Aztec

and the desire. The slaves are allowed to study as far as is consistent with their particular employments.'

'You yourself are well spoken, for such a young tlacotli.'

'Thank you, my lord. I went as far as learning good Nahuatl, deportment, and the rudiments of housekeeping. When I am older I may apply for further training, in hope of someday becoming Master of the Keys in some noble household.'

I said grandly, expansively, generously, 'If ever I have a noble household, Cozcatl, I promise you that position.'

I did not mean 'if,' I meant 'when.' I was no longer idly wishing for a rise to eminence, I was already envisioning it. I stood there in that lovely parkland, my servant at my side, and I stood tall in my fine new clothes, and I smiled to think of the great man I would be. I sit here now, among you, my reverend masters, and I sit bent and shriveled in my rags, and I smile to think of the puffed-up young pretender I was.

The Lord Teacher of History, Neltitica, who looked old enough to have experienced all of history, announced to the class, 'We have with us today a new piltontli student, a Mexicatl who is to be known as Head Nodder.'

I was so pleased to be introduced as a 'young noble' student that I did not wince at the nickname.

'Perhaps, Head Nodder, you would be good enough to give us a brief history of your Mexica people....'

'Yes, Lord Teacher,' I said confidently. I stood up, and every face in the class turned to gaze at me. I cleared my throat and said what I had been taught in Xaltocan's House of Learning Manners:

'Know, then, that my people originally dwelt in a region far to the north of these lands. It was Aztlan, The Place of Snowy Egrets, and at that time they called themselves the Aztlantlaca or the Azteca, the Egret People. But Aztlan was a hard country, and their chief god Huitzilopochtli told them of a sweeter land to be found to the south. He said it would be a long and difficult journey, but that they would recognize their new homeland when they reached it, for they would see there a nopali cactus on which perched a golden eagle. So all the Azteca abandoned their fine homes and palaces and pyramids and temples and gardens, and they set out southward.'

Someone in the class snickered.

'The journey took sheaves upon sheaves of years, and they had to pass through the lands of many other peoples. Some were hostile; they fought and tried to turn the Azteca back. Others were hospitable and let the Azteca rest among them, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for many years, and those peoples were repaid by being taught the noble language, the arts and sciences known only to the Azteca.'

Someone in the class murmured, and someone else gave a low chuckle.

'When the Azteca came finally into this valley, they were kindly received by the Tecpaneca people on the western shore of the lake, who gave them Chapultepec for a resting place. The Azteca lived on that Grasshopper Hill while their priests continued to range about the valley in search of the eagle on the nopali. Now, in the Tecpaneca dialect of our language, the nopali cactus is called tenochtli, so those people called the Azteca the Tenochca, and in time the Azteca themselves took that name of Cactus People. Then, as Huitzilopochtli had promised, the priests did find the sign—a golden eagle perched on a cactus—and this they found on a not-yet- peopled island in the lake. All the Tenochca-Azteca immediately and joyfully moved from Chapultepec to that island.'

Someone in the class laughed openly.

'On the island they built two great cities, one called Tenochtitlan, Place of the Cactus People, and the other Tlaltelolco, The Rocky Place. While they were building the cities, the Tenochca noticed how every night they could see from their island the moon Metztli reflected in the lake waters. So they also referred to their new habitation as Metztli-Zictli, In the Middle of the Moon. In time, they shortened that to Mexitli and then to Mexico, and eventually came to call themselves the Mexica. For their sign they adopted the symbol of the eagle perched on the cactus, and the eagle holds in its beak the ribbonlike symbol which represents war.'

A number of my new classmates were laughing by now, but I persevered.

'Then the Mexica began to extend their dominion and influence, and many peoples have benefited, either as adoptive Mexica or as allies or as trading partners. They learned to worship our gods, or variations of them, and they let us appropriate their gods. They learned to count with our arithmetic and mark time by our calendars. They pay us tribute in goods and currency, for fear of our invincible armies. They speak our language out of deference to our superiority. The Mexica have built the mightiest civilization ever known in this world, and Mexico-Tenochtitlan stands at its center—In Cem-Anahuac Yoyotli, The Heart of the One World.'

