Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary (версия книг .txt) 📗

"No," he said flatly.

We were sitting together on the bench before his house door, where, this time, he was not shaping a woman-formed piece of guitarra. He went on:

"Do you take me for a raving tlahuele? I am one of the fortunate few Mexica who have ample food, secure shelter, freedom from any master's abuse, freedom to come and go as I please. I have even real prosperity and a promising future for my family."

Yet another man drained of manhood, I thought bitterly, "lamiendo el culo del patron." I growled, "Is that all you desire to have, Erasmo?"

"All?! Are you tlahuele, Juan Britanico? What more could a man want in this world as it is today?"

"Today, you say. But there was a day when the Mexica also had pride."

"Those who could afford to. The tlatoantin rulers, and those with the noble -tzin to their names, and the pipiltin upper classes and the cuachitin knights and such. They were so proud, in fact, that they gave no thought to us macehualtin commoners who fed and clothed and attended them. Except when they needed us on the battlefield."

I said, "Most of the cuachitin of whom you speak were likewise mere macehualtin, who rose from the common class to the knighthood because they fought the enemies of the Mexica, and were proud to do so, and showed it in their prowess on the battlefield."

Erasmo shrugged. "I have here everything that any Mexicatl knight ever had, and I won it without fighting."

"You did not win it!" I snapped. "It was given to you."

He shrugged again. "If you like. But I work hard to be worthy of it and to keep it. And to show my gratitude to the good Padre Vasco."

"The padre is good and gracious, that is true. But do you not see, Cuatl Erasmo? He is degrading your Mexicatl manhood just as would a cruel, whip-wielding white master. He is treating all of you as if you were only domesticated wild beasts. Or drooling xolopitlin. Or swaddled infants."

This appeared to be Erasmo's day for shrugging. "Even the manliest man can appreciate being treated with tender solicitude." Now he sniffled, as if near to weeping. "The way a good wife treats a good husband."

I blinked. "What has wifeliness to do with—?"

"Hush. No more, please, Cuatl Juan. Come, walk with me. I would speak with you on something of a different nature."

Wondering, I went with him. When we were some distance from his house, I ventured to say, "You do not seem nearly so cheerful as when I last saw you, and that was not too long ago."

He sniffled again, and said gloomily, "That is certain. My head is bowed, my heart bleeds, my hands tremble so that my work suffers."

"Are you ill, Erasmo?"

"Best you address me by my pagan name—Ixtalatl—for I am no longer fit to be a Christian. I have sinned most irredeemably. I am... afflicted with chahuacocoliztli." That long word means "the shameful disease caused by adultery." He went on, still sniffling, "Not only does my heart leak. So does my tepuli. For some time now, I have not dared to embrace my good wife, and she keeps plaintively asking why."

"Ayya," I murmured sympathetically. "Then you have lain with one of those importunate Purempe women. Well, a ticitl of our own people—or probably even a Spanish medico—can alleviate the ailment. And any priest of our kindly goddess Tlazolteotl can absolve you of the transgression."

"As a Christian convert, I cannot resort to the goddess Filth Eater."

"Then go and confess to Padre Vasco. He told me that the sin of adultery is not exactly unknown here in Utopia. Surely he has forgiven others, and has let them continue being Christians."

Erasmo muttered guiltily, "As a man, I am too ashamed to confess to the padre."

"Then why, may I ask, are you confessing to me?"

"Because she wants to meet you."

"Who?" I exclaimed, mystified. "Your wife?"

"No. The adulterous woman."

Now I was nonplussed. "Why in the name of all the gods should I consent to meet a slut of polluted tipili?"

"She asked for you by name. By your pagan name. Tenamaxtli."

"It must be Pakapeti," I said, even more confounded, because if Tiptoe had been diseased when she and I so often and so enjoyably coupled, I too would be hurting and leaking by now. And there had hardly been time since then for some other male passerby to have—

"Her name is not Pakapeti," said Erasmo, and astounded me again by announcing, "Here she comes now."

This was too coincidental to be coincidence. The woman must have been observing our approach from some nearby hiding place, and now stepped forward to meet us. She was no one I had ever seen before, and I hoped I would never again see such a cold and gloating smile as she was smiling at me. Erasmo, speaking Nahuatl, not Pore, said without enthusiasm:

"Cuatl Tenamaxtli, this is G'nda Ke, who expressed a fervent wish to meet you."

I spoke no courteous salutation to her, saying only, "G'nda Ke is not a Purempe name. And you have abundant hair on your head."

Clearly she understood Nahuatl, for she said, "G'nda Ke is Yaki," and gave a haughty toss of her dead-black mane.

Erasmo mumbled, "I must go. My wife..." and scampered back toward his home.

"If you are a Yaki," I said to the woman, "you are far from home."

"G'nda Ke has been many years away from that home."

That was the way she talked, not ever saying "I" or "me." She spoke always as if she were standing apart from her own physical presence. She appeared to be no older than myself, and she was fair of face and form; I could understand how easily she must have seduced Erasmo. But whether G'nda Ke smiled, frowned or wore no expression whatever, her visage never ceased to seem gloating. It implied that she possessed some private, secret, unclean bit of knowledge with which she could damage or even damn to Mictlan any person she chose. There was one other feature of her face that was only rarely seen among our people.

"You have a profusion of freckles," I said, not caring if I was being rude, because I supposed it was a manifestation of her detestable disease.

"G'nda Ke is freckled all over her body," she said with a gloating grin, as if inviting me to have a look.

I ignored that, and asked, "What brought you so far south from the Yaki lands? Are you on a quest of some sort?"

"Yes."

"What do you seek?"

"You."

I laughed, without humor. "I did not realize that my attractiveness had such a long reach. Anyway, you found Erasmo instead."

"Only to find you."

I laughed again. "Erasmo has good reason to wish you had never found him."

She said indifferently, "Erasmo does not matter. G'nda Ke hopes that he will convey the disease to every other Mexicatl here. They deserve the agony and the shame. They are as flabby and cowardly as their forebears who refused to leave Aztlan with me."

My memory stirred. And, I think, so did the roots of my back hair. I recalled how my great-grandfather, Canautli the Rememberer, had told of the long-ago Yaki woman—and yes, her name had been G'nda Ke—who turned some of the peaceable early Azteca into the bellicose Mexica who battled their way to greatness.

"That was sheaves of sheaves of years ago," I said, certain that she did not need my explaining of what "that" was. "If you did not die then, as reported, Yaki woman, how old must you be?"