Текст книги "Aztec"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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The girl had been watching me over her shoulder as she did her pretense of fleeing. When I fell, she stopped and came back to stand over my clenched body, and said in a voice of some exasperation, "Unless you catch me fairly, we cannot play any other game. If you know what I mean."

I could not even wheeze at her. I lay doubled up, painfully trying to gasp some air back into me, and I felt quite incapable of playing any further games whatever. She frowned peevishly, probably sharing my low opinion of me, but then she brightened and said:

"I did not think to ask. Have you partaken of the jipuri?"

I feebly shook my head.

"That explains it. You are not so very inferior to the other men. They have the advantage of that enhanced strength and stamina. Come! You shall chew some jipuri!"

I was still curled into a ball, but I was almost beginning to breathe again, and her imperious command allowed of no refusal. I let her take my hand and haul me upright and lead me back to the village center. I already knew what the jipuri is and does, for small quantities of it were imported even into Tenochtítlan, where it was called peyotl and where it was reserved for the exclusive use of the divinatory priests. The jipuri or peyotl is a deceptively meek-looking little cactus. Growing close against the ground, round and squat, the jipuri seldom gets larger than the palm of a hand, and it is scalloped into petals or bulges, so it resembles a very tiny, gray-green pumpkin. For its most potent effect, it is best chewed when fresh picked. But it can be dried for keeping indefinitely, the wrinkled brown wads threaded on strings, and in the village of Guaguey-bo many such strings hung from the rafters of the several storage sheds. I reached to pluck one down, but my companion said:

"Wait. Have you ever chewed jipuri?"

Again I shook my head.

"Then you will be a ma-tuane, one who seeks the god-light for the first time. That requires a ceremony of your purification. No, do not groan so. It need not long delay our... our game." She looked around at the villagers still eating or drinking or dancing or running. "Everyone else is too busy to participate, but the Si-riame is unoccupied. She should be willing to administer the purification."

We went to the modest wooden house, and the girl jangled a string of snail shells hung beside the door. The chief-woman, still wearing her jaguar garments, lifted the door's deerskin curtain and said, "Kuira-ba," and made a gracious gesture for us to enter.

"Si-riame," said my companion, "this is the Chichimecame named Mixtli who has come to visit our village. As you can see, he is of some age, but he is a poor runner even for one of his advanced years. He could not catch me when he tried. I thought the jipuri might enliven his old limbs, but he says he has never before sought the god-light, so..."

The chief-woman's eyes twinkled with amusement as she watched me wince during that unflattering recital. I muttered, "I am not of the Chichimeca," but she ignored me and said to the girl:

"Of course. You are eager that he have the ma-tuane initiation as soon as possible. I will be happy to do it." She looked me appraisingly up and down, and the amusement in her eyes gave place to something else. "Whatever his years, this Mixtli seems an estimable specimen, especially considering his base origins. And I will give you one bit of advice, my dear, which you would not hear from any of our males. However rightly you are expected to admire a man's racing competence, it is his middle leg, so to speak, which better demonstrates his manliness. That member may even dwindle from disuse when a man devotes all his attention to developing the muscles of his other appendages. Therefore be not too quick to disdain a mediocre runner until you have examined his other attributes."

"Yes, Si-riame," the girl said impatiently. "I intended something of the sort."

"You can do so after the ceremony. You may go now, my dear."

"Go?" the girl protested. "But there is nothing secret about the ma-tuane initiation! The whole village always looks on!"

"We will not interrupt the celebration of the tes-guinapuri. And this Mixtli is a stranger to our customs. He might be abashed by a horde of staring onlookers."

"I am not a horde! And it was I who brought him for the purification!"

"You will have him back when it is done. Then you can judge whether he was worth your trouble. I have said you may go, my dear." Throwing a furious look at both of us, the girl went, and the Si-riame said to me, "Sit down, guest Mixtli, while I mix you a brew of herbs to clear your brain. You should not be drunk when you chew the jipuri."

I sat down on the pounded-earth floor strewn with pine needles. She set the herbal drink to simmering on the hearth in a corner, and came to me bearing a small jar. "The juice of the sacred ura plant," she described it, and, using a small feather for a brush, she painted circles and whorls of bright yellow dots on my cheeks and forehead.

