Mexico

by James A. Michener

  Nopiltzín: I find all this talk extremely vague.

  Ixbalanque: May I give you this illustration to ponder? Do you remember when we had the last visit from the ambassadors of Tenayuca-by-the-Lake? They spoke of their great god Tezcatlipoca, and when we tried to identify who he was they said simply, “The god of the smoking mirror.” I remember that you smiled, for who has ever heard of a mirror that smoked? When I asked further, they said, “The god of the hall where gods live.” I did not understand this, so I pressed them, and they replied, “The god of good things done by the sun.” I pointed out that they already had a god of the sun, but they replied, “Tezcatlipoca is the god of redness but also the god of blueness. He is the god of sun, but also the god of night. He is the god of the warm south but also of the cold north. And it is improper to speak of Tezcatlipoca as he at all, for Tezcatlipoca is simply Tezcatlipoca.”

  Nopiltzín: I was bewildered by what they said.

  Ixbalanque: Is it not possible that the greatness of Tenayuca-by-the-Lake derives from such a god?

  Nopiltzín: Have you ever seen Tenayuca? Who says it’s great?

  Ixbalanque: Its ambassadors.

  Nopiltzín: Who believes ambassadors? I’ve seen our city and I’ve seen our simple, honest gods: rain, earth, sun. Do you know what I think, Ixbalanque? I think it was a good thing when the flowered serpent left us. He was far too difficult for our people to understand.

  Ixbalanque: I warn you, Nopiltzín, if you do not restore something like him our people will perish.

  It was following a week of such argument, for the high priest was so deeply disturbed about the future of his city that he was determined to challenge the king, that Nopiltzín happened to remember the long-forgotten clay jar and its contents of honey water. With some excitement he hurried to the dark corner where he had placed it, unwound the damp cotton cloth and smelled the contents. There was the same tempting pungency. Then he tasted, and there was the same tingling in the mouth. It never occurred to the king that any by-product of the maguey could be harmful to men of the high valley, so without fear he took a substantial amount of the liquid into his mouth, and to his delight the large drink was even more satisfying than the small. He allowed the new liquid to remain in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed it. Down into his stomach the tickling stuff passed, and its course was totally pleasing, but exactly how joyous it was going to be the king did not then appreciate.

  Gratified by the tastiness of his converted honey water, Nopiltzín took four or five additional gulps, and now the magic of the maguey began to work. The small room in which Nopiltzín had hidden his clay jar became larger, and the mean floors acquired a certain sheen. The walls became appreciably more ornate than those of the royal room, which were covered with cotton-and-silver cloth. The wind, which had been blowing from the north a few moments before, now swung around to the south and changed to a soft breeze that induced a feeling of languor.

  The king looked out a window to see what had caused this sudden shift in the wind and he saw walking along the palace grounds the older sister of one of his queens. For the first time he realized how beautiful this girl was.

  “Greetings, Coxlal!” the king called.

  The woman turned in surprise and bowed to Nopiltzín.

  “Where are you going?” he shouted rather more loudly than the distance required.

  “I’m to pick some flowers for the queen,” she explained.

  “Well, pick some for me too,” Nopiltzín shouted as the surprised woman moved off toward the gardens.

  He felt very good, took another long drink of the liquid and, when he found that this had exhausted the supply, threw the clay jar hard against the splendid wall. The sound of shattering fragments as they fell to the beautiful floor pleased him and he cried to no one in particular: “I’d like to talk with Ixbalanque again. That man had some powerful ideas that I didn’t fully understand.”

  He left the small room and hurried through the palace, and whereas the distances between rooms had sometimes seemed excessive to him, on this day they seemed entirely functional and he was impressed at how charmingly his grandfather had laid out the sprawling palace. He banged his way unannounced into the priests’ quarters and shouted in what he intended to be a commanding voice: “Ixbalanque! I want to talk to you!”

  The high priest hurried from an inner sanctum and bowed with precisely the degree of deference due the royal leader, but before he was able to rise he felt the king’s right hand slam down on his shoulder and heard him cry in a voice louder than usual: “Ixbalanque, my friend, let’s go somewhere quiet, because now I see everything clearly and appreciate what you’ve been talking about.”

  The priest was pleased and led his king to a quiet arbor overlooking the pyramid, and here Nopiltzín shouted expansively, pointing to the pyramid: “We’re going to put a new face on that pile of rocks that will reach from here to here.” He indicated dimensions far greater than those the high priest had suggested.

  “You mean,” Ixbalanque asked, “that we can proceed?”

  “In days to come,” the king said, embracing his priest once more, “the people of this valley will look back upon us as two of the greatest builders the Builders have ever produced. That pyramid is going to be so large—” He stopped abruptly and turned away from the great structure. “Explain again about this curious god the Tenayucans have. What is a smoking mirror?”

  Not to be sidetracked by the sudden digression, Ixbalanque replied, “If we’re going to resurface the pyramid, there will probably be no need for—”

  “Tell me about Tezcatli …” As his tongue twisted over the unfamiliar name he started to giggle. Quickly recovering his dignity, he moved back a few paces and bellowed: “Tell me about him.”

