drug. My sister and I both knew what were the 'preliminary formalities'—a physical examination conducted by the priests' female attendants to ascertain that the honored maiden was indeed a maiden. As I have said, Tzitzi knew the means to seem impeccably a virgin, and to deceive the most suspicious examiner. But she had had no warning of the sudden swoop of the raptor priests, no reason to prepare, and now there was no time to do so.
'Tzitzitlini,' our father said chidingly. 'No one refuses a tlamacazqui, or the summons he brings. It would be rude to the priest, it would show disdain for the delegation of women who have accorded you this honor, and, far worse, it would insult the goddess Teteoinan herself.'
'It would also annoy our esteemed governor,' our mother put in. 'The Lord Red Heron has already been advised of the choice of this year's virgin, and so has his son Pactlitzin.'
'No one advised me!' said my sister, with one last flash of rebellion.
She and I knew now who had proposed her for the role of Teteoinan, without consulting her or asking her permission. We also knew why. It was so that our mother might take vicarious credit for the performance Tzitzi would give; so that our mother might preen in the applause of the whole island; so that her daughter's public pantomime of the sex act would further inflame the Lord Joy's lust; and so that he would be more than ever ready to elevate our whole family to the nobility in exchange for the girl.
'My Lord Priests,' Tzitzi pleaded. 'I am truly not suitable. I cannot act a part. Not that part. I would be awkward, and laughed at. I would shame the goddess....'
'That is totally untrue,' said one of the four. 'We have seen you dance, girl. Come with us. Now.'
'The preliminaries take only a few moments,' our mother said. 'Go along, Tzitzi, and when you return we will discuss the making of your costume. You will be the most brilliant Teteoinan ever to bear the infant Centeotl.'
'No,' my sister said again, but weakly, desperate for any excuse. 'It is—it is the wrong time of the moon for me—'
'There is no saying no!' barked a priest. 'There are no acceptable pretexts. You come, girl, or we take you.'
She and I had no chance even to say good-bye, since the presumption was that she would be gone only a brief time. As Tzitzi moved to the door, and the four malodorous old men closed about her, she flung one despairing look back at me. I almost missed seeing it, for I was looking about the room for a weapon, anything I could use for a weapon.
I swear, if I had had Blood Glutton's maquahuitl at hand, I would have slashed our way through priests and parents—weeds to be mowed—and we two would have fled for safety somewhere, anywhere. But there was nothing sharp or heavy within reach, and it would have been futile for me to attack barehanded. I was then twenty years old, a man grown, and I could have bested all four of the priests, but my work-toughened father could have held me back without much effort. And that, for sure, would have caused suspicion, interrogation, verification, and the doom would have been upon us....
I have often since then asked myself: would not that doom have been preferable to what did happen? Some such thought flickered through my mind at that moment, but I wavered, I hesitated. Was it because I knew, in a cowardly corner of my mind, that I was not involved in Tzitzi's predicament—and probably would not be—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? Was it because I held to some desperate hope that she could yet deceive the examiners—that she was not yet in danger of disgrace—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? Was it simply my immutable and inescapable tonali—or hers—which made me waver, which made me hesitate? I will never know. All I know is that I wavered, I hesitated, and the moment for action was gone, as Tzitzi was gone, with her honor guard of vulturine priests, into the darkness.
She did not come home that night.
We sat and waited, until long past the normal bedtime, until long past the midnight trumpeting of the temple conch, and we talked not at all. My father looked worried, doubtless about his daughter and the cause for the unusual attenuation of the 'preliminary formalities.' My mother looked worried, doubtless about the possibility that her carefully woven scheme for self-advancement had somehow come unraveled. But at last she laughed and said, 'Of course. The priests would not send Tzitzi home in the dark. The temple maidens have given her a chamber there for the night. We are foolish to wait sleepless. Let us go to bed.'
I went to my pallet, but I did not sleep. I worried that if the examiners had found Tzitzi to be no virgin—and how could they find otherwise?—the priests could very well take rapacious advantage of that fact. All the priests of all our gods were ostensibly bound to an oath of celibacy, but no rational person believed that they observed it. The temple women would truthfully state that Tzitzi came to them already devoid of her chitoli membrane and virginally tight closure. That condition could only be blamed on her own prior wantonness. When she left the temple again, whatever might have happened to her in the interim, she could prove no charges against the priests.
I tossed in anguish upon my pallet, as I imagined those priests using her throughout the night, one after another, and gleefully calling in all the other priests from all the other temples on the island. Not because any of them was sexually starved; they presumably used their temple women at will. But, as you reverend friars may have observed among your own religious, the kind of women who dedicated their lives to temple service were seldom of a face or form to drive a normal man delirious with desire. The priests must have been overjoyed that night, to receive a gift of new young flesh of the most desirable girl on Xaltocan.
I saw them flocking to Tzitzi's defenseless body, in hordes, like vultures to an uncaring cadaver. Flapping like vultures, hissing like vultures, taloned like vultures, black like vultures. They observed another oath: never to disrobe once they had taken the priestly vow. But, even if they broke that oath, to fall naked upon Tzitzi, their bodies would still be black and scaly and fetid, having been unwashed ever since they took to the priesthood.
I hope it was all in my fevered imagination. I hope that my beautiful and beloved sister did not spend that night as carrion for the vultures to tear at. But no priest ever afterward spoke of her stay in the temple, either to confirm or refute my imaginings, and Tzitzi did not come home in the morning.
A priest came, one of the four of the night before, and his face was blank of expression as he reported simply, 'Your daughter does not qualify to represent Teteoinan in the ceremonies. She has at some time carnally known at least one man.'
'Yya ouiya ayya!' my mother wailed. 'This ruins everything!'
'I do not understand,' my father muttered. 'She was always such a good girl. I cannot believe...'
'Perhaps,' the priest said blandly to them, 'you would care to volunteer your daughter for the sacrifice instead.'
I said to the priest, through my teeth, 'Where is she?'
He said indifferently, 'When the examining women found her unsatisfactory, we naturally reported to the governor's palace that another candidate must be sought. At which, the palace requested that Nine Reed Tzitzitlini be delivered there this morning for an interview with—'
'Pactli!' I blurted.
'He will be desolated,' said my father, sadly shaking his head.
'He will be infuriated, you fool!' spat my mother. 'We will all suffer his wrath, because of your slut of a daughter!'
I said, 'I shall go to the palace immediately.'
'No,' the priest said firmly. 'The court no doubt appreciates your concern, but the message was most specific: that only the daughter of this family would be admitted. Two of our temple women are escorting her there. None of the rest of you is to seek audience until and unless you are summoned.'
Tzitzi did not come home that day. And no one else came to call, since the whole island by then must have been aware of our familial disgrace. Not even the festival-organizing women came to collect my mother to do her day's sweeping. That evidence of her ostracism, by women whom she had expected soon to be looking down upon, made her even more than ordinarily vociferous and shrill. She passed the dreary day in scolding my father for his having let his daughter 'run wild,' and in scolding me for having doubtless introduced my sister to some 'evil friends' of mine, and letting one of them debauch her. The accusation was ludicrous, but it gave me an idea.
I slipped out of the house and went to seek Chimali and Tlatli. They received me with some embarrassment and with awkward words of commiseration.
I said, 'One of you can help Tzitzitlini, if you will.'
'If there is anything we can do, of course we will,' said Chimali. 'Tell us, Mole.'
'You know for how many years the insufferable Pactli has been besieging my sister. Everyone knows it. Now everyone knows that Tzitzi preferred someone else over him. So the Lord Joy has been made to seem lovesick and
