Текст книги "Aztec Autumn"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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So, on the night that Kukú had said would be my last there, Cricket and I sat side by side, leaning against the fallen tree trunk that roofed our two shelters, and I asked her, "Ixínatsi, who was your father?"

She said simply, "We have no fathers. Only mothers and daughters. My mother is dead. You are acquainted with my daughter."

"But your mother could not have created you all by herself. Nor you your Tirípetsi. Sometime, somehow, in each case, there had to have been a man involved."

"Oh, that," she said negligently. "Akuáreni. Yes, the men come to do that once a year."

I said, "So that is what you meant when you first spoke to me. You told me I had come too soon."

"Yes. The men come from that mainland village to which you are going. They come for just one day in the eighteen months of the year. They come with loaded freight canoes, and we select what we need, and we trade our kinúcha for them. One kinú for a good comb made of bone or tortoiseshell, two kinúcha for an obsidian knife or a braided fishing line—"

"Ayya!" I interrupted. "You are being outrageously cheated! Those men exchange those pearls for countless times that value, and the next buyers trade them for another profit, and the next and the next. By the time the pearls have passed through all the hands between here and some city market..."

Cricket shrugged her moon-radiant bare shoulders. "The men could have the kinúcha for no payment at all, if Xarátanga should choose to let them learn to dive. But the trading brings us what we need and want, and what more could we ask? Then, when the trading is all done, Kukú gathers those women who want to have a daughter—even those who may not be so eager, if Kukú says it is their turn—and Kukú selects the more robust of the men. The women lie in a row on the beach, and the men do that akuáreni we must endure if we are to have daughters."

"You keep saying daughters. There must be someboys born."

"Yes, some. But the goddess New Moon ordained that these be The Islands of the Women, and there is only one way to keep them so. Any male children, being forbidden by the goddess, are drowned at birth."

Even in the dark, she must have seen the expression on my face, but she misinterpreted it, hastening to add:

"That is not a waste, as you may think. They become nourishment for the oysters, and that is a very worthwhile use for them."

Well, as a male myself, I could hardly applaud that merciless weeding out of the newborn. On the other hand, like most god-commanded doings, it had the purity of stark simplicity. Keep the islands a female preserve by feeding the oysters on whose hearts the islanders depend.

Cricket went on, "My daughter is almost of an age to commence diving. So I expect Kukú will order me to do akuáreni with one of the men when they come next time."

At that I did speak up. "You make it sound as enjoyable as being attacked by a sea monster. Does none of you ever lie with a man just for the pleasure of it?"

"Pleasure?!" she exclaimed. "What pleasure can there be in having a pole of flesh painfully stuck inside you and painfully moved back and forth a few times and then painfully pulled out? During that while, it is like being constipated in the wrong place."

I muttered, "Gallant and gracious men you women invite for consorts," then said aloud, "My dear Ixínatsi, what you describe is rape, not the loving act it should be. When it is done with love—and you yourself have spoken of the loving heart—it can be an exquisite pleasure."

"Done how with love?" she asked, sounding interested.

"Well... the loving can start long before a pole of flesh is involved. You know that youhave a loving heart, but you may not know that you also have a kinú. It is infinitely more capable of being loved than that of the most emotional oyster. It is there."

I pointed to the place, and she seemed immediately to lose interest.

"Oh, that," she said again. She unwound her single garment and shifted to move her abdomen into a moonbeam, and with her fingers she parted the petals of her tipíli, and looked incuriously at her pearl-like xacapíli, and said, "A child's plaything."

"What?"

"A girl learns very young that that little part of her is sensitive and excitable, and she makes much use of it. Yes—as you are doing now with your fingertip, Tenamáxtli. But, as a girl matures, she grows bored with that childish practice and finds it unwomanly. Also, our Kukú has taught us that such activity depletes one's strength and endurance. Oh, a grown woman does it once in a while. I do it myself—exactly as you are doing it to me this moment—but only for relief when I feel tense or ill-humored. It is like scratching an itch."

I sighed. "Itching and push-pull and constipation. What awful words you use to speak of the feeling that can be the most sublime of feelings. And your aged Kukú is wrong. Lovemaking can invigorate you to much greater strength and satisfaction in everyother thing you do. But never mind that. Just tell me. When Ifondle you there, is it like your own scratching of an itch?"

