Aztec Autumn

by neetha Napew

  "No, but sometimes you would think he owned it. Tenochtítlan—excuse me, the City of Mexíco—is the encomienda of the crown. Of the king himself. Carlos. From the things made here and the things traded here—every commodity from slaves to sandals, and every last copper maravedí of profit realized therefrom—Carlos takes not just the King's Fifth, but everything. Including all the precious gold and silver I had worked all my life to—"

  "Yes, yes," I said again.

  "Also, of course," he went on, "any citizen can be commanded to cease his occupation of earning his livelihood, to help dig or build or pave for the king's city's improvement. Most of Carlos's buildings are completed now. But that is why the bishop had to wait impatiently for the start of his Cathedral Church, and why it is still under construction. And I believe Zumárraga works his laborers harder than ever the king's builders did."

  "So... as I see it..." I said pensively, "any revolt would best be fomented first among the so-called rústicos. Stir them up to overthrow their masters on the estancias and encomiendas. Only then would we persons of the higher classes turn against the Spanish higher classes. The pot must start to boiling—as a pot does in actuality—from the bottom up."

  "Ayya, Tenamáxtli!" He grabbed at his hair in exasperation. "Are you again thumping that same flabby drum? I assumed you would abandon that nonsensical idea of rebellion, now that you are such a darling of the Christian clergy."

  "And glad I am to be that," I said, "for thereby I can see and hear and learn much more than I could otherwise. But no, I have not abandoned my resolution. In time, I shall tighten that flabby drumhead so that it can be heard. So that it thunders. So that it deafens with its defiance."

  VIII

  For some time, I had had enough grasp of the Spanish tongue that while I was yet too timorous to attempt speaking it anywhere outside the notarius Alonso's classroom, I could understand much of what I heard spoken. So Alonso, aware of that, obviously warned all the clerics of the Cathedral where he and I worked together—and warned any other persons whose duties brought them there—not to discuss anything of a confidential nature within my hearing. I could hardly help but notice that whenever two or more Spanish speakers got to talking in my presence, they would at some point give me a glance askance and then move elsewhere. However, when I walked anonymously about the city, I could eavesdrop shamelessly and undetected. One conversation that I overheard, as I browsed over the vegetables displayed at a market stall, went like this:

  "Just another damned meddling priest," said one Spaniard, a person of some importance, I judged from his dress. "Feigning to weep tears over the cruel mistreatment of the indios, his excuse for making rules that benefit himself."

  "True," said the other man, equally richly attired. "Being a bishop makes him no less the cunning and hypocritical priest. He agrees that we brought to these lands a gift beyond price—the Gospel of Christianity—and that the indios therefore owe us every obedience and exertion we can wring from them. But, he says, we must work them less rigorously and beat them seldomer and feed them better."

  "Or risk their dying," said the first man, "as did those indios who perished during the Conquest and in the plagues of disease that followed—before the wretches could be confirmed in the Faith. Zumárraga pretends that what he wants saved is not the indios' lives, but their souls."

  "So," said the second man, "we strengthen them and coddle them, to the detriment of the work we need them for. Then he conscripts them, to build more churches and chapels and shrines, all over the damned country, and for all of which he takes credit. And any indio that displeases him, Bishop Zurriago can burn."

  They went on for some while in this wise, and I was pleased to hear them do so. It was the Bishop Zumárraga who had condemned my father to his terrible death. When these men called him Bishop Zurriago, I knew they were not mispronouncing his name; they were making play on it, and mocking him, for the word zurriago means "a scourge." Pochotl had told me how the Marqués Cortés had been discredited by his own officers. Now I was hearing stalwart Christians defaming their own highest priest. If both soldiers and the citizenry could openly dislike and malign their superiors, it was evidence that the Spaniards were not so like-minded that they would spontaneously present a united and solid front to any challenge. Nor were they so secure in their vaunted authority as to be invincible. These glimpses into Spanish thought and spirit I found encouraging, possibly useful to me in the future, therefore worth remembering.

