![Byron McAfee translated another play into English, also catechistical, but like
"Souls and Testamentary Executors" of a nonbiblical nature. Its plot has to do with
the avaricious dealings of a pochtecatl or "merchant" who loses his soul in punish-
ment for his misdeeds. McAfee's English version of this play has been published by
the same Marilyn EkdahlRavicz (1970,99-118). To the sameMcAfee, in collaboration
with the short-lived but well-known Mexicanist Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), is
owed the publicationand translation of anotherproduction, Uncuaderno de Marqueses
(1947),a good example of popular theater whose plot has to do with the conquest of
Mexico.
Angel Maria Garibay K. (1892-1967), the chief exponent in contemporary research
on Nahuatl literature, included indigenous colonial theater among his many con-
cerns. To it he dedicated a whole chapter in his Historia de la literatura ndhuatl
(1953-1954, 2:121-59). There he makes a pertinent observation on how "it was not
possible that the Mexicans, once they fell under the burden of the Conquest,would
lose their [essential]nature. Being a people inclined to live in the open air, they
required the constant presentation of various formsof spectaclesin their feastsduring
the year" (1953-1954,2: 122).
Garibay continued his discussion on what he calls "the catechistical theater,"
describingthe pieces published by Paso y Troncosoand others of whose existencehe
knew. Commenting on an article by Fernando Horcasitas, "Bibliografia descriptiva
de las piezas teatrales en lengua nihuatl" (Horcasitas 1948),he states that "it is the
most complete attempt ever done on describing the known materials in this area of
literaryproduction. Therein thirty four pieces areincluded there" (1953-1954,2:129). If
in his chapter on "the catechisticaltheater" Garibay could not encompass all of what
is known today about this dramaticgenre in Nahuatl, it is at least true that he offered
a well-informed comprehensive synthesis of it, as well as some excerpts of his own
translationsinto Spanishof severalof those plays.
Theater in Nahuatl, in a differentkey, is exemplifiedby the piece edited and trans-
lated into English by William H. Hunter, The Calderonian Auto Sacramental El Gran
Teatro del Mundo (1960).This piece was originally adapted into Nahuatl by the priest
Bartolome de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,a brother of the well-known Tetzcocan chroniclerdon
Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. In his publication Hunter discusses the historical
background, paying attentionto the developmentof various forms of theater in New
Spain and in particular to the genre known as auto sacramental,to which this piece by
Calderh belongs.
In his appreciation of the work done by Alva Ixtlilxochitl,Hunter states that Alva
"demonstratesgood judgment in refraining from any attempt to render into Nahuatl
the sonorous intricacies of the Calderonian verse" (1960,150).Hunter acknowledges
the considerablehelp he received from Garibay and McAfee.
I have mentioned already the name of Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz. Although not a
scholar concerned directly with the Nahuatl language and culture, she produced a
book entitled Early Colonial Religious Drama in Mexico: From Tzompantli to Golgotha
(1970), with an ample preface in which she also deals with the pre-Hispanic back-
ground and the colonial context of religious drama. She offers English translationsof
the versions prepared by Paso y Troncoso of "The Sacrificeof Isaac," "The Adoration
of the Kings," and "The Destructionof Jerusalem."](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-15-320.jpg)
![4--DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO
circumstances. Like its counterparts in other Mesoamerican tongues, the Nahuatl
corpus includes sermonaries, confessionalmanuals, books of Christian doctrine, tes-
taments, land titles, civil and criminal proceedings, bills of sale, and so on. Size does
make a difference, though, for it allowed for more variety, and among the items par-
ticular to the Nahuatl corpus are plays.
There is an inherent difficulty in presenting these dramas to a broad audience.
Except for the obstacles posed by deciphering the idiosyncratic scrawl of hurried
notaries, colonial texts in Spanish can be directly consulted with relative ease by
those who know modem Spanish. Not so with Nahuatl. The gap between colonial
and current Nahuatl is significantly wider because Spanish influence on it has been
profound. Hence critical or skepticalreaders-including the vast majority of modern
speakersof Nahuatl-will in most casesbe unable to verify for themselves the valid-
ity of a transcription, the accuracy of a translation, and the soundness of the subse-
quent interpretation and analysis. Helping to bridge that gap at the beginning of the
twenty-first century is the function of the essays in this and succeeding volumes of
the Nahuatl Theater set.
The Manuscripts
Abrief review of the texts should help orient the reader. They are described in the
order in which they appear in this volume. The Clements Library of the Universityof
Michigan holds three textsbound together: "The ThreeKings" (lr-23r), "The Sacrifice
of Isaac" (23v-36r), and "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors" (36v-52r). A set of four
bound pieces is held by the Library of Congress (LC):"Final Judgment" (lr-lOv), two
versions of "How to Live on Earth" (llr-28v [the basis of the English translation
included here], 29r43v), and "The Merchant" (44r-53v).3 The Academy of American
Franciscan Historyowns a previously unknown play: "The Life of Don Sebastiih" (29
pages).
Long-established conventions for titling in Spanish and English have been fol-
lowed in four of the seven cases. "The Life of Don Sebastih" is presented here for the
first time. One of the two translators of this piece, Louise M. Burkhart, chose the title
from the openingwords of the main text, "Moral example which speaks about the life
of Don Sebastih" (p.5)."How to Live on Earth" was originallypresentedby JohnH.
Cornynand ByronMcAfee in T2alocan 1.4(1944)as "Tlacahuapahualiztli (BringingUp
Children)." Burkhart decided that the present title, derived from an early speech in
the play would be more appropriate. "The Three Kings" was presented in transcrip-
tion and translation first by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso in his Biblioteca Nbuatl I1
(1900b)and later by Fernando Horcasitas in his El teafronhhuatl (1974,25679). Both
of these noted Mexican scholars referred to it as "La adoracibn de 10s reyes." In the
absence of anything resembling a title at the beginning of the drama, both editors
think the present designationis more in accord with the opening lines.
Fundamentalto analyzingthese dramas is the task of establishingtheir authorship,
dates of composition or copying, and provenience. There are several scattered clues
to these pressing concerns. Prefatory remarks in "The Merchant" indicate that what
follows is an](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-34-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-5
Edifying example that speaks about a merchant. I am writing it today; it is my
property. My name is Don Joseph Gaspar and I am a resident here in San Juan
Bautista Tollantzinco. I am setting down the day and year: today is Saturday, 15
November, of the year 1687. (36r)
There are later references to the altqetl4of Xochimilco and Tepeyacac, and to pur-
chasing land "three years ago in the year 1627"(48r-v).
Also helpful is the following from the end of "The Sacrificeof Isaac":
Finis. Laus Deo.Thismoral examplewas prepared in the year 1678.It was copied
today, Friday, the first of February of the year 1760.And as to whether in truth I
worked on this moral example, [I aff'i my signature]:Bernab6 Vgzquez. (36r)
Some useful informationcan be found as well in "The Life of Don Sebastik." The
firstwords read "Praise Play in Nahuatl" and "From Huaxtepec" (1).Near the end are
the following remarks: "Finis. Laus Deo. Amen. This moral example was finished
today, the first of April of the year one thousand, six hundred, ninety and two" (27).
There is no overtindicationof whether the plays are Nahua translationsof Spanish
or Latin pieces or simply ad hoc creations composed by some combination of clerics
and literateNahuas. The two named individualsare little known. If BernabbVizquez
was indeed the copyist of "The Sacrifice of Isaac," then he can be assigned the same
role regarding "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors" sinceboth arebound together and
are in the samehand. He was most probably a Nahua notary,givenhis practiced hand
and facility in the language, although his names were not the Spanish appellations
most common among Nahuas. His status could not have been very high because he
lacked the (by then) increasingly common "don."
Sportingthe title when it had a more lofty connotation was don Joseph Gaspar of
SanJuan Bautista Tollantzinco who claimed to have written, or finished writing, "The
Merchant" on Saturday, November 15, 1687. The references cited above to "three
years ago in the year 1627"and to Xochimilcoand Tepeyacac(mostlikely the altepetl
of the same names that neighbored Mexico City to the south) put the play in a time
and place I consider more propitious for its creation, that is, in the capital when
Franciscan scholarship was at the height of its influence during the sixteenth and
early seventeenth centuries. It should be added that Franciscans ministered to
Tollantzinco (Spanish Tulancingo)and Xochimilco. Don Joseph was almost certainly
not the writer nor even the copyist; colonial conventions called for the author of
record, patron, or supervisingeditor to take full credit for producing a text.
Additional considerationspoint to a less direct role by don Joseph.In two notarial
documents from Tollantzincodated October 7,1687, and Wednesday, November 3,
1687,don JosephGaspar appears as a witness, his formal authority deriving fromhis
position as an alcalde or member of the Hispanic-style town co~ncil.~
As with so many
other Tollantzincorecords, the notary of the cabildo (Spanish-style town council), don
Joseph de la Cruz, wrote the entire text and apparently signed for everyone. Don
JosephGaspar did not sign his own name, nor did he add his own distinctiverubric.
The notary simply added the very same undistinguished rubric to don Joseph's and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-35-320.jpg)
![&DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO
several other names. This does not prove that don Joseph was unable to write, but it
does not speak well for the possibility.
The dates support my working assumption that all the plays have been through a
process similarto that which produced two copies of "How to Live on Earth," each in
a different hand and with a similar, though not identical, ~ontent.~
"The Merchant"
was created or copied in 1630and then (re)copiedon Saturday,November 15, 1687.7
"The Sacrifice of Isaac" is explicitly said to have been copied on Friday, February 1,
1760, from a 1678version that itself may have been derived from an even earlier text.
The same dates may also apply to one of its two companion dramas ("Souls and
Testamentary Executors") since it is in the same hand and literary style. The seven-
teenth century surfaces also in "The Life of Don Sebastih," which was finished on
April 1, 1692.
Miscellaneous clues from "The Life of Don SebastiAn" strengthen the church con-
nection but leave the place of compositionor copying still undetermined.The procla-
mation at the beginning, that what follows is a "Praise Play in Nahuatl," strikes me
as a typically clerical formulation.Nahuas had infrequent occasion to speak of their
cultural or ethnic entirety in terms of "Nahuas" (for the people) and "Nahuatl" (for
the language) in texts written by and for themselves. Clerics had rather more, so
these terms are usually found in ecclesiastical Nahuatl texts (see Sell 1993, 129-36).
Unfortunately for our purposes, the names of earlyMexicanaltepetl sometimesrepeat,
so it is unclear just which "Huaxtepec" is referred to on the first page of "The Life of
Don Sebastiih"8
Hence, littleis securelyknown about suchbasics as dates of compositionor copying.
Previous scholarship on Nahuatl theater has at times erroneously indicated more
securedating of textsthan is actuallypossible, and inherited errorscontinue to plague
the study of these dramas.Apointed example is provided by something as simple as
the dating of "Final Judgment." Fernando Horcasitas asserts (1974,564)that in con-
trast with many other works describedin his collection, "de El juiciofinal siposeemos
un manuscrito antiguo .. .fechado 1678 (aunque seguramente 6sta es la fecha de la
copia solamente)" (concerningFinal Judgmentwe do indeed possess an ancient man-
uscript. ..dated 1678[althoughsurely this is only the date of the copy]).Until recent-
ly I myself thought the same (Sell1988,4).9Put simply:"Final Judgment" is undated,
and there is no overt sign of any kind that it was newly composed or translated, an
originalor a copy.1°
Proceeding, then, with caution, I turn to a considerationof some revealing aspects
of the plays. These include the writing habits of the scribes, the types of loanwords
present, the nature of the Nahuatl sociopolitical terminology used, and the pervasive
if somewhat uneven presence of traditional Nahuatl formal speech.
It often seemsthat nothing that originatedin the Spanish-speakingworld remained
completely unchanged once the Nahuas made it their own. The art of writing Nahuatl
with the Roman characters of the Spanish alphabet is no exception. Yet even special-
ists in Nahuatl studies can little appreciate much of the strongly Nahua cast of the
plays under consideration. James Lockhart regards Fernando Horcasitas's El teatro
ruihuatl as
a vast contributionto Nahuatl philology ... [that]brings together a substantial
portion of the existingtheatricalcorpusin transcriptionand Spanishtranslation,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-36-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-9
it would go from those produced more independentlyby Nahuas to those generated
under clerical supervision. Somewhat impressionistically, I would place the two
copiesof "How to Live on Earth," "FinalJudgment," and "The Life of Don Sebastik"
on the more independent end of the spectrum, the other four on the more supervised.
Nonetheless all the texts occasionally but persistently defy easy assumptions.
Judging by the handwriting, six of the eight documents are by different scribes; only
"The Sacrificeof Isaac" and "Souls and Testamentary Executors" come from the same
well-trained hand. Yet all eight are in what I judge to be more or less skillfully ren-
dered variants of the clear italianatehand taught by Franciscannahuatlatos (expertsin
Nahuatl; translators)to their Nahua pupils in the first decades after the conquest. In
some respects, such as the standardizationof spellings,the two aforementionedplays
hew more closely to Europeannorms than almost any of the others. But then there is
a distinctive anomaly, like their very nonstandard rendering of Nahuatl ceppa (in oc
c w a "again") as cecppa, with its outrageously impossible-to-pronounce consonant
cluster cpp.16Such similaritiesand anomalies are to be expected from the general run
of civil and ecclesiasticalNahuatl texts.
The originallettering tentatively provides additional clues to dating. Very early in
the development of alphabetical Nahuatl writing there was some hesitation about
how to representthe affricate[ts].By mid-sixteenthcentury the digraph tz became the
settled convention in most Nahuatl writings, especially those associated with the
church. Alternative solutions from an earlier period of evolving standards are infre-
quent. Among the early manuscripts and imprints that contain such alternatesis the
anonymously authored Dominican Doctrina cristiana of 1548. The handwritten copy
that provided the basis of the book was already rather dated because the by-then-
dominant fz is a rarity in this book of Christian doctrine(forone of the few examples,
see f. 13v).It is written variously c, tc, and tg, the latter two predominating(seeff. 6v,
llv, 30r, 124v, 129r, and passim; it is possible that tc is a print-shop error for t ~ ) .
An
even earlierNahuatl text from circa 1540uses g and z in place of tz (Cline1993).There
are occasional later examples.17None of these notably early or nonstandard forms
replaces tz in any of the plays in this volume.ls
During much of the sixteenthcenturyprevocalic [W]was variouslyrepresented as
v, U,and hu.l9A samplingfrom the mid-sixteenth century containsthe following rep-
resentative examples:yvan/yuan, civatl/@vatl,peua, yehuatzin, vecauh, vel/uel, cavifl, and
quavitl/quauitl (Selland Kellogg1997,34149; Docfrinacristiana 1548).By the end of the
sixteenth century, hu became the prevailing standard, again especially in church-
related texts. Hence such items as yvan/yuan usually would be spelled yhuan, vel/uel
as huel, and quavitl/quauitl as quah~itl.~0
There are thousands of instances where pre-
vocalic [W]appears before a, e, and i in the eight pieces. With only one exception,
there is alwayshua, never va or ua; always hue, never ve or ue; always hui, never vi or
~ i . ~ l
The relentless representation of prevocalic [W]as hu and [ts] as tz establishes
beyond reasonable doubt that whatever the plays' original dates of composition,
their extant versions cannot be earlier than the last quarter of the sixteenth century.
