Gary Jennings - Aztec

I must have been feeling uncommonly inflated by the finery of my costume, by having just come from a court infinitely more cultured than Pactli's, and by being the center of attention of a houseful of friends and relations—or I should probably not have dared to flout the conventions of servility. Not troubling to scan the paper further, I refolded and handed it back to him.

Have you ever noticed, Your Excellency, how the same emotion of rage can make different persons turn different colors? Pactli's face had gone almost purple, my mother's almost white. Tzitzi lightly brushed her hand across her mouth in the gesture of surprise, but then she laughed; so did Tlatli and Chimali. Pactli turned his baleful glare from me to them, then swept it around the entire assemblage, most of whom seemed to be wishing they could turn yet another color: the invisible color of the invisible air. Speechless with fury, the Lord Joy crushed his paper together in his fist and stalked out, rudely shouldering those who could not immediately make way for him.

Most of the rest of the company also left straightaway, as if thereby they could somehow disassociate themselves from my insubordination. They gave the excuse that their houses were more or less distant from ours, and they wanted to hurry home before darkness fell, to make sure that not a single ember in their hearths had been accidentally left smoldering alight. While that mass departure was in progress, Chimali and Tlatli both gave me supportive grins, Tzitzi pressed my hand, my father looked stricken, and my mother looked glazed with frost. But not everyone left. Some of the guests were staunch enough not to feel trepidation at the contumacy I had displayed—and had displayed on the very eve of the lifeless days.

During those coming five days, you see, to do anything was regarded as rash—patently fruitless and possibly hazardous. The days were not really days; they were only a necessary gap between the year's last month of Xiutecutli and the next year's first month of Cuahuitl Ehua; they did not exist as days. Hence we tried to keep our own existence as imperceptible as possible. That was the time of year when the gods lazed and drowsed; even the sun was pale and cool and low in the sky. No sensible person would do anything to disturb the gods' languor and risk their annoyance.

So, during the five hollow days, all worked stopped. All activities ceased, barring the most essential and unavoidable tasks. All house fires and lights were extinguished. No cooking was done and only meager cold meals were served. People did not travel or visit or mingle into crowds. Husbands and wives refrained from sexual connection. (They also refrained, or took precautions, at the proper time previous to the nemontemtin, for a child born during the lifeless days was seldom let survive them.) Throughout all our lands, then, most people stayed indoors and occupied themselves with trivial timepassers like flaking tools or mending nets, or they simply sat about and moped.

Since the hollow days themselves were so ill-omened, I suppose it was only natural that the company remaining in our house that evening conversed on the subject of omens and portents. Chimali, Tlatli, and I sat apart and continued our comparison of our schools, but I overheard snatches of the talk of our elders:

"It was a year ago that Xopan stepped over her baby daughter who was crawling underfoot in the kitchen. I could have told Xopan what she was doing to the girl's tonáli. That child has not grown a fingerspan in the whole year since she was stepped over. She will be a dwarf, you wait and see."

"I used to scoff, but now I know that the old tales about dreams are true. One night I dreamt of a water jar being broken, and it was the very next day that my brother Xicama died. Killed in the quarry, you recall."

"Sometimes the dire results do not happen for so long that one might forget what thoughtless action provoked them. Like the time, years ago, that I warned Teoxihuitl to be careful with her broom, when I saw her sweep across the foot of her son playing on the floor. And sure enough, that boy grew up to marry a widow woman nearly as old as his mother Teoxihuitl. Made himself the laughingstock of the village."

"A butterfly flew in circles about my head. It was not until a month later that I got the word. My only sister Cueponi had died at her home in Tlácopan on that same day. But of course I should already have known, from the butterfly, for she was my nearest and dearest relation."

I could not help reflecting on two things. One was that everybody on Xaltócan really did speak a most unrefined tongue, compared with the Náhuatl of Texcóco to which I had recently become accustomed. The other was that, of all the omens of which the company spoke, not a single one ever seemed to presage anything but misfortune, deprivation, misery, or woe. Then I was diverted by Tlatli's telling me something he had learned from his Lord Teacher of Sculpture:

"Humans are the only creatures that have a nose. No, do not laugh, Mole. Of all the living creatures of which we make carvings, only men and women have a nose which is not just part of a muzzle or a beak, but sticks out from the face. So, since we elaborate our statues with so many decorative details, my master has taught me always to sculpture a human with a somewhat exaggerated nose. Thus anyone looking at the most complicated statue, even if he is ignorant of art, can tell at a glance that it represents a human and not a jaguar or a serpent or, for that matter, the frog-faced water goddess Chalchihuitlioió."

I nodded, and tucked the idea away in my memory. Thereafter I did likewise in my picture writing, and many other scribes later imitated my practice of always limning men and women with distinctive noses. If all our people are doomed to vanish from the earth like the Toltéca—I trust that our books at least will survive. Any future readers of our picture writing may get the mistaken notion that every inhabitant of these lands had a hooked hawk beak like the Maya, but they should at least have no trouble distinguishing the human characters from the animals and the gods of animal aspect.

"Thanks to you, Mole, I have devised a unique signature for my paintings," said Chimali, with a shy grin. "Other artists sign their works with their name symbols, but I use this." He showed me a board about the size of his sandal, embedded all over its surface with countless tiny chips of sharp obsidian. I was startled and horrified when he slapped his open left hand hard against the board, then, still grinning, held it open for me to see the blood oozing from its palm and every finger. "There may be other artists named Chimali, but it was you, Mole, who showed me that no two hands are alike." His was now entirely covered with his blood. "Hence I have a signature which can never be imitated."

He slapped the massive household water jar nearby. On its dull brown clay surface there was now a gleaming red handprint. Travel these lands, Your Excellency, and you will see that same signature on many a temple mural and palace painting. Chimali did a prodigious amount of work before he stopped working.

He and Tlatli were the last of the guests to leave our house that night. Those two stayed, on purpose, until we actually heard the drums and conch trumpets from the temple pyramid, announcing the start of the nemontemtin. While my mother dashed about the house to douse the lights, my friends scampered to get to their own homes before the beating and the bleating stopped. It was reckless of them—if the hollow days were bad, their lightless nights were far worse—but the two friends' staying saved me from chastisement for my insult to the Lord Joy. Neither my father nor mother could undertake something as serious as punishment during the ensuing days, and by the time the nemontemtin ended, the matter had been pretty well forgotten.