Aztec

by Gary Jennings

  “We will not interrupt the celebration of the tes-güinápuri. And this Mixtli is a stranger to our customs. He might be abashed by a horde of staring onlookers.”

  “I am not a horde! And it was I who brought him for the purification!”

  “You will have him back when it is done. Then you can judge whether he was worth your trouble. I have said you may go, my dear.” Throwing a furious look at both of us, the girl went, and the Si-ríame said to me, “Sit down, guest Mixtli, while I mix you a brew of herbs to clear your brain. You should not be drunk when you chew the jípuri.”

  I sat down on the pounded-earth floor strewn with pine needles. She set the herbal drink to simmering on the hearth in a corner, and came to me bearing a small jar. “The juice of the sacred urá plant,” she described it, and, using a small feather for a brush, she painted circles and whorls of bright yellow dots on my cheeks and forehead.

  “Now,” she said, when she had given me the hot beverage to drink and it was almost magically bringing me out of my fuddlement. “I do not know what the name Mixtli means, but, since you are a ma-tuáne seeking the god-light for the first time, you must choose a new name.”

  I nearly laughed. I had long ago lost count of all the old and new names I had worn in my time. But I said only, “Mixtli means the sky-hung thing you Rarámuri call a kurú.”

  “It makes a good name, but it should have a descriptive addition. We will name you Su-kurú.”

  I did not laugh. Su-kurú means Dark Cloud, and there was no way she could have known that that already was my name. But I remembered that a Si-ríame was reputedly a sorcerer, among other things, and I supposed that her god-light could show her truths hidden from other people.

  “And now, Su-kurú,” she said, “you must confess all the sins you have committed in your life.”

  “My lady Si-ríame,” I said, and without sarcasm, “I probably have not life enough left in which to recount them all.”

  “Indeed? So many?” She regarded me pensively, then said, “Well, since the true god-light resides exclusively in us Rarámuri, and is ours to share, we will count only your sins since you have been among us. Tell me of those.”

  “I have done none. Or none that I know of.”

  “Oh, you need not have done them. To want to do them is the same thing. To feel an anger or a hatred and a wish to avenge it. To entertain any unworthy thought or emotion. For example, you did not wreak your lust upon that girl, but you clearly chased her with lustful intent.”

  “Not so much lust, my lady, as curiosity.”

  She looked puzzled, so I explained about the ymáxtli, the body hair which I had seen on no other bodies, and the urges it had aroused in me. She burst into laughter.

  “How like a barbarian, to be intrigued by what a civilized person takes for granted! I would wager it has been only a few years since you savages ceased to be mystified by fire!”

  When she had done laughing and mocking me, she wiped tears from her eyes and said, more sympathetically:

  “Know then, Su-kurú, that we Rarámuri are physically and morally superior to primitive peoples, and our bodies reflect our finer sensibilities, such as our high regard for modesty. So it became the nature of our bodies to grow that hair which you find so unusual. Our bodies thus insure that, even when we are unclothed, our private parts are discreetly covered.”

  I said, “I should think that such a growth in those parts would attract rather than distract notice. Not modest at all, but immodestly provocative.”

  Seated cross-legged on the ground as I was, I could not readily hide the evidence bulging my loincloth, and the Si-ríame could hardly pretend not to see it. She shook her head in wonderment and murmured, not to me but to herself:

  “Mere hair between the legs … as common and unremarkable as weeds between the rocks … yet it excites an outlander. And this talk of it makes me oddly conscious of my own …” Then she said eagerly, “We will accept your curiosity as your confessed sin. Now here, quickly, partake of the jípuri.”

  She produced a basket of the little cactuses, fresh and green, not dried. I selected one that had numerous lobes around its rim.

  “No, take this five-petaled one,” she said. “The many-scalloped jípuri is for everyday consumption, to be chewed by runners who must make a long run, or by idlers who merely wish to sit and bask in visions.

  But it is the five-petaled jípuri, the more rare and hard to find, that lifts one closest to the god-light.” So I bit a mouthful of the cactus she handed me—it had a slightly bitter and astringent flavor—and she selected another for herself, saying, “Do not chew as fast as I do, ma-tuáne Su-kurú. You will feel the effect more quickly because it is your first time, and we should keep pace with each other.”

