The words, barely whispered at my back, were spoken in Náhuatl. I swung around to see who made this threat. An indio was moving through the crowd, and I was certain he was the culprit.
I hurried away, not happy about my rash remarks and the omen they had provoked. It was not just the comment. It was the hateful tone in which it had been invoked. At the time I saw no connection between jaguars and sacrificial blocks, although I knew that the great jungle cats were sacred to the indios.
At any other time I would have laughed off the indio's comment as just another insult leveled at my mixed blood, but this was the second threat to my life in a short space. I was not frightened by the indio's threat but angered.
I wandered into the crowd, aggravated at both the insult and my hasty retreat in the face of what the fray would have derided as "superstitious foolishness." A picaro would have had a ready retort for a shaman's magical threats. Except the final threat had not come from the shaman but from a disembodied voice I still could not identify.
I headed for the bookstalls, searching for Fray Antonio and Fray Juan. Fray Antonio would be there, browsing the books but not buying any. Any dinero that came his way he used to purchase food for the poor. I could, of course, filch a fine libro for him, but he, of course, would not approve.
I spotted Fray Juan first, talking to a man near one of the bookstalls. As I approached, the man glanced around furtively, then led the fray to the area in back of the stalls.
I immediately broke into a run when I recognized the man—the picaro, Mateo. There was no telling what kind of trouble he had in mind for the fray. Look at the trouble he'd gotten me into already, my run-in with the alcalde's wife and her witch's teat. The dwarf who hawked comedias and ballads for him might boast that Mateo had written and performed before the crowned heads of Europe, but I was immune to such braggadocio. I knew silken devils when I met them. Naive Fray Juan, however, believed the best about everyone and would find himself Mateo's unlawful prey.
Behind the stalls Mateo was slipping him a book from beneath his cloak. When I approached them, Mateo reached for his dagger.
"The boy is a brother's servant," Fray Juan explained to Mateo.
Fray Antonio had described me the same way to the inquisitors to deflect their curiosity.
Mateo did not seem to recognize me, which was understandable. Léperos were objects, not people, and by definition unmemorable.
I hung back, subservient, but kept within earshot.
"This book," Mateo said, continuing his pitch, "is one of the classics of chivalric romance, a sweeping epic, towering above Amadis of Gauland Palmerin de Oliva.See for yourself—the lavish cover of Moroccan leather, the elegant Gothic script, the exquisite vellum, all for a pittance: a minuscule... ten pesos."
Ten pesos! A pope's ransom. A month's wages for most men and for what? A chivalric romance? A stupid tale of knights and ladies, of dragons slain, kingdoms conquered, and damsals won. The very works that drove Quixote to joust with windmills.
Fray Juan examined it fondly. "It doesn't look like vellum—"
"You have my personal assurance as a lord of the realm that this paper was milled right on the Nile's venerable banks and shipped across the Mediterranean for the personal perusal of our saintly monarch in Madrid. Only by the most fortunate and auspicious of circumstances was this work of art diverted into my capable hands."
"The people of the Nile make papyrus not vellum," I said.
The picaro threw me a nasty look, but quickly returned to Fray Juan. The holy brother was now reading aloud the tome's flowery title.
"Chronicle of the very remarkable Three Knights Tablante of Barcelona who defeated Ten Thousand Howling Moors and Five Frightful Monsters and set the rightful King upon the Throne of Constantinople and claimed a Treasure larger than that held by any King of Christendom."
I roared with derision. "The title is a jest and so is the book. Cervantes's Don Quixoteexposed these chivalry romances for what they are. Who would read such gibberish? Only an imbecile. Who would write idiosy? Only a lunatic."
The fray, embarrassed, returned the book to Mateo and hurried away.
I had started after the fray when I heard Mateo quietly say, "Boy."
As I turned, his hand caught my throat with the speed of a striking snake. He jerked me toward him, his dagger already beneath my manta, probing my cojones.
"I should geld you like a steer, you dirty, half-caste beggar."
The point of the dagger cut into the soft flesh of my crotch, and a trickle of blood ran down my leg. He had the eyes of a pain-crazed animal insane with feral suffering. I was too scared to even beg.
He shoved me to the ground. "I will not rip your throat out because I don't want your whore's blood splattering my hands." His sword was out, and he stood over me, its blade flashing over my throat. I expected my head to drop and roll, but the sword tip froze stock-still against my Adam's apple.
"You spoke of that hijodeputa who wrote the saga of Quixote. If you mention his name one more time—the swine who plundered the stories, ideas, the truth, the very life of another, my life—I will not simply separate your head from your shoulders, I will strip your sorry hide an inch at a time and dress your carcass down with jalapeno and salt." The madman vanished, and I stared wall-eyed at the sky.
Ay! What had I done? True, I had spoiled his sale, but it was Cervantes's name that had driven Mateo muy loco ciego, almost costing me my cojones and my head. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the madman might be the author of the ridiculous novel.
Dios mio! Perhaps the fray can tell me about this church in India where one is punished for a past life's sins. I must have flung a thousand souls into hell's eternal furnace to have deserved this woe.
The fray, of course, claims I bring this hell of woe on myself by continually speaking out. He blames himself for my loose tongue, and there is some truth in that. He introduced me to the works of that indefatigable skeptic, Socrates. He challenged everythingand passed this loathsome habit onto me like a disease.
Fortunately this lamp of truth seldom illuminates my own unrighteous life. One cannot tread the lépero path with truth as a guiding light; some truths no one can bear.
I dusted myself off and went back to the fair with less enthusiasm than I had had before.
TWENTY-FIVE
Then I met the Healer.
The first time I saw him he stood on the remains of an ancient Aztec monument, one of many scattered around the area. The stone slab elevated him several feet above the assembled onlookers, allowing him to perform his magic and work the crowds.
He was not old. He transcended such mundane concepts. He was ancient of days, a being of eons and millennia, not weeks or years.
I did not know what time or place or people spawned him, but to me he was everythingAztec or, more properly, Mexica, since the word Aztec was more Spanish than indio. One could not tell by his speech. Like a jungle parrot, he addressed questioners in their own tongue. I soon suspected he could speak the speech of birds and snakes, of rocks and trees, of mountains and stars.
The soothsayer I had encountered, the peruser of bones, was, in contrast, a charlatan. The Healer abjured conjury. Written in the wrinkles of that old man's face and in the shadows of his veiled eyes were the secrets of the grave.
To me he was a god, not Greek or Roman replete with schemes and intrigues, but a darker deity, gentle in his wisdom but murderous in his scorn.