Gary Jennings - Aztec Autumn

"Ayya, Tenamáxtli!" He grabbed at his hair in exasperation. "Are you again thumping that same flabby drum? I assumed you would abandon that nonsensical idea of rebellion, now that you are such a darling of the Christian clergy."

"And glad I am to be that," I said, "for thereby I can see and hear and learn much more than I could otherwise. But no, I have not abandoned my resolution. In time, I shall tighten that flabby drumhead so that it can be heard. So that it thunders. So that it deafens with its defiance."

VIII

For some time, I had had enough grasp of the Spanish tongue that while I was yet too timorous to attempt speaking it anywhere outside the notarius Alonso's classroom, I could understand much of what I heard spoken. So Alonso, aware of that, obviously warned all the clerics of the Cathedral where he and I worked together—and warned any other persons whose duties brought them there—not to discuss anything of a confidential nature within my hearing. I could hardly help but notice that whenever two or more Spanish speakers got to talking in my presence, they would at some point give me a glance askance and then move elsewhere. However, when I walked anonymously about the city, I could eavesdrop shamelessly and undetected. One conversation that I overheard, as I browsed over the vegetables displayed at a market stall, went like this:

"Just another damned meddling priest," said one Spaniard, a person of some importance, I judged from his dress. "Feigning to weep tears over the cruel mistreatment of the indios, his excuse for making rules that benefit himself."

"True," said the other man, equally richly attired. "Being a bishop makes him no less the cunning and hypocritical priest. He agrees that we brought to these lands a gift beyond price—the Gospel of Christianity—and that the indios therefore owe us every obedience and exertion we can wring from them. But, he says, we must work them less rigorously and beat them seldomer and feed them better."

"Or risk their dying," said the first man, "as did those indios who perished during the Conquest and in the plagues of disease that followed—before the wretches could be confirmed in the Faith. Zumárraga pretends that what he wants saved is not the indios' lives, but their souls."

"So," said the second man, "we strengthen them and coddle them, to the detriment of the work we need them for. Then he conscripts them, to build more churches and chapels and shrines, all over the damned country, and for all of which he takes credit. And any indio that displeases him, Bishop Zurriago can burn."

They went on for some while in this wise, and I was pleased to hear them do so. It was the Bishop Zumárraga who had condemned my father to his terrible death. When these men called him Bishop Zurriago, I knew they were not mispronouncing his name; they were making play on it, and mocking him, for the word zurriago means "a scourge." Pochotl had told me how the Marqués Cortés had been discredited by his own officers. Now I was hearing stalwart Christians defaming their own highest priest. If both soldiers and the citizenry could openly dislike and malign their superiors, it was evidence that the Spaniards were not so like-minded that they would spontaneously present a united and solid front to any challenge. Nor were they so secure in their vaunted authority as to be invincible. These glimpses into Spanish thought and spirit I found encouraging, possibly useful to me in the future, therefore worth remembering.

On that same day, in that same market, I finally found the scouts from Tépiz that I had been seeking for so long. At a stall hung all over with baskets woven of rushes and reeds, I inquired of the man attending it—as I had been inquiring everywhere—whether he knew of a Tépiz native named Netzlin or his wife named—

"Why, I am Netzlin." the man said, eyeing me with some wonderment and a little of apprehension. "My wife is named Citláli."

"Ayyo, at last!" I cried. "And how good it is to hear someone talking with the accents of the Aztéca tongue again! My name is Tenamáxtli, and I come from Aztlan."

"Welcome, then, former neighbor!" he said with enthusiasm. "It is indeed good to hear Náhuatl spoken in the old way, not in the city manner. Citláli and I have been here for nearly two years now, and yours is the first voice I have heard from our homeland."

"Mine may be the only such voice for a long while," I said. "My uncle has decreed that no one from Aztlan or its surrounding communities shall have anything to do with the white men."

"Your uncle has decreed?" Netzlin said, looking puzzled.

"My Uncle Mixtzin, the Uey-Tecútli of Aztlan."

"Ayyo, of course, the Uey-Tecútli. I knew he had children. I apologize for not knowing that he had you for a nephew. But if he forbids familiarity with the Spaniards, what are you doing here?"

I glanced about before I said, "I should prefer to speak of that in private, Cuatl Netzlin."

"Ah," he said, and winked. "Another secret scout, eh? Then come, Cuatl Tenamáxtli, let me invite you to our humble home. Just wait while I collect my stock of wares. The day latens, so there will likely be few customers disappointed."

I helped him stack the baskets for carrying, and each of us hefted a load that, combined, must have been a considerable weight for him to bring to market unaided. He led me through back streets, out of the white men's Traza and southeast toward a colación of native dwellings—the one called San Pablo Zoquípan. As we walked, Netzlin told me that after he and his wife decided to settle in the City of Mexíco, he had been straightway put to work at repairing the aqueducts that brought fresh water to the island. He had been paid only barely enough to buy maize meal, from which Citláli made atóli, and they lived on that mush and nothing else. But then, when Netzlin was able to demonstrate to the tepízqui of his barrio that he and Citláli had a better means to earn their livelihood, he was given permission to set up on his own.

"Tepízqui." I repeated. "That is clearly a Náhuatl word, but I never heard it before. And barrio, that is Spanish for a part of a community—a small neighborhood within it—am I right?"

"Yes. And the tepízqui is one of us. That is to say, he is the Mexícatl official responsible for seeing that his barrio observes all the white men's laws. He, of course, is answerable to a Spanish official, an alcalde, who governs that whole colación of barrios and their several tepízque and their people."

So Netzlin had shown his tepízqui how adept and artful he and his wife were at the weaving of baskets. The tepízqui had gone and reported that to the Spanish alcalde, who in turn passed the word to the corregidor who was his superior, and that official in turn reported it to the gobernador of the king's encomienda, which, as I already knew, comprised all the barrios and quarters and inhabitants of the City of Mexíco. The gobernador took up the matter with the Audiencia, when next it met in council, and finally, trickling back down through all those twisty channels, came a concesión real granting Netzlin leave to utilize the stall in the market where I had found him.

I said, "It seems an almighty lot of conferring and dawdling for a man to put up with, just to sell the work of his own hands."

Netzlin shrugged, as well as he could under his load. "For all I know, things were just as complicated back when this was the city of Motecuzóma. Anyway, the concesión exempts me from being snatched away to do foreign labor."

"What decided you to do baskets instead?" I asked.

"Why, it is the same work that Citláli and I did back in Tépiz. The reeds and canes that we plucked from the brackish bogs up north were not much different from the ones that grow in the lake beds here. Reeds and swamp grass are, in fact, about the only greenery that does grow around the shore here, though I am told that this was once a most fertile and verdant valley."