"Now," she said, when she had given me the hot beverage to drink and it was almost magically bringing me out of my fuddlement. "I do not know what the name Mixtli means, but, since you are a ma-tuane seeking the god-light for the first time, you must choose a new name."

I nearly laughed. I had long ago lost count of all the old and new names I had worn in my time. But I said only, "Mixtli means the sky-hung thing you Rarámuri call a kuri."

"It makes a good name, but it should have a descriptive addition. We will name you Su-kuru."

I did not laugh. Su-kuru means Dark Cloud, and there was no way she could have known that that already was my name. But I remembered that a Si-riame was reputedly a sorcerer, among other things, and I supposed that her god-light could show her truths hidden from other people.

"And now, Su-kuru," she said, "you must confess all the sins you have committed in your life."

"My lady Si-riame," I said, and without sarcasm, "I probably have not life enough left in which to recount them all."

"Indeed? So many?" She regarded me pensively, then said, "Well, since the true god-light resides exclusively in us Rarámuri, and is ours to share, we will count only your sins since you have been among us. Tell me of those."

"I have done none. Or none that I know of."

"Oh, you need not have done them. To want to do them is the same thing. To feel an anger or a hatred and a wish to avenge it. To entertain any unworthy thought or emotion. For example, you did not wreak your lust upon that girl, but you clearly chased her with lustful intent."

"Not so much lust, my lady, as curiosity."

She looked puzzled, so I explained about the ymáxtli, the body hair which I had seen on no other bodies, and the urges it had aroused in me. She burst into laughter.

"How like a barbarian, to be intrigued by what a civilized person takes for granted! I would wager it has been only a few years since you savages ceased to be mystified by fire!"

When she had done laughing and mocking me, she wiped tears from her eyes and said, more sympathetically:

"Know then, Su-kuru, that we Rarámuri are physically and morally superior to primitive peoples, and our bodies reflect our finer sensibilities, such as our high regard for modesty. So it became the nature of our bodies to grow that hair which you find so unusual. Our bodies thus insure that, even when we are unclothed, our private parts are discreetly covered."

I said, "I should think that such a growth in those parts would attract rather than distract notice. Not modest at all, but immodestly provocative."

Seated cross-legged on the ground as I was, I could not readily hide the evidence bulging my loincloth, and the Si-riame could hardly pretend not to see it. She shook her head in wonderment and murmured, not to me but to herself:

"Mere hair between the legs... as common and unremarkable as weeds between the rocks... yet it excites an outlander. And this talk of it makes me oddly conscious of my own..." Then she said eagerly, "We will accept your curiosity as your confessed sin. Now here, quickly, partake of the jipuri."

She produced a basket of the little cactuses, fresh and green, not dried. I selected one that had numerous lobes around its rim.

"No, take this five-petaled one," she said. "The many-scalloped jipuri is for everyday consumption, to be chewed by runners who must make a long run, or by idlers who merely wish to sit and bask in visions. But it is the five-petaled jipuri, the more rare and hard to find, that lifts one closest to the god-light."

So I bit a mouthful of the cactus she handed me—it had a slightly bitter and astringent flavor—and she selected another for herself, saying, "Do not chew as fast as I do, ma-tuane Su-kuru. You will feel the effect more quickly because it is your first time, and we should keep pace with each other."

She was right. I had swallowed very little of the juice when I was astounded to see the walls of the house dissolving from around me. They became transparent, then they were gone, and I saw all the villagers outside, variously engaged in the games and feasting of the tes-guinapuri. I could not believe that I was actually seeing through the walls, for the figures of the people were sharply defined, and I was not using my topaz; the too-clear vision had to be an illusion caused by the jipuri. But in the next moment I was not so sure. I seemed to float from where I sat, and I rose to and through the roof—or where the roof had been—and the people dropped away and became smaller as I soared toward the treetops. Involuntarily, I exclaimed, "Ayya!" The Si-riame, somewhere behind or below me, called, "Not too fast! Wait for me!"

