Aztec

* * *

Now, it may be that I have here and there in my narrative left a gap that Your Excellency would like bridged, or there may be questions Your Excellency would wish to put to me, or further details Your Excellency would desire on one subject or another. But I beg that they be postponed for a time, and that I be allowed a respite from this employment. I ask Your Excellency's permission now to take my leave of you and the reverend scribes and this room in what was once The House of Song. It is not because I am weary of speaking, or because I have said all that might be told, or because I suspect you may be weary of hearing me speak. I ask to take my leave because last night, when I went home to my hut and sat down beside my wife's pallet, something astounding occurred. Waiting Moon told me that she loved me! She said that she loved me and that she always had and that she still does. Since Béu never in her life said any such thing before, I think she may be approaching the end of her long dying, and that I ought to be with her when it comes. Forlorn things though we are, she and I, we are all we have—Last night, Béu said she had loved me ever since our first meeting, long ago, in Tecuantépec, in the days of our greenest youth. But she lost me the first time and she lost me forever, she said, when I decided to go seeking the purple dye, when she and her sister Zyanya did the choosing of the twigs to see which of the girls would accompany me. She had lost me then, she said, but she had never ceased to love me, and never encountered another man she could love. When she made that astonishing revelation last night, an unworthy thought went through my mind. I thought: if it had been you, Béu, who went with me, who married me soon after, then it would be Zyanya whom now I would still have with me. But that thought was chased away by another: would I have wanted Zyanya to suffer as you have suffered, Béu? And I pitied the poor wreckage lying there, saying she loved me. She sounded so sad that I endeavored to make light of it. I remarked that she had chosen some odd ways in which to manifest her love, and I told how I had seen her dabbling in the magic art, making a mud image of me, as witch women do when they would work harm upon a man. Béu said, and she sounded sadder yet, that she had made it to do me no hurt; that she had waited long and in vain for us to share a bed; that she had made the image that she might sleep with it and possibly enchant me into her embrace and into love of her. I sat silent beside her pallet, then, and I thought over many things past, and I realized how undiscerning and impervious I have been during all the years Béu and I have known each other; how I have been more unseeing and crippled than Béu is at this moment in her utter blindness. It is not a woman's place to announce that she loves a man, and Béu had respected that traditional inhibition; she had never said it, she had disguised her feelings with a flippancy that I had obstinately and always taken for scorn or mockery. She had let slip her ladylike restraint only a few times—I remembered her once saying wistfully, "I used to wonder why I was named Waiting Moon"—and I had refused ever to recognize those moments, when all I need have done was hold out my arms—True, I loved Zyanya, I have gone on loving her, and I always will. But that would not have been diminished by my later loving Béu too. Ayya, the years I have thrown away! And it was I who deprived myself; I can blame no one else. What is more hurtful to my heart is the ungracious way in which I deprived Waiting Moon, who waited so long, until now it is too late to salvage even a last moment of all those misused years. I would make them up to her if I could, but I cannot. I would have taken her to me last night, and lain with her in the act of love, and perhaps I could have done it, but what remains of Béu could not. So I did the only thing possible, which was to speak, and I spoke it honestly, saying, "Béu, my dear wife, I love you too." She could not reply, for the tears came and choked what little voice she has left, but she put out her hand to mine. I squeezed it tenderly, and I sat there holding it, and I would have entwined our fingers, but I could not even do that, since she has no fingers.

As you have probably already divined, my lords, the cause of her long dying has been The Being Eaten by the Gods, and I have described what that is like, so I would prefer not to tell you what the gods have left uneaten of the woman who was once as beautiful as Zyanya. I merely sat beside her, and we were both silent. I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been—of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent. Last night, Béu and I at last declared our love... but so late, too late. It is spent, and cannot be bought back. So I sat and recalled those lost years... and beyond them, to other years. I remembered that night my father carried me on his shoulders across the island of Xaltócan, under the "oldest of old" cypress trees, and how I passed from moonlight to moon shadow and to moonlight again. I could not have known it then, but I was sampling what my life was to be—alternate light and shadow, dappled days and nights, good times and bad. Since that night, I have endured my share of hardships and griefs, perhaps more than my share. But my unforgivable neglect of Béu Ribé is proof enough that I have caused hardship and grief to others as well. Still, it is futile to regret or complain of one's tonáli. And I think, on balance, my life has been more often good than bad. The gods favored me with many fortunes and with some occasions to do worthwhile deeds. If I were to lament any one aspect of my life, it is only that the gods refused me the one last best fortune: that my roads and my days had come to their end when my few worthy deeds were done. That would have been long ago, but still I live. Of course, I can believe, if I choose, that the gods have their reason for that too. Unless I choose to remember that distant night as a drunken dream, I can believe that two of the gods even told me their reason. They told me that my tonáli was not that I be happy or sad, rich or poor, productive or idle, even-tempered or ill-tempered, intelligent or stupid, joyful or desolated—though I have been all of those things at one time or another. According to the gods, my tonáli dictated simply that I dare to accept every challenge and seize every opportunity to live my life as fully as a man can. In so doing, I have participated in many events, great and small, historic and otherwise. But the gods said—if they were gods, and if they spoke truly—that my real function in those events was only to remember them, and tell of them to those who would come after me, so that those happenings should not be forgotten. Well, I have now done that. Except for any small details Your Excellency might wish me to add, I can think of nothing more to relate. As I cautioned at the beginning, I could tell of nothing but my own life, and that is all past. If there is a future, I cannot foresee it, and I think I would not wish to.

