Part 12 (1/2)

All the priests and wise men in the city were a.s.sembled to a.n.a.lyze Amba.s.sador Xaca's report, and after each frightening item had been a.n.a.lyzed and rejected as absurd, the priests' only proposal was that Xaca should be sacrificed to Mother G.o.ddess as a liar and one who did not have her welfare at heart. But others, who struggled to understand the new mysteries, argued: ”Let us accept what Xaca has said and try to determine what it means,” so the amba.s.sador was spared to repeat what he had been told, but when the priests hammered at him: ”Did you see the white-faced men? Did you see the lesser G.o.ds with four feet? Did you touch the garment that cannot be pierced?” he had to answer no, and was again discredited and sentenced to death as a deranged menace. Only the courage of the king wrested him from the priests and allowed him to escape back to the safer climate of the Aztec capital, where men now had painful proof that a new force had entered Mexican life.

With the amba.s.sador gone, there was a strong movement to blame Lady Gray Eyes for the dangers that were threatening Mexico, for she had certainly abetted her son in his abysmal behavior. For the moment, the king remained strong enough to protect her as he had his amba.s.sador, but events were unfolding with such speed and mystery that even he had begun to suspect her loyalty to the G.o.ds who had made his Cactus People strong.

Most of all, the priests were determined to execute Xochitl because they believed that the sixteen-year-old girl had bewitched the Perfect Youth and had kept him from performing his duties in proper style. But they could not find her, for on the day Ixmiq was sacrificed Lady Gray Eyes had antic.i.p.ated the priests' intentions and had secreted her in a cave under the royal palace, where the queen attended her as her pregnancy advanced.

”All this senseless sacrifice must soon end,” the queen said. ”Xochitl, the priests may kill you and me, as they seem determined to do, but this evil can't go on much longer.” Once she took the girl's hands in hers and asked, ”Tell me the truth, before you were sent to my son, did you realize how evil all this was?”

”I knew,” Xochitl said. ”My mother told me.”

”Oh my child, thank you!” Lady Gray Eyes started to weep and now it was the girl who comforted her.

”When my son is born,” Xochitl promised, ”I shall tell him the truth. So far it's been only women telling other women.”

At these words Lady Gray Eyes felt new tears well in her eyes and she clasped the young girl in her arms. ”I had forgotten how to weep,” the queen said.

In July, the seventh month of Xochitl's pregnancy, Lady Gray Eyes came into the cave in some excitement and carrying a package. ”I must tell you what has happened,” she began. Then abruptly she stopped speaking and began to kiss Xochitl.

”My beloved daughter,” she whispered, ”you are the only one to whom I can speak. Have a strong child. Have a son as beautiful as his father.”

”I know I will,” Xochitl replied.

'This must remain a secret between us,” Lady Gray Eyes insisted as she unrolled a length of parchment. ”My Uncle Xaca, amba.s.sador to the Aztecs, sent to me secretly a picture of the G.o.ds whom the strangers wors.h.i.+p, and here they are!” In the dim light of the cave the queen and her pregnant daughter-in-law unrolled the parchment and saw a drawing of a serene mother fondly holding on her knee a boy of one or two years, and in silence the two women contemplated the picture for a long time.

Finally Xochitl asked: ”What kind of G.o.ds are they?”

”You can see,” Lady Gray Eyes replied. ”A mother whose head is not a serpent. A son whose hands are not caked with blood.”

Again the two women reflected Upon the enormous moral chasm that separated the new G.o.ds from the ones they knew. Neither spoke, but years later Lady Gray Eyes reported what happened: ”So we sat there in the cave, my pregnant daughter and I, and I thought, For all these years we've been hiding in caves and wors.h.i.+ping hideous G.o.ds, while in other parts of the world people could look at the sky and wors.h.i.+p human beings like themselves who could weep. But what impressed us most that day was that the mother had a benign smile as if she loved everyone and hated none, and the difference between this kind of G.o.d and the ones we had known was so great that later, when we comprehended it more fully, Xochitl said, 'My son shall be born to these G.o.ds,' and it was so.”

But after the child's birth-it was a girl whom they named Stranger, as if she had come from nowhere so that she could not be traced back to her condemned mother-Xochitl sought sunlight and was detected by the priests and captured. For the part she had played in ruining the ultimate celebration of the Perfect Youth, she was sentenced to death, and both the king and his queen were forced to witness her execution. Xochitl, one of the most memorable of my ancestors, was the first Christian to die for her faith in Mexico and was later sanctified as Santa Maria of the Cave.

When Xochitl stood before the Mother G.o.ddess, she thought of the new G.o.ds, and when she looked down at Lady Gray Eyes, she knew that she was also thinking of Mary and the infant Christ. But when she turned to face death she saw five priests, their hair matted with blood, their fingernails black with caked blood, their bodies foul with tattoos and more blood. She saw a G.o.ddess whose head was a pair of serpents and whose entire being was an abomination. She looked up at the walls of the temple and they were black with smoke and blood, and fear, and death. The only clean thing she saw that day was the obsidian knife, and soon even that would be stained with blood.

With miraculous strength she broke free from the priests and shouted, ”The evil G.o.d must die! A new G.o.d is coming!” She was quickly seized and thrown on the convex slab, and hers was the last human heart on which the most obscene of all Mexican G.o.ds ever feasted.

That night, while the priests were in convocation to consider what steps must be taken to protect the city from the heresy that Xochitl had p.r.o.nounced, Lady Gray Eyes, wrapped in a gray serape such as peasant women wore, left the palace, and hurried through back streets to the home of the general's wife who had been brave enough to weep openly because her son had been needlessly sacrificed. Slipping in by the back entrance, she signaled the woman to join her in the garden, where they could speak.

