Aztec Autumn by Gary Jennings
In our Náhuatl language, a woman’s body is often respectfully referred to as a xochitl, a “flower,” and her navel as the yoloxóchitl, or “bud center” of that flower. When I was inside Ixínatsi, then, my tepúli literally became the “stalk” of that bud, that flower. Just to realize, in my mind, that she and I were so very intimately conjoined—not to mention the vivid sensations involved—heightened my ardor to a degree I could never have believed possible.
And, in her arranging of Ixínatsi’s feminine parts, the goddess had provided, for both Cricket and myself, yet a further enhancement of the joy that comes in the act of love. The slightly rearward placement of her tipíli orifice meant that when my tepúli penetrated her to its hilt, my pubic bone was necessarily close and hard against her sensitive xacapíli pearl, much more tightly than it would be with an ordinary woman. So, as Ixínatsi and I clasped and rocked and writhed together, her little pink kind accordingly got caressed, rubbed, kneaded—to excited erection, then to urgent throbbing, then to paroxysms of rapture. And Cricket’s increasingly heated response naturally heated me as well, so that we were equally, gleefully, dizzily, almost swooningly exultant when together we came to climax.
When it was over, she of the prodigious lungs, of course, got her breath back before I did. While I still lay limp, Ixínatsi slipped into her den under the tree and emerged to press something into my hand. It glowed in the moonlight like a piece of the moon itself.
“A kinú means a loving heart,” she said, and kissed me.
“This single pearl,” I said weakly, “would buy you much. A proper house, for instance. A very good one.”
“I would not know what to do with a house. I do know—now—how to enjoy akuáreni. The kinú is to thank you for showing me.”
Before I could gather breath to speak again, she had bounded upright and called across the tree trunk, “Marúuani!” to the young woman who lived in the shelter on the other side. I thought Cricket was going to apologize for the doubtlessly unfamiliar noises we had been making. Instead she said urgently, “Come over here! I have discovered a thing most marvelous!”
Marúuani came around the root end of the tree, idly combing her long hair, pretending to be not at all curious, but her eyebrows went up when she saw us both unclothed. She said to Ixínatsi, but with her eyes on me, “It sounded—as if you were enjoying yourselves.”
“Exactly that,” Cricket said with relish. “Our… selves. Listen!” She moved close, to whisper to the other woman, who continued to regard me, her eyes widening more each moment. Lying there, being described and discussed, I felt rather like some hitherto unknown sea creature just washed ashore and causing a sensation. I heard Marúuani say, in a hushed voice, “He did?” and after some more whispering, “Would he?”
“Of course he will,” said Ixínatsi. “Will you not, Tenamáxtli? Will you not do akuéreni with my friend Marúuani?”
I cleared my throat and said, “One thing you must realize about men, my dearest. It takes them at least a little resting—between times—for the pole to stiffen again.”
“It does? Oh, what a pity. Marúuani is eager to learn.”
I considered, then said, “Well, I have shown you some things, Cricket, that do not require my participation. While I regather my faculties, you could demonstrate the preliminaries to your friend.”
“You are right,” she said brightly. “After all, we will not always have men with poles at our bidding. Marúuani, take off your loincloth and lie down here.”
Somewhat guardedly, Marúuani obeyed, and Ixínatsi stretched out beside her, both of them just a little way from me. Marúuani flinched and gave a small shriek at the first intimate touch.
“Be still,” said Cricket, with the confidence of experience. “This is how it is done. In a moment you will know.”
And it was not long before I was watching two supple, shining sea-cuguars doing the contortions of coupling—much as the real animals do it—except that these were much more graceful, since they had long, shapely arms and legs to intertwine. And the watching of it hastened my own availability, so I was ready for Marúuani when she was ready for me.
I repeat, I was in love with Ixínatsi even before we did the act of love. I had already, that very night, determined to take her and her little girl with me when I left the island. I would do it by persuasion, if possible. If not, I would—like a brute Yaki—abduct them by force. And now, having found out how uniquely and wonderfully Cricket was constructed for the act of love, I was more determined than before.
