Текст книги "Aztec Autumn"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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"What in the name of all the gods are you talking about?"

"Nothing. Never mind." I looked long at this self-described mendicant, parasite, idler. But Pochotl did possess a lifetime's knowledge of this city. I decided to trust him. I said, "I wish to know everything about the Spaniards because I want to overthrow them."

He laughed harshly. "Who does not? But who can?"

"Perhaps you and I."

"I?!"Now he laughed uproariously. "You?!"

I said defensively, "I have had the same military training as did those warriors who made the Mexíca the pride and terror and overlords of The One World."

"Much good their training did those warriors," he growled. "Where are they now? The few who are left are walking around with brands etched into their faces. And you expect to prevail where they could not?"

"I believe a determined and dedicated man can do anything."

"But no man can do everything." Then he laughed again. "Not even you andI can."

"And others, of course. Many others. Those Chichiméca, for instance, whom you so despise. Theirlands have not been conquered, nor have they. And theirs is not the only northern nation still defying the white men. If all of those were to rise up and charge southward... Well, we will talk more, Pochotl, when I have begun my studies."

"Talk. Yes, talk. I have heard much of talk."

I was waiting at the Colegio entrance for only a short while before the notarius Alonso arrived and greeted me warmly, adding:

"I was a little concerned, Tenamáxtli, that you might have changed your mind."

"About learning your language? Why, I am sincerely determined—"

"About becoming a Christian," he said.

"What?" Taken aback, I protested, "We never discussed any such thing."

"I assumed you understood. The Colegio is a parroquialschool."

"The word tells me nothing, Cuatl Alonso."

"A Christian school. Supported by the Church. You must be a Christian to attend."

"Well, now..." I muttered.

He laughed and said, "It is no painful thing to do. Bautismoinvolves only a touch of water and salt. But it cleanses you of all sin, and qualifies you to partake of the Church's other sacraments, and assures the salvation of your soul."

"Well..."

"It will be a long while before you are sufficiently instructed and prepared for Catecismoand Confirmatiónand first Comunión."

All those words were also meaningless to me. But I gathered that I would be merely a sort of apprentice Christian during that "long while." If in the meantime I could learn Spanish, no doubt I could escape from here before I was totally committed to the foreign religion. I shrugged and said, "As you will. Lead on."

Which he did, leading me into the building and to a room he said was "the office of the registrador."That personage was a Spanish priest, bald on top like all the others I had seen, but very much fatter below, who eyed me with no great show of enthusiasm. He and Alonso exchanged a fairly lengthy conversation in Spanish, and then the notarius spoke to me again:

"At bautismo a new convert is given a Christian name, and the custom is to bestow the name of the saint on whose feast day the bautismo is administered. Today being the feast day of Saint Hilarion the Hermit, you will therefore be styled Hilario Ermitaño."

"I had rather not."

"What?"

I said tentatively, "I believe there is a Christian name called Juan...?"

"Why, yes," said Alonso, looking puzzled. I had mentioned that name because—if I had to have one—that had been the Christian name inflicted on my late father Mixtli. Apparently Alonso made no connection with the man who had been executed, because he said with approval, "Then you doknow something about our faith. Juan was that discípulowhom Jesús loved best." I made no reply, for that was just more gibberish to me, so he said, "Then Juan is the name you would prefer?"

"If there is not some rule forbidding it."

"No, no rule... but let me inquire..." He turned again to the fat priest and, after they had conferred, said to me, "Father Ignacío tells me that this is also the feast day of a rather more obscure saint called John of York, once the prior of a priory somewhere in Inglaterra. Very well, Tenamáxtli, you will be christened Juan Británico."

Most of that speech was also incomprehensible to me. And when the priest Ignacio sprinkled water on my head and had me lick a taste of salt from his palm, I regarded the whole ritual as so much nonsense. But I tolerated it, because it clearly meant much to Alonso, and I would not disappoint a friend. So I became Juan Británico and—while I could not know it at the time—I was again being a dupe of those gods who prankishly arrange what seem to be coincidences. Though I very seldom in my life called myself by that new name, it would eventually be heard by some foreigners even more alien than the Spaniards, and that would cause some occurrences most odd.

