Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary - Страница 33

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Rather than go on asking frantic questions and getting dotard answers that were nearly sending me into a frenzy, I said, "Very well, old mother. Let us hurry."

As we approached the unlighted house, we heard no screams or moans or other sounds of distress coming from within. But I let the old woman precede me, and waited in the front room while she tiptoed into the other. She returned with a finger held to her lips, whispering: "She sleeps at last."

"She is not dead?" I asked, in a sort of a shout of a whisper.

"No, no. Only sleeping, and that is good. But come now—quietly—and see the infant. It sleeps also."

With a tongs, she plucked an ember from the cooking hearth and used it to light a coconut-oil lamp, and with that led me into the room where Citlali slept. In a straw-padded box beside her pallet lay the child, neatly swathed, and the midwife held the lamp so I could look down at it. To me it looked like any other newborn: red and raw and as wrinkled as the midwife, but apparently entire, with all the requisite appendages, the proper number of ears and fingers and toes and such. It lacked hair, true, but there was nothing unusual about that.

"Why did you want me to see it, old mother?" I whispered. "I have seen babies before, and this one appears no different."

"Ayya, friend Tenamaxtli, it has no eyes."

"The child is blind? How could you tell?"

"Not just blind. It has no eyes. Look more closely."

Since the child was asleep, I had taken for granted that its eyelids were closed. But now I could see that there was no line of closed lashes. Where there should have been lids, each eye socket was closed over—from the faint little eyebrows down to the cheekbones—with the same delicate skin that covered the rest of the face, only slightly indented where the eyeballs should have been.

"By all the darkness of Mictlan," I muttered, horrified. "You are right, old mother. It is a monster."

"That is why Citlali was so distraught, even before she heard the news about Netzlin. At least he was spared knowing of this." She hesitated, then asked, "Shall I throw it into a canal?"

That would have been the kindest thing, for both Citlali and the infant. It would indeed have been the obligatory thing, according to the customs of The One World. Children born defective in either body or intellect were disposed of, immediately the defect was discovered. It was the natural and expected thing to do, in order that such creatures not grow up to be a burden to themselves and to the community, or, worse, perhaps to bear similarly blighted children themselves. No one wept or regretted or disputed the quick disposal of such unfortunates. It was too plainly necessary, to maintain undiluted the best physical and mental qualities of the race. One nation, the Cloud People of Uaxyacac, renowned for their beauty, even disposed of infants who were merely ugly.

But, I reminded myself, this was no longer The One World, free to follow its age-old, wise traditions. I knew that the Christians let their own varicolored and despised mongrel offspring live and grow up—even those wretched ones of splotched brown-and-white complexion that they called pintojos, from whom everyone of every other color turned his gaze away in revulsion. So there was probably a Christian law requiring that any child—though misbegotten and, for whatever reasons of practicality, unwanted—must be kept and reared, at whatever cost in misery to itself, its parents and all the rest of society. I was not sure that such a law existed; I would have to remember to ask Alonso if the Christians truly were that insensitive and pitiless and unmerciful. Anyway, this one poor creature's fate need not be decided this very night, so I told the midwife:

"It is not for me to say. Netzlin would assuredly have told you to get rid of it. But he is gone, and Citlali is its only parent. We will wait for her to wake."

X

"I wish to keep the child," said Citlali when she had awakened and I had spoken some consoling and encouraging words, and she was able to regard the two sudden disasters in her life with more composure than she had the night before.

I asked her, "Have you considered what you will have to bear? Besides staying in constant and vigilant attendance on the child—perhaps even until it is full grown, or even until one of you dies—you will suffer the scorn and derision of all our people, especially our priests. And to what sort of tonali has your baby been destined? A life of abject dependence on its mother. A life of inability to deal with the commonest happenings of every day, let alone any real difficulty that may come along. Practically no hope of its ever doing anything in life to earn a place in the happy afterworld of Tonatiucan. Why, no tonalpoqui will even deign to consult his book of omens to give the child an auspicious name."

"Then its birthday name will have to serve as its only name," she murmured, undeterred. "Yesterday was the day Two-Wind, was it not? So—Ome-Ehecatl its name will be, and that is fitting. The wind has no eyes, either."

"There," I said, "you have spoken it. Ome-Ehecatl will never even see you, Citlali; never know what its own mother looks like; never marry and give you grandchildren; never support you in your old age. You yourself are still young and comely and talented in your craft, and sweet of nature, but you will not likely attract another husband, not with such a gross impediment hung upon you. Meanwhile—"

"Please, Tenamaxtli, no more," she said sadly. "In my sleep I confronted all those obstacles in my dreams, one after another. And you are right. They are formidable. Nevertheless, little Ehecatl is all that I have left of Netzlin and our life together. That little I wish to keep."

"Very well, then," I said. "If you must persist in this folly, I insist on helping you to do so. You will need a friend and an ally against those obstacles."

She looked at me unbelievingly. "You would encumber yourself with both of us impediments?"

"For as long as I can, Citlali. Mind you, I do not speak of marriage or of permanence. There will come a time when I expect to be doing—other things."

"That plan of which you have spoken. To drive the white men out of The One World."

"Yes, that. But, for right now, I had already decided to move out of the meson and seek private lodgings. I will stay here with you—if you agree—and contribute my savings to the household. I think I need no further classes in my study of Spanish, and I know I want no more in the study of Christianity. I will continue to do my work with the Cathedral's notarius, to keep on earning those wages. In my free time I will occupy Netzlin's concesion stall in the market. I see there is a supply of baskets yet to be sold, and when you regain your strength, you can make more. There will be no need for you ever to leave Ehecatl's side. In the evenings, you can assist me in my experiments at making polvora."

"It is more than I could have hoped for, and you are kind to offer it, Tenamaxtli." But she looked vaguely troubled.

"You have been kind to me, Citlali, ever since we met. And already helpful, I believe, in that matter of the polvora. Have you some objection to my offer?"

"Only that I, too, have no intention of marrying anyone. Or to be anyone's woman. Even if that is the price of survival."

I said stiffly, "I suggested no such thing. Nor did I expect you to infer it."

"Forgive me, dear friend." She reached out a hand and held mine. "I am sure you and I could easily become... and I know the powdered root that safeguards against... but it does not always avert mishaps... Ayya, Tenamaxtli, I am trying to say that I very well might yearn someday to have you—but not to chance having another deformed child like—"

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