But I am human. And I am male. Therefore I am incurably, insatiably curious. I could not help wondering if all these island women possessed the same physical properties that Cricket did. Although the young woman Marúuani was comely and appealing, I had never felt any desire for her, certainly not what I had felt and still felt for Ixínatsi. However, after watching what had just occurred, and being aroused by it to an indiscriminate lustfulness, and with Ixínatsi unselfishly urging me on…
Well, that is how my stay in the islands came to be indefinitely prolonged. Ixínatsi and Marúuani spread the word that there was something more to life than just working and sleeping and occasionally playing with one’s self—and the other island women clamored to be introduced to it. Grandmother’s scandalized objections were shouted down, probably for the first time in her reign, but she became resigned to the new state of affairs when it effected a noticeable increase in the workers’ good spirits and productivity. Kukú enforced only one condition: that all akuáreni be confined to the nighttimes—which I did not mind, because it gave me the days for sleeping and regaining my stamina.
Let me say here that I would not have obliged any of the other women if Cricket had evinced the least jealousy or possessiveness. I did it mainly because she seemed so happy to have her sisters thus enlightened, and seemed to take pride in that being done by “her man.” In truth, I would rather have restricted my attentions to her alone, for she was the one that I deeply loved—the only one, then or ever—and I know she loved me, too. Even Tirípetsi, who at first had been shy and uneasy about having a man in residence, came to regard me fondly, as other little girls elsewhere regard their fathers.
Also, and this is important, the other island women were not physically constructed as was Ixínatsi. They were as ordinary in that respect as every other woman I have coupled with in my lifetime. In short, I was so infatuated with Cricket that no other woman would ever measure up to the standards she had set. It was only because she wished it that I lent my services to the women at large. I did that more dutifully than avidly, and even instituted a sort of program—a petitioning woman every other night, the nights between being devoted to Cricket alone—and those were nights of love, not just loving.
It may be that because I had seldom lacked for women—and certainly did not now—I had become somewhat jaded with the commonplace, and the very newness of Ixínatsi was what vitalized me so. I only know that the sensations shared by her and myself kindled in me fires that I had never felt, even in my lustiest youth. As for dear Cricket, I am sure she had no idea that she was physically superior to ordinary women. Nothing could ever have made her suspect that she had been so god-blessed at birth. And, of course, it may be that she was not the only female in human history to have been thus endowed by a goddess. Possibly some aged midwife, after numberless years of attending a numberless multitude of females, could have told of having sometime found some other young woman similarly constructed.
But I cared not From this time forward, I would not ever need or seek or want any other lover—however extraordinary—now that I possessed this most exceptional one of all. And whether or not Ixínatsi realized that in our frequent and fervent embraces she was enjoying ecstasies surpassing those that the love goddess grants to every other woman in the world… well, she did enjoy them. And so did I, so did I. Yyo ayyo, how we did enjoy them!
Meanwhile, I lay at least once with every island woman and girl who was physically mature enough to appre
ciate the experience. Though our akuéreni was always done in the darkness, I know I also coupled with some who were rather beyond mature—but none of the really old ones, like Kukú, for which I was thankful. I might well have lost count of the women I obliged with my teachings, if I had not been recompensed for my services. Eventually, I owned exactly sixty-five pearls, the largest and most perfect of that year’s harvest. That was Cricket’s doing; she insisted that it was only fair exchange that my students pay me one pearl apiece.
In the beginning, there was such mass enthusiasm that there was a constant traffic of females rafting every night back and forth between the two inhabited islands. But there was only one of me, and the other women had to alternate with Ixínatsi, so during that time many of them earnestly essayed to learn by imitation, as Ixínatsi had taught Marúuani. Sometimes I would be lying with a woman, going through the ceremony from first fondlings to final consummation, and two other females—her sister and her daughter, it might be—would lie right next to us, alternately eyeing our doings and then doing them to one another, insofar as possible.
After I had personally served every eligible girl and woman at least once, and the demand for me was not so imperative, the women continued, on their own, to discover the numerous ways they could pleasure one another, and freely traded partners, and even learned to do it in threes and fours—all this with blithe disregard for any consanguinity among them. Ixínatsi and I, in our intervals of rest at night, would often hear, among the other forest sounds, the sound of those women’s wonderful breasts slapping rhythmically together.
All this while, I was ardently wooing Ixínatsi—not to make her love me; we knew we loved one another. I was trying to persuade her to come with me, and bring the daughter I now thought of as my own, to The One World. I besieged her with every argument I could muster. I told her, with honesty, that I was the equivalent of Kukú in my own domain, that she and Tirípetsi would live in a genuine palace, with servants at their command, lacking nothing they could possibly need or want, never again having to dive for oysters, or skin sea-cuguars for their hides, or fear the storms that might ravage the islands, or lie down to mate with strangers.