"Now then," said Alonso, "besides Spanish, let us decide what other classes you will avail yourself of, Juan Británico." He picked up a paper from the priest's table and scanned it. "Instruction in Christian doctrine, of course. And, should you later be blessed with a calling to holy orders, there is also a class in Latin. Reading, writing—well, those must wait. Several other classes are taught only in Spanish, so those must wait, too. But the teachers of handicrafts are native speakers of Náhuatl. Do any of these appeal to you?" And he read from the list, "Carpentry, blacksmithing, tanning, shoemaking, saddlery, glassworking, beer-brewing, spinning, weaving, tailoring, embroidery, lacemaking, begging of alms—"

"Begging?!"I exclaimed.

"In case you should become a friar of a mendicant order."

I said drily, "I have no ambition to become a friar, but I think I could already be called a mendicant, living at the mesón as I do."

He looked up from the list. "Tell me, are you competent at reading the Aztec and Maya books of word-pictures, Juan Británico?"

"I was well taught," I said. "It would be immodest of me to say how well I learned."

"Perhaps you could be of help to me. I am attempting to translate into Spanish what few native books are left in this land. Almost all of them were purged—burned—as being iniquitous and demonic and inimical to the true faith. I manage fairly well with those books whose word-pictures were drawn by speakers of Náhuatl, but some were done by scribes who spoke other languages. Do you think you might be able to help me fathom those?"

"I could try."

"Good. Then I shall ask His Excellency for permission to pay you a stipend. It will not be lavish, but you will be spared the feeling that you are a disgraceful drone, living on charity." After another exchange with the fat priest Ignacio, he said to me, "I have registered you for only two classes, for now. The one I teach in basic Spanish and the one in Christian instruction taught by Father Diego. Any other classes can wait. In the meantime, you will spend your free hours at the Cathedral, helping me with those native books—what we call the códices."

"I shall be pleased," I said. "And I am greatly obliged to you, Cuatl Alonso."

"Let us go upstairs now. Your other classmates should already be seated on their benches and waiting for me."

They were, and I was abashed to find that I was the only grown man among some twenty boys and four or five girls. I felt as my cousin Yeyac must have felt, years ago, back in Aztlan's lower schools, when he had to commence his education with so many classmates who were mere infants. I do not believe there was a single male in the room old enough to wear the máxtlatl under his mantle, and the few girls appeared even younger. Another thing immediately noticeable was the range of skin coloration among us. None of the children was Spanish-white, of course. Most of them were of the same complexion as myself, but a good number were much paler of hue, and two or three were much darker. I realized that the lighter-skinned ones must be the offspring of couplings between Spaniards and us "indios." But whence came those very dark ones? Obviously one of the parents of each had been of my people... but the other parent?

I asked no questions right then. I dutifully sat down on one of the benches set in rows and—while those youngsters craned and leaned around to gawk at this hulking adult in their midst—waited for the first lesson to begin. Alonso stood behind a table at the front of the room, and I must say that I admired his clever approach to the teaching of us.

"We will start," he said in Náhuatl, "by practicing the open soundsof the Spanish language—ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. They are the same sounds as in these words of your tongue. Listen. Acáli... tene... ixtlil... pochotl... calpúli."

The words he had uttered were recognizable by even the youngest in the class, since they meant "canoe," "mother," "black," "ceiba tree" and "family."

He continued, "You will hear the very same sounds again in these Spanish words. Listen. Acáli... banca.Tene... dente.Ixtlil... piso.Pochotl... polvo.Calpúli... muro."

He led us in repeating those ten words again and again, stressing the sameness of the "open sounds." Only then—not to confuse us—did he demonstrate what the Spanish words stood for.

"Banca," he said, and reached down to pat one of the front-row benches. "Dente," and he pointed to one of his own teeth. "Piso," and he pointed to and stamped his foot on the floor. "Polvo," and he swept his hand across the table, raising a puff of dust. "Muro," and he pointed to the wall behind him.

Then he made us repeat those Spanish words again and again, and join him in pointing to the things meant. Banca,"bench." Dente,"tooth." Piso,"floor." Polvo,"dust." Muro,"wall." Now he returned to our own tongue, saying:

"Very good, class. Now—which of you bright students can tell me five other Náhuatl words that contain those sounds of ah, ay, ee, oh, oo?"

