Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  What I did not say was that I fervently hoped also to return with my vision restored. The reputation of the Maya physicians was my overriding reason for choosing the Maya country as our destination.

  “Your requests are granted,” said Ahuítzotl. “You will await a summons to appear at The House of Pochtéca for examination.” He stood up from his grizzled-bear throne, to indicate that the interview was terminated. “We shall be interested to talk to you again, Pochtécatl Mixtli, when you return. If you return.”

  I went upstairs again, to my apartment, to find Cozcatl awake, sitting up in the bed, hands over his face, crying as if his life were finished. Well, a good part of it was. But when I entered and he looked up and saw me, his face showed first bewildered shock, then delighted recognition, then a radiant smile beaming through his tears.

  “I thought you were dead!” he wailed, scrambling out from the quilts and hobbling painfully toward me.

  “Get back in that bed!” I commanded, scooping him up and carrying him there, while he insisted on telling me:

  “Someone seized me from behind, before I could flee or cry out. When I woke later, and the doctor said you had not returned to the palace, I supposed you must be dead. I thought I had been wounded only so I could not warn you. And then, when I woke in your bed a little while ago, and you still were not here, I knew you must—”

  “Hush, boy,” I said, as I tucked him back under the quilt.

  “But I failed you, master,” he whimpered. “I let your enemy get past me.”

  “No, you did not. Chimáli was satisfied to injure you instead of me, this time. I owe you much, and I will see that the debt is paid. This I promise: when the time comes that I again have Chimáli in my power, you will decide the fitting punishment for him. Now,” I said uncomfortably, “are you aware—in what manner he wounded you?”

  “Yes,” said the boy, biting his lip to stop its quivering. “When it happened, I knew only that I was in frightful pain, and I fainted. The good doctor let me stay in my faint while he—while he did what he could. But then he held something of a piercing smell under my nose, and I woke up sneezing. And I saw—where he had sewn me together.”

  “I am sorry,” I said. It was all I could think to say.

  Cozcatl ran a hand down the quilt, cautiously feeling himself, and he asked shyly, “Does this mean I am a girl now, master?”

  “What a ridiculous idea!” I said. “Of course not.”

  “I must be,” he said sniffling. “I have seen between the legs of only one female undressed, the lady who was late our mistress in Texcóco. When I saw myself—down there—before the doctor put on the bandage—it looked just the way her private parts looked.”

  “You are not a girl,” I said firmly. “You are far less so than the scoundrel Chimáli, who knifes from behind, in the way only a woman would fight. Why, there have been many warriors who have suffered that same wound in combat, Cozcatl, and they have gone on being warriors of manly strength and ferocity. Some have become more mighty and famous heroes afterward than they were before.”

  He persisted, “Then why did the doctor—and why do you, master—look so long-faced about it?”

  “Well,” I said, “it does mean that you will never father any children.”

  “Oh?” he said, and, to my surprise, seemed to brighten. “That is no great matter. I have never liked being a child myself. I hardly care to make any others. But … does it also mean that I can never be a husband?”

  “No … not necessarily,” I said hesitantly. “You will just have to seek the proper sort of wife. An understanding woman. One who will accept what kind of husbandly pleasure you can give. And you did give pleasure to that unmentionable lady in Texcóco, did you not?”

  “She said I did.” He began to smile again. “Thank you for reassuring me, master. Since I am a slave, and therefore cannot own a slave, I would like to have a wife someday.”

  “From this moment, Cozcatl, you are not a slave, and I am no longer your master.”

  The smile went, and alarm came into his face. “What has happened?”

  “Nothing, except that now you are my friend and I am yours.”

  He said, his voice tremulous, “But a slave without a master is a poor thing, master. A rootless and a helpless thing.”