“Ah, Tenamáxtli,” she would say with an endearing smile, “but this is palace enough”—indicating the tree-trunk shelter—“as long as you share it with us.”
Not quite so honestly, I omitted all mention of the Spaniards’ having occupied most of The One World. These island women did not yet know that such things as white men existed. Evidently the men from Yakóreke had likewise refrained from speaking of the Spaniards, possibly out of concern that the women might withhold their kinúcha, hoping to start a new commerce with richer traders. For that matter, I reminded myself, I could not be sure that the Spaniards had not already overwhelmed Aztlan, in which case I had no Kukúdom, so to speak, with which to tempt Cricket. But I firmly believed that she and Tirípetsi and I could make a new life for ourselves somewhere, and I regaled her with tales of the many lovely, lush, serene places I had found in my travels, where we three might settle down together.
“But this place, Tenamáxtli, these islands, they are home. Make them your home, too. Grandmother is accustomed to having you here now. She will no longer be demanding that you depart. Is this not as pleasant a life as we could find anywhere else? We need not fear the storms and strangers. Tirípetsi and I have survived all the storms, and so will you. As for the strangers, you know I will never again lie with one of those. I am yours.”
In vain, I tried to make her envision the more varied life that could be lived on the mainland—the abundance of food and drink and diversion, of travel, of education for our daughter, the opportunities of meeting new people quite different from those she was used to.
“Why, Cricket,” I said, “you and I can have other children there, to be company for little Tirípetsi. Even brothers for her. She can never have any here.”
Ixínatsi sighed, as if she was wearying of my importunities, and said, “She can never miss what she has never had.”
I asked anxiously, “Have I made you angry?”
“Yes, I am angry,” she said, but with a laugh, in her cricket-merry way. “Here—take back all your kisses.” And she began kissing me, and kept on kissing me every time I tried to say anything more.
But always, with sweet stubbornness, she dismissed or countered my every argument—and one day she did it by alluding to my own enviable current situation:
“Do you not see, Tenamáxtli, that any mainland man would absolutely pounce to trade places with you? Here you have not only me to love you and lie with you—and you will have Tirípetsi, too, when she is of age—you have, when you so desire, any other woman of these islands. Every woman. And, in time, their daughters.”
I was hardly qualified to start preaching morality. I could only protest, and with utmost sincerity, “But you are all I want!”
And now I must confess something shameful. That same day, I went off into the woods to think, and I said to myself, “She is all I want. I am captivated by her, obsessed, besotted. If I dragged her away from here against her will, she would never love me again. Anyway, what would I be dragging her to? What awaits me yonder? Only a bloody war—killing or being killed. Why should I not do what she says? Stay here in these fair islands.”
Here I had peace, love, happiness. The other women were making ever fewer demands on me, now that the novelty had worn off. Ixínatsi and Tirípetsi and I could be a selfcontained and self-sufficient family. Since I had broken one of the islands’ sacred traditions—by living here as no man had ever done before—I believed that I could break others. Old Grandmother had gone unheeded in that instance, and, anyway, she would not live forever. I had every expectation that I could wean the women away from their man-hating goddess New Moon, and turn them instead to worship of the kindlier Coyolxaúqui, goddess of the full-hearted full moon. No longer would boy infants be fed to the oysters. Cricket and I and all the others could have sons. I would eventually be the patriarch of an island domain, and its benevolent ruler.
For all I knew, the Spaniards had by now overrun the entire One World, and I could hope to accomplish nothing by going back there. Here, I would have my own One World, and it might be sheaves of years before any farther-reaching Spanish explorers should stumble upon it. Even if the white men had subjugated so much of the mainland—or later would—that the Yakóreke fishermen could no longer visit the islands, I was sure that they would not reveal the location. If they came no more, well, I now knew the course back and forth. I and, in time, my sons could paddle stealthily to that shore to procure the necessities of life—knives and combs and such—that had to be bought with pearls …
Thus shamefully did I contemplate abandoning the quest that I had pursued during all the years since I watched my father burn to death, the quest that had led me along so many roads, into so many hazards, through so many adventures. Thus shamefully did I seek to justify discarding my plans to avenge my father and all others of my people who had suffered at the hands of the white men. Thus shamefully did I try to concoct excuses for forgetting those many—Citláli and the child Ehécatl, dauntless Pakápeti, the Cuachic Comitl, the Tícitl Ualíztli, the others—who had perished in helping me toward my aim of vengeance. Thus shamefully did I seek plausible reasons for my deserting the Knight Nochéztli and my hard-gathered army and, indeed, all the peoples of The One World…
I have been ashamed, ever since that day, that I even thought of so disgracing myself. I would have lost the race I never ran. Had I actually done that—succumbed to Ixínatsi’s love and the islands’ easefulness—I doubt that I could long have lived with my shame. I would have come to hate myself, and then have turned the hate on Cricket for her causing me to hate myself. What I might have done for love would have destroyed that love.
