Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  The sleeping chamber contained no woven reed pallet, but a raised platform, and on that some ten or twelve thick quilts apparently stuffed with down; anyway, they made a pile that felt as soft as a cloud looks. When ready to sleep, I could slide myself in between the quilts at any layer, depending on how much softness I wanted under me and how much warmth on top.

  The sanitary closet, however, I could not so easily comprehend. There was a sunken tiled depression in the floor, in which to sit and bathe, but there were no water jugs anywhere about. And there was a receptacle on which to sit and perform the necessary functions, but it was solidly fixed to the floor and obviously could not be emptied after each use. Each of those, the bath and the slop jar, had a curiously shaped pipe jutting from the wall above it, but neither pipe was spouting water or doing anything else that I could ascertain. Well, I would never have thought that I should have to ask instruction in cleaning and evacuating myself, but, after studying the utilities in bafflement for a while, I went to pull the bell rope over the bed, and waited with some embarrassment for the appearance of my assigned tlacotli.

  The fresh-faced little boy who came to my door said pertly, "I am Cozcatl, my lord, and I am nine years old, and I serve all the young lords in the six apartments at the end of the corridor."

  Cozcatl means Jeweled Collar, rather a high-flown name for such as he, but I did not laugh at it. Since a name-giving tonalpoqui would never deign to consult his divinatory books for a slave-born child, even if the parents could afford it, no such child ever had a real and registered name. His or her parents simply picked one at whim, and it could be wildly inappropriate, as witness Gift of the Gods. Cozcatl appeared well fed and bore no marks of beatings, and he did not cringe before me, and he wore a spotlessly white short mantle in addition to the loincloth that was customarily a male slave's only apparel. So I assumed that among the Acolhua, or at least in the palace vicinity, the lower classes were fairly treated.

  The boy was carrying in both hands a tremendous pottery vessel of steaming hot water, so I quickly stepped aside, and he took it to the sanitary closet and poured it into the sunken tub. He also spared me the humiliation of having to ask to be shown how the closet's facilities worked. Even if Cozcatl took me to be a legitimate noble, he could have supposed that any noble from the provinces would be unaccustomed to such luxury—and he would have been right. Without waiting to be asked, he explained:

  "You can cool your bathwater to the temperature you prefer, my lord, like this." He pointed to the clay pipe jutting from the wall. It was pierced near its end by another, shorter piece of pipe stuck vertically through it. He merely twisted that short pipe and it gushed clear cold water.

  "The long pipe brings water from our main supply line. The short pipe has one hole in its side, and when you twist it to make that hole face inward to the long pipe, the water can run as needed. When you are through with your bath, my lord, just remove that óli stopper in the bottom and the used water will drain away through another pipe beneath."

  Next he indicated the curiously immobile slop jar and said, "The axixcali works the same way. When you have relieved yourself in it, simply twist that short pipe above, and a gush of water will wash the wastes away through that hole in its bottom."

  I had not even noticed the hole before, and I asked in ignorant horror, "The excrement falls into the room below?"

  "No, no, my lord. Like the bathwater, into a pipe that carries it clear away. Into a pond from which the manure men dredge fertilizer for the farm fields. Now, I will order my lord's evening meal prepared, so it will be waiting when he has finished his bath."

  It was going to take me a while to stop playing the rustic and to learn the ways of the nobility, I reflected, as I sat at my own table in my own room and dined on grilled rabbit, beans, tortillas, and batter-fried squash blossoms... with chocolate to drink. Where I came from, chocolate had been a special treat doled out once or twice a year, and only weakly flavored. Here, the foamy red drink—of precious cacao, honey, vanilla, and scarlet achiyotl seeds, all ground up and beaten together to a stiff froth—was as free for the asking as spring water. I wondered how long it would take me to lose my Xaltócan accent, to speak the precise Náhuatl of Texcóco, and gracefully to "get used to comfort," as the First Lady had phrased it.

