Mexico: A Novel Part 10

"Well, pick some for me too," Nopiltzin shouted as the surprised woman moved off toward the gardens.

He felt very good, took another long drink of the liquid and, when he found that this had exhausted the supply, threw the clay jar hard against the splendid wall. The sound of shattering fragments as they fell to the beautiful floor pleased him and he cried to no one in particular: "I'd like to talk with Ixbalanque again. That man had some powerful ideas that I didn't fully understand."

He left the small room and hurried through the palace, and whereas the distances between rooms had sometimes seemed excessive to him, on this day they seemed entirely functional and he was impressed at how charmingly his grandfather had laid out the sprawling palace. He banged his way unannounced into the priests' quarters and shouted in what he intended to be a commanding voice: "Ixbalanque! I want to talk to you!"

The high priest hurried from an inner sanctum and bowed with precisely the degree of deference due the royal leader, but before he was able to rise he felt the king's right hand slam down on his shoulder and heard him cry in a voice louder than usual: "Ixbalanque, my friend, let's go somewhere quiet, because now I see everything clearly and appreciate what you've been talking about."

The priest was pleased and led his king to a quiet arbor overlooking the pyramid, and here Nopiltzin shouted expansively, pointing to the pyramid: "We're going to put a new face on that pile of rocks that will reach from here to here." He indicated dimensions far greater than those the high priest had suggested.

"You mean," Ixbalanque asked, "that we can proceed?"

"In days to come," the king said, embracing his priest once more, "the people of this valley will look back upon us as two of the greatest builders the Builders have ever produced. That pyramid is going to be so large-" He stopped abruptly and turned away from the great structure. "Explain again about this curious G.o.d the Tenayucans have. What is a smoking mirror?"

Not to be sidetracked by the sudden digression, Ixbalanque replied, "If we're going to resurface the pyramid, there will probably be no need for-"

"Tell me about Tezcatli ..." As his tongue twisted over the unfamiliar name he started to giggle. Quickly recovering his dignity, he moved back a few paces and bellowed: 'Tell me about him."

Ixbalanque was frightened. He could see that the king was afflicted with some strange malady, and it would be dreadful if Nopiltzin were to fall seriously sick before the rebuilding of the pyramid was actually launched. Every precaution must be taken to ensure the king's health, so the priest suggested, "Shall I take you back to your quarters?"

"You shall not!" Nopiltzin bellowed. "You'll sit here and tell me about Tezcatli ..." Again he could get no further.

Seeking to humor the sick man, Ixbalanque began, "The G.o.d Tezcatlipoca stands for the reconciliation of things that cannot be reconciled." The old man stopped, for he was afraid that the king was in no condition to comprehend such matters, but he soon resumed, for he had become convinced that any community must pay allegiance to two kinds of G.o.ds.

"We must placate the G.o.ds who control our immediate destinies--the rain G.o.d, the earth G.o.d and the G.o.d of fertility-- but we should also wors.h.i.+p some deity who represents a higher order of thought and who is not concerned with arbitrating day-to-day problems. Perhaps he is the G.o.d from whom the lesser ones derive their power. Perhaps he is a G.o.d infinitely removed from temporary questions of power, but if we do not direct ourselves to such a G.o.d ..."

When the old priest paused to look directly at his king, he saw that the monarch had fallen asleep. He didn't hear a word I said, Ixbalanque reflected, which is probably a good thing, because it might have confused him and prevented us from going ahead with the pyramid. Then he noticed that the king's jaw was slack and that his forehead was sweating profusely while his right arm and shoulder twitched spasmodically. It was apparent that Nopiltzin was much sicker than Ixbalanque had originally suspected, so the latter called for help, but when the servants were carrying the inert king off to bed he suddenly regained consciousness and, seeing some tame rabbits on the lawn, broke away to follow the animals, shouting: "I'll be a rabbit and I'll be the new G.o.d!" Then he saw the old priest and ran over to embrace him. "Don't worry, old friend," he mumbled. "Now everything is very clear. It's as if a hundred suns have risen." With this jubilant remark he collapsed completely, with a beatific smile.