  I said, “Not when he has a friend whose life and fortunes he shares. I do have some small fortune now, Cozcatl. You have seen it. And I have plans for increasing it, as soon as you are fit to travel. We are going south, into the alien lands, as pochtéca. What do you think of that? We will prosper together, and you will never be poor or rootless or helpless. I have just come from asking the Revered Speaker’s sanction of the enterprise. I have also asked him for the official paper which says that Cozcatl is no longer my slave but my partner and friend.”

  Again there were tears and a smile on his face at the same time. He laid one of his small hands on my arm, the first time he had ever touched me without command or permission, and he said, “Friends do not need papers to tell them they are friends.”

  Tenochtítlan’s community of merchants had, not many years before, erected its own building to serve as a combined warehouse for the trading stock of all the members, as their meeting hall, accounting offices, archival libraries, and the like. The House of Pochtéca was situated not far from The Heart of the One World and, though smaller than a palace, it was quite palatial in its appointments. There was a kitchen and a dining room for the serving of refreshments to members and visiting tradesmen, and sleeping apartments upstairs for those visitors who came from afar and stayed overnight or longer. There were many servants, one of whom, rather superciliously, admitted me on the day of my appointment and led me to the luxurious chamber where three elderly pochtéca sat waiting to interview me.

  I had come prepared to be properly deferential toward the august company, but not to be intimidated by them. Though I made the gesture of kissing the earth to the examiners, I then straightened and, without looking behind me, undid my mantle’s clasp and sat down. Neither the mantle nor I hit the floor. The servant, however surprised he may have been by this commoner’s magisterial air, somehow simultaneously caught my garment and whisked an icpáli chair under me.

  One of the men returned my salute with the merest movement of a hand, and told the servant to bring chocolate for us all. Then the three sat and regarded me for some time, as if taking my measure with their eyes. The men wore the plainest of mantles, and no ornaments at all, in the pochtéca tradition of being inconspicuous, unostentatious, even secretive about their wealth and station. However, their constraint in dress was a bit belied by their all three being almost oilily fat from good eating and easy living. And two of them smoked poquíeltin in holders of chased gold.

  “You come with excellent references,” one of the men said acidly, as if he resented not being able to reject my candidacy forthwith.

  “But you must have adequate capital,” said another. “What is your worth?”

  I handed over the list I had made of the various goods and currencies I possessed. As we sipped our frothy chocolate, on that occasion flavored and scented with the flower of magnolia, they passed the list from hand to hand.

  “Estimable,” said one.

  “But not opulent,” said another.

  “How old are you?” the other asked me.

  “Twenty and one, my lords.”

  “That is very young.”

  “But no handicap, I hope,” I said. “The great Fasting Coyote was only sixteen when he became the Revered Speaker of Texcóco.”

  “Assuming you do not aspire to a throne, young Mixtli, what are your plans?”

  “Well, my lords, I believe my richer cloth goods, the embroidered mantles and such, could hardly be afforded by any country people. I shall sell them to the nobles of the city here, who can pay the prices they are worth. Then I shall invest the proceeds in plainer and more practical fabrics, in rabbit-hair blankets, in cosmetics and medicinal preparations,
in those manufactured things procurable only here. I shall carry them south and trade for things procurable only from other nations.”

  “That is what we have all been doing for years,” said one of the men, unimpressed. “You make no mention of travel expenses. For, example, a part of your investment must go to hire a train of tamémime.”

  “I do not intend to hire porters,” I said.

  “Indeed? You have a sufficient company to do all the hauling and toiling yourselves? That is a foolish economy, young man. A hired tamémi is paid a set daily wage. With companions you must share out your profits.”

  I said, “There will be only two others besides myself sharing in the venture.”

  “Three men?” the elder said scoffingly. He tapped my list. “With just the obsidian to carry, you and your two friends will collapse before you get across the southern causeway.”

  I patiently explained, “I do not intend to do any carrying or to hire any porters, because I will buy slaves for that work.”

  All three men shook their heads pityingly. “For the price of one husky slave, you could afford a whole troop of tamémime.”

  “And then,” I pointed out, “have to keep them fed and shod and clothed. All the way south and back.”

