Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  Little Poyec of Texcóco gave me a look as if I had been to blame for my ancestors' aggressiveness, but Neltitica went on speaking with the dispassion of the detached historian:

  "We know how the Mexíca have thrived and prospered since then. They have far surpassed, in wealth and influence, those other nations that once snubbed them as insignificant. Their Tenochtítlan is the richest and most opulent city built since the days of the Toltéca. Though there are countless languages spoken in The One World, the far-ranging Mexíca armies and traders and explorers have made our Náhuatl the second language of every people from the northern deserts to the southern jungles."

  He must have seen the trace of a smug smile on my face, for the Lord Teacher concluded:

  "Those accomplishments would, I think, be enough for the Mexíca to boast about, but they have insisted on even more self-glorification. They rewrote their history books, trying to persuade themselves and others that they have always been the foremost nation of this region. The Mexíca may delude themselves, and may deceive historians of generations to come. But I believe I have adequately demonstrated that the usurping Mexíca are not the great Toltéca reborn."

  The Lady of Tolan invited me to take chocolate in her chambers, and I went eagerly, with a question bubbling inside me. When I arrived, her son the Crown Prince was there, and I kept silent while they discussed minor matters concerning the palace management. But when there came a lull in their colloquy, I made bold to ask the question:

  "You were born in Tolan, my lady, and that was once a Toltéca city. Are you then a Toltecatl?"

  Both she and Black Flower looked surprised; then she smiled. "Anyone of Tolan, Head Nodder—anyone anywhere—would be proud to claim even a drop of Toltéca blood, but in honesty, ayya, I cannot. During all of living memory, Tolan has been part of the Tecpanéca territory, so I come of Tecpanéca stock—though I suspect our family may long ago have included an Otomitl or two, before that race was ousted."

  I said in disappointment, "There is no trace of the Toltéca in Tolan?"

  "In the people, who can say for certain? In the place, yes, there are the pyramids and stone terraces and vast walled courts. The pyramids have been stunted by erosion, and the terraces are all buckled and crazed, and the walls are fallen in places. But the exquisite patterns in which their stones were set are still discernible, and the low-relief carvings, and even fragmentary paintings here and there. The most impressive and least worn objects, though, are the many statues."

  "Of the gods?" I asked.

  "I do not think so, for they each have the same face. They are all of the same size and shape, sculptured simply and realistically, not in the convoluted style of today. They are cylindrical columns, as if once they supported some massive roof. But the columns are carved into the form of standing humans, if you can imagine humans more then three times as tall as any human known."

  "Perhaps they are portraits of the giants who lived on earth after the gods," I suggested, remembering the monstrous thighbone of which Neltitica had told.

  "No, I think they represent the Toltéca themselves, only portrayed much larger than life size. Their faces are not stern or brutal or haughty, as you would expect of gods or giants. They wear an expression of untroubled watchfulness. Many of the columns are toppled and scattered about the low ground, but others still stand on the heights, and they look out across the countryside as if patiently, tranquilly waiting."

  "Waiting for what, do you suppose, my lady?"

  "Perhaps for the Toltéca to come again."

  It was Black Flower who answered, and he added a harsh laugh. "To emerge from wherever they have been lurking through all these sheaves of years. To come in might and fury, to conquer us interlopers, to reclaim these lands that were theirs."

  "No, my son," said the First Lady. "They were never a warlike people, nor wanted to be, and that was their undoing. If they could ever come again, they would come in peace."

  She sipped at her chocolate and made a face; it had gone flat. She took from the table at her side the beater of large and small wooden rings strung loose and jingling on a central stem, the whole instrument cunningly carved from a single stick of aromatic cedar. Putting it into her cup and holding the stem between her palms, she rubbed briskly to rotate the beater rings until the red liquid puffed up foamy and stiff again. After another sip, she licked the froth from her upper lip and said to me:

  "Go sometime to the city of Teotihuacan, Head Nodder, and look at what is left of the wall paintings there. Only one of them shows a Toltecatl warrior, and he is merely playing at war. His spear has no blade, but a tuft of feathers at its point, and his arrows are tipped with óli gum, like those employed in teaching archery to boys."