Further to my shame, I cannot even claim with conviction that I would not have chosen to surrender my quest—and my honor—because it so happened that the gods made the choi
ce for me.
Toward twilight, I returned to the seaside, where the divers were wading ashore with their last baskets of the day. Ixínatsi was among them, and when she saw me waiting for her, she called cheerily, mischievously, with a meaningful grin:
“I think by now, darling Tenamáxtli, I must owe you at least one more kinú. I shall dive this moment and bring you the Kukú of all kinúcha.” She turned and swam to the nearest rock outcrop, where some indolent sea-cuguars were basking and gleaming in the last low rays of sunlight.
I called to her, “Come back, Cricket I wish to talk.”
She must not have heard me. Glistening as golden as the animals about her, radiant and beautiful, she stood poised on one of the rocks, gave me a jaunty wave of her hand, dove into the sea and never came out again.
When finally I realized that not even the strongest-lunged woman could have stayed underwater so long, I raised an outcry. All the other divers still in the shallows came splashing ashore in fright, probably thinking I had espied a shark’s fin. Then, after some hesitation, the more intrepid of them swam back to the area I pointed to—where I had seen Ixínatsi plunge under—and they dove again and again, until they were exhausted, without finding her or any indication of what had happened to her.
“Our women,” said a creaky old voice beside me, “do not all live to my great age.”
It was Kukú, who had naturally hastened to the scene. Although she might have berated me for having disturbed the complacency of her realm, or for having been partly to blame for Cricket’s loss, the old woman sounded as if she wished to solace me.
“Kinú-diving is more than rigorous work,” she said. “It is perilous work. Down there lurk savage fish with tearing teeth, others with poisonous stings, others with clutching tentacles. I do not think, however, that Ixínatsi fell prey to any such fish. When there are predators in the vicinity, the seacuguars bark a warning. More likely she has been swallowed.”
“Swallowed?” I echoed, thunderstruck. “Kukú, how could a woman be swallowed by the sea in which she has lived for half her life?”
And, in her arranging of Ixínatsi’s feminine parts, the goddess had provided, for both Cricket and myself, yet a further enhancement of the joy that comes in the act of love. The slightly rearward placement of her tipíli orifice meant that when my tepúli penetrated her to its hilt, my pubic bone was necessarily close and hard against her sensitive xacapíli pearl, much more tightly than it would be with an ordinary woman. So, as Ixínatsi and I clasped and rocked and writhed together, her little pink kind accordingly got caressed, rubbed, kneaded—to excited erection, then to urgent throbbing, then to paroxysms of rapture. And Cricket’s increasingly heated response naturally heated me as well, so that we were equally, gleefully, dizzily, almost swooningly exultant when together we came to climax.
When it was over, she of the prodigious lungs, of course, got her breath back before I did. While I still lay limp, Ixínatsi slipped into her den under the tree and emerged to press something into my hand. It glowed in the moonlight like a piece of the moon itself.
“A kinú means a loving heart,” she said, and kissed me.
“This single pearl,” I said weakly, “would buy you much. A proper house, for instance. A very good one.”
“I would not know what to do with a house. I do know—now—how to enjoy akuáreni. The kinú is to thank you for showing me.”
Before I could gather breath to speak again, she had bounded upright and called across the tree trunk, “Marúuani!” to the young woman who lived in the shelter on the other side. I thought Cricket was going to apologize for the doubtlessly unfamiliar noises we had been making. Instead she said urgently, “Come over here! I have discovered a thing most marvelous!”
Marúuani came around the root end of the tree, idly combing her long hair, pretending to be not at all curious, but her eyebrows went up when she saw us both unclothed. She said to Ixínatsi, but with her eyes on me, “It sounded—as if you were enjoying yourselves.”
