The Gate of Worlds, page 3
Then a second Mexican woman appeared, and all was changed.
This one was quite clearly the mother of the first. They had the same eyes, the same features. But the mother was thirty-five instead of fifteen, and that made a world of difference. As I was later to learn, Mexican women age swiftly. Mama had lovely eyes, but she weighed two hundred pounds. I had the sickly feeling that her daughter would take the same route, in the fullness of time.
I found my tongue and asked for a room. Mama seemed a little unwilling to give shelter to a wild man from the east, but I flashed my roll of cash and she melted impressively fast. Daughter took me to a room on the top floor. Nothing luxurious, just four walls and a stuffed mattress, the Mexicans scorning to invent the bed. It was wondrously cool, though, after the furnace heat of the day outside.
"Can I get you anything?" the girl asked. Her voice was husky, and she seemed shy as a forest fawn.
"A bowl of chocolatl right away," I said. "Dinner later."
She brought me the chocolatl: a cold, frothy drink seasoned with peppers and other spices. I drank it down in eager gulps. On my first day out from Southampton I had thought that this dark, foaming stuff was the foulest of the foul, but my tastes had changed. I was coming to like Mexican food, which was just as well, since I stood little chance of tasting Yorkshire pudding and leg of mutton again for a while.
I rested a bit, thinking I'd go out and stroll around the town when the cool of the evening descended. In the meanwhile, I had dinner. The usual Mexican fare: cornmeal bread wrapped around miscellaneous spicy fragments of meat and vegetables. I ate well, and washed it down with more chocolatl. Then I set the soiled dishes outside my room for the girl to take away.
By now night had fallen. I went out for my stroll. Oddly, though, the cool of the evening was an unattainable virtue here. It was not so hot as the day, but it was hotter than I cared for. I returned to my room. A night's rest, I thought, and all would be well.
Stripping, I sprawled out on the mattress-comfortable enough-and warily laid Opothle's knife beside me. You could never tell, I thought. But yet this place seemed calm and peaceful and hospitable. I was weary after my broiling day in the sun on the customs line, and sleep was welcome.
I closed my eyes. I must have slipped into a light doze.
Then a voice cried in tones like thunder, "Help! Murder! Assassins! Quequex is being slain! Help! Help! Help!"
THREE
A Sorcerer, More or Less
It was not my business. It did not have to become my business. This was my first night in a strange land, and alien brawls should not have concerned me. I was safe in my room with the door latched.
On the other hand, a man was howling for help in the hallway. Could I simply lie there and let him be murdered?
On the third hand, it might all be a trap to get me out of my room so that I could be attacked and robbed.
I meditated on all this for what seemed like a long time. Actually it must have been less than a second. Then I realized what I had to do. Scooping up the knife, I ran out into the hall.
Two leggy young bandits were attacking an enormously fat old man who seemed weighed down by tons of jade jewelry. He did not appear to be in mortal peril of losing any of his jade, but he was yelling like a dying whale. One of his attackers was trying to hold him by the arms; the other was trying to pull away the jewelry. The fat one was amazingly spry for his age and bulk, and was lashing out furiously with elbows and heels. Nevertheless, he was in trouble.
"Let go of him!" I barked.
In my excitement I said it in English, but the tone of my voice must have conveyed my meaning. The thief who was yanking at the jade swung around and made an ugly face at me, showing six dozen teeth and a couple of yards of tongue. For the first time I understood that the Aztec idols must have been copied from real life.
He snarled and pulled forth a gleaming blade of obsidian, the volcanic glass. His arm went up as though to throw the knife, and I ducked in underneath it, slapping his wrist hard to spoil his aim, and in the same moment bringing my knife across his bare belly. It wasn't my intention to cut him open, merely to scratch him a little. I succeeded.
He yelped. The old man let out a booming cry of satisfaction. He had been hanging on to the other criminal all this while. Now the other lad broke free and came at me. For a moment I faced both of them.
"Look behind you!" I shouted, in Nahuatl this time.
