The Goldsmith's Daughter (4 page)

Both prepared themselves with rites of penitence, just as a new emperor does when he comes to the throne. Then the other gods prepared a vast, flaming pyre and the splendid Tecuciztécatl made lavish offerings of sweet-smelling incense and the brightly coloured feathers of the sacred quetzal before it. But Nanahuatzin laid out something more simple: blood-covered thorns with which he had pierced his own body.

Both gods approached the fire. Tecuciztécatl was driven back by the dreadful heat. Four times he tried, but he had neither the courage nor the will to enter the flames. Without fear the scarred, imperfect Nanahuatzin stepped into the pyre; and, as his earthly body burned to ashes, the fifth sun was born. Shamed by his own cowardice, Tecuciztécatl also threw himself on the flames. He became the pale moon.

The earth was lit, but the fifth sun hung exhausted and motionless in the heavens. Only when the gods cut their bodies, feeding him with their own hearts' blood, did he have the strength to move across the sky.

Thus the age of the fifth sun dawned. With blood. With sacrifice.

With death.

And – so the priests foretold – it would draw to a close with earthquakes and destruction.

By that strange light Mitotiqui and I clasped each other for comfort, trembling in fear of what was to come.

Full well we knew that the age into which we had been born would end in fire.

T
he flame blazed in the sky all that night, and the many nights that followed. For almost a year the spectacular omen hung above us. To begin with, fear held the city in its icy fingers, but when month followed month and no disaster came, it waned. Though it did not entirely vanish, it was put away in a dark corner, where it could be overlooked and ignored.

I grew accustomed to the warm glow that filled our courtyard, and it gave me comfort. The night was a time of terror when the sun battled for its very life, and all feared lest it failed in its struggle and rose no more. So when at last the strange sky fire faded and ceased I missed it sorely, for the night seemed darker and blacker than it had ever been. Whether it was truly so, or whether my troubled heart and bitter thoughts coloured my perception, it was impossible to tell. For when the omen vanished, Mayatl decided it was time I learnt to weave.

I was then ten years old, and had been aiding her in the household tasks since I was four – a little later than most girls, who assisted their mothers almost as soon as they could walk. As a small child, my weak stature had bought me a time of freedom. But when I survived my early childhood, and racing against my brother had made me grow strong, I became condemned to a life of domesticity.

It had started with sweeping and scrubbing, tasks I did not greatly object to, for they gave me access to my father's workshop. When he was absent I was sent there by Mayatl to dust and sweep, but I spent more time examining his designs and handling polished gems than I ever did in cleaning. Secretly, alone, I learnt the weight of fine stones and observed the flaws that marred those of lesser value. I studied the settings he worked, seeing how they displayed the gems to their best advantage.

But the goldsmith's art was not for me. Girls could not be craftsmen. At seven, I had to learn the art of cooking tortillas.

My first attempt had been a disaster. I had rushed the grinding of the maize, being too hasty with the heavy stone to produce a smooth flour. Likewise, I had hurried the shaping and rolling of the dough, so desperate had I been to finish the chore and get back to Mitotiqui. I recall my father chewing bravely on the hard, lumpen tortilla, saying nothing but smiling vaguely with encouragement until he gave a sudden cry and clutched his jaw.

It seemed I had done my task so poorly that a piece of grit had become mingled with the grain and chipped his tooth. My heart had beaten fast with shame for many days as his mouth swelled in wordless accusation. He had finally had his tooth pulled, and, although he never once reproached me, I made a solemn vow then to cause him no further injury. I would be careful. But the dreariness of grinding corn was an endless source of irritation to me. And I burned with jealousy that while I knelt rolling the stone back and forth, Mitotiqui was allowed to follow my father and assist him when he worked gold into fine ornaments.

Mitotiqui was destined for glory on the field of battle, but a warrior is not always at war. Only in the appropriate season did our army set forth to fight the ancient enemy, Tlaxcala. Therefore my father reasoned that Mitotiqui also needed to learn the goldsmith's art.

Envy of my brother soured my temper. I had not forgotten my stolen glimpse of the emperor's adornments. Indeed, each time I set foot in the city streets I could not help but glance at nobles to assess the craftsmanship of the jewels they wore. Tortilla-making seemed such dull, repetitious labour in comparison. To relieve the tedium I often moulded shapes in the dough – the gods, the tiny hairless dogs that were the pets of noblemen, the flowers that tumbled from the roof of every house – before I had to squash them and roll the dough flat. Such usage did not improve the flavour of my tortillas, nor soften their texture. I was a pitifully poor cook, for I saw no reward in the task. Hour after hour I pummelled and flattened and baked, only to see my work disappear in the course of a single meal!

I complained of it crossly to Mitotiqui. “What our father crafts – what you craft – will last for ever. Anything I make vanishes down your throat in the blink of an eye!”

“You think so?” Mitotiqui's voice was deadly serious, but his eyes gleamed teasingly. “I assure you, Itacate, you are mistaken.”

“How?”

“Your tortillas are so heavy that they take months to pass through my insides.” He rubbed his stomach. “In fact, I think there is one lodged just here that you baked last year.”

I cried with indignation, and cuffed Mitotiqui as he mimed chewing, and gave a perfect imitation of my father smashing his tooth.

“Your tortillas are good, solid creations. They are immortal, Itacate, like the gods.” He nudged me. “Perhaps our emperor should use them to pave his palace. They would last longer than terracotta.”

I fell upon him in play, beating him around the head with the palm of my hand. And so, with laughter, my brother lightened the weight of my domestic burden. But even he could not ease my horror of weaving, for by then he was attending school.