“Exactly that,” Cricket said with relish. “Our… selves. Listen!” She moved close, to whisper to the other woman, who continued to regard me, her eyes widening more each moment. Lying there, being described and discussed, I felt rather like some hitherto unknown sea creature just washed ashore and causing a sensation. I heard Marúuani say, in a hushed voice, “He did?” and after some more whispering, “Would he?”
“Of course he will,” said Ixínatsi. “Will you not, Tenamáxtli? Will you not do akuéreni with my friend Marúuani?”
I cleared my throat and said, “One thing you must realize about men, my dearest. It takes them at least a little resting—between times—for the pole to stiffen again.”
“It does? Oh, what a pity. Marúuani is eager to learn.”
I considered, then said, “Well, I have shown you some things, Cricket, that do not require my participation. While I regather my faculties, you could demonstrate the preliminaries to your friend.”
“You are right,” she said brightly. “After all, we will not always have men with poles at our bidding. Marúuani, take off your loincloth and lie down here.”
Somewhat guardedly, Marúuani obeyed, and Ixínatsi stretched out beside her, both of them just a little way from me. Marúuani flinched and gave a small shriek at the first intimate touch.
“Be still,” said Cricket, with the confidence of experience. “This is how it is done. In a moment you will know.”
And it was not long before I was watching two supple, shining sea-cuguars doing the contortions of coupling—much as the real animals do it—except that these were much more graceful, since they had long, shapely arms and legs to intertwine. And the watching of it hastened my own availability, so I was ready for Marúuani when she was ready for me.
I repeat, I was in love with Ixínatsi even before we did the act of love. I had already, that very night, determined to take her and her little girl with me when I left the island. I would do it by persuasion, if possible. If not, I would—like a brute Yaki—abduct them by force. And now, having found out how uniquely and wonderfully Cricket was constructed for the act of love, I was more determined than before.
But I am human. And I am male. Therefore I am incurably, insatiably curious. I could not help wondering if all these island women possessed the same physical properties that Cricket did. Although the young woman Marúuani was comely and appealing, I had never felt any desire for her, certainly not what I had felt and still felt for Ixínatsi. However, after watching what had just occurred, and being aroused by it to an indiscriminate lustfulness, and with Ixínatsi unselfishly urging me on…
Well, that is how my stay in the islands came to be indefinitely prolonged. Ixínatsi and Marúuani spread the word that there was something more to life than just working and sleeping and occasionally playing with one’s self—and the other island women clamored to be introduced to it. Grandmother’s scandalized objections were shouted down, probably for the first time in her reign, but she became resigned to the new state of affairs when it effected a noticeable increase in the workers’ good spirits and productivity. Kukú enforced only one condition: that all akuáreni be confined to the nighttimes—which I did not mind, because it gave me the days for sleeping and regaining my stamina.
Let me say here that I would not have obliged any of the other women if Cricket had evinced the least jealousy or possessiveness. I did it mainly because she seemed so happy to have her sisters thus enlightened, and seemed to take pride in that being done by “her man.” In truth, I would rather have restricted my attentions to her alone, for she was the one that I deeply loved—the only one, then or ever—and I know she loved me, too. Even Tirípetsi, who at first had been shy and uneasy about having a man in residence, came to regard me fondly, as other little girls elsewhere regard their fathers.
Also, and this is important, the other island women were not physically constructed as was Ixínatsi. They were as ordinary in that respect as every other woman I have coupled with in my lifetime. In short, I was so infatuated with Cricket that no other woman would ever measure up to the standards she had set. It was only because she wished it that I lent my services to the women at large. I did that more dutifully than avidly, and even instituted a sort of program—a petitioning woman every other night, the nights between being devoted to Cricket alone—and those were nights of love, not just loving.
It may be that because I had seldom lacked for women—and certainly did not now—I had become somewhat jaded with the commonplace, and the very newness of Ixínatsi was what vitalized me so. I only know that the sensations shared by her and myself kindled in me fires that I had never felt, even in my lustiest youth. As for dear Cricket, I am sure she had no idea that she was physically superior to ordinary women. Nothing could ever have made her suspect that she had been so god-blessed at birth. And, of course, it may be that she was not the only female in human history to have been thus endowed by a goddess. Possibly some aged midwife, after numberless years of attending a numberless multitude of females, could have told of having sometime found some other young woman similarly constructed.