That night, after the king had been put to bed, Ixbalanque went to a temple at the crest of the pyramid where he convened a meeting of his priests. "We face a difficult situation," he told them. "King Nopiltzin has been struck by a fatal malady and might leave us at any moment."

"The fever?"

"Worse. Loss of his mind." Allowing his subordinates time to grasp the ominous news, he resumed: "The king has authorized us to resurface the pyramid, as we had proposed, but if he dies before we start, the new king-"

"What we must do," one of the priests advised, "is start immediately to resurface, because if the task is fairly begun, the new king won't feel free to halt it."

That night the priests remained in the temples atop the pyramid praying that King Nopiltzin would recover from his illness and survive long enough to let them begin the resurfacing. At dawn the high priest hurried down the long avenue to the royal palace to inspect Nopiltzm's health and to gain final permission for initiating the vast project.

He found the king in a vile humor, but more distressing was the fact that Nopiltzin had no recollection of having authorized the rebuilding of the pyramid. In some confusion Ixbalanque pleaded, "Don't you remember looking at the pyramid and saying that we would make the new version even longer and higher than I had proposed?"

"Are you insane?" Nopiltzin growled.

"But we agreed on it," Ixbalanque argued, "and I want to start digging the trenches today."

"Then you get yourself a little stick and start digging," Nopiltzin snapped.

Ixbalanque decided to be direct: "Are you ill?"

Nopiltzm's features relaxed slightly and he said: "I do not feel well, but I'm sure the giddiness will pa.s.s. The important thing is that last evening for a moment I saw everything very clearly. I know just what we are going to do about the G.o.ds."

"What?" Ixbalanque asked with undisguised eagerness.

"I'll tell you later," Nopiltzin parried. "But there are two things I'll tell you right now. We're not going to build any pyramid. And we're not going to import from Tenayuca-by-the-Lake any G.o.d who represents nothing but vague contradictions."

"What are we going to do?" Ixbalanque pleaded.

"You'll be most surprised."

When the high priest left, Nopiltzin went out among his maguey plants and with an obsidian knife-although my ancestors of that period had not discovered durable metal, they did know how to give hard rock a cutting edge-cut down into the heart of several plants and drew out by sucking through a hoilow gourd enough honey water to fill eight clay jars. These he wrapped in damp cloth for storing in the dark, and at the end of three anxious weeks he sampled the results.

He was elated because the honey water had once more transformed itself into the exciting beverage that he had tasted earlier. Closing the curtains that protected his apartment, he began to drink the liquor seriously, and before long the animated visions that had so pleased him at the first testing returned. Knowing that many problems beset the high priest, he summoned Ixbalanque, threw his arms about the old man, and cried in a half-tearful voice, "Ixbalanque, you are going to get your G.o.d!"

The priest struggled to free himself from the embrace and asked: "Will you remember tomorrow what you say today?"

Nopiltzin ignored this and said, "I have discovered a new G.o.d."

"Where?"

"In the heart of the maguey plant."

The king led Ixbalanque into the darkened room where the eight clay jars stood and pointed to his treasure. "A G.o.d lies hidden there, Ixbalanque, and I shall introduce you to him." Going to one of the jars, the king poured his guest a substantial helping of the liquid and invited the priest to drink. With some apprehension Ixbalanque lifted the cup to his lips and for the first time tasted the beverage that was to become known as pulque.

As the afternoon wore on, Ixbalanque noticed that under the influence of pulque the king became more and more expansive while he, Ixbalanque, became increasingly suspicious. He could feel the strange liquid altering his normal behavior and tried to fight against it; he had the distinct suspicion that the pulque was usurping a function that any man should keep for himself or allocate to the G.o.ds. He was on the point of formulating what that function was when Nopiltzin grabbed a flute and began playing delicious music, whereupon Ixbalanque found himself a drum, and after only a few moments of frenzied playing, the entire situation began to clear up for the high priest.

"We play better than the temple musicians," Ixbalanque announced gravely.