  In time I came to realize that no noble, not even an honorary or temporary one like myself, ever had to do anything for himself. When a nobleman reached one hand up to undo the shoulder clasp of his magnificent feather mantle, he simply walked away from the garment, and it never hit the floor. Some servant was always there to take it from his shoulders, and the noble knew there would be someone there. If a nobleman folded his legs to sit down, he never looked behind him—even if he collapsed suddenly, involuntarily, from an excess of octli drinking. But he never fell. There was always an icpali chair slid under him, and he knew the chair would be there.

  I wondered: were the noble folk born with such a lofty assurance, or could I possibly acquire it by practice? There was only one way to find out. At the first opportunity—I forget the occasion—I entered a room crowded with lords and ladies, made the proper salutations, sat down with assurance, and without looking behind me. The icpali was right there. I did not even glance back to see whence it came. I knew then that a chair—or anything I wanted and expected from my inferiors—would always be there. That small experiment taught me a thing I never forgot. To command the respect and deference and privileges reserved for the nobility, I need only dare to be a noble.

  On the morning after my arrival, the slave Cozcatl came with my breakfast and with an armload of new clothes for me, more clothes than I had ever worn and worn out during my whole previous life. There were loincloths and mantles of glossy white cotton, beautifully embroidered. There were sandals of rich and pliable leathers, including one gilded pair for ceremonial wear, which laced nearly to my knees. The Lady of Tolan had even sent a small gold and bloodstone clasp for my mantle, which heretofore I had worn only knotted at the shoulder.

  When I had donned one of those stylish outfits, Cozcatl led me again around the palace grounds, pointing out the buildings containing schoolrooms. There were more classes available than in any calmécac. I was most interested, of course, in those dealing with word knowing, history, geography, and the like. But I could also, if I chose, attend classes in poetry, gold and silver work, feather work, gem cutting, and various other arts.

  "The classes that do not require tools and benches are held indoors only in bad weather," said my little guide. "On fine days like this, the Lord Teachers and their students prefer to work outside."

  I could see the groups, sitting on the lawns or gathered about the marble pavilions. The teacher of every class was an elderly man wearing a distinctive yellow mantle, but his students were an assortment: boys and men of varying sizes and ages, here and there even a girl or a woman or a slave sitting slightly apart.

  "The students are not graded by age?" I asked.

  "No, my lord, but by their ability. Some are much further along in one subject than in another. When you first attend, you will be interrogated by each Lord Teacher to determine in which of his classes you will fit best—for example, among the Beginners, the Learners, the Somewhat Learned, and so on. He will grade you according to what knowledge you already have and what he judges to be your capacity for learning more."

  "And the females? The slaves?"

  "Any daughter of a noble is allowed to attend, all the way through the highest grades, if she has the ability and the desire. The slaves are allowed to study as far as is consistent with their particular employments."

  "You yourself are well spoken, for such a young tlacotli."

  "Thank you, my lord. I went as far as learning good Náhuatl, deportment, and the rudiments of housekeeping. When I am older I may apply for further training, in hope of someday becoming Master of the Keys in some noble household."

  I said grandly, expansively, generously, "If ever I have a nob
le household, Cozcatl, I promise you that position."

  I did not mean "if," I meant "when." I was no longer idly wishing for a rise to eminence, I was already envisioning it. I stood there in that lovely parkland, my servant at my side, and I stood tall in my fine new clothes, and I smiled to think of the great man I would be. I sit here now, among you, my reverend masters, and I sit bent and shriveled in my rags, and I smile to think of the puffed-up young pretender I was.

  The Lord Teacher of History, Neltitica, who looked old enough to have experienced all of history, announced to the class, "We have with us today a new piltontli student, a Mexícatl who is to be known as Head Nodder."

  I was so pleased to be introduced as a "young noble" student that I did not wince at the nickname.

  "Perhaps, Head Nodder, you would be good enough to give us a brief history of your Mexíca people...."