"N-no," she admitted, with a break in her voice. "I feel... whatever I feel... it is very different..."

Trying to suppress my own arousal, so I could speak as soberly as an examining tícitl, I asked, "But it feels good?"

She said softly, "Yes."

When I kissed her nipples, she whispered, "Yes."

As I kissed farther down the sleek-pelted, moon-glistening length of her body, she said almost inaudibly, "Yes."

I kissed to where my hand was, then moved my hand out of the way. She started and gasped, "No!You cannot... that is not how... oh, yes, it is! Yes, you can! And I... oh, Ican!"

It took a while for Cricket to recover, and she breathed as if she had just come up from the sea depths when she said, "Uiikíiki! Never... when I myself... it has never been like that!"

"Let us make up for the long neglect," I suggested, and I did things that took her to those depths—or heights—twice again before I even let her know that I had a pole of flesh available when it should be wanted. And when it was, I was embraced and enfolded and engulfed by a creature as lithe and sinuous and pliant and nimble as any sea-cuguar cavorting in its own element.

Then it was that I discovered something absolutely novel about Ixínatsi—and I would have sworn that no woman could ever again surprise me in any way. It was not until we lay together that I discovered it, because her delightful difference from all other women resided in her most intimate parts. Manifestly, when the unborn Cricket was being fashioned by the gods, while she was still within her mother's womb, the kindly goddess of love and flowers and connubial happiness must have said:

"Let me endow this girl-child Ixínatsi with one small uniqueness in her female organs, so that when she grows to womanhood she can perform akuáreni with mortal men as joyously and voluptuously as I myself might do." It was indeed only a small alteration that the goddess effected in Cricket's body, but ayyo!—I can attest that it added an incredible piquancy and exuberance when she and I joined in the conjugal act.

The love goddess is called Xochiquétzal by us Aztéca, but is known as Petsíkuri by the Purémpecha, including these island women. Whatever her name, what she had done was this. She had set Cricket's tipíli opening just a littlefarther back between her thighs than is the case in ordinary women. Thus her tipíli's inner recess did not simply extend straight upward inside her body, but upward and forward.When she and I coupled face-to-face, and I slid my tepúli into her, it gently flexed to fit that curve. So, when it was fully sheathed inside her, my tepúli's crown was pointing back toward me, or, rather, toward the back of her belly's navel button.

In our Náhuatl language, a woman's body is often respectfully referred to as a xochitl, a "flower," and her navel as the yoloxóchitl, or "bud center" of that flower. When I was inside Ixínatsi, then, my tepúli literally became the "stalk" of that bud, that flower. Just to realize, in my mind, that she and I were so veryintimately conjoined—not to mention the vivid sensations involved—heightened my ardor to a degree I could never have believed possible.

And, in her arranging of Ixínatsi's feminine parts, the goddess had provided, for both Cricket and myself, yet a further enhancement of the joy that comes in the act of love. The slightly rearward placement of her tipíli orifice meant that when my tepúli penetrated her to its hilt, my pubic bone was necessarily close and hard against her sensitive xacapíli pearl, much more tightly than it would be with an ordinary woman. So, as Ixínatsi and I clasped and rocked and writhed together, her little pink kinú accordingly got caressed, rubbed, kneaded—to excited erection, then to urgent throbbing, then to paroxysms of rapture. And Cricket's increasingly heated response naturally heated me as well, so that we were equally, gleefully, dizzily, almost swooningly exultant when together we came to climax.

When it was over, she of the prodigious lungs, of course, got her breath back before I did. While I still lay limp, Ixínatsi slipped into her den under the tree and emerged to press something into my hand. It glowed in the moonlight like a piece of the moon itself.

"A kinú means a loving heart," she said, and kissed me.

"This single pearl," I said weakly, "would buy you much. A proper house, for instance. A very good one."

"I would not know what to do with a house. I doknow—now—how to enjoy akuáreni. The kinú is to thank you for showing me."