I kissed the earth to the aged Lord Teacher Neltitica and sat down. My classmates were all waving their hands for permission to speak, meanwhile making a clamor of noises ranging from laughter to hoots of derision. The Lord Teacher gestured imperiously, and the class sat still and silent.

'Thank you, Head Nodder,' he said politely. 'I had wondered what version the Mexica teachers were expounding these days. Of history you know abysmally little, young lord, and what little you know is wrong in almost every particular.'

I stood up again, my face as hot as if I had been slapped. 'Lord Teacher, you requested a brief history. I can elaborate in more detail.'

'Kindly spare me,' he said. 'And in return I will do you the kindness of correcting just one of the details already proffered. The words Mexica and Mexico did not derive from Metztli the moon.' He waved for me to be seated, and addressed the class as a whole:

'Young lord and lady students, this illustrates what I have often told you before now. Be skeptical of the many versions of the world's history you are likely to hear, for some are as full of impossible invention as they are of vanity. What is more, I have never met a historian—I have never met any sort of professional scholar who could put into his work the slightest trace of humor or ribaldry or jollity. I have never met one who did not consider his particular subject the most momentous and weighty of all studies. Now, I concede the importance of scholarly works—but need importance always wear the long face of stern solemnity? Historians may be serious men, and history may sometimes be so somber that it saddens. But it is people who make the history, and they often play pranks or cut capers while they are doing it. The true story of the Mexica confirms that.'

He spoke directly to me again: 'Head Nodder, your Azteca ancestors brought nothing to this valley: no ancient wisdom, no arts, no sciences, no culture. They brought nothing but themselves: a skulking, ignorant, nomad people who wore ragged animal skins crawling with vermin, and who worshiped a loathsomely pugnacious god of slaughter and bloodshed. That rabble was despised and repulsed by every other already developed nation hereabout. Would any civilized people welcome an invasion of uncouth beggars? The Azteca did not settle on that island in the lakeside swamp because their god gave them any sign, and they did not go there joyfully. They went because there was nowhere else to go, and because no one else had cared to claim that pimple of land surrounded by marshes.'

My classmates watched me from the corners of their eyes. I tried not to flinch under Neltitica's words.

'They did not immediately build great cities, or anything else; they had to spend all their time and energy just in finding something to eat. They were not allowed to fish, for the lake's fishing rights belonged to the nations about it. So for a long time your ancestors existed—just barely existed—by eating revolting little things like worms and water insects, and the slimy eggs of those creatures, and the only edible plant that grew in that miserable swamp. It was mexixin, the common cress or peppergrass, a scraggly and bitter-tasting weed. But if your forebears had nothing else, Head Nodder, they had a mordant sense of humor. They began to call themselves, with wry irony, the Mexica.'

The very name evoked another knowing snicker from the class. Neltitica went on:

'Eventually the Mexica devised the chinamitl system of growing decent crops. But even then, they grew for themselves only a necessary minimum of staple foods like maize and beans. Their chinampa were mainly used for growing more rare vegetables and herbs—tomatoes, sage, coriander, sweet potatoes—which their lofty neighbors could not be bothered to cultivate. And the Mexica traded those delicacies for the necessities of life: the tools and building materials and cloth and weapons that the mainland nations would otherwise have been unwilling to give them. From then on, they made rapid progress toward civilization and culture and military might. But they never forgot that humble weed which had sustained them in the beginning, the mexixin, and they never afterward abandoned the name they had adopted from it. Mexica is a name now known and respected or feared throughout our world, but it means only...'

He paused on purpose, and he smiled, and my face flamed again, as the entire class shouted in concert: 'The Weed People!'

'I understand, young lordlet, that you have essayed some learning of reading and writing on your own,' said