Another period-specificchange occurred during the last quarter of the following
century. OrthographicS began to appear where z would earlier have been expected."
Narrowing the possible environments down to that of verbal complexes yields
results that are both expected and unexpected. "The Life of Don Sebastik," with its](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-39-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-I I
more readily adopted. These changes flowed from a deepening one-on-one inter-
action that had created a critical mass of bilingual Nahuas who served as a conduit
for bringing more of the Spanish-speaking world into Nahua life. My own extensive
reading of colonialNahuatl writings confirms this schema.23
The seventranslated dramasin this volume containover two hundred Spanish and
Latin phrases and words. There are a number of possible stage 3 items or features in
the unspoken sections.The most notable is the Nahuatlized Spanishverb trasladar (to
copy) in "omotrasladoro" at the end of "The Sacrificeof Isaac" (see f. 36r).However,
I consider the centraland more resistant-to-changeoriginalcore of the plays to be that
which the actors spoke and the audience heard-that is, the dialogues. There the
picture is quite different. The loans shrink drastically in half, to 1
1
1
.There are no
examples of borrowed verbs using the Nahuatl verbalizing suffix -oa (see above).
There are none of the Spanishparticles used by post-1650 Nahua writers such as sin,
como, para, hasta, pero, and rnientras. There are no Spanish-style dependent clauses
introduced by the Spanishparticle que or by its back translation into Nahuatl tle and
inin. There are no instances where the Nahuatl terms for close kin and the cardinal
directions are replaced by their Spanish counterparts. There is not even one example
of a Nahuatl inanimate noun being pluralized based on the Spanish model. On the
contrary,all 1
1
1items are of a type compatiblewith stage 2although severalmay have
come into Nahuatl in stage 3 (refertoAppendixes1 4for the discussion that follows).
The speaking parts draw most of the 1
1
1loans from a small pool of older church
items. The name or title Dios isby far the most frequent. It alone accountsfor fully317
spoken occurrencesin the sevenplays' total of 784 occurrences (or some40 percent of
the total).Dios ranges from a low of 18.6percent of the loan frequency in "The Three
Kings" to highs of 55.8 percent in "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and 62.8 percent in "How
to Live on Earth."24It is one of the oldest, with attested firstappearancesin 1548.25
The
five most frequently spoken loans-Dios, bnirna, misa, Jesucristo, and Lucifer-account
for 412 occurrences out of 784 (some52.5 percent) and appear in Nahuatl documents
no later than 1552. I judge 16 of the 20 most frequently used items to be primarily
ecclesiastical. Those 16 come to 537 occurrences out of 784 (68 percent of the total),
and all appear in various types of Nahuatl texts no later than the early seventeenth
century.
The church bias is stronger yet when the more mundane loans are taken into
account. By my reckoning there are approximatelyone hundred total occurrencesof
such items in the seven plays. These include terrns for money (peso[s] and fomin[es]),
measurements of time (doming0 and hora), legal terms and posts (juramento, justicia,
juez, testamento, testigos, escribano, and escritura), designations of rank and function
(alcalde, conde, marquis, reylesl, and emperador), and Spanish-style objects (puerta and
mesa). Fifty-four of those occurrences are in "The Merchant." In some cases this one
play contains all, or almost all, of the most frequentlyused. "The Merchant" has six-
teen out of seventeentotal occurrencesin the seven plays of pesos and ten out of thir-
teen occurrences of tomin, as well as all occurrencesof tomines (6), testamento (5),peso
(4),escribano (2),and escriturcl(2).The already strongly ecclesiasticaltone of the other
six plays would be intensified if this play were excluded.
Focusing on the spoken loans reduces drastically the number of names being
bandied about. Traditional socialmores discouraged the use of individuals' names in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-41-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL P
L
A
Y
S IN CONTEXT- 1 3
sculpted images accompanying the meaningless words conveyed the essential infor-
mation quite effectively,and besides, if anyone were curiousabout their meaning the
local priest would have offered explanationsin Nahuatl or Spanish.Hence finding an
attestation for this Latin passage in any Nahuatl document (even in San And&
Calpan)borders, in practical terms, on the impossible (see photograph, page 40).
There is one notable calquein mixed Spanish/Nahuatl form. There are eight occur-
rencesof the loanword cuenta, not with the more commonmeaning of "rosary bead(s),
rosary," but with the sense of "accounting," as in "to give or make an accounting of
[something to someone]." Seven of the eight occurrences use the Nahuatl verb maca,
"to give," in a rather straightforward calquebased on Spanishdar cuenta de, "to givean
accounting of [somethingto someone]" (see"How to Live on Earth," f. 21v; "The Life
of Don Sebastiiin," p. 19;and "Final Judgment," ff. 2r, 3r, 5r [twice],and 7r).Theeighth
uses Nahuatl ckihua "to make" as part of the related Spanish idiom "to make an
accounting of [something to someone]" (see "Final Judgment," f. 7r). They appear in
"Final Judgment" (6),"How to Live on Earth" (l),
and "The Life of Don Sebastiin" (1).
This is one of the few fully attested anticipations of stage 3. Undeniable confirma-
tion of its stage 2 authenticity appears in the so-called Diario of Chimalpahin, the
greatest Nahua annalist of the colonial period. In his entry for Saturday, January 21,
1612, he goes on at length about a troublesome-and apparently troubled-priest,
fray Jerhimo de Zirate. He ruminates a bit about the cleric's questionable activities,
perhaps consoling himself somewhat with the thought that "ma san ice1 yc quimo-
maquiliz cuenta in totecuiyo Dios" (he alone will have to give an accounting of it to
our lord, God).A few lines later he adds that when Zarate dies, "yc cuenta quimo-
maquiliz" (hewill have to give an accounting of it to him; Chimalpahin 1965,2:103).
Added support comes from the published Nahuatl translation of the life of Saint
Anthony of Padua by fray Juan Bautista and Agustin de la Fuente (1605).Here cuenta
appears once as part of the calque and then in the general sense of "accounting":
"quimmacaz melahuac cuenta in Officiales) (he will give a true accounting [of it] to
the [king's] officials) and "Xiccuilican, xiccelilican, cuenta inin tlacatl" (take and
receive an accounting [of this matter] from this person; Bautista 1605,49r).
The general tenor of the loans suggestsa stage 2 origin for the plays. Nonetheless
there are at least two borrowings that smack of early stage3. During his fulminating
at the priests in "The Three Kings," Herod twice uses judiazos and chicharrones. The
former contains the derogatory augmentativesuffix -zo and is correctly inflected for
the masculineplural -0s. The latter is correctlyinflected for the plural -es. Spanish as
the language of insult is well attested among Nahuatl speakers today so this usage
per se is not in question (see Hill and Hill 1986,118-20). However, I intuitively feel
that on balance this may imply a greater knowledgeof the subtletiesof Spanishthan
perhaps even Chimalpahin or Agustin de la Fuente possessed at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and it may be more appropriately associated with the period
around 1700.27
Whenever appropriate the loans are Nahuatlized in ways typical of the time. One
of the most interestingexamplesis pexotli, which can be found in a nonspeakingpor-
tion of "Final Judgment" (f. 6r).A tiny group of very early Spanish loan nouns bear
what has been called the Nahuatl "absolutive suffix." In this particular case, the
absolutive suffix -tli is attached to Spanish peso, "weight; scales." This attests to its](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-43-320.jpg)
![[&DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO
very early entry into Nahuatl as well as to the (usually)unmarked glottal stop pres-
ent in every borrowed Spanishnoun that ended in a vowe1.28 The presence of ortho-
graphic X for S is probably a clue to its actual pronunciation by Nahuatl speakers,
who early on would have substituted the affricate [S]for the Spanish sibilant.29
Sociopoliticalterms alsoprovide someclues to dating. Lockharthas correctly stated
that, with regard to "political organization and kinship" as well as to "social rank,"
circa 1650 "proves to be a watershed in the evolution of vocabulary and concepts"
(1992, 117). For example, such traditional terms for town council officeholders as
teteuctin, "lords," and pipiltin, "nobles," are nonexistent or rare in eighteenth-century
documents (1992, 49). He has not seen tlatoani, "dynastic ruler," used in that sense
after 1661 (1992, 132). Wherever there is occasion to use such terminology in the
plays, there is a decided bias toward the pre-1650, rather than the post-1650, period.
This again speaks to probable dates of composition and/or copying that center on
the seventeenthcentury,in particular the first half.
The traditional Nahuatl high rhetoric called huehuetlatolli, especially evident in
pieces like "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "The Three Kings," is also much more com-
mon prior to 1650.30
Thereis a very precious and revealing detail of the huehuetlatolliin
these plays that throws light on the entire group of plays and suggestssomeconcrete,
if tentative, conclusions about their origins.
The largest collection of explicitly prehispanic-style huehuetlatolli is contained in
what is known today as book 6 of the twelve-book Florentine Codex. The entire work
began in the late 1540sand went through variousrevisionsand versions over the next
thirty years. The editor of record was fray Bernardino de Sahagiin. During the six-
teenth century, the expertise in Nahuatl of this prominent Franciscan was equaled or
surpassed only by a fellow Franciscan, fray Alonso de Molina, who had learned it as
a smallchild and had native-speaker fluency.NotwithstandingMolina's preeminence
in the language of everyday life, the Franciscan nahuatlato fray Jeronimode Mendieta
would aver that in "10s secretosy antigiiedadesde la lenguaha alcanzadomas que 6
1
ni otro ninguno" (the subtleties and ancient usages of the language [Sahagh] has
achieved more than [Molina] or anyone else).31Sahaglin directed a large and able
group of Nahua collaborators, some his former students literate in Nahuatl, Spanish,
and Latin.32
Another collection of huehuetlatolli pertains to the circle of the greatest colonial
grammarian of Nahuatl, the Jesuit nahuatlato Father Horacio Carochi. The text is
known today as the BancroftDialugues. They can be appreciatedin a criticaleditionby
Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart (1987).Two sections of those dialogues (one
rather lengthy) closely parallel parts of chapter 10 of book 6 of the Florentine Codex.
These borrowings establish beyond reasonable doubt that the mid-seventeenth-
century Jesuit had access to the precious fruits of earlier Franciscan and Nahua
scholarship (Karttunen and Lockhart 1987, 11-13).33 No less certain is a similar con-
nection between two sections of "The Three Kings" and the same chapter 10of book
6 of the Florentine Codex? Intriguingly, both the Bancroft Dialogues and "The Three
Kings" borrow from the same pages (Saha- 1950-1982, 6:4749). The chapter is
devoted to the installation of a new ruler and lamentations on the death of the old
one. The three texts are noticeably close at times, but they are not identical. Compare
the following excerptsfrom Sahagiin's work and the play:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-44-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT- 15
auh in aocnane, in aoc tate in cujtlapilli, in atlapalli, auh in aoc ixe, in oc nacace,
in aoc iyollo in atl, in tepetl: in ma iuh nontica, in amo naoati, in amo tlatoa in
ma iuhquj quechcotontica.
(And the vassals no longer possess a mother, no longer possess a father. And no
longer doth the city have the able, the prudent. They are as if mute; they speak
not; they talk not; they are as if beheaded.) (Sahagih 1950-1982,6: 47)
auh canel aocmonane aocmotaye in cuitlapilliin atlapalliAuh canel aocmoixxe
in aocmonacace in iuhqui nontiticacin amonahuati in arno tlatohuainnniuhqui
quechcotonticac.
(And truly the tail, the wing [i.e., the vassal] no longer has a mother, no longer
has a father.And truly it no longer has eyes, it no longer has ears [i.e., it lacks
prudence]. It is as if it stands mute. It does not speak, it does not talk. It is as if
it stands beheaded.)35
h his prologue to the Sermonavio of 1606, fray Juan Bautista wrote that he and
Agustin de la Fuente had compiled a three-volume collection of plays, which they
intended to publish. They had already published a collectionof elegant huehuetlatolli
in 1600that was based on work from sixty years before. Bautista explicitly acknowl-
edged that they drew from the works of many eminentNahua and Franciscan writers
including Sahagih. They included parts of Sahagh's sermons in their sermonary.
Their entire trajectory speaks of reviewing an extensive corpus of the best and most
varied older writings, and then copying and revising them in preparation for publi-
cation. The three volumesof plays are among severalworks that unfortunatelynever
left the press.
Given the above, I tentatively conclude that most or even all of the plays in their
present form camefrom the texts gathered for Bautista and de la Fuente's three unpub-
lished volumes of Nahuatl plays. The Franciscan nahuatlato and his trilingual Nahua
coauthor-like no one elsebefore or since-had the motivation, opportunity,training,
and support needed to collect such materials and work them up. The textual ties to
Sahagtin in "The Three Kings" and the Franciscanjurisdiction where "The Merchant"
was copied reinforcemy supposition.The less-author-specificclues mentioned above
point to circa 1600 (when Bautista and de la Fuente were active) as a time of likely
copying and rearranging. SinceI judge that some or all of the plays passed through-
rather than originated at-their hands, there is the strongpossibility that many arose
in some fashionbefore, perhaps even well before, 1600.36
Caution is necessary in attribution, given the types of clues found in the texts
themselves. It is further required since we can only appreciate these writings in their
now-extant forms; most, perhaps all, can with varyingjustification be said to be later
copies of older originals. The reader should thus regard the following as suggestions
rather than ironclad conclusions. I consider "The Sacrifice of Isaac," "Souls and Tes-
tamentary Executors," "The Three Kings," and "The Merchant" in their currently
known colonialversions as the most probable yields of the Bautista and de la Fuente
collaboration.I deem "Final Judgment" and "How to Live on Earth" to be less certain
products of their hands. I judge "The Life of Don Sebastih" to be the least certain,
and in fact it may be a genuine product of the late seventeenth century. In any case,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-45-320.jpg)
![16-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO
now that the plays are in more reliable transcriptionsand their originals all located, a
new round of scholarly analysiscan more precisely verify or disprove these tentative
assertions.
Life in the A1tepetl:The Setting of ''The Merchant"
Other contributorsto this volume comment far more knowledgeably than I could
on some of the otherwordly aspects of the dramas. I will discuss some of their more
mundane features with a special focus on "The Merchant." Here as elsewhere the
emphasis is on drawing out characteristicsof the plays that may not be obvious to
the generalreader.
