Aztec Autumn Read online

  “I have no affection for you, Yeyac, not any more.”

  “Come, now,” he said, wheedlingly. “In time you will learn to like our playing together. You will yearn for it.”

  “No. The priests are right to forbid such play. And Uncle Mixtzin seldom agrees with any priest, but I wager he would, if I told him about this.”

  “Ayya—touchy, touchy,” Yeyac said again, but not jovially this time.

  “No fear. I will not tell. You are my cousin, and I would not see you beaten. But you are nevermore to touch my parts or show me yours. Do your exercises elsewhere. Now kiss the earth to that.”

  Looking disappointed and disgruntled, he slowly bent down to touch a finger to the stone floor and then to his lips, the formal gesture signifying that I-swear-to-it.

  And he kept that promise. Not ever again did he try to fondle me or even let me see him except when he was ftilly clothed. He evidently found other boys who were not, like me, averse to learning what he taught, because when the Mexícatl warrior in charge of our House of Building Strength assigned students to the tedious duty of standing guard in remote places, I noticed that Yeyac and three or four boys of varying ages were always eager to step forward. And Yeyac may have been right in what he had said about the priests. There was one who, whenever he wanted something carried to his room, would always ask Yeyac to do it, and then neither of them would be seen again for a long while.

  But I did not hold that against Yeyac, or hold any lingering resentment about his behavior with me. True, relations between the two of us were strained for some time, but they gradually relaxed to mere coolness and perhaps overpolite politeness. Eventually I, at least, quite forgot the episode—until much, much later, when something occurred to make me remember it. And meanwhile, my tepúli grew on its own, without requiring any outside assistance, as the years passed.

  Over those years, we Aztéca got accustomed to the crowded pantheon of gods the Mexíca had brought with them and raised temples to. Our people began to join in the rites for this or that god—at first, I think, just to show courtesy and respect to the Mexíca now residing among us. But, in time, our Aztéca seem to have found that they were deriving something—security? uplift? solace? I do not know—from sharing in the worship of those gods, even some of the ones they might otherwise have found repellent, such as the war god Huitzilopóchtli and the frog-faced water goddess Chalchihuítlicué. Nubile girls prayed to Xochiquétzal, the Mexíca’s goddess of love and flowers, that they might snare a desirable young man and make a good marriage. Our fishermen, before setting out to sea, besides uttering their usual prayers to Coyolxaúqui for a bounteous catch, prayed also that Ehécatl, the Mexíca’s wind god, would not raise a gale against them.

  No person was expected, as are Christians, to confine his or her devotion to any particular god. Nor were people punished, as Christians are, if they switched their allegiance at whim from one deity to another, or impartially among many of them. Most of our folk still reserved their truest adoration for our longtime patron goddess. But they saw no harm in giving some, too, to the Mexíca deities—partly because those newcome gods and goddesses provided them with so many new holidays and impressive ceremonies and causes for song and dance. The people were not even much deterred by the fact that many of those deities demanded compensation in the form of human hearts and blood.

  We never, during those years, engaged in any wars to provide us with foreign prisoners for sacrifice. But, surprisingly, there was never any lack of persons—Aztéca as well as Mexíca—to volunteer to the and thereby nourish and please the gods. Those were the people convinced by the priests that if they simply lolled about and waited to die of old age or in some other ordinary way, they risked an instant plunge into the depths of Míctlan, the Dark Place, there to suffer an eternal afterlife devoid of delight, diversion, sensation, even misery, an afterlife of absolute nothingness. To the contrary, said the priests, anyone undergoing the Flowery Death, so-called, would instantly be wafted to the lofty realm of the sun god, Tonatíu, there to enjoy a blissful and ever-lasting afterlife.

  That is why numerous slaves offered themselves to the priests, to be sacrificed to any god—the slaves cared not which—believing they would thus be improving their lot. But flagrant gullibility was not limited to the slaves. A young male freeman would volunteer to be slain, after which his body would be flayed of its entire skin, and that would be donned by a priest to imitate and honor Xipe Totec, the god of seedtime. A freeborn young maiden would volunteer to have her heart torn out, to represent the mother-goddess Teteoínan’s dying while giving birth to Centéotl, the maize god. Parents even volunteered their infant children to be suffocated in sacrifice to Tlaloc, the rain god.

