Aztec Blood

'Lost? How much?'

'Everything.'

'Everything? All of my money?'

'Cristo, not so loud. Do you want to embarrass me?'

'I want to kill you!'

'All is not lost, my young friend.' He fingered the cross I wore, the one that Fray Antonio told me was my only memoir of my mother. I had removed the false coloring to expose its beauty. 'This fine, holy necklace would bring enough pesos to get me back into the game.'

I slapped away his hand. 'You are a knave and a blackguard.'

'True, but we still need to raise money.'

'Sell your horse, the one Cortes rode.'

'I can't. The beast is lame. As will be the scoundrel who sold him to me when I catch him. But I wonder if the madam would give me a few pesos for him? She can sell him to the indios for meat.'

Walking away from him, I was so angry, if I had had the courage—and the insanity—I would have drawn my sword and asked him to step outside.

The guard was still at the doorway to the harem. I showed him a silver ring with a small red stone that I had gotten in my travels with the Healer.

'This is a powerful ring; it brings luck to those who wear it.'

'Give it to your friend who plays cards.'

'No, uh, he doesn't know how to use the magic. It is worth ten pesos. I will give it to you for time with the tawny beauty.' My tongue refused to refer to her as his wife.

'The ring is worth one peso. You can have fifteen minutes with a one-peso girl.'

'One peso! That is thievery. It is worth at least five.'

'One peso. Ten minutes.'

I was desperate. I needed the smell of a woman's perfume in my nostrils as a nosegay to get me through the night of smelling manure in my room at the don's house. Besides, I had stolen the ring after refusing to pay a peso for it.

'All right. Which girl.'

He pointed to the oldest india, the masked woman who had selected prostitution over sewing in a labor shop. 'Her name is Maria.'

'You are a handsome boy. Do you have more money?' she panted.

I lay flat on my back on a hard bed with her bouncing atop me like she was riding a horse after it stepped on hot coals.

'Oh, you are a beast—pant! pant!—you have the pene of a horse, the thrust of a bull—pant! pant! How much money will you pay if I make your juice come twice?'

We only had ten minutes and while I was capable of exploding juice from my virile part in seconds, I needed to last the full ten minutes to get my peso's worth. She talked continuously from the moment I hurriedly took off my breeches, mostly about how much more money she should get from me. While I had modestly flattered myself as one of the great lovers of New Spain, she was leaving me with the impression that she was more interested in the size of my pocketbook than the precious jewels I carried in my pants.

'You are a fine, handsome boy. It's too bad you don't have more money.'

She stopped panting. The ten minutes were almost up.

'More! I need more! I've been holding it, now I need to spend it.'

'You have one more peso?' she asked.

'I have nothing!'

She started rocking again and reached down and took hold of the cross I wore. 'A beautiful necklace. I'm sure the madam would let you have me all night for this.'

'No!' I slapped her hands away from it. I could feel the stirring in my pene, the power building up, ready to gush. 'It belonged to my mother,' I moaned, thrusting.

'Perhaps God wants me to have it. My own son had one like it.'

'Ask him for his.'

'I haven't seen him in years. He lives in Veracruz,' she panted.

'I lived in Veracruz. What's his name?'

'Cristobal.'

'My name is Cristo—'

She stopped cold and stared down at me. I stopped thrusting and stared up at her. Two dark eyes in the mask stared down at me. The volcano between my legs was shaking my whole body, ready to erupt and pour lava into her.

'Cristobal!' she screamed.

She leapt off the bed and ran from the room. I lay numb, my volcano slowly shrinking. Maria. My mother's Christian name was Maria.

I struggled into my clothes and staggered out of the room to find Mateo. My mind and body were in the grip of a growing sense of horror.

EIGHTY-FOUR

I left the House of the Seven Angels feeling cold and depressed. Mateo was waiting for me in the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the fountain, flipping his dagger. His face told the story of his luck.

'I lost the horse. When the madam finds out he's lame, she'll send her underlings to rip off my privates, stick them in my mouth, and sew my lips shut.' He noticed my dejected state. What had occurred was too horrible to reveal, too heinous to share even with a good friend, too infamous to acknowledge even to myself.

He slapped me on the back. 'Don't feel so bad. Tell me the truth. You could not get your garrancha up, eh? Don't worry, compadre. Tonight you could not get your sword up, but tomorrow, I swear, when a woman passes within ten feet of you, your sword will reach out of your pants and slip into her.'

Morning came and I stayed in my hard bed in my stinking room, refusing to leave, hoping that miasma from the stables would kill me. I had found my mother and then—no! It was too awful to think about. She had not seen me since I was a young boy. Today, I was just a bearded young stranger to her, but a good son would have recognized his own mother. Like Oedipus, I was damned and doomed, tricked by the gods, and deserved only to stick needles into my eyes and spend my days as a blind beggar, tormented by my sins.

Midday I sent a servant to the House of Seven Angeles to ascertain the price of Miaha's freedom. The servant returned with news that the woman had fled during the night, leaving the madam unpaid for her bond debt.

There would be no use searching for her on the streets of the city; she would not be foolish enough to run from her legal bond master and stay around the city. Besides the horror of the act we had committed, my appearance in her life would have ignited anew the troubles that had driven us from the hacienda when I was a boy. As an india, she could disappear forever into the land.

Among his many babblings, Fray Antonio claimed I had no mother. From that I took it to mean that Maria was not my mother. But last night she had claimed me as her son. ?Ay de mi! I felt so miserable.

Late in the next afternoon Mateo took me to go to the Alameda. 'The don's horses are well enough for pulling a carriage or working cattle, but we can't ride such animals on the Alameda. We would be laughed off of the green.'

'Then what will we do?'

'We walk, as if our servants were tending our horses while we stretched our legs.'

'Perhaps the senoritas will not notice our poverty.'

'What! A Spanish woman not knowing the amount of gold in a man's pouch? Would God not notice the man who murdered the pope? I said that we would walk, not that we would fool anyone.'

We strolled along the cool greenery, watching the champion horses and champion women. How envious I was of everything! To be born and raised basking in the reflection of silver and gold—rather than rags and straw. I had chosen the best clothes that the don had handed down to me and a dress sword he had given me. What I had thought on the hacienda was a fine blade with a fancy basket hilt was little more than a kitchen knife on the Alameda. My confidence began to fade as I suspected that people saw the lepero under my clothes.