"We're going to have a temple on top of the new pyramid-"

"Are we going ahead with the rebuilding after all?"

"Old friend, if you want a new pyramid, you get a new pyramid. See that tree over there? We're going to put so many blocks of stone on that old pyramid that it will be higher than the tree."

"Marvelous," Ixbalanque shouted, banging his drum with renewed vigor.

For five or six hours the king and the high priest drank pulque and rearranged the business of the high valley. There would be a new pyramid and new laws, grouchy elderly officials would be demoted, and the high priest would arrange a marriage between the king and his wife's oldest sister, even though such a union was forbidden by custom. In the sixth hour the king began to run around on all fours like a rabbit and he invited the high priest to do the same.

"No," Ixbalanque said, "if you are the rabbit, I am the coyote, and I'm going to catch you!"

Together the two leaders of the state crawled around the king's chambers, Nopiltzin leaping like a rabbit and Ixbalanque yelping like a coyote, until the chase became so noisy that the queen sent her older sister to see what was happening. When that austere and ugly woman pushed aside the curtains, she was aghast to find the two men rolling around the floor, but this reaction soon turned to utter confusion when the king saw her, leaped across the room on all fours, and grabbed her by the knees, pulling her down onto the floor beside him.

"I've found my darling little rabbit!" he shouted.

"Oh no!" the high priest barked in protest. "Only coyotes can have little rabbits." He leaped past the king and started biting the queen's sister on the forearm, whereupon she screamed, and he suddenly came to his senses. In amazement and confusion he rose, brushed himself off and looked down at his king, who was still groveling on the floor, holding the woman by the knees.

"Nopiltzin!" the priest cried. "Get up!"

With some difficulty, for he had been drinking for some hours before the arrival of the high priest, Nopiltzin released his sister-in-law and staggered to his feet. The astonished woman adjusted her clothing and fled, while the king banged himself on the temples to clear his head. Mouthing ill-formed words, he asked: "What were we doing, down on the floor?

I've always thought of her as the ugliest woman in the high valley."

That night Ixbalanque, once more in command of his reasoning powers, walked disconsolately among the temples atop the pyramid, and in trying to understand what had happened that confusing afternoon he reached several frightening conclusions. Under questioning, after the queen's sister had left, Nopiltzin had a.s.sured his priest that the strange liquid had consistently reliable power: the same results had been achieved with each batch. Furthermore, it could be easily made. Finally, when one was drinking it, a G.o.d did indeed seem to inhabit one. There was a sense of excitement and colors seemed brighter. What was most shocking was that during the time when the G.o.d of pulque had been in command, the queen's sister had actually been a rather attractive woman, so that when he, Ixbalanque, had attacked her and started nibbling her arm, what he had really wanted to do was to drive the king away, tear off the woman's clothes and enjoy her.

"There will be no new pyramid," the high priest admitted in the darkness that enveloped the top of the pyramid. "The G.o.d of the smoking mirror, which might have saved us, will not be welcome. The flowered serpent is gone with his sponsors.h.i.+p of beauty, and I'm afraid that all we have accomplished in the high valley is in danger." He looked down at the sleeping city, then one of the loveliest and best governed in Mexico, and sensed accurately that the great decline had begun, that subtle dry rot that overtakes societies when vision and grand design have been surrendered. In anguish he went to the dormitory where his priests slept and cried: "Brothers! I need your counsel!" and long after midnight the guardians of the high valley's conscience debated the most danger-filled question the clergy ever had to confront: "The king seems to have lost control of his powers to govern. Shall we depose him?" The younger men listened in bewilderment as Ixbalanque reported the king's curious behavior while saying nothing of his own when he was galloping about as a coyote.

Relying only on what the high priest had told them, the group could reach no conclusion about deposing the king, and Ixbalanque was left with the dismal realization that he must act but had no idea of what that action should be. In his confusion he asked two of his senior advisers to walk with him among the temples he and they were supposed to serve and protect, and in the darkness he revealed the cause of his consternation.