  Myself, I never felt the least inclination to self-immolation. No doubt influenced by my irreverent Uncle Mixtzin, I never cared much for any god, and cared even less for priests. Those dedicated to the Mexíca’s new-brought deities, I found especially detestable, because, as a mark of their high calling, they performed various mutilations on their own bodies and, worse, never washed themselves or their garments. For some while after their arrival in Aztlan, they had worn rough work clothes and, like every other worker, cleaned themselves after a day of hard labor. But later, when they were excused from the work teams and donned their priestly gowns, they never so much as took a dip in the lake—let alone enjoyed a really good purification in a steam hut—and very soon were repulsively filthy, the air around them almost visibly mephitic. If I had ever taken the trouble to meditate on my cousin Yeyac’s curious sexual tastes, I probably would have done no more than wonder, with a shudder, how he could possibly bring himself to embrace such an abhorrent thing as a priest.

  However, as I have said, it was a long time—fully five years—before I again had occasion to think, and then only briefly, of Yeyac’s having made advances to me. I was now twelve years old, my voice just beginning to change, alternating between rumble and squeak, and I was looking forward to putting on my own loincloth of manhood before long. And what happened, absurdly enough, happened just as it had the other time.

  As I keep remarking, the gods derive their merriest entertainment from putting us mortals in situations that could seem to be mere coincidence. I was in my room at the palace, my back to the door, when again a hand stole under my mantle, gave my genitals an affectionate squeeze—and propelled me to another prodigious leap.

  “Yya ouíya, not again!” I squealed, as I went up in the air and came down again, and spun to face my molester.

  “Again?” she said, herself surprised.

  It was my other cousin, Améyatl. If I have not earlier mentioned that she was beautiful, well, she was. At sixteen, she was more fair of face and form than any other girl or woman I had seen in all of Aztlan, and, at that age, probably at her veriest pinnacle of beauty.

  “That was most unseemly,” I chided her, my voice now coming out as a growl. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  She said forthrightly, “I hoped to tempt you.”

  “Tempt me?” I piped, like a wee child. “To what?”

  “To prepare for the day when you will wear the maxtlatl. Would you not like to learn, before that day, how to perform like a man?”

  “Perform?” I grunted. “Perform what?”

  “The private act that a man and woman do together. I confess, I should very much like to learn. I thought we might teach one another.”

  “But—why me?” I said in a thin peep.

  She smiled mischievously. “Because, like me, you have not yet learned. But that one touch I gave you, just now, tells me that you are full-grown and able. So am I. I shall undress and you will see.”

  “I have seen you undressed. We have bathed together. Sat in the steam hut together.”

  She waved that away. “When we were sexless children. Since I donned my own undergarment of womanhood, you have not seen me naked. You will find me much different now, both here … and here. You can touch, too, and so will I,
and we will go on to do whatever we are next inclined to do.”

  Now, I and my childhood companions had often solemnly discussed, as I imagine even Christian youngsters do, the differences between male and female bodies, and what we believed men and women did in private, and how it was done, and with which on top, and with what variations, and how long did the act take, and how often could it be done in succession. Each of us, first in secret, later in competitive gatherings, found out how to verify that our tepultin were reliably erectile and that our olóltin eggs contained manly omícetl in a quantity and projectile capability not inferior to that of our fellows.

  Also, whenever we were put to assist at one of the city’s never-finished works of improvement, we listened with avidity to the adult workers’ bawdy banter, and their reminiscences of their adventures with women, almost certainly exaggerated in the telling. So I, and every other boy I knew, possessed only vague and secondhand information, a good deal of it misinformation, ranging from the implausible to the anatomically impossible. If we boys came to any consensus at all in our discussions, it was simply that we were more than eager to delve into those mysteries ourselves.

