Aztec Autumn Read online

  The noises included the familiar crepitations of wood doing its duty as fuel, and the eager lickings and lappings of the flames, and the spitting sounds as the man's skin bulged into blisters that instantly burst, and the crackling and sizzling of his flesh, and the hissing as his blood fumed away, and the snaps and crunches as his muscles tightly contracted in the heat and broke the bones inside him and, toward the end, the indescribably horrid sound of his skull's blowing to fragments from the pressure of the brain boiling within.

  Meanwhile, we all could also smell him burning. The aroma of human flesh being cooked is, at first, as deliciously appetizing as that of any other kind of meat being properly broiled. But then this particular cooking became burning, and there was the odor of char and smoke, and the rancid smell of his under-skin fat bubbling and melting, and the lingering scorch odor of his one garment disintegrating, and the briefer but sharper whiff when the hair of his head went away in a flash, and the reek of roasting organs and membranes and viscera, and the cloying sick-sweet smell of blood turning to steam, and after a while the hot metallic odor as the restraining chain seemed trying to catch fire itself, and the powdery smell of bones turning to ashes and the revolting stink when the man's lower guts and their fecal contents were incinerated.

  Since the man at the stake could also see, hear and smell those various things happening to himself, I began to wonder what was going on in his mind all that time. He never emitted a sound, but surely he had to be thinking. About what? Regretting the things he had done, or not done, that had brought him to this dreadful end? Or dwelling on and savoring the small pleasures, even adventures he had sometime enjoyed? Or thinking of loved ones left behind? No, at his age, he had probably outlived all of them except children or grandchildren, if he had any, but there must have been women in his life; even old, he had still been a fine-looking man when he came to the stake. Also, he had come to this unspeakable fate unafraid and unbowed; he must have been a man of consequence in his day. Was he now, perhaps, despite the excruciating pain he was enduring, inwardly laughing at the irony of his having once been high and mighty, and today brought so low?

  And which of his senses, I wondered, was the first to be extinguished? Did his vision last long enough that he could view the on-looking executioners and his countrymen crowded about, and himself ponder on what the living were thinking at seeing him die? Could he see his own legs shriveling and blackening and, while he hung suspended by the chain, curling up against his belly—and then his arms doing the same, shrinking and crisping and curling across his chest—as if his limbs were trying to protect the torso for which they had worked faithfully during a lifetime? Or had the heat by then burst his eyeballs, so that there would nevermore be any light or any sight to see it?

  Then, eyeless, did he go on tracing by sound and smell the remorseless progress of his being corroded? The mud-bubble plopping sounds of his skin's blisters swelling, heaving and viscously erupting—could he hear those? Could he smell his own human meat turning to a nauseous carrion that even the tzopilótin vultures would refuse to feed on? Or did he merely feel those things? If so, did he feel them as separate, identifiable pangs or as an all-engulfing agony?

  But even when he had been deprived of sight, hearing, smell—and, I hope, feeling—he still for a while had a brain. Did it go on thinking until the very last? Did it dread the endless night and nothingness of the Míctlan netherworld? Or did it dream of a new and eternal life in the bright, lush, happy land of the sun god Tonatíu? Or did it simply, desperately try to hold, for just a little longer, the memories of this world and its life that were dearest to him? Of youth, of sky and sunlight, of loving caresses, of deeds and feats, of places once visited and never to be visited again? Had he managed frantically to keep those thoughts and memories for his pathetic last solace until the instant when his whole head shattered and everything was ended?

  If this spectacle had in fact been intended as some sort of edifying lesson for us who had been commanded to watch, I think we all would have had our fill of it very early on. For one reason, we all saw that the man Juan Damasceno died to no good purpose—not his heart, not even his blood went to nourish any god, none of our own or those of the Christians. But the soldiers would not let us leave before the presiding priests did, and they stayed on their platform until there was little left of their victim but smoke and stench. They watched the entire proceedings with that stern expression of disagreeable-duty-done that any priest of any religion can so righteously assume, but their eyes belied their faces. The priests' eyes were bright with avid enjoyment and approval of what they watched. All but one priest, I should remark—that younger one who had done the translating into Náhuatl.