When nobody, including myself, volunteered to do so, Alonso motioned for a small girl on a front bench to stand up. She did, and began timidly, "Acáli... tene..."

"No, no, no," said our teacher, wagging his finger. "Those are the same words I gave you. There are many, many others. Who can speak five of them for us?"

The students, including myself, all sat silent and glanced shyly sideways at each other. So Alonso pointed at me.

"Juan Británico, you are older and I know you have a good store of words in your head. Tell us five of them that contain those various open sounds."

I had already been meditating on this and—I do not know why—a certain five had come into my mind. So now, as mischievously as a schoolboy half my age, I grinned and spoke them:

"Maátitl... ahuilnéma... tipíli... chitóli... tepúli."

A few of the younger children looked blank, but most of the older ones recognized at least some of the words, and gasped with horror or giggled behind their hands, because those were words that any teacher—especially a Christian one teaching in a church school—would not often hear or care to hear.

Glowering at me, Alonso snapped, "Very comical, you impudent babalicón.Go and stand in that corner with your face to the wall. Stay there, and be ashamed of yourself, until class is dismissed."

I did not know what a babalicón was, but I could hazard a guess. So I stood in the corner, feeling that I had been rightfully chastised, and regretting having spoken so to a man who had been kind to me. Anyway, the whole of that day's lesson was given over to repeating, again and again, innocuouswords containing those open sounds. I had already mastered the sounds, and memorized those five Spanish words, so I did not miss much by being ostracized and ignored. Also, after the class, Alonso said to me:

"It wasa rude and unseemly and infantile thing you did, Juan. And I had to be strict with you as a caution to the others. But I must confide that your wicked caprice did relax the stiffness of those children. Most of them were tense and nervous at this commencement of a new experience. They and I will get along more easily and familiarly from now on. So I forgive your deviltry. This time."

I said, and meant it, that there would not be any more such times. Then Alonso led me along the hall to the room where my next class was assembling. This was where I would be subjected to my first instruction in Christianity, and I was pleased to see that here I was not the oldest pupil. My classmates ranged in age from adolescents to mature adults. There were no children, and only a few females, and among these students there was none of that disturbing diversity of skin color displayed by the youngsters in the other room. However, this was not a class where beginners were being taught the very simplest rudiments of their subject. It had clearly been going on for some time, maybe months, before I joined it. Therefore I was plunged into what, for me, were depths that defied my comprehension.

On that, my first day, the teacher-priest was expounding on the Christian concept of trinity.Padre Diego was bald of hair, not shaven just on the crown of his head, and was pleased when addressed as Tete, our people's fond diminutive of "father." He was very nearly as fluent in Náhuatl as was the notarius Alonso, so I understood everything he said,but not what the words and phrases meant.For example, the word trinityin our tongue is yeyíntetl, and it denotes a group of three, or three things in company, or three entities acting together, or a set of three somethings—such as the three points of a triangle or the three-lobed leaf of certain plants. But Tete Diego kept urging us listeners to adore what is plainly a group of four.

To this day, I have never met a Christian Spaniard who does not wholeheartedly worship a trinity comprising one God, who has no name, and the God's son, who is named Jesucristo, and that son's mother, named María Virgen, and an Espíritu Santo, who, though he has no name, is apparently one of those godling Santos, like San José and San Francisco. However, that makes four to be adored, and how four could constitute a trinity I never couldunderstand.

  VII

That day, and each day thereafter—except for the days called Sunday—when I had finished with my two classes at the Colegio, I would report to Alonso de Molina at the Cathedral. We would sit among his heaps of bark-paper books, metl-fiber books, fawnskin books, and discuss the interpretation of this or that page or passage or sometimes just a single pictured symbol.

