Aztec Rage

  “More lies. I am the victim here, not the aggressor. If there’s justice in this world, let God be my witness.” I made the sign of the cross. “Señor Notario, I’m innocent. I didn’t poison my uncle. He tried to poison me and poisoned himself by mistake.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Some of that shit you have waded in has gone to your brain. Do I not look white to you? Do you take me for a fool or an indio? How could he have poisoned himself?”

  “Please, señor, listen to me. José, his servant, brought me brandy the night before my uncle died. We had had an argument earlier, and I had threatened to seize control of my own money. The brandy was a gift of conciliation. It was fine brandy, from a supply my uncle kept for himself.”

  “Bruto de Zavala was not your uncle, and you are not a gachupine. You have no money, no estate, no right or claim to any estate. You are an imposter, an Aztec or mixed blood who tricked an old man into believing you were his nephew.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I was raised from childhood to believe I was a Zavala. I was one year old when my parents died, and I inherited their estate. Bruto made up this lie about my parentage because—”

  “It was not your rightful inheritance. You were an imposter. Bruto discovered your deception, and you killed him to keep the fraud hidden. He exposed your true identity on his deathbed.”

  This notario had fewer brains than the intoxicated indios who had been brought here from the gutters outside pulquerías. How could a babe in arms be an imposter and trick a grown man? I wanted to shake some sense into him and beat the arrogance out of his voice, but I had already found that fists alone did not suffice in jail.

  “Señor Notario, please listen, even if what you say is true—that I’m not Juan de Zavala—that still doesn’t prove me a murderer. If Bruto brought me in as a changeling to claim the estate, when he thought I was going to take control of the money, he sent me the brandy—”

  “His servant said you sent Don Bruto the brandy, that soon after he drank it, he became ill. The doctor examined the dregs of the brandy left in the goblet, he could smell the poison.”

  “My uncle—”

  “He was not your uncle.”

  I took a deep breath. “Bruto de Zavala, the man who claimed to be my uncle, sent the brandy to me, I sent it back—”

  “Eh, so you admit you killed him by sending him poisoned brandy.”

  He began to write frantically, dipping the quill in the pot of ink repeatedly as his hand flew across the paper. I stared down at the paper in complete puzzlement. The man was estúpido, an ignoramus. How could he conclude such nonsense?

  When he was finished, he turned the paper around, so the bottom of the page was in my direction. “Sign here.”

  “What am I signing?”

  “Your confession.”

  I shook my head. This miserable little maggot of a criollo clerk, a week ago had he brushed me on the street, I would have sent him tumbling into the gutter and stepped on his face.

  I leaned forward, and he rocked back in his chair, grabbing his nosegay. “You stink worse than any of the others.”

  “The only thing I confess, señor, is that I have squashed barn mice with my foot that have more brains than you. What do I look like to you? A—”

  “You look like a filthy creature who murdered a gachupine. One who will hang for his crimes.”

  I was still boiling with anger and disappointment when I was returned to the cell, angry at the fool, angry at myself. I was foolish to have threatened the notary, foolish to have lost control, a folly that has plagued me all my life. I would need more than brute aggression to escape this place alive.

  When I returned to the jail chamber, a newcomer had commandeered the private cell, recently vacated by the cacique’s son, whose crimes the facile touch of dinero had scrubbed clean.

  I recognized the man immediately, not his name, but his status: Like the notary, he was both a criollo and some sort of clerk, scholar, or lower-level government employee. His clothing lacked a caballero’s splendor. His hands were meant more for quills and paper, books and ledgers than for horses and pistols. Most important, however, was his food basket.

  Did I mention that I was hungry? I had lost weight in jail because of the putrid corn gruel. The more I ate, the more it chewed on my intestines and flushed through my bowels.

  I stepped into his cell and sat down beside him, grinning at his startled expression.

  “Amigo, I am Don Juan de Zavala, gentleman and caballero. I will consent to share your lunch.”

  I grabbed a big turkey leg and clamped my teeth into it.

