You say that this is foolishness and not magic? The play of childish savages? Is a tititl's magic anymore the work of savages than a priest's envisioning the devil in the shape of a man's garrancha? Or his dream of salvation from a dead man nailed to a cross?
Snake Flower did not look up when I entered her hut.
"I need a sleeping potion for my mother."
"You have no mother," she said, still not looking up.
"What? Even mestizos have mothers, witch-woman. It is sorcerers who are spawned from dirt and bat droppings. My mother needs a potion to help her sleep so the sleep spirits can fight the sickness."
She kept stirring the green leaves, sizzling and smoking on the rock slab. "A mestizo enters my hut and asks for favors and brings insults as his gifts. Have the Aztec gods grown so weak that a half-blood can insult one of pure blood?"
"My apologies, Snake Flower. My mother's injuries have made me forget my place." I had softened my tone. While I did not believe in the power of gods and spirits, there are many mysteries that sorceresses know and many secret paths they walk. I did not want to find a snake in my bed or poison in my bowl because I had offended her.
"My mother needs the sleep medicine that only an Aztec spirit woman can prepare. I offer not only gratitude but a gift of magic."
I tossed a small doeskin pouch on the dirt beside her.
She stirred the smoking leaves, not looking at the pouch or me.
"And what is this? The heart of a monkey? The ground bones of a jaguar? What magic does a mestizo boy know?"
"Spanish magic. A medical potion not as powerful as yours," I added hastily, "but
"Magic from pale-skinned weaklings who cannot withstand the sun god without burning and fainting?"
"I brought it so that you can show the others in the village how weak and foolish Spanish medicine is. The powder inside is used by Fray Antonio to burn off skin growths. It is mixed with water and spread over the growth. After it disappears, a lesser amount is applied to keep the growth from returning."
I stared at her. "How did you know I would come for sleeping medicine?"
She laughed shrilly. "I know many things."
I reached for the cup, but she withdrew it. She stared at me, taking my measure. "You shoot up like a corn stalk under a hot, wet sun. You are no longer a boy." She pointed a finger at me. "I give you this medicine to bring the sleeping spirits to Miahauxiuitl, but you will serve me in return."
"In what way?"
She laughed shrilly again. "You will see, mestizo, you will see."
I hurried back to my mother, leaving the doeskin pouch with the sorceress. She had a growth on the back of her hand, the same type of growth that I had seen Fray Antonio treat on Spaniards with the mixture of mercuriales I left her. I knew her concern. Because she was unable to get rid of the growth on her own hand, villagers had begun to question her skills. How could she drive away the demons that bring sickness, when she could not cure herself?
On the way back to our hut, I smelled her potion and was curious to learn its ingredients. My nose detected honey and lime and
She was covered from head to foot in a cape. I followed her with apprehension. I could not see her hands, but her toes were exposed and each toe had a claw attached. I wondered nervously what else was under the long cape.
It was with some relief that I was taken off on this unnamed adventure even though it raised the hair on the back of my neck. Fray Antonio and Miaha had argued on several occasions since the incident with the majordomo, each time sending me away so I could not hear what was being said. I did not have to hear the words to know that I was in some manner the source of their controversy.
For an hour I followed Snake Flower into the jungle—until we came to a pyramid that was almost covered by vines and other jungle growth. I had not been to an ancient Aztec shrine before but knew of this one from the village talk.
The fray forbade all from going to it, and to be discovered worshipping at it was blasphemy.
Under the glow of a half moon, Snake Flower bounded up the stepped slope of the temple like a jungle cat and waited for me near the large, flat, altar stone. She took off the reed cape, and I gawked at what she wore underneath. A snakeskin skirt covered her lower body. Above the dangling snakes, her breasts were bare, full and plump. Hanging between her naked breasts was a necklace of tiny hands and hearts. I stared intently in the darkness and could not readily see if the hands were those of monkeys or infants.
The temple was fifty feet high—a dwarf compared to many of the great Aztec temples I'd heard of—but it appeared gigantic to me in the moonlight. As we approached the top I trembled. On this summit children had been sacrificed by the thousands to angry Aztecs.
She was dressed as
We were at the right place for such dark deeds. Here was where young children were slaughtered, sacrificed to
Her laughter shrilled.
"It is not blood I desire, young one. Pull down your pants."
I stepped back in fear, instinctively covering my virile part.
"Foolish boy, this will not hurt."
She took a small bundle from beneath the reed cape and removed the sacred deerskin she used in healing and a clay cup. To those items she added the rib bone of an animal and emptied a rawhide bag into the cup. She knelt on the sacrificial stone and began crushing the contents with the bone.
"What is that?" I asked, as I knelt beside her.
"A piece of dried jaguar heart."
She cut an eagle feather and deposited it into the cup. "The jaguar has power, the eagle soars. Both abilities are necessary if a man is to please his woman and produce many children." She sprinkled a fine, dark powder into the cup. "This is snake blood. A snake can unhinge its jaws, swell its belly, and devour something several times its size. A man needs a snake's expansive power to fill his woman's hole and satisfy her." She carefully stirred the mixture.
"I will not drink it."
Her laugh rang through the jungle night. "No, little fool, it is not for you to drink but to add to its power. The potion is for another man who can no longer swell his tepuli to please and impregnate his woman."
"He can't make babies?"
"No babies, no pleasure for him or his woman. The potion will make his tepuli grow long and hard."
