated, and the moment for action was gone, as Tzitzi was gone, with her honor guard of vulturine priests, into the darkness.
She did not come home that night.
We sat and waited, until long past the normal bedtime, until long past the midnight trumpeting of the temple conch, and we talked not at all. My father looked worried, doubtless about his daughter and the cause for the unusual attenuation of the “preliminary formalities.” My mother looked worried, doubtless about the possibility that her carefully woven scheme for self-advancement had somehow come unraveled. But at last she laughed and said, “Of course. The priests would not send Tzitzi home in the dark. The temple maidens have given her a chamber there for the night. We are foolish to wait sleepless. Let us go to bed.”
I went to my pallet, but I did not sleep. I worried that if the examiners had found Tzitzi to be no virgin—and how could they find otherwise?—the priests could very well take rapacious advantage o
f that fact. All the priests of all our gods were ostensibly bound to an oath of celibacy, but no rational person believed that they observed it. The temple women would truthfully state that Tzitzi came to them already devoid of her chitóli membrane and virginally tight closure. That condition could only be blamed on her own prior wantonness. When she left the temple again, whatever might have happened to her in the interim, she could prove no charges against the priests.
I tossed in anguish upon my pallet, as I imagined those priests using her throughout the night, one after another, and gleefully calling in all the other priests from all the other temples on the island. Not because any of them was sexually starved; they presumably used their temple women at will. But, as you reverend friars may have observed among your own religious, the kind of women who dedicated their lives to temple service were seldom of a face or form to drive a normal man delirious with desire. The priests must have been overjoyed that night, to receive a gift of new young flesh, of the most desirable girl on Xaltócan.
I saw them flocking to Tzitzi’s defenseless body, in hordes, like vultures to an uncaring cadaver. Flapping like vultures, hissing like vultures, taloned like vultures, black like vultures. They observed another oath: never to disrobe once they had taken the priestly vow. But, even if they broke that oath, to fall naked upon Tzitzi, their bodies would still be black and scaly and fetid, having been unwashed ever since they took to the priesthood.
I hope it was all in my fevered imagination. I hope that my beautiful and beloved sister did not spend that night as carrion for the vultures to tear at. But no priest ever afterward spoke of her stay in the temple, either to confirm or to refute my imaginings, and Tzitzi did not come home in the morning.
A priest came, one of the four of the night before, and his face was blank of expression as he reported simply, “Your daughter does not qualify to represent Teteoínan in the ceremonies. She has at some time carnally known at least one man.”
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