Aztec Autumn

by Gary Jennings

  At the time, I admit, I was being as deceitful as any white man. I was not, as Padre Vasco supposed, touring the villages of his Utopía just to assess or admire them; I was combing them for any inhabitants who might collaborate in my planned sedition. To every village smith who worked with metals, I showed my arcabuz and inquired whether he could make a copy of such a contrivance. They all, of course, recognized a thunder-stick—and made loud praise of the Mexícatl who had crafted mine. But all were unanimous in saying that even if they were inclined to imitate that talented artisan, they had not the necessary tools. And the replies I got when I asked all the men whether any would rally to me in rebellion against the Spanish oppressors could be summed up in the response I got from Erasmo Mdrtir, the last one I queried.

  “No,” he said flatly.

  We were sitting together on the bench before his house door, where, this time, he was not shaping a woman-formed piece of guitarra. He went on:

  “Do you take me for a raving tlahuéle? I am one of the fortunate few Mexíca who have ample food, secure shelter, freedom from any master’s abuse, freedom to come and go as I please. I have even real prosperity and a promising future for my family.”

  Yet another man drained of manhood, I thought bitterly, “lamiendo el culo del patrón.” I growled, “Is that all you desire to have, Erasmo?”

  “All?! Are you tlahuéle, Juan Británico? What more could a man want in this world as it is today?”

  “Today, you say. But there was a day when the Mexíca also had pride.”

  “Those who could afford to. The tlátoantin rulers, and those with the noble -tzin to their names, and the pípiltin upper classes and the cuéchitin knights and such. They were so proud, in fact, that they gave no thought to us macehuáltin commoners who fed and clothed and attended them. Except when they needed us on the battlefield.”

  I said, “Most of the cuáchitin of whom you speak were likewise mere macehualtin, who rose from the common class to the knighthood because they fought the enemies of the Mexíca, and were proud to do so, and showed it in their prowess on the battlefield.”

  Erasmo shrugged. “I have here everything that any Mexícatl knight ever had, and I won it without fighting.”

  “You did not win it!” I snapped. “It was given to you.”

  He shrugged again. “If you like. But I work hard to be worthy of it and to keep it. And to show my gratitude to the good Padre Vasco.”

  “The padre is good and gracious, that is true. But do you not see, Cuatl Erasmo? He is degrading your Mexícatl manhood just as would a cruel, whip-wielding white master. He is treating all of you as if you were only domesticated wild beasts. Or drooling xolopítlin. Or swaddled infants.”

  This appeared to be Erasmo’s day for shrugging. “Even the manliest man can appreciate being treated with tender solicitude.” Now he sniffled, as if near to weeping. “The way a good wife treats a good husband.”

  I blinked. “What has wifeliness to do with—?”

  “Hush. No more, please, Cuatl Juan. Come, walk with me. I would speak with you on something of a different nature.”

  Wondering, I went with him. When we were some distance from his house, I ventured to say, “You do not seem nearly so cheerful as when I last saw you, and that was not too long ago.”

  He sniffled again, and said gloomily, “That is certain. My head is bowed, my heart bleeds, my hands tremble so that my work suffers.”

  “Are you ill, Erasmo?”

  “Best you address me by my pagan name—Ixtélatl—for I am no longer fit to be a Christian. I have sinned most irredeemably. I am … afflicted with chéhuacocoliztli.” That long word means “the shameful disease caused by adultery.” He went on, still sniffling, “Not only does my heart leak. So does my tepúli. For some time now, I have not dared to embrace my good wife, and she keeps plaintively asking why,”

  “Ayya,” I murmured sympathetically. “Then you have lain with one of those importunate Purémpe women. Well, a tícitl of our own people—or probably even a Spanish medico—can alleviate the ailment. And any priest of our kindly goddess Tlazoltéotl can absolve you of the transgression.”

  “As a Christian convert, I cannot resort to the goddess Filth Eater.”

  “Then go and confess to Padre Vasco. He told me that the sin of adultery is not exactly unknown here in Utopía. Surely he has forgiven others, and has let them continue being Christians.”