Of course, the notarius was already well acquainted with such basic matters as the Aztéca's and Mexíca's method of counting numbers, and the differing methods used by other peoples—in the Tzapotéca and Mixtéca languages, for example—and those used by older nations that no longer existed, but had left records of their times—the ancient Maya and Olméca, for example. He also knew that in any book drawn by any scribe of any nation a person depicted with a náhuatl—that is, a tongue—near its head meant the person was speaking. And if the pictured tongue was curly, it meant the person was singing or speaking poetry. And if the pictured tongue was pierced by a thorn, it meant the person was lying. Alonso could recognize the symbols that all our peoples employed to indicate mountains and rivers and the like. He knew many such features of our picture writing. But I was able to correct him, now and then, in some misapprehension.

"No," I might say, "the southernmost inhabitants of The One World—the peoples of Quautemálan—do not call the god Quetzalcóatl by that name. I have never visited those lands but, according to my calmécac teachers, in those southern languages the god has always been known as Gúkumatz."

Or I might say, "No, Cuatl Alonso, you are misnaming these several gods shown here. These are the itzceliúqui, the blindgods. That is why you will find them always pictured, as here, with all-black faces."

That particular remark of mine, I remember, led to my asking Alonso why some of the younger pupils at the Colegio had skin so dark that theywere almost black. The notarius enlightened me. There existed certain men and women, he said, called in Spanish Morosor Negros,a pitiably inferior race inhabiting some place called Africa. They were brutish and savage, and could be civilized and domesticated only with great difficulty. But those who couldbe tamed, the Spanish made into slaves—and a favored few of the Moro men had even been allowed to enlist as Spanish soldiers. Several of those had been among the original troops who had conquered The One World—and those were, like their white comrades, rewarded with grants of tribute here in New Spain, and with slaves of their own, "indio" prisoners of war, the men I had seen with the figure Gbranded into their faces.

"I have seen two or three of the black men, too, on the streets," I said. "They seem to be fond of rich apparel. They dress even more gaudily than the upper-class white men. Perhaps it is because they are so ugly in the face. Those broad, splayed noses and immense, everted lips and the tight-kinked hair. I have seen no black women, though."

"Just as ugly, believe me," said Alonso. "Most of the Moro conquistadoreswho were given grants settled on the east coast, around the Villa Rica de Vera Cruz. And some of those have imported black wives for themselves. But they generally prefer the lighter—and much more handsome—native women."

All warriors, of course, are inclined and expected to rape the womenfolk of their defeated foes, and the white Spanish conquerors naturally had done much of that. But, according to Alonso, the Moro soldiers were even more lustfully inclined to seize and rape anythingfemale that could not outrun them. Whether this had resulted in the birth of such brute creatures as tapir-children or alligator-children, Alonso could not say for sure. But, in New Spain and in older Spanish colonies, too, he said, both Spanish and Moro patroneswere still making use, at whim, of their female slaves. Also, though it was not much talked about, there was ample evidence that some Spanish womenhad done the same; not just the sluts imported from Spain to be whores for hire, but some of the wives and daughters of the highest-born Spaniards. Out of perversity or prurience or simple curiosity, they occasionally copulated with men of any color or class, even their own male slaves. What with this abundance of licentious miscegenation, said Alonso, there resulted an abundance of children with skins ranging from near-black to almost-white.

"Ever since Velázquez took Cuba," he said, "we have found it convenient to apply names of classification to the variously colored offspring. The product of a coupling between a male or female indio and a male or female white person we call a mestizo.The product of a coupling between Moro and white we call a mulato,meaning 'mulish.' The product of a coupling between indio and Moro we call a pardo,a 'drab.' Should a mulato or a pardo and a white person mate, their child is a cuarterón,and a child with that mere one-quarter of indio or Moro blood can sometimes appear to be pure white."

I asked, "Then why bother with such minute specifics of degree?"

"Oh, come now, Juan Británico! Because it can happen that the father or mother of a bastard of mixed blood may come to feel some responsibility for it, or actually become fond of it. As you have noticed, they sometimes enroll such mongrels for an education. Sometimes, too, the parent may bequeath to the child a family title or property. There is nothing to forbid the doing of that. But the authorities—especially Holy Church—must keep precise records, to prevent the adulteration of the pure Spanish blood. Just suppose a cuarterón should pass himself or herself off as white, and thereby trick some unsuspecting real Spaniard into marriage... well... that hashappened."

"How could anyone else possibly know?" I asked.

