Aztec Autumn

'Be assured, Juan Britanico, that all Spaniards are white. Unless perhaps one excepts the Jews of Spain who converted to Christianity. They are somewhat dark and oily of complexion. But yes, indeed, there are many other white peoples besides Spaniards. Those of every nation in Europe.'

'Europe?'

'It is a large and capacious continent, of which Spain is only one country. Rather as your One World used to be—a single sweeping terrain occupied by numerous different nations. However, all the native peoples of Europe are white.'

'Then are they all equal in quality to each other—and to you Spaniards? Are they all Christians? Are they all equally superior to people who are not white?'

The notarius scratched his head with the duck quill with which he had been writing.

'You pose questions, Cuatl Juan, that have perplexed even philosophers. But I will do my best to answer. All whites are superior to all non-whites, yes, that is certain. The Bible tells us so. It is because of the differences among Sem and Cam and Jafet.'

'What or who are they?'

'The sons of Noe. Your instructor, Padre Diego, can explain that better than I. As to the matter of all Europeans being equal, well...' He laughed in a slightly self-mocking way. 'Each nation—including our beloved Spain—likes to regard itself as superior to every other. As no doubt you Azteca do here in New Spain.'

'That is true,' I said. 'Or it was heretofore. But now that we and all others are lumped together as mere indios, we may discover that we all have more in common than we formerly believed.'

'To your other question—yes, all of Europe is Christian—bar some heretics and Jews here and there, and the Turks in the Balkans. Sad to say, though, in recent years there has been disquiet and dissatisfaction even among the Christians. Certain nations—England, Germany, others—have been contesting the dominion of Holy Church.'

Astonished to hear that such a thing could be possible, I asked, 'They have ceased to worship the four of the Trinity?'

Alonso, preoccupied, evidently did not hear me say 'four.' He replied somberly, 'No, no, all Christians still believe in the Trinity. What some of them nowadays refuse to believe in is the pope.'

'The pope?' I echoed wonderingly. I was thinking, but not saying aloud: A fifth entity to be adored? Is such queer arithmetic conceivable? A trinity of five?

Alonso said, 'El Papa Clemente Septimo. The Bishop of Rome. The successor to San Simon Pedro. Jesucristo's vicar on earth. The head of the entire Roman Catholic Church. Its supreme and infallible authority.'

'This is not another santo or espiritu? This is a living person?'

'Of course a living person. A priest. A man, just like you or me, only older. And vastly more holy, in that he wears the shoes of the fisherman.'

'Shoes?' I said blankly. 'Of the fisherman?' In Aztlan, I had known many fishermen. None wore shoes, or was the least bit holy.

Alonso sighed with exasperation. 'Simon Pedro had been a fisherman before he became Jesucristo's most prominent disciple, the foremost among the Apostles. He is regarded as having been the first pope of Rome. There have been ever so many since then, but each succeeding pope is said to have stepped into the shoes of the fisherman, thereby acquiring the same eminence and authority. Juan Britanico, why do I suspect that you have been idly daydreaming during Padre Diego's instruction?'

'I have not,' I lied, and said defensively, 'I can recite the Credos and the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. And I have memorized the ranks of the Church's clerics—nuns and friars, abades and abadesas, padres, monsenores, obispos. Then... uh... is there anything higher than our Bishop Zumarraga?'

'Archbishops,' Alonso snapped. 'Cardinals, patriarchs. And then the pope over all. I strongly recommend that you pay closer attention in Padre Diego's class, if you wish ever to be confirmed in the Church.'

I forbore to tell him that I wanted nothing more to do with the Church than was absolutely necessary to my private plans. And it was mainly because my own plans were still so nebulous that I continued attending the class of instruction in Christianity. That consisted almost entirely of our being taught to recite rules and rituals and invocations, most of those—the Pater Noster, for instance—in a language that even the Spaniards did not pretend to understand. When the class, at Tete Diego's insistence, made visits to the church service called Mass, I went along with them a few times. That, too, was totally incomprehensible to anybody except, I suppose, the priests and acolitos who conducted the Mass. We natives and mestizos and such had to sit in a separate upper gallery, but still the smell of many unwashed Spaniards crowded together would have been intolerable but for the heady clouds of incense smoke.

Anyway, since I had never taken a great deal of interest in my native religion—except for enjoying the many festivities it provided—I was no more interested in adopting a new one. I was particularly inclined to pick my teeth in disdain of a religion that seemed unable to count higher than three, since its objects of adoration, by my count, totaled at least four, maybe five, but were called a trinity.

Despite that numerical eccentricity of his own faith, Tete Diego frequently inveighed against our old religion as overcrowded with gods. His pink face purpled perceptibly when one day I pointed out to him that while Christianity purported to recognize only a single Lord God, it actually accorded almost equal prestige to the worshipful beings called santos and angeles and arcangeles. They were easily as numerous as our gods, and several of them seemed as vicious and vindictive as those darker gods of ours that Christians called demons. The chief difference I could see between our old religion and Tete Diego's new one, I told him, was that we fed our gods, while Christians eat theirs, or pretend to, in the ritual called Communion.

I went on to say:

'There are many other ways in which Christianity is no improvement on our old paganisnio, as you call it. For example, Tete, we too confessed our sins, to the kindly and forgiving goddess Tlazolteotl, meaning 'Filth Eater,' who thereupon inspired us to acts of contrition or gave us absolution, just as your priests do. As for the miracle of virgin birth, several of our deities came into existence just that way. And so did even one of the Mexica's mortal rulers. That was the First Motecuzoma, the great Revered Speaker who was grand-uncle to the lesser Motecuzoma who reigned at the time you Spaniards came. He was conceived when his mother was still a virgin maiden and—'

'That will do!' said Tete Diego, his entire bald head gone purple. 'You have an antic sense of humor, Juan Britanico, but you have made mock and jest enough for one day. You verge on blasphemy, even heresy. Leave this classroom and do not return until you have repented and made confession, not to some Filthy Glutton but to a Christian confesor sacerdote!'

I never did that, then or since, but I did do my best to look chastened and repentant when I returned to class the next day. And I continued to attend the class, for a reason that had nothing whatever to do with comparing religious superstitions, or with plumbing the Spanish ways of thought and behavior, or with furthering my plans for revolution. I was now attending that class just to see and be seen by Rebeca Canalluza. I had not yet done the act of ahuilnema with either a white female or a black one, and perhaps would never have a chance at either. But, in the person of Rebeca Canalluza, I could, in a sense, sample both kinds of female at once.

That is to say, she was what Alonso had classified as a mulato—'mulish'—the offspring of a coupling between a Moro and a white.

There being so very few black women, as yet, in New Spain, Rebeca's father had to have been the black party to the coupling, and her mother some sluttish or perversely curious Spanish woman. But the mother had contributed little to Rebeca's configuration, and that was hardly surprising; no more does coconut milk poured into a cup of chocolatl lighten it at all.

At least the girl had inherited from her mother decently long and wavy hair, not the moss-kinks of a full- blooded Moro. But in everything else—ayya, she had the broad, flat nose with wide nostrils, the overfull and purplish lips, and the rest of what I could see of her was precisely the color of a cacao bean. Also, I had to assume that Moro females mature at a very early age, because Rebeca was only a child of eleven or twelve, and small even for that age, but she already had the curves of a woman, and estimable breasts, and buttocks that could only be called protuberant. Furthermore, the looks she gave me were the covetous