Read The Demon of the Air Online
Authors: Simon Levack
The Demon of the Air (20 page)
“Shining Light and Curling Mist?” I said incredulously.
“Why not? Curling Mist has some hold on my grandson, and it's not just money. He's the one I was telling you about, who persuaded Shining Light to move all our property. It all ended up in Curling Mist's own warehouse. As I said, I've never met the man, but he sounds like my grandson's type: vicious. I told you once there were other vices that could seduce a man besides drinking, didn't I?” He waved the gourd at me theatrically. “It's not just the gambling, you see. I think Shining Light's tried everything once. And he always had a cruel streakâI caught him once, he had one of Lily's dogs in a sack with a turkey, I think he wanted to see which one would come out alive. Maybe they dreamed up this business with the sacrifice together as a kind of sick joke.”
“And Lily knows about this?”
“She knows what her son's like, yes. But you can't blame her for not wanting it talked about, can you?” He took up the gourd one last time, tipping it to let the last drops of liquid run into his mouth. “If it got out that her son liked boys instead of girls, he'd be killed and we'd be ruined.
“In fact,” he added, turning a grin on me that had no humor in it whatsoever, “I wouldn't let my daughter know I've even told you. She might kill you herself, just to keep your mouth shut!”
A
s if having one drunkard in this house wasn't enough! Do you think I saved your miserable life just to provide that disgusting old sot with company?”
s if having one drunkard in this house wasn't enough! Do you think I saved your miserable life just to provide that disgusting old sot with company?”
The sound of Lily's voice was like a hard rubber ball bouncing off the inside of my skull, although the words themselves seemed to come from far away and to be in a foreign language that I could just about understand with a lot of efforts.
“He is your father.”
“He could be the Sun, the Turquoise Prince himself, with a crowd of warriors dancing around him, and he'd still be a disgusting old sot! At least he has an excuse!”
“So do I,” I ventured.
“Oh no you don't. The doctor prescribed snake's tongue for you, not sacred wine, and that's what you're getting. Here!”
I sniffed at the proffered bowl, which contained a brownish liquid. I knew it was not literally made of snakes' tongues but of a herb which was used to treat chest pain. I had learned that much at school. They had not taught me how vile its smell was, but I assumed its taste could not be worse. I was wrong.
“You might have mixed it with honey,” I spluttered.
“I might,” she conceded, taking the bowl back. “Maybe I will, next time, if you learn to grow up!”
It was getting toward evening, and a chilly breeze had got up and driven us indoorsâKindly to collapse, unconscious, on his mat, and me to endure revolting medicine and a lecture on the perils of drink.
The stuff cleared my head, at least. I looked at Lily, who had knelt opposite me, by the open doorway, so that the sunlight that came into the room fell on her. She looked different, somehow, although I could not at first see why.
“Tell me something, Lily. If I'm not your father's drinking companion, what am I doing here?” I held my breath, fearing the kind of explosion a similar question had provoked that morning, but this time she took it calmly.
“Getting better, of course. You were in such a bad way when the police had finished with you that I couldn't see what else to do with you, except bring you back here.”
“So you felt sorry for me? Look, I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful, but if some beggar comes to your door offering withered chillies or stale maize cakes for sale, do you buy them? I doubt it.”
She surprised me by looking hurt: she gave an audible sniff and turned her head away sharply As she did so the Sun caught her cheek and I realized what was different. Although her hair was still streaked with gray, her skin looked clearer and paler than before.
On her the effect was so surprising that I could not help remarking: “Ocher?”
She looked at me again. “I beg your pardon?”
“You've painted your face.”
“What do you mean? Oh, I see! No I haven't,” she corrected me primly, although she could not quite suppress the smile that wanted to form on her lips. “Even if I had any reason to put on makeup, I couldn't, not while my son's ⦠away. It's like being in mourning, for us,” she added in a low voice. “This is only axin ointment, for the cold. It stops my skin drying out at night.”
Her half smile did not chase the lines around her mouth and eyes away. If anything they deepened, but they looked now as if they might have been etched there by laughter as well as pain. They made me wonder how she could be in happier, more relaxed times.
Since we seemed, just for a moment, to be able to speak to each other, I tried putting my question again.
“Why am I really here?”
She sighed. “Why do you think? I wanted to ask you about Shining Light's sacrifice. Then when I saw you in the marketplace, I thought it was a gift from the gods.”
“We were both lucky, then,” I said skeptically.
“I had to speak to you, because I thought you could tell me about the offeringâtell me something that would help me work out where he came from and why he did what he did. I know why my son would have had you with him, you see. He never told me, but it's obvious enough. He knew he had not prepared the sacrifice properly, and he thought it would help if he had someone who knew all the rituals.”