Before I could gather breath to speak again, she had bounded upright and called across the tree trunk, "Marúuani!" to the young woman who lived in the shelter on the other side. I thought Cricket was going to apologize for the doubtlessly unfamiliar noises we had been making. Instead she said urgently, "Come over here! I have discovered a thing most marvelous!"

Marúuani came around the root end of the tree, idly combing her long hair, pretending to be not at all curious, but her eyebrows went up when she saw us both unclothed. She said to Ixínatsi, but with her eyes on me, "It sounded—as if you were enjoying yourselves."

"Exactly that," Cricket said with relish. "Our... selves. Listen!" She moved close, to whisper to the other woman, who continued to regard me, her eyes widening more each moment. Lying there, being described and discussed, I felt rather like some hitherto unknown sea creature just washed ashore and causing a sensation. I heard Marúuani say, in a hushed voice, "He did?"and after some more whispering, "Wouldhe?"

"Of course he will," said Ixínatsi. "Will you not, Tenamáxtli? Will you not do akuáreni with my friend Marúuani?"

I cleared my throat and said, "One thing you must realize about men, my dearest. It takes them at least a little resting—between times—for the pole to stiffen again."

"It does? Oh, what a pity. Marúuani is eager to learn."

I considered, then said, "Well, I have shown you some things, Cricket, that do not require my participation. While I regather my faculties, you could demonstrate the preliminaries to your friend."

"You are right," she said brightly. "After all, we will not always have men with poles at our bidding. Marúuani, take off your loincloth and lie down here."

Somewhat guardedly, Marúuani obeyed, and Ixínatsi stretched out beside her, both of them just a little way from me. Marúuani flinched and gave a small shriek at the first intimate touch.

"Be still," said Cricket, with the confidence of experience. "This is how it is done. In a moment you will know."

And it was not long before I was watching twosupple, shining sea-cuguars doing the contortions of coupling—much as the real animals do it—except that these were much more graceful, since they had long, shapely arms and legs to intertwine. And the watching of it hastened my own availability, so I was ready for Marúuani when she was ready for me.

I repeat, I was in love with Ixínatsi even before we did the actof love. I had already, that very night, determined to take her and her little girl with me when I left the island. I would do it by persuasion, if possible. If not, I would—like a brute Yaki—abduct them by force. And now, having found out how uniquely and wonderfully Cricket was constructed for the act of love, I was more determined than before.

But I am human. And I am male. Therefore I am incurably, insatiably curious. I could not help wondering if allthese island women possessed the same physical properties that Cricket did. Although the young woman Marúuani was comely and appealing, I had never felt any desire for her, certainly not what I had felt and still felt for Ixínatsi. However, after watching what had just occurred, and being aroused by it to an indiscriminate lustfulness, and with Ixínatsi unselfishly urging me on...

Well, that is how my stay in the islands came to be indefinitely prolonged. Ixínatsi and Marúuani spread the word that there wassomething more to life than just working and sleeping and occasionally playing with one's self—and the other island women clamored to be introduced to it. Grandmother's scandalized objections were shouted down, probably for the first time in her reign, but she became resigned to the new state of affairs when it effected a noticeable increase in the workers' good spirits and productivity. Kukú enforced only one condition: that all akuáreni be confined to the nighttimes—which I did not mind, because it gave me the days for sleeping and regaining my stamina.

Let me say here that I would not have obliged any of the other women if Cricket had evinced the least jealousy or possessiveness. I did it mainly because she seemed so happy to have her sisters thus enlightened, and seemed to take pride in that being done by "her man." In truth, I would rather have restricted my attentions to her alone, for she was the one that I deeply loved—the only one, then or ever—and I know she loved me, too. Even Tirípetsi, who at first had been shy and uneasy about having a man in residence, came to regard me fondly, as other little girls elsewhere regard their fathers.

Also, and this is important, the other island women were notphysically constructed as was Ixínatsi. They were as ordinary in that respect as every other woman I have coupled with in my lifetime. In short, I was so infatuated with Cricket that noother woman would ever measure up to the standards she had set. It was only because she wished it that I lent my services to the women at large. I did that more dutifully than avidly, and even instituted a sort of program—a petitioning woman every other night, the nights between being devoted to Cricket alone—and those were nights of love, not just loving.