But I cared not From this time forward, I would not ever need or seek or want any other lover—however extraordinary—now that I possessed this most exceptional one of all. And whether or not Ixínatsi realized that in our frequent and fervent embraces she was enjoying ecstasies surpassing those that the love goddess grants to every other woman in the world… well, she did enjoy them. And so did I, so did I. Yyo ayyo, how we did enjoy them!
Meanwhile, I lay at least once with every island woman and girl who was physically mature enough to appre
In the beginning, there was such mass enthusiasm that there was a constant traffic of females rafting every night back and forth between the two inhabited islands. But there was only one of me, and the other women had to alternate with Ixínatsi, so during that time many of them earnestly essayed to learn by imitation, as Ixínatsi had taught Marúuani. Sometimes I would be lying with a woman, going through the ceremony from first fondlings to final consummation, and two other females—her sister and her daughter, it might be—would lie right next to us, alternately eyeing our doings and then doing them to one another, insofar as possible.
After I had personally served every eligible girl and woman at least once, and the demand for me was not so imperative, the women continued, on their own, to discover the numerous ways they could pleasure one another, and freely traded partners, and even learned to do it in threes and fours—all this with blithe disregard for any consanguinity among them. Ixínatsi and I, in our intervals of rest at night, would often hear, among the other forest sounds, the sound of those women’s wonderful breasts slapping rhythmically together.
All this while, I was ardently wooing Ixínatsi—not to make her love me; we knew we loved one another. I was trying to persuade her to come with me, and bring the daughter I now thought of as my own, to The One World. I besieged her with every argument I could muster. I told her, with honesty, that I was the equivalent of Kukú in my own domain, that she and Tirípetsi would live in a genuine palace, with servants at their command, lacking nothing they could possibly need or want, never again having to dive for oysters, or skin sea-cuguars for their hides, or fear the storms that might ravage the islands, or lie down to mate with strangers.
“Ah, Tenamáxtli,” she would say with an endearing smile, “but this is palace enough”—indicating the tree-trunk shelter—“as long as you share it with us.”
Not quite so honestly, I omitted all mention of the Spaniards’ having occupied most of The One World. These island women did not yet know that such things as white men existed. Evidently the men from Yakóreke had likewise refrained from speaking of the Spaniards, possibly out of concern that the women might withhold their kinúcha, hoping to start a new commerce with richer traders. For that matter, I reminded myself, I could not be sure that the Spaniards had not already overwhelmed Aztlan, in which case I had no Kukúdom, so to speak, with which to tempt Cricket. But I firmly believed that she and Tirípetsi and I could make a new life for ourselves somewhere, and I regaled her with tales of the many lovely, lush, serene places I had found in my travels, where we three might settle down together.
“But this place, Tenamáxtli, these islands, they are home. Make them your home, too. Grandmother is accustomed to having you here now. She will no longer be demanding that you depart. Is this not as pleasant a life as we could find anywhere else? We need not fear the storms and strangers. Tirípetsi and I have survived all the storms, and so will you. As for the strangers, you know I will never again lie with one of those. I am yours.”
In vain, I tried to make her envision the more varied life that could be lived on the mainland—the abundance of food and drink and diversion, of travel, of education for our daughter, the opportunities of meeting new people quite different from those she was used to.
“Why, Cricket,” I said, “you and I can have other children there, to be company for little Tirípetsi. Even brothers for her. She can never have any here.”
Ixínatsi sighed, as if she was wearying of my importunities, and said, “She can never miss what she has never had.”
I asked anxiously, “Have I made you angry?”
“Yes, I am angry,” she said, but with a laugh, in her cricket-merry way. “Here—take back all your kisses.” And she began kissing me, and kept on kissing me every time I tried to say anything more.
But always, with sweet stubbornness, she dismissed or countered my every argument—and one day she did it by alluding to my own enviable current situation:
“Do you not see, Tenamáxtli, that any mainland man would absolutely pounce to trade places with you? Here you have not only me to love you and lie with you—and you will have Tirípetsi, too, when she is of age—you have, when you so desire, any other woman of these islands. Every woman. And, in time, their daughters.”
I was hardly qualified to start preaching morality. I could only protest, and with utmost sincerity, “But you are all I want!”
And now I must confess something shameful. That same day, I went off into the woods to think, and I said to myself, “She is all I want. I am captivated by her, obsessed, besotted. If I dragged her away from here against her will, she would never love me again. Anyway, what would I be dragging her to? What awaits me yonder? Only a bloody war—killing or being killed. Why should I not do what she says? Stay here in these fair islands.”
