Aztec Blood a-3

by Gary Jennings

  "Your blood has been salted by the Spanish. The indio spirits in you have been asleep, but you can awaken them and sweeten your blood with them. To awaken them you must walk the Way of your indio ancestors."

  "Will you teach me the Aztec Ways?"

  "One cannot be taught the Ways. One can be shown the direction, but only their heart will guide them to the truth. I will point you in the right direction, boy, but you must make the journey alone. The gods will test you," he twittered, "and sometimes the test is so severe that they rip the heart from your chest and throw your body to their favorites, the jungle cats. But if you survive you will know magic stronger than the fire the Spanish shoot from their muskets."

  I had never given much thought to the indio side of my blood. In a world where the Spanish dominated, only their blood—or the lack of it—mattered. Now I found myself as fascinated about learning the Way of the Aztec as I was about Spanish literature and sword fighting. In truth, I had stepped from the world of New Spain to the world of the old Aztec. Just as I had had a guide in the fray, who led me through the culture of the Spanish, I was being offered help in learning the path of my indio side.

  I was curious about the Healer. Where had he come from? Did he have a family?

  "I came from the stars," he told me.

  FORTY

  At midday we arrived at a small village where the cacique, the indio headman, welcomed the Healer. We sat outside the cacique's thatched hut, along with several of the old men of the village. Most of the villagers were working in the fields.

  The Healer gave the assembly a gift of tobacco. Pipes were lit and they spoke of the harvest and their fellow villagers. If we had come to the village for a purpose, it was not evident. Nor was it urgent. Life moved slowly for these old men; only death came at a gallop.

  No one asked anything about me, and the Healer volunteered nothing. I squatted with my haunches on my heels and drew meaningless patterns in the dirt as I listened to the talk. I had difficulty understanding many of the words. My Veracruz Náhuatl was inadequate. Fortunately I am good with languages and was able to increase my ability to speak the tongue even as I listened to the chatter of the old men.

  It was more than an hour before they got down to business, and the cacique told him of a woman who needed his services.

  "She is suffering from the espanto," the cacique said. His voice fell into a whisper as he spoke.

  Eh, the espanto! This was something that even I knew something about. I have heard indios in Veracruz whisper of this terrible element. Like the cacique, they spoke the word only in a low voice—if they spoke it at all.

  Espanto was terror, caused by witnessing something frightening. Not just an ordinary tragedy like the death of a loved one; usually it was something in the supernatural sphere, in the form of a ghost or other apparition. It was said that those who have seen Night Ax, the headless specter who stuffs heads in the hole in his chest, and Camazotz, the huge, blood-thirsty bat from the southern region who swoops down and rips people apart with enormous teeth and claws, suffer from espanto for the rest of their lives. People who had the infliction often are unable to eat and end up wasting away until they die.

  There was more discussion between the Healer and the cacique on the way to the woman's hut, but I followed too far behind to hear. When we got to the hut, the woman came out and greeted the assembly. After the proper introductions, to which I deliberately kept out of the center, everyone sat on logs and tobacco was passed around.

  A haze of smoke rose from the six people as they smoked their pipes. The woman puffed as much smoke from her pipe as any of the men.

  She was a widow of about forty, a short, stocky india who had spent a lifetime working the fields, making tortillas, and nursing babes. She told the Healer that her husband had been dead for a year. This was her second husband, the one before having fathered her three children, two boys and a girl. One boy and the girl had died from the peste and the surviving boy was married, had a family, and lived in the village. The woman married the now-deceased second husband about five years ago. Their relationship had been a stormy one. "He was infected by Tlazoltéotl," she told the Healer.

  I recognized the name of the goddess. Tlazoltéotl was the Aztec Venus, a goddess of love.

  "He gave much blood to Tlazoltéotl," she said, "and the goddess rewarded him with the strength of many men in his lovemaking. He made constant demands on me for ahuilnéma." She dabbed tears in her eyes. "I did it so often that soon I could not sit down to roll tortillas. It was not decent. Even in the daylight, he would come home early from the fields and demand that he put his tepúli in my tipíli."

