Sire, not long ago we heard a priest wiser than ourself say this: that no man should be unreservedly lauded while he still lives and still sails upon the unpredictable seas of life. Not he nor anyone can know whether he will survive all the besetting tempests and the lurking reefs and the distracting Siren songs, to make safe harbor at last. That man alone can rightly be praised whom God has guided so that he finishes his days in the port of Salvation, for the
May that guiding Lord God continue to smile upon and favor Your Imperial Majesty, whose royal feet are kissed by your chaplain and servant,
OCTAVA PARS
My own personal tragedy naturally overshadowed everything else in the world, but I could not help being aware that the entire Mexica nation had also suffered more of a tragedy than the demolition of its capital city. Ahuitzotl's frantic and rather uncharacteristic plea for Nezahualpili's help in stopping the flood was the last act he ever performed as Uey-Tlatoani. He was inside his palace when it collapsed and, though he was not killed, he would probably have preferred that he had been. For he was struck on the head by a falling beam, and thereafter—so I was told; I never saw him again alive—he was as witless as the timber that struck him. He wandered aimlessly about, talking to himself in gibberish, while an attendant followed the once great statesman and warrior everywhere he went, to keep changing the loincloth he kept soiling.
Tradition forbade that Ahuitzotl be divested of the title of Revered Speaker as long as he lived, even if his speaking was a babble and he could be revered no more than could an ambulatory vegetable. Instead, as soon as was practical, the Speaking Council convened to choose a regent to lead the nation during Ahuitzotl's incapacity. No doubt vengefully, because Ahuitzotl had slain two of their number during the panic on the causeway, those old men refused even to consider the most eligible candidate, his eldest son Cuautemoc. They chose for regent his nephew, Motecuzoma the Younger, because, they announced, 'Motecuzoma Xocoyotzin has proved his ability successively as a priest, a military commander, a colonial administrator. And, having traveled so widely, he has firsthand knowledge of all the farthest Mexica lands.'
I remembered the words Ahuitzotl had thundered at me one time: 'We will not set upon this throne a hollow drum!' and I decided that it was probably as well that he was out of his wits when that very thing occurred. If Ahuitzotl had been killed outright, so that he died in his right mind, he would have clambered up from the nethermost pit of Mictlan and sat his cadaver on the throne in preference to Motecuzoma. As things turned out, a dead ruler might almost have been better for the Mexica. A corpse at least maintains a fixed position.
But at that time I was not at all interested in court intrigues; I was myself preparing to abdicate for a while, and for several reasons. For one, my home had become a place full of painful memories from which I wished to get away. I felt a pang even when I looked at my dear daughter, because I saw so much of Zyanya in her face. For another reason, I thought I had devised a way to keep Cocoton from feeling too poignantly the loss of her mother. For still another, my friend Cozcatl and his wife Quequelmiqui, when they came to comfort me with condolences, let slip the news that they were homeless, their own house having been among those toppled by the flood.
'We are not as downcast about it as we might be,' Cozcatl said. 'To tell the truth, we were getting rather cramped and uncomfortable, with our home and the school for servants both under one roof. Now that we are forced to rebuild, we will put up two separate buildings.'
'And meanwhile,' I said, 'this will be your home. You will both live here. I am going away in any case, so the place and the servants will be all yours. I ask only one favor in return. Will you two be substitute mother and father to Cocoton as long as I am absent? Could you play Tene and Tete to an orphan child?'
Ticklish said, 'Ayyo, what a lovely idea!'
Cozcatl said, 'We will do it willingly—no, gratefully. It will be the one time we shall have had a family.'
I said, 'The child gives no trouble. The slave Turquoise tends to her routine needs. You will have to provide nothing but the security of your presence... and a show of affection from time to time.'
'Of course we will!' Ticklish exclaimed, and there were tears in her eyes.
I went on, 'I have already explained to Cocoton—meaning I lied to her—about her mother's absence these past several days. I said that her Tene is out marketing, buying the necessities she and I will need for a long journey we must undertake. The child only nodded and said, 'Long journey,' but it means little to her at her age. However, if you keep reminding Cocoton that her Tete and Tene are traveling in far places... well, I hope she will have got used to being without her mother by the time I return, so that she will not be too dismayed when I tell her that her Tene has not returned with me.'