"It has a potent magic. It's made from the liquid at the heart of the maguey, so it must be sacred. When you drink it, you weigh less. Your eyes see colors more clearly. Your tongue is loosened and you become a golden-voiced orator." At this point he stopped, looked out over the valley below and confided: "When I drank some of the new liquid and looked at c.o.xlal, the queen's ugly sister, she became sixteen years old, a ravis.h.i.+ng princess."

"It must be magic," one of the priests said. "We must protect our city from the king's madness."

In the dark hour before dawn, Ixbalanque faced the critical problem: "I think we must consider carefully the king's future," and now his colleagues knew he was speaking of deposition. Beating his fists against his chest, Ixbalanque cried: "I should have forced a change years ago. Well, I'll perform my duties now," and he returned to the dormitory, where he roused his two advisers and whispered: "The king must go. This city must be saved." And he hastened down the long flight of stone steps to the level below, where he went immediately to his quarters and prepared for the painful meeting at which he would inform the king that his reign was over.

But one of the priests who had learned of the decision scurried down the stone steps in the breaking dawn and alerted the king to what was afoot, so that when Ixbalanque appeared at the palace, the king was waiting with two henchmen secreted behind a wall. Since Nopiltzin had spent the previous night drinking huge drafts of pulque, his capacity for understanding what the high priest wanted to tell him was severely blunted, but at the first sign that Ixbalanque had come to recommend abdication, he flew into a towering rage and, summoning his two thugs, shouted: "Kill him!" and the obsidian daggers, gleaming black in the morning sunlight, plunged into the chest of the high priest.

As he fell at the king's feet he looked up to see his drunken monarch and mumbled: "We shall have a new G.o.d, but it won't be the one we need," and he perished, the one man who might have saved the civilization of the Builders.

For the next two hundred years, roughly 900 to 1100, which is not an insignificant length of time as the lives of nations go, City-of-the-Pyramid enjoyed one of the greatest levels of human happiness ever attained by an early organized community. There was no war, no hunger, no forced labor on state projects, no human sacrifice, no grinding social injustice. Some were rich and some were poor, but the gap between the two was not immense. There was an army of sorts, but it played no significant role in the affairs of state. Adultery was punished severely so as to protect the family, and there was even a rude educational system that enabled even the poorest of boys to rise to the priesthood.

What gave City-of-the-Pyramid its greatest distinction, however, was its wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.d of pulque. The beverage was fermented in great amounts at maguey plantations, which now occupied fields that had once produced only cactus. For mile after mile the spidery arms of the blue-green maguey twisted into the air like the flames of earth, and one of the most common sights in the high valley was the maguey harvester pa.s.sing among his plants, armed with a hollow gourd, one end of which he pressed into the heart of the plant while the other end was kept in his mouth. Then, by sucking vigorously, he drew up the honey water, depositing it in large gourd buckets which carried it to the fermenting areas, where it was transformed into pulque, the beer, the wine of Mexico.

One of the curiosities of history is that the G.o.d of pulque was named Four Hundred Rabbits, since the king who had discovered the drink felt that any man, given enough pulque, could be as carefree as four hundred rabbits. There was a temple to Four Hundred Rabbits-not a large one because the high valley's energy for building had long since been dissipated. The G.o.d was represented by a green stone statue of a rabbit with ears like a maguey leaf, and he was perpetually surrounded by flowers of four colors. A troupe of dancers was usually in attendance at his temple and the outer walls of the little structure were festooned with gourds and garlands of fruit. Celebrations in honor of Four Hundred Rabbits consisted of music and singing, the burning of nopal-and-rubber incense, and all who wors.h.i.+ped the G.o.d were supposed to be gentle, happy and, above all, kind. It is no exaggeration to say that Four Hundred Rabbits was the loveliest G.o.d who ever reigned in Mexico.