Were they stupid enough to look? Yes. They were stupid enough to look. Both of them turned, and I clunked their heads together hard, at the same time giving the one I had scratched a lusty kick in the small of the back. He went lurching forward and fell on his face, landing hard. The other one was quicker, and swung around again to face me, an obsidian blade in his hand. We crouched and circled each other, looking for an opening. I got the distinct impression that he would kill me if he could, and I made up my mind to put my knife as deep into him as possible.
He feinted with the knife and came up with his left foot, intending to kick me in the face, a deft maneuver practiced by limber-jointed fighters. Unhappily for him, I had anticipated the move, and when that foot came off the floor I seized his heel and gave him a shove. There was the sound of tearing muscles and he went down, dropping his knife. Instantly I followed him to the floor and rested the edge of my blade against his throat.
The first one was stirring, now. I indicated what he would bring upon his companion if he tried any tricks.
"Get up," I told him. "Get out of here, and don't come back."
There was little fight left in him. He rose, rubbing his blood-smeared belly where I had made the light slit in it, and unsteadily walked to the exit ladder that served in place of stairs. I watched until he was gone. Then I heaved my prisoner to his feet and marched him toward the ladder, pressing the knife none too gently into the lump of his throat.
"Down," I commanded. "Go. Fast."
He went. Down. Fast.
Order was restored. Now, and only now, did our bulky landlady arrive to see what had been going on. When she found that the hoodlums were gone, she threw her arms around me and embraced me vigorously. The old man did the same, so that for a dizzying moment I was squeezed between at least five hundred pounds of Mexican flesh.
Then they released me. The landlady announced that my lodging would cost me nothing. She said that bowls of chocolatl would instantly be sent to my room, and stronger drink if desired. The old man, for his part, plucked off a massive pendant of ocean-dark jade and draped it around my neck. I was growing used to receiving gifts by now.
"My savior! My deliverance!" he boomed. "We are companions for life! I owe all to you! Your name?"
"Dan Beauchamp. Of London."
"Quequex is my name," he replied. "I am from the city of Azcapotzalco, but I make my home now in Tenochtitlan. I am a sorcerer to the royal court."
"A sorcerer?"
"A sorcerer, more or less," he said modestly. "As I grow older and fatter, the devils no longer dance to my commands. But Moctezuma doesn't know that yet." He laughed, and the flesh rippled all over him. He was shorter than I by six inches or more, but at least twice as heavy, a small mountain of fat half concealed by baubles of jade. Unlike any other Mexican I had seen, Quequex wore a beard-a stringy one, true-and his round-featured face lacked the sharp cheekbones and jutting nose of the true Aztec. Perhaps he came from some other tribal line.
Wise old eyes stared out from that pudgy face. With the danger gone, he seemed relaxed and mellow, though he had been screeching piteously only ten minutes before. We repaired to his room, and over bowls of chocolatl we struck up an acquaintanceship.
"Where are you bound?" he asked. "What takes you from London?"
I told him my tale. He nodded sagely. "Very good, very good," he wheezed. "A boy should seek his soul in strange worlds. So is it written. You go on to Tenochtitlan?"
"Yes."
"A blessing upon us. We will travel together, Dan Beauchamp. You will protect me from the mountain bandits. And I will instill in you some of the wisdom that great age and extreme corpulence have bestowed on me. Is it agreed? I leave tomorrow."
I hadn't planned to head for the capital so soon.
But it seemed to me better to travel in the company of this fat old fraud than to go alone through an unknown land.
We sat together far into the night. He claimed to be on his way back from Peru, where he had gone as a special envoy from King Moctezuma XII to His Imperial Majesty, the Inca Capac Yupanqui V. Although from my brief acquaintance with Quequex I could not imagine why a king would wish to trust him with matters of high diplomacy, I didn't challenge his assertion. Certainly he had been to Peru, for he showed me fine blankets of the Inca weave, and some small silver statuettes that had clearly been made in Cuzco. But I suspected he had gone there for private reasons, not as envoy from king to king.