  And here was I, being offered the body of the loveliest maiden in Aztlan—not a cheap and common maátitl or even an expensive auyaními, but a veritable princess. (As the daughter of the Uey-Tecútli, she was entitled to be addressed—and was by the common folk—as Améyatzin.) Any of my usual companions would have snatched at the offer without demur, but with glee and gratitude and fulsome thanks to all the gods that be.

  But remember, even though she was four years my senior, I had grown up with this princess. I had known her when she was just a grubby girl-child, her nose often running, her knobby knees frequently skinned, and sometimes her picking at the scabs on them, and her occasional crying fits and temper tantrums and being a general nuisance, and, later, her spiteful older-sister teasing and tormenting of me. She had, of course, become more ladylike since those days, but I still regarded her as a big sister. So, to the same degree that she held no mystery for me, she held no compelling attraction. I could not look at her, as I could at just about any other pretty woman I encountered, and think: Now … what if we two …?

  Nevertheless, this was an opportunity I could hardly—as we say—pick my teeth at. Even if coupling with this cousin should prove as boring, even distasteful, as my long-ago brief experience with her brother, I was being offered the chance to explore an adult female body and all its secret places, and to find out what no one yet had credibly explained to me: how the act of coupling was actually done. Still, to my credit, I put up an argument, however feebly:

  “Why me? Why not Yeyac? He is older than us both. He should be able to teach you more than—”

  “Ayya!” she said with a grimace. “Surely you must have realized that my brother is a cuilóntli. That he and his lovers indulge only in cuilónyotl.”

  Yes, I did know that, and by now I had learned the words for that sort of man and that sort of indulgence, but I was fairly astonished that a cloistered maiden would know such words. I was even more astonished that a cloistered maiden could, as Améyatl was now doing, so casually take off her blouse, leaving herself bare to the waist. But suddenly her expression of pleased expectancy turned to one of dismay, and she cried:

  “Is that what you meant when you said ‘again’? That you and Yeyac—? Ayya, cousin, are you a cuilóntli, too?”

  I could not reply on the instant, for I was dumbstruck, gaping at her divinely round, smooth, inviting breasts, each tipped with a russet bud that I was sure would taste like flower nectar. Améyatl was right; she was different now. She had used to be as flat there as I was, and her nipples as indistinct as mine. But, after that spellbound moment, I hastened to say:

  “No. No, I am not. Yeyac did once grab at me. As you did. But I repulsed him. I have no interest in cuilónyotl love-making.”

  Her face cleared and she smiled and said, “Then let us get on with the right sort of lovemaking.” And she let her skirt drop to the floor.

  “The right sort?” I repeated, like a parrot. “But that is the sort by which babies are made.”

  “Only when babies are wanted,” she said. “Do you think I am a baby myself? I am a grown woman, and I have learned from other grown women how to avoid pregnancy. I daily take a dose of the powdered tlatlaohuéhuetl root.”

  I had no notion of what that might be, but I took her at her word. Still—again to my credit, I think—I tried one last argument:

  “You will want to be married one day, Améyatl. And you will wish to marry a píli of your own rank. And he will expect you to be a virgin.” My voice went up into a squeak again, as she began slowly, almost teasingly, to unwind the felted tochómitl garment that wrapped her loins. “I am told that a female, after even one single time of lovemaking, is not a virgin, and that the fact is manifest on her wedding night In which case you would be fortunate if you were accepted as a wife by even a—”

  She sighed as if much exasperated by my nervous maundering. “I told you, Tenamaxtii, I have been taught by other women. If ever I do have a wedding night, I shall be prepared. There is an astringent ointment to make me tighter than a virgin only eight years old. And a certain sort of pigeon’s egg to insert inside me. Unnoticed by my husband, it will break at the proper moment.”

  My voice gone gruff again, I said, “You certainly seem to have given this considerable thought before you invited me to—”

  “Ayya, will you be quiet? Are you afraid of me? Cease your blithering, idiot cousin, and come here!” And she lay back on my pallet and drew me down beside her, and I surrendered utterly.

  I found that she had spoken truthfully, also, about her being different in that place, too. The earlier times that I had seen her naked, there had been only a small, barely defined crease at her groin. The tipíli there now was rather more than a crease, and within it were marvels. Marvels.

