Clash of Star-Kings Read Online Free Page B

were agitated before he arrived and why they were now behaving to him as they were. So he began to speak as had been in his mind to, all the long way up, in hopes that not only might he get meaningful answers, but that, in the course of conversation, the stiffness between them would melt away and the former easiness return.
    Soldiers in town: why?
How would we know, Señor?
    Trouble with the procession?
Up here, we hear nothing
.
    Take away the Tlaloc?
Oh … Ah … Mmmm …
(
sigh
)
…
    Lights on the volcanoes?
We are ignorant Indios …
    Smoke on Popo?
Popo? Smoke? We see nothing
.
    And a silence fell, and Luis, overcome with disappointment, slumped … winced … sighed. Suddenly, a small, a very small sign of a smile appeared on the face of old Tío Santi. He patted Luis on the shoulder, took him by the arm, urged him along, did not even let him look back to see if Domingo Deuh was following. Luis relaxed into a wonderful feeling of relief … more than relief … of happiness. It had all been merely a test! And he had, somehow, ¿
quien sabe?
passed it: and now the old man was about to reveal everything to him…. It had been a shock, though!
    The two of them stooped and entered a hut and sat down on their haunches. Old Tue said something in Moxtomi, patted Luis again on the shoulder, and left the hut. And the two old women and the very young girl bestirred themselves. He peered about, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness, saw only the ordinary accoutrements of a poor Indian household, and a number of sober-faced babies, and waited for the old man to return.
    “Long walk … you,” the older old woman said, speaking in a deliberately debased Moxtomí, as though he were incapable of understanding anything better.
    He said, in his best command of the language, “Has Tata Santiago very far to go before he returns?”
    “Yes, very far — you. Tired. Hungry. Eat — eat,” she said, as though not understanding, and gave him tortillas with beans and a bit of chili. The other old woman poured him some stale pulque. And the girl began to roast a handful of squash seeds over the tiny charcoal fire. It was not until he had dutifully cracked the last of these that it occurred, belatedly, to Luis, that old Tue was not coming back at all! And he ceased, suddenly, to be the bewildered friend of the humble and dispossessed autochthones and became, totally, the outraged Mexican male upon whom an insult disparaging his
machismo
— his maleness — has been put.
    Bad enough that he, having come with warmth, should be greeted with coldness! Bad enough that his sincere inquiries had been repulsed with assumed ignorance and feigned indifference. Worse, he had been tricked! But worst of all, he had been given over to the custody and the ministrations of women, two old hags and a child, as though he were no more of a man than the infants on the earthen floor! It was not to be tolerated! Rage choked him — they did not think he was a man, then? Not worthy of masculine courtesy? So — he would show them if he were
macho
or
hembra!
He half-rose from where he was sitting….
    But the sudden ugly flame, which sprang more from outrage than from lust, died down quickly. The women were too old, dry and shriveled like mushrooms, and the girl was far too young — it would be like mounting a boy…. Besides, this was their village, they would certainly make a commotion, and Luis might indeed cease very suddenly to be very much
macho
at all after the men were finished with him.
    He muttered a Moxtomí thanks and farewell which almost choked him, and walked off with stiff and angry strides away from the cold and meager hamlet and its empty streets.
    With distance, however, came reflection; with reflection, forgiveness. Why should they have trusted him? What, after all, did they know of him? His overtures of friendship might, for ought they knew, have been false. Wasn’t his father a landowner? If he, Luis, were a Moxtomí,