The arena in which the plays' Nahua characters, Christian supernaturals, and
biblical figures mingle and interact is the altepetl. The term is a quasi-compound
derived from the metaphorical doublet (in) at1(in) tqetl (the water, the hill), which
refers to two essentialsof community life. Postcolonial scholarshave variously ren-
dered it as tribe, village, empire, city, city-state, people, settlement, nation, and
kingdom. My own preferences run to characterizing it most often as an ethnic city-
state of greatly varying ~ize.3~
This sociopoliticalentity and its subdivisions are the
overwhelming referent in the notarial corpus when Nahua scribes referred to unit
identity. Its infrequent appearance in the dramas belies its importance. It is only
within the framework of altepetl roles and expectationsthat the characters are most
fully under~tood.~~
A prime example is provided by the use of the term tlatoani (plural tlatoque), the
traditional dynastic ruler of the altepetl and one of its defining features. The main
thrust has to do with someone in charge who says things, that is, "Speaker" rather
than "speaker," hence "one who issues commands, who gives orders," hence "ruler,
governor." Since colonial times it has often been translated rey, "king." Indeed in
"The Three Kings," Nahuatl tlatoque is paired a number of times with the Spanish
loanword reyes, "kings."39 Here the more neutral designation"ruler" has been chosen
to avoid too easily casting Nahua tlatoqueinto the role of exotic "Indian kings." The
word is present in all the plays. It is used in several ways typical of the 1540-1650,
or stage 2, period: as a title of the ruler of an altepetl (Abraham),as one of the most
frequently used epithets of the Christian deity (God),and in the more general sense
of an important person who is not a ruler or even of noble birth (the avaricious
merchant).
The tlatoani stood in a distinctly non-European relationship to the altepetl. Named
subunits called tlaxilacalli (etymology uncertain) or calpolli, '%ig house," were the
building blocks of the late prehispanic and colonial altepetl. They stood in relation-
ship to each other in accordance with what Lockhart has termed a cellular or modu-
lar type of organization. Altqetl were created by the "aggregation of parts that
remain[ed]relatively separate and self-contained, brought together by their common
function and similarity,their place in some numerical or symmetrical arrangement,
their rotational order, or all three" (Lockhart 1992,436;brackets mine). He adds that
this contrasts with the more urban-centered and nucleated Spanish municipality,
which "stretched from a dominant center in the city to subordinateparts in the coun-
try" (1999,100).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-46-320.jpg)
![NAHUATL P
L
A
Y
S IN CONTEXT- I7
It is not surprising that Spaniardsconsidered the area encompassingthe residence
of the current tlatoani-the central marketplace, nearby miscellaneous clusters of
dwellings lying in distinct tlaxilacalli, and the main church (often the former site of
the temple dedicated to the altqetl's patron deity in prehispanic times)-as a cabecera
(head town) and outlying tlaxilacallior parts thereof as sujetos (dependencies;subject
settlements).From their perspective, the early colonial tlatoani and his successor, the
gobernador ("governor," or head of the local Spanish-style town council), was or
should be in command of this so-called cabecera and its supposedly subordinate
parts. However, from the Nahua perspective (at least for quite some time), this
alleged urban center had no special status or name. Tlatoque and their later colonial
counterparts were first and foremost based in their various tlaxilacalli and repre-
sented them. Ideally the highest-ranking members of these subunits rotated the post
of tlatoani/governor accordingto some fixed order.
None of this is obvious in any of the plays, even in "The Merchant,'' which is the
most naturalisticdrama and the one on which I will focus below. "The Three Kings,"
with its emphatic use of late prehispanic forms of speech and social terminology,
quite unselfconsciously pairs Nahuatl tlatoque with Spanish rcyes (see above). This
pairing may mislead the unwary reader. However, I take this usage to be no more or
less expected than the many other shifting functional equivalencies that are rife
within the extant Nahuatl and Spanish corpus when either party talked about the
other. Each side long operated within its own conceptual framework and assumed
that the other thought as it did (Lockhart [1992, 4-45]calls this process Double Mis-
taken Identity;for a current restatement of his position, see also 1999,98-119). When
communicating across cultural/linguistic borders, the tendency was to strive for
pithy analogues rather than unwieldy longwinded definitionsthat took into account
every conceivablesimilarity and difference.Both the Nahua and Spanish personages
in question had power and authority over others, played vital roles in group unity
and identity, and in other ways were essential parts of early modem Nahua and
Spanish society.
The inhabitants and routines of the colonial altepetl are most fully represented by
"The Merchant." In order of appearance, the cast comprises an unidentified speaker
giving the prologue, Merchant, Old Man and Old Woman (an elderly couple),Young
Woman, two sick people, Lowly Servant, Mature Man (married),Lord, an unidenti-
fied group of servants,Mother (accompaniednow or later by nonspeaking children),
Notary, Alcalde, Constable, Priest, Doctor, Sick Man (Merchant in his final agonies),
Nobleman, several demons, the Merchant/Sick Man's wife, Guardian Angel, and
two noblemen. Here we can see some of the rich complexity of Nahua society: the old
and the young, those of varying degrees of wealth and poverty, men and women,
nobles and commoners, people who are single or widowed or married, employers
and employees, crucial altepetl officials, the healthy and the sick, members of various
occupations (although farm folk and petty craftspeople are mostly implied), and
even the presence of non-Nahuas, such as Priest.I
f one subtracts the obligatoryopening
speech, three quarters of the play passes in selected worldly pursuits before the first
supernatural being makes his appearance. Customary activities include bargaining,
borrowing and lending money, engaging the services of municipal officials, creating
documents, and soon.Theonlycomparablepiece is "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors."](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-47-320.jpg)
![18-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO
Lockhart suggeststhat these two dramas imply a subgenre (1992,597n.120).There is
a definite tilt in these two instances toward the confessionals' detailed presentations
of the seventh commandment against stealing than toward the oftentimes more
abstract offerings found in doctrinals and sermonaries.
Given a lingering popular conceptionthat Spaniardsoverwhelmed and controlled
passive native subjects, it is noteworthy that the few non-Nahuas in the plays have
ineffectual powers of persuasion and nothing more. The priest in "The Merchant" is
completely unsuccessful when he tries to persuade Merchant to show mercy to
Mother and her two children, or when he pleads with Merchant's metamorphosed
self, Sick Man, to make the true confession that will spare him the torments of hell.
The cleric in "Final Judgment" is shocked by Lucia's confession but can do nothing
beyond registering shock and horror. The priest in "Souls and Testamentary Execu-
tors" enjoysno real successwith the spouse of don Pedro, for she is already observing
allnecessary Nahua and Christian protocols.In short, these church-sponsoreddramas
seem to undercut the moral stature of priests by denying them an authority they
allegedly possessed.
Nahua altqetl often enjoyed considerable autonomy, survived in admirable fash-
ion catastrophic imported epidemics that took off perhaps 95 percent of their num-
bers by the beginning of the seventeenth century, and seemingly always bedeviled
their official spiritual advisers with their non-Christian beliefs and behaviors.40
Among many pertinent colonial commentsis the following marginalnote (or lamen-
tation?)from the Bautista and de la Fuente sermonary of 1606:"Lafacilidad con que 10s
naturales sejuntan con Mestizos, y Espafioles para contra su ministro, y padre" (the ease
with which the natives join with mestizos and Spaniards against their minister and
priest; Bautista 1606,617).Earlier marginalia drive home the point that "base and vile
people" provoke damaging testimony against priests, and later marginalia almost
wistfully enjoin Nahua parishionersto follow the lead of Saint Francisby loving and
revering their spiritual fathers (Bautista 1606, 49, 616; cited in Sell 1993, 225n.219,
226n.225, respectively). Bautista's dismal view of Nahua treatment of the clergy is
echoed decades later by the secular cleric (and mestizo) don Bartolomk de Alva
[Ixtlilxochitl]in his confessionalmanual of 1634.Regarding taking the name of God
in vain, Alva asks: "Perhaps somebad Spanish Christianpaid you so that you would
take an oath against a priest or some other honorable person, or someone who is a
representative of the devil-through and because of you-wants to dishonor him,
just taking his revenge and anger out on him?" (Selland Schwaller1999,91-93).
The plays make no mention of one profound reality of early modem Nahua life: the
nonclericaland nonroyal "mestizos and Spaniards" who evidentlyforrneda considerable
part of the "baseand vilepeople'' who setNahuas againstGod's representativeson earth.
The absence of ethnic, racial, or national diversity is perhaps the single most serious
omission in the plays. The human landscape of Nahua Mexico has been reduced to a
purist version of Nahua-only communities served by presumably Spanishpriests. The
contradictionbetween dramatized impression and recorded fact is stark in "The Mer-
chant." The brief remarks in Nahuatl at the beginning of this play place it in Tollan-
tzincoin 1687.Ten years later, the noted FranciscanchroniclerfrayAgustin de Vetancurt
would write that Tollantzinco, ministered to by his order, contained more than fifteen
hundred natives and more than six hundred Spaniardsand mestizos (Vetancurt 1982,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/1001799-250514124517-6e867b7c/85/Nahuatl-Theater-Volume-I-Death-And-Life-In-Colonial-Nahua-Mexico-Barry-D-Sell-48-320.jpg)
Nahuatl Theater Volume I Death And Life In Colonial Nahua Mexico Barry D Sell
- 1. Nahuatl Theater Volume I Death And Life In Colonial Nahua Mexico Barry D Sell download https://ebookbell.com/product/nahuatl-theater-volume-i-death-and- life-in-colonial-nahua-mexico-barry-d-sell-2003598 Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com
- 3. NAHUATLTHEATER Edited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart
- 4. This page intentionally left blank
- 5. VOLUME I Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico
- 6. This page intentionally left blank
- 7. NAHUATLTHEATER Volume 1 Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico Edited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart With the assistance of Gregory Spira Foreword by Miguel Le6n-Portilla UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA :NORMAN
- 8. Also by Barry D. Sell (editor and translator)Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 2552 Nahuatl Ordinances offray Alonso de Molina, OFM (Berkeley2002) (coeditor-translator)A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 2634 (Norman, 1999) Also by Louise M. Burkhart Before Guadalupe:The VirginM a y in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature (Albany 2001) Holy Wednesday:A Nahua Dramafrom Early ColonialMexico (Philadelphia,1996) The Slippey Earth:Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Centuy Mexico (Tucson, 1989) This book is published with the generous assistance of The McCasland Foundation, Duncan, Oklahoma. Portions of Viviana Diaz Balsera's essay appeared previously in "A Judeo-Christian Tlaloc or a Nahua Yahweh? Domination, Hybridity, and Continuity in the Nahua Evangelization Theater," Colonial Latin American Review 10, no. 2 (2001): 209-27. Reprinted with permission. http:/ /www.tandf.co.uk/joumals/carfax/l0609164.htm.l. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Nahuatl theater / edited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart with the assistance of Gregory Spira;foreword by Miguel Leh-Portilla. V . cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents:v. 1.Death and life in colonialNahua Mexico ISBN 0-8061-3633-2 (alk.paper) 1.Nahuatl drama. 2. Indian theater. I. Sell,Barry D., 1949- 1 1 .Burkhart, Louise M., 1958- ID.SpiralGregory. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. Copyright O 2004 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Divi- sion of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.
- 9. Nahuatl Theater Dedicated to FernandoHorcasitas,author of El teatrona'huafl(1974) Westand on the shoulders of giants Volume I Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico To pathfinders Arthur J. 0.Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, for their editing of fray Bernardino de Sahagh's Florentine Codex (1950-1982)
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- 11. Foreword,by Miguel Ledn-Portilla Preface Acknowledgments Part l. Essays Nahuatl Plays in Context, by Barry D. Sell Death and the Colonial Nahua, by Louise M. Burkhart Nahuatl CatechisticDrama: New Translations, Old Preoccupations, by Daniel Mosquera Instructing the Nahuas in Judeo-ChristianObedience:A Neixcuitilli and Four SermonPieces on the Akedah, by Viviana Diaz Balsera Part 2. Plays Transcription Guidelines The Three Kings The Sacrificeof Isaac Souls and TestamentaryExecutors Final Judgment How to Live on Earth The Merchant The Life of Don Sebastih Appendixes References Index xi xix xxvii
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- 13. Fernando Horcasitas (1924-1980) and Nahuatl Theater Miguel Leon-Portilla New Spain's various forms of theater in Nahuatl have attracted the attention of a good number of researchers. Thanks to them we know that such theater owes its existence to the effortsof Franciscan friars. In some ways this theater came to take the place of the feasts and performances of pre-Hispanic times. Only a few years after the conquest of the Mexican metropolis of Mexico Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), some Franciscans, with the invaluable help of their native assistants, chose subjects mostly from the Holy Scriptures and also from texts already existing in Spanish or Latin, then prepared scripts, had them translated into the Nahuatl language, and organized performances. Accounts left by some Franciscan and Indian chroniclers recall how intensely the natives enjoyedsuch performances,which were usually held in the open air. I myself, as an eyewitness, can testify how in our time many people have similarly enjoyed attending the staging of one of these old theater pieces. The stagingwas put on by a professional, Miguel Sabido, and his company, which includes Nahuatl-speaking actors. The performance also took place in the open air, near the pyramid of Tlatelolco to the north of Mexico City; there have been other performances at the sumptuous Palace of Fine Arts in the heart of the metropolis. We owe to the FranciscansToribio de Benavente Motolinia, Ger6nimode Mendieta, and Juan de Torquemada the first vivid accounts of how these plays were presented, as early as the 1530sat places such as the same SantiagoTlatelolco or in the atrium of the cathedral of Mexico City. Their extant scripts, mostly copies of the original texts, are preserved at various archives and libraries in Mexico, the United States, and Europe and permit careful appreciation of the plots, dialogue, and other stylistic attributesof the plays we know today as pieces of this early theater.A very good exam- ple of what can be done is offered by this book in which seven pieces are rendered (somefor the first time)in English, translated directlyfrom the Nahuatl language by Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell.