Although I'm an American and not a trained historian, I believe I'm ent.i.tled to make a judgment about the reign of King Nopiltzin because, through a quirk of Mexican history, I was born a lineal descendant of the king: my grandfather married an Indian woman who sprang directly from his line. So when I try to evaluate his performance I am speaking not of some Indian stranger long dead but of my own ancestor. My summary of his reign is this. The G.o.d of pulque acquired a significance greater than that of any other deity. No priest like Ixbalanque tried to call the city back to its high destiny, and the king, unlike tough old Ixmiq, did not dream of building a city so powerful and vast that it would be a monumental tribute to the G.o.ds. Instead, king and priest alike wors.h.i.+ped fairly constantly at the shrine of Four Hundred Rabbits, and a hazy indifference settled over the city and the entire valley.

I am convinced by various murals that life in the latter years of Nopiltzm's reign was very good indeed. There is evidence from some of the memorials dug up around Mexico City that other states looked upon City-of-the-Pyramid as the apex of accomplishment, and the decorated pottery and featherwork produced in the high valley was treasured even as far south as present-day Guatemala. Some of the songs composed in those years are still sung in Mexico, including the one that accompanies the hilarious pulque dance that tourists love to photograph: the singers jig up and down on one foot like rabbits while bystanders bark like coyotes. Tradition claims that Nopiltzin himself composed both the music and the dance.

But after his death the city began to decline. As the years pa.s.sed, artists in the rest of Mexico began to depict City-of-the-Pyramid not as a triangle accompanied by a flute but as an Indian dignitary whose many headdresses were c.o.c.ked to one side, as if he were drunk. The envy of others had given way to contempt, even by local artists.

And there was an ominous development whose menace the rulers of the city were too befuddled by pulque to appreciate. From time to time, starting in the year 992, when Nopiltzin was long dead, a strange group of Indians who occupied caves far to the north began wandering down to the high valley; we know this from the decorated pottery of the period. Invariably they are depicted as barbarians, ugly and ferocious people lacking the graciousness that had marked the citizens of City-of-the-Pyramid. We find not a shred of evidence that any of the pulque people appreciated the significance of these stragglers. Just as the rest of civilized Mexico now treated the Builders with contempt, so the latter dismissed the northern barbarians as insignificant.

One aspect of this darkening period around the year 1000 saddens me, for it reflects on what I had come to think of as "my people." The descendants of Ixmiq, those fine people who had built some of the grandest structures in all the Americas, would be known in history only as the Drunken Builders, a name taken from the days of their decline. This misnomer has deluded many into thinking that men who were habitually drunk could have built those enduring memorials. I think those ancestors of mine should more generously be termed the Beautiful Builders Who Took to Drink. But I know that's too c.u.mbersome, for historians, like us journalists, seem always to prefer the simplification, whether it represents the truth or not.

Chapter 6.

INDIAN ANCESTORS: THE ALTOMECS.

AT THE BEGINNING of the tenth century, when Nopiltzin was preoccupied with the discovery of pulque, there existed in a series of dark caves along a network of rivers that ran through the steaming jungles several hundred miles north of Mexico City a tribe of Indians who for three or four thousand years, at least, and possibly much longer, had kept alive in their tribal traditions memory of an age when they had lived in a high place. This recollection was so persistent that after the Conquest the tribe was given the name Altomec, a mixture of Spanish and Indian meaning "Those who seek a high place," but during the time of which I speak they were called by others either the Cave People or the Followers of Glittering-Fish Color-Bird.

They were a short-statured, very dark people. Their standard of living was abysmal. In three or four thousand years, huddling in their caves, they had failed to invent cloth, or to develop any simple decoration for their pottery, or to tame the turkey. But they had made two discoveries that were to remake the history of Mexico. Along with their relatives, the Aztecs, who were a little more advanced, the Cave People had learned the effectiveness of organized tribal action, and they had found a G.o.d ideally suited to lead them.

Their capacity for unified movement was remarkable, and all during the first half of the eleventh century their rulers sent out disciplined bodies of men to scout the rest of Mexico in the search for a new homesite, for it had become apparent that continued life in the caves was not desirable. Some of these scouting parties penetrated as far south as the areas beyond Guatemala. Others had spied upon the lands of the Drunken Builders, and these had reported favorably on that domain.

