Only for an instant do we endure.
"Did they believe in life after death?" I asked the Healer. "Like the frays teach about the Christian religion?"
Where are we going, ay, where are we going?
Will we be dead there, or will we live still?
Will there be existence again there?
Will we feel again the joy of the Giver of Life?
"Your question," he said, "is answered by a third song."
By chance are we to live a second time?
Your heart knows it.
Only once have we come to live.
FORTY-THREE
Along with learning the Ways of the Aztec, I slowly picked up the methods of the Healer, not just learning the art of treating wounds and sickness, but much more important in my eyes, the technique of pulling an "evil" snake from a person's head. I couldn't stomach putting one of the Healer's snakes in my mouth when doing the trick and instead I practiced with a twig.
I soon was able to put my "magic" into practice in a most delightful way.
The Healer had gone off to meditate with birds, and I was in the hut provided by the village cacique. Bored and with time on my hands, a dangerous combination for any youth, I had put on the Healer's colorful feather manta and elaborate headdress that covered most of my face. I was practicing the snake trick when the local cacique entered the hut.
"Great Sorcerer," he said, "I have waited for your arrival. I have problems with my new wife. She is very young, and is proving difficult for this old man to deal with."
The fray always claimed that I had a devil in me. At the old man's words, the devil in me awoke and took control. I could not resist finding out what problems this old man had with his young wife.
"I need you to come now to my hut and examine her. Some evil spirit has entered her tipíli and my tepúli is unable to penetrate into her."
Eh, I had seen the Healer deal many times with sex problems. It would be an easy task for me. Mumbling nonsense and gesturing with my hand, I sent him out of the hut. Once he was outside, I pocketed one of the Healer's pet snakes. The notion of using the snake was repulsive to me, but he would expect it.
The cacique's house was the largest house in the village. While most of the village huts consisted of one or two rooms, his had four.
Ayya. The old man's wife was a surprise. A young, good-looking female, little older than me. Very ripe for ahuilnéma, even if it was an old pene being poked at her.
The cacique explained the problem. "She is too tight. I cannot get my tepúli into her. My tepúli is hard," he assured me, expanding his chest with air, "that is not the problem. And she is not too small. I can open her tipíli with my hand and put three fingers inside. But when I try to shove into her, the opening is not large enough."
"It is los aires," the young woman told me, using the Spanish phrase. "I was washing clothes by the riverbank when I breathed in an evil spirit. When my husband tries to put his tepúli in me, it will not go in even if I help it with my hand because the spirit closes my tipíli."
I muttered an incoherent response in a muffled voice.
She spoke impassively, but her eyes were very much alive. And those lively eyes were intently examining what little of my face was exposed by openings in the Healer's headpiece. No doubt she was picking up clues about my age that her husband's old eyes never caught.
I heard other men outside, the village elders gathering to see the magic. I ushered the cacique out to tell them they could not enter, mumbling the instruction so that I barely understood the words myself.
With him out of the room, I spoke to the girl. "Why are you not having ahuilnéma with your husband," I said, in a normal voice. "And don't tell me it's evil spirits."
"What kind of healer are you? They are always old men."
"A new type. I have knowledge not only of indio medicine but of Spanish as well. Tell me why you are not permitting your husband to have ahuilnéma with you."
She scoffed. "When I married, it was promised that I would have many presents. He is the richest man in the area, but he does not give me gifts. If he gives a chicken for me to pluck and cook for him, he thinks it is a present."
A woman after my own heart. The demon would go away if she got what she wanted. But ¡ay de mí! I had presented myself as the Healer and the cacique was familiar with his technique. Neither he nor the village elders would be satisfied unless a snake was pulled from her. The slimy little green snake was wiggling in my pocket. From the feel, I was certain I now had snake mierda in the pocket, too. There was no possibility that I would put the horrible little creature in my mouth.
Obeying my instructions, the cacique entered alone. "The village elders wish to see you remove the evil spirit."
I put one of the Healer's talismans in front of my lips and spoke into it with the hoarse mutter I was affecting.
"The elders cannot enter. The evil spirit must be removed from your wife."
"Yes, yes, they want to—"
"From her tipíli."
"Aaaak!" He gasped and gagged and began coughing. For a moment I thought he was going to drop dead on the spot. His health was important to me. If he died, I would probably never make it out of the village alive.
I was greatly relieved when he got his breathing going again.
"The demon is in her tipíli, and it is from there I must draw it. Being a doctor, it is of course proper and respectful that I perform the task. Of course, if you wish to never have ahuilnéma with your wife..."
"I don't know, don't know," he said, "perhaps I will try again—"
"Ayya! If you do, the demon will enter your tepúli!"
"No!"
"Yes. Until the demon is removed, she cannot even share her bed with you. Or cook for you. It might enter through your mouth with the food."
"¡Ayya ouiya! I must eat. Remove it from her."
"You may stay," I said, graciously, "but you must turn around and face the wall."
"Face the wall? Why must I—"
"Because the demon will seek another hole to enter after I remove it. It may go inside your mouth, up your nose, in your..." I patted my backside.