I was ten. In five or six years my father would approach Nemaneoanoliztli, the matchmaker, and she would begin the search to find me a suitable husband. It went unsaid, but I knew well that a good match was unlikely to be made: the predictions at my birth made certain of that. Nevertheless, Mayatl was determined that I should learn all the womanly skills that would be expected of a wife.

My life acquired a deadly, dull discipline. Mornings were taken up with grinding maize and cooking, sweeping and cleaning. The rest of the daylight hours were spent spinning and weaving. We had a constant need of cloth not only for clothing, but also for bartering at market. Well-woven fabric could be exchanged for meat and vegetables.

When Mayatl first fitted me to the loom, I felt as though a huge chain were being fastened about my waist, pinning me to the hearth. The strap was passed behind my back and tied to the first bar of wood. Mayatl then tied the second – the loom bar – to a post in the courtyard. Here I was to kneel, using my weight to straighten the warp threads that ran between the two bars. Inside that contraption I felt as helpless and trapped as a trussed chicken.

Mayatl then showed me how to pass the weft thread over and under the strands of warp, using a heddle stick and shed rod to lift the alternating strands. With a steadily sinking heart, I began. I knelt until my neck ached, my fingers were raw, my knees had lost all feeling, and the sun had sunk into the darkness of Mictlan. Back and forth I passed the heddle, over and under, thread by tiny, narrow, hair-thin thread.

At the end of that first day, in the still darkness while the rest of the city slept, I wept. I felt I could work all year and still see only a fingernail's length of fabric! And if I wanted to follow the design that was Mayatl's instruction, I did not know how I would endure it. It was so complex, and yet so repetitive! I could not even talk, or listen to Mayatl's tales, for the concentration I needed was so great. Not even the story of my birth could relieve the tedium of the task.

As day succeeded day, month followed month and the years moved on, I became more skilled, but I grew to loathe the cloths I created. They were so flat. So dull. So unvarying. I dreaded the moment after the noonday meal when we had finished eating, and I could avoid my loom no longer. Each piece I wove seemed to drain me of energy, of spirit, of life. I dreamt of fabric, the patterns dancing before my eyes even when the lids were shut.

To evade this domestic oppression I began more and more to retreat to a place deep inside my head. Into my cloths I threaded stories of escape. The heddle stick became myself – weaving between the reeds at the edge of the lake, between boulders as I climbed the hills, between stout trunks of trees in distant jungles. When I beat the weft threads into position, I journeyed further away. By the time each piece was finished, in my mind I had arrived amongst a strange new tribe of men, and I was weaving freely amongst them in a great, triumphant dance.

While I stayed, bound with tight cords of resentment to my loom, my brother was schooled. He went not to the telpochcalli, where the son of a goldsmith might be expected to attend, but to the calmecac along with the city's nobility, for his propitious birth had marked him for great deeds. Here he excelled both in learning and in popularity, as the gods had blessed Mitotiqui with a spirit that charmed everyone he met.

Each day I eagerly awaited his return; I found our home empty and lifeless without him and our daily separation miserably hard to endure. I had always thought us to be two halves of one whole, and in his absence I felt myself to be a shrivelled, withered thing. When he came back, he would sit with me awhile, telling me of what he had learnt. His world had expanded as mine shrank, and I devoured his knowledge with the same fervour as he devoured his food.

One afternoon he returned home wielding a cudgel, a fearsome, flat-sided weapon with many sharp obsidian blades set into the edges. In high spirits he demonstrated to me the elaborate steps of the ritual dance that preceded any battle.

“And then I must approach my enemy thus,” he declared, grimacing menacingly.

I laughed at his expression, as he intended I should.

“Can you not just beat your opponent over the head?” I asked. “Would it not be a swifter way to dispatch him?”

Mitotiqui sighed dramatically. “The object is not to kill, Itacate, as well you know. I must take live captives for sacrifice.” He swung his cudgel again.

“You are likely to remove their legs if you do it like that,” I replied. “Then how will they climb the temple steps?”

“Wait and see, Itacate. The blood I take shall make the sun rise. I am an important man. Do not forget it.”

He spoke in jest, but his remark grated, setting my teeth on edge.

As children we had always talked as equals. Fool that I was, I had expected it to remain so. We had always delighted in flights of fancy, each of us striving to top the other with the wildness of our imaginings. But now our conversation was lopsided. Daily my brother came back with tales of new triumphs and nuggets of knowledge that gleamed like gold. And what could I tell Mitotiqui in return?

He would say, “Today we studied the movement of the stars and assessed the sacred calendar. And then we practised the skills of oratory, debating whether the gods are separate deities, or aspects of one vast whole as the poet Nezahualcoyotl thought.”

Was I to reply, “Today
I
studied the movement of the grinding stone and assessed the inordinate amount of time it takes to turn maize into flour. Then I knelt for hours within my loom and debated with myself whether I should use the red or the black thread, and if anyone in the entire world would care a grain of salt either way”?

Mitotiqui perfected imitations of his fellow students and the many priests who taught him. He copied their speech and their way of walking with deadly accuracy. And how was I to entertain him in return? By mimicking the ant who carried a fragment of corn across the courtyard while I spun thread? By impersonating the spider who repaired its web above me with greater skill than I could ever master? For I neither met nor talked with anyone else!

I could say nothing. So while Mitotiqui became more eloquent, more glorious, more shining, as he grew to manhood, I became his opposite: tight-lipped, dark, dull. If we were parts of one whole, we were no longer twin halves. He was the corn's kernel, growing and ripening to perfect fruition; I was the husk – empty, dried out, discarded and useless. Thus it went on. Until the day I crossed him, and tainted his golden glow.

We were by that time fifteen years old. My brother had continued to assist our father in his workshop, and one evening he brought a necklet into the house to show me. It was Mitotiqui's own work – he had made it unaided – and he was proud of his craftsmanship.