It may be that because I had seldom lacked for women—and certainly did not now—I had become somewhat jaded with the commonplace, and the very newnessof Ixínatsi was what vitalized me so. I only know that the sensations shared by her and myself kindled in me fires that I had never felt, even in my lustiest youth. As for dear Cricket, I am sure she had no idea that she was physically superior to ordinary women. Nothing could ever have made her suspect that she had been so god-blessed at birth. And, of course, it may be that she was not the onlyfemale in human history to have been thus endowed by a goddess. Possibly some aged midwife, after numberless years of attending a numberless multitude of females, could have told of having sometimefound some other young woman similarly constructed.

But I cared not. From this time forward, I would not ever need or seek or want any other lover—however extraordinary—now that I possessed this most exceptional one of all. And whether or not Ixínatsi realized that in our frequent and fervent embraces she was enjoying ecstasies surpassing those that the love goddess grants to every other woman in the world... well, she didenjoy them. And so did I, so did I. Yyo ayyo,how we did enjoythem!

Meanwhile, I lay at least once with every island woman and girl who was physically mature enough to appreciate the experience. Though our akuáreni was always done in the darkness, I know I also coupled with some who were rather beyondmature—but none of the really old ones, like Kukú, for which I was thankful. I might well have lost count of the women I obliged with my teachings, if I had not been recompensed for my services. Eventually, I owned exactly sixty-five pearls, the largest and most perfect of that year's harvest. That was Cricket's doing; she insisted that it was only fair exchange that my students pay me one pearl apiece.

In the beginning, there was such mass enthusiasm that there was a constant traffic of females rafting every night back and forth between the two inhabited islands. But there was only one of me, and the other women had to alternate with Ixínatsi, so during that time many of them earnestly essayed to learn by imitation, as Ixínatsi had taught Marúuani. Sometimes I would be lying with a woman, going through the ceremony from first fondlings to final consummation, and two other females—her sister and her daughter, it might be—would lie right next to us, alternately eyeing our doings and then doing them to one another, insofar as possible.

After I had personally served every eligible girl and woman at least once, and the demand for me was not so imperative, the women continued, on their own, to discover the numerous ways they could pleasure one another, and freely traded partners, and even learned to do it in threes and fours—all this with blithe disregard for any consanguinity among them. Ixínatsi and I, in our intervals of rest at night, would often hear, among the other forest sounds, the sound of those women's wonderful breasts slapping rhythmically together.

All this while, I was ardently wooing Ixínatsi—not to make her love me; we knew we loved one another. I was trying to persuade her to come with me, and bring the daughter I now thought of as my own, to The One World. I besieged her with every argument I could muster. I told her, with honesty, that I was the equivalent of Kukú in my own domain, that she and Tirípetsi would live in a genuine palace, with servants at their command, lacking nothing they could possibly need or want, never again having to dive for oysters, or skin sea-cuguars for their hides, or fear the storms that might ravage the islands, or lie down to mate with strangers.

"Ah, Tenamáxtli," she would say with an endearing smile, "but thisis palace enough"—indicating the tree-trunk shelter—"as long as you share it with us."

Not quite so honestly, I omitted all mention of the Spaniards' having occupied most of The One World. These island women did not yet know that such things as white men existed. Evidently the men from Yakóreke had likewise refrained from speaking of the Spaniards, possibly out of concern that the women might withhold their kinúcha, hoping to start a new commerce with richer traders. For that matter, I reminded myself, I could not be sure that the Spaniards had not already overwhelmed Aztlan, in which case I had no Kukúdom, so to speak, with which to tempt Cricket. But I firmly believed that she and Tirípetsi and I could make a new life for ourselves somewhere,and I regaled her with tales of the many lovely, lush, serene places I had found in my travels, where we three might settle down together.

"But this place, Tenamáxtli, these islands, they are home.Make them your home, too. Grandmother is accustomed to having you here now. She will no longer be demanding that you depart. Is this not as pleasant a life as we could find anywhere else? We need not fear the storms and strangers. Tirípetsi and I have survived all the storms, and so will you. As for the strangers, you know I will never again lie with one of those. I am yours."

