Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  “Do not simply stroll about the city, gawking,” said one country fellow who had recently been there. “Always walk briskly, as if you have a specific objective toward which you are going. And it is wise to be always carrying something when you do. I mean a building brick or block of wood or coil of rope, as if you were on your way to some task already assigned you. Otherwise, if you go about empty-handed, some Spanish overseer of some work project will be sure to give you a job to do. And you had better do it.”

  So, forewarned, we three went on. And even from our first sight of it, from afar, the City of Mexíco was awe-inspiring, bulking as large as it did, towering from the floor of the bowl-shaped valley in which it stands. Our actual entry, though, was a little disappointing. As we walked over a long, wide, banistered stone causeway that took us from the town of Tepayáca on the mainland to the city’s islands my uncle muttered:

  “Strange. This causeway used to vault an expanse of water, busily swarming with acáltin of every size. But now look.”

  We did, seeing nothing below us but an immense stretch of rather smelly wetland, all mud and weeds and frogs and a few herons—very like the swamps around Aztlan before they were drained.

  But, beyond the causeway was the city. And I, even though forewarned, was immediately and often that day tempted to do what we had been told not to do—because the hugeness and magnificence of the City of Mexíco were such as to stun me into motionless ogling and admiration. Each time, fortunately, my uncle would prod me onward, because he himself was not much impressed by the sights of the place, he having once seen the sights of the vanished Tenochtítlan. And again he supplied a commentary for me and my mother:

  “We are now in the Ixacuálco quarter of the city, the very best residential district, where lived that friend also named Mixtli, who had persuaded me to bring the Moon Stone hither, and I visited in his house while I was here. His house and the others around it were much more various and handsome then. These new ones all lode alike. Friend”—and he reached out to catch the hand of a passerby (carrying a load of firewood, with a tumpline about his forehead)—“friend, is this quarter of the city still known as Ixacuálco?”

  “Ayya,” muttered the man, giving Mixtzin a suspicious look. “How is it that you do not know? This quarter is now called San Sebastian Ixacuálco.”

  “And what means ‘San Sebastián’?” my uncle asked.

  The man shrugged his load of wood. “San means ‘santo,’ a lesser god of the Spanish Christians. Sebastián is the name of one of the santos, but what he is the god of I have never been told.”

  So we moved on, and Mixtzin continued his narration:

  “Notice now. Here was a broad canal, always busy and crowded with a traffic of immense freight acáltin. I have no idea why it has been filled in and paved over to become a street instead. And there—ayyo, there before you, sister, nephew”—he made an impressively sweeping gesture of both arms—“there, enclosed by the undulating Snake Wall painted in many vivid colors, that was the vast open space—the bright-shining marble square that was The Center of The Heart of The One World. And in it, yonder, was the sumptuous Palace of Motecuzóma. And yonder, the court for the ceremonial tlachtli ball games. And yonder, the Stone of Tizoc, where warriors dueled to the death. And yonder”—he broke off to catch the arm of a passerby (carrying a basket of lime mortar)—“friend, tell me, what is that gigantic and ugly structure still a-building over there?”

  “That? You do not know? Why, that will be the Christian priests’ central temple. I mean cathedral. The Cathedral Church of San Francisco.”

  “Another of their santos, eh?” said Mixtzin. “And for what aspect of the world is this lesser god responsible?”

  The man said uneasily, “As best I know, stranger, he just happens to be the personal favorite godling of Bishop Zumárraga, the chief of all the Christian priests.” Then the man scurried away.