  The Healer and the assembled old men murmured their sympathy for the woman's plight. I wondered what the problem was now that he was dead. But she soon enlightened us.

  "He died last year and for a few months I had peace. But now he has come back."

  I had been scratching meaningless designs into the dirt, but she suddenly had my attention.

  "He comes to me in the middle of the night, takes my blanket off, and removes my nightclothes. While I lay naked, he takes off his clothes and gets on the bed with me. I try to keep him away from me, but he forces my legs apart."

  She showed the old men how the ghost of her husband forced her legs apart, pushing at the inside of her thighs with her hands while her legs trembled and tried to resist the pressure. The old men as a group mouthed aaayyyyo as her legs finally split apart enough for her husband's pene to slip in. All eyes were on the area between her legs that she had exposed to get across her point.

  "He comes to me not once a night but at least three or four times!"

  A gasp of astonishment rose from the old men. Even I gasped. Three or four times a night! The continuous nocturnal struggles that the old woman went through showed on her face—dark circles under tired eyes.

  "I cannot eat and my body is wasting away!" she wailed.

  The old men confirmed excitedly that the woman was indeed wasting away.

  "She was twice this size," the cacique said, "a woman of good proportion, who could work all day in the fields and still make tortillas."

  The Healer asked her more questions about the apparition that raped her at night, going into minute detail about how he looked, the expression on his face, what he wore, and how his body felt to her.

  "Like a fish," the woman said, "his tepúli feels cold and wet, slippery like a fish, when he slips it in my tipíli—" She shuddered as if she could feel the cold fish inside of her, and we all shuddered with her.

  After questioning her, the Healer got up and walked away from the hut, moving along the edge of a set of trees near a maize field. Birds flew in and out of the trees. His own gentle twittering was carried back to us on a breeze.

  We all remained squatted by the woman as the Healer walked among the trees. Everyone had an ear cocked in the Healer's direction, quietly straining to hear what insight the Healer gained from birds. I, too, listened to the songs and chatters of the birds, but gained no wisdom about the woman's problem.

  Finally the Healer came back to share what he had divined.

  "It is not the dead husband who visits you at night," he told the woman, as we listened eagerly. "Tlazoltéotl has created a shadow image of the husband, and it is this shadow that comes at night." He held up his hand to shut off the woman's excited response that the ghost was solid. "The shadow is a reflection of your husband. He looks and feels like him, but he is a mirror image created with Tlazoltéotl's personal smoking mirror."

  The Healer slipped out his own smoking mirror, and the woman and men drew back from it in fear and awe.

  "We must burn her hut," the cacique said, "to rid her of this fiend. He must hide in a dark corner and come out at night to have his pleasure with her."

  The Healer clicked his tongue. "No, it would do no good to burn the hut—not unless the woman was in it. The shadow fiend is inside of her!"

  More gasps. The Healer was a true showman. He
used his hands, eyes, and facial expressions to get across every point. I could imagine him on a comedia stage with the picaros at the fair, the audience alternately in awe and shock from his pronouncements, as he explained how life was but a dream....

  "Tlazoltéotl has hidden the shadow in you," he told the woman. "We need to draw it out and destroy it so it cannot come back and violate you."

  He instructed the cacique to get a fire going; then he led the woman into the hut. I followed inside, but he barred everyone else but the cacique.

  "Lie down on the bed," he told the woman.

  When she was on her back on the bed, he knelt down beside her and began to hum near her ear. His humming got louder and developed into a soft chant.

  His mouth got closer and closer to her ear and finally his lips were brushing the woman's ear. She was wide-eyed and frozen in fear as if she expected him to mount her as her husband's ghost had done.

  He slowly moved away from her ear, just inches, but enough so that the cacique and I could see that he was drawing a snake from her ear and into his mouth.