“I can see why he might have needed that,” I conceded, “but I don't understand how he fixed on me. He might have got a real priest to advise him, and there must have been enough of his own people, merchants, that he could have turned to. Did your son ask my master for me in particular, or did my master volunteer my services?”
“I've no idea.”
I followed my own train of thought. “Shining Light got my name from somewhere. What would have made him go to the Chief Minister? A mutual acquaintance? They both had dealings with Curling Mist.” I noticed Lily's sharp intake of breath at my mention of the name, but I carried on thinking aloud. “So Curling Mist, or that boy of his, Nimble, could have suggested my nameâbut what for?” I
groaned aloud, not from the pain of my wounds but from a much older, more enduring anguish. “It's not even as if I'm a priest! I'm a scribe, a secretary, a messenger, a whipping boy for my master's vicious dog of a steward. I haven't set foot in a Priest House in a dozen or more yearsâwhat use could I have been anyway?”
groaned aloud, not from the pain of my wounds but from a much older, more enduring anguish. “It's not even as if I'm a priest! I'm a scribe, a secretary, a messenger, a whipping boy for my master's vicious dog of a steward. I haven't set foot in a Priest House in a dozen or more yearsâwhat use could I have been anyway?”
Lily said nothing. She was staring at me.
Then I realized that I had been almost shouting, with my fists clenched like a baby's and the muscles of my face clenched in an angry mask. With an effort and some pain I made them relax.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Sometimes it's not so easy, remembering.”
She leaned forward into the room and laid her hands on her knees.
“What happened to you, Yaotl?” she asked earnestly. “You were a priest. You belonged to the gods. You belonged near the sky, in the mountains, on the summits of the pyramids. What made you give all that up to become another man's possession?”
“Perhaps the gods gave up on me,” I said lightly. It hurt, merely thinking about this subject. “They do that, you know. They're easily bored. They will raise a man up only to hurl him down again, and if it's going to happen to you then it's no use trying to prepare for it, or complaining. And I was dedicated to the most fickle of them all, the Smoking Mirror. Why do you think we call him âthe Enemy on Both Hands?'”
“Something drove you out of the temple,” she insisted. “What was itâa woman? An argument with another priest?”
“It was a long time ago.” Being asked these things now was like being pricked with maguey spines. “It doesn't matter any more. Please, let's just forget it.”
Memories, suddenly released, tumbled over each other in my head: the calculated cruelty of the priests, the temples with their reek of incense and slaughter, the hymns and prayers I still knew by heart, and the confusion, anger and despair that had ended it all. I could live without such memories, cheerfully abandoned years before, with the traces washed away by a cleansing tide of sacred wine.
“You don't want to tell me.” The woman sat back again, withdrawing from me a little, apparently feeling that my reserve was a poor return for her hospitality. “Well, it's up to you.” She looked toward the doorway, as if making up her mind to leave.
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I realized, surprising myself, that I did not want her to go. All of a sudden sharing my memories with this woman seemed preferable to being left alone with them.
“Do you know ⦔ My voice faltered.
She turned her head. “Yes?”
“Do you know what happens during the month of Eating Maize and Beans, before the festival?”
T
he month of Eating Maize and Beans: it's a time of testing. Summer is coming and if the rains fail, the city will starve, the way it did sixty years ago, when even the nobles had to sell their children for want of food. If a priest falters in a song or a sacrifice, the rain-god may just go away from usâempty his rain clouds on the far side of the mountains, perhaps, and water our enemies' fields instead of ours. The priests have to be prepared for the festival. They have to be culled. Any who aren't up to it have to be weeded out.”
he month of Eating Maize and Beans: it's a time of testing. Summer is coming and if the rains fail, the city will starve, the way it did sixty years ago, when even the nobles had to sell their children for want of food. If a priest falters in a song or a sacrifice, the rain-god may just go away from usâempty his rain clouds on the far side of the mountains, perhaps, and water our enemies' fields instead of ours. The priests have to be prepared for the festival. They have to be culled. Any who aren't up to it have to be weeded out.”
“You failed the test?” she inquired gently.
“I passed the test! I passed it every year from when I was seven years old!
“Let me tell you what happens. You have to remember that this is all done during a fast, when there is nothing to eat but a few maize cakes at noon. Now, at twilight we make an offering before the hearth in the Priest House. It's nothing muchâdough balls, tomatoes, peppers, something like that. The important thing is that whatever we offer has to be round. It has to be something that will roll about the moment you so much as look at it, because that's part of the test. You have to pile the offerings up in front of the fire and if
they don't stay just where you put themâif they roll over, or worse if the pile collapsesâthen you're in trouble.”
they don't stay just where you put themâif they roll over, or worse if the pile collapsesâthen you're in trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I'll come to thatâthere's a lot more to it. When that part's all over, you strip and make a blood offering.”
I remembered drawing the thorns through my earlobes, feeling the old, numb scar tissue reopening and watching the blood, the water of life so precious to the gods, as it ran over my shoulders and arms.