I say she called, but in fact I did not hear her. I mean to say, her words came not into my ears but somehow into my own mouth, and I tasted them—smooth, delicious, like chocolate—yet in some manner I understood them by their flavor. Indeed, all my senses seemed suddenly to be exchanging their usual functions. I heard the aroma of the trees and the cook fires' smoke that drifted up among the trees as I was drifting. Instead of giving off a leafy smell, the trees' foliage made a metallic ringing; the smoke made a muffled sound like a drumhead being softly stroked. I did not see, I smelled the colors about me. The green of the trees seemed not a color to my eyes but a cool, moist scent in my nostrils; a red-petaled flower on a branch was not red but a spicy odor; the sky was not blue but a clean, fleshy fragrance like that of a woman's breasts.

And then I perceived that my head was really between a woman's breasts, and ample ones. My sense of touch and feeling was unaffected by the drug. The Si-riame had caught up to me, had thrown open her jaguar blouse, had clasped me to her bosom, and we were rising together toward the clouds. One part of me, I might say, was rising faster than the rest. My tepúli had already been earlier aroused, but it was getting even longer, thicker, harder, throbbing with urgency, as if an earthquake had occurred without my notice. The Si-riame gave a happy laugh—I tasted her laughter, refreshing as raindrops, and her words tasted like kisses:

"That is the best blessing of the god-light, Su-kuru—the heat and glow it adds to the act of ma-rakame. Let us combine our god-given fires."

She unwound her jaguar skirt and lay naked upon it, or as naked as a woman of the Rarámuri could get, for there truly was a triangle of hair pointing from her lower abdomen down between her thighs. I could see the shape of that enticing little cushion, and the curly texture of it, but the blackness of it was, like all other colors at that moment, not a color but an aroma. I leaned close to inhale it, and it was a warm, humid, musky scent....

At our first coupling, that ymáxtli felt crinkly and tickly against my bare belly, as if I were thrusting my lower body among the fronds of a luxuriant fern. But soon, so quickly did our juices flow, the hair became wet and yielding and, if I had not known it was there, I would not have known it was there. However, since I did know—that my tepúli was penetrating more than flesh, that it was held for the first time by a densely hair-tufted tipíli—the act had a new savor for me. No doubt I sound delirious in the telling of it, but delirious is what I was.

I was made giddy by being at a great height, whether it was reality or illusion; by the oddity of sensing a woman's words and moans and cries in my mouth, not my ears; by the sensing of her skin's every surface and curve and gradation of color as a subtly distinct fragrance. Meanwhile, each of those sensations, as well as our every move and touch, was enriched by the effect of the jipuri.

I suppose also I felt a tinge of danger, and danger makes every human sense more acute, every emotion more vivid. Men do not ordinarily fly upward to a height, they more often fall down from one, and that is often fatal. But the Si-riame and I stayed suspended, with no discernible floor or other support beneath us. And being unsupported we were also unencumbered by any support, so we moved as freely and weightlessly as if we had been under water but still able to breathe there. That freedom in all dimensions enabled some pleasurable positions and coilings and intertwinings that I would otherwise have thought impossible. At one point the Si-riame gasped some words, and the words tasted like her ferned tipíli: "I believe you now. That you could have done more sins than you could tell." I have no idea how often she came to climax and how many times I ejaculated during the time the drug held us aloft and enraptured, but, for me, it was many more than I had ever enjoyed in such a short time.

The time seemed too short. I became aware that I was hearing, not tasting the sounds when she sighed, "Do not worry, Su-kuru, if you do not ever excel as a runner."

I was seeing colors again, not scenting them; and smelling odors, not hearing them; and I was descending from the heights of both altitude and exaltation. I did not plummet, but came down as slowly and lightly as a feather falling. The Si-riame and I were again inside her house, side by side on our discarded and rumpled garments of jaguar and deerskin. She lay on her back, fast asleep, with a smile on her face. The hair of her head was a tumbled mass, but the ymáxtli on her lower belly was no longer crisp and curly and black; it was matted and lightened in color by the white of my omícetl. There was another dried spill in the cleft between her heavy breasts, and others elsewhere.