He questioned me at length about European politics, which seemed to interest him intensely. He knew the political structure of Europe far better than I had expected him to, and spoke with knowledge of the persecution of Christians in Spain and Italy, the proposed merger of a few dozen of the Teutonic States into a United Germany, and the recent friction between the Czar of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey.
"And you?" he said. "A Moslem, are you?"
"Christian, sir."
"Indeed so? How did that happen?"
"My family remained Christian after the Turks conquered England. It's the way we are."
He smiled, creasing his drooping jowls. "Chambers underground where prayers are said. The crucifix in its hidden place. An outward acceptance of Islam. The secret rites: Christmas, Easter, Twelfth Night. Yes?"
"Yes." I felt a stab of nostalgia. Christmas would be coming soon, and all England under a blanket of white snow. While here I was in this torrid land of endless heat, away from home for the first time at the season of the holly and the ivy. "How is it you know so much of our religion? You can't have met many Christians."
"It is my trade to know the holy mysteries of the world," he replied dreamily, rocking gently back and forth, his belly bulging like a Buddha's. "I have been in Jerusalem, do you know? I have seen the birthplace of Christ, and the place where He died. And I have been to Mecca, shuffling round the black rock with the Faithful. In Istanbul once, the Sultan and I-"
Was he a shameless liar? Or had he really done such things? He spoke so glibly.
I could not check him on his tales of carousing in the Sultan's halls. But I could verify him in other ways.
"Have you been to London, Quequex?"
"New Istanbul, so it is usually called. Yes. I was there thirty years ago, for the coronation of King Edward of blessed memory. A cold time it was, too, all snow and pain. I was part of the royal delegation from Mexico." And he proceeded to launch into a lengthy recollection of London. He described it faultlessly: Oxford Street and Piccadilly, the monument to the defeat of the Turks, the Tower, the British Museum, the Grand Palace of Sultan Mahmud, St. Paul's, the Mosque of Ali. Of course, he could have been faking it. But he was convincing. When he told of looking down the Strand and seeing the winter sunlight glinting off the gilded dome of the Mosque of Ali, I felt like weeping, for even a Christian Englishman bears affection for that grand house of Allah that the Turks built in the heart of our city. It is a wonder of the age, and even I who abominate all things Islamic would not tear it down.
We talked far into the night. That is, Quequex talked and I listened, for once I had told my little tale I had nothing left to say. Chocolatl seemed to oil the wheels of his mind, and he reminisced on and on, his voice now a high wheeze, now a deep boom. He told of kings and emperors, of radiant princesses now long dead, of wars and assassinations, of secret and hideous rites carried out even today within the dark Aztec pyramids. I drank it all in. No matter if he was inventing everything as he went; he was a miraculously fine storyteller, and I could hope only that when and if I reached his age, I could spin a yarn as well.
My head throbbed with lack of sleep after a while. I said, breaking into an improbable account of personal services he had rendered Pasha Malik Ismail when in Cairo, "I must rest now. In the morning-"
"Bring your mat here to sleep," he said. "The assassins may return."
I assured him I'd come to his aid if there were any trouble, but he insisted that I share his room. There was no help for it, so I hauled my mat in. He blew out the lamp. I felt sleep engulf me.
Then came the voice of Quequex: "Dan Beauchamp?"
"Mmm?"
"Perhaps it is not my business, but you said no prayer before you closed your eyes."
I had not said bedtime prayers since the age of eight. But Quequex seemed to be expecting them, so I told him, "I uttered a silent prayer."
"A silent prayer will not be heard, will it? Pray for our safety tonight, Christian. Ask your god to guard us both."
Until I did, I knew, I would get no sleep. So I took to my knees, clasped my hands, and wearily implored Jesus, Mother Mary, and Saint Christopher to watch over us this night. Quequex seemed satisfied. I heard him droning an unintelligible invocation to Huitzilopochtli, and after it a shorter prayer in a Mexican language I did not understand. The evils of the night had been properly prayed away. Once more I lay down on my mat.
Sleep descended like a summer storm-all at once.