I recall the words I heard so many times during my journey in search of Aztlan, the words Motecuzóma repeated that night we sat atop the Teotihuacan pyramid in the moonlight, repeating them as if he spoke an epitaph: "The Aztéca were here, but they brought nothing with them, and they left nothing when they went." The Aztéca, the Mexíca—whatever name you prefer—we are going now, we are being dispersed and absorbed, and soon we will all be gone, and there will be little left to remember us by. All the other nations too, overrun by your soldiers enforcing new laws, by your lords properietors demanding slave labor, by your missionary friars bringing new gods, those nations also will vanish or change beyond recognition or decay into decrepitude. Cortés is at this moment planting his colonies in the lands along the southern ocean. Alvarado is fighting to conquer the jungle tribes of Quautemálan. Montejo is fighting to subdue the more civilized Maya of Uluumil Kutz. Guzmán is fighting to vanquish the defiant Purémpecha of Michihuácan. At least those peoples, like us Mexíca, will be able to console themselves that they fought to the last. I pity more those nations—even our ancient enemy Texcala—which now so bitterly regret what they did to help you white men hasten your taking of The One World. I said, a moment ago, that I could not foresee the future, but in a sense I already have seen it. I have seen Malintzin's son Martin, and the ever increasing number of other little boys and girls, the color of cheap, watered-down chocolate. That may be the future: not that all our peoples of The One World will be exterminated, but that they will be diluted to an insipid weakness and sameness and worthlessness. I may be wrong; I doubt it; but I can hope that I am. There may be people somewhere in these lands, so remote or so invincible that they will be left in peace, and they will multiply, and then... aquin ixnentla? Ayyo, I should almost like to live to see what could happen then! My own ancestors were not ashamed to call themselves The Weed People, for weeds may be unsightly and unwanted, but they are fiercely strong and almost impossible to eradicate. It was not until after The Weed People's civilization had flourished and flowered that it was cut down. Flowers are beautiful and fragrant and desirable, but they are perishable. Perhaps somewhere in The One World there exists, or will exist, another Weed People, and perhaps it will be their tonáli next to flourish, and perhaps you white men will not be able to mow them down, and perhaps they will succeed to what was once our eminence. It could even happen that, when they march, some of my own descendants will march among them. I take no account of whatever seeds I may have scattered in the far southern lands; the people there have been so long degenerate that they will never be anything else, not even with my possible infusion of Mexícatl blood among them. But in the north—well, among the many places I have dallied, there is still Aztlan.

And I long ago realized the meaning of the invitation extended to me by that Lesser Speaker who was also named Tlilectic-Mixtli. He said, "You must come again to Aztlan, Brother, for a small surprise," but it was not until afterward that I remembered I had lain many nights with his sister, and I knew what the waiting surprise must be. I have often wondered: a boy or a girl? But this I know: he or she will not torpidly or fearfully stay behind in Aztlan, should another migration move out from there. And I wish that young weed all success.... But I maunder again, Your Excellency fidgets. If I have your leave, then, Lord Bishop, I will now make my departure. I will go and sit with Béu, and I will keep telling her that I love her, for I want those to be the last words she hears each night before she sleeps, and before she begins the last sleep of all. And when she sleeps, I will get up and go out into the night and I will walk the empty streets.

EXPLICIT

The chronicle told by an elderly male Indian of the tribe commonly called Aztec, as recorded verbatim ab ongine by

FR. CASPAR DE GAYANA J.

FR. TORIBIO VEGA DE ARANJUEZ

FR. JERONIMO MUÑOZ G.

FR. DOMINGO VILLEGAS E YBARRA

ALONSO DE MOLINA, interpret

FEAST DAY OF ST. JAMES, APOSTLE

25 July, A.D. 1531

I H S

S.C.C.M.

Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:

Most Magisterial Majesty: from this City of Mexíco, capital of New Spain, this Day of the Holy Innocents, in the year of Our Lord one thousand five hundred thirty and one, greeting.