  I am sure that anyone observing our inexperienced fiimblings, even a totally disinterested cuilóntli, would have been overcome with laughter. In my unreliable voice, which wavered through every tone from reed flute to conch trumpet to turtleshell drum, I kept stammering inanities like “Is this the right way?” and “What do I do with this?” and “Would you prefer that I do this … or this?” Améyatl, more calmly, was saying things like “If you gently spread it open with your fingers, as if it were an oyster shell, you will come upon a little tiny pearl, my xacapíli…” and, not calmly at all, “Yes! There! Ayyo, yes!” And, of course, after a while she abandoned all calm, and I was no longer nervous, and we were both crying inarticulate noises of rapture and delight.

  The thing I remember best, about that coupling and all the subsequent others, is how well Patzcatl-Améyatl personified her name. It means “Fountain of Juice,” and when we lay together, that is what she was. I have known many women since then, but have found none who was so copious of juices. That first time, my first mere touch of her started her tipíli exuding its water-clear but lubricant fluid. Soon we were both—and the pallet, too—slick and shiny with it. When we finally got to the act of penetration, Améyatl’s virginity-protecting chitóli membrane gave way without resistance. She was virginally tight, but there was no forcing or frustration at all. My tepúli was welcomed by those juices, and it glided right in. On later occasions, Améyatl started her fountaining as soon as she unwound her tochómitl—and later still, as soon as she entered my room. And sometimes, still later, when we were both fully dressed and in the company of others and were behaving with impeccable propriety, she would cast me a certain look that said, “I see you, Tenamáxtli… and I am moist beneath my clothes.”

  That is why, on my thirteenth birthday, I was secretly a little amused when Améyatl’s father, my uncle, inelegantly but with good intentions, bade me accompany him to the foremost house of auyaníme in Aztlan, and selected for me an auyaními of prime quality. Smug young sprig that I was, I thought I already knew everything a man could know ab
out the act of ahuilnéma with a female. Well, I soon discovered—with delight, with several moments of real surprise, even now and then with mild shock—that there were a great many things I did not know, things that my cousin and I would never once have thought to try.

  For example, I was briefly taken aback when the girl did to me with her mouth what I thought only cuilóntli males did between themselves, because it was what Yeyac had once tried to do to me. But my tepúli was more mature now, and the girl so expertly excited it that I erupted with glorious gratification. Then she showed me how to do the same to her xacapíli. I learned that that inconspicuous pearl, though so much tinier than a man’s organ, can likewise be mouthed and tongued and suckled until, all by itself, it impels a female to virtual convulsions of joy. On learning this, I began to suspect that no woman ever actually needed a man—that is to say, his tepúli—since another woman, or even a child, could give her that same sort of joy. When I said so, the girl laughed, but agreed, and told me that that lovemaking between females is called patlachuia.

  When I left the girl the next morning and returned to the palace, Améyatl was impatiently waiting for me, and urgently hustled me off to where we could converse in private. Though she knew where I had spent the night, and what I had been doing all the night long, she was neither jealous nor distressed. Quite the contrary. She was almost aquiver to find out if I had learned any novel or exotic or voluptuously wicked things to impart to her. When I grinned and said that I certainly had, Améyatl would that instant have dragged me off to her room or mine. But I pleaded for time to rest andrecover and revitalize my own juices and energies. My cousin was no little annoyed at having to wait, but I assured her that she would much more enjoy the new things she would learn when I had regained the vigor necessary to teach them.

  And so she did, and so did I, and we went on enjoying one another at every possible private moment during the next five years or so. We never were caught in the act, never even suspected, as far as I knew, by her father or brother or my mother. But neither were we ever really in love. Each of us simply happened to be the other’s most convenient and ever-willing utensil. Just as on my thirteenth birthday, Améyatl never evinced any displeasure or indignation on the few times when surely she was aware that I had sampled the charms of a servant wench or a slave girl. (Very few times, and I kiss the earth to that. None of those compared with my dear cousin.) And I would not have felt betrayed if ever Améyatl had done the same. But I know she did not. She was a noble, after all, and she would never have hazarded her reputation with anyone she could not have trusted as she did me.