  He jumped up. “I’m calling the guards.”

  With my free hand, I reached up and grabbed the crotch of his pants, getting his two little cojones in my fist.

  “Sit down before you lose your manhood.” I gave them a squeeze that caused his eyes to bulge.

  As soon as he was seated, I nudged him with my elbow. “You hear my voice, see my mannerisms. Like you, I am a gentleman.”

  “You smell worse than rotting meat.”

  “A fallen gentleman. Look.” I nodded at the prisoner chamber outside the bars of the small cell. “What do you see?”

  His eyes bulged more, and his jaw went slack. Prisoners, the worse street trash, had gathered before the cell.

  “They know you’re not strong,” I told him. “You smell the jail stink on them, and they smell fear and weakness on you. They’re a pack of wild animals who will devour you whole. You can call the guards, and the guards will beat me and a few others, but the animals will come for you in the night, when it’s dark and the guards are asleep.”

  I nudged him again. “Do you understand, señor? I can protect you. I can keep the animals from eating your liver.” I took a big bite of turkey leg. I spoke as I chewed it, the savory juices running down my chin. I’d forgotten what real food tasted like. “You feed me, and I protect you.”

  He looked at me askance, his facial expression shouting that he did not know what was worse, me or the pack of wild men.

  I grinned at him as I chewed the succulent meat. “It’s not a match made in heaven, but I will be your friend.” I grabbed the wine bottle from the basket, uncorked it with my teeth, and spat out the cork. “But if you prefer to battle this rabid pack of baying hounds yourself . . .”

  He stared through the bars at the beasts of prey. They settled onto their haunches and stared back, transfixed by his food and drink. My newfound friend turned pale enough for a trip to the grave.

  FOURTEEN

  MY CELLMATE’S NAME was José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi. He was thirty-two years old, born in Méjico City. Although his parents were criollos and claimed to be closely allied with the city’s most affluent families, they themselves were not wealthy. As it is said about those of modest means with connections to wealthy families, their heads are in the clouds and their feet in the mud.

  His mother was the daughter of a bookseller from Puebla, his father a physician in Méjico City. Most doctors were criollos because it was a profession not highly esteemed, although those who had a reputation as healers could earn a comfortable living. Many people preferred barbers when they needed leaching or bleeding. And, of course, most surgery was performed by barbers.

  I knew of his kind immediately. He was a “Don Nadie,” which meant a “Señor Nobody,” a criollo from a family with Spanish faces but without significant property. Not poor, certainly, but not of hacendado and caballero status either. They probably owned a small, open carriage pulled by a single horse—unlike the grand, gilt carriages that carried people of quality—and would more likely live in a modest, two-story house, walled, with a small courtyard in front, managing with but a single servant.

  They would not sit at the viceroy’s table and would not ascend to high rank in the Spanish royal forces or even the militia. They would never own government monopolies on government-controlled products or services, licenses that manipulate prices, markets, and the supply of those goods
and services. People like his parents were New Spain’s shopkeepers, teachers, small ranchers, priests, petty bureaucrats, and comprised the lower ranks of our officer corps. Their sons—at least those who failed to follow them into shopkeeping or failed at the priesthood—were sometimes letrados, learned young men, scholars like the one I sat next to in this jail cell, a man of book learning but no common sense.

  When he told me what led to his arrest, I asked, “A pamphlet? You are in jail for something you wrote? How could one be arrested for something written on paper?”

  Lizardi shook his head. “You are singularly ignorant. Have you not heard of the Revolution of ’89, the revolt during which the French killed the king and made themselves a republic? Or the Revolution of 1776, the year of my birth, when the norteamericanos revolted against the British king and made themselves independent? Do you know nothing of politics, of the rights of people, of the wrongs perpetrated against them?”

  “You confuse indifference with ignorance. I know of those things. I just don’t care about politics and revolutions, which are concerns of fools and bookworms like yourself.”