Sometime about 1050 the Cave People decided to abandon the caves. Loading their men and women with heavy burdens, they set forth with rude implements, statues of their G.o.d weighing thousands of pounds, seeds, gourd baskets, totems of one kind or another and hundreds of small children. Each year, from September to April, they moved a few miles from their old camping ground to a new site, where in the spring they planted the seeds they had been carrying through the winter. For five months they tended their crops and during another month they harvested, and then they pushed south. Scouting parties were constantly probing the areas ahead and for a period of ten years it was intended that they would settle somewhere in the Yucatan peninsula. It was a strange fact that most of the people in the areas spied upon by these nomads were not aware of their presence, so stealthy were their operations. But they did leave a trail, for wherever they probed, a few local men would mysteriously disappear; Glittering-Fish Color-Bird required the constant sacrifice of young warriors.

The powerful G.o.d of the Cave People acquired its name Glittering-Fish Color-Bird in this curious way.

Sometime around the birth of Christ the Cave People had seen in a river a fish whose scales seemed to be made of some glittering substance that caught the sun and held it prisoner. After three days of marveling at the phenomenon, the priests proclaimed the fish a G.o.d, for it was apparent that it had some control over the sun, and for six or seven hundred years it was wors.h.i.+ped as one of the Cave People's princ.i.p.al deities.

In the year 753, three hundred years before the Cave People set forth on their tribal journey through Mexico, one of their scouting parties brought back from Guatemala a dead specimen of that extraordinary bird the quetzal, whose bright bronze-green and red plumage and immensely long tail would excite all Indian tribes who saw it. The priests were convinced that no such bird could have been placed on earth without the direct intervention of the G.o.ds, so on the spot they added the divinity of this colorful bird to that of the glittering fish to create one G.o.d.

When trying to explain Glittering-Fish Color-Bird to people who do not know Mexico, I have found it helpful to remind them that the G.o.d was a composite whose two halves had originated seven centuries apart. Glittering-Fish was a primal G.o.d who could be represented by any kind of s.h.i.+mmering material, and since the Cave People had no metal of any kind, they used waxy leaves, fish scales, polished bones and human teeth to indicate the glittering quality of their deity. The glitter also represented the movement of water that brought fish, the movement of the heavens that brought the growing seasons, and the radiance of the sun. Thus Glittering-Fish was one of the most practical G.o.ds in Mexican history, and one of the most serviceable, for he served as intermediary with the rivers, the fields, the flowers and the life-giving sun.

The attributes of glorious Color-Bird, represented by feathers, flowers and iridescent stones, were the intangible virtues such as love of beauty-even though the Cave People were deficient in this-honesty and loyalty. Color-Bird was wors.h.i.+ped by displaying before him featherwork, bouquets of flowers and costumed dancers. The figure chosen to represent this benign deity was, appropriately, an androgynous figure with a benevolent countenance and an all-embracing smile.

About the year 1000, a small group of priests serving the Cave People decided that their tribe might be better guided if their rather languid G.o.d Glittering-Fish Color-Bird was replaced by one with more clearly defined manly virtues. One of the younger priests, a man of vision and vigor, argued: "If we are ever to move south into the good lands we've been scouting, we'll meet enemies who will want to prevent us from coming into their territory. Since we'll have to fight them to gain what we need, we must have a G.o.d who will lead us in battle." So slowly the priests began to transform Glittering-Fish Color-Bird into a more commanding figure with more rigorous demands. His smile became a scowl, his hands held not flowers but obsidian-studded maces. He now gave the impression of being eager to lead men into battle rather than to protect them in their homes and fields.

This new G.o.d, taller and bigger than his predecessor, demanded for tribute not flowers and colored feathers but war clubs, obsidian daggers and s.h.i.+elds made of closely woven matting. At his stone feet a hollow was kept filled with short lengths of wood to feed the fire that smoldered perpetually, producing soot that darkened the figure and gave it a menacing look.

