Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary. Страница 32

"In an intimate connection," I reminded him.

"But would a female's xitli be any different from a male's?"

"In one respect, I know it is, and so do you. You must have seen that when a man urinates outdoors, on the grass, the grass is not at all affected. But wherever a woman urinates, the grass goes brown and dead."

"You are right," he and his wife said together, and Netzlin added, "It is such a commonplace occurrence that no one ever even speaks of it."

"And charcoal is also a commonplace thing," I said. "And so is the volcanic yellow azufre. It stands to reason that something as common as a female's xitli could provide the third ingredient of the polvora. Citlali, forgive my audacious rudeness, but may I borrow your axixcali pot for a while, and do some experimenting with its contents?"

She went still redder in the face, maybe by now all the way down to her taut belly, but her laugh was unabashed. "Do with it what you like, you preposterous man. Only do bring back the pot, please. I have ever more frequent need of it now that the child is due to be born at any moment."

It took both hands to carry the clay container, covered but audibly sloshing, back to the meson—and I got some queer looks from passersby along the way, because everyone knows an axixcali by sight.

Yes, I had been living all this while at the meson—or at least sleeping and taking meals there—and so had Pochotl, while many other lodgers had come and gone in the meantime. So, feeling guilty about my leech-like dependence on the friars of San Jose, I had often joined Pochotl in helping them clean the place, fetch wood to stoke the fires, stir and serve the soup, things like that. I might have thought that the friars were lenient about my staving on and on because they knew of my attending classes next door. But they were equally lenient about the perpetual residence of Pochotl, so obviously they were not showing me any partiality. In my opinion, they were kindheartedly carrying charity to an extreme of benevolence. Even though I was one of its chief beneficiaries, that day I returned from visiting Netzlin and Citlali, I made bold to ask one of the soup-ladling friars about that.

To my bewilderment, the friar actually sneered at me. "You think we do this for love of you shiftless layabouts?" he snarled. "We do this in God's name, for our own souls' sake. Our order bids us to debase ourselves, to work among the lowest of the lowly, the filthiest of the filthy. I am here at this meson only because so many other brothers of the order had already volunteered for the leprosery that there was no room there for me. I had to settle for serving you indio sluggards. And that I do, and in doing that I lay up for myself credits in heaven. But one thing I do not have to do is associate with you. So get back to your lazy fellow redskins."

Well, I thought charity comes in some strange guises. I wondered if the nuns of Santa Brigida felt similar contempt for the multicolored orphans in their charge—caring for them ostensibly in the name of their God, but really in the expectation of reward in the afterlife. I wondered also if Alonso de Molina had been kind and helpful to me only for that same reason. Such thoughts naturally strengthened my resolve not to adopt such a crass religion. Bad enough that my tonali had decreed that I be born into The One World precisely when I would have to share my lifetime with these Christians; I certainly did not intend to spend my afterlife among them.

No longer feeling guilty, but feeling ashamed of myself for having partaken of the friars' grudging charity, I decided to move away from their meson. The Cathedral elders had been paying me only a pittance for my work with notarius Alonso—barring whatever extra they had paid for my three articles of Spanish attire: shirt, trousers and boots. Still, of my wages I had spent only the occasional bit for a midday meal, so my savings should enable me to take lodging at one of the cheap native hostelries situated in the colacion neighborhoods. I went to my pallet determined that this was the last night I would sleep there, that in the morning I would pack up my few belongings—which now included Citlali's axixcali—and be gone. However, no sooner had I made that decision than it turned out that the decision had already been made for me, doubtless by those same mischievous, interfering gods who had for so long been persistently at my heels.

In the middle of the night I was awakened—as was everyone else in the men's chamber—by the shouting of the aged warder whom the friars left to watch over the premises after they had departed:

"?Senor Tennamotch! ?Hay aqui un senor bajo el nombre de Tennamotch?"

I knew he meant me. My name, like so many other Nahuatl words, was always a tongue-twister for the Spaniards, particularly because they are unable to pronounce the soft "sh" sound represented by the letter x with which they write my name. I scrambled up from my pallet, threw on my mantle, and went down the stairs to where the old man stood.

"?Senor Tennamotch?" he barked, angry at having been disturbed himself. "Hay aqui una mujer insistente e importuna. La vejezuela demanda a hablar contigo."

A woman? Insistently demanding to speak to me? The only female I could think of, who might come seeking me at midnight, was the mulata child Rebeca, and that was highly unlikely. Anyway, the warder had called her an "old hag." Mystified, I followed him out the front door, and there stood a woman, old indeed, and no one I had ever seen before. Tears were flowing down along the many wrinkles of her face as she said in Nahuatl:

"I am midwife to the young woman friend of yours, Citlali. The baby is born, but the father has died."

I was shocked, but not too shocked to correct her. "You mean the mother, surely." Even I knew that even the healthiest-appearing woman could die in giving birth, but it gave me a heart pang that dear Citlali should have done so.

"No, no! The father. Netzlin."

"What? How could that be?" Then I remembered his extreme eagerness to see a son born to him. "Did he die of the excitement? Of a stroke of the hands of a god?"

"No, no. He waited in the front room, pacing. The instant the baby gave its first cry in the other room, Netzlin roared triumphantly and went crashing out the door into the street, bellowing, 'I have a son!' though he had not yet even seen the child."

"Well? Did he come back and find it was a daughter? And that killed him?"

"No, no. He gathered all the men of the barrio, and bought much octli for them, and they all got drunk, but he much more drunk than the others."

"And that killed him?" I demanded in frustration. "Old mother, you will never make a storyteller. Best stick to midwifing."

"Well... yes. But, after tonight, I think I may even give up that humble profession and—"

"Will you get on?" I shouted, almost dancing in impatience.

"Yes, yes. You could say the drinking did kill poor fuddled Netzlin. He was caught by the soldiers on night patrol. They beat and cut him to death."

I was too stunned to say anything. The old midwife went on:

"The neighbors came to tell us. Citlali was already near to frenzy. and the news of Netzlin's death on top of everything else drove her near to madness. But she was able to tell me where to find you and—"

"What do you mean—on top of everything else? Did the birthing cause injury to her? Is she in pain? In danger?"

"Just come, Tenamaxtli. She needs comforting. She needs you."