'But she would get used to being without you, too,' Cozcatl warned.
'I suppose so,' I said resignedly. 'I can only trust that, when I do come back, she and I can get reacquainted again. In the meantime, if I know that Cocoton is well cared for, and is loved...'
'She will be!' Ticklish said, laying a hand on my arm. 'We will live here with her for as long as need be. And we will not let her forget you, Mixtli.'
They went away, to prepare for the moving in of what possessions they had saved from the ruins of their own house, and that same night I put together a light and compact traveling pack. Early the next morning I went into the nursery and woke Cocoton, and told the sleepy little girl:
'Your Tene asked me to say good-bye for us both, Small Crumb, because... because she cannot leave our train of porters, or they will scatter and run away like mice. But here is a good-bye kiss from her. Did not that taste exactly like her kiss?' Surprisingly, it did, to me at least. 'Now, Cocoton. With your fingers, lift Tene's kiss from your lips and hold it in your hand, like that, so your Tete can kiss you, too. There. Now take mine and hers, and hold them both tight in your hand while you go to sleep again. When you get up, put them safely away and keep the kisses to return to us when we come back.'
'Come back,' she said drowsily, and smiled her Zyanya smile, and closed her Zyanya eyes.
Downstairs, Turquoise sniffled and Star Singer several times blew his nose as we said our good-byes, and I charged them with the management of the household and reminded them that until my return they were to obey Cozcatl and Quequelmiqui as their lord and lady. I paused once more on my way out of town, at The House of Pochtea, and left there a message to be carried by the next merchant train going in the direction of Tecuantepec. The folded paper was to advise Beu Ribe—in the least hurtful word pictures I could compose—of her sister's death and the manner of it.
It did not occur to me that the normal flow of Mexica commerce had been considerably disrupted, and that my message would not soon be delivered. Tenochtitlan's fringe of chinampa had been underwater for four days, at the season when the crops of maize, beans, and other staples were just sprouting. Besides drowning those plants, the water had also invaded the warehouses kept stocked for emergencies and ruined all the dried foods stored in them. So, for many months, the Mexica pochtea and their porters were occupied solely with supplying the destitute city. That kept them constantly traveling, but did not take them far afield, and that is why Waiting Moon did not learn of Zyanya's death until more than a year after it happened.
I was also constantly traveling during that time, wandering like a milkweed puff wherever the winds might blow me, or wherever some scenic vista beckoned me closer, or wherever a path meandered so tantalizingly that it was forever seeming to say, 'Follow me. Just around the next bend there is a land of heart's-ease and forgetfulness.' There never was such a place, of course. A man can walk to the end of all the roads there are, and to the end of his days, but he can nowhere lay down his past and walk away from it and never look back.
Most of my adventures during that time were of no special account, and I sought to do no trading nor to burden myself with acquisitions, and if there were fortuitous discoveries to be made—like the giant tusks I found that other time I tried to walk away from woe—I passed them unseeing. The one rather memorable adventure that I did have, I fell into quite by accident, and it happened in this way:
I was near the west coast, in the land of Nauyar Ixu, one of the remote northwestern provinces or dependencies of Michihuacan. I had wandered up that way just to see a volcano that had been in violent eruption for almost a month and threatened never to stop. The volcano is called Tzeboruko, which means to snort with anger, but it was doing more than that: it was roaring with rage, like the overflow of a war going on down below in Mictlan. Gray-black smoke billowed from it, shot with jacinth flashes of fire, and towered up to the sky, and had been doing that for so many days that the whole sky was dirty and the whole of Nauyar Ixu in day-long twilight. From that cloud constantly rained down a soft, warm, pungent gray ash. From the crater came the incessant angry growl of the volcano goddess Chantico, and gouts of fiery-red lava, and what looked from a distance like pebbles being tossed up and out, though they were of course immense hurled boulders.