* * *
When I woke, several years later, bright sunlight was pouring through the window and Quequex, enveloped in jade and freshly painted in horrifying designs, stood above me, evidently about to nudge me awake with his toe.
"At last. The sleeper awakens."
I had had terrible dreams of live Aztec gods pursuing me through the streets of Tenochtitlan, teeth gnashing and claws red with blood. But I concealed that and rose to my feet readily enough.
"Have you eaten yet?" I asked.
He laughed. "Yes, I have eaten. And settled my accounts here. And hired a motorcar to take us to Tenochtitlan. Can you drive?"
"I've never driven before."
"It is not hard. I will show you. Eat, now, and then we leave."
The landlady's lovely daughter brought me a hearty breakfast. My soul soared at the sight of her; I wanted to tell her that she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, that I loved her, that I wanted her to share my travels and my life. It is a bad habit of mine, falling in love at a glance, but so far I have escaped the worst consequences of it. In any event, I did not tell the girl any of the things I had on my mind, and quite likely it was better that way. In truth she was an elegant thing, delicate and shy and graceful, but behind that flawless exterior she probably had the empty mind of a small-town serving girl, and when I lost interest in staring into those large dark shining eyes I might find her a dreary companion.
As we left the inn, a curious pang of emotion speared me at the thought that I would never see the girl again. In my romantic way I tried to deny the thought, telling myself that fate would bring us together some day, that I would meet her once more further on in my wanderings. I had read stories in which just such a thing had happened.
But life lacks the neatness of a story. I never did meet her again, and now that I have left Mexico it is not likely that I shall. And, of course, it would be awkward now if I did, considering that…
No. I have tried to maintain strict chronological order in this narrative, and so there is to be no jumping forward to talk of that other dark-haired wench whose sparkling eyes ensnared me by the shores of the blue Western Sea. Let her wait her proper turn.
Quequex had indeed rented a motorcar for our trip inland. Coming as I do from an impoverished and unimportant island, I had never ridden in one of these vehicles, though I had once seen the Earl of Warwick drive proudly through Hyde Park in one. They were invented about thirty years ago by some clever German, I believe. The wealthy kingdoms of the Hesperides imported some German engineers to supervise the building of them here for neither the Aztecs nor the Incas have ever had much in the way of skill with machinery. Now they are so common in the New World that they are available for hire at low cost.
"Dare we ride in that?" I asked him.
"Perfectly safe. Perfectly. Come, lad: I'll show you how to operate it, for the trip is long and old Quequex can hardly do all the driving."
I approached the motorcar. I can best describe it as a small railway locomotive, consisting of a steam engine mounted on three wheels, two big ones in back and a smaller one in front. The large wheels provided the drive; the small front wheel did the steering, and there was a lever mounted on it by which it could be turned from side to side. A seat in front looked just wide enough for Quequex and myself. In back was a platform on which one could stand while loading coal into the boiler.
Quequex lit the boiler fire.
"Is that enough coal to get us to Tenochtitlan?" I asked.
He laughed. "It's a day's supply. We purchase more along the way. There are coal depots for the benefit of travelers like ourselves everywhere."
The boiler grew hot rapidly. Soon steam was coming up, and the engine made great booming sounds as it started. The car was braked, but I could see it straining eagerly, and half expected it to spurt away from us at once.
"Let us board it," Quequex said.
We loaded our baggage onto the side compartments provided for it, and got into the front seat. Quequex sat on the driver's side, gripping the steering lever. Behind us, the boiler rumbled and burbled ominously, and gave off so much heat that I could feel my bones softening.
"Attend to me," the garrulous sorcerer declared. "The controls are few and simple. We release the brake"-he unsnapped a hook near my knee-"and depress the starter pedal, which engages the gears of the engine. You notice that the car instantly goes forward."
I noticed it, all right. As Quequex stepped on the starter, the car started with a ferocious lurch that all but hurled me from my seat. I clung on for dear life. We were rolling down the highway at a speed of perhaps twelve miles an hour. Thick black smoke poured from our smokestack, and occasionally the boiler gave off a roaring trumpeting sound. From the engine came steady explosions.