  She was right. I had swallowed very little of the juice when I was astounded to see the walls of the house dissolving from around me. They became transparent, then they were gone, and I saw all the villagers outside, variously engaged in the games and feasting of the tes-güinápuri. I could not believe that I was actually seeing through the walls, for the figures of the people were sharply defined, and I was not using my topaz; the too-clear vision had to be an illusion caused by the jípuri. But in the next moment I was not so sure. I seemed to float from where I sat, and I rose to and through the roof—or where the roof had been—and the people dropped away and became smaller as I soared toward the treetops. Involuntarily, I exclaimed, “Ayya!“ The Si-ríame, somewhere behind or below me, called, “Not too fast! Wait for me!”

  I say she called, but in fact I did not hear her. I mean to say, her words came not into my ears but somehow into my own mouth, and I tasted them—smooth, delicious, like chocolate—yet in some manner I understood them by their flavor. Indeed, all my senses seemed suddenly to be exchanging their usual functions. I heard the aroma of the trees and the cook fires’ smoke that drifted up among the trees as I was drifting. Instead of giving off a leafy smell, the trees’ foliage made a metallic ringing; the smoke made a muffled sound like a drumhead being softly stroked. I did not see, I smelled the colors about me. The green of the trees seemed not a color to my eyes but a cool, moist scent in my nostrils; a red-petaled flower on a branch was not red but a spicy odor; the sky was not blue but a clean, fleshy fragrance like that of a woman’s breasts.

  And then I perceived that my head was really between a woman’s breasts, and ample ones. My sense of touch and feeling was unaffected by the drug. The Si-ríame had caught up to me, had thrown open her jaguar blouse, had clasped me to her bosom, and we were rising together toward the clouds. One part of me, I might say, was rising faster than the rest. My tepúli had already been earlier aroused, but it was getting even longer, thicker, harder, throbbing with urgency, as if an earthquake had occurred without my notice. The Si-ríame gave a happy laugh—I tasted her laughter, refreshing as raindrops, and her words tasted like kisses:

  “That is the best blessing of the god-light, Su-kurú—the heat and glow it adds to the act of ma-rákame. Let us combine our god-given fires.”

  She unwound her jaguar skirt and lay naked upon it, or as naked as a woman of the Rarámuri could get, for there truly was a triangle of hair pointing from her lower abdomen down between her thighs. I could see the shape of that enticing little cushion, and the curly texture of it, but the blackness of it was, like all other colors at that moment, not a color but an aroma. I leaned close to inhale it, and it was a warm, humid, musky scent….

  At our first coupling, that ymáxtli felt crinkly and tickly against my bare belly, as if I were thrusting my lower body among the fronds of a luxuriant fern. But soon, so quickly did our juices flow, the hair became wet and yielding and, if I had not known it was there, I would not have known it was there. However, since I did know—that my tepúli was penetrating more than flesh, that it was held for the first time by a densely hair-tufted tipíli—the act had a new savor for me. No doubt I sound delirious in the telling of it, but delirious is what I was. I was made
giddy by being at a great height, whether it was reality or illusion; by the oddity of sensing a woman’s words and moans and cries in my mouth, not my ears; by the sensing of her skin’s every surface and curve and gradation of color as a subtly distinct fragrance. Meanwhile, each of those sensations, as well as our every move and touch, was enriched by the effect of the jípuri.

  I suppose also I felt a tinge of danger, and danger makes every human sense more acute, every emotion more vivid. Men do not ordinarily fly upward to a height, they more often fall down from one, and that is often fatal. But the Si-ríame and I stayed suspended, with no discernible floor or other support beneath us. And being unsupported we were also unencumbered by any support, so we moved as freely and weightlessly as if we had been under water but still able to breathe there. That freedom in all dimensions enabled some pleasurable positions and coilings and intertwinings that I would otherwise have thought impossible. At one point the Si-ríame gasped some words, and the words tasted like her ferned tipíli: “I believe you now. That you could have done more sins than you could tell.” I have no idea how often she came to climax and how many times I ejaculated during the time the drug held us aloft and enraptured, but, for me, it was many more than I had ever enjoyed in such a short time.

