Читать книгу Ahuitzotl - Herb Allenger - Страница 28

XIX

Excitement abounded in the streets of Tenochtitlan as the first day of the thirteenth month, one of three during the year honoring the god Tlaloc, arrived. Nezahualpilli and Chimalpopoca, along with numerous other rulers, princes, and dignitaries, had made their appearances in response to invitations from Tizoc; both were expected to participate in the sacred rites to the Rain God, second in importance after Huitzilopochtli.

Tizoc contrived two major ceremonies, each one lasting a day, to initiate the month. The first, a sacrifice of the waters, was to conform to traditional demands imposed by Tlaloc’s priests by which they would propitiate the god into delivering them continuous fresh rains. The second ritual entailed sacrificing a representative number of Tolucan captives. The priests had determined that one in ten, three hundred of them, amounted to an ample supply for Tlaloc as well as several other deities, with those remaining reserved for future rites, enduring until then as laborers on Tizoc’s abundant projects. Both observances required the active involvement of the sovereign whose primary duties included initiating the cutting.

The sacrifice of the waters commenced at early dawn when a procession of lords and priests marched slowly by way of the northern causeway avenue from the central plaza to the lake’s edge where hundreds of rowers waited for them in canoes. Upon their shoulders, two priests bore a canopied litter within which sat a little girl six years old and dressed in blue garments representing the water. They sang songs and chanted prayers to Tlaloc as they ambled along accompanied by music from flutes and drums. When they reached the shore, the priests carrying the litter boarded the boat that was to lead the others from the city. Each lord, escorted by his principal aides, took his own canoe and followed. Many of the townspeople crowded into extra vessels in order to observe the rites making a flotilla of hundreds of canoes that moved out on the lake.

Propelled by many rowers, the canoes rapidly skimmed over the water for a place known as Pantitlan, near the lake’s northern end, where it drained amidst strong currents forming a large whirlpool. All along the route, a ceaseless chanting of intones coupled with the haunting melodies of numerous flutists and dull thuds of drums marked their passage. After arriving at the sacred spot, they waited, still singing and playing their instruments, until the whirlpool attained its maximum strength and width. At this point, Tizoc raised both hands over his head, holding them parallel to each other with palms extended forward, and by this signal brought the chanting and music to an abrupt halt. He nodded to the foremost priest who shared his canoe and the ceremony began.

“Lord Tlaloc!” chanted the priest, “Protector of our Fields and Provider of Fresh Waters! We beseech you and pay our debt for the gift of life you bestow on us. We ask for your dominion over us, your continued abundance, and that you accept our offerings to you and your glory. Receive these, Oh Lord of Waters, and grant us your bounty!”

With his invocation thus completed, drums were beaten in rapid succession as other votaries broke out in more incantations in praise to Tlaloc. Faster and faster rolled the percussions until they approximated the thunderclap of a rainstorm—Tlaloc’s voice! Then, after building up to a crescendo of deafening rumbling, the chief priest raised his hands and all fell silent again.

In the canoe bearing the litter, one of the priests next took their gift to Tlaloc from its covering and lifted her over his head for all to see. The second priest removed a small spear from his sash and, as his companion brought the girl down, slashed its sharp obsidian point across her fragile throat and sliced open her jugular veins. She gave out a brief whimper when her flesh was penetrated and was quickly extended over the canoe’s edge so that the hot blood gushing forth fell into the water, and, upon striking it, her dying body was cast into the eddy and disappeared from sight as if Tlaloc had swallowed it up.

After she vanished beneath the swells, music and singing resumed as the lords passed the spot into which she had been thrown and tossed their jewelry, precious stones, necklaces and bracelets into it. One by one, the canoes rowed by and were lightened of the valuable belongings and when the last of the lords had delivered up his gifts, an eerie stillness befell on them as all voices ceased and all instruments stopped playing; under this blanket of reverential solemnity they returned to the city.

