Aztec Autumn

'Ah, after that Christian saint. I too have a Christian name. Juan Britanico.'

'If you are a Christian, and if you are looking for employment, our good Padre Vasco may make room for you here. Have you a wife and children somewhere?'

'No, Cuatl Erasmo. I am a solitary wayfarer.'

'Too bad.' He shook his head sympathetically. 'Padre Vasco accepts only settlers with families. However, if you care to stay for a time, he will most hospitably afford you guest lodging. You will find him in Santa Cruz Patzcuaro, the next village west along the lake.'

'I will go there, then, and not keep you from your work.'

'Ayyo, you are no hindrance. The padre does not make us labor unceasingly, like slaves, and it is pleasant to converse with a newcome Mexicatl.'

'What is it that you are making, anyway?'

'This will be a mecahuehuetl,' he said, indicating some nearly finished parts behind the bench. They were pieces of wood about the size and gracefully curvaceous shape of a woman's torso.

I nodded, recognizing what the parts would be when assembled. 'What the Spaniards call a guitarra.'

Of the musical instruments that the Spanish introduced to New Spain, most were at least basically similar to those already known in our One World. That is to say, they made music by being blown through or shaken or struck with sticks or rasped with a notched rod. But the Spaniards had also brought instruments totally different from ours, such as this guitarra and the vihuela, the arpa, the mandolina. All of our people were much amazed—and admiring—that such instruments could make sweet music from mere strings, tightly strung, being plucked with the fingers or rasped with an arco.

'But why,' I asked Erasmo, 'are you copying a foreign novelty? Surely the white men have their own guitarra makers.'

'Not so expert as we are,' he said proudly. 'The padre and his assistants taught us how to make these, and now he says we make these mecahuehuetin superior even to those brought from Old Spain.'

'We?' I echoed. 'You are not the only maker of guitarras?'

'No, indeed. Every man here in San Marcos Churitzio concentrates on this one craft. It is the particular enterprise assigned to this village, as other villages of Utopia each produce lacquerwork or copperware or whatever.'

'Why?' was all I could think to say, for I had never before known of any community devoted to doing just one thing and nothing else.

'Go and talk to Padre Vasco,' said Erasmo. 'He will be happy to tell you all about his engendering of our Utopia.'

'I will do that. Thank you, Cuatl Erasmo, and mixpantzinco.'

Instead of saying 'ximopanolti' in farewell, he said, 'Vaya con Dios,' and added cheerfully, 'Come again, Cuatl Juan. Someday I intend to learn to play music from one of these things.'

I trudged on westward, but halted in an uninhabited area and went among some bushes to change from my mantle and loincloth into the shirt and trousers and boots I carried in my pack. So I was Spanishly attired when I arrived at Santa Cruz Patzcuaro. On inquiry, I was directed to the small adobe church and its attached casa de cura. The padre himself answered the door there; he was in no wise so aloof and inaccessible as most Christian priests are. Also, he was dressed in sturdy, heavy, work-stained shirt and breeches, not a black gown.

I made bold to introduce myself, in Spanish, as Juan Britanico, lay assistant to Fray Alonso de Molina, notarius of Bishop Zumarraga's Cathedral and said I was presently engaged, at my master Alonso's behest, in visiting Church missions in these hinterlands, to evaluate and report on their progress.

'Ah, I think you will give good report of ours, my son,' said the padre. 'And I am pleased to hear that Alonso is still toiling so assiduously in the vineyards of Mother Church. I remember the lad most fondly.'

So I and my prevarication were instantly accepted, without question, by the good priest. And good I found him truly to be. Padre Vasco de Quiroga was a tall, thin, austere-looking but really merry-humored man. He was old enough to be bald enough that he required no tonsure, but he was still vigorous, as was attested by his work clothes, for which he humbly apologized.

'I should be properly cassocked to welcome an emissary of the bishop, but I am today helping my friars build a pigsty behind this house.'

'Do not let me interrupt—'

'No, no, no. Por cielo, I am glad to take a respite. Sit down, son Juan. I can see that you are dusty from the road.' He called to someone in some other room to bring us wine. 'Sit, sit, my boy. And tell me. Have you yet seen much of what the Lord has helped us to accomplish hereabouts?'

'Only a little. I talked for a while to an Erasmo Martir.'

'Ah, yes. Of all our skillful guitarra makers, perhaps the most skillful. And a devout Christian convert. Then tell me also, Juan Britanico. Since you are named for an English saint, are you perhaps acquainted with the late saintly Don Tomas Moro, also of England?'

'No, padre. But—excuse me—I was given to understand that the men of England are white men.'

'So they are. Moro was this man's name, not his race or color. He was but lately and unjustly and vilely slain—his Christian piety his only crime—executed by the king of that England, who is an odious and despicable heretic. Anyway, if you do not know of Don Tomas, I suppose you do not know of his far-famed book, De optima Reipublicae statu...'

'No, padre.'

'Or of the Utopia he prefigured in that book?'

'No, padre, except that I heard the artisan Erasmo speak the word.'

'Well, Utopia is what we are trying to create here, around the shores of this paradisal lake. I only wish I could have undertaken it years ago. But I have not been that long a priest.'

A young friar came in, bringing two exquisitely carved and lacquered wooden cups, clearly Purempe products. He handed one to each of us and silently withdrew, and I drank gratefully of the cool wine.

'For most of my life,' the padre went on, sounding contrite, 'I was a judge, a man of the legal profession. And any practice of the law—let me tell you, young Juan—is a venal and corrupt and loathly occupation. At last, thanks be to God, I realized how I was so foully defiling myself and my soul. That is when I tore off my judicial robe, took holy orders and eventually was ordained to wear the cassock instead.' He paused and laughed. 'Of course, many of my former adversaries in the courts have gleefully quoted to me the old proverb: Hartose el gato de carne, y luego se hizo fraile.'

It took me a moment to translate that in my head: 'The cat got a gutful of meat before it turned friar.'

He went on, 'The Utopia envisioned by Tomas Moro was to be an ideal community whose inhabitants would exist under perfect conditions. Where the evils bred by society—poverty, hunger, misery, crime, sin, war—would all have been done away with.'

I forbore from commenting that there would be some people, even in an ideal community, who might wish to retain the right to enjoy sinning or waging war.

'So I have repopulated this pleasant piece of New Galicia with colonist families. Besides instructing them in the tenets of Christianity, I and my friars show them how to use European tools and how to employ the most modern methods of agriculture and husbandry. Beyond that, we strive not to direct or meddle in the colonists' lives. True, it was our Brother Agustin who taught them how to make guitarras. But we found elderly Purempe men who could be persuaded to lay aside old rivalries and teach the colonists the age-old Purempe handicrafts. Now each village devotes itself to perfecting one of those arts— woodwork, ceramics, weaving and so on—in the finest tradition of the Purempecha. Any colonists incapable of learning such artisanry make their contribution to Utopia by farming or fishing or raising pigs, goats, chickens and such.'

'But, Padre Vasco,' I said. 'What use have your settlers for such things as guitarras? That Erasmo to whom I spoke, he did not even know how to play music on it.'

'Why, those are sold to merchants in the City of Mexico, my son. The guitarras and the other crafted objects. Many of them are bought by brokers who, in turn, export them all the way back to Europe. We get handsome prices