Aztec

she even...

Yes, yes, I hasten to conclude this episode.

Gift of the Gods finally gave up in annoyance. She threw my tepuli back against my belly and said petulantly, 'The conceited cub warrior saves his virginity, no doubt for a woman of his own class.' She spat on the ground, abruptly left me, seized another boy, wrestled him down, and began to buck like a wasp-stung deer—

Well.

His Excellency did ask me to speak of sex and sin, did he not, reverend friars? But it seems he cannot ever listen for long without turning as purple as his cassock, and betaking himself elsewhere. I should at least like him to know what I was leading up to. But of course—I was forgetting—His Excellency can read of it when he is calmer. May I proceed then, my lords?

Chimali came and sat beside me, and said, 'I was not one of those who laughed at you, Mole. She does not excite me either.'

'It is not so much that she is ugly and slovenly,' I said. And I told Chimali what my father had recently told me: of that disease nanaua which can come from unclean sexual practices, the disease which afflicts so many of your Spanish soldiers, and which they fatalistically call 'the fruit of the earth.'

'Women who make a decent career of their sex are not to be feared,' I told Chimali. 'Our warriors' auyanime, for instance, keep themselves clean, and they are regularly inspected by the army physicians. But the maatime who will spread themselves for just anybody, and for any number, they are best avoided. The disease comes from unclean parts, and this creature here—who knows what squalid slave men she services before she comes to us? If you ever get infected with the nanaua, there is no cure. It can rot your tepuli so it falls off, and it can rot your brain until you are a stumbling, stammering idiot.'

'That is the truth, Mole?' asked Chimali, quite ashen in the face. He looked at the sweating, heaving boy and woman on the ground. 'And I was going to have her too, just so I would not be jeered at. But I had rather be unmanly than be an idiot.'

He went at once and informed Tlatli. Then they must have spread the word, for the waiting line diminished after that evening, and, in the steam house, I often saw my comrades examining themselves for symptoms of rot. The woman came to be called by a variant of her name: Teteo-Tlayo, Offal of the Gods. But some of the schoolboys continued recklessly rutting on her, and one of those was Pactli. My contempt for him must have been as obvious as his dislike of me, for he came to me one day and said menacingly:

'So the Mole is too careful of his health to soil himself with a maatitl? I know that is only your excuse for your pitiable impotence, but it implies criticism of my behavior, and I warn you not to slander your future brother.' I gaped at him. 'Yes, before I rot, as you predict, I intend to marry your sister. Even if I become a diseased and shambling idiot, she cannot refuse a nobleman. But I would prefer that she come to me willingly. So I tell you, brother-to-be. Never let Tzitzitlini know of my sport with Offal of the Gods. Or I will kill you.'

He strode away without waiting for me to reply, which, in any case, I could not have done at that moment. I was dumb with dread. It was not that I feared Pactli personally, since I was a shade the taller of us and probably the stronger. But if he had been a weakling dwarf, he was still the son of our tecutli, and now he bore me a grudge. The fact was that I had lived in trepidation ever since the boys began their games of solitary sex, and then their couplings with Offal of the Gods. My poor performance, and the derision I endured, those embarrassments did not wound my boyish vanity so much as they put fear in my vitals. I truly had to be thought impotent and unmanly. Pactli was as underwitted as he was overbearing, but if he ever began to suspect the real reason for my seemingly feeble sexuality—that I was lavishing it all elsewhere—he was not too stupid to wonder where. And on our small island, it would not take him long to ascertain that I could be trysting with no female except...

Tzitzitlini had first caught Pactli's interest when she was only a bud of a girl, when she visited the palace to attend that execution of his own adulterous sister princess. More recently, at the springtime Feast of the Great Awakening, Tzitzi had led the dancers in the pyramid plaza—and Pactli had seen her dance, and he had been fully smitten. Since then, he had repeatedly managed to encounter her in public and had spoken to her, a breach of manners for any man, even a pili. He had also recently invented excuses to visit our house two or three times, 'to discuss quarry affairs with Tepetzalan,' and there he had to be let enter. But Tzitzi's cool reception of him and her unconcealed distaste for him would have sent any other young man slinking away for good.