By the time they disembarked from their canoes, most of the day had been spent and the notables were invited to a banquet held in the royal palace that evening. As protocol dictated, Tizoc sat centered at the hall’s end with the rulers of Texcoco and Tlacopan on his immediate right and left; Ahuitzotl was next to Nezahualpilli and Cihuacoatl beside Chimalpopoca; the remaining guests were circled around this group. No ladies were in attendance. They dined lavishly, enjoying succulent dishes prepared with care by the cooks which the bounty of the land watered by the grace of Tlaloc offered, while in the god’s temple, his priests fasted to demonstrate their devotion and reverence. The feasting had gone on for an appreciable length of time before Nezahualpilli deemed Ahuitzotl’s conspicuous silence, brought on by his apparent brooding, as somewhat disconcerting.

“You are strangely quiet tonight, Ahuitzotl,” he commented, “unusual for a carouser like you. Did the ceremony displease you?”

“It went well enough,” said Ahuitzotl, “but since you speak of it, there is a puzzling feature in it. Tell me, as a point of curiosity, how is it that the child sinks so quickly at Pantitlan?”

Nezahualpilli turned grim. “The currents are strong, the waters deep, and the child is dead. I would expect her to sink.”

“I would have expected her to swirl around for awhile before submerging out of our sight.”

“Tlaloc has approved of our offering and has readily accepted her into his domain.”

“No doubt you are correct. Ignore my foolish fancies. I entertained a notion that the priests may have weighted her down with stones concealed underneath her pretty garments.”

Nezahualpilli, always suspicious of Ahuitzotl’s piety, glared hard at him, his displeasure obvious. “How dare you blaspheme like this? On the very night we honor him, you mock Tlaloc.”

“Not Tlaloc—I revere him as much as Huitzilopochtli—but perhaps his priests.”

“You are a dangerous man.”

“Forget what I said. My idle speculation—a private rebellion against the constraints I find the priests have placed upon me. Do not take it seriously.”

“It has spoiled my evening.”

“For that, I am sorry. I should not have disturbed you with my personal grievances.”

“You already have, and by so doing have invited my counsel. Be warned, Ahuitzotl! Never try to separate the priests from the gods they serve; they are one and the same. The gods speak through them and impart their knowledge and demands on them. If you scorn one, you also scoff at the other. You will be well advised to heed my counsel, for if you do not…” Nezahualpilli paused to take a bite of the grouse on his plate.

“Yes?” Ahuitzotl was eager to hear him finish.

“You will bring calamitous misfortunes upon yourself, if not on our people.”

“For their devotion to the gods, I respect them, and for their services to them, I honor them, but I think they too often meddle into the affairs of men that go beyond the requirements of their office. I haven’t as lofty an opinion of them as you do.”

Tizoc, who spotted Nezahualpilli deep in conversation with Ahuitzotl, noticed how it left his colleague in obvious discontent; uneasy over what subject could impugn such an impression, he was compelled to know its cause.

“What does my brother say to you, Nezahualpilli, that so affects you? I see your alarm.”

“We discussed today’s ceremony, Tizoc. A small disagreement over it, nothing more.”

“Surely not small—it had an unsettling effect on you.”

Nezahualpilli caught a glimpse of Ahuitzotl’s impassioned eyes and felt himself pierced by them; he perceived something more was involved here than he supposed. But it was clear to him that Tizoc was bent on having a reply and he saw no reason for withholding it.

“We were questioning the role of the priests. Ahuitzotl is of the belief they go further in their duties than is necessary or demanded by the gods they serve. I opposed him on that issue.”

“Ah,” grinned Tizoc, relieved that it was nothing worse. “He’s still smarting over what I told him. Our chief commander is angry with the priests because their laws forbid him to marry outside of the royal families.”

“Now it makes sense,” Nezahualpilli laughed. “I presume we speak of the Lady Pelaxilla.”

“You have heard about her?” asked Ahuitzotl in amazement.

“Only by name. See?—your amorous escapades have reached even my court in Texcoco. She must be quite a woman to have turned your head so. I should like to meet her.”