  The time seemed too short. I became aware that I was hearing, not tasting the sounds when she sighed, “Do not worry, Su-kurú, if you do not ever excel as a runner.”

  I was seeing colors again, not scenting them; and smelling odors, not hearing them; and I was descending from the heights of both altitude and exaltation. I did not plummet, but came down as slowly and lightly as a feather falling. The Si-ríame and I were again inside her house, side by side on our discarded and rumpled garments of jaguar and deerskin. She lay on her back, fast asleep, with a smile on her face. The hair of her head was a tumbled mass, but the ymáxtli on her lower belly was no longer crisp and curly and black; it was matted and lightened in color by the white of my omícetl. There was another dried spill in the cleft between her heavy breasts, and others elsewhere.

  I felt similarly encrusted with her emanations and my own dried perspiration. I was also terribly thirsty; the inside of my mouth felt as furred as if it had grown ymáxtli; I later learned to expect that effect always after chewing jípuri. Moving carefully and quietly, not to disturb the sleeping Si-ríame, I got up and dressed to go and seek a drink of water outside the house. Before departing, I took one final appreciative look through my topaz at the handsome woman relaxed on the jaguar skins. It was the first time, I reflected, that I had ever had sexual relations with any sovereign ruler. I felt rather smugly pleased with myself.

  But not for long. I emerged from the house to find the sun still up and the celebrations still going on. When, after drinking heartily, I raised my eyes from the dipper gourd, I looked into the accusing eyes of the girl I had earlier been chasing. I smiled as guiltlessly as I could, and said:

  “Shall we run again? I can now partake at will of the jípuri. I have been properly initiated.”

  “You need not boast of it,” she said between her teeth. “Half a day and a whole night and almost another day of initiation.”

  I gaped stupidly, for it was hard for me to realize that so much time had been compressed into what had seemed so little. And I blushed as the girl went on accusingly:

  “She always gets the first and the best ma-rákame of the god-enlightened, and it is not fair! I do not care if I am called rebellious and irreverent. I have said before and I say again that she only pretended to receive the god-light from the Grandfather and the Mother and the Brother. She lied to be chosen as the Si-ríame, only so she can claim first right to every ma-tuáne she happens to favor.”

  That somewhat lessened my self-esteem in having coupled with an anointed ruler: learning that the ruler was in no way superior to any common woman gone astraddle the road. My self-esteem further suffered when, during the remainder of my stay, the Si-ríame did not again command my attendance on her. Evidently she wanted only “the first and the best” that a male initiate could give under the influence of the drug.

  But at least I was eventually able to mollify the angry girl, after I had slept and recuperated my energies. Her name, I learned, was Vi-rikóta, meaning Holy Land, which is also the name of that country east of the mountains where the jípuri cactus is gathered. The celebration went on for many days longer, and I persuaded Vi-rikóta to let me chase her again, and since I had taken care not to overindulge in food or tes-güino, I caught her almost fairly, I believe.

  We plucked some of the dried jípuri from one of the storage strings and went together to a secluded and pleasant glade in the forested canyon. We had to chew quite a lot of the less potent cactus to approximate the effects I had enjoyed in the Si-ríame’s house, but after a while I felt my senses again exchanging their functions. That time the colors of butterflies and flowers around us began to sing.

  Vi-rikóta, of course, also wore a medallion of ymáxtli between her legs—in her case a less crisp, more fluffy cushion—and that was still a novelty to me, so it again provoked me to extraordinary enterprise. But she and I never quite achieved the ecstasy I had known during my initiation. We never had the illusion of ascending skyward, and we were conscious at all times of the soft grass on which we lay. Also, Vi-rikóta was really very young, and small even for her age, and a female child simply cannot spread her thighs far enough that a man’s big body can get close enough to penetrate her to the full length of his tepúli. All else aside, our coupling had to be less memorable than what the Si-ríame and I had done together, because Vi-rikóta and I did not have access to the fresh, green, five-petaled, real god-light jípuri.