  Ixbalanque was frightened. He could see that the king was afflicted with some strange malady, and it would be dreadful if Nopiltzín were to fall seriously sick before the rebuilding of the pyramid was actually launched. Every precaution must be taken to ensure the king’s health, so the priest suggested, “Shall I take you back to your quarters?”

  “You shall not!” Nopiltzín bellowed. “You’ll sit here and tell me about Tezcatli …” Again he could get no further.

  Seeking to humor the sick man, Ixbalanque began, “The god Tezcatlipoca stands for the reconciliation of things that cannot be reconciled.” The old man stopped, for he was afraid that the king was in no condition to comprehend such matters, but he soon resumed, for he had become convinced that any community must pay allegiance to two kinds of gods.

  “We must placate the gods who control our immediate destinies—the rain god, the earth god and the god of fertility—but we should also worship some deity who represents a higher order of thought and who is not concerned with arbitrating day-to-day problems. Perhaps he is the god from whom the lesser ones derive their power. Perhaps he is a god infinitely removed from temporary questions of power, but if we do not direct ourselves to such a god …”

  When the old priest paused to look directly at his king, he saw that the monarch had fallen asleep. He didn’t hear a word I said, Ixbalanque reflected, which is probably a good thing, because it might have confused him and prevented us from going ahead with the pyramid. Then he noticed that the king’s jaw was slack and that his forehead was sweating profusely while his right arm and shoulder twitched spasmodically. It was apparent that Nopiltzín was much sicker than Ixbalanque had originally suspected, so the latter called for help, but when the servants were carrying the inert king off to bed he suddenly regained consciousness and, seeing some tame rabbits on the lawn, broke away to follow the animals, shouting: “I’ll be a rabbit and I’ll be the new god!” Then he saw the old priest and ran over to embrace him. “Don’t worry, old friend,” he mumbled. “Now everything is very clear. It’s as if a hundred suns have risen.” With this jubilant remark he collapsed completely, with a beatific smile.

  That night, after the king had been put to bed, Ixbalanque went to a temple a
t the crest of the pyramid where he convened a meeting of his priests. “We face a difficult situation,” he told them. “King Nopiltzín has been struck by a fatal malady and might leave us at any moment.”

  “The fever?”

  “Worse. Loss of his mind.” Allowing his subordinates time to grasp the ominous news, he resumed: “The king has authorized us to resurface the pyramid, as we had proposed, but if he dies before we start, the new king—”

  “What we must do,” one of the priests advised, “is start immediately to resurface, because if the task is fairly begun, the new king won’t feel free to halt it.”

  That night the priests remained in the temples atop the pyramid praying that King Nopiltzín would recover from his illness and survive long enough to let them begin the resurfacing. At dawn the high priest hurried down the long avenue to the royal palace to inspect Nopiltzín’s health and to gain final permission for initiating the vast project.

  He found the king in a vile humor, but more distressing was the fact that Nopiltzín had no recollection of having authorized the rebuilding of the pyramid. In some confusion Ixbalanque pleaded, “Don’t you remember looking at the pyramid and saying that we would make the new version even longer and higher than I had proposed?”

  “Are you insane?” Nopiltzín growled.

  “But we agreed on it,” Ixbalanque argued, “and I want to start digging the trenches today.”

  “Then you get yourself a little stick and start digging,” Nopiltzín snapped.

  Ixbalanque decided to be direct: “Are you ill?”

  Nopiltzín’s features relaxed slightly and he said: “I do not feel well, but I’m sure the giddiness will pass. The important thing is that last evening for a moment I saw everything very clearly. I know just what we are going to do about the gods.”

  “What?” Ixbalanque asked with undisguised eagerness.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Nopiltzín parried. “But there are two things I’ll tell you right now. We’re not going to build any pyramid. And we’re not going to import from Tenayuca-by-the-Lake any god who represents nothing but vague contradictions.”

  “What are we going to do?” Ixbalanque pleaded.

  “You’ll be most surprised.”

  When the high priest left, Nopiltzín went out among his maguey plants and with an obsidian knife—although my ancestors of that period had not discovered durable metal, they did know how to give hard rock a cutting edge—cut down into the heart of several plants and drew out by sucking through a hollow gourd enough honey water to fill eight clay jars. These he wrapped in damp cloth for storing in the dark, and at the end of three anxious weeks he sampled the results.

  He was elated because the honey water had once more transformed itself into the exciting beverage that he had tasted earlier. Closing the curtains that protected his apartment, he began to drink the liquor seriously, and before long the animated visions that had so pleased him at the first testing returned. Knowing that many problems beset the high priest, he summoned Ixbalanque, threw his arms about the old man, and cried in a half-tearful voice, “Ixbalanque, you are going to get your god!”

  The priest struggled to free himself from the embrace and asked: “Will you remember tomorrow what you say today?”

  Nopiltzín ignored this and said, “I have discovered a new god.”

  “Where?”