- 14. The recent "discovery" of what may be the oldest extant original Nahuatl text of this genre, dating to about 1591-entitled "Mi&coles Santo" or "Holy Wednesday" and published by Louise M. Burkhart-demonstrates that the field is open to further progress in the study of what is indeed the earliestform of Euro-Indian theater in the Americas (Burkhart 1996). The recording, translation, and publishing of some of these plays has a rich history, in which a very significant role was played by Fer- nando Horcasitas Pimentel, to whose memory the Nahuatl Theater set is dedicated. Predecessors in Research on NahuatlTheater I willbriefly recall some of Fernando's most distinguishedpredecessorsin the field. Two Mexican scholars deserve particular attention. One is the well-known bibliogra- pher and editor of several sixteenth-century chronicles, Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta (1825-1894). He wrote a well-documented study on this subject, "Representaciones religiosas en M6xico en el siglo XVI," published in 1877, as an introduction to the Coloquios espirituales y sacramentalesby FernAn Gonzalez de la Eslava. Garcia Icazbal- ceta alsomade severalreferences to the samematter in his Bibliografiamexicam del siglo XVI (1886 and 1954).His contributions in this field called the attention of scholarsto these compositions conceived as an instrument for the conversion of the Indians and as a genre within the literary productions of colonialMexico. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (1842-1917) is the other Mexican scholar who made importantcontributions related to Nahuatl theater. He was well versed in the Nahuatl languageand an assiduous researcher in the main documentaryrepositories of Europe. He was the first to publish the Nahuatl texts and his own translations into Spanish of five pieces of this genre (Paso y Troncoso 1899,19OOb, 1902,1907).He also wrote "Comedies en langue nahuatl: Une petite vieille et le gamin, son petit fils," a paper presented at the twelfth InternationalCongress of Americanists,held in Paris (1900a, 309-16). Thanksto Pasoy Troncoso's publications, examples of Nahuatl theaterbecame widely accessiblefor the first time. Two North Americans who spent a large part of their lives in Mexico, John H. Cornyn (1875-1941) and Byron McAfee (188&1962), also became attracted by these plays. In 1944they introduced and published the Nahuatl text and an English version of a composition entitled "Tlacahuapahualiztli(BringingUp Children)," preserved at the Library of Congress (Cornyn and McAfee 1944,314-51). This play does not have, as several others do, a biblical subject. Its theme is the Christian education that is to be offered to indigenous youth. As noted by its two editors, to achieve its purpose, ideas and forms of expression in the play were derived from some huehuehtlahtolli, testimonies of the "old word." To the same researchers is due the study and English translation of another play, entitled "Souls and Testamentary Executors." A copy is preserved at the National Library of Anthropology and History, housed in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City; an English translation was published by Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz (1970, 211-34). This is another example of a play with a nonbiblicalplot, as it dealswith the misdeeds perpetrated by a widow, helped by the executors of her dead husband's will. Instead of ordering masses for his soul, she used the inherited riches to foolishly enjoy life.
- 15. Byron McAfee translated another play into English, also catechistical, but like "Souls and Testamentary Executors" of a nonbiblical nature. Its plot has to do with the avaricious dealings of a pochtecatl or "merchant" who loses his soul in punish- ment for his misdeeds. McAfee's English version of this play has been published by the same Marilyn EkdahlRavicz (1970,99-118). To the sameMcAfee, in collaboration with the short-lived but well-known Mexicanist Robert H. Barlow (1918-1951), is owed the publicationand translation of anotherproduction, Uncuaderno de Marqueses (1947),a good example of popular theater whose plot has to do with the conquest of Mexico. Angel Maria Garibay K. (1892-1967), the chief exponent in contemporary research on Nahuatl literature, included indigenous colonial theater among his many con- cerns. To it he dedicated a whole chapter in his Historia de la literatura ndhuatl (1953-1954, 2:121-59). There he makes a pertinent observation on how "it was not possible that the Mexicans, once they fell under the burden of the Conquest,would lose their [essential]nature. Being a people inclined to live in the open air, they required the constant presentation of various formsof spectaclesin their feastsduring the year" (1953-1954,2: 122). Garibay continued his discussion on what he calls "the catechistical theater," describingthe pieces published by Paso y Troncosoand others of whose existencehe knew. Commenting on an article by Fernando Horcasitas, "Bibliografia descriptiva de las piezas teatrales en lengua nihuatl" (Horcasitas 1948),he states that "it is the most complete attempt ever done on describing the known materials in this area of literaryproduction. Therein thirty four pieces areincluded there" (1953-1954,2:129). If in his chapter on "the catechisticaltheater" Garibay could not encompass all of what is known today about this dramaticgenre in Nahuatl, it is at least true that he offered a well-informed comprehensive synthesis of it, as well as some excerpts of his own translationsinto Spanishof severalof those plays. Theater in Nahuatl, in a differentkey, is exemplifiedby the piece edited and trans- lated into English by William H. Hunter, The Calderonian Auto Sacramental El Gran Teatro del Mundo (1960).This piece was originally adapted into Nahuatl by the priest Bartolome de Alva Ixtlilxochitl,a brother of the well-known Tetzcocan chroniclerdon Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl. In his publication Hunter discusses the historical background, paying attentionto the developmentof various forms of theater in New Spain and in particular to the genre known as auto sacramental,to which this piece by Calderh belongs. In his appreciation of the work done by Alva Ixtlilxochitl,Hunter states that Alva "demonstratesgood judgment in refraining from any attempt to render into Nahuatl the sonorous intricacies of the Calderonian verse" (1960,150).Hunter acknowledges the considerablehelp he received from Garibay and McAfee. I have mentioned already the name of Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz. Although not a scholar concerned directly with the Nahuatl language and culture, she produced a book entitled Early Colonial Religious Drama in Mexico: From Tzompantli to Golgotha (1970), with an ample preface in which she also deals with the pre-Hispanic back- ground and the colonial context of religious drama. She offers English translationsof the versions prepared by Paso y Troncoso of "The Sacrificeof Isaac," "The Adoration of the Kings," and "The Destructionof Jerusalem."
- 16. She includes three more pieces in her book. These are: "The Merchant," "How the Blessed Saint Helen Found the Holy Cross," and "Souls and Testamentary Execu- tors." In doing this she took advantage of the translations into English done by McAfee, who, accordingto her, authorized their publication. In only one case, that of "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors," had McAfee prepared his translation in collab- oration with Cornyn. The main merit of Ravicz's book is its calling attention once more to the existence of this colonial literary genre. The authors we have considered published their works years before the more comprehensive contributionby Fernando Horcasitas. Several of them profited from Fernando's bibliographical essay on Nahuatl theater that appeared in 1948. Here I will just add that, after the publication of Horcasitas's El teatro Ma'huatl in 1974,others have continued research on various aspects of the same subject, although-with the exception of Louise M. Burkhart (1996)-no one has edited and translated another piece originally in Nahuatl. The names and works of those researchers are Maria Sten, Vida y muerte del teatro nahuatl (1974, 1982)and Oth6n Arr6niz' Teatro de evange- lizacio'n en Nueva Espafia (1979).They both continued along the lines first proposed by Jos6Rojas Garcidueiias as early as 1935in his Teatro de la Nueva Espaiia en el siglo XVI, in which no in-depth research was done to approach directly the compositions in their Nahuatl originals. Fernando Horcasitas's Distinguished Career as a Nahuatl Scholar Born in Los Angeles, California, on September 26,1924, and registered by his par- ents as a Mexican citizen, Fernando grew up in an environment influenced by two cultures. In the milieu of his family he became rooted in Mexican tradition. While attending grammar school and later Loyola High School, he was at the same time exposed to Anglo-American culture. So it was that his background was bicultural and bilingual. He could expresshimself, with equal proficiency and elegance,in both Spanishand English. When his parents returned to Mexico in 1944, putting an end to their voluntary political exile, Fernando settled in the country's capital. He then enrolled in the Department of Philosophy and Letters of the National University. There he became deeply interested in studies of a humanistic nature, mainly history and linguistics. Two years later he joined the National School of Anthropology, concentrating on the fields of ethnology, archaeology,and Nahuatl culture. At those two institutionshe met Robert H. Barlow; it was an encounter that pro- foundly influenced his professional career. In 1947, at Barlow's request, he began to serve as secretary for Tlalocan, a journal of source materials on the native cultures of Mexico. Many years later, in 1977,he wrote in the same magazine an article entitled "Para la historia de Tlalocan," in which he described the origin of this journal, con- ceived, as he stated,by Barlow, "one of the most brilliant anthropologistsattracted by the cultures of AncientMexico" (Horcasitas1977,15). Under the guidance of professors as distinguished as Pablo Martinez del Rio and Wigberto Jim6nez Moreno, he obtained in 1953his master's degree in anthropology summa cum laude. His dissertation, entitled "An Analysis of the Deluge Myth in Mesoamerica," was presented at the institution then known as Mexico City College,
- 17. the predecessor of what is now the Universidad de lasAmQicas. At the same college he began his teaching activities, which embraced a rather large number of subjects including the ethnohistory of Mesoamerica, the Nahuatl language, and a seminaron folklorenarrative. Among his first publicationsthe one already mentioned on Nahuatl theater, pub- lished in the Boletin Bibliogrlifico de Antropologia Americana, stands out, as it signaled the revival of active interest in this genre of Nahuatl literature and the beginning of Fernando's valuable contributions in the area. His activities as secretary of Tlalocan intensified following Barlow's death in 1951, and he took on the task of publishing thejournal as one of his most cherished responsibilitiesuntil the end of his life. In Tlalocan and in other journals such as Mesoamerican Notes, Estudios de Cultura Nhhuatl, and Anales de Antropologia he published a good number of articles, several of which dealt with oral tradition and theatrical pieces performed in some contempo- rary Nahuatl-speaking communities such as, for example, "Textos de Xaltepoxtla" (1962), "Los xoxocoteros, una farsa indigena" (1967), "El entremks del Sefior de Yencuictlalpan,una farsa en niihuatl" (1972a),and "La danza de 10stecuanes" (1980). In 1963FernandoHorcasitas became a full-timeresearchprofessor at the National University. Therehe taught Nahuatl in the Department of Summer Courses.Becoming a member of the same university's Institute of Historical Research, of which I was director, he played a significant role in the creation there of a Department of Anthro- pology. The seventeenyears he worked at the university,in particular those since the transformation of said department into the Institute of Anthropological Research in 1968, were particularly fruitful in his life. He prepared and published several other contributions while working there. Two had to do with oral narratives he had col- lected from a very distinguished native speaker of Nahuatl, doiia Luz Jimhez (1897- 1965),native of the town of Milpa Alta in the southern part of the Federal District of Mexico. In one he presented the remembrances of dofia Luz, expressed in Nahuatl, about the last years of the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and subsequenthappenings during the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Emiliano Zapata occupies an important place in her narrative. Horcasitas accompanied the Nahuatl text with a Spanish translation and an ample introduction. He asked me to write a prologue, which I did, stressing the significanceof the publication. Thebook, De Povfirio Diaz a Zapata. Memoria nlihuatl de Milpa AIta (Horcasitas1968),aroused wide interest and was also published in an English version, translated by Horcasitashimself (Horcasitas1972b). Another contribution, also based on oral narratives by dofia Luz Jimknez, was entitled Los cuentos en nlihuatl de dofia Luz Jiminez (Horcasitasand 0.de Ford 1979).In it a good number of legends, tales, and other accounts were also presented in the originalNahuatl, accompanied by Fernando's translationinto Spanish. Horcasitas was very interested in the sixteenth-centurywork of the religiouschroni- clers and in severalindigenousearly colonialcodices (booksof paintings)with Nahuatl glosses. One manifestationof this interest was the preparation-in collaboration with Dr. Doris Heyden and with an extensive introductory study, copious notes, and an index--of an English version of what can be described as the ethnographicwork of the Dominican friar DiegoDurh, Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar (1971). His extensive introductory study is particularly valuable because of the information
- 18. he gathered about the author and his work. Once again, Fernando asked me to pre- pare another prologue, which was for me an honor and a pleasure. As for the codices, I will only mention two examples that had been previously unpublished: "Anales jeroglificos e hist6ricos de Tepeaca" (Horcasitosand Simons 1974),and "El Codice de Tzictepec, una nueva fuentepict6rica indigena" (Horcasitas and de Magrelli 1975).The first is a pictorial chronicle with text in Nahuatl covering the years 1524-1645. It dealswith natural phenomena held as omens, with epidemics, the arrival of viceroys, the building of churches, the execution of criminals, the con- struction of an aqueduct,and a plague of grasshoppers. The other documentbelongs to the group known as Techialoyan codices. It is interesting how in this codex there is emphasis on the bonds that the village of Tzictepec (near Toluca)had with Tlacopan in the period of the TripleAlliance and also during colonial times. His Main Contribution Busy as Fernandowas with these and other publications, he continued his research on the subject he cherishedso much: Nahuatl theater. In 1974he succeeded in offering the first part of what he entitled El teatrona'huatl:~ ~ o c a s novohispanuy modem. As he put it in an introductorynote to Teatrona'huatl: The aim of the present work, of which the first part appears in this volume, is offeringsomethinglittle known to researchersof the language and culture of the Nahuas: a corpus of dramatic pieces in that language. We will take as a point of departure the catechisticalproductions of the first half of the 16thcentury, pro- ceeding to those which continue to be represented in our towns. (Horcasitas 1974,13) In what is entitled "Preliminary Study" Horcasitas describes "the universe of the feast" and theatrical representations in several indigenous languages of the New World, particularly in Nahuatl. He points to what is known about pre-Hispanic rep- resentations, as one antecedent, and also discusses theatrical performances in Europe, mainly in Spain, during the MiddleAges and in the sixteenthcentury. Concentrating on missionarytheater he investigatesits originsand purpose, giving also a chronology of its development. To facilitatean understanding of how such the- ater was staged he describes people's participation in it, the scenery and costuming, the music that accompaniedit, and how the actors were chosen and taught. Of much interest to the discussion in this volume is the attention he gives to the causes of the decline of this theater, as well as to the literary merit of the compositions, the reactions of the natives, and the results the friars obtained with these perform- ances. The preliminary study, ample enough, is followed by an "Anthology of the Dramatic Pieces," in which he presents thirty-five of them, offering whenever avail- able their-~ahuatl text accompaniedby a translationand a relevant commentary. Fernando described in a "Note" at the beginning of his book what were the other dramatic compositions he intended to publish, in addition to those he labeled "ancient missionary theater," that is, the ones included as a first part in his published volume.The second part of Horcasitas's work should embracepieces of moralcontent,
- 19. dealing with themes not taken from Holy Scripture.A third part would be composed of the "Marian Theater," those about the Virgin Mary. Part 4 was to be dedicated to ffCourtly Theater," also in Nahuatl, which would include adaptationsfrom the Spanish classical theater. Pieces related to the conquest of Mexico and to the battles between Moors and Christians, and others in which the apostle SaintJarnesplayed a key role, were to make up the fifth part. A last part was to be concerned with what he des- cribed as "Village Theater," a miscellaneous corpus of popular compositions,several of them stillperformed in modem times. Of this vast project Fernando succeeded in publishing only the first part, dedi- cated entirelyto missionary theater in Nahuatl. The materialshe had assembled tobe incorporated into the other five parts, in accordance with his plan, are preserved today at the Latin American Library of Tulane University in New Orleans, depository of his personal archives. In the present book, three of the piecespublished and studied by Horcasitasare ren- dered into English: "The Sacrificeof Isaac," "The Three Kings," and "Final Judgment." As to the other four pieces included here, Fernando knew about those published in Tlalocan, that is, "Yn Animastin Yhuan Alvaceasme" (Souls and Testamentary Execu- tors) and "Yn Pochtecatl" (The Merchant).He was aware also of the Nahuatl texts that Paso y Troncoso had published and of others entitled "La Pasih del Domingo de Rarnos," which is preserved at the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University, and "La conversih de San Pablo," which was in a manuscript belonging to the bibliographer and historian Federico G6mez de Orozco. In addition, he listed and described,with the support of reliable sources, otherspieces reaching-as noted- a total of thirty-five compositions. Fernando Horcasitas Pimentelhas left us a rich legacy of works related to the cul- ture and language of the Nahua people. He guided and helped a good number of students and colleagues, and even when he had to interrupt his teaching activities due to illness, he kept his spirits up until his last days. Proof of this is provided by a report he wrote a few months before his final departure on the precise date of his fifty-sixth birthday, September 26, 1980. In this report he stated that he had reached the final stage of what would be the second volume of his Teafro na'huafl. He wrote also that "in view of the very poor situation regarding the publication of Mexican folklore texts and of serious studies on them, I plan to dedicate time to the publica- tion of a collection of them" (Horcasitasin Le6n-Portilla 1982,36). I just will add that it has been an honor and a pleasure for me to join here Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D. Sell in dedicating this book to Fernando's memory. He opened many new doors into the treasure trove of literary productions in Nahuatl, conceived indeed as a part of universal literature, produced by men and women of all times and in all places.