  "Yes, my lady, I have used such arrows in practicing the war games."

  "From other murals, we can deduce that the Toltéca never gave human sacrifices to their gods, but only butterflies, flowers, quail, and such offerings. The Master Artisans were a peaceable people because their gods were gentle gods. One of them was that Quetzalcoatl still worshiped by all nations far and wide. And the Toltéca concept of that Feathered Serpent tells us much about them. Who but a wise and kindly people could have bequeathed to us a god that so harmoniously blends lordliness and lovingness? The most awesome but most graceful of all creatures, the snake, clad not in hard scales but in the soft and beautiful plumage of the quetzal tototl bird."

  I said, "I was taught that the Feathered Serpent once really lived in these lands, and will someday come back again."

  "Yes, Head Nodder, from what we can understand of the remains of Toltéca writing, Quetzalcoatl did indeed once live. He was a long-ago Uey-Tlatoani, or whatever the Toltéca called their rulers, and he must have been a good one. It is said that he himself devised the writing, the calendars, the star charts, the numbers we use today. It is even said that he left us the recipe for ahuacamoli and all the other moli sauces, though I am sure I cannot see Quetzalcoatl doing cook's work in a kitchen."

  She smiled and shook her head, then was serious again. "It is said that during his reign the farmers' fields grew not just white cotton but cotton of all colors, as if already dyed, and that a single ear of maize was as much as a man could carry. It is said that there were no deserts in his time, but fruit and flowers growing everywhere in abundance, and the air was perfumed with all their mingled fragrances...."

  I asked, "Is it possible that he could come again, my lady?"

  "Well, according to the legends, Quetzalcoatl somehow unintentionally committed some sin so awful—or did something which so violated his own high standards of behavior—that he voluntarily abdicated his throne. He went to the shore of the eastern ocean and built a raft—of interwoven feathers, some say, or of intertwined live snakes. In his last words to the grieving Toltéca he vowed to return again someday. And he rowed away, and he vanished beyond the ocean's eastern horizon. Since then, the Feathered Serpent has become the one god recognized by every nation and every people known to us. But all the Toltéca have also disappeared since then, and Quetzalcóatl has yet to return."

  "But he could have, he may have," I said. "The priests say that the gods often walk among us unrecognized."

  "Like my Lord Father," said Black Flower, laughing. "But I believe the Feathered Serpent would be rather harder to overlook. The reappearance of such a distinctive god should certainly make a stir. Be assured, Head Nodder, if ever Quetzalcdatl comes again, with or without his retinue of Toltéca, we will know him."

  I had left Xaltócan toward the close of the rainy season in the year Five Knife and, except for my frequent yearnings for the presence of Tzitzitlini, I had been so engrossed in my studies and my enjoyments of palace life that I had scarcely noticed the swift passing of time. I was frankly surprised when my schoolmate Prince Willow informed me that the day after tomorrow would be the first of the forthcoming nemontemtin, the five lifeless days. I had to count on my fingers to believe that I had been away from home for more than
the round of a whole year, and that this one was coming to a close.

  "All activities are suspended during the five hollow days," said the young prince. "So this year we will take the opportunity to pack and move the entire court to our Texcóco palace, to be ready to celebrate the month of Cuhhuitl Ehua there."

  That was the first month of our solar year. Its name means The Tree Is Raised and refers to the many elaborate ceremonies during which the people of all nations were accustomed to beseech the rain god Tlaloc that the forthcoming summer's wet season would be an abundantly wet one.

  "And you will want to be with your family for the occasion," Willow went on. "So I ask you to accept the loan of my personal acáli to carry you thither. I will send it again at the close of Cuahuitl Ehua, and you will rejoin the court at Texcóco."

  This was all very sudden, but I accepted, expressing my gratitude for his thoughtfulness.