Please to forgive the long interval since our last communication, Sire. As Captain Sanchez Santovena will attest, his courier caravel was much delayed in its arrival here, owing to contrary winds about the Azores and a long becalming in the doldrum latitudes of the Sargasso Sea. Hence we have only now received Your Magnanimous Majesty's letter directing us to arrange—"as recompense for his services rendered to the Crown"—that our Aztec chronicler be granted "for himself and his woman a comfortable house on a suitable plot of land, and a pension adequate to sustain them through their remaining lifetimes."

We regret to say, Sire, that we cannot comply. The Indian is dead, and if his invalid widow still lives, we have no idea where.

Since we had earlier inquired as to Your Majesty's pleasure regarding the Aztec and what was to become of him upon the termination of his employment here, and since the only reply was an ambiguously long silence, we may perhaps be excused for having assumed that Your Devout Majesty shared this cleric's belief, often stated during our campaign against the witches of Navarre, that "to overlook heresy is to encourage heresy."

After waiting a reasonable while for any directive from you, Sire, or any expression of your wishes regarding a fitting disposition of the matter, we took the measure we thought eminently justified. We instituted against the Aztec a formal charge of heresy, and he was bound over for trial. Of course, had Your Forgiving Majesty's letter arrived earlier, it would have constituted a tacit royal pardon of the man's offenses, and the denunciation would have been dismissed. However, Your Majesty might reflect—could it not have been an indication of God's will, that the winds of the Ocean Sea delayed the courier?

In any case, we well remember our Sovereign's own oath, once declared in our hearing, that you were "ready to lay down your dominions, friends, blood, life and soul for the extinction of heresy." So we are confident that Your Crusading Majesty will approve of our having helped the Lord to rid the world of one more minion of the Adversary.

A Court of Inquisition was convened in our chancellery on St. Martin's Day. All protocol and formalities were carefully and strictly observed. There were present, besides ourself as Your Majesty's Apostolic Inquisitor, our vicar-general acting as President of the Court, our chief constable, our apostolic notary, and of course the accused. The proceedings occupied only the one morning of that one day, inasmuch as we were both the accuser and the prosecutor, and the accused was the sole witness called to testify, and the only evidence presented was a selection of quotations excerpted from the chronicle told by the accused and transcribed by our friars.

According to his own admission, the Aztec had embraced Christianity only fortuitiously, by happening to be present at that mass baptism conducted by Father Bartolome de Olmedo many years ago, and he had submitted to it as casually as all his life he had submitted to every opportunity for sinning. But, whatever his attitude at that time—frivolous, inquisitive, skeptical—it could in no way abrogate the Sacrament of Baptism. The Indian called Mixtli (among innumerable other names) died in that moment when Father Bartolome asperged him, and he was cleansed of all his actual sins and of original sin, and he was reborn blameless in the character indelibilis of Juan Damasceno.

However, during the years after that conversion and his professed confirmation of belief, Juan Damasceno committed many and diverse iniquities, most notably in making those comments derisive and derogatory of Holy Church, which he either slyly or brazenly expressed in the course of narrating his "Aztec history." Thus Juan Damasceno was charged and tried as a heretic of the third category: i.e., one who, having embraced the Faith, having abjured all earlier sins, has subsequently lapsed into heinous error.

For politic reasons, we omitted from the denunciation of Juan Damasceno some of the corporal sins whose commission since his conversion he had admitted without the least contrition. For example, if we accept that he was (by existing folk law) "married" at the time of his admitted fornication with the woman then called Malinche, he was clearly guilty of the mortal sin of adultery. However, we deemed it would be imprudent for us to call sub poena the now respectable and esteemed Doña Sra. Marina Vda. de Jaramillo to testify in that regard. Besides, the purpose of an Inquisition is not so much to examine the particular offenses of the accused, as to ascertain his incorrigible tendency or susceptibility to fomes peccati, the igniting "tinder of sin." So we were satisfied to charge Juan Damasceno not with any of his carnal immoralities, but only with his lapsi fidei, which were numerous enough.

The evidence was presented rather in the form of a litany, with the apostolic notary reading a selected passage from the transcription of the accused man's own words, and then the prosecutor responding with the appropriate charge: e.g., "Profaning the sanctity of Holy Church." The notary would lead with another question, and the prosecutor would respond: "Contempt and disrespect of the clergy." The notary would read again, and the prosecutor would respond: "Promulgating doctrines contrary to the Holy Canons of the Church."

And so on, through the whole roster of charges: that the accused was the author of an obscene, blasphemous, and pernicious book, that he had inveighed against the Christian Faith, that he had encouraged apostasy, that he had propounded sedition and lese majesty, that he had ridiculed the monastic state, that he had pronounced words which a pious Christian and a loyal subject of the Crown might neither speak nor hear.