  “Yya ayya,” Mixtzin mourned. “Nínotlancuícui in Teo Francisco. I pick my teeth at the little god Francisco. If that is his temple, it is a poor substitute for its predecessor. For there, sister, nephew, there stood the most awesome edifice ever erected in all The One World. It was the Great Pyramid, massive but graceful, and so sky-reaching that one had to climb a hundred fifty and six marble stair-treads to attain the top, and there be awed all over again by the brilliantly colored and roofcombed temples of the gods Tlaloc and Huitzilopóchtli. Ayyo, but this city had gods worth celebrating in those days! And—”

  He was abruptly interrupted, as all three of us were suddenly propelled forward. We might have been standing on a beach with our backs to the sea, and neglecting to count the waves, and thus getting unexpectedly deluged by the always-mountainous seventh wave. What shoved against us from behind was that crowd of people being herded by the soldiers into the open square we had been eyeing. We were in the forefront of the throng, and we managed to stay close together. So, when the square was packed full and the milling had ceased and all was quiet, we had an unimpeded view of the platform onto which the priests were ascending, and the metal post to which the condemned man was led and bound. We had a rather better view than I might, in retrospect, have wished to have. Because I can still see him burning.

  As I have told, the old man Juan Damasceno spoke only briefly before the torch was laid to the wood heaped about him. And then he made no moan or scream or even whimper as the fire ate its way up his body. And none of us witnesses made a sound, either, except for my mother, who uttered a single sob. But there were noises, nevertheless. I can still hear him burning.

  The noises included the familiar crepitations of wood doing its duty as fuel, and the eager lickings and lappings of the flames, and the spitting sounds as the man’s skin bulged into blisters that instantly burst, and the crackling and sizzling of his flesh, and the hissing as his blood fumed away, and the snaps and crunches as his muscles tightly contracted in the heat and broke the bones inside him and, toward the end, the indescribably horrid sound of his skull’s blowing to fragments from the pressure of the brain boiling within.

  Meanwhile, we all could also smell him burning. The aroma of human flesh being cooked is, at first, as deliriously appetizing as that of any other kind of meat being properly broiled. But then this particular cooking became burning, and there was the odor of char and smoke, and the rancid smell of his under-skin fat bubbling and melting, and the lingering scorch odor of his one garment disintegrating, and the briefer but sharper whiff when the hair of his head went away in a flash, and the reek of roasting organs and membranes and viscera, and the cloying sick-sweet smell of blood turning to steam, and after a while the hot metallic odor as the restraining chain seemed trying to catch fire itself, and the powdery smell of bones turning to ashes and the revolting stink when the man’s lower guts and their fecal contents were incinerated.

  Since the man at the stake could also see, hear and smell those various things happening to himself, I began to wonder what was going on in his mind all that time. He never emitted a sound, but surely he had to be thinking. About what? Regretting the things he had done, or not done, that had brought him to this dreadful end? Or dwelling on and savoring the small pleasures, even adventures he had sometime enjoyed? Or thinking of loved ones left behind? No, at his age, he had probably outlived all of them except children or grandchildren, if he had any, but there must have been women in his life; even old, he had still been a fine-looking man when he came to the stake. Also, he had come to this unspeakable fate unafraid and unbowed; he must have been a man of consequence in his day. Was he now, perhaps, despite the excruciating pain he was enduring, inwardly laughing at the irony of his having once been high and mighty, and today brought so low?

  And which of his senses, I wondered, was the first to be extinguished? Did his vision last long enough that he could view the onlooking executioners and his countrymen crowded about, and himself ponder on what the living were thinking at seeing him die? Could he see his own legs shriveling and blackening and
, while he hung suspended by the chain, curling up against his belly—and then his arms doing the same, shrinking and crisping and curling across his chest—as if his limbs were trying to protect the torso for which they had worked faithfully during a lifetime? Or had the heat by then burst his eyeballs, so that there would nevermore be any light or any sight to see it?

  Then, eyeless, did he go on tracing by sound and smell the remorseless progress of his being corroded? The mud-bubble plopping sounds of his skin’s blisters swelling, heaving and viscously erupting—could he hear those? Could he smell his own human meat turning to a nauseous carrion that even the tzopilótin vultures would refuse to feed on? Or did he merely feel those things? If so, did he feel them as separate, identifiable pangs or as an all-engulfing agony?