I felt similarly encrusted with her emanations and my own dried perspiration. I was also terribly thirsty; the inside of my mouth felt as furred as if It had grown ymáxtli; I later learned to expect that effect always after chewing jipuri. Moving carefully and quietly, not to disturb the sleeping Si-riame, I got up and dressed to go and seek a drink of water outside the house. Before departing, I took one final appreciative look through my topaz at the handsome woman relaxed on the jaguar skins. It was the first time, I reflected, that I had ever had sexual relations with any sovereign ruler. I felt rather smugly pleased with myself.

But not for long. I emerged from the house to find the sun still up and the celebrations still going on. When, after drinking heartily, I raised my eyes from the dipper gourd, I looked into the accusing eyes of the girl I had earlier been-chasing. I smiled as guiltlessly as I could, and said:

"Shall we run again? I can now partake at will of the jipuri. I have been properly initiated."

"You need not boast of it," she said between her teeth. "Half a day and a whole night and almost another day of initiation."

I gaped stupidly, for it was hard for me to realize that so much time had been compressed into what had seemed so little. And I blushed as the girl went on accusingly:

"She always gets the first and the best ma-rakame of the god-enlightened, and it is not fair! I do not care if I am called rebellious and irreverent. I have said before and I say again that she only pretended to receive the god-light from the Grandfather and the Mother and the Brother. She lied to be chosen as the Si-riame, only so she can claim first right to every ma-tuane she happens to favor."

That somewhat lessened my self-esteem in having coupled with an annointed ruler: learning that the ruler was in no way superior to any common woman gone astraddle the road. My self-esteem further suffered when, during the remainder of my stay, the Si-riame did not again command my attendance on her. Evidently she wanted only "the first and the best" that a male initiate could give under the influence of the drug. But at least I was eventually able to mollify the angry girl, after I had slept and recuperated my energies. Her name, I learned, was Vi-rikota, meaning Holy Land, which is also the name of that country east of the mountains where the jipuri cactus is gathered. The celebration went on for many days longer, and I persuaded Vi-rikota to let me chase her again, and since I had taken care not to overindulge in food or tesguino, I caught her almost fairly, I believe.

We plucked some of the dried jipuri from one of the storage strings and went together to a secluded and pleasant glade in the forested canyon. We had to chew quite a lot of the less potent cactus to approximate the effects I had enjoyed in the Si-riame's house, but after a while I felt my senses again exchanging their functions. That time the colors of butterflies and flowers around us began to sing.

Vi-rikota, of course, also wore a medallion of ymáxtli between her legs—in her case a less crisp, more fluffy cushion—and that was still a novelty to me, so it again provoked me to extraordinary enterprise. But she and I never quite achieved the ecstasy I had known during my initiation. We never had the illusion of ascending skyward, and we were conscious at all times of the soft grass on which we lay. Also, Vi-rikota was really very young, and small even for her age, and a female child simply cannot spread her thighs far enough that a man's big body can get close enough to penetrate her to the full length of his tepúli. All else aside, our coupling had to be less memorable than what the Si-riame and I had done together, because Vi-rikota and I did not have access to the fresh, green, five-petaled, real god-light jipuri.

Nevertheless, that young female and I suited each other well enough that we consorted with no other partners during the remainder of the festival, and we indulged many times in the ma-rakame, and I felt a genuine regret at parting from her when the tes-guinapuri concluded. We parted only because my original host Tes-disora insisted, "It is time now for the serious running, Su-kuru, and you must see it. The ra-rajipuri, the race between the best runners of our village and those of Guacho-chi."

I asked, "Where are they? I have seen no strangers arriving."

"Not yet. They will arrive after we have gone, and they will arrive running. Gaucho-chi is far to the southeast of here."

He told me the distance, in the Rarámuri words for it, which I forget, but I remember that it would have translated as more than fifteen Mexíca one-long-runs or fifteen of your Spanish leagues. And he was speaking of the distance in a straight line, though in actuality any race in that rugged country has to follow a tortuous course around and between and through ravines and mountains. I calculated that in total the running distance from Guaguey-bo to Guacho-chi must have been nearer fifty one-long-runs. Yet Tes-disora said casually:

"To run from one village to the other, and back again, kicking the wooden ball all the way, takes a good runner one day and one night."