“She is agreeable, but not extraordinary,” Tizoc noted. “My brother’s tastes are mundane. Dozens of royal princesses wish to be claimed by him, but he has eyes only for my mistress.”

“That’s understandable,” Nezahualpilli concluded. “Cheer up, Ahuitzotl. It should be no barrier to you. I have my wives, and my Tula Woman, who I prefer above any of them. The priests also say I cannot marry her, but if you asked any of my wives, they will tell you I already am.”

The group resounded with hearty laughter, except for Ahuitzotl who deemed his situation serious, and Cihuacoatl who regarded a feast in honor of Tlaloc a more solemn occasion.

“Come now, Ahuitzotl,” Nezahualpilli continued. “No woman is worth all this trouble. In the dark, they are all alike.”

“Is that why you have so many of them?” Tizoc added, bringing on even more laughter.

“At least your Tula Woman is not denied to you,” Ahuitzotl related to Nezahualpilli.

“Pelaxilla is denied to you?”

“She belongs to Tizoc, and he has no inclination to give her to me.”

“What’s this?” Nezahualpilli intuitively recognized that he had stirred up a hornet’s nest. “Tizoc keeps her even though he says she is nothing extraordinary? Does he know you covet her?”

“He does.”

“There’s something unsavory here; you two play a game I want no part of,” Nezahualpilli said. He judiciously avoided additional comments on the subject, having no wish to get embroiled in any personal dispute between Ahuitzotl and Tizoc.

Tizoc was perturbed that Ahuitzotl had taken his denial of Pelaxilla so severely and ruminated if he might not have been unreasonable about it. There always remained the possibility for him to relent, he thought, and it may be wise to do so. His brother’s services were valuable to him and could be easier obtained with more kindness. As he pondered over this, he glanced aside and noticed an irritated look in his minister.

“What! You too are disturbed, Cihuacoatl?” Tizoc remarked.

“This feast is supposed to bestow our gratitude to Tlaloc—a solemn occasion!” Cihuacoatl replied. “Yet none of you have regard for this and engage in merriment.”

“As usual, I have you to remind me of my obligations,” Tizoc said, vexed over the minister’s incessant preoccupation with the monarch’s duty requisites. “You’re quite right of course, and we are properly admonished for it. Don’t worry about displeasing Tlaloc. Tomorrow we shall satisfy him amply when we offer him the Tolucans.”

“Will Zozoltin be among them?” asked Nezahualpilli.

“He shall be the first.”

“So you have not yielded your stand; you will not permit him to fight on the combat stone.”

“No. He is to die on the altar. I shall personally send him on his journey to Paradise. This ought not offend you any—we accord him the highest honors by doing this.”

Nezahualpilli’s objection to having Zozoltin sacrificed was not so much based on it being any less honorable fate as that he felt it undignified for a monarch to be paraded naked before his subjects in the fashion of the offered victims. An exhibition of this sort reflected unfavorably on the kingship in that it debased an office which he believed should reserve a certain sanctity to a commoner’s level. He was mystified why Tizoc, who professed to admire the Tolucan, persisted in this choice of death for him—perhaps he found this a necessary measure in order to put the doomed adversary out of his life.

Nezahualpilli was not the only one thinking of Tizoc; Ahuitzotl likewise had the Revered Speaker on his mind, but with sentiments considerably less favorable towards him. Enjoy this feast, Tizoc, he was thinking; there shall not be many more of them for you. You have scorned me and this love I bear Pelaxilla for the last time. Had you not so basely deprecated my desires for her, things might have gone differently for you, but now it is too late.

Early that following morning, priests probed among the cages of Tolucan prisoners and selected the three hundred who were to be honored this day. These were led into a nearby building for their ceremonial preparation where they were divested of their clothing, bathed, and painted yellow over their entire bodies. Their last sumptuous meal was laced with drugs which numbed the senses, making their movements lethargic and inducing anesthesia to destroy much of the pain felt from the knife. The priests gravely spoke to them, giving them messages they wished carried to Tlaloc, often repeating them until the words were memorized and could be recited back. Sedated, counseled, and otherwise conditioned for their final journey, the Tolucans were next marched to the Temple of Tlaloc in columns of two escorted by sober priests and a few guards.

