by neetha Napew
I saw other dogs, too, of various shapes and sizes and unfierce mien, though one could hardly believe that they are related to the pudgy little techíchi dogs that we of The One World had for ages been breeding for no other use than as emergency rations. Indeed, there were no more techíchime to be found in the City of Mexíco, because all of the native citizens had become so fond of puerco meat and there was such an abundance of it here, and the Spaniards never would eat techíchi meat. There were other animals here that were totally new to me, though I assume they must be Old Spain's peculiar variety of our jaguar, cuguar and océlotl. They are ever so much smaller than those cats, however, and tame and gentle and soft of voice. And as only the cuguar, of all our cats, can do, these miniature versions even purr.
The elbow-to-elbow buildings on the narrower side streets were both working and living quarters for their occupants, all of them white. At ground level might be a shop selling some kind of merchandise, a smithy, a stable for horses or an eating establishment open to the public—the white public. The one or two or three floors above would be where the proprietors and their families lived.
Except for those I have mentioned, the dark-skinned persons I saw on those streets and avenues were mostly swift-messengers going somewhere at a trot or tamémime trudging along under yokes or tumplines bearing bales and bundles. Those men were dressed as I was, in tilmatl mantle, máxtlatl loincloth and cactli sandals. But there were some others who had to be servants of white families, because they were dressed like Spaniards, in tunics and tight-fitting breeches and boots and hats of one shape or another. Some of the older of those men had curious scars on their cheeks. The first such man that I saw I assumed had come by his scar in some war or duel, because its shape—like this: G—conveyed nothing to me. But then I saw several more men whose cheeks were marked with that same figure. And I saw others, younger men, similarly scarred but with different symbols. It was clear that all of them had deliberately been so marked. Whether any of the city's women had been treated the same, I could not determine, because I saw on those streets no women at all, neither white nor dark.
I learned later that this portion of the city through which I was plodding was called the Traza, a vast rectangle comprising many streets and avenues in extent, the entire center of the City of Mexíco. The Traza was reserved for the residences, churches, commercial establishments and official buildings of the white men and their families. There were exceptions. The copper-skinned men in clerical garb lived in the church residences along with their white fellow churchmen. And a few of the white families' native servants ate and slept in the houses where they worked. But all other native citizens—even those who worked for the governing functionaries—had to go home at night to the colaciones, the several parts of the city that extended out from the Traza to the edges of the island. And those sections ranged in quality and appearance and cleanliness from respectable to tolerable to vile.
Just looking at the fine, large buildings that composed the Traza, I wondered if the Spaniards were ignorant of the natural disasters that this city was prone to, and which were well known to everybody else in The One World. Tenochtítlan had frequently been inundated by floods of the surrounding lake waters, and two or three times had been all but washed away. I supposed that there was no longer much danger of floods, with Lake Texcóco's being now so diminished.
However, the entire island, because it was simply an upcropping of the lake's unstable bed, had often also been racked by what we called the tlalolíni—the terremoto in Spanish. On some of those occasions, just one or a few of Tenochtítlan's structures had shifted position slightly or had leaned sideways or had sunk below ground level to some degree. On other occasions, the whole island had violently shaken and heaved, making buildings fall down as suddenly as did the people on the streets. That was why, by the time my Uncle Mixtzin first saw Tenochtítlan, its major buildings were all firmly broad-based, and the lesser ones were built on pilings that would merely sway or give a little, to compensate for the island's settling or quaking.
Another thing that I learned later was that the Spaniards were beginning to realize this propensity of the island, and from experience. The looming Cathedral Church of San Francisco, the biggest, therefore the heaviest, structure yet attempted by the white builders—and not even completed yet—was already perceptibly and lopsidedly sinking. Its stone walls were cracking in places, its marble floors buckling.
"It is the spiteful doing of the pagan demons," declared the priests who inhabited the place. "We should never have built this house of God on the site of the red heathens' monstrous temple, and even used that temple's stones in the process. We must start again, and rebuild elsewhere."
So the Cathedral's architects were frantically putting wedges under the building, and buttresses about it, trying every means to keep it upright and intact at least until it was finished. At the same time, they were drawing plans for a whole new Cathedral to be erected some distance away, with an extensive underground foundation that they hoped would hold it up.
I knew none of that on the day, still carrying the empty jar on my shoulder, I crossed the immense open square beside which the Cathedral stood. I set the jar down beside the big main door, so that I might look less like an itinerant laborer and more like an estimable caller. I waited while several clerically gowned white men went in or came out, addressing each of them and asking if I might enter their temple. (I also knew nothing then of the rules regarding respectful entrance; for instance, whether I should kiss the ground before or after going through the door.) What soon became evident was that not a one of these white priests, friars, whatever they were—and some had been resident in New Spain for as long as ten years—could speak or comprehend a word of Náhuatl. And none of our people-turned-Crixtanóyotl came by. So I tried repeating over and over, as best I could pronounce the words, "notarius" and "Alonso" and "Molina."