  “In the heart of the maguey plant.”

  The king led Ixbalanque into the darkened room where the eight clay jars stood and pointed to his treasure. “A god lies hidden there, Ixbalanque, and I shall introduce you to him.” Going to one of the jars, the king poured his guest a substantial helping of the liquid and invited the priest to drink. With some apprehension Ixbalanque lifted the cup to his lips and for the first time tasted the beverage that was to become known as pulque.

  As the afternoon wore on, Ixbalanque noticed that under the influence of pulque the king became more and more expansive while he, Ixbalanque, became increasingly suspicious. He could feel the strange liquid altering his normal behavior and tried to fight against it; he had the distinct suspicion that the pulque was usurping a function that any man should keep for himself or allocate to the gods. He was on the point of formulating what that function was when Nopiltzín grabbed a flute and began playing delicious music, whereupon Ixbalanque found himself a drum, and after only a few moments of frenzied playing, the entire situation began to clear up for the high priest.

  “We play better than the temple musicians,” Ixbalanque announced gravely.

  “We’re going to have a temple on top of the new pyramid—”

  “Are we going ahead with the rebuilding after all?”

  “Old friend, if you want a new pyramid, you get a new pyramid. See that tree over there? We’re going to put so many blocks of stone on that old pyramid that it will be higher than the tree.”

  “Marvelous,” Ixbalanque shouted, banging his drum with renewed vigor.

  For five or six hours the king and the high priest drank pulque and rearranged the business of the high valley. There would be a new pyramid and new laws, grouchy elderly officials would be demoted, and the high priest would arrange a marriage between the king and his wife’s oldest sister, even though such a union was forbidden by custom. In the sixth hour the king began to run around on all fours like a rabbit and he invited the high priest to do the same.

  “No,” Ixbalanque said, “if you are the rabbit, I am the coyote, and I’m going to catch you!”

  Together the two leaders of the state crawled around the king’s chambers, Nopiltzín leaping like a rabbit and Ixbalanque yelping like a coyote, until the chase became so noisy that the queen sent her older sister to see what was happening. When that austere and ugly woman pushed aside the curtains, she was aghast to find the two men rolling around the floor, but this reaction soon turned to utter confusion when the king saw her, leaped across the room on all fours, and grabbed her by the knees, pulling her down onto the floor beside him.

  “I’ve found my darling little rabbit!” he shouted.

  “Oh no!” the high priest barked in protest. “Only coyotes can have little rabbits.” He leaped past the king and started biting the queen’s sister on the forearm, whereupon she screamed, and he suddenly came to his senses. In amazement and confusion he rose, brushed himself off and looked down at his king, who was still groveling on the floor, holding the woman by the knees.

  “Nopiltzín!” the priest cried. “Get up!”

  With some difficulty, for he had been drinking for some hours before the arrival of the high priest, Nopiltzín released his sister-in-law and staggered to his feet. The astonished woman adjusted her clothing and fled, while the king banged himself on the temples to clear his head. Mouthing ill-formed words, he asked: “What were we doing, down on the floor? I’ve always thought of her as the ugliest woman in the high valley.”

  That night Ixbalanque, once more in command of his reasoning powers, walked disconsolately among the temples atop the pyramid, and in trying to understand what had happened that confusing afternoon he reached several frightening conclusions. Under questioning, after the queen’s sister had left, Nopiltzín had assured his priest that the strange liquid had consistently reliable power: the same results had been achieved with each batch. Furthermore, it could be easily made Finally, when one was drinking it, a god did indeed seem to inhabit one. There was a sense of excitement and colors seemed brighter. What was most shocking was that during the time when the god of pulque had been in command, the queen’s sister had actually been a rather attractive woman, so that when he, Ixbalanque, had attacked her and started nibbling her arm, what he had really wanted to do was to drive the king away, tear off the woman’s clothes and enjoy her.

  “There will be no new pyramid,” the high priest admitted in the darkness that enveloped the top of the pyramid. “The god of the smoking mirror, which might have saved us, will not be welcome. The flowered serpent is gone with his sponsorship of beauty, a
nd I’m afraid that all we have accomplished in the high valley is in danger.” He looked down at the sleeping city, then one of the loveliest and best governed in Mexico, and sensed accurately that the great decline had begun, that subtle dry rot that overtakes societies when vision and grand design have been surrendered. In anguish he went to the dormitory where his priests slept and cried: “Brothers! I need your counsel!” and long after midnight the guardians of the high valley’s conscience debated the most danger-filled question the clergy ever had to confront: “The king seems to have lost control of his powers to govern. Shall we depose him?” The younger men listened in bewilderment as Ixbalanque reported the king’s curious behavior while saying nothing of his own when he was galloping about as a coyote.

  Relying only on what the high priest had told them, the group could reach no conclusion about deposing the king, and Ixbalanque was left with the dismal realization that he must act but had no idea of what that action should be. In his confusion he asked two of his senior advisers to walk with him among the temples he and they were supposed to serve and protect, and in the darkness he revealed the cause of his consternation.