  But even when he had been deprived of sight, hearing, smell—and, I hope, feeling—he still for a while had a brain. Did it go on thinking until the very last? Did it dread the endless night and nothingness of the Míctlan netherworld? Or did it dream of a new and eternal life in the bright, lush, happy land of the sun god Tonatíu? Or did it simply, desperately try to hold, for just a little longer, the memories of this world and its life that were dearest to him? Of youth, of sky and sunlight, of loving caresses, of deeds and feats, of places once visited and never to be visited again? Had he managed frantically to keep those thoughts and memories for his pathetic last solace until the instant when his whole head shattered and everything was ended?

  If this spectacle had in fact been intended as some sort of edifying lesson for us who had been commanded to watch, I think we all would have had our fill of it very early on. For one reason, we all saw that the man Juan Damasceno died to no good purpose—not his heart, not even his blood went to nourish any god, none of our own or those of the Christians. But the soldiers would not let us leave before the presiding priests did, and they stayed cm their platform until there was little left of their victim but smoke and stench. They watched the entire proceedings with that stern expression of disagreeable-duty-done that any priest of any religion can so righteously assume, but their eyes belied their faces. The priests’ eyes were bright with avid enjoyment and approval of what they watched. All but one priest, I should remark—that younger one who had done the translating into Náhuatl.

  His face was not stern but sad, his eyes not gloating but pitying. And when the other priests finally stepped down from the platform and went away, and the soldier bade the rest of us disperse, that one younger priest lingered on. He stood before the dangling chain—its links glowing red-hot—and looked sorrowfully down at the small remains of what that chain had held.

  Everyone else, including my mother and uncle, made haste to vacate the square. But I too lingered, along with the priest, and approached him and addressed him in the language we both spoke.

  “Tlamacázqui,” I said, respectfully enough, but he raised a hand to object.

  “Priest? I am not a priest,” he said. “I can summon one of them, though, if you will tell me why you wish to talk to a priest.”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “I do not speak the Spanish of the other priests.”

  “And I say again, I am no priest. Sometimes I am glad of that. I am only Alonso de Molina, notarius to my lord Bishop Zumarraga. And because I troubled to learn your language, I am also His Excellency’s interpreter between your people and ours.”

  I had no idea what a notarius might be, but this one seemed amiable, and he had displayed some human compassion during the execution, which the others officiating had not. So now I addressed him by the honorific that means more than “friend”; it means “brother” or even “twin.”

  “Cuatl Alonso,” I said. “My name is Tenamáxtli. I and some relatives just now came from far away to admire your City of Mexíco for the first time. We did not expect to find a—a public entertainment—provided for us visitors. I would ask only this. Despite your excellent translation, I could not—in my provincial ignorance—understand all the legal-sounding terms you spoke. Would you do me the favor of explaining, in simple words, what that man was accused of and why he was slain?”

  The notarius regarded me for a moment, then asked, “You are not a Christian?”

  “No, Cuatl Alonso. I have heard of Crixtanóyotl, but I know nothing of that religion.”

  “Well, Don Juan Damasceno was found guilty of—in simple words, as you request—having pretended to embrace our Christian faith, but all the time remaining an unbeliever. He refused to confess this, refused to renounce his old religion, and so he was sentenced to die.”

  “I begin to understand. Thank you, cuatl. A man has the choice of becoming a Christian or of being slain.”

  “Now, now. Not exactly, Tenamáxtli. But once he does become a Christian, he must remain one.”

  “Or your courts of law order him burned.”

  “Not exactly that, either,” said the notarius, frowning. “The secular courts may adjudge various penalties for various offenses. And if they vote for capital punishment, there are several ways—by shot or sword or the headsman’s ax or—”

  “Or the most cruel way of all,” I finished for him. “The burning.”