  His face was not stern but sad, his eyes not gloating but pitying. And when the other priests finally stepped down from the platform and went away, and the soldier bade the rest of us disperse, that one younger priest lingered on. He stood before the dangling chain—its links glowing red-hot—and looked sorrowfully down at the small remains of what that chain had held.

  Everyone else, including my mother and uncle, made haste to vacate the square. But I too lingered, along with the priest, and approached him and addressed him in the language we both spoke.

  "Tlamacázqui," I said, respectfully enough, but he raised a hand to object.

  "Priest? I am not a priest," he said. "I can summon one of them, though, if you will tell me why you wish to talk to a priest."

  "I wanted to talk to you," I said. "I do not speak the Spanish of the other priests."

  "And I say again, I am no priest. Sometimes I am glad of that. I am only Alonso de Molina, notarius to my lord Bishop Zumárraga. And because I troubled to learn your language, I am also His Excellency's interpreter between your people and ours."

  I had no idea what a notarius might be, but this one seemed amiable, and he had displayed some human compassion during the execution, which the others officiating had not. So now I addressed him by the honorific that means more than "friend"; it means "brother" or even "twin."

  "Cuatl Alonso," I said. "My name is Tenamáxtli. I and some relatives just now came from far away to admire your City of Mexíco for the first time. We did not expect to find a—a public entertainment—provided for us visitors. I would ask only this. Despite your excellent translation, I could not—in my provincial ignorance—understand all the legal-sounding terms you spoke. Would you do me the favor of explaining, in simple words, what that man was accused of and why he was slain?"

  The notarius regarded me for a moment, then asked, "You are not a Christian?"

  "No, Cuatl Alonso. I have heard of Crixtanóyotl, but I know nothing of that religion."

  "Well, Don Juan Damasceno was found guilty of—in simple words, as you request—having pretended to embrace our Christian faith, but all the time remaining an unbeliever. He refused to confess this, refused to renounce his old religion, and so he was sentenced to die."

  "I begin to understand. Thank you, cuatl. A man has the choice of becoming a Christian or of being slain."

  "Now, now. Not exactly, Tenamáxtli. But once he does become a Christian, he must remain one."

  "Or your courts of law order him burned."

  "Not exactly that, either," said the notarius, frowning. "The secular courts may adjudge various penalties for various offenses. And if they vote for capital punishment, there are several ways—by shot or sword or the headsman's ax or—"

  "Or the most cruel way of all," I finished for him. "The burning."

  "No." The notarius shook his head, now looking a trifle uncomfortable. "Only the ecclesiastical Courts of Inquisition can pronounce that sentence. Indeed, that is the sole means of execution the Church can specify. You see, the Church is bidden to punish sorcerers and witches and heretics like this late Juan Damasceno, but it is forbidden ever to shed blood. And clearly, burning does not shed blood. Thus it is laid down in canon law, how the Church must execute such persons. By flame... and by flame alone."
r />   "I do see," I said. "Yes, laws must be obeyed."

  "I am pleased to say that such executions are only infrequently required," said the notarius. "It has been fully three years since a Marrano was burned on this same spot, for having similarly flouted the faith."

  "Excuse me, Cuatl Alonso," I said. "What is a Marrano?"

  "A Jew. That is, a person formerly a Jew who has converted to Christianity. And Hernando Halevi de León seemed a sincere convert. He even ate pork. So he was given a royal grant of a profitable encomienda of his own, at Actópan, north of here. And he was allowed to marry the beautiful Isabel de Aguilar, the Christian daughter of one of the best Spanish families. But then it was discovered that the Marrano was forbidding Doña Isabel to attend Mass at those times of the month when she had her feminine bleeding. Obviously, de León was a false convert, still secretly observing the pernicious strictures of Judaism."

  None of this made any sense to me at all, so I returned to the matter nearer to hand, saying, "This man today, cuatl—you did not appear very happy to see this one burned."