  "Yes, Lord Teacher," I said confidently. I stood up, and every face in the class turned to gaze at me. I cleared my throat and said what I had been taught in Xaltócan's House of Learning Manners:

  "Know, then, that my people originally dwelt in a region far to the north of these lands. It was Aztlan, The Place of Snowy Egrets, and at that time they called themselves the Aztlantláca or the Aztéca, the Egret People. But Aztlan was a hard country, and their chief god Huitzilopóchtli told them of a sweeter land to be found to the south. He said it would be a long and difficult journey, but that they would recognize their new homeland when they reached it, for they would see there a nopali cactus on which perched a golden eagle. So all the Aztéca abandoned their fine homes and palaces and pyramids and temples and gardens, and they set out southward."

  Someone in the class snickered.

  "The journey took sheaves upon sheaves of years, and they had to pass through the lands of many other peoples. Some were hostile; they fought and tried to turn the Aztéca back. Others were hospitable and let the Aztéca rest among them, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for many years, and those peoples were repaid by being taught the noble language, the arts and sciences known only to the Aztéca."

  Someone in the class murmured, and someone else gave a low chuckle.

  "When the Aztéca came finally into this valley, they were kindly received by the Tecpanéca people on the western shore of the lake, who gave them Chapultepec for a resting place. The Aztéca lived on that Grasshopper Hill while their priests continued to range about the valley in search of the eagle on the nopali. Now, in the Tecpanéca dialect of our language, the nopali cactus is called tenochtli, so those people called the Aztéca the Tenochca, and in time the Aztéca themselves took that name of Cactus People. Then, as Huitzilopóchtli had promised, the priests did find the sign—a golden eagle perched on a cactus—and this they found on a not-yet-peopled island in the lake. All the Tenochca-Aztéca immediately and joyfully moved from Chapultepec to that island."

  Someone in the class laughed openly.

  "On the island they built two great cities, one called Tenochtítlan, Place of the Cactus People, and the other Tlaltelólco, The Rocky Place. While they were building the cities, the Tenochca noticed how every night they could see from their island the moon Metztli reflected in the lake waters. So they also referred to their new habitation as Metztli-Zictli, In the Middle of the Moon. In time, they shortened that to Mexitli and then to Mexíco, and eventually came to call themselves the Mexíca. For their sign they adopted the symbol of the eagle perched on the cactus, and the eagle holds in its beak the ribbonlike symbol which represents war."

  A number of my new classmates were laughing by now, but I persevered.

  "Then the Mexíca began to extend their dominion and influence, and many peoples have benefited, either as adoptive Mexíca or as allies or as trading partners. They learned to worship our gods, or variations of them, and they let us appropriate their gods. They learned to count with our arithmetic and mark time by our calendars. They pay us tribute in goods and currency, for fear of our invincible armies. They speak our language out of deference to our superiority. The Mexíca have built the mightiest civilization ever known in this world, and Mexíco-Tenochtítlan stands at its center—In Cem-Anáhuac Yoyótli, The Heart of the One World."

  I kissed the earth to the aged Lord Teacher Neltitica and sat down. My classmates were all waving their hands for permission to speak, meanwhile making a clamor of noises ranging from laughter to hoots of derision. The Lord Teacher gestured imperiously, and the class sat still and silent.

  "Thank you, Head Nodder," he said politely. "I had wondered what version the Mexíca teachers were expounding these days. Of history you know abysmally little, young lord, and what little you know is wrong in almost every particular."

  I stood up again, my face as hot as if I had been slapped. "Lord Teacher, you requested a brief history. I can elaborate in more detail."