"Recently, in Cuba, an apparently white man and wife bore a—what we call a turna atrás—an unmistakably black baby. The woman of course pled innocence and immaculate Castilian lineage and unblemished wifely fidelity. And later the local gossips said that if records had been properly kept since the first Spaniards settled in Cuba, the white husbandcould very well have proved to be the guilty possessor of the black blood. But the Church had, of course, by that time sent the woman and her child to the burning stake. Hence our now-punctilious attention to records. Because the merest trace of non-white blood, evident or not, taints the bearer of it as inferior."

"Inferior," I said. "Yes, of course."

"We Spaniards even observe some distinctions among ourselves. The indisputably white Spanish children you see in your Colegio classrooms we call criollos,meaning that they were born on this side of the Ocean Sea. The older children and their parents, who, like myself, were born in Mother Spain are called gachupines—which is to say, the 'spur-wearers'—the most SpanishSpanish of all. In time, I daresay, the gachupines will look down on the criollos, as if being born under different skies made some difference in their social status. All it means to me is that I am bidden to list them that way in my census and cadastral records."

I nodded, to show that I was following him, though I had no least idea what words like "spur" and "census" meant.

"However," he continued, "of the others, the mongrels, I have mentioned only a very few of the fractional classifications. If, for instance, a cuarterón mates with a white, their child is an octavo.The divisions of classification extend to decimosexto,which would be a child probably indistinguishable from white, though New Spain is too young a colony yet to have spawned any. And there are other names for those of every possible combination of white, indio and Moro blood. Coyotes, barcinos, bajunos,the unfortunate mottled-skin pintojos,and many more. Keeping records of those can be vexatiously complicated, but maintain the records we must, and we do, to distinguish every person of every quality, from noblest to basest."

"Of course," I said again.

It would eventually be evident on any city street, and not at all ambiguously, that many of my own people came to accept, even to agree with, that Spanish-imposed notion of their being less-than-human beings. Their acceptance of that evaluation, that they were inherently inferior, they expressed with—of all things—hair.

The Spaniards have long known that the majority of our peoples of The One World are markedly less hairy than they. We "indios" have abundant hair on our heads, but except for the people of one or two anomalous tribes, we have no more than a trace of hair on our faces or bodies. Our male children, from their birth throughout their infancy, have their faces repeatedly bathed by their mothers with scalding lime water. So, at adolescence, they do not sprout even a fuzz of beard. Female children, of course, do not have to endure that preventative treatment. But, male or female, we grow no hair on the chest or in armpits, and only a few of us have even the merest wisp of ymáxtli in the genital region.

Very well. White Spaniards are hairy, and white Spaniards, by their own definition, are immeasurably superior to indios. And I gather that the blood of a white forebear, however much diluted down the generations, confers on every descendant a tendency to hairiness. So, in time, our men ceased to be proud of having a smooth and clean visage. Mothers no longer scalded the faces of their male infants. Those adolescent boys who found the least tufts of down on their cheeks let it grow and did whatever they could to encourage it to full beardedness. Any who sprouted hair on their chests or under their arms refrained from plucking or shaving it.

Worse yet, young women—even women who were otherwise comely—if they found themselves growing hair on their legs or under their arms, they were not ashamed of it. Indeed, they began to wear their skirts short, to display those hairy legs, and they cut the sleeves from their blouses, to show the little bushes in their armpits.

To this day, any of our men and women who grow hirsute of face or body—whether just a few sparse hairs or near to furriness—he or she flaunts that. Of course, it marks them as having the taint of bastardy somewhere in their lineage, but they do not mind that, because it proclaims to the rest of us:

"You smooth-skinned persons may be of the same complexion as myself, but you and I are no longer of the same lowly and despised race. I have an excess of hair, meaning that I have Spanish blood in me. You can tell just by looking at me that I am superior to you."

But I am getting ahead of my chronicle. At the time I settled in the City of Mexíco, there were not so many mestizos and mulatos and other mongrels to be seen. I had passed my nineteenth birthday some while back—though exactly when, by the Christian calendar, I could not say, since I was not then very familiar with that calendar. Anyway, the white and black conquerors had not yet been among us for long enough to have produced more than those very young offspring, such as I saw in my Colegio classes.