  Erasmo muttered guiltily, “As a man, I am too ashamed to confess to the padre.”

  “Then why, may I ask, are you confessing to me?”

  “Because she wants to meet you.”

  “Who?” I exclaimed, mystified. “Your wife?”

  “No. The adulterous woman.”

  Now I was nonplussed. “Why in the name of all the gods should I consent to meet a slut of polluted tipíli?”

  “She asked for you by name. By your pagan name. Tenamáxtli.”

  “It must be Pakapeti,” I said, even more confounded, because if Tiptoe had been diseased when she and I so often and so enjoyably coupled, I too would be hurting and leaking by now. And there had hardly been time since then for some other male passerby to have—

  “Her name is not Pakápeti,” said Erasmo, and astounded me again by announcing, “Here she comes now.”

  This was too coincidental to be coincidence. The woman must have been observing our approach from some nearby hiding place, and now stepped forward to meet us. She was no one I had ever seen before, and I hoped I would never again see such a cold and gloating smile as she was smiling at me. Erasmo, speaking Náhuatl, not Poré, said without enthusiasm:

  “Cuatl Tenamáxtli, this is G’nda Ké, who expressed a fervent wish to meet you.”

  I spoke no courteous salutation to her, saying only, “G’nda Ké is not a Purémpe name. And you have abundant hair on your head.”

  Clearly she understood Náhuatl, for she said, “G’nda Ké is Yaki,” and gave a haughty toss of her dead-black mane.

  Erasmo mumbled, “I must go. My wife…” and scampered back toward his home.

  “If you are a Yaki,” I said to the woman, “you are far from home.”

  “G’nda Ké has been many years away from that home.”

  That was the way she talked, not ever saying “I” or “me.” She spoke always as if she were standing apart from her own physical presence. She appeared to be no older than myself, and she was fair of face and form; I could understand how easily she must have seduced Erasmo. But whether G’nda Ké smiled, frowned or wore no expression whatever, her visage never ceased to seem gloating. It implied that she possessed some private, secret, unclean bit of knowledge with which she could damage or even damn to Míctlan any person she chose. There was one other feature of her face that was only rarely seen among our people.

  “You have a profusion of freckles,” I said, not caring if I was being rude, because I supposed it was a manifestation of her detestable disease.

  “G’nda Ké is freckled all over her body,” she said with a gloating grin, as if inviting me to have a look.

  I ignored that, and asked, “What brought you so far south from the Yaki lands? Are you on a quest of some sort?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you seek?”

  “You.”

  I laughed, without humor. “I did not realize that my attractiveness had such a long reach. Anyway, you found Erasmo instead.”

  “Only to find you.”

  I laughed again. “Erasmo has good reason to wish you had never found him.”

  She said indifferently, “Erasmo does not matter. G’nda Ké hopes that he will convey the disease to every other Mexícatl here. They deserve the agony and the shame. They are as flabby and cowardly as their forebears who refused to leave Aztlan with me.”

  My memory stirred. And, I think, so did the roots of my back hair. I recalled how my great-grandfather, Canauútli the Rememberer, had told of the long-ago Yaki woman—and yes, her name had been G’nda Ké—wh
o turned some of the peaceable early Aztéca into the bellicose Mexíca who battled their way to greatness.

  “That was sheaves of sheaves of years ago,” I said, certain that she did not need my explaining of what “that” was. “If you did not the then, as reported, Yaki woman, how old must you be?”

  “That does not matter either. What matters is that you, too, Tenamáxtli, have left Aztlan. And now you are of a disposition to accept G’nda Ké’s gift of her other disease.”

  I blurted, “By Huitzli, I want none of your afflictions!”

  “Ayyo, but you do! You just spoke the word—the name of him—Huitzilopóchtli, god of war. For that is G’nda Ké’s other disease, and one she will happily help you spread through all The One World. War!”

  I could only stare at her. I had not lately partaken of chépari, so this awful creature was hardly a drunken hallucination.

