We started away, but I turned back to ask, "That Yaki woman—G'nda Ké—whatever became of her?"
"When the tlatocapíli stormed the seven caves, she was among the first slain. But she was known to have coupled with several of her male followers. So there is no doubt that her blood still runs in the veins of many Mexíca families. Perhaps in all of them. That would account for their still being as warlike and sanguinary as she was."
I will never know why Canaútli refrained from telling me right then: that I myselfvery likely contained at least a drop of that Yaki woman's blood, that I could certainly claim to be Aztlan's foremost example of an Aztéca-Mexíca "family connection" since I had been born of an Aztécatl mother and sired by that Mexícatl Mixtli. Maybe the old man hesitated because he deemed it his granddaughter's place to disclose or withhold that family secret.
And I really do not know, either, why she did withhold it. When I was a child, the population of Aztlan was so small and close-knit that my illegitimacy had to have been widely known. An ordinary woman of the macehuáli class would have been severely censured and probably chastised if she had borne a bastard. But Cuicáni, being sister to the then tlatocapíli and later the Uey-Tecútli, hardly had to fear gossip and scandal. Still, she kept me in ignorance of my paternity until that horrific day in the City of Mexíco. I can only suspect that she must have hoped, during all the intervening years, that that other Mixtli would someday return to Aztlan, and to her embrace, and that he would rejoice in finding that the two of them had a son.
To be honest, I do not even know why I never, in childhood or later, evinced any inquisitiveness about my parentage. Well, Yeyac and Améyatl had a father but no mother; I had a mother but no father. I must have reasoned that a situation so self-evident could only be normal and commonplace. Why ponder on it?
My mother would occasionally make a motherly proud remark—"I can see, Tenamáxtli, that you will grow up to be a handsome man, strong of features, just like your father." Or, "You are getting very tall for your age, my son. Well, so was your father much taller than most other men." But I paid little heed to such comments; every mother fondly believes that her hatchling will prove an eagle.
Of course, if anyone at all had ever voiced an insinuating hint, I would have been prodded to ask questions about that absent father. But I was the nephew and the son of the lord and the lady occupying Aztlan's palace; no one with good sense would ever have risked Mixtzin's displeasure. Neither was I ever taunted by playmates nor neighbor children. And, at home, Yeyac and Améyatl and I lived together in amity and harmony, more like half brothers and sister than like cousins. Or so we did, I should say, until a certain day.
IV
Yeyac was then fourteen years old and I was seven, newly named and newly attending school. We were living in the splendid new palace by then, each of us young ones glorying in having his or her own sleeping room, and being childishly jealous of our separate privacies. So I was vastly surprised when one day, about twilight, Yeyac stepped into my room, uninvited and without asking permission. It happened that he and I were alone in the building—except for any servants who may have been working in the kitchen or elsewhere downstairs—because our elders, Mixtzin and Cuicáni, had gone to the city's central square to watch Améyatl participate in a public dance being performed by all the girls of The House of Learning Manners.
What mainly surprised me was that Yeyac entered, quietly, while my back was turned to the room door, so I did not even know he was there until his hand reached under my mantle, between my legs, and—as if weighing them—gently bouncedmy tepúli and olóltin. As startled as if a claw-clacking crab had got under my mantle, I gave a prodigious jump in the air. Then I whirled and stared at Yeyac, bewildered and disbelieving. My cousin had not only breached my privacy, he had handled my private parts.
"Ayya, touchy, touchy!"he said, half smirking. "Still the little boy, eh?"
I spluttered, "I was not aware... I did not hear..."
"Do not look so indignant, cousin. I was but comparing."
"Doing what?" I said, mystified.
"I daresay mine must have been as puny as yours when I was your age. How would you like, small cousin, to have what I have got now?"
He raised his mantle, unloosed his máxtlatl loincloth, and there emerged—sprang forth, actually—a tepúli like none I had ever seen before. Not that I had seen many, only those in evidence when I and my playmates frolicked naked in the lake. Yeyac's was much longer, thicker, erect, engorged and almost glowing red at its bulbous tip. Well, his full name was Yeyac-Chichiquíli, I reminded myself—Long Arrow—so perhaps the name-bestowing old seer had been truly prescient in this case. But Yeyac's tepúli looked so swollen and angry that I asked, sympathetically:
"Is it sore?
He laughed a loud laugh. "Only hungry," he said. "This is the way a man's is supposedto be, Tenamáxtli. The bigger, the better. Do not you wish you possessed the like?"
"Well," I said hesitantly, "I expect I will. When I am of age. Like you."
"Ah, but you should start exercising it now, cousin, because it improves and enlarges, the more it is employed. That way, you can be sureto have an impressive organ when you are man-grown."
"Employ it how?"
"I will show you," he said. "Take mine in your grasp." And he took my hand and put it there, but I yanked it back again, saying severely:
"You have heard the priest warn that we should not play with those parts of ourselves. You are in the same cleanliness class as I at The Learning Manners House."
(Yeyac was one of those older boys who had had to start, along with us really young ones, at the most elementary school level. And now, though he had worn the máxtlatl for a year or more, he had not yet qualified to go on to a calmécac.)
"Manners!" he snorted scornfully. "You really are an innocent. The priests warn us against pleasuring ourselves, only because they hope that sometime we will pleasure them."
"Pleasure?" I said, more befuddled than ever.
"Of course the tepúli is for pleasure, imbecile! Did you think it was only to make water with?"
"That is all mine has ever done," I said.
Yeyac said impatiently, "I toldyou—I will show you how to have pleasure with it. Watch. Take mine in your hand and do this to it." He was briskly rubbing his own clasped hand up and down the length of his tepúli. Now he let go of it, hugged me to him and closed myhand on it—though mine only barely encircled the girth of it.
I imitated, as well as I could, what he had been doing. He closed his eyes, and his face got almost as red as his tepúli bulb, and his breathing became quick and shallow. After a while of nothing else happening, I said, "This is very boring."
"And you are very awkward," he said, his voice quavery. "Tighter, boy! And faster! And do not interrupt my concentration."
After another while I said, "This is extremelyboring. And how is my doing this supposed to benefit mine?"
"Pochéoa!"he growled, which is a mildly dirty word. "All right. We will exercise them both at once." He let me take my hand away, but with his own resumed the stroking of his tepúli. "Lie down here on your pallet. Lift up your mantle."