In vain, I tried to make her envision the more variedlife that could be lived on the mainland—the abundance of food and drink and diversion, of travel, of education for our daughter, the opportunities of meeting new people quite different from those she was used to.

"Why, Cricket," I said, "you and I can have other children there, to be company for little Tirípetsi. Even brothersfor her. She can never have any here."

Ixínatsi sighed, as if she was wearying of my importunities, and said, "She can never miss what she has never had."

I asked anxiously, "Have I made you angry?"

"Yes, I am angry," she said, but with a laugh, in her cricket-merry way. "Here—take back all your kisses." And she began kissing me, and kept on kissing me every time I tried to say anything more.

But always, with sweet stubbornness, she dismissed or countered my every argument—and one day she did it by alluding to my own enviable current situation:

"Do you not see, Tenamáxtli, that any mainland man would absolutely pounceto trade places with you? Here you have not only me to love you and lie with you—and you will have Tirípetsi, too, when she is of age—you have, when you so desire, any otherwoman of these islands. Every woman. And, in time, theirdaughters."

I was hardly qualified to start preaching morality. I could only protest, and with utmost sincerity, "But youare all I want!"

And now I must confess something shameful. That same day, I went off into the woods to think, and I said to myself, "She isall I want. I am captivated by her, obsessed, besotted. If I dragged her away from here against her will, she would never love me again. Anyway, what would I be dragging her to? What awaits meyonder? Only a bloody war—killing or being killed. Why should I not do what she says? Stayhere in these fair islands."

Here I had peace, love, happiness. The other women were making ever fewer demands on me, now that the novelty had worn off. Ixínatsi and Tirípetsi and I could be a self-contained and self-sufficient family. Since I had broken one of the islands' sacred traditions—by living here as no man had ever done before—I believed that I could break others. Old Grandmother had gone unheeded in that instance, and, anyway, she would not live forever. I had every expectation that I could wean the women away from their man-hating goddess New Moon, and turn them instead to worship of the kindlier Coyolxaúqui, goddess of the full-hearted fullmoon. No longer would boy infants be fed to the oysters. Cricket and I and all the others could have sons.I would eventually be the patriarch of an island domain, and its benevolent ruler.

For all I knew, the Spaniards had by now overrun the entire One World, and I could hope to accomplish nothing by going back there. Here, I would have my own One World, and it might be sheaves of years before any farther-reaching Spanish explorers should stumble upon it. Even if the white men had subjugated so much of the mainland—or later would—that the Yakóreke fishermen could no longer visit the islands, I was sure that theywould not reveal the location. If they came no more, well, Inow knew the course back and forth. I and, in time, my sons could paddle stealthily to that shore to procure the necessities of life—knives and combs and such—that had to be bought with pearls...

Thus shamefully did I contemplate abandoning the quest that I had pursued during all the years since I watched my father burn to death, the quest that had led me along so many roads, into so many hazards, through so many adventures. Thus shamefully did I seek to justify discarding my plans to avenge my father and all others of my people who had suffered at the hands of the white men. Thus shamefully did I try to concoct excuses for forgetting those many—Citláli and the child Ehécatl, dauntless Pakápeti, the Cuáchic Comitl, the Tícitl Ualíztli, the others—who had perished in helping me toward my aim of vengeance. Thus shamefully did I seek plausible reasons for my deserting the Knight Nochéztli and my hard-gathered army and, indeed, all the peoples of The One World...

I have been ashamed, ever since that day, that I even thoughtof so disgracing myself. I would have lost the race I never ran. Had I actually done that—succumbed to Ixínatsi's love and the islands' easefulness—I doubt that I could long have lived with my shame. I would have come to hate myself, and then have turned the hate on Cricket for her causing me to hate myself. What I might have done for love would have destroyed that love.

Further to my shame, I cannot even claim with conviction that I would nothave chosen to surrender my quest—and my honor—because it so happened that the gods made the choice for me.

Toward twilight, I returned to the seaside, where the divers were wading ashore with their last baskets of the day. Ixínatsi was among them, and when she saw me waiting for her, she called cheerily, mischievously, with a meaningful grin:

"I think by now, darling Tenamáxtli, I must owe you at least one more kinú. I shall dive this moment and bring you the Kukú of all kinúcha." She turned and swam to the nearest rock outcrop, where some indolent sea-cuguars were basking and gleaming in the last low rays of sunlight.