  “But your slaves will go empty-bellied and barefooted? Really, young man …”

  “As I dispose of the goods carried by the slaves, I will sell off the slaves. They should command a good price in those lands from which we have captured or conscripted so many of the native workers.”

  The elders looked slightly surprised, as if that was an idea new to them. But one said, “And there you are, deep in the southern wilds, with no porters or slaves to carry home your acquisitions.”

  I said, “I plan to trade only for those goods that are of great worth in little bulk or weight. I will not, as so many pochtéca do, seek jadestone or tortoiseshell or heavy animal skins. Other traders buy everything offered them, simply because they have the porters to pay and feed, and they might as well load them down. I will barter for nothing but items like the red dyes and the rarest feathers. It may require more circuitous traveling and more time to find such specialized things. But even I alone can carry home a bag full of the precious dye or a compacted bale of quetzal tototl plumes, and that one bundle would repay my entire investment a thousandfold.”

  The three men looked at me with a new if perhaps grudging respect. One of them conceded, “You have given this enterprise some thought.”

  I said, “Well, I am young. I have the strength for an arduous journey. And I have plenty of time.”

  One of the men laughed wryly. “You think, then, that we have always been old and obese and sedentary.” He pulled aside his mantle to show four puckered scars in the flesh of his right side. “The arrows of the Huichol, when I ventured into their mountains of the northwest, seeking to buy their Eye-of-God talismans.”

  Another lifted his mantle from the floor to show that he had but one foot. “A nauyáka snake in the Chiapa jungles. The venom kills before you can take ten breaths. I had to amputate immediately, with my own maquáhuitl in my own hand.”

  The third man bent so that I could see the top of his head. What I had taken for a full crop of white hair was really only a fringe around a dome that was a red and crinkled scar. “I went into the northern desert, seeking the dream-giving peyotl cactus buds. I made my way through the Chichiméca dog people, through the Téochichiméca wild dog people, even through the Zácachichiméca rabid dog people. But at last I fell among the Yaki, and, compared to those barbarians, all the dog people are as rabbits. I escaped with my life, but some Yaki savage is now wearing my scalp on a belt festooned with the hair of many other men.”

  Chastened, I said, “My lords, I marvel at your adventures, and I am awed by your courage, and I only hope I can someday approach your stature as pochtéca of achievement. I would be honored to be counted among the least of your society, and I would be grateful to partake of your hard-won knowledge and experience.”

  The three men exchanged another look. One of them murmured, “What say you?” and the other two nodded. The scalped old man said to me:

  “Your first trading journey will necessarily be the real test of your acceptability. For know this: not all novice pochtéca come back from even that first foray. We will do everything possible to help you prepare properly. The rest is up to you.”

  I said, “Thank you, my lords. I will do whatever you suggest and heed whatever you care to speak. If you disapprove of my intended plan—”

  “No, no,” said one of them. “It has commendable originality and audacity. Let some of the merchandise carry the rest of the merchandise. Heh heh.”

  “We would amend your plan only to this extent,” said another. “You are right, that your luxury goods would best be sold here in Tenochtítlan. But you should not waste the time necessary to sell them piece by piece.”

  “No, do not waste time,” said the third. “Through long experience and through counsel with the seers and sayers, we have determined that the most auspicious date to set out upon an expedition is the day One Serpent. Today is Five House, so—let me see—a One Serpent day is coming up on the calendar in just twenty and three days. It will be the only One Serpent day in this year’s dry season, which—believe me—is the only season for traveling south.”

  The first man spoke again. “Bring to us here your stock of those rich clothes and fabrics. We will calculate their worth and give you fair exchange in more suitable trade goods. We can dispose of the luxury items locally, and in our own good time. We will deduct only a small fraction on the exchange, as your initiatory contribution to our god Yacatecútli and to the maintenance of the society’s facilities.”