Crowds had gathered at the base of the structure, standing quietly by as the captives entered the square and listened to repetitive incantations voiced from the numerous votaries accompanying them while a lone drumbeater walked along pounding out a cadence. The occasion was an extremely solemn one, and this was patently evident in the grim countenance of the spectators who viewed the procession with hushed veneration.

Tizoc waited on the temple’s upper tier in front of the techcatl, the altarstone, emplaced directly ahead of Tlaloc’s shrine at the very edge of the steps. On his right was Nezahualpilli and on the opposite side Chimalpopoca—all wore brilliant plumages and colorful attire with the typical copious adornments. Also standing with them were Cihuacoatl and the chief priests of Tlaloc. Gravely, they gazed down on the square to observe the lines of victims approaching them, and when Tizoc noticed the once-proud Zozoltin, tall and naked, heading one of the columns, looking a pitiful spectacle, not at all like the noble king he had been, he blushed, feeling regret that he had not taken Nezahualpilli’s advice.

Soon the Tolucan lines ran up on both sides of the steps and Zozoltin was halted on reaching the uppermost level. He glowered fiercely at Tizoc who avoided looking at him and yet felt his overpowering presence. Next, on taking his cue from the Revered Speaker, the chief priest raised his arms and thereby activated a thunderous roll of the giant panhuehuetl, beaten by many clubs and booming as Tlaloc’s invocation across the square leaving its multitude of spectators awestruck. Then, a short time later, he dropped his hands and, as abruptly as it had begun, the drum was stilled.

The chief priest recited his age-old chants, invoking Tlaloc’s blessings and entreating him into granting abundant rains by which the nation was assured another successful planting season. When he finished and stepped back, his subordinates tossed a powdered substance into the decorated braziers placed at each of the temple’s five tiers which emitted dense clouds of smoke when it struck the fire. Four priests strode up to the techcatl where Tizoc was standing and after they posted themselves, he lifted his hands in the air.

“Oh Tlaloc!” Tizoc shouted out as he peered into a partially clouded sky, “Accept these offerings—warriors honorably taken in battle—we are about to send you! Welcome them into your house and hear their messages from us!”

This completed, he nodded to the four priests and they quickly seized Zozoltin, each grabbing one of his limbs, and dragged him to the altar. He was thrown on his back upon the curved block so that it arched his chest upward, elevating it above the rest of his body, and as each priest tightly held him down, a fifth one stepped up and threw a strap under his chin that forceably yanked his head back. His chest heaved up and down in his heavy breathing and his eyes never left Tizoc’s.

Tizoc raised his flint knife a full arm’s length over his head, holding it there momentarily for all to see, then plunged it with all his power into Zozoltin’s chest. It cut into the flesh directly under the rib cage and was forced in one strong horizontal stroke across the width of the chest, opening it in a broad slash as the blood gushed forth. With his free hand, Tizoc reached into the gory cavity and pushed his fingers ahead until he felt them encircling the pulsating heart. He then violently jerked his hand back, ripping the organ, which for an instant still clung to attached veins, from its snug enclosure. As red blood spurted volumously over the altar, he lifted the heart into the air, then passed it to Cihuacoatl who transferred it on a plate to the arperture of the stone idol within the shrine and dropped it in. Tizoc stood acutely aware of the glassy, sightless eyes of the corpse still fixed on him as it was raised from the block by the four priests and flung over the steps. It rolled down like a heavy log leaving a thin streak of blood to mark its path. At the bottom, the body was taken by more priests who cut off its head, arms, and legs, setting these parts aside for later use—the limbs to be cooked and eaten—while the torso was set on a stretcher and placed away from the temple’s base for eventual removal by boat, either to a burning ground or to the zoo for the animals. Thus did Zozoltin enter paradise.

