greatness; whoever dares not speak before thee, knows not thy goodness.'
Though we may risk giving affront and receiving rebuke, we beseech you, Sire, that we may be granted permission to abandon this noxious enterprise.
Inasmuch as Your Majesty has recently read, in the previous portion of manuscript delivered into your royal hands, the Indian's bland and almost blithe confession of having committed the abominable sin of incest—an act proscribed throughout the known world, civilized and savage alike; an act execrated even by such degenerate peoples as the Basques, the Greeks, and the English; an act forbidden even by the meager
However, Your Majesty's loyal cleric has never yet disobeyed a command from our liege. We append the further pages collected since the last were sent. And we will keep the scribes and the interpreter at their enforced and odious occupation, setting down still further pages, until such time as our Most Esteemed Emperor may see fit to give them surcease. We only beg and urge, Sire, that when you have read this next segment of the Aztec's life history—since it contains passages that would sicken Sodom—Your Majesty will reconsider your command that this chronicle be continued.
That the pure illumination of Our Lord Jesus Christ always guide the ways of Your Majesty, is the devout wish of Your S.C.C.M.'s devoted missionary legate,
TERTIA PARS
At the time of which I have been speaking, when I was given the name of Mole, I was still in school. Every sundown, when the working day was done, I and all the other boys above seven years of age, from all the villages and residences of Xaltocan, went either to The House of Building Strength, or, boys and girls together, to The House of Learning Manners.
In the former school, we boys endured rigorous physical exercises, and were taught the ball game of tlachtli and the rudiments of handling battle weapons. In the latter school, we and the girls our age were given some sketchy history of our nation and other lands, some rather more intensive instruction in the nature of our gods and the numerous festivals dedicated to them, and were taught the arts of ritual singing, dancing, and playing of musical instruments for the celebration of all those religious ceremonies.
It was only in those telpochcaltin, or lower schools, that we commoners mingled as equals with the children of the nobility, and even with a few of the demonstrably brighter and more deserving slave children. That elementary education, stressing politeness, piety, grace, and dexterity, was regarded as sufficient schooling for us middle-class youngsters, and a real honor for the handful of slave children who were deemed worthy and capable of any schooling whatever.
But none of the slave boys, and few of us middle-class boys—and never a girl child, even a daughter of the nobility—could look forward to any further education than that provided by The Houses of Manners and Strength. The sons of our nobles usually left the island to attend one of the calmecactin, since there was no such school on Xaltocan. Those institutions of higher learning were staffed and taught by a special order of priests, and their students learned to be priests themselves, or to be governing officials, or scribes, historians, artists, physicians, or professionals of some other calling. Entrance to a calmecac was not forbidden to any ordinary boy, but the attendance and boarding there was too costly for most middle-class families to afford, unless a boy was accepted at no cost at all, for having shown great distinction in the lower school.
And I must confess that I distinguished myself not at all in either The House of Learning Manners or that of Building Strength. I remember, on my first entering the music class at the school of manners, the Master of the Boys asked me to sing something, so that he might judge the quality of my voice. And I did, and he did, saying, 'A wondrous thing to hear, but I do not believe it is singing. We will try you on an instrument.'
When I proved equally incapable of wringing a tune from the four-holed flute, or any kind of harmony from the various tuned drums, the exasperated Master put me into a class which was learning one of the beginners' dances, the Thundering Serpent. Each dancer makes a small spring forward with a stamping noise, then whirls completely around, crouches on one knee and turns again in that position, then makes another stamping forward leap. When a line of boys and girls does this in progression, the sound is of a continuous rolling boom and the visual effect is that of a long snake twining its way along in sinuous curves. Or it should be.
'This is the first Thundering Serpent I ever saw with a kink in it!' shouted the Mistress of the Girls.
'Get out of that line, Malinqui!' shouted the master of the Boys.
Thereafter, to him, I was Alfaqui, the Kink. And thereafter, when our school's students performed in public, at festival ceremonies in the island's pyramid plaza, my only contribution to the music and dancing was to beat a turtleshell drum with a pair of small deer antlers or to click a pair of crab claws in each hand. Fortunately, my sister maintained the honor of our family at those events, she being always the featured solo dancer. Tzitzitlini could dance without any music at all, yet make the spectators believe they heard music all about them.
I was beginning to feel that I possessed no identity at all, or else so many that I knew not which to accept as really my own. At home I had been Mixtli, the Cloud. To the rest of Xaltocan I was becoming generally known as Tozani, the Mole. At The House of Learning Manners I was Alfaqui, the Kink. And in The House of Building Strength I soon became Poyautla, the Fogbound.
By good fortune, I was not as lacking in muscle as in musical bent, for I had inherited my father's stature and solidity. By the time I was fourteen I was taller than schoolmates two years older. And I suppose a stone-blind man could do the stretching and leaping and weightlifting exercises. So the Master of Athletics found no fault with my performance until we began to engage in team sports.
If the game of tlachtli allowed the use of hands and feet, I might have played better, for one moves one's hands and feet almost instinctively. But the hard oli ball can be struck only with knees, hips, elbows, and buttocks, and when I could see the ball at all, it was only a dim blob further blurred by its speed. Consequently, though we players wore head protectors, hip girdles, knee and elbow sleeves of heavy leather, and thick cotton padding over the rest of our bodies, I was constantly being bruised by the blows of the ball.
Worse, I could seldom distinguish my own teammates from the opposing players. When I did infrequently knee or hip the ball, I was as likely as not to slam it through the wrong one of the squat stone arches, the knee-high goals which, according to the complicated rules of the game, are continually being lugged from place to place at the ends of the court. As for putting the ball through one of the vertical stone rings high up in the midline of the court's two enclosing walls—meaning an immediate win, no matter what the score of goals already made by either team— that is next to impossible for even the most experienced player to do even by accident; it would have been a miracle for fogbound me.
It was not long before the Master of Athletics gave up on me as a participant. I was put in charge of the players' water jar and dipper, and of the pricking thorns and sucking reeds with which, after each game, the school physician eased the stiffness of the players by drawing the turgid black blood from their bruises.
Then there were the war games and the weapons instruction, under the tutelage of an elderly and scarred cuachic, an 'old eagle,' the title of one whose battle valor has already been proved. His name was Extli-Quani, or Blood Glutton, and he must have been well over forty years old. For those exercises, we boys were not allowed to wear any of the plumes or paints or other array of real warriors. But we carried boy-sized shields of wood or wicker covered with leather, and we wore boy-sized suits of the soldiers' standard battle garb. Those garments were of thickly quilted cotton, toughened by having been soaked in brine, and they covered us from neck to wrists and ankles. They allowed a reasonable freedom of movement, and they were supposed to protect us from arrows—at least those arrows propelled from a distance—but ayya! they were hot and scratchy and sweaty things to wear for longer than a short while.
'First you will learn the battle cries,' said Blood Glutton. 'In combat, of course, you will be accompanied by the conch trumpeters and the beaters of the thunder drums or the groaning drums. But to those must be added your own voices shouting for slaughter, and the sound of your fists and weapons pounding upon your shields. I know from experience, my boys, that an overwhelming clamor of noise can be a weapon itself. It can shake a man's mind, water his blood, weaken his sinews, even void his bladder and bowels. But you must make that noise, and you will find it twice effective: it heartens your own battle resolve while it terrifies your enemy.'
And so, for weeks before we had even a mock weapon, we yelled the shrieks of the eagle, the rasping grunts