  Nevertheless, that young female and I suited each other well enough that we consorted with no other partners during the remainder of the festival, and we indulged many times in the ma-rákame, and I felt a genuine regret at parting from her when the tes-güinápuri concluded. We parted only because my original host Tes-disóra insisted, “It is time now for the serious running, Su-kurú, and you must see it. The ra-rajípuri, the race between the best runners of our village and those of Guacho-chí.”

  I asked, “Where are they? I have seen no strangers arriving.”

  “Not yet. They will arrive after we have gone, and they will arrive running. Guacho-chí is far to the southeast of here.”

  He told me the distance, in the Rarámuri words for it, which I forget, but I remember that it would have translated as more than fifteen Mexíca one-long-runs or fifteen of your Spanish leagues. And he was speaking of the distance in a straight line, though in actuality any race in that rugged country has to follow a tortuous course around and between and through ravines and mountains. I calculated that in total the running distance from Guagüey-bo to Guacho-chí must have been nearer fifty one-long-runs. Yet Tes-disóra said casually:

  “To run from one village to the other, and back again, kicking the wooden ball all the way, takes a good runner one day and one night.”

  “Impossible!” I exclaimed. “A hundred one-long-runs? Why, it would be like a man running from the city of Tenochtítlan to the far-off Purémpe village of Kerétaro in the same time.” I shook my head emphatically. “And half of that in the darkness of night? And kicking a ball as he goes? Impossible!”

  Of course Tes-disóra knew nothing of Tenochtítlan or Kerétaro, or their distance apart. He shrugged and said, “If you think it impossible, Su-kurú, you must come along and see it done.”

  “I? I know it is impossible for me!”

  “Then come only part of the way and wait to accompany us home on our return. I have a pair of stout boar-hide sandals you may wear. Since you are not one of our village runners, it will not be cheating if you do not run the ra-rajípuri barefoot, as we do.”

  “Cheating?” I said, amused. “You mean there are rules to this running game?”

  “Not many,” he said, in all seriousness. “Our runners will depart from here this afternoon at the precis
e instant when Grandfather Fire”—he pointed—“touches his rim to the upper edge of that mountain yonder. The people of Guacho-chí have some similar means of judging that exact same instant, and their runners likewise depart. We run toward Guacho-chí, they run toward Guagüey-bo. We pass at some point between, shouting greetings and raillery and friendly insults. When the men of Guacho-chí get here, our women offer them refreshment and try all manner of wiles to detain them—and so do their women when we get there—but you may be sure we pay no heed. We turn right around and continue running, until we are back in our own respective villages. By then, Grandfather Fire will again be touching that mountain, or sinking behind it, or still some way above it, and accordingly we can determine our running time. The men of Guacho-chí do the same, and we send messengers to exchange the results, and thus we know who won the race.”

  I said, “For all that expenditure of time and effort, I hope the winners’ prize is something worthwhile.”

  “Prize? There is no prize.”

  “What? You do all that for not even a trophy? For not even a goal to reach and hold? With no aim or end but to stagger wearily to your own same homes and women again? In the name of your three gods, why?”

  He shrugged again. “We do it because it is what we do best.”

  I said no more, for I knew that it is futile to argue any matter rationally with irrational persons. However, I later gave more thought to Tes-disóra’s reply on that occasion, and it is perhaps not so nonsensical as it sounded then. I suppose I could not better have defended my lifelong preoccupation with the art of word knowing, if anyone had ever demanded of me to know why.

  Only six robust males, those adjudged the best runners of Guagüey-bo, were the actual racers in the ra-rajípuri. The six, of whom Tes-disóra was one that day, were well gorged on the fatigue-averting jípuri cactus before the event began, and they each carried a small water sack and a pouch of pinóli meal, which sustenance they would snatch almost without slowing their pace. Also attached to the waists of their loincloths were some small dry gourds, each containing a pebble, whose rattling noise was intended to keep them from falling asleep on their feet.