  On that same day, in that same market, I finally found the scouts from Tépiz that I had been seeking for so long. At a stall hung all over with baskets woven of rushes and reeds, I inquired of the man attending it—as I had been inquiring everywhere—whether he knew of a Tépiz native named Netzlin or his wife named—

  "Why, I am Netzlin." the man said, eyeing me with some wonderment and a little of apprehension. "My wife is named Citláli."

  "Ayyo, at last!" I cried. "And how good it is to hear someone talking with the accents of the Aztéca tongue again! My name is Tenamáxtli, and I come from Aztlan."

  "Welcome, then, former neighbor!" he said with enthusiasm. "It is indeed good to hear Náhuatl spoken in the old way, not in the city manner. Citláli and I have been here for nearly two years now, and yours is the first voice I have heard from our homeland."

  "Mine may be the only such voice for a long while," I said. "My uncle has decreed that no one from Aztlan or its surrounding communities shall have anything to do with the white men."

  "Your uncle has decreed?" Netzlin said, looking puzzled.

  "My Uncle Mixtzin, the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan."

  "Ayyo, of course, the Uey-Tecútli. I knew he had children. I apologize for not knowing that he had you for a nephew. But if he forbids familiarity with the Spaniards, what are you doing here?"

  I glanced about before I said, "I should prefer to speak of that in private, Cuatl Netzlin."

  "Ah," he said, and winked. "Another secret scout, eh? Then come, Cuatl Tenamáxtli, let me invite you to our humble home. Just wait while I collect my stock of wares. The day latens, so there will likely be few customers disappointed."

  I helped him stack the baskets for carrying, and each of us hefted a load that, combined, must have been a considerable weight for him to bring to market unaided. He led me through back streets, out of the white men's Traza and southeast toward a colación of native dwellings—the one called San Pablo Zoquípan. As we walked, Netzlin told me that after he and his wife decided to settle in the City of Mexíco, he had been straightway put to work at repairing the aqueducts that brought fresh water to the island. He had been paid only barely enough to buy maize meal, from which Citláli made atóli, and they lived on that mush and nothing else. But then, when Netzlin was able to demonstrate to the tepízqui of his barrio that he and Citláli had a better means to earn their livelihood, he was given permission to set up on his own.

  "Tepízqui." I repeated. "That is clearly a Náhuatl word, but I never heard it before. And barrio, that is Spanish for a part of a community—a small neighborhood within it—am I right?"

  "Yes. And the tepízqui is one of us. That is to say, he is the Mexícatl official responsible for seeing that his barrio observes all the white men's laws. He, of course, is answerable to a Spanish official, an alcalde, who governs that whole colación of barrios and their several tepízque and their people."

  So Netzlin had shown his tepízqui how adept and artful he and his wife were at the weaving of baskets. The tepízqui had gone and reported that to the Spanish alcalde, who in turn passed the word to the corregidor who was his superior, and that official in turn reported it to the gobernador of the king's encomienda, which, as I already knew, comprised all the barrios and quarters and inhabitants of the City of Mexíco. The gobernador took up the matter with the Audiencia, when next it met in council, and finally, trickling back down through all those twisty channels, came a concesión real granting Netzlin leave to utilize the stall in the market where I ha
d found him.

  I said, "It seems an almighty lot of conferring and dawdling for a man to put up with, just to sell the work of his own hands."

  Netzlin shrugged, as well as he could under his load. "For all I know, things were just as complicated back when this was the city of Motecuzóma. Anyway, the concesión exempts me from being snatched away to do foreign labor."

  "What decided you to do baskets instead?" I asked.

  "Why, it is the same work that Citláli and I did back in Tépiz. The reeds and canes that we plucked from the brackish bogs up north were not much different from the ones that grow in the lake beds here. Reeds and swamp grass are, in fact, about the only greenery that does grow around the shore here, though I am told that this was once a most fertile and verdant valley."

  I nodded. "Now it merely stinks of mud and moldiness."

  Netzlin continued, "At night, I slog about in the muck and pick the rushes and reeds. Citláli weaves during the day, while I am at the market. Our baskets sell well, because ours are much tighter and more handsome than those done by the few local weavers. The Spanish householders, especially, prefer our wares."