And now the vile Pactli told me he was going to marry Tzitzi. I went home from school that night and, as we sat around our supper cloth, after our father had given thanks to the gods for the food before us, I bluntly spoke up:

'Pactli told me today that he intends to take Tzitzitlini to wife. Not perhaps, or if she accepts him, or if the family gives consent. But that he intends it and will do it.'

My sister stiffened and stared at me. She drew her hand lightly across her face, as our women always do at something unexpected. Our father looked uncomfortable. Our mother went on placidly eating, and just as placidly said, 'He has spoken of it, Mixtli, yes. Pactzin will soon be out of the primary school, but he still must spend some years at the calmecac school before he can take a wife.'

'He cannot take Tzitzi,' I said. 'Pactli is a stupid, greedy, unwholesome creature—'

Our mother leaned across the cloth and slapped my face, hard. 'That is for speaking disrespectfully of our future governor. Who are you, what is your high station, that you presume to defame a noble?'

Biting back uglier words, I said, 'I am not the only one of this island who knows Pactli to be a depraved and contemptible—'

She hit me again. 'Tepetzalan,' she said to our father. 'One more word out of this unruly young man and you must attend to his correction.' To me she said, 'When the pili son of the Lord Red Heron marries Tzitzitlini, all the rest of us become pipiltin as well. What are your great prospects, with no trade, with only your useless pretense of studying word pictures, that you could bring such eminence to your family?'

Our father cleared his throat and said, 'I care not so much for the -tzin to our names, but I care less for discourtesy and infamy. To refuse a nobleman any request—especially to decline the honor Pactli confers by asking our daughter's hand—would be an insult to him, a disgracing of ourselves, that we could never live down. If we were let to live at all, we would have to leave Xaltocan.'

'No, not the rest of you.' Tzitzi spoke for the first time, and firmly. 'I will leave. If that degenerate beast Pactli... Do not raise your hand to me, Mother. I am a woman grown, and I will strike you back.'

'You are my daughter and this is my house!' shouted our mother.

'Children, what has come over you?' pleaded our father.

'I say only this,' Tzitzi went on. 'If Pactli demands me, and you accede, not you or he will ever see me again. I will leave the island forever. If I cannot borrow or steal an acali, I will swim. If I cannot reach the mainland, I will drown. Not Pactli or any other man will ever touch me, except a man I can give myself to.'

'On all of Xaltocan—' our mother sputtered. 'No other daughter so ungrateful, so disobedient and defiant, so—'

This time she was silenced by our father, who said, and said solemnly, 'Tzitzitlini, if your unfilial words had been heard outside these walls, not even I could pardon you or avert your due punishment. You would be stripped and beaten and your head shaved. Our neighbors would do it if I did not, as an example to their own children.'

'I am sorry, father,' she said in a level voice. 'You must choose. An undutiful daughter or none.'

'I thank the gods I need not choose tonight. As your mother remarked, it will be a few years yet before the young Lord Joy can marry. So let us speak of it no more now, in anger or otherwise. Many things may happen between now and then.'

Our father was right: many things might happen. I did not know if Tzitzi had meant anything she said, and I had no chance to ask her that night or the next day. We dared no more than to exchange a worried and yearning glance from time to time. But, whether or not she held to her resolve, the prospect was desolating. If she fled from Pactli, I should lose her. If she succumbed and married him, I should lose her. If she went to his bed, she knew the arts of convincing him that she was virgin. But if, before then, my own behavior made Pactli suspect that another man had known her first—and me of all men—his rage would be monumental, his revenge inconceivable. Whatever the hideous manner he chose for slaying us, Tzitzi and I would have lost each other.

Ayya, many things did happen, and one of them was this. When I went to The House of Building Strength at the next day's dusk, I found my name and Pactli's on Blood Glutton's roster, as if it had been ordained by some ironic god. And when our squad got to the appointed patch of trees, Offal of the Gods was already there, already naked, sprawled, and ready. To the astonishment of Pactli and our other companions, I immediately ripped off my