Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  At the mesón, also, on any night I could engage in conversation that long-time city dweller, the former jewelsmith Pochotl, who obviously had determined to spend the rest of his life battening on the hospitality of the San José friars. Some of our talks consisted of my merely listening, and trying not to yawn, as he recited his innumerable grudges and grievances against the Spanish, against the tonáli that from his birth had predestined his present misery, and against the gods who had laid that tonáli on him. But more often I listened more attentively, for he had really informative things to tell. For example, Pochotl provided my first knowledge of the orders and ranks and authorities by which New Spain was ruled and governed.

  “The very topmost personage,” he said, “is a certain man named Carlos, who resides back in what the Spaniards call the Old World. He is sometimes referred to as ‘king,’ sometimes as ‘emperor,’ sometimes as ‘the crown’ or ‘the court’ But clearly he is the equivalent of a Revered Speaker, such as we Mexíca once had. A good many years ago, that king sent ships full of warriors to conquer and colonize a place called Cuba, which is a very large island in the Eastern Sea, somewhere beyond the horizon.”

  “I have heard of it,” I said. “It is now populated by varicolored mongrel bastards.”

  He blinked and said, “What?”

  “No matter. Go on, please, Cuatl Pochotl.”

  “From that Cuba, about twelve or thirteen years ago, came hither that Carlos’s captain-general Hernán Cortes, to lead the conquest of our One World. Cortes naturally expected that the king would make him lord and master of all he conquered. However, it is now common knowledge that there were many dignitaries in Spain, and many of his own officers, who were jealous of Cortés’s presumption. They persuaded the king to clamp a firm restraining hand on him. So now Cortés holds only the grand but empty title of Marqués del Valle—of this Valley of Mexíco—and the real rulers are the members of what they call the Audiencia, or what in the old days would have been a Revered Speaker’s Speaking Council. Cortés has retired in disgust to his estate south of here, in Quaunáhuac—”

  I interrupted. “I understand that place is no longer called Quaunáhuac.”

  “Well, yes and no. Our name for it, Surrounded by Forest, is pronounced by the Spaniards Cuernavaca, which is ridiculous. It means ‘Cow’s Horn’ in their tongue. Anyway, Cortés now sits sulking on his fine estate there. I do not know why he should sulk. His herds of sheep and his plantations of the sugar-yielding cane and the tribute he still receives from numerous tribes and nations—all of that has made him the wealthiest man in New Spain. Perhaps in all the dominions of Spain.”

  “I am not much interested,” I said, “in the intrigues and exploitations that the white men concoct and inflict among themselves. Nor in the riches they have laid up for themselves. Tell me the details of the hold they have on us.”

  “There are many who do not find that grip too onerous,” said Pochotl. “I mean those who have always been the lower classes. Peasants and laborers and such. They so seldom raise their eyes from their toil that they may not yet have noticed that their masters have changed color.”

  He went on to elaborate. New Spain was governed by the councilmen of the Audiencia, but, every so often, their King Carlos would send across the sea a royal inspector called a visitador, to make sure the Audiencia was properly attending to its business. The visitadores reported back to a council in Old Spain, the Consejo de los Indios. That council was purportedly responsible for protecting the rights of all in New Spain, natives and Spaniards alike, so it could change or amend or overrule any laws made by the Audiencia.

  “I personally believe, though,” said Pochotl, “that the Consejo exists mainly to make sure that the quinto gets paid.”

  “The quinto?”

  “The King’s Fifth. Every time a quill measure of gold dust or a handful of sugar is extracted from our land—or cacao beans or cotton or anything else—one fifth of it is set aside for the king, before any others get their share of it.”

  The Audiencia’s laws and regulations made in the City of Mexíco, Pochotl continued to explain, were passed along for enforcement by Spanish officials called corregidores, posted in the major communities throughout New Spain. And those officials, in turn, enjoined the encomenderos residing in their districts to abide by those laws and see that they were obeyed by the native population.

  “The encomenderos, of course, are usually Spanish,” he said, “but not all of them. Some are the survivors or descendants of our own onetime overlords. The son and two daughters of Motecuzóma, for instance, as soon as they converted to Christianity and took Spanish names—Pedro, Isabel and Leonor—they were given encomiendas. So was Prince Black Flower, the son of Nezahualpili, the late, great and sincerely lamented Revered Speaker of Texcóco. That son fought on the side of the white men during their conquest, so he is now Hernando Black Flower, and a wealthy encomendero.”

  I said, “Encomendero. Encomienda. What are those?”

  “An encomendero is one who has been granted an encomienda. And that is a territory of varying size, within which the encomendero is master. The cities or towns or villages within that area pay him tribute in money or goods, all who grow or produce anything give him a share of it, all are subject to his command, whether to build him a mansion, to till his fields for him, to tend his livestock, to hunt or fish for him, even to lend him their wives or daughters, if he demands. Or their sons, I suppose, if it is a female encomendera of lascivious tastes. An encomienda does not include the land, only everything and everybody on it.”

  “Of course,” I said. “How could anyone own land? Own a piece of the world? The notion is beyond belief.”

  “Not to the Spaniards,” said Pochotl, raising a cautionary hand. “Some of them were granted what is called an estancia, and that does include the land. It can even be bequeathed from one generation to the next. The Marqués Cortés, for example, owns not just the people and produce of Quaunáhuac, but also the very ground under the whole of it. And his former concubine Malinche, that traitress to her own people, is now respectfully entitled the Widow Jaramillo and owns an entire, immense river island as her estancia.”

  “It is against all reason,” I growled. “Against all nature. No person can claim to possess the smallest fragment of the world. It was put here by the gods, it is managed by the gods. In times past, it has been purged of people by the gods. It belongs only to the gods.”

  “Would that the gods would purge it again, then,” said Pochotl with a sigh. “Of white people, I mean.”

  “Now, the encomienda I can understand,” I went on. “It is no more than our own rulers did. Collect tribute, conscript workers. I do not know of any who demanded partners for their beds, but I suppose they could have done, if they had wanted to. And I can understand why you say that many persons nowadays do not perceive any difference in the change of masters from—”

  “I said the lower classes,” Pochotl reminded me. “What the Spaniards call indios rusticos—clods, bumpkins, priests of our old religion, other persons easily dispensable. But I am of the class called indios pallos—persons of quality. And, by Huitztli, / perceive the difference. So does every other artist and artisan and scribe and—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, for I could recite his lamentations almost as well as he, by now. “And what of this city, Pochotl? It must constitute the biggest and richest encomienda of all. To whom was it granted? To the Bishop Zumárraga, perhaps?”

  “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 maravedi 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 Zoquipan. 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 cm his own.

  “Tépizqui,” 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 had 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.”