Clash of Star-Kings (3 page)

Only not yet.

His heart had begun to beat faster at the prospect, as it had used to at the prospect of a woman before he had ever really had one. But the joy of making a woman part of himself was a transient joy and this other anticipated pleasure would be a permanent joy. And so he hesitated. For, with every delight there is a sorrow, and the delightsome life of the Moxtomi Indians had a very sorrowful side, indeed. Almost every bit of it had its roots in poverty and this poverty was due entirely to the loss of the greater part of the
ejido
lands. He told himself that he might not do it, after all…. But underneath the thin meniscus of confidence in his ability to prosper as a modern man was a deep certainty, part pleasure and part pain, that his future lay not in an office or an apartment but in the small huts of the Indians, warm only in love and history.

There was, of course, never any doubt in his mind that the Indians in question were the Moxtomi. The Tenocha Indians were infinitely the more numerous, incomparably the more powerful, and there was even a vigorous movement among them to give official status to their language, the Nahua dialect, which they called
Meshika
. The fact that Luis knew very well that his maternal grandmother had been a Moxtomí did not blind him to the probable fact that the blood of the Tenocha flowed in his veins as well as a heritage on both familial sides. But who and what, after all, were the Tenocha? Who else but the Aztecs! And were they not themselves the seed of a pre-Spanish Conquest? They were themselves aliens here on the upper slopes of the great valley. The Moxtomí, the last and furthest-flung of the Toltecs — it was to them that this land rightfully belonged.

And all the while Luis’s feet led him up through the stone-strewn and balsam-scented paths.

But his mind was elsewhere and on a multitude of things.

He wasn’t going up to El Pueblo de San Juan Bautista Moxtomí merely to enjoy the friendly presence of such acquaintances as, say, Tío Santiago Tue, or Domingo Deuh, who was more of Luis’s own age. There were
things
he wanted to discuss with them, a variety of exciting things, and he wanted their opinions. There, up ahead, a huddle of brown brushwood and adobe, he saw the pueblo. It was still a good way off. Luis began to form his thoughts into mental conversation.

“There are soldiers in town, Uncle Santiago, soldiers from ‘Mexico’ with horses and rifles. Why, do you suppose? I don’t really think that this time they’ve come to expel any Indios from Indio lands; their business seems to lie only in Los Remedios
municipalidad
. But there’s a further question, you see —
what
business? It has to do with Monte Sagrado, I’m sure … everyone is sure of that. Some say that they’re here to keep order at the feria of the Holy Hermit. Some say there’s going to be, I don’t know, some kind of trouble with the procession. You know that not everyone in town is the
Heremito’
s friend — particularly not in the
Barrio Occidental —
that’s a mean, tough neighborhood; you know that. Today I heard a saying I haven’t heard in a long time:
Scratch a Nahua and you find a Nagual
…. What do you think that really means?

“And others are saying, Tío Santi, that the soldiers are here for another reason altogether. They say that the government is going to take away the Tlaloc that’s in the cave under the Monte and take it to ‘Mexico’ — I don’t know why. And there’s talk that this would be a bad thing, that if they do this the Tlaloc will be angry and that there will never be any rain again in the whole Valley. Some are angry about this and some are just excited and of course some don’t care at all.”

The turn in the path at this point brought Luis face to face with a view which might alone make the fortune of a hotelier. To his left the great Valley of Mexico sloped downward like a precious bowl, and he could see the farms and fields below the rim of forest. Very far below him, and seeming quite small, was his native hateful town of Los Remedios, a huddle of red-tiled roofs at the foot of Monte Sagrado — so high it seemed from down there — yet from here a mere hummock, apparent only because crowned with the church. More fields, more forests, dwindling, dwindling … a tiny wisp of smoke: the
mas o menos
steam locomotive panting its way uphill from Amecameca. And, to the left of the misty huddle which was Amecameca, from here the land fell away abruptly into another valley and another state and another and altogether different climate. To Luis’s right the land rose unmarked by man except by the meager
milpitas
of the Moxtomí, rivulets and gorges and woods and great riven boulders: the Pass of Cortes like a line of demarcation between the gigantic sleeping woman in her white shroud which was Ixtaccihuatl and the looming cone of glistening ice-clad Popocatepetl.