All of those being most grave errors of Faith, the accused was given every opportunity to recant and abjure his offenses, though of course no recantation could have been accepted by the Court, inasmuch as all his heretical remarks had been taken down and preserved in writing, thus substantiating every charge against him, and the published word being inexpungeable. In any event, when the notary again read out to him, one by one, the selected passages from his own narrative: e.g., his idolatrous remark that "Someday my chronicle may serve as my confession to the kindly goddess Filth Eater," and asked, after each such quotation, "Don Juan Damasceno, are those indeed your words?" he readily and indifferently conceded that they were. He posted no brief in defense or mitigation of his offenses, and when he was most solemnly advised by the Court President of the dire penalties he faced if found guilty, Juan Damasceno volunteered only one comment:

"It will mean I do not go to the Christian Heaven?"

He was told that that would indeed be the worst of his punishments: that he most assuredly would not go to Heaven. At which, his smile sent a thrill of horror through every soul of the Court.

We, as Apostolic Inquisitor, were obliged to advise him of his rights: that although an acceptable recantation of his sins was impossible, he could still confess and manifest contrition, thereby to be received as a penitent, and reconciled with the Church, and subject only to the lesser penalty prescribed by canon and civil law, viz., condemnation to spend his remaining life at labor in Your Majesty's prison galleys. We also recited the standard adjuration: "You behold us sincerely afflicted at your culpable obstinacy. We pray that Heaven will endow you with the spirit of repentance and contrition. Do not grieve us by persisting in error and heresy; spare us the pain of being compelled to invoke the just but severe laws of the Inquisition." But Juan Damasceno remained recusant, yielding not to any of our persuasions or inducements, only continuing to smile faintly, and murmuring something about his destiny having been decreed by his pagan "tonáli," a sufficient heresy in itself. Whereupon, the constable returned the accused to his cell, while the Court considered its judgment, and of course found for conviction, and pronounced Juan Damasceno guilty of contumacious heresy.

As provided by canon law, on the following Sunday his sentence was formally and publicly proclaimed. Juan Damasceno was brought from his cell and marched to the center of the grand plaza, where all the city's Christians had been commanded to attend and pay heed. So there was a large crowd, which included, besides the Spaniards and Indians of our several congregations, also the oidores of the Audiencia, the other secular officials of the Justicia Ordinaria, and the provisor in charge of the auto-de-fé. Juan Damasceno came wearing the sackcloth sanbenito garment of the condemned, and on his head the coroza straw crown of infamy, and he was accompanied by Fray Caspar de Gayana bearing a large cross.

An elevated platform had been specially erected in the square for us of the Inquisition, and from that eminence the Secretary of the Holy Office read aloud to the crowd the official account of the offenses and charges, the Court's judgment and verdict, all of which was repeated in the Náhuatl language by our interpreter Molina, for the comprehension of the many Indians present. Then we, as Apostolic Inquisitor, preached the sermo generalis of sentence, remanding the condemned sinner to the secular arm for punishment debita animadversione, and routinely recommending that those authorities exercise mercy in the carrying out of that punishment:

"We find ourself bound to declare Don Juan Damasceno to be a contumacious heretic, and do pronounce him as such. We find ourself bound to remit, and thus do remit him, to the secular arm of the Justicia Ordinaria of this city, whom we pray and charge to deal with him humanely."

Then we addressed Juan Damasceno directly, making the obligatory last plea that he abandon his recusancy, that he confess and abjure his heresies, which penitence would at least earn him the mercy of a quick execution by garrotte before his body was relaxed to the fire. But he remained as obdurate as ever, smiling and saying only, "Your Excellency, once when I was still a small child I vowed to myself that if ever I were selected for the Flowery Death, even on an alien altar, I would not degrade the dignity of my going."

Those were his last words, Sire, and I say to his credit that he did not struggle or plead or cry out when the constables used the old anchor chain to bind him to the stake before our platform, and piled the faggots high about his body, and the provisor set the torch to them. Since God permitted and the man's sins deserved it, the flames consumed his body, and of that burning it pleased God that the Aztec should die.

We subscribe ourself our Gracious Sovereign's loyal Defender of the Faith, pledging our constancy in the service of God for the salvation of souls and of nations,

Fr. Juan de Zumárraga

Bishop of Mexíco

Apostolic Inquisitor

Protector of the Indians

IN OTTN IHUAN IN TONÁLTIN NICAN TZONQUÍCA

HERE END THE ROADS AND THE DAYS

Copyright © 1980 by Gary Jennings

ISBN: 0-689-11045-6