"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "A hundred one-long-runs? Why, it would be like a man running from the city of Tenochtítlan to the far-off Purémpe village of Keretaro in the same time." I shook my head emphatically. "And half of that in the darkness of night? And kicking a ball as he goes? Impossible!"

Of course Tes-disora knew nothing of Tenochtítlan or Keretaro, or their distance apart. He shrugged and said, "If you think it impossible, Su-kuru, you must come along and see it done."

"I? I know it is impossible for me!"

"Then come only part of the way and wait to accompany us home on our return. I have a pair of stout boar-hide sandals you may wear. Since you are not one of our village runners, it will not be cheating if you do not run the ra-rajipuri barefoot, as we do."

"Cheating?" I said, amused. "You mean there are rules to this running game?"

"Not many," he said, in all seriousness. "Our runners will depart from here this afternoon at the precise instant when Grandfather Fire"—he pointed—"touches his rim to the upper edge of that mountain yonder. The people of Guacho-chi have some similar means of judging that exact same instant, and their runners likewise depart. We run toward Guacho-chi, they run toward Guaguey-bo. We pass at some point between, shouting greetings and raillery and friendly insults. When the men of Guacho-chi get here, our women offer them refreshment and try all manner of wiles to detain them—and so do their women when we get there—but you may be sure we pay no heed. We turn right around and continue running, until we are back in our own respective villages. By then, Grandfather Fire will again be touching that mountain, or sinking behind it, or still some way above it, and accordingly we can determine our running time. The men of Guacho-chi do the same, and we send messengers to exchange the results, and thus we know who won the race."

I said, "For all that expenditure of time and effort, I hope the winners' prize is something worthwhile."

"Prize? There is no prize."

"What? You do all that for not even a trophy? For not even a goal to reach and hold? With no aim or end but to stagger wearily to your own same homes and women again? In the name of your three gods, why?"

He shrugged again. "We do it because it is what we do best."

I said no more, for I knew that it is futile to argue any matter rationally with irrational persons. However, I later gave more thought to Tes-disora's reply on that occasion, and it is perhaps not so nonsensical as it sounded then. I suppose I could not better have defended my life-long preoccupation with the art of word knowing, if anyone had ever demanded of me to know why.

Only six robust males, those adjudged the best runners of Guaguey-bo, were the actual racers in the ra-rajipuri. The six, of whom Tes-disora was one that day, were well gorged on the fatigue-averting jipuri cactus before the event began, and they each carried a small water sack and a pouch of pinoli meal, which sustenance they would snatch almost without slowing their pace. Also attached to the waists of their loincloths were some small dry gourds, each containing a pebble, whose rattling noise was intended to keep them from falling asleep on their feet.

The remainder of the ra-rajipuri runners comprised every other fit male of Guaguey-bo, from adolescents to men much older than myself, and they went along to help sustain the runners in spirit. Numerous of them had gone on ahead, as early as that morning. They were men who could run remarkably fast for a short time but tended to weaken over long distances. They posted themselves at intervals along the course between the two villages. As the chosen runners came by, those sprinters would speed alongside them, to inspire the racers to their best efforts over each of those intervals.

Others of the nonracers carried small pots of glowing coals and torches of pine splints, the latter to be fired after dark to light the racers' way throughout the night. Still other men carried spare strings of dried jipuri, spare sacks of pinoli and water. The youngest and oldest carried nothing; their task was to keep up a continuous shouting and chanting of inspiriting encouragement. All the men were painted on the face, bare chest, and back with dots and circles and spirals of the vivid yellow ura pigment. I was adorned only on my face, for, unlike the others, I was allowed to wear my sleeved mantle.

As Grandfather Fire settled toward the designated mountain in late afternoon, the Si-riame came smiling to the door of her house, wearing her regalia of jaguar skins, holding in one hand her silver-knobbed staff and in the other the yellow-painted wooden ball the size of a man's head. She stood there, glancing sideways at the sun, while the racers and all their companions stood nearby, perceptibly leaning forward in eagerness to be off. At the moment Grandfather Fire touched the mountaintop, the Si-riame smiled her broadest and threw the ball from her threshold among the bare feet of the waiting six racers. Every inhabitant of Guaguey-bo gave an exultant shout, and the six runners were away, playfully kicking the ball from one to another as they went. The other participants followed at a respectful distance, and so did I. The Si-riame was still smiling when I last saw her, and little Vi-rikota was jumping up and down as gaily as a dying candle flame.