  “No.” The notarius shook his head, now looking a trifle uncomfortable. “Only the ecclesiastical Courts of Inquisition can pronounce that sentence. Indeed, that is the sole means of execution the Church can specify. You see, the Church is bidden to punish sorcerers and witches and heretics like this late Juan Damasceno, but it is forbidden ever to shed blood. And clearly, burning does not shed blood. Thus it is laid down in canon law, how the Church must execute such persons. By flame … and by flame alone.”

  “I do see,” I said. “Yes, laws must be obeyed.”

  “I am pleased to say that such executions are only infrequently required,” said the notarius. “It has been fully three years since a Marrano was burned on this same spot, for having similarly flouted the faith.”

  “Excuse me, Cuatl Alonso,” I said. “What is a Marrano?”

  “A Jew. That is, a person formerly a Jew who has converted to Christianity. And Hernando Halevi de León seemed a sincere convert. He even ate pork. So he was given a royal grant of a profitable encomienda of his own, at Actópan, north of here. And he was allowed to marry the beautiful Isabel de Aguilar, the Christian daughter of one of the best Spanish families. But then it was discovered that the Marrano was forbidding Dona Isabel to attend Mass at those times of the month when she had her feminine bleeding. Obviously, de León was a false convert, still secretly observing the pernicious strictures of Judaism.”

  None of this made any sense to me at all, so I returned to the matter nearer to hand, saying, “This man today, cuatl—you did not appear very happy to see this one burned.”

  “Ayya, make no mistake,” he hastened to say. “By all the beliefs and laws and rules of our Church, this Damasceno most certainly deserved his fate. I would not dispute that, not in the least. It is only that… well, over the years, I had grown rather fond of the old fellow.” He looked down at the ashes one last time. “Now, Cuatl Tenamáxtli, you must excuse me. I have duties. But I shall be pleased to converse with you again, whenever you are in the city.”

  I had followed his glance down at the ashes with a glance of my own, and had instantly perceived that one other thing besides the metal chain and the upright metal post had survived the flames. It was the pendant I had earlier glimpsed, the light-reflecting object that the dead man had worn about his neck.

  As the notarius Alonso turned away, I quickly stooped and picked up the thing, having to toss it from hand to hand for a while, because it was still scorching hot. It was a small disk of some kind of yellow crystal, and it was curiously but smoothly polished, flat cm one side, curved inward cm the other. The thing had hung from a leather thong, which of course was gone, and it had evidently been set in a circlet of copper, because traces of that still remained, though most had melted.

  None of the soldiers patrolling the area or other Sp
anish persons with errands that took them strolling or hurrying across the vast open square paid any attention to my filching the yellow talisman, or whatever it was. So I tucked it inside my mantle and went in search of my mother and uncle.

  I found them standing on a walk-bridge that spanned one of the city’s remaining canals. My mother had been weeping—her face was still wet with tears—and her brother had a comforting arm clasped about her shoulders. He was also growling, more to himself than to her:

  “Those other scouts gave good report of the white men’s rule. They could not have witnessed anything like this. When we get back, I shall most certainly insist that we Aztéca keep our distance from these loathsome—” Then he broke off, to demand crossly of me, “What kept you, nephew? We might well have decided to start for home without you.”

  “I stayed to pass a few words with that Spaniard who speaks our tongue. He said he had been fond of old Juan Damasceno.”

  “That was not the man’s real name,” said my uncle, his voice gruff, and my mother again gave a small sob. I looked at her, in some surmise, and hesitantly said:

  “Tene, you sighed and sobbed back there in the square. Of what earthly concern could that man have been to you?”

  “I knew him,” she said.

  “How is that possible, dear Tene? You have never set foot in this city before.”

  “No,” she said. “But he came once, long ago, to Aztlan.”

  “Even if not for the yellow eye,” said my uncle, “Cuicáni and I would have recognized him.”

  “The yellow eye?” I repeated. “Do you mean this thing?” And I brought out the crystal I had taken from the ashes.

  “Ayyo!” cried my mother, joyfully. “A memento of the dear departed.”