Finally one of the men snapped his fingers in recognition of what I was asking, and led me through the portal—no kissing the ground at all, by either of us, though he did give a sort of reverential little dip at one point—through the cavernous interior and along aisles and corridors and up stairways. Inside the church, I noticed, all the churchmen removed their hats—they wore quite an assortment, from small and round to large and puffy—and every one of them had a circle of his hair shaved bald at the crown of his head.
My guide stopped at an open door and motioned for me to enter, and in that small room sat the notarius Alonso at a table. He was smoking picíetl, but not in the way we do, with the dried, shredded herb rolled in a tube of reed or paper. He held between his lips a long, stiff, thin thing of white clay, the far end of which was bent upward and packed with the slow-burning picíetl, and he inhaled the smoke from the other, narrower end.
The notarius had one of our native pleated bark-paper books before him, and was copying from its many colored word-pictures. I should say translating from it, because the copy he was writing on another paper was not in word-pictures. He was doing it with a sharpened duck quill that he dipped in a small jar of black liquid, and then scribbled on his paper only wiggly lines of that one color—what I know now, of course, is the Spanish style of writing. He finished a line and looked up, and looked pleased, but had to fumble for my name:
"Ayyo, it is good to see you again... er... Cuatl..."
"Tenamáxtli, Cuatl Alonso."
"Cuatl Tenamáxtli, to be sure."
"You told me I might come and talk to you again."
"By all means, though I did not expect you so soon. What can I do for you, brother?"
"Teach me to speak and understand Spanish, if you would, brother notarius."
He gave me a long look before he asked, "Why?"
"You are the only Spaniard I have met who speaks my language. And you said it makes you useful as a communicator between your people and mine. Perhaps I could be equally useful. If none other of your countrymen can manage to learn our Náhuatl—"
; "Oh, I am not the only one who speaks it," he said. "But the others, as they become fluent, get variously assigned to other parts of the city or out in the farther reaches of New Spain."
"Then will you teach me?" I persisted. "Or if you cannot, maybe one of those others..."
"I can and I will," he said. "I cannot make time to give you private lessons, but I do teach a class every day at the Colegio de San José. That is a school established solely for the education of you indios—of you people. Every priest-teacher at the Colegio speaks at least a passable Náhuatl."
"Then I am in luck," I said, pleased. "As it happens, I am lodging in the friars' mesón next door."
"Even better luck, Tenamáxtli, there is a beginners' class just starting. That will make the learning easier for you. If you will be at the front gate of the Colegio tomorrow at the hour of Prime—"
"Prime?" I said blankly.
"I was forgetting. Well, never mind. As soon as you have broken your night's fast—that would be the hour of Lauds—simply step over to the Colegio gate and wait for me. I will see that you are properly admitted and enrolled and told when and where your classes will be."
"I cannot thank you enough, Cuatl Alonso."
He picked up his quill again, expecting me to depart. When I hesitated there before his table, he asked, "Was there something else?"
"I saw something today, brother. Can you tell me what it means?"
"What sort of something?"
"May I borrow your quill for a moment?" He gave it to me, and I wrote with that black liquid on the back of my hand (not to spoil any of his paper) the figure G. "What is that, brother?"
He looked at it and said, "Hay."
"Hay?"
"That is the name of the character. Hay. It is a letra inicial—well, there is no word in Náhuatl for it. You will learn these things in your Colegio class. Hay is a particle of the Spanish language, as is ahchay, ee, hota... and so on. Where did you see this?"
"It was scarred into a man's face. Cut or burned, I could not tell."
"Ah, yes... the brand." He frowned and looked away. It seemed that I had a faculty for making Cuatl Alonso uncomfortable. "In that case, the letra inicial stands for guerra. War. It means the man was a prisoner of war, therefore now a slave."
"I saw several wearing that mark. I saw others—like these." Again I wrote on the back of my hand, the figures HC and JZ and perhaps others that I do not now remember.
"More letras iniciales," he said. "Ahchay thay, that would be the Marqués Hernán Cortés. And hota thaydah, that would be His Excellency, the Bishop Juan de Zumárraga."
"Those are names? The men's own names are branded onto them?"
"No, no. The names of their owners. When a slave is not a prisoner taken during the conquest of ten years ago, but is simply bought and paid for, then the owner may brand him—like a horse—as a permanent claim on him, you see."
"I see," I said. "And female slaves? They are branded, too?"
"Not always." He looked uncomfortable yet again. "If she is a young woman, and comely, her owner may not wish to disfigure her beauty."
"I can understand that," I said, and gave his quill back to him. "Thank you, Cuatl Alonso. You have taught me some things of the Spanish nature already. I can hardly wait to learn the language."
VI
I had intended to ask the notarius Alonso for another favor—his suggestion of some work I might do that would pay me a living wage. But as soon as he mentioned the Colegio de San José, I decided on the instant not to ask that question. I would go on living at the mesón for as long as the friars would let me. It was right next to the school, and not having to work for my food and lodging would enable me to take advantage of all the kinds of education the Colegio could teach me.