  “Ah, señor, your disinterest only confirms your ignorance! It is because of your kind that tyrants rule and wrongs are not righted.”

  And so it went. Lizardi was university-educated, conversant in Latin and Greek, philosophers and kings, and yet knew nothing of life. He knew the rights of man but not the rites of man. He was a bad shot, a terrible horseman, and an even worse swordsman. He could not play the guitar, serenade a señorita, and ran from fights with his tail between his legs.

  His only courage flowed from his quill onto paper, bleeding India ink instead of crimson blood. He hemorrhaged pamphlets full of poems, fables, dialogues, moral lectures, and politics. In the end, his writing landed him in jail.

  “I wrote a criticism of the privileges the gachupines enjoy and the viceroy’s tolerance of the situation. We criollos are blocked in our ambitions in every direction. The gachupines come here from Spain, and they are little more than provisional guests. When they leave their families at home, they remain only to sow bastards and reap riches. They usurp high office in our government, universities, army, and the church. They plunder our trades, mines, and haciendas, sneering at criollos the entire time.

  “The reason for the system has nothing to do with purity of blood. The Spanish crown wants incontestable control over the colony, that’s all. Why else is New Spain denied the right to raise olives for oil and grapes for wine? Why are we forbidden to fabricate the tools we use? We are forced to buy products from Spain even if we can make them cheaper here.”

  Eh, listening to his complaints reminded me that I, too, once wore and wielded the sharp spurs.

  “I poured my thoughts into writing and published a pamphlet in Méjico,” Lizardi said, referring to the capital. “I challenged the viceroy, demanding that he remedy these inequities by banning gachupine oppression and decreeing that no one be allowed to come from Spain to seek their fortune unless they plan to remain. I demanded that the colony be allowed to grow and manufacture what it needs and to compete with Spanish products, exporting them even to Spain itself.

  “Of course, the viceroy spurned my ideas. When I learned officers from the audiencia sought my arrest, I fled the city. They caught me here in Guanajuato this morning. Traitors informed on me.”

  “You were recognized?”

  “No, I still had many pamphlets left. Informants spotted me, and I was arrested distributing them.”

  “Ah! And you call me ignorant!” I scratched myself.

  “Why do you itch so much?” he asked.

  I picked a louse off my ankle. “This hombre finds me appetizing. You will feed his brothers tonight.”

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked. “I can see that despite your ignorance and arrogance you have the speech and manner of a caballero. What crime did you commit?”

  “Murder.”

  “Ah, of course, an affair of the heart. Did you kill the woman or her lover?”

  “I’m accused of killing my uncle.”

  “Your uncle? Why would you—” He stared at me. “Ay de mío! I know who you are. You’re that rogue, Zavala.”

  “You’ve heard of me? Tell me, what have you heard?”

  “That you’re an imposter, that you pretended to be a gachupine, convincing an old man you were his nephew, then killing him for his money.”

  “Eh, did you hear that I also raped nuns and stole from orphans?”

  “You did those crimes, too?”

  “I committed no crimes, you fool. I’m the victim. You claim to have some knowledge of books and right and wrong, tell me if you have ever read anything as unjust as this.” I gave him my sad tale of being accused of existing as a changeling, of being raised to believe I was a Zavala, of the horrible events of late.

  Lizardi listened quietly, intently, interjecting a question only occasionally. When I was finished explaining how Bruto had managed to poison himself, he shook his head.

  “I write fables, using the fantastic characters to emphasize my points, but indeed, Juan de Zavala, I don’t believe that anything I have ever written is as astounding as your true life.” He paused and frowned at me. “If it is true.”

  “I swear on the grave of the whore who, as they say, bore and sold my body that it is true.”

  “Actually, I believe you. You’re not intelligent enough to create such a provocative tale.”

  A week ago I would have offered this bookish buffoon his choice of weapons and forced him onto the field of honor for a final reckoning. But with so much folly staring me in the face, I could no longer maintain the pretense of my honor. And I had become a dog, eating his scraps.

