His wife's grandfather, Canautli, the aged historian, sat with us while we dined. The old man was one of the persons I had earlier seen eating the unlovely swamp greens, and he watched rather wistfully as we two Mixtlis savored our dish of delicate frogs' legs. I think old Canautli paid more attention to our lip smacking and chop licking than he did to my discourse. Hungry though I was, I managed, between mouthfuls, to tell briefly what had become of the Aztéca who had departed Aztlan: how they had become known as the Tenochca, then as the Mexíca, then as the foremost lords of The One World. The old man and the young one occasionally shook their heads in mute admiration—or maybe disbelief—as I recounted one achievement and advancement and war triumph after another.
The Tlatocapili interrupted once to murmur, "By the six fragments of the goddess, if the Mexíca have become all that grand, perhaps we ought to change the name of Aztlan." Meditatively, he tried two or three new names: "Place of the Mexíca. First Homeland of the Mexíca..."
I went on to give a brief biography of the Mexíca's current Uey-Tlatoani, Motecuzóma, then a lyrical description of his capital city of Tenochtítlan. The old grandfather sighed and closed his eyes, as if to see it better in his imagination.
I said, "The Mexíca could not have progressed so far and so fast if they had not availed themselves of the art of word knowing." Then I hinted heavily, "You too, Tlatocapili Mixtli, might make of Aztlan a grander city—make your people the equals of their Mexíca cousins—if you learned how to preserve the spoken word in lasting pictures."
He shrugged and said, "We have not yet suffered by not knowing."
Nevertheless, his interest seemed to quicken when I showed him—using a slender frog bone to scratch the hard earth of the floor—how simply his own name could be permanently graven.
"Yes, that is a cloud shape," he conceded. "But how could it say Dark Cloud?"
"Merely color it with a dark paint, gray or black. A single picture is capable of infinite useful variations. Paint that figure blue-green, for example, and you have the name Jadestone Cloud."
"Is that so?" he said, and then, "What is jadestone?" And the gulf gaped again between us. He had never seen or even heard of the mineral held sacred by all civilized peoples.
I muttered something about the night getting late, that I would tell more on the morrow. My cousin offered me a pallet for the night, if I did not object to sleeping in a room full of some other probable male relations of mine. I thanked him and accepted, and concluded my evening's discourse by explaining how I had come to Aztlan: tracking backward along my ancestors' route of march, trying to verify a legend. I turned to old Canautli and said:
"Perhaps you would know, venerable Rememberer of History. When they left here, did they carry a sufficiency of supplies that they could have made provision for a necessary return?"
He did not reply. The venerable Rememberer had fallen asleep.
But the next day he said, "Your ancestors took almost nothing with them when they left here."
I had breakfasted together with the whole "palace family," on tiny fish and mushrooms grilled together, and some kind of hot herb drink. Then my namesake had gone out on some civic business, leaving me to converse with the aged historian. But that day, unlike the night before, it was Canautli who did most of the talking.
"If all our Rememberers have spoken truly, those people who departed took only what belongings they could pack in a hurry, and only meager rations for the march. And they took the image of their villainous new god: a wooden image newly and roughly and hastily made, because of the urgency of their going. But that was untold sheaves of years ago. I daresay your people have built many finer statues to replace it since then. We of Aztlan have a different high deity, and only the one image of it. Oh, of course we recognize all the other gods, and have recourse to them when necessary. Tlazolteotl, for instance, cleanses us of our sins; Atlaua fills our fowlers' nets, and so on. But only one reigns supreme. Come, cousin, let me show you."
He took me out of the house and along the city's shell streets. As we walked, his birdlike little black eyes flung an occasional look sideways from their nests of wrinkles, a shrewd and humorous glance at me, and he said:
"Tepetzalan, you have been courteous, or at least discreet. You have not spoken your opinion of us, the remaining Aztéca. But permit me to guess. I would wager that you consider us the dregs that were left in Aztlan when the more worthy ones went away."
True, that was my opinion. I might have said something to put a slightly better face on it, but he went on:
"You believe that our forefathers were too lazy or listless or timid to raise their eyes to some beckoning vision of glory. That they feared the risk and so lost the opportunity. That your own ancestors, by contrast, ventured boldly forth from here in the certain knowledge that they were destined to be exalted above all other peoples of the world."
"Well..." I said.
"Here is our temple." Canautli stopped at the entrance to a low building of the customary crushed-shell plastering, but with many fine shells of conch and other sea creatures inset entire. "Our only temple, and a humble one, but if you will enter..."
I did, and with my topaz I looked at what stood there, and I said, "That is Coyolxauqui," and I said truthfully, admiringly, "That is a superb work of art."
"You recognize her?" The old man sounded a trifle surprised. "I should have thought that your people would have forgotten her by now."
"I confess, venerable one, that she is now regarded only as a minor goddess among our many gods. But the legend is one of our oldest, and it is still remembered."
To tell it briefly, reverend friars, the legend was this. Coyolxauqui, whose name means Adorned with Bells, was one of the godling children of the high goddess Coatlicue. And that goddess Coatlicue, though already a mother many times over, became gravid again when one day a feather floated down upon her from the skies. (How that could impregnate any female, I do not know, but such things happened in many old stories. And it would seem that the daughter-goddess Coyolxauqui was also skeptical when her mother told of it.) Coyolxauqui gathered her brothers and sisters and said, "Our mother has brought shame upon herself and us her children. We must put her to death for it."
However, the child in Coatlicue's womb was the war god Huitzilopóchtli. He heard those words and he sprang instantly out of his mother, full grown and already armed with an obsidian maquahuitl. He slew his scheming sister Coyolxauqui and cut her in pieces and flung those dismembered parts to the sky, where their blood stuck them to the moon. He likewise threw all his other sisters and brothers to the sky, where they have since been stars indistinguishable from the older stars. That newborn war god Huitzilopóchtli, of course, was ever afterward the chief god of us Mexíca, and we accorded to Coyolxauqui no importance whatever. We erected no statues of her or temples for her, and we dedicated no feast days to her.
"To us," said the old historian of Aztlan, "Coyolxauqui has always been the goddess of the moon, and always will be, and we worship her in that guise."
I did not understand, and I said so. "Why worship the moon, venerable Canautli? I ask in all respect. But the moon is of no benefit to mankind, except for its night light, and that is dim at its brightest."
"Because of the sea tides," said the old man, "and those are of benefit to us. This lake of ours, at its western end, is separated from the ocean by only a low rock barrier. When the tide rises, it spills fish and crabs and shellfish into our lake, and they stay here when the tide waters recede. Catching those creatures for our food is much easier in this shallow lake than it would be in the deep sea outside. We are grateful to be so lavishly and punctiliously supplied."