I would not be living luxuriously, of course. Two meals a day, and not very substantial meals, were hardly enough to sustain one of my age and vigor and appetite. Also, I would have to contrive some way to keep myself clean. In my traveling pack, I had brought only two changes of apparel besides what I was wearing; those clothes would have to take turns being laundered. Just as important, I would have to make some arrangement for washing my body. Well, if I could find that Tépiz couple, perhaps they would accommodate me in the matter of hot water and amóli soap, even if they had no steam hut. Meanwhile, I had a fair number of cacao beans in my purse. For a time, at least, I could buy from the native markets the amenities that were indispensable, and an occasional morsel to supplement the friars' charity fare.
"You can reside here forever, if you wish," said the scrawny man, Pochotl, whom I found at the mesón when I returned there, both of us getting into the line for the evening meal. "The friars will not mind, or probably even notice. The white men like to say that they 'cannot tell one of the filthy indios from another.' I myself have been sleeping here for months, and gleaning my two skimpy meals a day, ever since I sold the last few granules of my stock of gold and silver." He added wistfully, "You may not believe it, but I once was admirably fat."
I asked, "What do you do with yourself during the rest of the day?"
"Sometimes, feeling guilty about being a parasite, I stay here to help the friars clean out the cooking vessels and the men's sleeping chamber. The women's quarters are cleaned by some nuns—those are female friars—who come over from what they call the Refugio de Santa Brígida. But most days, I merely amble about the city, remembering what used to be where in the bygone days, or just gazing at things in the market stalls that I wish I could buy. Idling, nothing but idling."
We had shuffled our way to the vats and a friar was ladling our bowls full—again with duck soup—handing us each a bolillo when, as on the previous afternoon, there came that distant thunder rumble from the eastward.
"There they go," said Pochotl. "Collecting ducks again. The fowlers are as punctual as those misbegotten church bells that mark divisions of the day by beating us on the ears. But, ayya, we must not complain. We get our share of the ducks."
I carried my bowl and bread into the building, thinking that I must sometime soon go to the eastern side of the island at twilight and see what was the method the Spanish fowlers employed to harvest the ducks.
Pochotl joined me again and said, "I have confessed to being a mendicant and an idler. But what about you, Tenamáxtli? You are still young and strong and not work shy, I think. Why are you planning to stay on here among us pauper wretches?"
I pointed toward the Colegio next door. "I shall be going to classes yonder. Learning to speak Spanish."
"Whatever for?" he asked, in mild surprise. "You do not even speak Náhuatl very well."
"Not the modern Náhuatl of this city, that is true. My uncle told me that we of Aztlan speak the language as it was spoken long ago. But everyone I have met here understands me, and I them. You, for instance. Also, you may have noticed that many of our fellow lodgers—those who come from the Chichiméca lands far to the north—speak several different dialects of Náhuatl, but all of them understand each other without great difficulty."
"Arrgh! Who cares what the Dog People speak?"
"Now there you are mistaken, Cuatl Pochotl. I have heard many Mexíca call the Chichiméca the Dog People... and the Téochichiméca the Wild Dog People... and the Zácachichiméca the Rabid Dog People. But they are wrong. Those names do not derive from chichíne, the word for dog, but from chichíltic—red. Those people are of many different nations and tribes, but when they call themselves collectively the Chichiméca, they mean only red-skinned, which is to say akin to all of us of The One World."
Pochotl snorted. "Not akin to me, thank you. They are an ignorant and dirty and cruel people."
"Because they live all their lives in the cruel desert lands up north."
He shrugged. "If you say so. Still, why would you wish to learn the Spaniards' language?"
"So I can learn about the Spaniards themselves. Their nature, their Christian superstitions. Everything."
Pochotl used the last of hi
s bolillo to sop up the last of his soup, then said, "You saw the man burned to death yesterday, yes? Then you know all that anyone could possibly want to know about Spaniards and Christians."
"Well, I know one thing. My jar disappeared from right outside the Cathedral. It must have been a Christian who stole it. I had only borrowed it. Now I owe these mesón friars a jar."
"What in the name of all the gods are you talking about?"
"Nothing. Never mind." I looked long at this self-described mendicant, parasite, idler. But Pochotl did possess a lifetime's knowledge of this city. I decided to trust him. I said, "I wish to know everything about the Spaniards because I want to overthrow them."
He laughed harshly. "Who does not? But who can?"
"Perhaps you and I."
"I?!" Now he laughed uproariously. "You?!"
I said defensively, "I have had the same military training as did those warriors who made the Mexíca the pride and terror and overlords of The One World."
"Much good their training did those warriors," he growled. "Where are they now? The few who are left are walking around with brands etched into their faces. And you expect to prevail where they could not?"
"I believe a determined and dedicated man can do anything."
"But no man can do everything." Then he laughed again. "Not even you and I can."
"And others, of course. Many others. Those Chichiméca, for instance, whom you so despise. Their lands have not been conquered, nor have they. And theirs is not the only northern nation still defying the white men. If all of those were to rise up and charge southward... Well, we will talk more, Pochotl, when I have begun my studies."