Without any delay, the four priests grabbed their next captive from the opposite row, spreading him over the altar, and the operation was repeated. The trail of blood widened along the steps when this body plummeted down. Then the priests went back to the first row and carried their new victim to the block, and in this fashion, moving back and forth between the two lines, the Tolucans met their end under blood-soaked knives wielded by Mexica kings. Tizoc’s arms began to weaken, strained in his efforts, and by the time he came to his fortieth captive, his work was becoming sloppy, with the gashes not as deep and more tugging to rip the heart from its tendons. Nezahualpilli next resumed the arduous task, to be later followed by Chimalpopoca.

This slaughter lasted throughout most of the day, and when the last of the victims had finally been dispatched, the temple stairs rested thoroughly splattered with coagulating blood and at its base, where the corpses had been dismembered, a large pool of it lay stagnated and sticky in the sweltering heat. After all was done, a signal once again directed the panhuehuetl to thunder out its earsplitting rumbling and when it fell silent, the ceremony was concluded and the Mexica lords descended the stairway along its lateral edge, the only section remaining clear of blood.

Even as the dignitaries left in preparation for the evening’s banquet, clean-up crews were already beginning their strenuous task of refurbishing the temple, carrying containers of water up the steps and scrubbing the stonework clean of its congealed, pasty blood. The torsos they dumped into barges after reserving a few for the zoo. The priests themselves collected up the edible limbs and took them, along with basketloads of hearts recovered from the idol, to the kitchens to be boiled in large vats for eventual consumption, while the heads were amassed so that they could be stripped of flesh and mounted on the skull rack located in the main plaza. In its entirety, the rehabilitation work of the sacrificial ritual entailed a major constructive effort involving crews of hundreds toiling late into the night, if not all the next day.

The feasting that evening, observed to give the commemoration of Tlaloc its closing sequel, was, in contrast to the previous night, an affair conducted under a cloud of serious contrition, and when small cuts of cooked flesh were served to the guests, each of the participants spoke a solemn prayer before he began to eat. In this way he shared the sacrifice with Tlaloc, maintaining a mutual connection to him.

As Tizoc was about to bite into a piece of meat that had been placed on his platter, a recollection of Zozoltin’s piercing eyes suddenly flashed through his mind. He turned pale. “It is the flesh of Zozoltin!” he gasped.

“What?” Nezahualpilli replied, staggered by this. “How can you be sure?”

“I know!” Sweat appeared on Tizoc’s forehead.

“I don’t see how, but even if it were, you should have no aversion in digesting it. He was a gallant warrior—you respected him when alive—and if Tlaloc accepted him, so should you.”

“I will not eat it!”

“Don’t be so squeemish and accept that he was a good offering.”

“It is tainted—with doubt. Zozoltin never believed we were sending him to paradise.’

“Suit yourself, but know it’s not the flesh that is contaminated. The defilement exists in your lack of piety about our purpose in eating it and you announce it to everyone here. You always manage to bring harm to yourself, Tizoc, even if unintentional.”

“I did not ask for this counsel from you.”

“I recommend you abide by it. My intent was to prevent you from spoiling this feast for everyone else.”

“My not eating affects the others in a like manner?”

“Yes,” came Nezahualpilli’s reply, which he deemed sufficient in getting Tizoc to grasp the ramifications of his behavior.

Tizoc eyed the meat on his plate, noting its grayish appearance from having been boiled, and reluctantly picked up a small portion of it, placed it slowly in his mouth, and started to chew on it. The gesture met a silent approval from several guests seated in his vicinity who had apparently stopped eating in anticipation of his next move; when they saw that he proceeded with his meal, they heartily resumed cleaning up their own plates. For Tizoc, it stood as another reminder of how closely his actions were scrutinized by his subordinates: an aspect of being ruler he found difficulty adjusting to. By nature he was a private man, and he held a distinct aversion for the public role demanded of his title. Once again, Nezahualpilli had given him the correct advice and he resisted taking it. Yet he felt no compulsion to thank him; a satisfied look in the Texcocan’s face combined with the fact that Tizoc was now eating the meat spoke well of their relationship.