  The trustee entered the chamber carrying a food basket and a mattress of straw held together with a cotton cover. He came to the small cell, set down the basket and dropped the mattress.

  “I already have a mattress,” Lizardi said.

  He nodded at me. “It’s for the caballero.” He used the word sarcastically.

  I jumped to my feet. “How am I entitled to this treasure? Has the viceroy realized the error of the Guanajuato authorities and sent me a gift?”

  “The only thing the viceroy will send you is a taut noose to break your neck so the hangman doesn’t have to drop the trap twice.” He gestured at what he delivered. “A servant brought these and a little for the jailers but refused to divulge your benefactor’s name. But Don Murderer, even a lowly mestizo like me can infer your benefactor is a woman. Only a woman would be so stupid.”

  ¡Ay María! I knew it! Isabella sent the mattress and food basket. No one else loved me as much as she. Bruto was wrong; Isabella was not the vain, silly girl he said she was. My fall from grace would mortify her parents, but the gifts proved beyond trivialities the redemptive grace of her love. I was eternally relieved, because I, too, had doubted her, wondering if the unkind words I had heard from Bruto and others were true. Now I knew that they had played me false. My darling Isabella would free me from this hellhole, and I would again ride beside her coach on the paseo.

  I lay on my new straw mattress, my stomach sated, my thirst appeased with wine, and belched. Lizardi lay nearby but turned the other way, claiming that my stench would knock a buzzard off a meat wagon.

  My eyes were closed, and I was fading when Lizardi whispered: “You’re wrong about the notary.”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t ignorant.”

  “How could he believe that as a babe I tricked a grown man?”

  “The story the notary told you—that you’re a fraud and trickster—was the same story told at the inn where I stayed. People talked about nothing else. Everyone talked about how you had tricked Don Bruto into believing you were his nephew—”

  “I was a baby!”

  “So you keep saying, but the story I heard was word-for-word what the notary spoke.”

  “The story is probably the work of my cousins who covet my money
. I must get out of jail and let the world know what happened.”

  “You still don’t understand. The alcalde and the corregidor, two of the most powerful gachupines in the city, were present at your uncle’s deathbed, were they not?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The notary repeated a tale spread by the city officials. Who ordered them to spread the lie? The governor? The viceroy?”

  I sat up. “Tell me why the governor and viceroy would spread this slander?”

  “Gachupines, Spain-born Spaniards—whatever you want to call them—control the colony. If I accept your story as true, you passed as a gachupine for more than twenty years. Everyone around you, including the Zavala family itself, accepted you as one of them. If the tale is true, you are not a gachupine, or even a criollo. You’re a lowly peon, yet the gachupines accepted you as one of their own.

  “Don’t you see the predicament you’ve created for the viceroy, for all the gachupines of the colony? They claim to be superior to everyone else: Mestizos and indios are little more than farm animals; even criollos—pure-blooded Spaniards—are not fit to govern. But a peon has been accepted as a gachupine, not just as a Spaniard but as a caballero who was admired as a gentleman-knight of the colony. Your life belies everything they stand for.”

  I sat up and stared at Lizardi, who was barely visible in the flickering candlelight. “I don’t wish to destroy them. I am a gachupine. I only want a chance to explain.”

  “You thick-headed fool, don’t you understand? They don’t want to hear your story or have anyone else hear it. To protect their positions, keeping the people in fear of them, they can’t be the subject of laughter.”

  “Is that what I am? A cause for amusement?”

  Lizardi sighed and lay back down. “No, you’re a threat.”

  “I’ve done nothing to them.”

  “If you are lucky, they will kill you or pay someone to cut your throat. To hide you here until you are old, gray, and your brain is soft as the rancid gruel, that fate would be worse. But either way, they can’t release you. They can battle rebellion, force us to buy their crooked plows and rotten wine, throw truth-tellers like me in jail, but the one affront they cannot abide is ridicule. We Spaniards are proud, whether we are born in Madrid or Méjico City. To laugh at us is to turn our machismo lethal.”