  He suddenly stood up and spit the snake into his hand. Rushing by the cacique, he ran outside. I followed him outside with the cacique and the woman on my heels.

  The Healer paused before the fire and held the wriggling snake in the air, hoarsely whispering an incantation of words that were completely unfamiliar to me. I knew it was not Náhuatl; no doubt they were magic words learned from secret sources and known only to those in the inner circle of magic.

  He threw the snake into the fire. When the snake hit the flames, a whiff of green flame flashed. As he stood by the fire and made more proclamations in the strange tongue, I wondered if I had seen a little dust come out of his pocket and hit the flames just before the fire flashed green.

  Sweating and trembling from ecstatic excitement, he turned to the woman. "The demon who has violated you each night, I have burned in this fire. It is gone and cannot return. Tlazoltéotl no longer has any control over your life. You will sleep well tonight and will never again be visited by the shadow creature."

  After receiving his pay, a handful of cacao beans, the Healer led us back to the cacique's house, where pipes were once more lit and a jug of pulque passed around.

  The old men were still discussing the oversexed ghost a little later when horsemen came into the village. I had heard the horses approaching and started up to flee but sat down at a look from the Healer. He was right. I could not outrun a horse.

  Three men rode into the village: A Spaniard was on a horse. His clothes were similar to the man who had chased me at the fair, and I took him to be a hacienda overseer. The other two men were on mules, an indio and an africano. Both of these mule riders were dressed better than common indios and slaves. From their appearance I concluded that they were not simply vaqueros but a step above, men who held some authority over common workers.

  I knew the moment I saw them that these men were hunters looking for me. Rather than simply passing through the village, they looked about with the wariness and intensity of men on a mission.

  They paused their mounts by us. The cacique rose and greeted them, the mounted indio returning his greeting before he addressed all of us in Náhuatl.

  "Have any of you seen a mestizo boy, about fourteen or fifteen years old? He would have passed through in the last couple of days."

  I had to lift my head a little to look up to the indio on the mule. My hat was pulled down because of the sun, and I shaded my eyes with my hand in the hopes of concealing part of my face, hoping that the searchers would only see my big nose.

  I waited gripped by fear as a general discussion ensued among the old men about who had passed through the village in the last two days. Finally the cacique said, "No mestizo has passed this way."

  The elders murmured their assent.

  "There is a reward," the hacienda indio said. "Ten pesos if you catch him."

  Ayyo! The reward was a hundred pesos. These searchers were thieves who would cheat poor indios out of most of the reward.

  FORTY-ONE

  That evening as we lay in our blankets, I said to the Healer, "The way you disguised my face fooled not only the Spaniard and the vaqueros, but even the cacique and the old men who were around me for hours."

  "You did not fool the cacique or the elders; they know you are a mestizo."

  I was shocked. "Why didn't they tell the Spaniard?"

  "Their enemy is your enemy," the Healer said. "The cacique's son was forced to labor in a hole the Spanish have dug in the ground to steal silver. These holes are to the north, in the land of the Mictlán, the dark place where the dead go. The silver is put into the mountains by Coyolxauhqui, the Moon goddess. It is her excrement and she puts it in the mountains as a gift to her fellow god, Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld. Digging the holes to steal the wealth of Mictlantecuhtli angers him, and he causes the tunnels to cave in. Many indios die there, some from the cave-ins and others from starvation and beatings. The cacique's son passed from sorrow to the Dark Place while working in one of the holes.

  "The Spanish have recently come again to this small village and taken men. All are the sons, grandchildren, or nephews of the elders. The young men are being forced to dig a hole through a mountain to drain the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan, the city the Spanish called Mexico. Mictlantecuhtli is again angered by this violation, and many indios have died digging through this mountain."

  "But there is a reward offered," I said. "Ten pesos is mucho dinero, probably more than the cacique or anyone else in the village see at any one time."