He groaned aloud.
"You must also keep repeating the chant I tell you. It is the only way to keep the demon from coming after you. Keep repeating these words over and over. Rosa rosa est est, rosa rosa est est."
I turned to examine his wife as he stood with his back to me, literally saying over and over that a rose is a rose is a rose...
I had the young wife lie down on a mat and remove her skirt. She had nothing on beneath it. Most of my experience with women had been in the dark, one might say, but the two girls at the river had instructed me well about the treasures to be found on a woman's body.
I put my hand on her mound of black hair and slowly allowed my hand to slip between her legs. As my hand moved down, her legs spread. I became instantly excited. My pene throbbed wildly. Her tipíli opened like a buttercup in the sun as my hand touched it. I let my fingers move in and around the lush, wet, warm opening. I found her witch's teat and began to gently caress it.
She began to flow with the movement of my hand, her hips moving up and down. Ayya! The only demon in this young woman's tipíli was the neglect she got from having to lay with an old man.
I heard the cacique tapering off from reciting roses. "You must keep the spirits away. Keep chanting."
He picked up immediately.
I turned back to the young woman. She was staring at me with eyes that told me she liked very much what I was doing. I started to lean down to take the witch's teat in my mouth, but she stopped me.
"I want your pene," she whispered, using the Spanish word. Her eyes were as lush and lustful as her hot-wet tipíli. She may not have been opening for the old cacique, but I had the feeling more than one village boy had enjoyed her favors.
In truth, while I was a teller of tales, sí, a liar if you insist, I will admit honestly that I had little prior experience
doing what the indios called ahuilnéma. The great opportunity at the fair had been lost when my garrancha got excited too quickly. Now, despite the danger of being caught—and not just skinned, but probably skinned and slow roasted—my pene was throbbing wildly, telling me that it wanted to explore new stimulation beyond what it had experienced by my own hand.
Her hand went to my pants and undid the cord holding them up. She pulled my pants down and took my pene in her hand, drawing it toward her tipíli.
The throbbing was so fierce that I thought my pene was going to explode.
I started to mount her and... and... mierda!
That juice that Snake Flower craved for her love potion exploded out of my pene. For a moment I convulsively jerked. The juice shot out and struck the young woman's stomach.
She looked down at her violated stomach and back into my eyes. She hissed something in Náhuatl. I did not recognize the word, but the meaning was clear.
Shamefaced, I slipped off of her and pulled up my pants.
"Rosas rosas rosas... can I stop now?" The cacique sounded exhausted.
I pulled the slimy little snake out of my pocket and told him to turn around.
"The demon is gone." I threw the demon into the fire, "but there is another problem. The demon got inside of your wife because she was weak from being unhappy. When she is happy, the demon cannot enter her. Each time you wish to do ahuilnéma with your wife, you must give her a silver reale. If you do that, the demon will not come back."
The cacique clutched his heart, and the girl grinned broadly as I left.
I hurried to the hut where we were staying to remove the headdress and cape before the Healer returned.
Fray Antonio had told me that a great king named Solomon had had the wisdom to order a baby chopped in two to determine which of the two women who claimed it was the baby's mother. I felt that my solution to the problem of the cacique and his wife had the same type of wisdom that this king of ancient Israel had possessed.
But ¡ay de mí! my performance as a lover was a failure. I had lost honor. Sí, amigos, honor. I was learning the Aztec Ways, but I was still a Spaniard. At least half of one; and I had been shamed again by my pene.
Using Plato's logic, I determined that the problem lay with my inexperience. I knew from my days on the streets that young boys train their penes. I must perform more practice with my hand to ensure that my garrancha is ready the next time it is given the opportunity.
FORTY-FOUR
"You will not know the Ways of the Aztec until you speak to your ancestors," the Healer told me.
I had been with the Healer for over a year. My sixteenth birthday had come and gone, and I was nearing another birthday. We had traveled from village to village. I had learned the Náhuatl language as it should be spoken and could hold a conversation in other indio dialects. From all I had learned about the indio in our travels, I thought that I knew the Ways of my Aztec ancestors; but when I told this to the Healer, he would click his tongue and shake his head.
"How do I talk to the gods?" I asked him.
He twittered like a bird. "You must go to where they reside and open your mind. We are going to the Place of the Gods," he said.
We had entered the Valley of Mexico, the great cavity between high mountains that contained the most prized land in New Spain. The valley had been the heart and soul of the Aztec world, and now it was the same for the Spanish of the New World. In it were the five-great-lakes-that-were-really-one, including Lake Texcoco that the Aztecs had built Tenochtitlan upon—the great city the Spanish in turn razed to build the City of Mexico.
But it was not to that city-on-the-water that the Healer was taking me. As was our custom, we avoided all large towns. We were on our way to another city, one that once had more people than Tenochtitlan. Our destination was about two days' walk from the City of Mexico.
"Are there many people in this city that you're taking me to?"
"More than the sands along the Eastern Sea," he said, referring to the Veracruz coast, "but you cannot see them." He cackled.