“Then you run to the lake. It's the middle of the night and the water's as cold as the Land of the Dead, but you all have to jump in, from the youngest to the eldest. There was always a lot of shouting and splashing about, and some people tried to tell me it was to attract the gods' attention or frighten away the lake monster, but I think we were really just trying to stop ourselves freezing to death.
“Then it's back to the Priest House, to sit and shiver until noon. You're allowed to sleep, but in the night it's too cold for sleep, and in the morning the prospect of food keeps your eyes open.
“They feed you at middayânothing but a few maize cakes, as I said, with some tomato sauce, and that's part of the test too. You've failed the moment you spill or splatter a drop. You try it, when your fingers are numb with cold and your hands are trembling, and all you want is to shovel those maize cakes down your throat and then go to sleep.”
“We owe so much to our priests,” said Lily. I gave her a sharp look, but from her dreamy expression I could tell she meant it.
“You haven't heard the half of it! You don't go to sleep in the afternoon, you go to work. You get sent out to Citlaltepec to gather reeds.”
“I think I've heard about this. Isn't that when the priests attack passersby?”
“On the way back, yes, if they're stupid enough to be out on the road. Hardly surprising, is it? You have a gang of priests, half starved, exhausted, and facing five days and nights of this misery, all in the name of keeping the crops watered, and they come across some ungrateful bastard with a full belly and a warm cloak who thinks his maize and beans just spring out of the ground by themselvesâof course they're going to beat the crap out of him!”
I paused, surprised by my own excitement, the quickness and shallowness
of my own breathing and the look on Lily's face. Her skin had colored a little under the ointment and she was watching me steadily with her lips slightly parted. She was imagining herself as one of us, I thought, feeling our hunger and fatigue and nervous exhaustion, and the release we had got from those few joyous moments of licensed violence.
of my own breathing and the look on Lily's face. Her skin had colored a little under the ointment and she was watching me steadily with her lips slightly parted. She was imagining herself as one of us, I thought, feeling our hunger and fatigue and nervous exhaustion, and the release we had got from those few joyous moments of licensed violence.
“Was that part of the test, as well?”
“I suppose it must have been. If you could vent all that anger on some stranger and come back to the temple in good order, ready to start again in the evening, then you might stand a chance ⦠Oh, and one final thing. Whoever is last back to the Priest House ⦔
“Fails the test?”
“That's right.”
“So what happens if you fail?”
“Someone will denounce you. They'll point to the chilli that rolled into the fire, the tomato stain on your breechcloth, your head nodding on your chest when you should be attending to your duties. You'll be hauled up before a senior priest and made to pay a fineâto your accuser.”
“To your accuser?” She stared. “But that's mad! You'd all be accusing each other all the time!”
“Why, yes, of course we were. How else do you think we passed the time? It was a game; it was the only thing that made the whole thing bearable.” I could not help smiling at the memory: how we would run back from the lake, too cold, wet, tired and absorbed in our own wretchedness to notice what was going on around us, and yet how soon the squabbling would start the moment we were settled on our mats in the Priest House. Pale eyes would probe the gloom, ready to pick up the slightest lapse, and soon harsh, triumphant cries, spirited denials and bitter recriminations would shatter the strained silence. I remembered how especially sweet it had felt to secure a fine from the man who had denounced you the day before. “The amount you paid depended on how wealthy you were, so it was the great lords' sons who were denounced most often. Since my father was a commoner and we had no money anyway, I used to do rather well.” By the time the festival began I would have a bundle of cotton capes and fine jewels wrapped up in my cloak, all things of no real use to me except as tokens of my triumph over my fellow priests.
I had known and savored that triumph every year I was a priest, except the last.
“Of course, the fifth day was different.”
I closed my eyes, as if that would keep out the sights of the last day before the festival in my final year at the Priest House. I had to stop myself clapping my hands over my ears in an effort to shut out the sounds as well.
From a long way off, I heard Lily asking me a question.
When I opened my eyes again, they would not meet hers, but were fixed on her hands, which were kept still by gripping her knees through her skirt.
“It had stopped being a game by the fifth day. It was serious. There were no fines and the rich fared the same as the poor. Make a mistake during the first four days and it would cost you nothing more than a couple of cloaks and a bit of ridicule, and you knew you'd get them back in the morning. On the last day it would cost you everything.
“They'd drum you out of the priesthood. They'd drag you by the hair and the ends of your breechcloth to the edge of the lake, throw you in and push you under till you were half drowned, you couldn't see, you were puking salt water. Men who'd been your friends since childhood would be the first to kick you in the head, and the last as well. Then they'd leave you, and if you were lucky, sooner or later someone would go and tell your family where you were.”
And sooner or later, I reminded myself, your family would come and take you home, and that had been the worst humiliation and the harshest punishment of all.
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