  “You will recruit no warriors here, Tenamáxtli. Do not be tempted to loiter in this easeful Utopía. Your tonáli has destined you to a harder life, and a more glorious one. Go north. You and G’nda Ké will meet again, probably many times, along the way. Wherever you need her, she will be there, to help infect others with the sublime disease that you and she share.”

  She had been walking backward away from me as she spoke, and was now at some distance, so I shouted, “I need you not! I want you not! I can make war without you! Go back to the Míctlan you came from.”

  Just before she disappeared around a corner of one of the village houses, she spoke a last time, not loudly but audibly, and ominously:

  “Tenamáxtli, no man can ever repulse or elude a woman bent on spite and malice. You will never be rid of this one while she still lives and hates and schemes.”

  Padre Vasco said, “I never even heard of the Yaki.”

  I told him, “They abide in the very farthest northwest corner of The One World. In forests and mountain ranges far beyond the desert wastes that our people call the Dead-Bone Lands. The Yaki are reputed to be the fiercest, most bloodthirsty of savages, loathing every other human being, including their own nearest relatives. I am quite ready to give credence to that reputation, after meeting my first Yaki yesterday. If the women are all like her, the men must be fiends indeed.”

  It was because I liked and admired Vasco de Quiroga that I had troubled to revisit his capital village of Santa Cruz Pétzcuaro. Leaving out any mention of the Yaki woman’s warlike aspirations—those she had expressed yesterday as well as those imputed to her in Canaútli’s tales of long ago—I recounted to the padre what else I knew of her evil doings and intentions.

  “It happened in a time before imagining,” I said, “but the happenings were never forgotten. The words were repeated from one aged Rememberer to the next. How that mysterious Yaki woman insinuated herself into our serene Aztlan, preaching the worship of an alien god, and thereby setting brother against brother.”

  “Hmmm,” mused the padre. “Lílith comes to Cain and Abel.”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “Nothing. Go on, my son.”

  “Well, either she did not die, all those ages ago, and became a demoness immortal, or she spawned a long line of demoness daughters. For there is most certainly just such a Yaki woman trying to disrupt your Utopía. This G’nda Ké is far more of a menace to your colonists here than any number of Purémpe women merely hungry for a man’s embrace. It was my great-grandfather’s belief that because the Yaki males are notorious for cruelly abusing their females, this particular Yaki woman is out to wreak revenge on every man alive.”

  “Hmmm,” the padre murmured again. “Ever since Lílith, every country of the Old World has known a similar female predator, eager to rip the entrails out of any male. Real woman or mythical, who can say? In various languages she is the harpy, the lamia, the witchwife, the nightmare hag, la bella dama sin merced. But tell me, Juan Británico. If I am to thwart this demoness, how do I find and recognize her?”

  “It might be difficult,” I admitted. “G’nda Ké could pass as a transient young woman of any nation—except the bald Purémpecha, of course—even as a Spanish señorita, if she chose to disguise herself. I confess I cannot remember her face well enough to describe her. It was handsome enough, but it seems to blur in my memory. Except for three things. I can tell you that her hair is of no living color. And her skin is flyspecked with freckles. And her eyes are like those of the axolotl lizard. However, if she saw me take the road hither, padre, she would know I intended to warn you about her, and she may well have gone into hiding or fled Utopía altogether.”

  We were interrupted by the sudden entry of that young friar I had seen before, now agitated and shouting:

  “Padre! Come quickly! A terrible fire to the eastward! San Marcos Churítzio—the guitarra village—it seems to be all ablaze!”

  We dashed outdoors and looked where he pointed. An immense column of smoke was rising there, much like the one I had once caused to rise over Grasshopper Hill. But this mischief was none of my doing, so I stayed where I stood when Padre Vasco, his friars and everyone else of Santa Cruz went running to help their neighbors in San Marcos. I of course assumed that the fire was the work of that malevolent G’nda Ké—until I felt a tug at my mantle and turned to find that Tiptoe, this time having personified her name, had slipped up noiselessly behind me. She was smiling broadly, triumphantly, so I said:

  “You did that! Set that village afire.”

