Aztec Rage (11 page)

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.”

I spoke quietly, little more than a whisper, as if the walls had ears. “You're right. No one could be as dull-witted as that notary was. The confession he wrote out was concocted in advance. He will lie, say that they were my words he transcribed and that I confessed to the crimes they accuse me of. You are right, amigo. They'll kill me.”

“And bury the truth.”

We were silent for a moment, and then I said, “I was wrong about you, Señor Lizardi. You know little about horses and women, guns and blades, but I now see that men kill as thoroughly with paper and quill as with pistol and sword.”

I listened quietly for a reply until I realized he was softly snoring.

Ay, some of the insanity made sense. My life was no longer spinning down a maelstrom of madness. No, Lizardi had spoken the truth. The notary
was not a fool but had told the story
on orders
. No doubt his masters would send others like him to inns, social gatherings, and card games to spread the lie. They'll start by assassinating my character. When they've succeeded, they'll take my life.

How could I defend against them? No doubt they thought of me as soft, that I would break in this hellhole of a jail, but unlike most caballeros, I rode and worked alongside the vaqueros at my hacienda. I enjoyed a life in the saddle: breaking mounts, herding cattle, gelding bulls, branding steers, fording rivers. I spent many months each year on the open range and in mountains, hunting and fishing, living off the land. I was not the dandy that they imagined.

But the most pressing question now was how to free myself from this prison-house, find pistol and blade so I could make them pay for their crimes.

FIFTEEN

T
WO DAYS LATER
another disaster struck.

“I gave my remaining funds to the trustee last night,” Lizardi said. “We'll be evicted from our comfortable quarters and have to join—” he sniffed in the rabble's direction, “them.”

I had devoured my own basket of food, and no more had come. Lizardi, who had been in jail before, explained that the person sending the food had to know who, as well as how much, to bribe or else the package would end up in the wrong hands. I suspected that Isabella still sent food baskets but did not know the proper way to get them in my hands.

“What about your family?” I asked.

“They're in the capital. I've sent a message. My father detests my politics and has disowned me.”

“How many times have you been arrested?”

“Twice. You see, amigo, we're both in the same quandary. They'll bury me alive in their dungeons or slit my gullet. They may try me first, but my fate is assured. Your case, on the other hand, will never see daylight.”

As if he had heard our whispers, the trustee suddenly materialized.

“Out of here, you peso-less léperos. The best room at this fine inn has been reserved by another guest.”

The new prisoner was a big burly mestizo shopkeeper who was in trouble for cheating on his taxes. He didn't appear to be someone I could bully as easily as Lizardi, so I joined Lizardi in our new home, a space big enough for our rear ends on the floor with the wall against our backs.

Lizardi moaned and buried his head in his arms. “The pity of it, I—a university-educated pure-blood Spaniard—forced to live in filthy conditions among you lowly léperos.”

I batted him across the side of the head. “Insult me again, and I'll stick your head in a shit bucket.”

But I felt no malice toward the man. I had discovered that he had great courage when it came to speaking ideas, though he was more cowardly than the commonest cur when it came to physical duress. I found his verbal valor and physical timidity a curious combination. I, on the other hand, was brave as a bull but devoid of ideas, philosophies, and burning beliefs. I functioned solely in the here and now, living day by day, taking what I wanted, discarding what I tired of. I had no interest in religion or politics, about colonial governance, divine rights of kings, or whether the pope was the Chosen Hand of God, though I was forced to listen to Lizardi expound for hours on end on these matters. But the pamphleteer had not instilled his ideals in me; I still believed in nothing. And at least now I knew it.