  "Kindly spare me," he said. "And in return I will do you the kindness of correcting just one of the details already proffered. The words Mexíca and Mexíco did not derive from Metztli the moon." He waved for me to be seated, and addressed the class as a whole:

  "Young lord and lady students, this illustrates what I have often told you before now. Be skeptical of the many versions of the world's history you are likely to hear, for some are as full of impossible invention as they are of vanity. What is more, I have never met a historian—I have never met any sort of professional scholar who could put into his work the slightest trace of humor or ribaldry or jollity. I have never met one who did not consider his particular subject the most momentous and weighty of all studies. Now, I concede the importance of scholarly works—but need importance always wear the long face of stern solemnity? Historians may be serious men, and history may sometimes be so somber that it saddens. But it is people who make the history, and they often play pranks or cut capers while they are doing it. The true story of the Mexíca confirms that."

  He spoke directly to me again: "Head Nodder, your Aztéca ancestors brought nothing to this valley: no ancient wisdom, no arts, no sciences, no culture. They brought nothing but themselves: a skulking, ignorant, nomad people who wore ragged animal skins crawling with vermin, and who worshiped a loathsomely pugnacious god of slaughter and bloodshed. That rabble was despised and repulsed by every other already developed nation hereabout. Would any civilized people welcome an invasion of uncouth beggars? The Aztéca did not settle on that island in the lakeside swamp because their god gave them any sign, and they did not go there joyfully. They went because there was nowhere else to go, and because no one else had cared to claim that pimple of land surrounded by marshes."

  My classmates watched me from the corners of their eyes. I tried not to flinch under Neltitica's words.

  "They did not immediately build great cities, or anything else; they had to spend all their time and energy just in finding something to eat. They were not allowed to fish, for the lake's fishing rights belonged to the nations about it. So for a long time your ancestors existed—just barely existed—by eating revolting little things like worms and water insects, and the slimy eggs of those creatures, and the only edible plant that grew in that miserable swamp. It was mexixin, the common cress or peppergrass, a scraggly and bitter-tasting weed. But if your forebears had nothing else, Head Nodder, they had a mordant sense of humor. They began to call themselves, with wry irony, the Mexíca."

  The very name evoked another knowing snicker from the class. Neltitica went on:

  "Eventually the Mexíca devised the chinamitl system of growing decent crops. But even then, they grew for themselves only a necessary minimum of staple foods like maize and beans. Their chinampa were mainly used for growing more rare vegetables and herbs—tomatoes, sage, coriander, sweet potatoes—which their lofty neighbors could not be bothered to cultivate. And the Mexíca traded those delicacies for the necessities of life: the tools and building materials and cloth and weapons that the mainland nations would otherwise have been unwilling to give them. From then on, they made rapid progress toward c
ivilization and culture and military might. But they never forgot that humble weed which had sustained them in the beginning, the mexixin, and they never afterward abandoned the name they had adopted from it. Mexíca is a name now known and respected or feared throughout our world, but it means only..."

  He paused on purpose, and he smiled, and my face flamed again, as the entire class shouted in concert: "The Weed People!"

  "I understand, young lordlet, that you have essayed some learning of reading and writing on your own," said the Lord Teacher of Word Knowing, somewhat sourly, as if he believed any such self-education impossible. "And I understand that you have brought examples of your work."

  Respectfully, I handed him the long, pleated-together bark paper strip of which I was most proud. I had drawn it with extra care, and painted it in the vibrant colors Chimali had given me. The Lord Teacher took the compacted book and began slowly to unfold its pages.

  It was an account of one famous incident in the history of the Mexíca, when they first arrived in this valley, and when the most powerful nation here was that of the Culhua. The Culhua leader, Coxcox, had declared a war against the people of Xochimilco, and invited the newcome Mexíca to fight as his allies. When the war was won and the Culhua warriors brought in their Xochimilca prisoners, the Mexíca brought none at all, and Coxcox denounced them as cowards. At that, the Mexíca warriors opened the bags they carried and dumped out a mountain of ears—all left ears—which they had sliced from the multitude of Xochimilca they had vanquished. Coxcox was astounded, and glad, and from then on the Mexíca were accounted fighters to be reckoned with.