Why?'
I said, 'I do not really know.' And I did not. 'Now sit still. You are heavy enough without wriggling.'
Though my daughter had just then turned twelve years of age and had had her first bleeding, hence wore the garb of a woman, and was beginning to swell and curve prettily into woman's shape, she had not—I thanked the gods—inherited her father's size, or I could not have endured sitting between her and the hard stone seat.
The priest of Tlaloc made special prayers and invocations and incense burnings—at tedious length—before he threw high the ball to declare the first game under way. I will not attempt, my lord scribes, to tell of the ball's every bound and bounce and rebound, for I know you are ignorant of the complex rules of tlachtli and could not begin to appreciate the finer points of the game. The priest scuttled from the court like a black beetle, leaving only Nezahualpili and Motecuzoma—and the two goalkeepers at either end of the court, but those men stayed immobile and unnoticed except when the progress of the game required them to move one goal yoke or another.
Those things, the movable low arches through which the players had to try to put the ball, were not the simple half-circles of stone provided on ordinary courts. The goal yokes, like the court's vertical walls, were of finest marble and, like the winning-goal rings set high in the walls' center points, they were elaborately carved and polished and brilliantly colored. Even the ball had been specially braided for that contest, of strips of the liveliest oli, the overlapping strips colored alternately blue and green.
Each of the Revered Speakers wore a padded leather band around his head and ears, secured by straps crossing the top of his head and under his chin; and heavy leather disks at elbows and knees; and a tightly wound, bulkily quilted loincloth, over which was belted a leather hip girdle. The head protectors were, as I have mentioned, of the two colors of Tlaloc—blue for Nezahualpili and green for Motecuzoma—but, even without that differentiation, even without my topaz, even I would have had no trouble distinguishing the two opponents. Between the paddings and quillings, Motecuzoma's body showed firm and smooth and muscular. Nezahualpili's was gaunt and ribby and stringy. Motecuzoma moved easily, springingly, lithe as oli himself, and the ball was his from the moment the priest tossed it up. Nezahualpili moved stiffly and awkwardly; it was pitiful to see him chase his fleet adversary, like Motecuzoma's shadow detached and trying to catch him up. A sharp elbow nudged my back; I turned to see the Lord Cuitlahuac, Motecuzoma's younger brother and commander of all the Mexica armies. He grinned tauntingly at me; he was one of the several men with whom I had laid a sizable wager in gold.
Motecuzoma ran, he leapt, he floated, he flew. Nezahualpili plodded and panted, his bald head gleaming with sweat under the straps of his headgear. The ball hurtled, it bounced, it flickered back and forth—but always from Motecuzoma to Motecuzoma. From one end of the court, he would hip it hard toward the wall where Nezahualpili stood indecisive, and Nezahualpili was never quick enough to intercept it, and the ball would angle off that wall toward the farther end of the court, and somehow, impossibly, Motecuzoma would be there to strike it again with elbow or knee or buttock. He sent the ball like an arrow through this goal yoke, like a javelin through that one, like a blowpipe pellet through the next, the ball going through every low arch without ever touching either side of the stone, every time scoring a goal against Nezahualpili, every time raising an ovation from every spectator except me, Nochipa, and Nezahualpili's courtiers.
The first game to Motecuzoma. He bounded off the court like a young buck deer, untired, unwinded, to the handlers who rubbed him down and gave him a refreshing sip of chocolate, and he was standing, haughty, ready for the next game, when the trudging, sweat-dripping Nezahualpili had barely reached his resting seat among his own handlers. Nochipa turned and asked me, 'Will we be poor, Father?' And the Lord Cuitlahuac overheard, and gave a great guffaw, but he laughed no more when the play resumed.
Long afterward, veteran tlachtli players were still arguing various and contradictory explanations for what subsequently occurred. Some said it had simply taken the playing of the first game to limber Nezahualpili's joints and reflexes. Some said that Motecuzoma had rashly played the first game so strenuously that he prematurely tired himself. And there were many other theories, but I had my own. I knew Nezahualpili of old, and I had too often seen a similar rickety, hobbling, pathetic old man, a man the color of a cacao bean. I believe I saw, that day of the tlachtli contest, Nezahualpili's last pretense at that decrepitude when he mockingly gave away the first game to Motecuzoma.