Luis gazed and sighed and resumed his walk and his cerebral conversation. “Domingo Deuh, my friend, have you and your people seen the lights which are said to have been shining and moving about on
los volcanes?
I myself think that I have, once or twice, but I am not entirely sure — perhaps they were stars peeping out from behind clouds, or
aeroplanes
passing high and silently between the mountains and myself. Still, many others and some of them sober and serious witnesses have claimed to have seen them, and in such a manner that neither stars nor
aeroplanes
could account for them. Do you know anything of this? Have your people formed an opinion?

“And what of the smokes from Popo? Mountain-climbers have come down with reports of such. Did they lie? Were they mistaken? Has the long-slumbering Smoking Mountain begun to stir again? Or have interlopers descended to dynamite the sulfur inside the crater and carry it away to sell without having to pay taxes on it? And are these smokes only from their blasting, or from fires started, by their thievery?”

Ahead, dogs began to bark. Luis selected a stout stick, advanced the short remaining way, running over in his mind his concluding sentences. “Are none of these reports true, my friends of the Moxtomi? I would like to speak to you about them, and you to speak of them to me … keeping in mind what you have told me, that there is a meaning to be gained from falsehood, as well as from truth — ”

The lean and hungry dogs of the hamlet came hurtling and howling at him; he flourished his stick, stooped and rose, making the gesture of throwing a stone at them.
“Sucsé!”
he cried.
“Cuidado!”
They retreated, still glaring at him with shining, hungry eyes, but still leapt up and down and barked frenziedly — much more so than usual. He wondered at this —

But not when he saw the uproar in the hamlet itself. The people, usually so quiet and sedate (though never of course so subdued up here as when down below in the lands where Castellano was spoken), were gathered in the open, waving their arms and all but shouting at each other, now and then leaving one group to walk rapidly — or even run! — to another. Luis stopped stock-still for a moment, astonished; then walked on, hailing them. His first syllables were almost drowned out in the hubbub; his final ones fell upon so absolute a silence that they faltered and stopped.

They whirled around and looked at him, and he could see the shutters falling behind their eyes, the masks sliding down over their faces. He did not seem to see anyone precisely walk off, the gathering seemed to sink away, somehow, to be absorbed into the houses and alleys and as ants from a disturbed area will appear to melt away into the clods of the field. And, by the time he had walked over to Tío Santiago Tuc and Domingo Deuh, who awaited him gravely and sedately … and totally expressionlessly … no other man or woman was beside them. This so disturbed him and his thoughts that he was long in speaking again, and all the while the black eyes in the brown faces (one smooth and young, the other graven and old) looked into an invisible hole between his eyes and through it and out beyond again.

He had come for nothing; this was clear, certain. He might just as well have been the tax collector, for all that any trace of confidence was visible. But he would not give up: it was more than that he wanted to discuss specifics, he would (he felt)
oblige
them to remember and to restore the atmosphere of that especial relationship which had previously been between them. He knew it would be useless to ask them, directly, why they were agitated before he arrived and why they were now behaving to him as they were. So he began to speak as had been in his mind to, all the long way up, in hopes that not only might he get meaningful answers, but that, in the course of conversation, the stiffness between them would melt away and the former easiness return.

Soldiers in town: why?
How would we know, Señor?

Trouble with the procession?
Up here, we hear nothing
.

Take away the Tlaloc?
Oh … Ah … Mmmm …
(
sigh
)
…

Lights on the volcanoes?
We are ignorant Indios …

Smoke on Popo?
Popo? Smoke? We see nothing
.

And a silence fell, and Luis, overcome with disappointment, slumped … winced … sighed. Suddenly, a small, a very small sign of a smile appeared on the face of old Tío Santi. He patted Luis on the shoulder, took him by the arm, urged him along, did not even let him look back to see if Domingo Deuh was following. Luis relaxed into a wonderful feeling of relief … more than relief … of happiness. It had all been merely a test! And he had, somehow, ¿
quien sabe?
passed it: and now the old man was about to reveal everything to him…. It had been a shock, though!

