"Ayyo, it is good to see you again... er... Cuatl..."
"Tenamáxtli, Cuatl Alonso."
"Cuatl Tenamáxtli, to be sure."
"You told me I might come and talk to you again."
"By all means, though I did not expect you so soon. What can I do for you, brother?"
"Teach me to speak and understand Spanish, if you would, brother notarius."
He gave me a long look before he asked, "Why?"
"You are the only Spaniard I have met who speaks mylanguage. And you said it makes you useful as a communicator between your people and mine. Perhaps I could be equally useful. If none other of your countrymen can manage to learn our Náhuatl—"
"Oh, I am not the only one who speaks it," he said. "But the others, as they become fluent, get variously assigned to other parts of the city or out in the farther reaches of New Spain."
"Then will you teach me?" I persisted. "Or if you cannot, maybe one of those others..."
"I can and I will," he said. "I cannot make time to give you private lessons, but I do teach a class every day at the Colegio de San José. That is a school established solely for the education of you indios—of you people. Every priest-teacher at the Colegio speaks at least a passable Náhuatl."
"Then I am in luck," I said, pleased. "As it happens, I am lodging in the friars' mesón next door."
"Even better luck, Tenamáxtli, there is a beginners' class just starting. That will make the learning easier for you. If you will be at the front gate of the Colegio tomorrow at the hour of Prime—"
"Prime?" I said blankly.
"I was forgetting. Well, never mind. As soon as you have broken your night's fast—that would be the hour of Lauds—simply step over to the Colegio gate and wait for me. I will see that you are properly admitted and enrolled and told when and where your classes will be."
"I cannot thank you enough, Cuatl Alonso."
He picked up his quill again, expecting me to depart. When I hesitated there before his table, he asked, "Was there something else?"
"I saw something today, brother. Can you tell me what it means?"
"What sort of something?"
"May I borrow your quill for a moment?" He gave it to me, and I wrote with that black liquid on the back of my hand (not to spoil any of his paper) the figure G. "What is that, brother?"
He looked at it and said, "Hay."
"Hay?"
"That is the name of the character. Hay. It is a letra inicial—well, there is no word in Náhuatl for it. You will learn these things in your Colegio class. Hay is a particle of the Spanish language, as is ahchay, ee, hota...and so on. Where did you see this?"
"It was scarred into a man's face. Cut or burned, I could not tell."
"Ah, yes... the brand." He frowned and looked away. It seemed that I had a faculty for making Cuatl Alonso uncomfortable. "In that case, the letra inicial stands for guerra.War. It means the man was a prisoner of war, therefore now a slave."
"I saw several wearing that mark. I saw others—like these." Again I wrote on the back of my hand, the figures HCand JZand perhaps others that I do not now remember.
"More letras iniciales," he said. "Ahchay thay,that would be the Marqués Hernán Cortés. And hota thaydah,that would be His Excellency, the Bishop Juan de Zumárraga."
"Those are names? The men's own names are branded onto them?"
"No, no. The names of their owners. When a slave is not a prisoner taken during the conquest of ten years ago, but is simply bought and paid for, then the owner may brand him—like a horse—as a permanent claim on him, you see."
"I see," I said. "And female slaves? They are branded, too?"
"Not always." He looked uncomfortable yet again. "If she is a young woman, and comely, her owner may not wish to disfigure her beauty."
"I can understand that," I said, and gave his quill back to him. "Thank you, Cuatl Alonso. You have taught me some things of the Spanish nature already. I can hardly wait to learn the language."
VI
I had intended to ask the notarius Alonso for another favor—his suggestion of some work I might do that would pay me a living wage. But as soon as he mentioned the Colegio de San José, I decided on the instant not to ask that question. I would go on living at the mesón for as long as the friars would let me. It was right next to the school, and not having to work for my food and lodging would enable me to take advantage of all the kinds of education the Colegio could teach me.
I would not be living luxuriously, of course. Two meals a day, and not very substantial meals, were hardly enough to sustain one of my age and vigor and appetite. Also, I would have to contrive some way to keep myself clean. In my traveling pack, I had brought only two changes of apparel besides what I was wearing; those clothes would have to take turns being laundered. Just as important, I would have to make some arrangement for washing my body. Well, if I could find that Tépiz couple, perhaps they would accommodate me in the matter of hot water and amóli soap, even if they had no steam hut. Meanwhile, I had a fair number of cacao beans in my purse. For a time, at least, I could buy from the native markets the amenities that were indispensable, and an occasional morsel to supplement the friars' charity fare.
"You can reside here forever, if you wish," said the scrawny man, Pochotl, whom I found at the mesón when I returned there, both of us getting into the line for the evening meal. "The friars will not mind, or probably even notice. The white men like to say that they 'cannot tell one of the filthy indios from another.' I myself have been sleeping here for months, and gleaning my two skimpy meals a day, ever since I sold the last few granules of my stock of gold and silver." He added wistfully, "You may not believe it, but I once was admirably fat."
I asked, "What do you do with yourself during the rest of the day?"
"Sometimes, feeling guilty about being a parasite, I stay here to help the friars clean out the cooking vessels and the men's sleeping chamber. The women's quarters are cleaned by some nuns—those are female friars—who come over from what they call the Refugio de Santa Brígida. But most days, I merely amble about the city, remembering what used to be where in the bygone days, or just gazing at things in the market stalls that I wish I could buy. Idling, nothing but idling."
We had shuffled our way to the vats and a friar was ladling our bowls full—again with duck soup—handing us each a bolillo when, as on the previous afternoon, there came that distant thunder rumble from the eastward.
"There they go," said Pochotl. "Collecting ducks again. The fowlers are as punctual as those misbegotten church bells that mark divisions of the day by beating us on the ears. But, ayya,we must not complain. We get our share of the ducks."
I carried my bowl and bread into the building, thinking that I must sometime soon go to the eastern side of the island at twilight and see what was the method the Spanish fowlers employed to harvest the ducks.
Pochotl joined me again and said, "I have confessed to being a mendicant and an idler. But what about you, Tenamáxtli? You are still young and strong and not work shy, I think. Why are you planning to stay on here among us pauper wretches?"
I pointed toward the Colegio next door. "I shall be going to classes yonder. Learning to speak Spanish."
"Whatever for?" he asked, in mild surprise. "You do not even speak Náhuatl very well."
"Not the modern Náhuatl of this city, that is true. My uncle told me that we of Aztlan speak the language as it was spoken long ago. But everyone I have met here understands me, and I them. You, for instance. Also, you may have noticed that many of our fellow lodgers—those who come from the Chichiméca lands far to the north—speak several different dialects of Náhuatl, but all of them understand each other without great difficulty."