I had fully expected the whole crowd of runners to outdistance me in a moment, but I should have guessed that they would not put all their energy into a headlong rush at the very start of the run. They set off at a moderate lope which even I could sustain. We went along the canyon riverside, and the cheering of the village women, children, and old folks faded behind us, and our own shouters began whooping and bellowing. Since the runners naturally avoided having to kick the ball uphill whenever possible, we continued along the canyon's bottom until its sides sloped and lowered sufficiently for us to climb easily out of it and into the forest to the south.

I am proud to report that I stayed with the racers for what I estimate to have been a full third of the way from Guaguey-bo to Guacho-chi. Perhaps the credit should go to the jipuri I had chewed before starting, for several times I found myself running faster than I ever have done in my life before or since that race. Those were the times when we came up to the posted sprinters and did our best to match their bursts of speed. And several times we passed the sprinters from Guacho-chi—they standing, not yet running—stationed to await the coming of their own racers from the opposite direction. Those competitors shouted cheerfully scornful names at us as we went by them—"Laggards!" and "Limpers!" and the like—especially at me, because by then I was trailing the rest of the Guaguey-bo contingent.

Running full tilt through closely spaced trees and along ravine floors strewn with ankle-twisting rocks was something to which I was unaccustomed at the best of times, but I managed well enough as long as I had light to see. When the glow of afternoon began to diminish, I had to run with my topaz held to my eye, and that forced me to slow my pace considerably. As the twilight got darker, I saw the guide lights bloom out ahead of me, where the torch bearers were firing their bundles of splints. But of course none of those men would drop back to waste his light on a nonracer, so I was left farther and farther behind the running crowd, and its cries dimmed away.

Then, as full darkness closed around me, I saw a red gleam on the ground just ahead. The kindly Rarámuri had not totally forgotten or dismissed their outlander companion Su-kuru. One of the torch bearers, after lighting his torch, had carefully set down his little clay pot of embers where I was sure to find it. So there I stopped, and laid and lit a campfire, and settled down to spend the night. I will admit that, despite my ingestion of the jipuri, I was sufficiently tired to have toppled over and slept, but I felt ashamed even to think of it, when every other male in the vicinity was exerting himself to the utmost. Also, I would have been intolerably humiliated, and so would my host village, if, when the rival runners from Guacho-chi came along that trail, they had found "a Guaguey-bo man" lying there asleep. So I ate some of my pinoli and washed it down with a drink from my water pouch and chewed on some of the jipuri I had brought, and that revived me nicely. I sat up all night, throwing an occasional stick on the fire to keep myself comfortable but not so warm that I might become drowsy.

I should be seeing the Guacho-chi runners twice before I again saw Tes-disora and my other former companions. After the two contingents had passed each other at the midpoint of the course, the rival runners would appear from the southeast and reach my campfire at just about the exact middle moment of the night. Then they would arrive at Guaguey-bo and turn and come back from the northwest and pass me again in the morning. The returning Tes-disora and his fellows would not reach me—so I could again join their run and go home with, them—until the midday sun was overhead.

Well, my calculation of the first encounter was correct. With the aid of my topaz I kept watch of the stars and, according to them, it was the middle of the night when I saw bobbing blobs of firelight coming from the southeast. I decided to pretend that I was one of Guaguey-bo's posted sprinters, so I was on my feet, looking alert, before the first of the ball-kicking runners came in sight, and I began to shout, "Laggards! Limpers!" The racers and their torch bearers did not shout back; they were too busy keeping their eyes on the wooden ball, which had lost whatever paint it had worn and was looking rather splintery and shredded. But the company of other Guacho-chi runners returned my taunts, yelling, "Old woman!" and "Warm your weary bones!" and such—and I realized that my having laid a fire made me, in Rarámuri estimation, seem something less than manly. But it was too late then to douse the fire, and they all dashed past and became again just wavery red lights, dwindling to the northwestward.