But no theory, including mine, can really account for the marvel that then occurred. Motecuzoma and Nezahualpili faced off for the second game, and Motecuzoma, having won the previous one, threw the ball into play. With his knee he lobbed it high in the air. It was the last time he ever touched that ball.
Naturally, after what had gone before, almost everyone's eyes were on Motecuzoma, expecting him to flicker away that instant and be under the ball before his aged opponent could creak into motion. But Nochipa, for some reason, watched Nezahualpili, and it was her squeal of delight that brought every other spectator to his feet, everybody roaring-together like a volcano in eruption. The ball was jiggling merrily inside the marble ring high in the north wall of the court, as if pausing there long enough to be admired, and then it fell through on the side away from Nezahualpili, who had elbowed it up there.
There was an uproar of exultation on the court and in the tiers, and it went on and on. Motecuzoma rushed to embrace his opponent in congratulation, and the goalkeepers and handlers milled about in a frenzy. The priest of Tlaloc came dancing and flaffing onto the court, waving his arms and raving, unheard in the din, probably proclaiming that to have been an augury of favor from Tlaloc. The cheering spectators jumped up and down in place. The bellow of 'AYYO!' got even louder, ear-breakingly louder, when the crowd in the great plaza beyond the court heard the word of what had occurred. You will have gathered, reverend friars, that Nezahualpili had won that second game. Placing the ball through that vertical ring on the wall would have won it for him even if Motecuzoma had already been many goals ahead.
But you must understand that such a ringed ball was almost as much of a thrill for the onlookers as for the man who ringed it. That was so rare an occurrence, so unbelievably rare, that I do not know how to tell you how rare it was. Imagine that you have a hard oli ball the size of your head, and a stone ring, its aperture of just slightly larger diameter than that of the ball, poised vertically and twice your height above you. Try putting that ball through that hole, using not your hands, using only your hips, knees, elbows, or buttocks. A man might stand for days, doing nothing else, uninterrupted and undistracted, and never do it. In the swift movement and confusion of a real game, its doing was a thing miraculous.
While the crowd inside and outside the court continued its wild applause, Nezahualpili sipped at chocolate and smiled modestly, and Motecuzoma smiled approvingly. He could afford to smile, for he had only to take the remaining game to win the contest, and the ringed ball—albeit his opponent's doing—would ensure that the day of his victory would be remembered for all time, both in the archives of the sport and in the history of Tenochtitlan.
It was remembered, the day is still remembered, but not joyously. When the tumult finally quieted, the two players faced off again, the throw to be Nezahualpili's. He kneed the ball into the air at an angle and, in the same movement, dashed away to where he knew it would descend, and there kneed the ball again, and again with precision, up to and through the stone ring above. It happened so swiftly that I think Motecuzoma had no time to move at all. Even Nezahualpili appeared unbelieving of what he had done. That ringing of the ball twice in a row was more than a marvel, more than a record never to be matched in all the annals of the game, it was an accomplishment veritably stunning.
Not a sound went up from the ranks of spectators. We scarcely moved, not even our eyes, which were fixed wonderingly on that Revered Speaker. Then a cautious murmuring began among the onlookers. Some of the nobles mumbled hopeful things: that Tlaloc had shown himself so mightily pleased with us as to have taken a hand in the games himself. Others growled suspicions: that Nezahualpili had ensorcelled the games by devious magic. The nobles from Texcoco disputed that accusation, but not loudly. No one seemed to care to speak in a loud voice. Even Cuitlahuac did not grumble audibly when he handed me a leather pouch heavy with gold dust. Nochipa regarded me solemnly, as if she suspected me of being secretly a seer of the outcome of things.
Yes, I won a great deal of gold that day, through my intuition, or a trace of loyalty, or whatever undefinable motive had made me put my wagers on my onetime lord. But I would give all that gold, if I had it now—I would give more than that, ayya, a thousand of thousand times more than that, if I had it—not to have won that day.
Oh, no, lord scribes, not just because Nezahualpili's victory validated his predictions of an invasion sometime to come from the sea. I already believed in the likelihood of that; the Maya's crude drawing had convinced me. No, the reason I so bitterly regret Nezahualpili's having won the contest is that it brought a more immediate tragedy, and upon no one but me and mine.
I was in trouble again almost as soon as Motecuzoma, in I a furious temper, stalked off the court. For