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- 21. PREFACE Louise M. Burkhart and Barry D.Sell In the entire western hemisphere the only extant colonialplays in any Native Ameri- can language are those in Nahuatl, the principal indigenous language of Central Mexico. In the decades following the Spanishconquest, Roman Catholic friars taught Nahua students to write their own language using the roman alphabet. As the Nahuas already had pictographic writing and tremendous respect for the written word, they enthusiastically adopted the new technique. European genres of dis- course and text were transposed into hybrid Nahua-Christian forms. As early as the 1530s,friarsbegan to use theatrical performances as a tool of evan- gelization. Theater, like other performative modes of Christian devotion, appealed to the Nahuas, whose traditional religious activities focused more on collective rituals than on preaching or private devotions. A native theater developed,based on Span- ish models but with native actors and sponsors. Scripts were authored by friars, in collaborationwith literate Nahuas, and also by Nahuas themselves-with and with- out priestly oversight-and were sometimesbased on Spanishscriptsand sometimes invented for the local context. The purpose of this and the other three volumes in the Nahuatl Theater set is to bring together and disseminate scripts and scholarship on this first truly American theater. By publishing a series devoted to Nahuatl theater we aim to establish the place of these dramas in the literary canon of the Americas, approaching them not just as an evangelization technique (asthey have often been treated)but also as sub- altern literature, as symbolic capital, as transcripts of intercultural dialogue, as pri- mary linguisticdata, and as artisticproducts. We build especiallyon the work of the late Mexican anthropologistFemando Hor- casitas, whose El teatro nihuatl of 1974 is still the classic book on the subject. To this groundwork we bring a quarter-century of advances in the study of Nahuatl gram- mar and translation; current understandings of the colonialhistory of Mexico, and of colonialhistoricalprocesses more generally; grounding in contemporaryculturaland
- 22. literary theory; and familiarity with the broader context of Nahuatl written expres- sion, both civil and ecclesiastical. The field of colonial Nahua studies has seen tremendous advances since the mid- 1970s, with the publication of excellent modern grammars of the language such as J. Richard Andrews's in 1975, and Michel Launey's in 1979; the 1982 completion of Arthur J. 0 . Anderson and Charles E. Dibble's translation of the Florentine Codex, a Nahuatl-language encyclopedia of traditional Nahua culture produced under the direction of the sixteenth-century Franciscan fray Bernardino de Sahagh; and stud- ies of Nahuatl civil and historical documentsby James Lockhart, Sarah Cline, Susan Kellogg, Susan Schroeder, and others. This growing body of work has begun to approach (insophisticationif not in size)that done on early Euro-Americans. Colonial religious literature in Nahuatl has not received equivalent attention,but significant contributions include Louise Burkhart's works (1989, 1996, 2001), Barry Sell's 1993 dissertation, Arthur J. 0 . Anderson's translations of some of Sahagh's doctrinal writings (Sahagiin 1993a, 1993b),and Sell and John Frederick Schwaller's critical edition of a seventeenth-century confession manual (Alva 1999).Burkhart's Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Dramafrom Early Colonial Mexico (1996)examined in great detail one native-authored Nahuatl drama and its Spanish source. Similar work has not yet been published on other Nahuatl dramas; secondary studies continue to rely on limited sourcesand outdated translations. Our volumes will bring the remaining corpus of Nahuatl dramas up to current standards of research. While the anthology format does not permit us to devote as extensive and consistent a descriptiveattention to the texts as Burkhart did in Holy Wednesday, we engage the material at a similar level of intensity. We have made this a collaborativeproject involving scholarsfrom different academic disciplines, in order to encourage a broader range of insights. Our work also complements and, we hope, will contribute to ongoingresearch by scholars in Mexico, such as the group working with Professor Maria Sten at the Universidad Nacional Autdnoma de Mkxico, who recentlyproduced a volume on Franciscan-Nahuatheater (Stenet al. 2000). The four volumes of Nahuatl Theater will include transcriptions and translations of all surviving colonial Nahuatl plays, some related Nahuatl texts, and scholarly essaysby the volume editors and by outside scholars.We will use colonial-era scripts as much as possible. We will also avail ourselves of the copious material translated and composedby FaustinoChimalpopoca Galicia, a nineteenth-centuryNahua scholar who was a speaker of the language. Our transcriptions of the Nahuatl texts are meant to be useful to students and scholarsof Nahuatl who need access to the dramas in their originallanguage for their own translation studies and exercises. Our transcriptions will also support studies of language usage and variation across time and, to some degree, space. For example, linguists may use this extended corpusof documentsto investigate Spanishinfluence on Nahuatl (use of loanwords, appearanceof calques and syntactic changes), aspects of style (for example, the use of the reverential system, parallel constructions, tradi- tional metaphors),and dialecticalvariation. Our readable English translations are intended to allow both specialists and non- specialists to understand the content of the plays and, thus, the wide range of dra- matic themes and plots surviving from the Nahua past. How was life represented on
- 23. the Nahuatl stage? How did playwrights working in Nahuatl go about their work? How were European texts and ideas adapted to the Mexican context?What multiple messages were conveyedby the plays?What stagingtechniques were used?Students of colonial social history and historical ethnography, of evangelization and religious history, of theater history, and SpanishAmerican and Native American literaturewill find these translations a useful resource for investigating a variety of issues. Texts such as these should find an expandingaudience among nonspecialists as contempo- rary Mexicansand Mexican Americans, including people of Nahua ancestry,increas- ingly seek to understand and recover their ethnichistory. These dramas speak to issues of multiculturalismnot just because they come from another culture but because they are by nature multicultural,products of the hybrid zone between Spanish and Nahua cultural worlds. Theater too is by nature ambiva- lent, engaging two simultaneousrealities: the imagined reality of the drama and the everyday world beyond the stage. Colonial dramas are particularly fascinating in that they display, in the microcosm of the theatrical event, the author's and actors' collective representation of what the colonialorder is or should be, thus commenting on the "real" world. But this representation, presented in Nahuatl but stemming from European discourses, is never univocal but always conflicted and subject to dif- ferent interpretations,native and other subalternreadings differing from those of the dominant Spaniards. The project is organized into four volumes, of which you hold the first in your hands. A summary descriptionof the individualvolumes in the series follows. Volume 1, Deafh and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico, coedited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart, contains seven Nahuatl dramas dating roughly from the first half of the seventeenthcentury. Six of these plays have been previouslypublished in now-outdated editions; one is presented here for the first time. Five are morality plays emphasizing death, judgment, moral reform, and punishment for moral fail- ures; two are autos derived from biblical narratives (the story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of the three wise men).In the accompanyingessays, Burkhart examines the plays' prominent themes of death and the care of the dead in the context of other Nahuatl writings on these topics; Sell examines the colonial social context of the plays and, through a close examination of the manuscripts, establishes their likely dates; Daniel Mosquera contributesa more theoretical piece on the playsftheological and catechistic aspects; and Viviana Diaz Balsera compares the dramatic treatment of the Abraham-Isaac story to its use as a moral exemplum in Nahuatl sermons. A foreword by Miguel Le6n-Portilla, the senior Mexican scholar of Nahuatl literature, reviews the contributions of Fernando Horcasitas and other early scholars to the study of Nahuatl theater. A detailed discussion of the manuscripts-their present location, size, provenience, and peculiarities-can be found in the first half of Sell's essay. In volume 2, entitled The Virgin o f Guadalupe, we turn to the history of the Mexican devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the country's principal religious focus. This devotion is the subject of much attentionand controversy, witness the recent debates over the canonization of Juan Diego, the legendary Nahua hero of the apparition story,and the long historical debate over the authenticityof the apparition tradition. While the earliest(1649)Nahuatl versionof the apparition legend has been published
- 24. in a recent critical edition (Sousaet al. 1998),the later development of the Guadalu- pan tradition in Nahuatl remains little known, despitethe centralplace this devotion came to occupy in native as well as nonnative Mexican religious life. Stafford Poole, C. M., one of the leading experts in the world on the history of the apparition, will be coeditor with Burkhart and Sell. Here we are concernednot with the historicity of the apparition legend but with itshistorical and literary developmentand dissemination. Twocolonialdramatizationsof the apparitionstory are known. Nineteenth-century copies of both, made by the Nahua scholar Faustino ChimalpopocaGalicia, are in the New York Public Library. The first play, with three acts, is called Coloquios de la apari- ci6n de la Virgm Santa Marh de Guadalupe ("Colloquies of the Apparition of the Virgin Saint Mary of Guadalupe");both FernandoHorcasitas and the Mexican scholarh g e l Maria Garibay Kintana attributed it to the early eighteenthcentury.A second and ear- lier copy of this play, made by or for the Mexican priest and scholar Jose Pichardo (1748-1812) in the late eighteenth century, is in the National Library of France. The other play, comprising one act in verse, is titled El portent0 mexicano, comediafamosa, y la primera en verso Mexicano ("The Mexican Portent, Famous Drama, and the First in Mexican Verse"); Fernando Horcasitastentatively dated it to about 1690. As companion material for the two dramas, in order to provide context on the Guadalupan devotion of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, we will include transcriptionsand translations of some other previouslyunpublished Nahuatl Guadalupan materials, such as prayers and praise songs. Volume 3, Spanish Golden Age Drama in Mexican Translation, on which the noted Hispanist Elizabeth R. Wrightjoins Burkhart and Sell as coeditor, will be truly bicul- tural, focusing on three Golden Age Spanish plays and a comic intermezzo (over sev- enty folios total length) that were adapted into Nahuatl by don Bartolom6 de Alva Ixtlilxochitl around 1640.Alva's work survives in the Bancroft Library of the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley. Alva was Spanish on his father's side but on his mother's sidewas descended from one of the Aztec Empire's royal dynasties.He was a native speaker of Nahuatl and one of very few men of either native or mixed blood to be ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood. Thus, he was perfectly posi- tioned to be a culturalbroker between native and Spanishworlds. The Spanish plays are El Gran Teatrodel Mundo ("The Great Theater of the World") by Pedro Calder6n de la Barca, the great master of eucharistic drama; La Madre de la Mejor ("The Mother of the Best"), about the conception and birth of the Virgin Mary, by Felix Lope de Vega Carpio, the most famous of all Spanish playwrights; and El Animal Propheta y Dichosa Patricida Don Julihn ("The Prophet Animal and the Blissful Patricide, Don Julian").A chapbook version of the latter play circulated under Lope de Vega's name, and Alva attributes it to him, but it was written by Antonio Mira de Amescua, a reasonably well-known playwright who was strongly influenced by Lope; this issue of authorship is itself of interest in studies of Golden Age drama. An English translation of Alva's Calderh adaptation was published by William A. Hunter in 1960,before all the more recent advances in Nahuatl scholarship. The other two have never been published. This only known case in which classic works of the Spanish theater were rendered into Nahuatl provides a unique opportunity to see how metropolitan "hits," so to speak, played in the colonial provinces. The
- 25. Spanish plays, with English translations, will be presented along with Alvafswork. This will allow the kind of controlledcomparisonbetween Spanishmodel and Nahuatl adaptation that Burkhart was able to carry out in Holy Wednesday, with an extra advantage in that we know the precise identity of the Mexican author. In addition to their significance as local adaptations of Spanish masterworks, Alva's dramas are important for Nahuatl linguistic studies.Alva devoted his work to Father Horacio Carochi, the Jesuit linguist who produced the most important colo- nial grammar of Nahuatl (1645) and who developed a system for using diacritical marks to indicate long vowels and glottal stops, essential features of the language usually ignored by earlier grammarians. Intermittently, but nevertheless to a useful extent, Alva or someone familiar with Carochifsdiacritics applied these marks to his translations. Our work will reproduce these revealing diacritics and analyze how they were used. In directing his theatrical translations to the Jesuits, Alva intended them for linguistic study and training rather than for performance since Jesuits ordained in Mexico were required to study Nahuatl. Thus while it is possible that Alvafswork was performed, we do not assume this was the case and will treat the plays as having primarilybeen texts for private study. Volume 4, Nahua Christianity in Performance, is still in the planning stages. We intend to include all other extant colonial and nineteenth-century Nahuatl plays, including a Passion play recently discovered in Mexico, works copied or composed by Faustino Chirnalpopoca Galicia in addition to the Guadalupan dramas, and two pieces held by the JohnCarter Brown Library. Our principal goal is to present the dramas with meticulously accurate transcrip- tions, up-to-date and readable translations, and supporting documentation on dating, authorship,and context.Our secondary goal is to offer interpretationsof the historical, literary religious, and linguisticsignificanceof the materials through the supplemen- tary essays. The process by which a set of volumes such as this is produced and the general guidelines that are followed may be of some use to those interested in undertaking similar projectsor in extending the work we have begun here. Briefly stated, they can be organized into five categories: identification of sources, establishmentof authori- tative texts, transcription, translation, and interpretation. Locating and identifying sources is fundamental to our work. Much of the extant corpus of colonial Nahuatl dramas is fairly well established but surprises occur: the "Holy Wednesday" drama was discovered in 1986and a Passion drama was recently discovered in Mexico. The original manuscript of three plays in our volume 1,lost according to some scholars, resides contentedly in the Clements Library of the Uni- versity of Michigan; some other "lost" texts may also reappear. The text currently held by the Academy of American Franciscan History "The Life of Don Sebastiiin," was unknown until very recently. Establishing an authoritative text is often trouble free.In most cases, only one copy of a Nahuatl drama survives. However, one exception is a drama in our volume 1, for which a second copy follows the first in the Library of Congressmanuscript. We transcribed both but translated only the first, noting all meaningful discrepancies in wording between that version and the second copy. Another exception is the
- 26. "Colloquies of the Apparition" Guadalupan drama, for which two versions sur- vive. Using both versions in tandem, we will produce as authoritative a reconstruc- tion of the originalas possible, documenting the discrepanciesbetween the two extant versions. The issue is much more complex for the Spanish dramas in volume 3, as these circulated in various manuscript and chapbook versions before or alongside more "authoritative" editions.For our work to be a valid contribution to studies of Golden Age drama, we must give serious attention to identdying the correct texts. We are in the process of determining (from date and content) which of the extant versions of the Spanish plays were the likeliest candidatesto have been used by Alva as the basis for his Nahuatl adaptations. These, rather than any now-standard editions, are the relevant sources for the Nahuatl Theater set. This task requires extensive archival research in multiple repositories: the National Library in Madrid, the Archive of the Indies in Seville, the Spanish theater archive in Almagro, the British Library, and the University of Pennsylvania Library. Meticulous transcriptions form the foundations of accurate translations and inter- pretations. Working from originals or microfilms, we digitally transcribe the dramas. Transforming handwritten Nahuatl into digital format is always somewhat problem- atic, as scribes used various abbreviations, diacritics, and punctuation marks that can- not always be reproduced exactly. Some standardization of diacritics is inevitable, but we includea l lsuch featuresand mirror them as closely as possible. The orthographyof the original is reproduced exactly. Following established practice, we do insert spaces between words and eliminate spaces within words (Nahua scribes tended to write in phonological units rather than words; line endings frequently bisect words). When one person has completed a transcription, another checks it thoroughly,marking cor- rections. A third-and in some cases, a fourth-complete check is also made. Some microfilms are clear enough that all featuresare easily visible.When this isnot the case, transcriptionsmade fromfilms are alsochecked against the originalmanuscripts. The most accessible part of the primary sources are the English translations, and they have been prepared with the utmost care. The colonial Nahuatl (urban,written) of these sources differssubstantially from contemporaryspokenNahuatl. Our collec- tive translation experiencefrom our work with other colonial texts and our familiar- ity with European religious texts provides the best preparation for translating these plays. Our procedure was that one person completed a draft translation. A second person went over it thoroughly and offered corrections and suggestions. The first person incorporated these, the second reviewed the text again, and a third person may also have reviewed the work. Passages that can be translated only tentatively have notes stating as much; alternative readings for ambiguous passages are also noted. The translations of the Spanish dramas into English will be a collaborative effort by Elizabeth Wright and Daniel Mosquera, with review by Burkhart and Sell. No text, especiallyfor those unable to directlyread the original,speaks for itself.A criticalpart of presentingNahuatl theater to a broad scholarlyaudienceis to provide interpretativeessays. These essays are not meant to exhaust all avenues of investiga- tion but to elucidate the scripts from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and, we hope, to inspire further studies of them. Of particular interest are issues of transla- tion; the negotiation of power and authority between Nahuas and the colonial
- 27. PREFACE-xxv church; colonial Nahua religious understandings and practices; issues of authorship, literacy, and text production;and Nahuatl linguistics. None of the above would be possible without the difficult and groundbreaking work done by our predecessors, first the Nahuas and the priests who wrote the plays and later those who copied, rearranged, and commented upon them. Priest-grarn- marians of the later colonial period would look back-with much justification-at the first half of the colony as a golden age of Nahuatl written expression. No subse- quent period could hope to equal the time when the most original, germinal, and innovative texts (includingthe plays) were created, but the present could be consid- ered another kind of golden age, one in which a great deal of previous lore and knowledge has been reclaimed for future generations,native and non-native alike. If the period up to circa 1650was the "Golden Age of Production" of Nahuatl texts, the time from circa 1970 to the present could be considered the "Golden Age of Recov- ery" of that rich and varied corpus. That such is possible for Nahuatl plays is due above all to Fernando Horcasitas, whose El teatro na'huafl(1974)was so many years ahead of its time.