  "Just one thing," he said. "Can you be ready to leave tomorrow morning? You understand, Head Nodder, my oarsmen will want to be safely back on their home shore before the lifeless days begin."

  * * *

  Ah, the Señor Bishop! Once more I am pleased and honored to have Your Excellency join our little gathering. And once more, my lord, your unworthy servant makes bold to give you worshipful greeting and welcome.

  ...Yes, I understand, Your Excellency. You say that I have not hitherto spoken sufficiently of my people's religious rites; that you especially want to hear in person about our superstitious dread of the hollow days; that you wish to hear at first hand my account of the ensuing month's heathen rituals of petition to the rain god. I understand, my lord, and I shall cause your reverend ears to hear all. Should my old brain wander in its recollection, or should my old tongue skip too lightly over any details of relevance, please do not hesitate, Your Excellency, to interrupt with questions or demands for elucidation.

  Know, then, that it was on the sixth-to-last day of the year Six House that Prince Willow's carved and bannered and canopied acáli put me ashore on a Xaltócan jetty again. My splendid borrowed craft of six oarsmen rather put to shame the uncovered, two-oared canoe of the Lord Red Heron which was, that same day, likewise bringing his son home from school for the ceremonial month of Cuahuitl Ehua. I was even noticeably better dressed than that provincial princeling, and Pactli involuntarily gave me an ingratiating nod before he recognized me and his face froze.

  At my house, I was welcomed like a hero home from some war. My father clapped his hands on my shoulders, which now nearly matched his in height and breadth. Tzitzitlini wrapped both arms around me in a squeeze that would have looked merely sisterly to anyone who did not see her fingernails digging softly But suggestively into my back. Even my mother was admiring, if mainly of my costume. I had deliberately chosen to wear my most wonderfully embroidered mantle, with the bloodstone clasp at the shoulder, and my gilt sandals which laced almost to the knee.

  Friends and relations and neighbors came crowding in to gawk at the rover returned. Among them, I was happy to see, were Chimali and Tlatli, who had each begged a ride home from Tenochtítlan on limestone freight acaltin returning to the island to ride out the lifeless days at their moorings. My family's three rooms and dooryard, which now appeared to me to have curiously shrunken, were quite overflowing with visitors. I do not attribute that to my personal popularity, but to the fact that midnight would bring the beginning of the hollow days, during which there could be no social mingling.

  Not many of the gathered people, except my father and some other quarriers, had ever been off our island, and were naturally eager to hear of the outside world. But they asked few questions; they seemed content to listen to me and Chimali and Tlatli trading tales of our experiences in our separate schools.

  "Schools!" snorted Tlatli. "It is precious little time we have for school work. Every day the vile priests roust us out at dawn to sweep and clean our quarters and all the rooms of the whole building. Then we must go to the lake to tend the school's chinampa, and pick maize and beans for the school kitchen. Or go all the way to the mainland to chop wood for the sacred fires, to cut and fetch bags full of maguey thorns."

  I said, "The food and firewood I can understand, but why the thorns?"

  "For penance and punishment, friend Mole," Chimali growled. "Break the slightest rule and a priest makes you prick yourself repeatedly. In the earlobes, in the thumbs and arms, even in private places. I am punctured all over."

  "But even the best-behaved suffer too," added Tlatli. "Every other day seems to be the feast day of some god or other, including many I have never heard of, and every boy must shed blood for the offering."

  One of the listeners asked, "When do you find time for studying?"

  Chimali made a face. "What little time there is does not avail us much. The teacher priests are not learned men. They know nothing except what there is in the textbooks, and those books are old and smudged and falling apart into shreds of bark."

  Tlatli said, "Chimali and I are fortunate, though. We did not go for book learning, so the lack of it does not much trouble us. Also, we spend most of our days in the studios of our art masters, who do not waste time on religious drivel. They work us hard, so we do learn what we came to learn."