What I did see on the streets, though, from my first arrival and ever afterward, was a much greater number of drunken people than I had ever seen even at the most licentious religious festivals in Aztlan. Many men, and more than a few women, could be seen at all hours, day or night, staggering about or even collapsed unconscious where sober passersby had to step over them. Our people, even our priests, had never been totally abstemious, but neither had they often overindulged—except at festivals—in the intoxicating beverages like Aztlan's fermented coconut milk or the tesgúino that the Rarámuri make from maize or the chápari that the Purémpecha make from bees' honey or the everywhere-common octli, which the Spaniards call pulque,made from the metl plant, which the Spaniards call maguey.

I could only suppose that the Mexíca citizens had taken to drinking to excess in order to forget for a while their utter defeat and despair, but Cuatl Alonso disagreed with that notion.

"It has been amply evidenced," he said, "that the entire race of indio peoples is susceptible to the gross effects of drink, and fond of those effects, and desirous of attaining those effects at every least opportunity."

I said, "I cannot speak for the inhabitants of this city, but I have never known the indios elsewhere to be so."

"Well, we Spaniards have subdued many other peoples," he said. "Berbers, Mohammedans, Jews, Turks, Frenchmen. Not even the Frenchmen took to mass drunkenness as a result of their defeat. No, Juan Británico, from our years-ago landing in Cuba to the farthest extent that we have secured this New Spain, we have found the natives to be natural-born sots. De León reported the same of the red men in Florida. It appears to be an inherent physical failing in your people, much the same as their so easily dying from such trivial diseases as measles and the small pocks."

"I cannot deny that they sicken and die," I said.

"The authorities, especially Mother Church," he said, "have compassionately tried to lessen the temptation that drink holds for the weakling indios. We have tried to convert them to Spanish brandies and wines, in the hope that those more highly intoxicating beverages would lead people to drink lessof them. But of course only the rich nobles could afford them. So the gobernadorset up a brewery in San Antonio de Padua—what used to be Texcóco—hoping to wean the indios onto the cheaper and weaker intoxicant called beer, but to no avail. Pulque remains the easiest available liquor, almost dirt-cheap, since anyone can make it even at home, hence it remains the most-favored way for an indio to get drunk. The authorities' only recourse has been to make a law against any natives drinking to excess, and jailing those that do. But even the law is impracticable. We should have to lock up almost the entire indio population."

Or kill them, I thought. I had recently watched as a middle-aged and very drunk woman, reeling and shouting incoherently, was seized by three soldiers of the force that regularly patrolled the city. They had not bothered to jail the woman. They had set upon her with the stocks of their thunder-stick weapons, and with seeming glee, until she was beaten unconscious. Then they used their swords, not to stab and kill but only to slash her repeatedly, crisscross-wise, all over her body, so that when the woman awoke from the beating—if she ever did—she would be conscious just long enough to realize that she was irremediably bleeding to death.

"Speaking of pulque," I said, to change the subject, "it is made from the metl, or maguey. And while we have been translating this newest text, Cuatl Alonso, I heard you speak of the maguey as a cacto.It is not. The maguey has spines, yes, but every cactus also has an internal woody skeleton, and the maguey does not. It is a planta,the same as any bush or grass."

"Thank you, Cuatl Juan. I am making a note. So—let us get on with our work, then."

I continued to sleep every night and to take my morning and evening meals at the Mesón de San José, while I passed my free Sundays in the several city markets, asking stallkeepers and passersby if they knew any persons named Netzlin and Citláli, formerly of the town of Tépiz. For a long while, my search was unsuccessful. But I was not wasting what time I spent, either at that endeavor or at the mesón.

Mingling with the city folk in the markets helped me refine my old-fashioned way of speaking Náhuatl and acquire the more modern vocabulary of the Mexíca. Also I associated as much as possible with those prosperous, far-traveled pochtéca who had brought goods from the south to sell in the city—and with the burly tamémime who had actually carried those goods—and thereby learned a useful number of words and phrases of the southern tongues: the Mixtéca language of the people who call themselves Men of the Earth, and the Tzapotéca of those who call themselves the Cloud People, even many words of the tongues spoken in the Chiapa and Quautemálan lands.