sounds are compounded into words much shorter than those of Nahuatl. But those few sounds have an infinity of meanings, according as they are spoken plain or lilted upward or pitched downward. The musical effect is not just sweet sounding; it is necessary for the words' comprehension. Indeed, the lilt is so much a working part of the language that a Tzapotecatl can dispense with the spoken noise and convey his meaning—to the extent of a simple message at least—by humming or whistling only the melody of it.
That was how we knew when we approached the lands of the Cloud People, and that was how they knew, too. We heard a shrill, piercing whistle from a mountain overlooking our path. It was a lengthy warble such as no bird would make, and, after a moment, it was repeated from somewhere ahead of us, the same in every trill. After another moment, the whistle was almost inaudibly but identically repeated from far, far ahead of us.
'The Tzapoteca lookouts,' explained Blood Glutton. 'They relay whistles, instead of shouting as our far-callers do.'
I asked, 'Why are there lookouts?'
'We are now in the land called Uaxyqacac, and the ownership of this land has long been disputed by the Mixteca and the Olmeca and the Tzapoteca. In some places they mingle or live amicably side by side. In other places they harry and raid one another. So all newcomers must be identified. That whistled message has by now probably gone all the way to the palace at Zaachila, and it doubtless tells their Revered Speaker that we are Mexica, that we are pochtea, how many we are, and maybe even the size and shape of the bales we carry.'
Perhaps one of your Spanish soldiers on horseback, traveling swiftly and far across our lands each day, would find every village in which he stopped for the night to be distinctly different from the village of the night before. But we, traveling slowly on foot, had discerned no abrupt changes from settlement to settlement. Aside from noticing that, south of the town of Quaunahuac, everybody seemed to go barefoot except when dressed up for some local festival, we saw no great differences between one community and the next. The physical appearance of the people, their costumes, their architecture—those things all changed, yes, but the change was usually gradual and only at intervals perceptible. Oh, we might observe here and there, especially in tiny settlements where all the inhabitants had been interbreeding for generations, that one people differed slightly from others in being just a bit shorter or taller, lighter or darker of complexion, more jovial or sour of disposition. But in general the people tended to blend indistinguishably from one place to the next.
Everywhere the working men wore no garment but a white loincloth, and covered themselves with a white mantle when at leisure. The women all wore the familiar white blouse and skirt and, presumably, the standard undergarment. The people's dress-up clothes did have their whiteness enlivened by fancy embroidery, and the patterns and colors of that decoration did vary from place to place. Also, the nobles of different regions had different tastes in feather mantles and headdresses, in noseplugs and earrings and labrets, in bracelets and anklets and other adornments. But such variances were seldom remarkable by passers-through like ourselves; it would take a lifelong resident of one village to recognize, on sight, a visitor from the next village along the road.
Or such had been our experience through all our journey until we entered the land of Uaxyacac, where the first warbling whistle of the uniquely lovely language Loochi gave notice that we were suddenly among a people unlike any we had yet encountered.
We spent our first night in Uaxyacac at a village called Texitla, and there was nothing especially noteworthy about the village itself. The houses were built, like those we had been accustomed to for some time past, of vine- tied upright saplings and roofed with straw thatch. The bath and steam huts were of baked clay, like all the others we had recently seen. The food we purchased was much the same as that which we had been served on many evenings previous. What was different was the people of Texitla. Never until then had we entered a community where the people were so uniformly good to look at, and where even their everyday garb was festive with bright colors.
'Why, they are beautiful!' Cozcatl exclaimed.
Blood Glutton said nothing, for he had of course been in those parts before. The old campaigner merely looked smug and proprietorial, as if he had personally arranged the existence of Texitla purposely to astound me and Cozcatl.
And Texitla was no isolated enclave of personable people, as we discovered when we arrived at the populous capital city of Zaachila, and as we confirmed during our passage through the rest of Uaxyacac. That was a land where all the people were comely, and their manner as bright as their dress. The Tzapoteca's delight in brilliant colors was understandable, for that was the country where the finest dyes were produced. It was also the northernmost range of the parrots, macaws, toucans, and other tropical birds of resplendent plumage. The reason for the Tzapoteca themselves being such remarkable specimens of humanity was less evident. So, after a day or two in Zaachila, I said to an old man of the city:
'Your people seem so superior to others I have known. What is their history? Where did they come from?'
'Come from?' he said, as if disdainful of my ignorance. He was one of the city dwellers who spoke Nahuatl, and he regularly served as an interpreter for passing pochtea, and it was he who taught me the first words I learned of Loochi. His name was Giigu Nashinyi, which means Red River, and he had a face like a weathered cliff. He said:
'You Mexica tell how your ancestors came from some place far to the north of what is now your domain. The Chiapa tell how their forebears originated somewhere far distant to the south of what is now their land. And every other people tell of their origins in some other place than where they now live. Every other people except us Ben Zaa. We do not call ourselves by that name for any idle reason. We are the Cloud People—born of the clouds and trees and rocks and mountains of this land. We did not come here. We have always been here. Tell me, young man, have you yet seen or smelled the heart flower?'
I said I had not.
'You will. We grow it now in our dooryards. The flower is so called because its unopened bud is the shape of a human heart. The woman of a household will pluck only a single bud at a time, because that one flower, as it unfolds, will perfume the entire house. But another distinction of the heart flower is. that it originally grew wild, in the mountains you see yonder, and grew nowhere else but in these mountains of Uaxyacac. Like us Ben Zaa, it came into existence right here, and like us, it flourishes still. The heart flower is a joy to see and to smell, as it always has been. The Ben Zaa are a strong and vigorous people, as they always have been.'
I echoed what Cozcatl had said, 'A beautiful people.'
'Yes, as beautiful as they are vivacious,' said the old man with no affected modesty. 'The Cloud People have kept themselves so, by keeping themselves pure Cloud People. We purge any impurity which crops up or creeps in.'
I said, 'What? How?'
'If a child is born malformed or intolerably ugly, or gives evidence of being deficient of brain, we see that it does not live to grow up. The unfortunate infant is denied its mother's teat, and it dwindles and dies in the gods' good time. Our old people also are discarded, when they become too unsightly to be seen, or too feeble to care for themselves, or when their minds begin to decay. Of course, the old folks' immolation is generally voluntary, and done for the public good. I myself, when I feel my vigor or my senses begin to wane, I shall make my farewells and go away to the Holy Home and never be seen again.'
I said, 'It sounds rather an extreme measure.'
'Is it extreme to weed a garden? To prune dead branches from an orchard?'
'Well...'
He said sardonically, 'You admire the effect but you deplore the means. That we choose to discard the useless and the helpless, who would otherwise be a burden on their fellows. That we choose to let the defective die, and thus avert their begetting still more defectives. Young moralist, do you also condemn our refusal to breed mongrels?'
'Mongrels?'
'We have been repeatedly invaded by the Mixteca and Olmeca in times past, and by the Mexica in more recent times, and we suffer creeping infiltrations from lesser tribes around our borders, but we have never mixed with any of them. Though outlanders move among us and even live among us, we will always forbid the mingling of their blood with ours.'
I said, 'I do not see how that could be managed. Men and women being what they are, you can hardly allow social intercourse with foreigners and hope to prevent the sexual.'
