Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary - Страница 92

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Meanwhile, I lay at least once with every island woman and girl who was physically mature enough to appreciate the experience. Though our akuareni was always done in the darkness, I know I also coupled with some who were rather beyond mature—but none of the really old ones, like Kuku, for which I was thankful. I might well have lost count of the women I obliged with my teachings, if I had not been recompensed for my services. Eventually, I owned exactly sixty-five pearls, the largest and most perfect of that year's harvest. That was Cricket's doing; she insisted that it was only fair exchange that my students pay me one pearl apiece.

In the beginning, there was such mass enthusiasm that there was a constant traffic of females rafting every night back and forth between the two inhabited islands. But there was only one of me, and the other women had to alternate with Ixinatsi, so during that time many of them earnestly essayed to learn by imitation, as Ixinatsi had taught Maruuani. Sometimes I would be lying with a woman, going through the ceremony from first fondlings to final consummation, and two other females—her sister and her daughter, it might be—would lie right next to us, alternately eyeing our doings and then doing them to one another, insofar as possible.

After I had personally served every eligible girl and woman at least once, and the demand for me was not so imperative, the women continued, on their own, to discover the numerous ways they could pleasure one another, and freely traded partners, and even learned to do it in threes and fours—all this with blithe disregard for any consanguinity among them. Ixinatsi and I, in our intervals of rest at night, would often hear, among the other forest sounds, the sound of those women's wonderful breasts slapping rhythmically together.

All this while, I was ardently wooing Ixinatsi—not to make her love me; we knew we loved one another. I was trying to persuade her to come with me, and bring the daughter I now thought of as my own, to The One World. I besieged her with every argument I could muster. I told her, with honesty, that I was the equivalent of Kuku in my own domain, that she and Tiripetsi would live in a genuine palace, with servants at their command, lacking nothing they could possibly need or want, never again having to dive for oysters, or skin sea-cuguars for their hides, or fear the storms that might ravage the islands, or lie down to mate with strangers.

"Ah, Tenamaxtli," she would say with an endearing smile, "but this is palace enough"—indicating the tree-trunk shelter—"as long as you share it with us."

Not quite so honestly, I omitted all mention of the Spaniards' having occupied most of The One World. These island women did not yet know that such things as white men existed. Evidently the men from Yakoreke had likewise refrained from speaking of the Spaniards, possibly out of concern that the women might withhold their kinucha, hoping to start a new commerce with richer traders. For that matter, I reminded myself, I could not be sure that the Spaniards had not already overwhelmed Aztlan, in which case I had no Kukudom, so to speak, with which to tempt Cricket. But I firmly believed that she and Tiripetsi and I could make a new life for ourselves somewhere, and I regaled her with tales of the many lovely, lush, serene places I had found in my travels, where we three might settle down together.

"But this place, Tenamaxtli, these islands, they are home. Make them your home, too. Grandmother is accustomed to having you here now. She will no longer be demanding that you depart. Is this not as pleasant a life as we could find anywhere else? We need not fear the storms and strangers. Tiripetsi and I have survived all the storms, and so will you. As for the strangers, you know I will never again lie with one of those. I am yours."

In vain, I tried to make her envision the more varied life that could be lived on the mainland—the abundance of food and drink and diversion, of travel, of education for our daughter, the opportunities of meeting new people quite different from those she was used to.

"Why, Cricket," I said, "you and I can have other children there, to be company for little Tiripetsi. Even brothers for her. She can never have any here."

Ixinatsi sighed, as if she was wearying of my importunities, and said, "She can never miss what she has never had."

I asked anxiously, "Have I made you angry?"

"Yes, I am angry," she said, but with a laugh, in her cricket-merry way. "Here—take back all your kisses." And she began kissing me, and kept on kissing me every time I tried to say anything more.

But always, with sweet stubbornness, she dismissed or countered my every argument—and one day she did it by alluding to my own enviable current situation:

"Do you not see, Tenamaxtli, that any mainland man would absolutely pounce to trade places with you? Here you have not only me to love you and lie with you—and you will have Tiripetsi, too, when she is of age—you have, when you so desire, any other woman of these islands. Every woman. And, in time, their daughters."

I was hardly qualified to start preaching morality. I could only protest, and with utmost sincerity, "But you are all I want!"

And now I must confess something shameful. That same day, I went off into the woods to think, and I said to myself, "She is all I want. I am captivated by her, obsessed, besotted. If I dragged her away from here against her will, she would never love me again. Anyway, what would I be dragging her to? What awaits me yonder? Only a bloody war—killing or being killed. Why should I not do what she says? Stay here in these fair islands."

Here I had peace, love, happiness. The other women were making ever fewer demands on me, now that the novelty had worn off. Ixinatsi and Tiripetsi and I could be a self-contained and self-sufficient family. Since I had broken one of the islands' sacred traditions—by living here as no man had ever done before—I believed that I could break others. Old Grandmother had gone unheeded in that instance, and, anyway, she would not live forever. I had every expectation that I could wean the women away from their man-hating goddess New Moon, and turn them instead to worship of the kindlier Coyolxauqui, goddess of the full-hearted full moon. No longer would boy infants be fed to the oysters. Cricket and I and all the others could have sons. I would eventually be the patriarch of an island domain, and its benevolent ruler.

For all I knew, the Spaniards had by now overrun the entire One World, and I could hope to accomplish nothing by going back there. Here, I would have my own One World, and it might be sheaves of years before any farther-reaching Spanish explorers should stumble upon it. Even if the white men had subjugated so much of the mainland—or later would—that the Yakoreke fishermen could no longer visit the islands, I was sure that they would not reveal the location. If they came no more, well, I now knew the course back and forth. I and, in time, my sons could paddle stealthily to that shore to procure the necessities of life—knives and combs and such—that had to be bought with pearls...

Thus shamefully did I contemplate abandoning the quest that I had pursued during all the years since I watched my father burn to death, the quest that had led me along so many roads, into so many hazards, through so many adventures. Thus shamefully did I seek to justify discarding my plans to avenge my father and all others of my people who had suffered at the hands of the white men. Thus shamefully did I try to concoct excuses for forgetting those many—Citlali and the child Ehecatl, dauntless Pakapeti, the Cuachic Comitl, the Ticitl Ualiztli, the others—who had perished in helping me toward my aim of vengeance. Thus shamefully did I seek plausible reasons for my deserting the Knight Nocheztli and my hard-gathered army and, indeed, all the peoples of The One World...

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