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- 29. This volume and the entire Nahuatl Theater set were prompted by the generosity of Gregory Spira.While working in the Hispanic Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congresshe spontaneouslyoffered to provide Barry D. Sellaccess to the Nahuatl texts held there. He then provided photocopies to Sellof three of the plays presented in this volume. Spira also checked the initial transcriptions against their originals. No less helpful was makinghis apartmentavailable so that Sellwas able to visit the Library of Congress and see the texts for himself. Such an auspicious start encouraged Sell to seek out other early Nahuatl dramas and to think of a more comprehensive effort. With that idea in mind and the first few transcriptions in hand, he approached Louise M. Burkhart with a request and a challenge:would she like to dramaticallyextend the work she began in her standard-setting Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama j?om Early Colonial Mexico (1996)by becoming the coeditor of a large Nahuatl Theater project? Shequicklyaccepted.Thistook matters fromwishful thinking to practical reality.And it allbegan with an unexpected act of generosity. The institutions holding the manuscripts that are transcribed and translated here are greatly appreciated for preserving and making available these unique texts. The Library of Congress greatly facilitated the examination of their three plays. The Academy of American Franciscan History graciously shared a previously unknown early Nahuatl drama in their collection and granted permission to reproduce it. The William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, which holds three of the most widely known early pieces, provided an exceptionally clear microfilm and allowed us to publish the texts. We would also like to thank James Lockhart for his thorough review of a draft of our translations, as well as John Frederick Schwaller and an anonymous reviewer for the University of Oklahoma Press for their helpful comments. Our acquisitions editor at the University of Oklahoma Press, JoAnn Reece, saw this project through a lengthy review process with unflagging persistence and enthusiasm. We also thank
- 30. our in-house editor, Marian J. Stewart, and our copyeditor, Pippa Letsky for work- ing efficiently and enthusiastically with a cumbersome, multi-authored bilingual manuscript. Subvention funds for this volume were generouslyprovided by the University of Oklahoma Foundation, the Department of Anthropology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and the New York State/United University ProfessionsProfessional Development Committee. Last, we make special mention here of the contributors to this volume: Miguel Leon-Portilla, Viviana Diaz Balsera, and Daniel Mosquera. They participated when this volume was just a hope. Their efforts and their confidence in our project are greatly appreciated.
- 31. PART I Essays
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- 33. Barry D . Sell The readers of this first volume of the Nahuatl Theater set hold in their hands some unusual texts. In the entirewestern hemisphere, the only extant colonialplays in any Native American language are those in Nahuatl ("Aztec"), the language spoken by the Nahuas ("Aztecs") of Mexico. Their rarity is hardly unexpected. Colonial Mexico was the one area in all the Americas where a large number of alphabetical texts in native languages were produced. This was due both to native precedent and to European encouragement.Unlike other First Peoples of the Amer- icas, many Mesoamericans already had a tradition of recording information by making symbols on paper.' The prestige attached to traditional writing eased the transition from local to intrusive modes of record-keeping. The Spanish variant of Europeans had their own reasons for encouraging a familiar literacy. Businesspeople and administrators alike benefited from the assistance, collaboration, and guidance provided by literateChristianizednatives. Native youngsters learned to write their languages with the characters of the Spanish alphabet. As the critical target group of Spanish colonization, the Nahuas were the first to adopt the new writing tradition; by the 1530sthe first extant docu- ments in alphabeticalNahuatl ap~eared.~ Mayas, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Tarascans, and otherswould follow suit decadeslater.However, the Nahuas' earlyhead start, greater numbers, and wider geographical spread gave them an overwhelming advantage even among Mesoamericans who were culturally predisposed to the new mode of writing. Thus it is no surprisethat most alphabeticalnative-languagetexts from 1500 to 1800,not only in Mesoamericabut throughout the Americas, are in Nahuatl. The sheerbulk of the extantNahuatl corpus is impressivebut largely unknown to the general public. Ten thousand printed pages, most church-related, are dwarfed by ecclesiastical manuscripts; one in a Mexico City archive has 888 pages all by itself. Larger yet is civil documentation, which in spite of its present mass is but a fraction of its original size due to the unsparing vicissitudes of changing times and
- 34. 4--DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO circumstances. Like its counterparts in other Mesoamerican tongues, the Nahuatl corpus includes sermonaries, confessionalmanuals, books of Christian doctrine, tes- taments, land titles, civil and criminal proceedings, bills of sale, and so on. Size does make a difference, though, for it allowed for more variety, and among the items par- ticular to the Nahuatl corpus are plays. There is an inherent difficulty in presenting these dramas to a broad audience. Except for the obstacles posed by deciphering the idiosyncratic scrawl of hurried notaries, colonial texts in Spanish can be directly consulted with relative ease by those who know modem Spanish. Not so with Nahuatl. The gap between colonial and current Nahuatl is significantly wider because Spanish influence on it has been profound. Hence critical or skepticalreaders-including the vast majority of modern speakersof Nahuatl-will in most casesbe unable to verify for themselves the valid- ity of a transcription, the accuracy of a translation, and the soundness of the subse- quent interpretation and analysis. Helping to bridge that gap at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the function of the essays in this and succeeding volumes of the Nahuatl Theater set. The Manuscripts Abrief review of the texts should help orient the reader. They are described in the order in which they appear in this volume. The Clements Library of the Universityof Michigan holds three textsbound together: "The ThreeKings" (lr-23r), "The Sacrifice of Isaac" (23v-36r), and "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors" (36v-52r). A set of four bound pieces is held by the Library of Congress (LC):"Final Judgment" (lr-lOv), two versions of "How to Live on Earth" (llr-28v [the basis of the English translation included here], 29r43v), and "The Merchant" (44r-53v).3 The Academy of American Franciscan Historyowns a previously unknown play: "The Life of Don Sebastiih" (29 pages). Long-established conventions for titling in Spanish and English have been fol- lowed in four of the seven cases. "The Life of Don Sebastih" is presented here for the first time. One of the two translators of this piece, Louise M. Burkhart, chose the title from the openingwords of the main text, "Moral example which speaks about the life of Don Sebastih" (p.5)."How to Live on Earth" was originallypresentedby JohnH. Cornynand ByronMcAfee in T2alocan 1.4(1944)as "Tlacahuapahualiztli (BringingUp Children)." Burkhart decided that the present title, derived from an early speech in the play would be more appropriate. "The Three Kings" was presented in transcrip- tion and translation first by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso in his Biblioteca Nbuatl I1 (1900b)and later by Fernando Horcasitas in his El teafronhhuatl (1974,25679). Both of these noted Mexican scholars referred to it as "La adoracibn de 10s reyes." In the absence of anything resembling a title at the beginning of the drama, both editors think the present designationis more in accord with the opening lines. Fundamentalto analyzingthese dramas is the task of establishingtheir authorship, dates of composition or copying, and provenience. There are several scattered clues to these pressing concerns. Prefatory remarks in "The Merchant" indicate that what follows is an
- 35. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-5 Edifying example that speaks about a merchant. I am writing it today; it is my property. My name is Don Joseph Gaspar and I am a resident here in San Juan Bautista Tollantzinco. I am setting down the day and year: today is Saturday, 15 November, of the year 1687. (36r) There are later references to the altqetl4of Xochimilco and Tepeyacac, and to pur- chasing land "three years ago in the year 1627"(48r-v). Also helpful is the following from the end of "The Sacrificeof Isaac": Finis. Laus Deo.Thismoral examplewas prepared in the year 1678.It was copied today, Friday, the first of February of the year 1760.And as to whether in truth I worked on this moral example, [I aff'i my signature]:Bernab6 Vgzquez. (36r) Some useful informationcan be found as well in "The Life of Don Sebastik." The firstwords read "Praise Play in Nahuatl" and "From Huaxtepec" (1).Near the end are the following remarks: "Finis. Laus Deo. Amen. This moral example was finished today, the first of April of the year one thousand, six hundred, ninety and two" (27). There is no overtindicationof whether the plays are Nahua translationsof Spanish or Latin pieces or simply ad hoc creations composed by some combination of clerics and literateNahuas. The two named individualsare little known. If BernabbVizquez was indeed the copyist of "The Sacrifice of Isaac," then he can be assigned the same role regarding "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors" sinceboth arebound together and are in the samehand. He was most probably a Nahua notary,givenhis practiced hand and facility in the language, although his names were not the Spanish appellations most common among Nahuas. His status could not have been very high because he lacked the (by then) increasingly common "don." Sportingthe title when it had a more lofty connotation was don Joseph Gaspar of SanJuan Bautista Tollantzinco who claimed to have written, or finished writing, "The Merchant" on Saturday, November 15, 1687. The references cited above to "three years ago in the year 1627"and to Xochimilcoand Tepeyacac(mostlikely the altepetl of the same names that neighbored Mexico City to the south) put the play in a time and place I consider more propitious for its creation, that is, in the capital when Franciscan scholarship was at the height of its influence during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It should be added that Franciscans ministered to Tollantzinco (Spanish Tulancingo)and Xochimilco. Don Joseph was almost certainly not the writer nor even the copyist; colonial conventions called for the author of record, patron, or supervisingeditor to take full credit for producing a text. Additional considerationspoint to a less direct role by don Joseph.In two notarial documents from Tollantzincodated October 7,1687, and Wednesday, November 3, 1687,don JosephGaspar appears as a witness, his formal authority deriving fromhis position as an alcalde or member of the Hispanic-style town co~ncil.~ As with so many other Tollantzincorecords, the notary of the cabildo (Spanish-style town council), don Joseph de la Cruz, wrote the entire text and apparently signed for everyone. Don JosephGaspar did not sign his own name, nor did he add his own distinctiverubric. The notary simply added the very same undistinguished rubric to don Joseph's and
- 36. &DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO several other names. This does not prove that don Joseph was unable to write, but it does not speak well for the possibility. The dates support my working assumption that all the plays have been through a process similarto that which produced two copies of "How to Live on Earth," each in a different hand and with a similar, though not identical, ~ontent.~ "The Merchant" was created or copied in 1630and then (re)copiedon Saturday,November 15, 1687.7 "The Sacrifice of Isaac" is explicitly said to have been copied on Friday, February 1, 1760, from a 1678version that itself may have been derived from an even earlier text. The same dates may also apply to one of its two companion dramas ("Souls and Testamentary Executors") since it is in the same hand and literary style. The seven- teenth century surfaces also in "The Life of Don Sebastih," which was finished on April 1, 1692. Miscellaneous clues from "The Life of Don SebastiAn" strengthen the church con- nection but leave the place of compositionor copying still undetermined.The procla- mation at the beginning, that what follows is a "Praise Play in Nahuatl," strikes me as a typically clerical formulation.Nahuas had infrequent occasion to speak of their cultural or ethnic entirety in terms of "Nahuas" (for the people) and "Nahuatl" (for the language) in texts written by and for themselves. Clerics had rather more, so these terms are usually found in ecclesiastical Nahuatl texts (see Sell 1993, 129-36). Unfortunately for our purposes, the names of earlyMexicanaltepetl sometimesrepeat, so it is unclear just which "Huaxtepec" is referred to on the first page of "The Life of Don Sebastiih"8 Hence, littleis securelyknown about suchbasics as dates of compositionor copying. Previous scholarship on Nahuatl theater has at times erroneously indicated more securedating of textsthan is actuallypossible, and inherited errorscontinue to plague the study of these dramas.Apointed example is provided by something as simple as the dating of "Final Judgment." Fernando Horcasitas asserts (1974,564)that in con- trast with many other works describedin his collection, "de El juiciofinal siposeemos un manuscrito antiguo .. .fechado 1678 (aunque seguramente 6sta es la fecha de la copia solamente)" (concerningFinal Judgmentwe do indeed possess an ancient man- uscript. ..dated 1678[althoughsurely this is only the date of the copy]).Until recent- ly I myself thought the same (Sell1988,4).9Put simply:"Final Judgment" is undated, and there is no overt sign of any kind that it was newly composed or translated, an originalor a copy.1° Proceeding, then, with caution, I turn to a considerationof some revealing aspects of the plays. These include the writing habits of the scribes, the types of loanwords present, the nature of the Nahuatl sociopolitical terminology used, and the pervasive if somewhat uneven presence of traditional Nahuatl formal speech. It often seemsthat nothing that originatedin the Spanish-speakingworld remained completely unchanged once the Nahuas made it their own. The art of writing Nahuatl with the Roman characters of the Spanish alphabet is no exception. Yet even special- ists in Nahuatl studies can little appreciate much of the strongly Nahua cast of the plays under consideration. James Lockhart regards Fernando Horcasitas's El teatro ruihuatl as a vast contributionto Nahuatl philology ... [that]brings together a substantial portion of the existingtheatricalcorpusin transcriptionand Spanishtranslation,