The two of them stooped and entered a hut and sat down on their haunches. Old Tue said something in Moxtomi, patted Luis again on the shoulder, and left the hut. And the two old women and the very young girl bestirred themselves. He peered about, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness, saw only the ordinary accoutrements of a poor Indian household, and a number of sober-faced babies, and waited for the old man to return.

“Long walk … you,” the older old woman said, speaking in a deliberately debased Moxtomí, as though he were incapable of understanding anything better.

He said, in his best command of the language, “Has Tata Santiago very far to go before he returns?”

“Yes, very far — you. Tired. Hungry. Eat — eat,” she said, as though not understanding, and gave him tortillas with beans and a bit of chili. The other old woman poured him some stale pulque. And the girl began to roast a handful of squash seeds over the tiny charcoal fire. It was not until he had dutifully cracked the last of these that it occurred, belatedly, to Luis, that old Tue was not coming back at all! And he ceased, suddenly, to be the bewildered friend of the humble and dispossessed autochthones and became, totally, the outraged Mexican male upon whom an insult disparaging his
machismo
— his maleness — has been put.

Bad enough that he, having come with warmth, should be greeted with coldness! Bad enough that his sincere inquiries had been repulsed with assumed ignorance and feigned indifference. Worse, he had been tricked! But worst of all, he had been given over to the custody and the ministrations of women, two old hags and a child, as though he were no more of a man than the infants on the earthen floor! It was not to be tolerated! Rage choked him — they did not think he was a man, then? Not worthy of masculine courtesy? So — he would show them if he were
macho
or
hembra!
He half-rose from where he was sitting….

But the sudden ugly flame, which sprang more from outrage than from lust, died down quickly. The women were too old, dry and shriveled like mushrooms, and the girl was far too young — it would be like mounting a boy…. Besides, this was their village, they would certainly make a commotion, and Luis might indeed cease very suddenly to be very much
macho
at all after the men were finished with him.

He muttered a Moxtomí thanks and farewell which almost choked him, and walked off with stiff and angry strides away from the cold and meager hamlet and its empty streets.

With distance, however, came reflection; with reflection, forgiveness. Why should they have trusted him? What, after all, did they know of him? His overtures of friendship might, for ought they knew, have been false. Wasn’t his father a landowner? If he, Luis, were a Moxtomí, with a memory of loss of tribal communal lands which had gone on over the course of over four centuries, it might very well seem cause for suspicion…. Only — Why,
now?
Why had suspicion of his intentions (if such it was) never manifested itself before? Or, at least, never in this form? What had suddenly upset them … for they had, he now clearly recalled, been upset
before
he arrived. The source of their mistrust of him must therefore lie in something apart from him … and, almost certainly, in something apart from
them…
.

What could this be?

He had no doubt that it lay, somehow, in the very matters he had desired to question them about; which he, in fact,
had
questioned them about. And since they would, and perhaps really could, tell him nothing, it thus behooved him to find out the answers himself and then
tell them
. His imagination began to soar once again, and, looking down from mental heights upon a landscape only partly imaginary, saw things it had been accustomed to see before. But now it saw clearly in detail as well as in outline things of which it had previously seen as only semi-concealed hints. He saw these so clearly and so richly that it no longer was possible for him to doubt them. In his disappointments with the modern world ruled by
guerros
and
blancos
of “purer” Spanish blood than he, in his sullen retreat from it, he had failed to appreciate that his knowledge of it could make it possible for him to use it for his own (and his friends’) ends — and thus totally to defeat it. Would this be
machismo
or not?

Thus and therefore …

He would not only find out the answers to the mysterious questions which must be not merely puzzling but vexing the Moxtomí — and thus gain their full friendship and confidence — he would do more than that; he would solve, somehow, (details did not concern him now) the basic Moxtomi question of all: how to regain the lost
ejido
lands, and by regaining them transform the Moxtomí from the huddled handful they now were to the prosperous people they had once been, and — with the help of Luis Lorenzo Santangel — would be once again.