  "Ayya, make no mistake," he hastened to say. "By all the beliefs and laws and rules of our Church, this Damasceno most certainly deserved his fate. I would not dispute that, not in the least. It is only that... well, over the years, I had grown rather fond of the old fellow." He looked down at the ashes one last time. "Now, Cuatl Tenamáxtli, you must excuse me. I have duties. But I shall be pleased to converse with you again, whenever you are in the city."

  I had followed his glance down at the ashes with a glance of my own, and had instantly perceived that one other thing besides the metal chain and the upright metal post had survived the flames. It was the pendant I had earlier glimpsed, the light-reflecting object that the dead man had worn about his neck.

  As the notarius Alonso turned away, I quickly stooped and picked up the thing, having to toss it from hand to hand for a while, because it was still scorching hot. It was a small disk of some kind of yellow crystal, and it was curiously but smoothly polished, flat on one side, curved inward on the other. The thing had hung from a leather thong, which of course was gone, and it had evidently been set in a circlet of copper, because traces of that still remained, though most had melted.

  None of the soldiers patrolling the area or other Spanish persons with errands that took them strolling or hurrying across the vast open square paid any attention to my filching the yellow talisman, or whatever it was. So I tucked it inside my mantle and went in search of my mother and uncle.

  I found them standing on a walk-bridge that spanned one of the city's remaining canals. My mother had been weeping—her face was still wet with tears—and her brother had a comforting arm clasped about her shoulders. He was also growling, more to himself than to her:

  "Those other scouts gave good report of the white men's rule. They could not have witnessed anything like this. When we get back, I shall most certainly insist that we Aztéca keep our distance from these loathsome—" Then he broke off, to demand crossly of me, "What kept you, nephew? We might well have decided to start for home without you."

  "I stayed to pass a few words with that Spaniard who speaks our tongue. He said he had been fond of old Juan Damasceno."

  "That was not the man's real name," said my uncle, his voice gruff, and my mother again gave a small sob. I looked at her, in some surmise, and hesitantly said:

  "Tene, you sighed and sobbed back there in the square. Of what earthly concern could that man have been to you?"

  "I knew him," she said.

  "How is that possible, dear Tene? You have never set foot in this city before."

  "No," she said. "But he came once, long ago, to Aztlan."

  "Even if not for the yellow eye," said my uncle, "Cuicáni and I would have recognized him."

  "The yellow eye?" I repeated. "Do you mean this thing?" And I brought out the crystal I had taken from the ashes.

  "Ayyo!" cried my mother, joyfully. "A memento of the dear departed."

  "Why did you call it an eye?" I asked Uncle Mixtzin. "And if this man was not who they said, Juan Damasceno, who was he?"

  "I have many times told you about him, nephew, but I suppose I neglected to mention the yellow eye. He was that Mexícatl stranger who came to Aztlan, and it turned out that he had the same name I bore, Tliléctic-Mixtli. It was he who inspired me to begin to learn the art of word-knowing. And he was the cause of my later bringing the Moon Stone to this city—and my being welcomed by the late Motecuzóma, and my being given by Motecuzóma all those warriors and artists and teachers and artisans who went with me back to Aztlan..."

  "Of course I remember your telling all that, uncle. But what does the yellow eye have to do with anything?"

  "Ayya, that poor Cuatl Mixtli had a disability, some weakness of his vision. The thing you hold—it is a disk of yellow topaz, specially and perhaps magically ground and polished. That other Mixtli used to hold it up to his eye whenever he wished to see anything really clearly. But that handicap never deterred his adventuring and exploring. And, if I may say so—in the case of our Aztlan, anyway—his doing good and great deeds."

  "You may indeed say so," I murmured, impressed. "And we ought indeed to mourn him. That other Mixtli gave us much."

  "To you, Tenamáxtli, even more," my mother said quietly. "That other Mixtli was your father."