- 37. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-7 some of it published in the late 19thand early 20th centuriesby Paso y Troncoso, and some of it published for the first time. As Horcasitasrealized, TN is far from definitive. The transcriptions mainly modernize the orthography, with conse- quent loss of distinctions, although some idiosyncrasies of the originals are retained; division into words is often highly inconsistent, punctuation is arbi- trary, and typographical errors and misreading are rife. Horcasitas' texts are sufficient for many purposes, and for the most part I have used them without further recourse to the originals (which are themselves nearly all posterior copies, some of them unreliable modern transcriptions). The translations improve on their predecessorsand give a generally adequatenotion of the con- tent, but errors abound, and much improvement is needed. In due course an updated, more complete, and much more critical edition of the corpus will be required. (1992,595-96 no. 97) The present criticaledition attempts to build on the strengthsof Horcasitas's work and rectify itsweaknesses. Theeditorshad access to the colonialoriginalsof the seven texts i n this book and used them as the basis of our final transcription^.^ We strenu- ously attempted to reproduce as far as possible all the original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization12although spacingfollowscurrent practices.13Consequently there are thousands of differencesbetween the present transcriptions and those published earlier. Yet in fairness to Horcasitas and others, the reader should understand that these latest productions are no more sacrosanct than their predecessors. There are inevitable divergences between any handwritten manuscript and its modem typo- graphic variant, in part due to the preferencesand training of the transcribers.Future presentationsof the samematerials may includecomplete photoreproductionsof the originals (not possible here), or utilize information technologies currently unavail- able. Nonetheless the present transcriptions are enough of an advance over former renderings and are sufficientlysuggestiveof the originals that they supersede all pre- vious versions.If nothing else,this latest round of transcriptions may encouragemore direct personal examination of the texts. The editors would welcome that increased interest and scrutiny. A direct comparison of transcriptions will help to demonstrate the contrast between the present renditions and earlier ones. Some of the spacing between lines has been adjusted to allow for easier reading of both selections. Horcasitas's version of "Juicio Final" begins : JESUS Nexcuitilmachiotl motenehuaJucioFinal I Tlapitzaloz.Motlapoz ilhuicac.Hualmotemohuiz San Miguel. San Miguel: Dios itlachihualtzitzihuan6, ma xicmatican inhuan ca tel ye anquimati, ca ipan ca in iteotenehuatiltzinin totecuyo Dios, ca quimotlamilliz, quimopolhuiz, in oquimochihuilitzino in itlazomahuiztatzin Dios in cen- manahuactli. Ca quimopolhuiz, quimotlamilliz,in ixquichin oquimochihuilitzi- no, in nepapan totome, i nepapan yoyolime, ihuan in amehuantin. iCa namech- mopolhuiz, in ancemanahuactlaca!(Horcasitas1974,568)
- 38. &DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO Our rendering of the same text from f. lr of the LC manuscript: Nexcuitilmachiotl. motenehua Juiqiofinal- tlapitzalos motlapoz yE.c hualrnotemohuiz s."mig.l= S.n miguel = v Dios ytlachihualtzitzinhuane.ma xicmatican. yhuan Ca tel ye anquimati. Ca ypan Ca yn iteotenahuatiltzin ji tt.0 D.S Ca quimotlamilliz quirnopolhuis yn oquimochihuilitzino. yn itlaqomahuiztatzin Dios. ji Senmanahuactli. Ca quimopolhuis. quimotlamilliz. yn ixquich yn oquimochi- huilitzino. ji nepapan totome. y nepapa yoyolirne. yhuan yn amehuantin. Ca hamechmopolhuis. yn ansemanahuactlaca. There are many noticeable differences in just these two small samples.More rele- vant to our purposes than the substitution of JES* for a cross is that Horcasitas added accent marks where there were none, drastically changed formatting, trans- formed notarialmarkingsinto a colon,resolved standard abbreviations,imposed cur- rent notions of capitalization and punctuation to create sentences, regularized most spellingaccordingto his own lights, and added textual divisions(scenes)that did not exist in the original. Elsewhere he forces blocks of text into paragraph form. His changesconformed to the scholarlystandards of his time and place, yet it is precisely the deviations from European-stylenorms that are of interest here. His "corrections" go a very long way toward eliminating precisely those features typical of Nahuatl documents. Consider simply one aspect of the changes in punctuation. When left to their own devices Nahuas applied alphabetical writing to the elements discernible in speech- that is, letter/sound segments, syllables,and the phonological phrase-rather than to the European-style units of word, sentence, and paragraph with their relatively stan- dardized spellings, punctuation, and spacing.Lockhart has accurately noted that the phonological phrase "consisting of a nuclear nominal or verbal stem with its affixes and its adverbial or other modifiers, is a far more obvious, detectable entity in Nahuatl than either the 'word' or the complete utterance (sentence)" (1992,338-39). He later adds that, while the use of spaces to indicate phonological phrases is debat- able, it is undeniable that in some instances Nahua writers used "a period (a dot at least)between phrases" and that this clearly shows their tendency "to think in terms of a phrase type quite foreign to European languages" (1992,339).I concur. This clue to the identity of the writer is obscured in Horcasitas's version, and obvious in the present one.14 Certain features of the seven plays (eight texts) are now more readily apparent. Overall, there is intrusive n as well as the loss of n in all the expected environments; idiosyncratic capitalization that sometimes appears patterned; heavy punctuation in one part of a text that is seemingly abandoned in another; an indifferenceat times to the notion of standardized spelling;the presence of assimilation,loss, and gemination that might provide clues to the speech habits of the scribes;15the frequent use of y rather than i at the beginning of a phrase; and so on. All this within the frameworkof great variance among the texts. If I were to place the texts on some sort of continuum,
- 39. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-9 it would go from those produced more independentlyby Nahuas to those generated under clerical supervision. Somewhat impressionistically, I would place the two copiesof "How to Live on Earth," "FinalJudgment," and "The Life of Don Sebastik" on the more independent end of the spectrum, the other four on the more supervised. Nonetheless all the texts occasionally but persistently defy easy assumptions. Judging by the handwriting, six of the eight documents are by different scribes; only "The Sacrificeof Isaac" and "Souls and Testamentary Executors" come from the same well-trained hand. Yet all eight are in what I judge to be more or less skillfully ren- dered variants of the clear italianatehand taught by Franciscannahuatlatos (expertsin Nahuatl; translators)to their Nahua pupils in the first decades after the conquest. In some respects, such as the standardizationof spellings,the two aforementionedplays hew more closely to Europeannorms than almost any of the others. But then there is a distinctive anomaly, like their very nonstandard rendering of Nahuatl ceppa (in oc c w a "again") as cecppa, with its outrageously impossible-to-pronounce consonant cluster cpp.16Such similaritiesand anomalies are to be expected from the general run of civil and ecclesiasticalNahuatl texts. The originallettering tentatively provides additional clues to dating. Very early in the development of alphabetical Nahuatl writing there was some hesitation about how to representthe affricate[ts].By mid-sixteenthcentury the digraph tz became the settled convention in most Nahuatl writings, especially those associated with the church. Alternative solutions from an earlier period of evolving standards are infre- quent. Among the early manuscripts and imprints that contain such alternatesis the anonymously authored Dominican Doctrina cristiana of 1548. The handwritten copy that provided the basis of the book was already rather dated because the by-then- dominant fz is a rarity in this book of Christian doctrine(forone of the few examples, see f. 13v).It is written variously c, tc, and tg, the latter two predominating(seeff. 6v, llv, 30r, 124v, 129r, and passim; it is possible that tc is a print-shop error for t ~ ) . An even earlierNahuatl text from circa 1540uses g and z in place of tz (Cline1993).There are occasional later examples.17None of these notably early or nonstandard forms replaces tz in any of the plays in this volume.ls During much of the sixteenthcenturyprevocalic [W]was variouslyrepresented as v, U,and hu.l9A samplingfrom the mid-sixteenth century containsthe following rep- resentative examples:yvan/yuan, civatl/@vatl,peua, yehuatzin, vecauh, vel/uel, cavifl, and quavitl/quauitl (Selland Kellogg1997,34149; Docfrinacristiana 1548).By the end of the sixteenth century, hu became the prevailing standard, again especially in church- related texts. Hence such items as yvan/yuan usually would be spelled yhuan, vel/uel as huel, and quavitl/quauitl as quah~itl.~0 There are thousands of instances where pre- vocalic [W]appears before a, e, and i in the eight pieces. With only one exception, there is alwayshua, never va or ua; always hue, never ve or ue; always hui, never vi or ~ i . ~ l The relentless representation of prevocalic [W]as hu and [ts] as tz establishes beyond reasonable doubt that whatever the plays' original dates of composition, their extant versions cannot be earlier than the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Another period-specificchange occurred during the last quarter of the following century. OrthographicS began to appear where z would earlier have been expected." Narrowing the possible environments down to that of verbal complexes yields results that are both expected and unexpected. "The Life of Don Sebastik," with its
- 40. 10-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO self-admitteddating of April 1,1692,has S for z in 61 unspoken (i.e., stage and other directions)and 229 spoken (i.e., speaking parts) instances.This will serve as a base- line for what follows. "Final Judgment" has been touted to be very old but it has 62 unspoken and 110 spoken instances, fixing the present copy at a time probably no earlier than the late seventeenth century. A mild surprise is offered by "The Three Kings." Its traditional language is much too old for a late-seventeenth- or early- eighteenth-century date of composition, yet it contains 73 unspoken and 125spoken instances. This speaks directly to the diachronic layeringof the plays with their com- plex mix of features from different periods. "The Merchant" contains four unspoken and one spoken instances of S for z .Since I take it to be a 1687copy of a 1630text, this strongly indicates that the earlier date is the more operative one. In this case, the scribe copied fairly exactly an older text with spelling that probably differed from his, a practice that is reflected in some of the other plays in this volume. Between "Souls and Testamentary Executors" and "The Sacrifice of Isaac," there is exactlyone unspoken instance of S for z in a verbal complex. Both texts were apparently copied in 1760 from 1678 versions, which themselves were surely much older, given the type of Nahuatl used. A real surprise is the first version of "How to Live on Earth." Here there are five unspoken and no spoken instances, all in a hand different from that of the main text. This and other features would place it sometime during the first half of the seventeenth century rather than the eighteenth as I had thought at first. This also highlights the differencesI have observed between those parts of the eight texts intended for and worked on by scribes, the unspoken written instruc- tions, and those shared by all members of the community the spoken dialogues. Nonspoken parts tend to have more later-colonialfeatures. The above evidence suggests the seventeenth century as a central point around which the texts were composed or copied. This holds true as well for the types of loanwordspresent in the seven plays. Someyears ago, Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart pointed out the diachronic patterning of loan acquisitionsin their Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period (1976). Subsequent work has refined and supported their initial judgments (see especially Karttunen 1982,1985; Lockhart 1992,ch. 7,1999, ch. 8). Theypostulate three stagesof Nahuatl's relationship and reactionto Spanish.Stage 1was very brief. It lasted from Spanishcontactto circa 1540.During this time, routine daily contact between the great mass of Nahuatl- and Spanish-speakerswas almost nonexistent. Hencemeaningful direct verbalcommunicationwas severely constrained becauseboth sides lacked the requisitelanguageskills. Only a tiny number of Spanish nouns were borrowed. Stage 2 lasted from approximately 1540 to 1650. This was a time of significantlymore interactionbetween selectedindividuals and groups, leading to a greater capacity on both sides to communicate orally with each other. The over- whelming result was the passage of many Spanish nouns into the Nahuatl lexicon. These newly acquired items were accommodated to Nahuatl speech habits and they supplemented rather than displaced native vocabulary. There were also a few scat- tered anticipations of what was to come. Stage 3 begins circa 1650 and continues to the present day. A whole range of significant adaptations to Spanish occurred: unfa- miliar sounds were acquired; a strategyfor borrowing verbs devised; particles incor- porated; Nahuatl syntax altered; portions of the native lexicon displaced; and idioms
- 41. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-I I more readily adopted. These changes flowed from a deepening one-on-one inter- action that had created a critical mass of bilingual Nahuas who served as a conduit for bringing more of the Spanish-speaking world into Nahua life. My own extensive reading of colonialNahuatl writings confirms this schema.23 The seventranslated dramasin this volume containover two hundred Spanish and Latin phrases and words. There are a number of possible stage 3 items or features in the unspoken sections.The most notable is the Nahuatlized Spanishverb trasladar (to copy) in "omotrasladoro" at the end of "The Sacrificeof Isaac" (see f. 36r).However, I consider the centraland more resistant-to-changeoriginalcore of the plays to be that which the actors spoke and the audience heard-that is, the dialogues. There the picture is quite different. The loans shrink drastically in half, to 1 1 1 .There are no examples of borrowed verbs using the Nahuatl verbalizing suffix -oa (see above). There are none of the Spanishparticles used by post-1650 Nahua writers such as sin, como, para, hasta, pero, and rnientras. There are no Spanish-style dependent clauses introduced by the Spanishparticle que or by its back translation into Nahuatl tle and inin. There are no instances where the Nahuatl terms for close kin and the cardinal directions are replaced by their Spanish counterparts. There is not even one example of a Nahuatl inanimate noun being pluralized based on the Spanish model. On the contrary,all 1 1 1items are of a type compatiblewith stage 2although severalmay have come into Nahuatl in stage 3 (refertoAppendixes1 4for the discussion that follows). The speaking parts draw most of the 1 1 1loans from a small pool of older church items. The name or title Dios isby far the most frequent. It alone accountsfor fully317 spoken occurrencesin the sevenplays' total of 784 occurrences (or some40 percent of the total).Dios ranges from a low of 18.6percent of the loan frequency in "The Three Kings" to highs of 55.8 percent in "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and 62.8 percent in "How to Live on Earth."24It is one of the oldest, with attested firstappearancesin 1548.25 The five most frequently spoken loans-Dios, bnirna, misa, Jesucristo, and Lucifer-account for 412 occurrences out of 784 (some52.5 percent) and appear in Nahuatl documents no later than 1552. I judge 16 of the 20 most frequently used items to be primarily ecclesiastical. Those 16 come to 537 occurrences out of 784 (68 percent of the total), and all appear in various types of Nahuatl texts no later than the early seventeenth century. The church bias is stronger yet when the more mundane loans are taken into account. By my reckoning there are approximatelyone hundred total occurrencesof such items in the seven plays. These include terrns for money (peso[s] and fomin[es]), measurements of time (doming0 and hora), legal terms and posts (juramento, justicia, juez, testamento, testigos, escribano, and escritura), designations of rank and function (alcalde, conde, marquis, reylesl, and emperador), and Spanish-style objects (puerta and mesa). Fifty-four of those occurrences are in "The Merchant." In some cases this one play contains all, or almost all, of the most frequentlyused. "The Merchant" has six- teen out of seventeentotal occurrencesin the seven plays of pesos and ten out of thir- teen occurrences of tomin, as well as all occurrencesof tomines (6), testamento (5),peso (4),escribano (2),and escriturcl(2).The already strongly ecclesiasticaltone of the other six plays would be intensified if this play were excluded. Focusing on the spoken loans reduces drastically the number of names being bandied about. Traditional socialmores discouraged the use of individuals' names in