Here I had peace, love, happiness. The other women were making ever fewer demands on me, now that the novelty had worn off. Ixínatsi and Tirípetsi and I could be a selfcontained and self-sufficient family. Since I had broken one of the islands’ sacred traditions—by living here as no man had ever done before—I believed that I could break others. Old Grandmother had gone unheeded in that instance, and, anyway, she would not live forever. I had every expectation that I could wean the women away from their man-hating goddess New Moon, and turn them instead to worship of the kindlier Coyolxaúqui, goddess of the full-hearted full moon. No longer would boy infants be fed to the oysters. Cricket and I and all the others could have sons. I would eventually be the patriarch of an island domain, and its benevolent ruler.
For all I knew, the Spaniards had by now overrun the entire One World, and I could hope to accomplish nothing by going back there. Here, I would have my own One World, and it might be sheaves of years before any farther-reaching Spanish explorers should stumble upon it. Even if the white men had subjugated so much of the mainland—or later would—that the Yakóreke fishermen could no longer visit the islands, I was sure that they would not reveal the location. If they came no more, well, I now knew the course back and forth. I and, in time, my sons could paddle stealthily to that shore to procure the necessities of life—knives and combs and such—that had to be bought with pearls …
Thus shamefully did I contemplate abandoning the quest that I had pursued during all the years since I watched my father burn to death, the quest that had led me along so many roads, into so many hazards, through so many adventures. Thus shamefully did I seek to justify discarding my plans to avenge my father and all others of my people who had suffered at the hands of the white men. Thus shamefully did I try to concoct excuses for forgetting those many—Citláli and the child Ehécatl, dauntless Pakápeti, the Cuachic Comitl, the Tícitl Ualíztli, the others—who had perished in helping me toward my aim of vengeance. Thus shamefully did I seek plausible reasons for my deserting the Knight Nochéztli and my hard-gathered army and, indeed, all the peoples of The One World…
I have been ashamed, ever since that day, that I even thought of so disgracing myself. I would have lost the race I never ran. Had I actually done that—succumbed to Ixínatsi’s love and the islands’ easefulness—I doubt that I could long have lived with my shame. I would have come to hate myself, and then have turned the hate on Cricket for her causing me to hate myself. What I might have done for love would have destroyed that love.
Further to my shame, I cannot even claim with conviction that I would not have chosen to surrender my quest—and my honor—because it so happened that the gods made the choi
Toward twilight, I returned to the seaside, where the divers were wading ashore with their last baskets of the day. Ixínatsi was among them, and when she saw me waiting for her, she called cheerily, mischievously, with a meaningful grin:
“I think by now, darling Tenamáxtli, I must owe you at least one more kinú. I shall dive this moment and bring you the Kukú of all kinúcha.” She turned and swam to the nearest rock outcrop, where some indolent sea-cuguars were basking and gleaming in the last low rays of sunlight.
I called to her, “Come back, Cricket I wish to talk.”
She must not have heard me. Glistening as golden as the animals about her, radiant and beautiful, she stood poised on one of the rocks, gave me a jaunty wave of her hand, dove into the sea and never came out again.
When finally I realized that not even the strongest-lunged woman could have stayed underwater so long, I raised an outcry. All the other divers still in the shallows came splashing ashore in fright, probably thinking I had espied a shark’s fin. Then, after some hesitation, the more intrepid of them swam back to the area I pointed to—where I had seen Ixínatsi plunge under—and they dove again and again, until they were exhausted, without finding her or any indication of what had happened to her.
“Our women,” said a creaky old voice beside me, “do not all live to my great age.”
It was Kukú, who had naturally hastened to the scene. Although she might have berated me for having disturbed the complacency of her realm, or for having been partly to blame for Cricket’s loss, the old woman sounded as if she wished to solace me.
“Kinú-diving is more than rigorous work,” she said. “It is perilous work. Down there lurk savage fish with tearing teeth, others with poisonous stings, others with clutching tentacles. I do not think, however, that Ixínatsi fell prey to any such fish. When there are predators in the vicinity, the seacuguars bark a warning. More likely she has been swallowed.”
“Swallowed?” I echoed, thunderstruck. “Kukú, how could a woman be swallowed by the sea in which she has lived for half her life?”