  I stood stunned and speechless, unable for a long moment to do anything more than stare down at the topaz in my hand, the last remainder of the man who had sired me. At last, though feeling as if I were strangling, I managed to blurt out:

  "Why are we all just standing here, then? Are we to do nothing—am I, his son, to do nothing—to wreak vengeance on these murderers for my father's gruesome death?"

  III

  At that time, there were many people still alive in Aztlan who remembered the visit of that Mexícatl named Tliléctic-Mixtli, "Dark Cloud." Uncle Mixtzin remembered, of course, and so did his son Yeyac and his daughter Améyatl, though they were only small children back then. (Their mother, my uncle's wife, who had been the first of all the Aztéca to speak to that visitor, died of a swamp fever not long after.) Another who remembered was old Canaútli, for he had engaged in many and long conversations with that Mixtli, telling him the history of our Aztlan. And Canaútli's granddaughter naturally remembered, because she, Cuicáni, had been the most hospitably welcoming Aztécatl of all, sharing her pallet with the visitor, and becoming pregnant by him, and eventually giving birth to his son, meaning me.

  Those and many other Aztéca, too, remembered my uncle's later setting out for Tenochtítlan, with numerous men helping him roll the Moon Stone. And my uncle's triumphant return from that journey is vividly remembered by everyone in Aztlan who was alive at the time—including myself, because I was by then three or four years old. When he went away, he had been only Tliléctic-Mixtli, tlatocapíli of Aztlan. Tlatocapíli was not much of a title—it meant only a "tribal chief"—and his domain was only an insignificant village surrounded by swamps. He himself had on several occasions described Aztlan as "this crack in the buttocks of the world." But he returned to it bedecked in a wondrously beautiful feather headdress and feather mantle, accompanied by many attendants, wearing jewels on his fingers. He was now to be known by the new and noble name of Tliléctic-Mixtzin, "Lord Dark Cloud," and bearing the title of Uey-Tecútli, "Revered Governor."

  Immediately on his arrival—since the entire adult population had convened to see and admire his new splendor—he addressed his people. I can repeat his words with fair accuracy, because Canaútli memorized them and told them to me when I was old enough to comprehend.

  "Fellow Aztéca," said the Uey-Tecútli Mixtzin, loudly and with determination. "As of this day we resume our long-forgotten family connection with our cousins the Mexíca, the most powerful people of The One World. We are henceforth a colony of those Mexíca, and an important one, for the Mexíca have previously had no outpost or stronghold abutting the Western Sea this far north of Teno
chtítlan. And a stronghold we shall be!"

  He gestured at the considerable train of people who had accompanied him. "The men who came here with me did not come merely to make an impressive show of my return. They and their families will settle among us, will make their homes here, as once their forefathers did. Every one of these stalwarts—from warriors to word-knowers—was chosen for his skill and experience at various arts and trades. They will show you what this farthest bastion of Tenochtítlan can be—a Tenochtítlan in miniature—strong, civilized, cultured, prosperous, and proud."

  His voice got even louder, commanding, "And you will hear and heed and obey these teachers. No longer will we of Aztlan be torpid and uncouth and ignorant, and content to be so. From this day on, every man, woman and child of you will learn and work and strive, until we are in every way the equals of our admirable Mexíca cousins."

  I remember only vaguely what Aztlan was like in those days. Consider, I was then a child. And a child neither esteems nor disprizes his hometown, does not perceive it as either grand or squalid; it is what he has always known and been accustomed to. But, whether from fragments of memory or from what I was told in later years, I can fairly well describe the Place of Snowy Egrets as it was when that other Tliléctic-Mixtli, the explorer, came upon it.

  For one thing, the "palace" in which my tlatocapíli uncle and his two children lived—as did I and my mother, for she became her brother's housekeeper after his wife died—was of numerous rooms but only one story. It was built of wood and reeds and palm leaves, made sturdier and "ornamented" to some extent by having been covered all over with a plaster made from crushed seashells. The rest of Aztlan's buildings of residence and commerce were, if it can be believed, of even flimsier and less handsome construction.