I was not proud of the part I had played in the degradation of Something Delicate, but I have always believed that a man should try to learn and profit from his involvement in even the most lamentable occurrences.
* * *
I do not mean to say that the rape of Something Delicate was the most lamentable event I ever knew in my life. Another was awaiting me when I went home again to Xaltocan for the festival of Ochpanitztli.
That name means The Sweeping of the Road and refers to the religious rituals performed to assure that the coming harvest of maize would be a good one. The festival was celebrated in our eleventh month, about the middle of your August, and consisted of various rites all culminating in the enactment of the birth of the maize god Centeotl. That was a ceremonial time entirely given over to the women; all the men, even most of the priests, were mere spectators.
It began with Xaltocan's most venerable and virtuous wives and widows going about with brooms specially made of feathers, sweeping out all the island's temples and other holy places. Then, under the direction of our female temple attendants, women did all the singing, dancing, and music playing on the climactic night. A virgin chosen from among the island girls played the part of Teteoinan, the mother of all the gods. The high point of the night was the act she did atop our temple pyramid—all by herself, with no male partner—her pretense of being deflowered and impregnated, then going through the pains of labor and of giving birth. After that, she was put to death with arrows, by women archers, who did the job with earnest dedication but with little skill, so she usually died an untidy and prolonged death.
Of course there was always a substitution at the last moment, since we never sacrificed one of our own maidens, unless for some peculiar reason she insisted on volunteering. So it was not really the virgin portraying Teteoinan who died, but some dispensable female slave or a female prisoner captured from another people. For the simple role of dying, it was not required that she be a virgin, and sometimes it was a very old woman who was dispatched on that night.
When, after having been clumsily chipped and minced and pierced by countless arrows, the woman was finally dead, a few priests participated for the first time. They came out from the pyramid temple in which they had been hidden behind her, and, still almost invisible because of their black garb, dragged the corpse inside the temple. There they quickly flayed the skin from one of her thighs. A priest put that conical cap of flesh on his head and bounded forth from the temple to a blast of music and song. The young god of the maize, Centeotl, had been born. He skipped down the pyramid stairs, joined the women dancers, and they all danced the rest of the night away.
I tell all this now because I suppose that year's ceremony proceeded as in all the years before. I have to suppose because I did not stay to see it.
The generous Prince Willow had again lent me his acali and oarsmen, and I arrived on Xaltocan to find that others—Pactli, Chimali, and Tlatli—had also again come home from their distant schools for that holiday. Pactli, in fact, was home to stay, having just then completed his calmecac education. That made me worry. He would now have no occupation at all, except to wait for his father Red Heron to die and vacate the throne. Meanwhile, Pactli could concentrate all his time and energy on securing the wife he desired—my unconsenting sister—with the help of his staunchest ally, my title-hungry mother.
But I had a more immediate worry. Chimali and Tlatli were so eager to see me that they were waiting at the jetty when my canoe made fast, and they were dancing with excitement. They both began talking, shouting, and laughing before I had even set foot on shore.
'Mole, the most wonderful thing!'
'Our first summons, Mole, to do works of art abroad!'
It took me some time, and some shouting of my own, before I could sort out and comprehend what they had to say. When I did, I was appalled. My two friends were the 'Mexica artists' of whom Jadestone Doll had spoken. They would not be returning to Tenochtitlan after the holiday. They would be accompanying me when I went back to Texcoco.
Tlatli said, 'I am to do sculptures and Chimali is to color them so they seem alive. So said the message of the Lady Jadestone Doll. Imagine! The daughter of one Uey-Tlatoani and the wife of another. Surely no other artists our age have ever before been so honored.'
Chimali said, 'We had no idea the Lady Jadestone Doll had ever even seen the work we did in Tenochtitlan!'
Tlatli said, 'Seen it and admired it enough to summon us to travel so many one-long-runs. The lady must have good taste.'
I said thinly, 'The lady has numerous tastes.'
My friends perceived that I was little infected by their excitement, and Chimali said, almost apologetically, 'This is our first real commission, Mole. The statues and paintings we did in the city were but adornments for the new palace being built by Ahuitzotl, and we were no more highly regarded or any better paid than stonemasons. Now this message says we are even to have our own private studio, all equipped and waiting. Naturally we are elated. Is there some reason why we should not be?'
Tlatli asked, 'Is the lady a female tyrant who will work us to death?'
I could have said that he had put it succinctly when he spoke of being worked 'to death,' but I said instead, 'The lady has some eccentricities. We will have plenty of time in which to talk of her. Right now, I myself am much fatigued by my own working.'
'Of course,' said Chimali. 'Let us carry your luggage for you, Mole. You greet your family, eat and rest. And then you must tell us everything about Texcoco and Nezahualpili's court. We do not want to appear there as ignorant provincials.'
On the way to my house, the two continued to chatter merrily of their prospects, but I was silent, thinking deeply—of their prospects. I knew very well that Jadestone Doll's crimes would eventually be exposed. When that happened, Nezahualpili would avenge himself upon all who had aided or abetted the girl's adulteries, and the murders to hide the adulteries, and the statues to flaunt the murders. I had some slim hope that I might be acquitted, since I had acted strictly on the orders of her husband himself. Jadestone Doll's other servants and attendants had acted on her orders. They could not have disobeyed, but that fact would earn them no mercy from the dishonored Nezahualpili. Their necks were already inside the flower-garlanded noose: the woman Pitza, and the gate guard, and perhaps Master Pixquitl, and soon Tlatli and Chimali...
My father and sister welcomed me with warm embraces, my mother with a halfhearted one—which she excused by explaining that her arms were limp and weary from having wielded a broom all day in various temples. She went on at great length about the island women's preparations for the observance of Ochpanitztli, little of which I heard, as I was trying to think of some ruse to get away alone somewhere with Tzitzi. I was not just eager to demonstrate to her some of the things I had learned from watching Jadestone Doll and Something Delicate. I was also anxious to talk to her about my own equivocal position at the Texcoco court, and to ask her advice as to what, if anything, I should do to avert the imminent arrival there of Chimali and Tlatli.
The opportunity never came. The night came, with our mother still complaining about the amount of work involved in The Sweeping of the Road. The black night came, and with it came the black-garbed priests. Four of them came, and they came for my sister.
Without so much as a 'Mixpantzinco' to the head of the house—priests were always contemptuous of the common civilities—one of them demanded, addressing nobody in particular, 'This is the residence of the maiden Chiucnaui-Acatl Tzitzitlini?' His voice was thick and gobbly, like that of a gallipavo fowl, and the words hard to understand. That was the case with many priests, for one of their penitential diversions was to bore a hole through their tongue and, from time to time, tear the hole wider by drawing reeds or ropes or thorns through it.
'My daughter,' said our mother, with a prideful gesture in her direction. 'Nine Reed the Sound of Small Bells Ringing.'
'Tzitzitlini,' the grubby old man said directly to her. 'We come to inform you that you have been chosen for the honor of enacting the goddess Teteoinan on the final night of Ochpanitztli.'
'No,' said my sister, with her lips, though no sound came out. She stared at the four men in their ragged black robes, and she stroked a trembling hand across her face. Its fawn skin had gone the color of the palest amber.
'You will come with us,' said another priest. 'There are some preliminary formalities.'
'No,' said Tzitzi again, that time aloud. She turned to look at me, and I almost flinched at the impact of her eyes. They were wise, terrified, as bottomlessly black as were Jadestone Doll's when she used the pupil-dilating