  Perhaps I hesitated for a moment. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Young Mixtli, do not distrust your colleagues. Unless each of us is scrupulously honest, none of us profits or even survives. Our philosophy is as simple as that. And know this, too: you are to deal equally honestly with even the most ignorant savages of the most backward lands. Because, wherever you travel, some other pochtécatl has gone before or will come after. Only if every one trades fairly will the next be allowed into a community—or leave it alive.”

  I approached old Blood Glutton with some caution, half expecting him to erupt in profanity at the proposal that he play “nursemaid” to a fogbound first-time pochtécatl and a convalescent young boy. But, to my surprise, he was more than enthusiastic.

  “Me? Your only armed escort? You would trust your lives and fortune to this old bag of wind and bones?” He blinked several times, snorted, and blew his nose into his hand. “Why, how could I decline such a vote of confidence?”

  I said, “I would not propose it if I did not know you to be considerably more than wind and bones.”

  “Well, the war god knows I want no part of another farcical campaign like that one in Texcála. And my alternative—ayya!—is to teach again in a House of Building Strength. But ayyo!—to see those far lands again …” He gazed off toward the southern horizon. “By the war god’s granite balls, yes! I thank you for the offer and I accept with gladness, young Fog—” He coughed. “Er—master?”

  “Partner,” I said. “You and I and Cozcatl will share equally in whatever we bring back. And I hope you will call me Mixtli.”

  “Then, Mixtli, allow me to take on the first task of preparation. Let me go to Azcapotzálco and do the buying of the slaves. I am an old hand at judging man-flesh, and I have known those dealers to pull some cheating tricks. Like tamping melted beeswax under the skin of a scrawny chest.”

  I exclaimed, “Whatever for?”

  “The wax hardens and gives a man the bulging pectoral muscles of a tocotíni flyer, or gives a woman breasts like those of the legendary pearl divers who inhabit The Islands of the Women. Of course, come a hot day, the woman’s teats droop to her knees. Oh, do not worry; I will not buy any female slaves. Unless things down south have changed drastically, we will not lack f
or willing cooks, laundresses—bed warmers as well.”

  So Blood Glutton took my quills of gold dust and went off to the slave market in Azcapotzálco on the mainland and, after some days of culling and bargaining, came back with twelve good husky men. No two were of the same tribe or from the same dealer’s slave pen; that was Blood Glutton’s precaution against any of them being friends or cuilóntin lovers who might conspire in mutiny or escape. They came already supplied with names, but we could not trouble to memorize all of those, and simply redubbed the men Ce, Ome, Yeyi, and so on; that is, numbers One, Two, Three, through Twelve.

  During those days of preparation, Ahuítzotl’s palace physician was allowing Cozcatl out of bed for longer and longer periods at a time, and finally removed the stitches and bandages, and prescribed exercises for him to perform. Soon the boy was as healthy and spirited as before, and the only thing remindful of his injury was that he had to squat like a female to urinate.

  I made the exchange of goods at The House of Pochtéca, turning in my high-quality wares and getting in return about sixteen times their quantity in more practical cheap trade goods. Then I had to select and purchase the equipment and provisions for our expedition, and the three elders who had conducted my examination were only too pleased to help me. I suspect they enjoyed a sense of reliving old times, in arguing over the comparative strength of maguey-fiber versus hemp-rope tumplines, in debating the respective advantages of deerskin water bags (which lose none of their contents) and clay water jars (which lose some to evaporation, but thereby keep the water cool), in acquainting me with the rather crude and imprecise maps they lent me, and in imparting all manner of old-expert advice:

  “The one food that transports itself is the techíchi dog. Take along a goodly pack of them, Mixtli. They will forage for their own food and water, but they are too pudgy and timid to run wild. Dog is not the tastiest of meats, of course, but you will be glad to have it handy when wild game is scarce.”

  “When you do kill a wild animal, Mixtli, you need not carry and age the meat until it loses its toughness and gamy flavor. Wrap the meat in the leaves of a papaya tree and it will be rendered tender and savory overnight.”