  This was interesting. I said, "So you have had dealings, then, with the Spanish residents? Have you learned much of their tongue?"

  "Very little," he said, not regretfully. "I deal with their servants. Cooks and scullions and laundresses and gardeners. They are of our own people, so I need none of the white men's gabbling language."

  Well, I thought, to have access to their domestics might be even more useful to my purpose than to have acquaintance with the Spanish householders themselves.

  "Anyway," Netzlin went on, "Citláli and I earn a rather better living than most of our neighbors in our barrio. We eat meat or fish at least twice in a month. Once, we even shared one of those strange and expensive fruits the Spaniards call a limón."

  I asked, "Is that all you ever aspire to be, Cuatl Netzlin? A weaver and peddler of baskets?"

  He looked genuinely surprised. "It is all I have ever been."

  "Suppose someone offered to lead you to war and glory. To rid The One World of the white men. What would you say to that?"

  "Ayya, Cuatl Tenamáxtli! The whites are my basket-buyers. They put the food in my mouth. If ever I wish to rid myself of them, I have only to return to Tépiz. But no one there ever paid as well for my baskets. Besides, I have no experience of war. And I cannot even imagine what glory might be."

  I gave up any idea of recruiting Netzlin as a warrior, but he still could come in handy if I wanted to infiltrate the servants' quarters of some Spanish mansion. I am sorry to say, though, that Netzlin would not be the last potential recruit to decline to join in my campaign, on the ground that he had become dependent on the white men's patronage. Each of those who did so might have quoted at me—if he ever had heard it—the old Spanish proverb: in effect, that a cripple would have to be crazy to break his own crutch. Or, to describe more accurately a man pleading that reason to dodge service in my cause, I might have said of him what I have heard some uncouth Spaniards say: that he preferred instead to lamer el culo del patrón.

  We arrived at Netzlin's barrio in San Pablo Zoquípan, which was one of the not too squalid outskirts of the city. He told me, with some pride, that he and Citláli had built their own house—as had most of their neighbors—with their own hands, of the sun-dried mud brick that is called adobe in Spanish. He also proudly pointed out the adobe steam hut at the end of the street, which all the local residents had joined together to build.

  We entered his little two-room abode through a curtain closing the doorway, and he introduced me to his wife. Citláli was about his own age—I guessed them both to be thirty or so—and sweet-faced and of a merry disposition. Also, I soon realized, she was as intelligent as he was obtuse. She was busily working at a just-begun basket when we arrived, although she was enormously pregnant and had to squat around her belly, so to speak, on the earthen floor that was her workplace. Tactfully, I think, I inquired whether in her delicate condition she should be doing manual labor.

  She laughed and said without embarrassment, "Actually, my belly is more help than hindrance. I can use it as a form—a mold—for shaping any size basket from small and shallow to voluminous."

  Netzlin asked, "What sort of lodgings have you found, Tenamáxtli?"

  "I am living on the Christians' charity. At the Mesón de San José. Perhaps you know of it?"

  "Yes, we do," he said. "Citláli and I availed ourselves of that shelter for a few nights when we first came here. But we could not endure being put into separate chambers every night."

  Netzlin might not be a willing warrior, I thought, but he was evidently a devoted husband.

  Citláli spoke again, "Cuatl Tenamáxtli, why do you not make your home here with us until you can afford quarters of your own?"

  "That is wondrously kind and hospitable of you, my lady. But if being separated at the mesón was unacceptable to you, having a stranger under this same roof would be even more intolerable. Especially since another and smaller stranger is about to join you."

  She smiled warmly at that. "We are all of us aliens in this city. You would be no more a stranger than the small newcomer will be."

  "You are more than gracious, Citláli," I said. "But the fact is that I could afford to move elsewhere. I have employment that pays me at least better than laborer's wages. But I am studying the Spanish language at the Colegio right next door to the mesón, so I will stay there until it becomes too wearisome."

  "Studying the white men's tongue?" said Netzlin. "Is that why you are here in the city?"