The transformed G.o.d transformed his wors.h.i.+pers. Under his triumphant guidance the Cave People moved slowly but steadily south, thrusting aside small communities of Indians less well organized than they and occupying always more attractive land. In these first years of their migration they met no armed resistance, but they felt confident that if battle was forced upon them they would win.

Even with their new, belligerent G.o.d the Cave People might have proved a commendable force in Mexican history if they had not remained totally ignorant. If their priests had been aware of the extraordinary discoveries in astronomy made a thousand years before by Indians in other parts of Mexico they would not have found it necessary to initiate the horrible rites that have severely damaged their image in later years.

For more than three thousand years, learned men in various parts of Mexico, priests and astronomers alike, had been aware that in what we now call the month of December the sun wandered each day farther and farther south until, as the twenty-first of December approached, it looked as if it might continue its flight south until it disappeared altogether. Primitive men must have feared that it would never return, so curious rites, mainly involving sacrifices, were invented to lure it back, and since they invariably worked, they became fixed in religious practices. But thoughtful men deduced the rules governing the seasons and realized that the sun was bound to return to perform its functions whether or not it was appeased by rites of any kind. Had the Cave People known this simple fact the abominations I am about to describe would not have happened.

The Cave priests repeatedly told their people: "We sacrificed to our G.o.ds, and the sun came back. If we had not, our crops would never have grown and we would have starved," and the listeners agreed, for they saw that the sun did return. But as the first millennium ended, the priests argued: "Since you are determined to move south in search of better living, sooner or later we will encounter strong tribes who will forbid us to touch their land. So we need his continued help in new and more persuasive ways to ask our G.o.d to help us. To a G.o.d leading us in battle, the offering of fruit and flowers is no longer proper. Our G.o.d deserves the ultimate sacrifice, a human being, one a day in the critical period, so that he not only will dissuade the sun from leaving us in the chill darkness but also will-guarantee our victory in battle."

When one listener asked, "How will the sacrificial man be chosen?" the high priest replied quickly: "No member of the Cave People will ever be selected. We will offer only enemy soldiers we have captured in battle. The best and the bravest, men of valor. Our G.o.d will recognize them as major gifts and will be eager to help us, so let us accept this new form of wors.h.i.+p gladly."

On a day in mid-December when the sun was perilously low, citizens a.s.sembled in the area facing the image of the new G.o.d and watched as a prisoner from a recently vanquished tribe was brought forth, a handsome young warrior who had fought with valor and who now stared defiantly at his captors. He was half led, half dragged toward a huge rounded log, and four priests, grabbing his ankles and wrists, lifted him high in the air and then brought him down forcefully on his back across the log. In this position the young warrior looked into the eyes of a ferocious priest who approached with a long, sharp dagger, which he drove into the prisoner's chest under the last rib and across the belly. Reaching with his left hand into the cavity to tear out the living heart, he offered it as food for the G.o.d of battle.

The people were awed by the terrible power of their new G.o.d, that he could command such a sacrifice, and in the days that followed they watched five successive ritual murders. After the final sacrifice everyone gathered in a public square to spend the night in prayer and religious ritual, imploring the sun to return. As dawn approached, a priest who was monitoring the sun's movement turned to the waiting crowd and shouted triumphantly: "The sun has halted his flight south. He's coming back to save us."

Later, in a year when no prisoners were taken for the good reason that this barren part of Mexico had no inhabitants, December approached with no captives to sacrifice. But the ritual had become so sacred, so vital, in the life of the Cave People, that it was an easy transition from sacrificing enemy warriors to plunging the obsidian knife into the chest of the tribe's own warriors. Within the s.p.a.ce of a mere fifty years the priests had convinced the Cave People that this was the n.o.blest way to leave this earth, a death that was more to be desired than life itself.

In their first encounters with other tribes, the wandering Cave People gained significant victories, and so grateful were they to Glittering-Fish Color-Bird that they dropped the complex double name and referred to him thereafter simply as War G.o.d. His original attributes were ignored, and few in the tribe remembered that he had once been their G.o.d of fertility and beauty.

