A woman? Insistently demanding to speak to me? The only female I could think of, who might come seeking me at midnight, was the mulata child Rebeca, and that was highly unlikely. Anyway, the warder had called her an "old hag." Mystified, I followed him out the front door, and there stood a woman, old indeed, and no one I had ever seen before. Tears were flowing down along the many wrinkles of her face as she said in Náhuatclass="underline"
"I am midwife to the young woman friend of yours, Citláli. The baby is born, but the father has died."
I was shocked, but not too shocked to correct her. "You mean the mother, surely." Even I knew that even the healthiest-appearing woman could die in giving birth, but it gave me a heart pang that dear Citláli should have done so.
"No, no! The father. Netzlin."
"What? How could that be?" Then I remembered his extreme eagerness to see a son born to him. "Did he die of the excitement? Of a stroke of the hands of a god?"
"No, no. He waited in the front room, pacing. The instant the baby gave its first cry in the other room, Netzlin roared triumphantly and went crashing out the door into the street, bellowing, 'I have a son!' though he had not yet even seen the child."
"Well? Did he come back and find it was a daughter? And thatkilled him?"
"No, no. He gathered all the men of the barrio, and bought much octli for them, and they all got drunk, but he much more drunk than the others."
"And thatkilled him?" I demanded in frustration. "Old mother, you will never make a storyteller. Best stick to midwifing."
"Well... yes. But, after tonight, I think I may even give up that humble profession and—"
"Willyou get on?" I shouted, almost dancing in impatience.
"Yes, yes. You could say the drinking did kill poor fuddled Netzlin. He was caught by the soldiers on night patrol. They beat and cut him to death."
I was too stunned to say anything. The old midwife went on:
"The neighbors came to tell us. Citláli was already near to frenzy. and the news of Netzlin's death on top of everything else drove her near to madness. But she was able to tell me where to find you and—"
"What do you mean—on top of everything else? Did the birthing cause injury to her? Is she in pain? In danger?"
"Just come, Tenamáxtli. She needs comforting. She needs you."
Rather than go on asking frantic questions and getting dotard answers that were nearly sending meinto a frenzy, I said, "Very well, old mother. Let us hurry."
As we approached the unlighted house, we heard no screams or moans or other sounds of distress coming from within. But I let the old woman precede me, and waited in the front room while she tiptoed into the other. She returned with a finger held to her lips, whispering: "She sleeps at last."
"She is not dead?"I asked, in a sort of a shout of a whisper.
"No, no. Only sleeping, and that is good. But come now—quietly—and see the infant. It sleeps also."
With a tongs, she plucked an ember from the cooking hearth and used it to light a coconut-oil lamp, and with that led me into the room where Citláli slept. In a straw-padded box beside her pallet lay the child, neatly swathed, and the midwife held the lamp so I could look down at it. To me it looked like any other newborn: red and raw and as wrinkled as the midwife, but apparently entire, with all the requisite appendages, the proper number of ears and fingers and toes and such. It lacked hair, true, but there was nothing unusual about that.
"Why did you want me to see it, old mother?" I whispered. "I have seen babies before, and this one appears no different."
"Ayya, friend Tenamáxtli, it has no eyes."
"The child is blind? How could you tell?"
"Not just blind. It has no eyes.Look more closely."
Since the child was asleep, I had taken for granted that its eyelids were closed. But now I could see that there was no line of closed lashes. Where there should have been lids, each eye socket was closed over—from the faint little eyebrows down to the cheekbones—with the same delicate skin that covered the rest of the face, only slightly indented where the eyeballs should have been.
"By all the darkness of Míctlan," I muttered, horrified. "You are right, old mother. It is a monster."
"That is why Citláli was so distraught, even before she heard the news about Netzlin. At least he was spared knowing of this." She hesitated, then asked, "Shall I throw it into a canal?"
That would have been the kindest thing, for both Citláli and the infant. It would indeed have been the obligatorything, according to the customs of The One World. Children born defective in either body or intellect were disposed of, immediately the defect was discovered. It was the natural and expected thing to do, in order that such creatures not grow up to be a burden to themselves and to the community, or, worse, perhaps to bear similarly blighted children themselves. No one wept or regretted or disputed the quick disposal of such unfortunates. It was too plainly necessary, to maintain undiluted the best physical and mental qualities of the race. One nation, the Cloud People of Uaxyácac, renowned for their beauty, even disposed of infants who were merely ugly.
But, I reminded myself, this was no longer The One World, free to follow its age-old, wise traditions. I knew that the Christians let their own varicolored and despised mongrel offspring live and grow up—even those wretched ones of splotched brown-and-white complexion that they called pintojos,from whom everyoneof every other color turned his gaze away in revulsion. So there was probably a Christian law requiring that anychild—though misbegotten and, for whatever reasons of practicality, unwanted—must be kept and reared, at whatever cost in misery to itself, its parents and all the rest of society. I was not surethat such a law existed; I would have to remember to ask Alonso if the Christians truly were that insensitive and pitiless and unmerciful. Anyway, this one poor creature's fate need not be decided this very night, so I told the midwife:
"It is not for me to say. Netzlin would assuredly have told you to get rid of it. But he is gone, and Citláli is its only parent. We will wait for her to wake."
X
"I wish to keep the child," said Citláli when she had awakened and I had spoken some consoling and encouraging words, and she was able to regard the two sudden disasters in her life with more composure than she had the night before.
I asked her, "Have you considered what you will have to bear? Besides staying in constant and vigilant attendance on the child—perhaps even until it is full grown, or even until one of you dies—you will suffer the scorn and derision of all our people, especially our priests. And to what sort of tonáli has your baby been destined? A life of abject dependence on its mother. A life of inability to deal with the commonest happenings of every day, let alone any real difficulty that may come along. Practically no hope of its ever doing anything in life to earn a place in the happy afterworld of Tonatíucan. Why, no tonalpóqui will even deign to consult his book of omens to give the child an auspicious name."
"Then its birthday name will have to serve as its only name," she murmured, undeterred. "Yesterday was the day Two-Wind, was it not? So—Ome-Ehécatl its name will be, and that is fitting. The wind has no eyes, either."
"There," I said, "you have spoken it. Ome-Ehécatl will never even see you, Citláli; never know what its own mother looks like; never marry and give you grandchildren; never support you in your old age. You yourself are still young and comely and talented in your craft, and sweet of nature, but you will not likely attract another husband, not with such a gross impediment hung upon you. Meanwhile—"