  "Some other boys do, too," said Chimali. "Those who are similarly apprenticed out—to physicians, feather workers, musicians, and the like. But I pity those who came to learn classroom subjects like the art of word knowing. When they are not engaged in rituals and bloody mortification and menial labor, they are being taught by priests as ignorant as any of the students. You can be glad, Mole, that you did not get into a calmécac. There is little to learn in one, unless you desire to be a priest yourself."

  "And nobody," said Tlatli, shuddering, "would want to be a priest of any god, unless he wants never to have sex or a drink of octli or even a bath just once in his life. And unless he truly enjoys hurting himself as well as seeing other people in pain."

  I had once felt envy of Tlatli and Chimali, when they donned their best mantles and went away to their separate schools. Now here they were, still wearing the same mantles, and it was they who envied me. I did not have to say a word about the luxurious life I enjoyed at the court of Nezahualpili. They were sufficiently impressed when I remarked that our textbooks were painted on smoked fawnskin for durability, and when I mentioned the absence of religious interruptions, the few rules and little rigidity, the willingness of the teachers to give private tutorial sessions.

  "Imagine!" murmured Tlatli. "Teachers who have worked at what they teach."

  "Fawnskin textbooks," murmured Chimali.

  There was a stir among the people nearest the door, and all of a sudden Pactli strode in, as if he had deliberately timed his arrival to display the superior product of the most select and prestigious kind of calmécac. Numerous persons dropped to kiss the earth to the son of their governor, but there was not room for all to do so.

  "Mixpantzinco," my father greeted him, uncertainly.

  Ignoring my father, not bothering to utter the customary response, Pactli spoke directly to me. "I came to request your aid, young Mole." He handed me a strip of folded bark paper and said, as comradely as he knew how, "I understand that your study is concentrated on the art of word knowing, and I ask that you give me your opinion of this effort of mine, before I return to school and submit it to the criticism of my Lord Teacher." But while he spoke to me, his eyes shifted to my sister. It must have cost the Lord Joy a pang, I thought, to have to use me as an excuse for visiting before midnight should make a visit impossible.

  Though Pactli could not have cared a little finger for my opinion of his writing—he was openly leering at my sister now—I flipped through the pleated pages and said boredly, "In which direction am I supposed to read this?"

  Several people looked aghast at my tone of voice, and Pactli grunted as if I had struck him. He glared at me and said, through his teeth, "From left to right, Mole, as you know very well."

 
"Usually from left to right, yes, but not always," I said. "The first and most basic rule of writing, which apparently you have not grapsed, is that the majority of your pictured characters must all face in the direction the writing is to be read."

  I must have been feeling uncommonly inflated by the finery of my costume, by having just come from a court infinitely more cultured than Pactli's, and by being the center of attention of a houseful of friends and relations—or I should probably not have dared to flout the conventions of servility. Not troubling to scan the paper further, I refolded and handed it back to him.

  Have you ever noticed, Your Excellency, how the same emotion of rage can make different persons turn different colors? Pactli's face had gone almost purple, my mother's almost white. Tzitzi lightly brushed her hand across her mouth in the gesture of surprise, but then she laughed; so did Tlatli and Chimali. Pactli turned his baleful glare from me to them, then swept it around the entire assemblage, most of whom seemed to be wishing they could turn yet another color: the invisible color of the invisible air. Speechless with fury, the Lord Joy crushed his paper together in his fist and stalked out, rudely shouldering those who could not immediately make way for him.

  Most of the rest of the company also left straightaway, as if thereby they could somehow disassociate themselves from my insubordination. They gave the excuse that their houses were more or less distant from ours, and they wanted to hurry home before darkness fell, to make sure that not a single ember in their hearths had been accidentally left smoldering alight. While that mass departure was in progress, Chimali and Tlatli both gave me supportive grins, Tzitzi pressed my hand, my father looked stricken, and my mother looked glazed with frost. But not everyone left. Some of the guests were staunch enough not to feel trepidation at the contumacy I had displayed—and had displayed on the very eve of the lifeless days.