After they had been wandering for thirty years in the general direction of Yucatan, they encamped somewhere in north-central Mexico-the place has never been identified-which was entirely different from their riverbank home: it was a broad, arid plain whose fields were surrounded by cactus. Here they stayed for about half a century to recoup strength, during which they introduced certain innovations. First, they were so impressed by the cactus plant that when there was no one surviving who could remember the caves they renamed themselves the Cactus People. Second, from the tanned skins of large snakes that infested the area they built themselves a huge drum that they beat whenever they were to offer a human sacrifice. Third, they were so fascinated by the soaring eagles that guarded the cactus plains that they adopted the habit of dressing their chief warriors in costumes that made them look like eagles, and it was these fighters who would soon be dreaded by much of Mexico.

A fourth change was one that occurred in the hearts of the people, for when the leaders decided that the time was ripe for a major thrust at some area in which they could settle permanently and cease their aimless wandering, the priests advised: "For an adventure of this magnitude, in which we may have to wage prolonged war against well-prepared adversaries, we should carry with us a powerful image of our G.o.d, one that reminds us of his strength and our enemies of his power." (Up to this time other peoples had been, known as strangers; now anyone not of their clan carried automatically the label of enemy.) Accordingly a hideous image was carved that represented a tyrant who sat in judgment not only of captives hauled before him but also of his own people. Held between his knees was a stone bowl, into which were thrown the still-pulsing human hearts ripped from the chests of living men. Smoke, emblem of the power of fire, curled about the figure, which in the years of its horrible existence became blackened with soot, and always there was that bottomless bowl into which heart after heart was thrown.

After the harvest period in the year 1130 the Cactus People held a convocation where in a two-day period they sacrificed four hundred and eighty men, of whom nineteen were Drunken Builders who had been surprised on a hunting trip. They were the first Indians from the high valley to die at the hands of War G.o.d. The military leaders and the priests presented the people with options: "One scouting party proposes yearly marches until the rich lands of Yucatan are reached, and rich they are, but the distance is endless, requiring so many years to traverse, that some of you would not live to see it." The people shouted down this proposal, so the leaders continued: "Other scouts have found a lake region only two years distant. But it has no high land in the vicinity except smoking volcanoes." To this the people cried: "We want no burning mountain," and it was rejected. At this impa.s.se, the high priest spoke: "There is one land that I myself have seen. It lies not far away, set among hills. It is a high valley, the kind of land our people have always sought, and it contains a man-made mountain upon which the present inhabitants have erected their temple. It almost looks as if it were waiting for our War G.o.d."

"Are the people living there warlike?" the king asked.

"We've engaged them in minor skirmishes," the high priest a.s.sured him, "and they are easy prey. War G.o.d has a.s.sured us that we can capture their city."

At the time of this meeting, City-of-the-Pyramid and its supporting countryside counted a population of about sixty thousand, whereas the nomadic Cactus People could not have numbered more than five thousand; furthermore, each year upward of a hundred of the best Cactus warriors were sacrificed to War G.o.d, which constantly weakened the tribe, but on the other hand the weak, the worn-out and the blind were also killed off, which constantly strengthened it.

The elite warriors that remained were among the most effective fighting men in Mexico and the idea of engaging an enemy twelve times their number in no way disturbed them. From having defeated many different tribes they had acc.u.mulated some of the most advanced weapons of the age: obsidian war clubs, s.h.i.+elds of hardened wood, mechanical spear-throwers, and sharp-tipped arrows. Their War G.o.d was decorated with turquoise and silver, which made him flash when fires were lighted at his feet and magnified his aura of evil menace.

The Cactus People were convinced that sixty thousand lackadaisical Drunken Builders could not withstand them. Therefore, in the year 1130 the Cactus People decided to move slowly but with constant pressure against City-of-the-Pyramid and occupy it. For the first fifteen years of this slow encroachment the Drunken Builders were not even aware that hostile forces were approaching, but in the spring of 1145 they awakened to the fact that the nomads were encamped only sixty miles away. Although there was consternation, no one knew what to do about the distressing situation.