  "The Spaniard's gold is stolen from Huitzilopochtli, the sun god, who excretes it for Mictlantecuhtli. The villagers do not want the gold. These are vengeful gods, who take many indio lives. The cacique and the other elders want their sons to live and the Spanish to stop forcing them to anger the gods."

  Any Veracruz indio or mestizo, household servant, or street trash would have slit my throat and turned my dead body in for a reward of ten pesos. They would have revealed me to the Spaniard just in the hopes of a small reward. I learned something about the indios of New Spain: The domesticated indios, raised like work animals on haciendas and in cities, were different than the ones who were not corrupted by the conquerors. There were still indios who followed the old ways and to whom honor was more important than gold.

  I asked the most important question. "How did the cacique know I'm not indio? The color of my skin? Hair? My facial features? Did I expose any pale skin? What was it?"

  "Your smell."

  I sat up. "My smell?" I was indignant. That morning I had washed with water from a creek. Late that afternoon both the Healer and I had used the cacique's temazcalli, his steam hut. While the Spanish did not bath as much as an indio, I bathed more than a Spaniard.

  "How could he tell from my smell? Don't people all smell the same?"

  The only response from the Healer was birdlike twittering.

  "I must know," I insisted. "What do I have to do to make sure I smell like an indio? I don't have access to a temazcalli every day. Is there a special soap I can use?"

  He tapped his heart. "Sweat and soap cannot take away what is in the heart. When you walk the Way of your indio ancestors, you will be an indio."

  Before we left the village the Healer treated several others for ailments. Like Fray Antonio, who "doctored" the poor of Veracruz, the Healer was also a man of practical medicine, although the fray would not have recognized his methods.

  A woman brought a small child to be examined for a stomach problem. The Healer held the child over a trough of water, studying the reflection. He twittered a bit and then prescribed pulverized avocado seed and crushed plantain in raw, unfermented maguey juice.

  He examined a man suffering from a bad cough with his smoke mirror. The man, emaciated and in obvious discomfort, described pains in his chest, abdomen, and back. The Healer prescribed pulque and honey.

  I was surprised that he had not drawn sn
akes from either person. "You told me that all illness is caused by the invasion of the body by evil spirits and they take the form of snakes that wiggle around the body. Why didn't you draw the evil snakes from the child and the man today?"

  "Not all sickness can be sucked out. The woman whose dead husband has been forcing her to have sex at night believes his ghost is attacking her. When she sees the snake come out, she realizes that the ghost is gone. The man suffers from los aires, bad spirits in the air, which have entered his body. The snakes are too small and too many to suck out. They are everywhere in his body. He will die soon."

  That shocked me. "The child will die, too?"

  "No, no, the child's stomach is just upset. It would be a waste of a snake to use it with a child who would not understand that the evil had been withdrawn."

  I knew that the snakes were not evil spirits in the body but were stored in a basket hauled around on the Healer's donkey. What he seemed to be telling me was that what he took from people's heads were bad thoughts. The thoughts themselves were maladies.

  Although I had assisted the fray in cutting off a prostitute's leg and many lesser medical treatments, bad thoughts were a strange malady to me. Yet it seemed to work. Each person who had the snake removed smiled and was noticeably happier afterward.

  The woman who suffered from the abuse of her husband brought us corn cakes and honey for breakfast and told the Healer that she had had the first good night's sleep in months. Had the woman gone to a Spanish doctor and complained of a ghost, he would have sent her to a priest for an exorcism. The priest would have used prayers and the cross to drive the evil from her—and perhaps solicited the help of the Inquisition to inquire whether the woman was a witch.

  Whose method was the more humane? The more effective?

  I was beginning to understand what the Healer meant when he said the Spanish had conquered the flesh of the indio but not the spirit.

  FORTY-TWO

  When I awoke in the morning, the Healer had already left his blanket. I went to the creek to wash and saw him in a small clearing between the trees. He was surrounded by birds, one of which was on his shoulder and eating from his hand.