I called to her, "Come back, Cricket. I wish to talk."

She must not have heard me. Glistening as golden as the animals about her, radiant and beautiful, she stood poised on one of the rocks, gave me a jaunty wave of her hand, dove into the sea and never came out again.

When finally I realized that not even the strongest-lunged woman could have stayed underwater so long, I raised an outcry. All the other divers still in the shallows came splashing ashore in fright, probably thinking I had espied a shark's fin. Then, after some hesitation, the more intrepid of them swam back to the area I pointed to—where I had seen Ixínatsi plunge under—and they dove again and again, until they were exhausted, without finding her or any indication of what had happened to her.

"Our women," said a creaky old voice beside me, "do not all live to my great age."

It was Kukú, who had naturally hastened to the scene. Although she might have berated me for having disturbed the complacency of her realm, or for having been partly to blame for Cricket's loss, the old woman sounded as if she wished to solace me.

"Kinú-diving is more than rigorous work," she said. "It is perilous work. Down there lurk savage fish with tearing teeth, others with poisonous stings, others with clutching tentacles. I do not think, however, that Ixínatsi fell prey to any such fish. When there are predators in the vicinity, the sea-cuguars bark a warning. More likely she has been swallowed."

"Swallowed?" I echoed, thunderstruck. "Kukú, how could a woman be swallowed by the sea in which she has lived for half her life?"

"Not by the sea. By the kuchúnda."

"What is the kuchúnda?"

"A giant mollusk, like an oyster or clam or scallop, only unbelievably bigger. As big as that rock islet yonder where the sea-cuguars are dozing, big enough to swallow one of those sea-cuguars. There are several of the kuchúndacha hereabouts, and we do not always know where, for they have the ability, like a snail, to creep from place to place. But they are visible and recognizable—each kuchúnda keeps its massive upper shell agape, to clamp down on any unwary prey—so our women know to stay well clear of them. Ixínatsi must have been unusually intent on her oyster-gathering. Perhaps she saw a prize kinú—it happens sometimes, when an oyster lies open—and she must have relaxed her vigilance."

I said miserably, "She went promising to fetch just such a kinú for me."

The old woman shrugged and sighed. "The kuchúnda would have slammed its shell shut, with her—or most of her—inside. And since it cannot chew, it is now slowly digesting her with its corrosive juices."

I shuddered at the picture she evoked, and I went sorrowfully away from the place where I had last seen my beloved Cricket. The women all looked sad, too, but they did no keening or weeping. They appeared to regard this as no uncommon event in a day's work. Little Tirípetsi had already been told, and she was not weeping, either. So I did not. I grieved only silently, and silently cursed the meddling gods. If they hadto intervene in my life—sternly pointing me to my destined future roads and days—they could have done it without so gruesomely ending the life of the innocent, vivacious, marvelous little Cricket.

I said good-bye only to Tirípetsi and Grandmother, not to any of the other women, lest they try to detain me. I could not now take the child with me, because of where I was going, and I knew she would be lovingly cared for by all her aunts and cousins of the islands. At dawn, I put on the elegant skin mantle Ixínatsi had made for me, and I took my sack of pearls, and I went to the southern end of the island, where my acáli had waited all this time, stocked with the provisions put into it by Ixínatsi, and I pushed off and paddled eastward.

So The Islands of the Women are still The Islands of the Women, though I trust they are now a more convivial place by night. And any Yakóreke fishermen who visited after my time could have had no cause to resent my having been there. Those who may have come immediatelyafter me could hardly have sired any children—surely every possible mother-to-be was already on her way to being one—but the men must have been so riotously welcomed and overwhelmingly entertained that they would have been ingrates indeed if they complained about a mysterious outlander's having preceded them.

But I thought, and I hoped, as I went away, that perhaps I would not be gone forever. Someday, when I had finished doing what I must do, and if I survived the doing of it... someday, when Tirípetsi had grown to be the image of her mother, the only woman I ever truly loved... someday toward the end of my days...