I had never seen the old man so ecstatic. But it was no wonder because we were entering Teotihuacan, the place of the gods, the city that was holy to the Aztecs and which they called the Place That Men Become Gods.
"Teotihuacan is an not an Aztec city," the Healer told me. "It is much older than the Aztecs. It was built by a civilization older and mightier than all of the known indio empires. It was the greatest city in the One World."
"What happened to it? Why are there no people there now?"
"Ayya. The gods engaged in battles among themselves. People fled the city as the gods fought because death fell from the sky like the new rains. The city is still there, but only the gods walk its streets."
The Healer's knowledge of the city was based not upon learning found in books, but upon the knowledge found in legends and tales of old. A day would come when I would learn more about Teotihuacan. It would be no surprise to me that the Healer's knowledge of the city was correct.
Teotihuacan, lying about ten leagues northeast of the City of Mexico, was truly one of the wonders of the world. It was the great city of the classic era of the indio, a New World Rome and Athens. Sprawled over an immense area, the ceremonial center of the city alone was larger than many of the great Aztec and Mayan cities. It is said that the city rose about the time of the birth of Christ and fell about the same time the Dark Age was falling upon Europe.
The masters of the civilization that flourished in Teotihuacan were truly gods. The temples they built were the examples for all the great indio religious edifices that followed, but all that followed were dwarfed by the originals.
My breath left me and my heart jumped when Teotihuacan came into view. The two greatest pyramids of the One World, the monuments the Aztecs most feared and loved and worshipped, the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon, were the most stunning as we came upon the deserted city. These great pyramids were what the Aztecs copied for the ones they built.
The two main groups of temples were connected by a broad avenue, the Way of the Dead. Half a league long, it was wide enough for two dozen carriages to drive side-by-side. At the north end of the city was the Pyramid of the Moon, along with lesser pyramids. To the east, the greatest pyramid of all: the Pyramid of the Sun. Over seven hundred feet wide in each direction at its base, it rose over two hundred feet into the sky.
A great stairway at the Pyramid of the Sun, climbing up the five levels of the temple—stairs to the heavens—faced the Way of the Dead.
The Pyramid of the Moon was similar in appearance to that of the Sun, but not as large.
Near the center of the city, just east of the Way of the Dead, was the Ciudadela, the Citadel: a vast, sunken court surrounded on all four sides by temples. In the middle of this compound was the Temple of Quetzalcóatl. This temple—a stepped pyramid like those of the Sun and the Moon—had dramatic sculptured representations of Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent, and the Fire Serpent, the bearer of the Sun on its diurnal journey across the sky each day. The temple was frightening and majestic.
Each year the Aztec emperors came to Teotihuacan to pay homage to the gods. They walked down the Way of the Dead toward the Temple of the Sun amid other temples and the tombs of ancient kings who had become gods. Now the Healer and I walked in the footsteps of those Aztec rulers.
"The Sun and Moon, husband and wife, became gods when they sacrificed themselves to take the earth out of darkness, becoming the golden fire of day and silvery light of night," the Healer said.
We stood before the greatest pyramid on earth, the Temple of the Sun, covering ten acres of ground.
The old man cackled. "The gods are still here; you can feel them. They have your heart clutched in their fist, but they will not rip it out if you honor them."
He pulled up his sleeve and nicked the tender skin on the underside of his arm with an obsidian knife. He let the blood drip to the ground and handed me the knife.
&n
bsp; I cut my arm and held it out so the blood would fall to the ground.
Three men and a woman came out of the shadows of a temple and slowly walked toward us. I recognized not their faces but their occupations: sorcerers and wizards, all of them. Each was as ancient and venerable as the Healer.
They exchanged the esoteric greetings of secret signs and veiled language known only to those who practiced the Dark Arts.
"These will be your guides to speak to your ancestors," the Healer said. "They will make your blood Aztec and take you to places where only those with true blood are permitted to enter."
Up to now I had not taken seriously the Healer's comments that I was to speak with the gods. Looking at the venerable faces and secretive eyes of the sorcerers who had come to guide me, I became anxious. How does one speak with the gods?
They led me to an opening in the great Sun pyramid, a hidden recess that I would not have found by myself even if I had been looking for it. The tunnel led to a huge cavern in the bowels of the pyramid, a cave as big as an indio ball court.
A fire in the center of the cave was waiting for us. I heard the trickle of water along the sides of the walls. The smell was of fire and water.
"We are in the womb of the earth," the woman said. "We came out of caves and into the light a thousand ancestors ago. This cave is the mother of all caves, the holiest of the holy. It was here before the Pyramid of the Sun was built." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It was here during the darkness after each of Four Suns had gone dark and cold."
Blood from our arms was spilled into the fire. We sat before the fire, our legs crossed. A wind blew against me, a cold breeze that frightened the hair on the back of my neck and sent a cold serpent of fear shivering down my spine. Where the wind had entered the cavern, I could not tell, but never before had I felt a wind that seemed to be so alive.
"He is with us," the old woman chortled.
One of the sorcerers chanted an ode to the gods:
In heaven you live;
The mountains you uphold,
Anáhuac is in your hand,
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