Her gold-flecked eyes froze me to the bone; her dark power consumed me. I lay on my back on the sacrificial stone while she undid my rope belt. She pulled down my pants to expose my private parts. I felt no shame. While I had yet to lay with a girl, I had watched Don Francisco in the hut with my mother and knew that his garrancha grew as he suckled her breasts.
She gently stroked my pene. "Your young juice will make him strong like a bull when he lies with his woman."
Her hand was strong; her rhythm sure. A warm glow enveloped my extremities, and I smiled.
"You enjoy the touch of a woman on your man part. Now I must milk your juice like a calf sucking on its mother."
She put her mouth on my garrancha. Her mouth was hot and wet, her tongue ingeniously energetic. My garrancha became more and more eager for the sucking, and I shoved it deeper into her mouth. I jerked up and down as a firestorm roared in me, trying to push it deeper and deeper down her throat. Suddenly I was pumping with a rhythm of my own as my juices exploded into her mouth.
When the rhythm stopped, she leaned over and spit the juice into the clay cup that had the other ingredients. She then put her mouth back on my organ, licking up juice that had gone down the side and putting it into the cup.
"Ayyo, boy-man, you have enough juice to fill the tipili of three women."
"We are leaving the village," Fray Antonio said. He awoke me in the hut I shared with my mother. His features were pale and drawn, his eyes red from a lack of sleep. He was nervous and anxious.
"Have you been wrestling devils all the night?" I asked.
"Yes, and I lost. Throw your things in a sack; we are leaving now. A cart is being loaded with my possessions."
It took me a moment to comprehend that he did not just mean that we were going to a neighboring village.
"We are leaving the hacienda for good. Be ready in a few minutes."
"What of my mother?"
He paused at the doorway to the hut and stared at me as if he were puzzled at my question. "Your mother? You have no mother."
—Cristo the Bastardo
The fray was not my father, of that I was certain, although I loved him as a father. Once when the fray was besotted with wine, a not uncommon condition for him, he swore that my father was a
a very big wearer of spurs, but when the nectar of the gods has captured his mind, the fray was prone to say many things.
He told me that it was true that he had stuck his pene in Miaha, but that he had not fathered me. He further confounded the mystery of my birth in an enigma by saying that Miaha had not birthed me.
Sober, he refused to confirm or deny his drunken ravings.
The poor fray. Amigos, believe me when I say that this was a very good man. Eh, all right, he was not perfect. But do not cast stones. A few mortal sins, si, but his sins hurt no one but himself.
On a day of great sadness for the fray, he was defrocked by a bishop of the Church. Those who take evil tales into their ears and spit them out their mouths had made many charges against him, few of which he bothered to defend, many for which he had no defense. I felt his sadness. His greatest sin was caring too much.
Although the Church rescinded his priestly authority to take confession and grant absolution, they couldn't stop him from ministering to the needs of the people. He finally found his calling in Veracruz.
vomito negro,
The vomito seeped out of the swamps during the hot, summer months, its foul miasma rising from the poisonous waters and floating over the city, along with hordes of mosquitoes that attacked like the frog plague of Egypt. The rotted air was the bane of travelers who came off the treasure ships and hurried to the mountains, clutching nosegays to their faces. Those whom this dark sickness struck suffered fever and terrible pains in the head and back. Soon their skin turned yellow, and they vomited black, coagulating blood. They found comfort only in the grave.
Believe me, amigos, when I tell you Veracruz is a hot ember that has been kicked out of hell, a place where the fiery tropical sun and fierce
What would we do in this hell on earth? Have the fray marry some lonely widow, not a grass widow who changed her soft bed for one of straw after the death of her husband, but one who had a golden widowhood and would permit us to live as grandees in her fine home? No, never. My compadre the fray sucked in the troubles of others like the leeches barbers use to suck bad blood from people. It was not to a fine house that we went, but to a hovel with dirt floors.
To the fray it was Casa de los Pobres, the House of the Poor. To him it was as much a house of God as the finest cathedrals in Christendom. It was a long, narrow, wood shack. The planks that made up its walls and roof were thin and rotted from the brutal rains, winds, and heat. Sand and dust blew in, and the whole place shook during a norte. I slept on dirty straw next to whores and drunks and squatted near the fire twice a day to get a tortilla filled with frijoles. This simple meal was a fine feast for those who only knew the streets.
Turned out onto the streets of the meanest city in New Spain, over the next couple of years blows and curses would recast me from being a hacienda boy to a street leper, a lepero. Lying, thieving, conniving, and begging were only a few of the talents I acquired.
I confess that I was not a saintly boy. I sang not hymns but a cry of the streets—a cry for alms! "Charity for a poor orphan of God!" was my song. Often I covered myself with dirt, rolled back my eyes, and twisted my arms in obscene contortions, all but wrenching them out of their sockets, in order to extricate alms from fools. I was a mudlark with the voice of a mendicant, the soul of a thief, and the heart of a waterfront whore. Half espanol, half indio, I was proud to bear the noble titles of both mestizo and lepero. I spent my days barefoot and dirty, keening my alms cry, cadging filthy lucre from silken grandees, who, when they looked down at me at all, grimaced with contempt.
Do not cast stones at me like that bishop did to the poor fray when he took the holy cloth from him. The streets of Veracruz were a battlefield in which you could find riches... or death.