”Do you remember that day when we talked of your son, and you wept?”

”Yes, and I wondered why you didn't weep, too.”

”I did, but I did it secretly. On many nights I have gone to sleep with tears.”

”Why have you come to see me?”

”Because the time has come.” For some moments the two women allowed these fateful words to hang in the air, then the general's wife said: ”I've waited for you to call me.”

”Do you know others we can trust?”

”Many, many.”

”Can you bring me two others like yourself?”

”Fifty.”

”No. We must rely on only a few trusted women. Find me two more like yourself.” When the woman nodded, Gray Eyes added: ”And each of us must bring a log-a piece of strong wood. Not so long that it will attract attention, but long enough to do the job.”

”What job?”

For a moment Gray Eyes was afraid to utter the fateful words and was silent, but finally she said in cold, measured tones: ”The destruction of that despicable G.o.ddess.”

The general's wife said only: ”Four of us, armed with logs. It shall be. But when?”

”If we delay, someone or something will betray us. The deed must be done tomorrow midnight after the last priest makes his rounds.”

The general's wife grasped the queen with both hands: ”We are committed-to the death,” and they parted.

Next night the four conspirators waited nervously at separate hiding places till midnight approached, then one at a time they crept to the top of the pyramid, three of the women carrying heavy logs, Gray Eyes a length of rope. They did not a.s.semble at the top until midnight rituals had been completed, then, when the last priest had departed, they crept to the G.o.ddess, and there Gray Eyes took upon herself the terrifying task of climbing that repulsive statue and fastening the rope around her neck. Working her way down, she ran quickly to the free end of the rope and began tugging while her three helpers, using the logs, tried to dislodge the horrible creature from her pedestal.

For a terrifying moment it seemed as if they were not strong enough to topple the Mother G.o.ddess, but when Gray Eyes gave a mighty pull, the monster quivered, and as the three women threw their full weight on the logs, the leverage broke the statue loose and with a resounding crash it fell and broke into fragments. According to plan, the four women sped from the scene the moment the statue appeared certain to crash, and they were far down the steps of the pyramid by the time a dozen priests were surveying the wreckage of their terrible G.o.ddess.

Three hundred years after that memorable night a German archaeologist recovered most of the fragments of the Mother G.o.ddess, and the rea.s.sembled deity can now be seen in the Palafox Museum, as repulsive as she was then.

I now move forward to a happier time, to 1601, when a doc.u.ment particularly precious to those who were born in the old City-of-the-Pyramid was written in the corner room of the House of Tile, the one I now occupied, by the girl who was born in the cave, Stranger, the first Christian child of the high valley: After my mother, X6chitl, was sacrificed to the Mother G.o.ddess the priests suspected that she had left behind a baby and they searched for me in order to kill me, too, but I was well hidden by my grandmother, Lady Gray Eyes, who brought me up. I never considered her as my grandmother but as my real mother, for she instructed me in all ways.

She was the first of our people to become a baptized Christian, even though she performed the rite herself and a.s.sured the Spanish priest who tried to rebaptize her later, ”I've already been a Christian for seven years.” When he said: ”But that's impossible. There were no priests here at that time,” she replied, ”We won't argue about it.” And after the king's death, it was she who kept our people together until they had adjusted to the Spanish ways.

But what I wish to relate today is what my grandmother told me when I was fourteen years old.

To catch the flavor of what my grandmother said that long afternoon when we sat in the garden, you must remember that she spoke in the year 1535, when the Spaniards were in complete command. She was fifty-eight years old and I think she wanted to rea.s.sure me that living by the rules of our Cactus People could be just as rewarding as living by those of Spain. She had accepted Christianity joyously, but that did not mean that she approved of all she saw in Spanish behavior. But I will let her speak for herself.

Gray Eyes: You are now fourteen and from the changes in your body it is clear that when you wish you may bear a child. This poses a great problem for girls, for there are many men who are willing to help her have a child, but there are few who are willing to understand the full responsibility of this act. Certainly I would he to you if I denied that conceiving children is pleasant, and it is a constant temptation to do so, for in this world there are many attractive men.

Stranger: Why is it that in a marriage there is always only one woman and one man?

Gray Eyes: Through many centuries we have found that that's the best way. Choose your man and be faithful to him in all things. Why men do not behave the same way with one woman I will not go into now; possibly it was because in the old days we killed so many of our best men in the temples that there were always surplus women to be taken care of and one man had to share himself with many wives. At any rate, for you there is to be one man, and he is to be your life. I have lived that way and have found it satisfactory.

Stranger: How does a girl learn to choose the right man?

Gray Eyes: I've heard from women who have known many men that they're generally much alike. Certainly I have never seen in men anything that would justify a woman's abandoning her good name and her family for one rather than another. Besides, if you are caught in adultery you will be stoned to death.

Stranger: If they're all alike, then it doesn't matter which one I choose, does it?

Gray Eyes: Now wait! Burn this into your mind. If you're fortunate and make the right choice the relations.h.i.+p between a man and woman can be like the rising of the sun or the love of a mother for her child. My mother told me that when General Tezozomoc returned from battle she could feel the earth tremble while he was still a mile away, so secure and steady was his step. I never once saw my father angry at my mother and she wors.h.i.+ped him so much that she went to her death because she treasured even the things he had touched. Keep that as your definition of love between a woman and a man.

Stranger: You speak as if most people don't find that kind.