  "That is part of the reason." I went on to tell him how I intended to learn everything possible about the white men. "So that I can effectively raise a rebellion against them. Drive them out of all the lands of The One World."

  "Ayyo..." Citláli breathed softly, regarding me with what could have been awe or admiration—or maybe suspicion that she and her husband were entertaining a madman.

  Netzlin said, "So that was why you asked me about going to war and glory. And you can see"—he indicated his wife—"why I was less than eager. With my first son about to be born."

  "First son!" said Citláli, laughing again. To me she said, "First child. I care not, son or daughter, so long as it is hale and whole."

  "It will be a boy," said Netzlin. "I insist on it."

  "And of course," I said, "you are right, not wanting to go adventuring at such a time. There is, though, one favor I would ask of you. If your neighbors have no objection, might I have your permission to use the local steam hut now and again?"

  "Surely so. I know the mesón has no bathing facilities at all. How do you keep even passably clean?"

  "I have been bathing from a pail. And then washing my clothes in it. The friars do not mind my heating my water over their fire. But I have not enjoyed a good, thorough steaming since I left Aztlan. I fear I must smell like a white man."

  "No, no," they both assured me, and Netzlin said, "Not even a brute Zácachichimécatl just come from the desert smells as bad as a white man. Come, Tenamáxtli, we will go to the steam hut this instant. And after our bath we will drink some octli and smoke a poquíetl or two."

  "And when next you come," said Citláli, "bring all your spare garments. I will take care of your laundering from now on."

  So thereafter I spent as much time visiting those two pleasant persons—and their steam hut—as I did in conversation with Pochotl at the mesón. And all the while, of course, I was still spending much time with the notarius Alonso—in his Colegio classroom each morning, in his Cathedral workroom each afternoon. We often interrupted our task of rooting through the old word-picture books to sit back and smoke while we discussed unrelated topics. My Spanish had improved to the point where I had a better grasp of those words he frequently had to use because there simply were no equivalent terms in Náhuatl.

  "Juan Británico," he said to me one day, "are you acquainted with Monseñor Suárez-
Begega, the arcediano of this Cathedral?"

  "Acquainted? No. But I have seen him in the halls."

  "He has evidently seen you, too. As archdeacon, you know, he is in charge of administration here, assuring the fitness of all things pertaining to the Cathedral. And he bids me give you a message from him."

  "A message? For me? From someone so important?"

  "Yes. He wants you to start wearing pantalones."

  I blinked at him. "The lofty Suárez-Begega can stoop to concern himself with my bare shanks? I dress the same as all the Mexíca working around here. The way we men have always dressed."

  "That is the point," said Alonso. "The others are laborers, builders, artisans at best. All very well for them to wear capas and calzoncillos and guaraches. Your work entitles you—obliges you, according to the monseñor—to dress like a white Spaniard."

  I said with asperity, "I can, if he likes, array myself in a fur-trimmed doublet, tight-fitting trousers, a feather-topped hat, some fobs and bangles, tooled-leather boots, and pass for a swaggering Moro Spaniard."

  Stifling a smile, he said, "No fur, fobs or feathers. Ordinary shirt, trousers and boots will suffice. I will give you the money to buy them. And you need wear them only at the Colegio and here. Among your own people, you can dress as you please. Do this for me, Cuatl Juan, so I do not have the archdeacon pestering me about it."

  I grumbled that my posing as a Spanish white man was almost as distasteful as trying to pass for a Moro, but at last I said, "For you, of course, Cuatl Alonso."

  He said, with asperity to match my own, "This distastefully white Spaniard thanks you."

  "I apologize," I said. "You personally are certainly not so. But tell me this, if you would. You always speak of white Spaniards or of Spanish whites. Does that mean that there are Spaniards somewhere who are not white? Or that there are other white people besides the Spanish?"

  "Be assured, Juan Británico, that all Spaniards are white. Unless perhaps one excepts the Jews of Spain who converted to Christianity. They are somewhat dark and oily of complexion. But yes, indeed, there are many other white peoples besides Spaniards. Those of every nation in Europe."