"Like Pactli, the governor shares our grief, but he does not hold us to blame for the misbehavior of our wayward daughter. He said to me: 'I have always respected Head Nodder.' And he said to me: 'I would like to do something to assuage his disillusions and bereavement.' And he said to me: 'Do you suppose Head Nodder would accept a promotion to become Chief Quarrier in charge of all the quarries?"
My father's bowed head jerked up, and he exclaimed, "What?"
"Those are the words Red Heron spoke. In charge of all the quarries of Xaltócan. He said: 'It cannot make up for the shame the man has suffered, but it may demonstrate my regard for him.' "
I said again, "I do not believe any of this." The Lord Red Heron had never before spoken of my father as Head Nodder, and I doubted that he even knew of Tepetzalan's nickname.
Still ignoring my interjections, my mother said to my father, "We have been unfortunate in our daughter, but we are fortunate in having such a tecutli. Any other might have banished us all. Consider—Red Heron's own son has been mocked and insulted by our own daughter—and he offers you this token of compassion."
"Chief Quarrier..." my father mumbled, looking rather as if he had been hit on the head by one of his own quarry stones. "I would be the youngest ever—"
"Will you accept it?" my mother asked.
My father stammered, "Why—why—it is small recompense for losing a loved daughter, however errant she..."
"Will you accept it?" my mother repeated, more sharply.
"It is a hand extended in friendship," my father maundered on. "To refuse that—after my lord has once been insulted—it would be another insult, and even more—"
"Will you accept it?"
"Why—yes. I must. I will accept it. I could not do otherwise. Could I?"
"There!" said my mother, much pleased. She dusted her hands together as if she had just completed some disagreeably dirty task. "We may not ever be nobles, thanks to the wench whose name I will never again pronounce, but we are one step higher in the macehualtin. And since the Lord Red Heron is willing to overlook our disgrace, so will be everyone else. We can still hold our heads high, not hang them in shame. Now," she concluded briskly, "I must go out again. The women of the delegation are waiting for me to join them in sweeping the temple pyramid."
"I will walk partway with you, my dear," said my father. "I think I will take a look at the western quarry while the workers are on holiday. I have long suspected that the Master Quarrier in charge there has overlooked a significant stratum—"
As they went together out the door, my mother turned back to say, "Oh, Mixtli, will you pack your sister's belongings and stow them somewhere? Who knows, she may someday send a porter for them."
I knew she never would or could, but I did as I was bidden, and packed into baskets everything I could recognize as a possession of hers. Only one thing I did not pack and hide: her little bedside figurine of Xochiquetzal, goddess of love and flowers, the goddess to whom young girls prayed for a happy married life.
Alone in the house, alone with my thoughts, I translated my mother's story into what I was sure had happened in fact. Tzitzi had not escaped from her guardian women. They had duly delivered her to Pactli at the palace. He, in a fury—and in what manner I tried not to imagine—had put my sister to death. His father might have been fully in accord with the execution, but he was a notably fair-minded man, and he could not have condoned a killing in cold blood, done without due process of trial and condemnation. The Lord Red Heron would have had the choice, then, of bringing his own son to trial or of covering up the whole affair. So he and Pactli—and, I suspected, Pactli's long-time conspirator, my mother—had concocted the story of Tzitzi's escape and flight in a stolen canoe. And, to smooth things over even more neatly, to discourage questions or a renewed search for the girl, the governor had thrown a sop to my father.
After stowing Tzitzi's belongings, I packed those of my own which I had brought with me from Texcóco. The last thing I tucked into my portable wicker basket was the figurine of Xochiquetzal. Then I shouldered the basket and left the house, never to come back again. When I walked down toward the lakeshore, a butterfly accompanied me for a while, and several times fluttered in circles around my head.
I was fortunate enough to find a fisherman who was irreverently determined to go on working during the Ochpanitztli festival, and who was even then preparing to paddle out to await the twilight rising of the lake's whitefish. He agreed to row me all the way to Texcóco, for a payment considerably in excess of what he could have earned from a whole night's fishing.
On the way, I asked him, "Have you heard of any fisherman or fowler losing a canoe recently? Of anyone's acáli having floated away or been stolen?"
"No," he said.
I looked back at the island, sunlit and peaceful in the summer afternoon. It sprawled on the lake water as it always had and always would, except that it would never again know "the sound of small bells ringing"—or give another thought to such a small deprivation. The Lord Red Heron, the Lord Joy, my mother and father, my friends Chimali and Tlatli, all the other inhabitants of Xaltócan, they had already agreed to forget.
I had not.
"Why, Head Nodder!" exclaimed the Lady of Tolan, the first person I encountered on my way to my apartment in the palace. "You have come back early from your holiday at home."
"Yes, my lady. Xaltócan no longer feels like home to me. And I have many things to do here."
"Do you mean you were homesick for Texcóco?" she said, smiling. "Then we must have made you learn to like us here. I am delighted to think so, Head Nodder."
"Please, my lady," I said huskily, "do not call me that anymore. I have seen enough of head nodding."
"Oh?" she said, her smile fading as she studied my face. "Whatever name you prefer, then."
I thought of the several things I had to do, and I said to her, "Tlilectic-Mixtli is the name I was given from the book of divination and prophecies. Call me what I am. Dark Cloud."
I H S
S.C.C.M.
Sanctified, Caesarean, Catholic Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos, Our Lord King:
Most High and Mighty Majesty, our Sovereign Liege: from the City of Mexíco, capital of New Spain, this day of the Feast of the Dolors in the Year of Our Lord one thousand five hundred twenty and nine, greeting.
We regret that we cannot include, with these latest collected pages of manuscript, the pictures which Your Majesty requests in your most recent letter: "those pictures of persons, especially of female persons, drawn by the storyteller and referred to in this chronicle." The aged Indian himself, when questioned as to their whereabouts, laughs at the idea that such trivially indecent jottings should have been worth keeping all these years, or that, even if they had been of any value, they could have survived all these years.
We refrain from deploring the obscenities those drawings were intended to record, since we are certain that the pictures, even if available, would have conveyed nothing to Your Majesty. We know that our Imperial Sovereign's sense of appreciation is accustomed to works of art like those of the Master Matsys, whose painting of Erasmus, for example, is unmistakably recognizable as Erasmus. The persons portrayed in the daubs made by these Indians are seldom recognizable even as human beings, except in a few of the more representational wall frescoes and reliefs.
Your Most Lofty Majesty has earlier bidden your chaplain to secure "writings, tablets, or other records" to substantiate the tales told in these pages. But we assure you, Sire, that the Aztec exaggerates wildly when he speaks of writing and reading, drawing and painting. These savages never created or possessed or preserved any mementos of their history aside from some plicate paper folders, skins and panels bearing multitudes of primitive figures such as children might scribble. These would be inscrutable to any civilized eye, and were of use to the Indians only as mnemonic aids for their "wise men," who utilized the scrawls to jog their memory as they repeated the oral history of their tribe or clan. A dubious sort of history at best.