  “Not I, but my warrior women. Ever since I assembled them, we have been searching for you, Tenamáxtli. I saw you in that village yonder. When you departed, I gave orders to my women, then I followed you here.” She added, with some scorn, “I could see that you had acquired no other followers.”

  I gestured toward the smoke. “But why do that? Those Mexíca are a harmless lot.”

  “Because they are a harmless lot. To show you what we mere women can do. Come, Tenamáxtli, before the Spaniards return. Come and meet the first recruits of your army of rebellion.”

  * * *

  I accompanied her to a mountainside overlooking the lake, where her “warriors” had regrouped to wait for her after their torch-bearing foray among the buildings of Erasmo’s village. Besides Tiptoe, there were forty-two females, of all ages from barely nubile to matronly. Though they were also of varying degrees of sightliness—uniformly bald, of course—all looked healthy, sturdy and determined to show their mettle. I was resignedly thinking, “Well, they are only women, but they are forty-three more allies than I have had until now…,” when suddenly my masculine presumptuousness was rebuked.

  “Pakápeti,” one of the older women barked at her. “It was you who enlisted us in this venture. Why now do you ask us to accept this stranger as our leader?”

  I expected Tiptoe to say something about my masterly qualities of leadership, or at least to mention the fact that this “venture” was originally my idea, but all she said was, turning to me, “Tenamáxtli, show them how your arcabuz works.”

  Though considerably exasperated, I did as she said—charging the weapon, then discharging it at a squirrel perched on a tree limb not too far distant (and this time, happily, hitting what I aimed at). The ball of lead fairly disintegrated the little animal, but the women excitedly fingered the remaining scraps of fur and handed them around, and clucked admiringly at the destructiveness of the thunder-stick, and marveled at my possessing such a thing. Then, all together, they began to clamor that I show them how to wield the arcabuz, and that I let them take turns at practicing with it.

  “No,” I said firmly. “If and when each of you procures a thunder-stick of your own, then I will teach you how to use it,”

  “And how do we manage that?” demanded that same older woman, who had the voice (and visage) of a cóyotl. “The white men’s weapons are not procurable just for the asking.”

  “Here is one who will tell you how,” said a new voice.

  We had been joined by a forty-fourth woman, this one not bald, not Purémpe—this one the Ya
ki G’nda Ké again, and again obtruding herself into my affairs. Evidently, in just the short time since I had last seen her, the demoness had somehow joined this troop of women and ingratiated herself with them, for they listened respectfully when she spoke. And even I could not find fault with what she had to say:

  “There are comely girls among you. And there are numerous Spanish soldiers here in Michihuácan, manning army outposts or guarding the estancias of Spanish landowners. You have only to catch the eye of those men and, with your beauty and your seductive wiles—”

  “Are you suggesting that we go astraddle the road?” cried one of the comely young women, using the phrase that connotes prostitution or wanton promiscuity. “You would have us couple with our avowed enemies?”

  I was tempted to say that even hateful, unwashed Christian white men ought to be preferable to billy goats and such other mates as were currently available in Michihuácan. But I kept silent and let G’nda Ké reply:

  “There are many ways of besting an enemy in war, young woman. And seduction is one way denied to male combatants. You should take pride in having a weapon unique to our female sex.”

  “Well…” said the girl who had objected, sounding somewhat mollified.

  G’nda Ké continued, “Besides, as Purémpe women, you have another unique advantage. The Spaniards’ own females are repellently hairy of head and body. The Spanish soldiers will be curious to—shall we say?—explore any woman totally and temptingly hairless.”

  Most of the bald heads nodded agreement.

  “Go to each guard or to each post,” the Yaki woman went on, “singly or severally, and exercise your charms. Do whatever is necessary, either to addle the soldiers with lust or—if you care to go so far—to wring them limp and helpless. Then steal their thunder-sticks.”

  “And any other weapons they may have,” I hastened to put in. “Also the pólvora and lead for those weapons.”

  “Now?” asked several of the women, almost eagerly. “Do we go this instant to seek those soldiers?”