- 42. 12-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO direct address. All eight occurrencesof the name Isaac in "The Sacrifice of Isaac" are about him, not directed to him personally. Nonetheless there was no absolute prohi- bition either. Once, in the sameplay,the slavewomanHagar speaksof Abraham toher son Ishmael. However, the other four instances are in direct address: God the Father repeatsAbraham's name twice in rapid succession,and his angel later does the same. Evidently this was a standard attention-getting device. Perhaps it was also pemis- sible in these circumstances because social superiors (and who could be higher in a Christian-conceived social hierarchy than God and His angels?)were addressing a social inferior. In "The Three Kings," ten out of seventeen spoken occurrences of Herod's name are in direct address, nine times by the three kings or Herod's priests, the tenth by Herod himself (uniquein all the plays). Herod never addresses Casper, Melchior, or Balthasar by name but only in exalted and respectfulterms. From a Nahua perspec- tive, this pattern marks Herod as a vile character lower in status than the visiting kings. Although not a precise time-delineating marker, this usage would be more typical-or perhaps it would be more accurateto say stronger and more prevalent- earlier in the colonialperiod rather than later. Many dimensions of loan meaningscannot be fully examined here. One that mer- its some attention is the use of Jeszis less as a name or title than as an exclamatory indication of strong emotion. Out of nine occurrence only two are shorthand for JesusChrist: 1of 1occurrence in "The Merchant" and 1of 4 occurrencesin "The Life of Don SebastihWz6 The other seven all convey some combination of astonishment, dread, and bewilderment: 1of 1occurrence in "Souls and Testamentary Executors," 2 of 2 occurrences in "Final Judgment," 1of 1in "How to Live on Earth," and 3of 4 in "The Life of Don Sebastiin" (see ff. 44r, 4v, 18v, and pp. 17, 21). It is repeated in rapid succession in "Final Judgment" ("Jesus! Jesus!") and almost the same in "The Life of Don Sebastih" ("Jesus, what are you saying, Jesus!"). This more idiomatic usage (from a Hispanic standpoint) would be expected by the seventeenth century but not earlier. A few of the loans have no dates of first appearance or present other minor prob- lems of placement. Nonetheless, given the sometimes unusual references, this has more to do with hit-or-miss usage in very specialized Nahuatl genres or my lack of access to a broader database. There are also no problems presented by unanalyzed borrowed strings of words like obra de misericordia. These are typical of colonial Nahuatl texts. Thereis one such item,however, that I do not ever expect to find in the general corpus.The Latin phrase surgite mortui venifea judicium in "Final Judgment" was meant to be a high-soundingif meaningless (to the average Nahua parishioner) jumble of sounds (seef. 6v; the Latin means "Arise, 0 dead, and come tojudgment"). These very samewords, carved in stone,areprominently displayedon one of the pro- cessional chapels in the courtyard of the Franciscan church complex of San Andrks Calpan, Puebla. The processional chapel was completed circa 1550.It forms part of a dramatic rendering of the Last Judgment.Christ sitson his throne and beneath him is this stirring Latin phrase which was publicly exposed over decades and centuries to the Nahua parishioners of San Andres Calpan. However, there is no compelling reason why eventhe few localnotaries(whoeventuallylearned to writeboth Nahuatl and Spanish) would have learned it and written it down in their documents. The
- 43. NAHUATL P L A Y S IN CONTEXT- 1 3 sculpted images accompanying the meaningless words conveyed the essential infor- mation quite effectively,and besides, if anyone were curiousabout their meaning the local priest would have offered explanationsin Nahuatl or Spanish.Hence finding an attestation for this Latin passage in any Nahuatl document (even in San And& Calpan)borders, in practical terms, on the impossible (see photograph, page 40). There is one notable calquein mixed Spanish/Nahuatl form. There are eight occur- rencesof the loanword cuenta, not with the more commonmeaning of "rosary bead(s), rosary," but with the sense of "accounting," as in "to give or make an accounting of [something to someone]." Seven of the eight occurrences use the Nahuatl verb maca, "to give," in a rather straightforward calquebased on Spanishdar cuenta de, "to givean accounting of [somethingto someone]" (see"How to Live on Earth," f. 21v; "The Life of Don Sebastiiin," p. 19;and "Final Judgment," ff. 2r, 3r, 5r [twice],and 7r).Theeighth uses Nahuatl ckihua "to make" as part of the related Spanish idiom "to make an accounting of [something to someone]" (see "Final Judgment," f. 7r). They appear in "Final Judgment" (6),"How to Live on Earth" (l), and "The Life of Don Sebastiin" (1). This is one of the few fully attested anticipations of stage 3. Undeniable confirma- tion of its stage 2 authenticity appears in the so-called Diario of Chimalpahin, the greatest Nahua annalist of the colonial period. In his entry for Saturday, January 21, 1612, he goes on at length about a troublesome-and apparently troubled-priest, fray Jerhimo de Zirate. He ruminates a bit about the cleric's questionable activities, perhaps consoling himself somewhat with the thought that "ma san ice1 yc quimo- maquiliz cuenta in totecuiyo Dios" (he alone will have to give an accounting of it to our lord, God).A few lines later he adds that when Zarate dies, "yc cuenta quimo- maquiliz" (hewill have to give an accounting of it to him; Chimalpahin 1965,2:103). Added support comes from the published Nahuatl translation of the life of Saint Anthony of Padua by fray Juan Bautista and Agustin de la Fuente (1605).Here cuenta appears once as part of the calque and then in the general sense of "accounting": "quimmacaz melahuac cuenta in Officiales) (he will give a true accounting [of it] to the [king's] officials) and "Xiccuilican, xiccelilican, cuenta inin tlacatl" (take and receive an accounting [of this matter] from this person; Bautista 1605,49r). The general tenor of the loans suggestsa stage 2 origin for the plays. Nonetheless there are at least two borrowings that smack of early stage3. During his fulminating at the priests in "The Three Kings," Herod twice uses judiazos and chicharrones. The former contains the derogatory augmentativesuffix -zo and is correctly inflected for the masculineplural -0s. The latter is correctlyinflected for the plural -es. Spanish as the language of insult is well attested among Nahuatl speakers today so this usage per se is not in question (see Hill and Hill 1986,118-20). However, I intuitively feel that on balance this may imply a greater knowledgeof the subtletiesof Spanishthan perhaps even Chimalpahin or Agustin de la Fuente possessed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and it may be more appropriately associated with the period around 1700.27 Whenever appropriate the loans are Nahuatlized in ways typical of the time. One of the most interestingexamplesis pexotli, which can be found in a nonspeakingpor- tion of "Final Judgment" (f. 6r).A tiny group of very early Spanish loan nouns bear what has been called the Nahuatl "absolutive suffix." In this particular case, the absolutive suffix -tli is attached to Spanish peso, "weight; scales." This attests to its
- 44. [&DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO very early entry into Nahuatl as well as to the (usually)unmarked glottal stop pres- ent in every borrowed Spanishnoun that ended in a vowe1.28 The presence of ortho- graphic X for S is probably a clue to its actual pronunciation by Nahuatl speakers, who early on would have substituted the affricate [S]for the Spanish sibilant.29 Sociopoliticalterms alsoprovide someclues to dating. Lockharthas correctly stated that, with regard to "political organization and kinship" as well as to "social rank," circa 1650 "proves to be a watershed in the evolution of vocabulary and concepts" (1992, 117). For example, such traditional terms for town council officeholders as teteuctin, "lords," and pipiltin, "nobles," are nonexistent or rare in eighteenth-century documents (1992, 49). He has not seen tlatoani, "dynastic ruler," used in that sense after 1661 (1992, 132). Wherever there is occasion to use such terminology in the plays, there is a decided bias toward the pre-1650, rather than the post-1650, period. This again speaks to probable dates of composition and/or copying that center on the seventeenthcentury,in particular the first half. The traditional Nahuatl high rhetoric called huehuetlatolli, especially evident in pieces like "The Sacrifice of Isaac" and "The Three Kings," is also much more com- mon prior to 1650.30 Thereis a very precious and revealing detail of the huehuetlatolliin these plays that throws light on the entire group of plays and suggestssomeconcrete, if tentative, conclusions about their origins. The largest collection of explicitly prehispanic-style huehuetlatolli is contained in what is known today as book 6 of the twelve-book Florentine Codex. The entire work began in the late 1540sand went through variousrevisionsand versions over the next thirty years. The editor of record was fray Bernardino de Sahagiin. During the six- teenth century, the expertise in Nahuatl of this prominent Franciscan was equaled or surpassed only by a fellow Franciscan, fray Alonso de Molina, who had learned it as a smallchild and had native-speaker fluency.NotwithstandingMolina's preeminence in the language of everyday life, the Franciscan nahuatlato fray Jeronimode Mendieta would aver that in "10s secretosy antigiiedadesde la lenguaha alcanzadomas que 6 1 ni otro ninguno" (the subtleties and ancient usages of the language [Sahagh] has achieved more than [Molina] or anyone else).31Sahaglin directed a large and able group of Nahua collaborators, some his former students literate in Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin.32 Another collection of huehuetlatolli pertains to the circle of the greatest colonial grammarian of Nahuatl, the Jesuit nahuatlato Father Horacio Carochi. The text is known today as the BancroftDialugues. They can be appreciatedin a criticaleditionby Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart (1987).Two sections of those dialogues (one rather lengthy) closely parallel parts of chapter 10 of book 6 of the Florentine Codex. These borrowings establish beyond reasonable doubt that the mid-seventeenth- century Jesuit had access to the precious fruits of earlier Franciscan and Nahua scholarship (Karttunen and Lockhart 1987, 11-13).33 No less certain is a similar con- nection between two sections of "The Three Kings" and the same chapter 10of book 6 of the Florentine Codex? Intriguingly, both the Bancroft Dialogues and "The Three Kings" borrow from the same pages (Saha- 1950-1982, 6:4749). The chapter is devoted to the installation of a new ruler and lamentations on the death of the old one. The three texts are noticeably close at times, but they are not identical. Compare the following excerptsfrom Sahagiin's work and the play:
- 45. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT- 15 auh in aocnane, in aoc tate in cujtlapilli, in atlapalli, auh in aoc ixe, in oc nacace, in aoc iyollo in atl, in tepetl: in ma iuh nontica, in amo naoati, in amo tlatoa in ma iuhquj quechcotontica. (And the vassals no longer possess a mother, no longer possess a father. And no longer doth the city have the able, the prudent. They are as if mute; they speak not; they talk not; they are as if beheaded.) (Sahagih 1950-1982,6: 47) auh canel aocmonane aocmotaye in cuitlapilliin atlapalliAuh canel aocmoixxe in aocmonacace in iuhqui nontiticacin amonahuati in arno tlatohuainnniuhqui quechcotonticac. (And truly the tail, the wing [i.e., the vassal] no longer has a mother, no longer has a father.And truly it no longer has eyes, it no longer has ears [i.e., it lacks prudence]. It is as if it stands mute. It does not speak, it does not talk. It is as if it stands beheaded.)35 h his prologue to the Sermonavio of 1606, fray Juan Bautista wrote that he and Agustin de la Fuente had compiled a three-volume collection of plays, which they intended to publish. They had already published a collectionof elegant huehuetlatolli in 1600that was based on work from sixty years before. Bautista explicitly acknowl- edged that they drew from the works of many eminentNahua and Franciscan writers including Sahagih. They included parts of Sahagh's sermons in their sermonary. Their entire trajectory speaks of reviewing an extensive corpus of the best and most varied older writings, and then copying and revising them in preparation for publi- cation. The three volumesof plays are among severalworks that unfortunatelynever left the press. Given the above, I tentatively conclude that most or even all of the plays in their present form camefrom the texts gathered for Bautista and de la Fuente's three unpub- lished volumes of Nahuatl plays. The Franciscan nahuatlato and his trilingual Nahua coauthor-like no one elsebefore or since-had the motivation, opportunity,training, and support needed to collect such materials and work them up. The textual ties to Sahagtin in "The Three Kings" and the Franciscanjurisdiction where "The Merchant" was copied reinforcemy supposition.The less-author-specificclues mentioned above point to circa 1600 (when Bautista and de la Fuente were active) as a time of likely copying and rearranging. SinceI judge that some or all of the plays passed through- rather than originated at-their hands, there is the strongpossibility that many arose in some fashionbefore, perhaps even well before, 1600.36 Caution is necessary in attribution, given the types of clues found in the texts themselves. It is further required since we can only appreciate these writings in their now-extant forms; most, perhaps all, can with varyingjustification be said to be later copies of older originals. The reader should thus regard the following as suggestions rather than ironclad conclusions. I consider "The Sacrifice of Isaac," "Souls and Tes- tamentary Executors," "The Three Kings," and "The Merchant" in their currently known colonialversions as the most probable yields of the Bautista and de la Fuente collaboration.I deem "Final Judgment" and "How to Live on Earth" to be less certain products of their hands. I judge "The Life of Don Sebastih" to be the least certain, and in fact it may be a genuine product of the late seventeenth century. In any case,
- 46. 16-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO now that the plays are in more reliable transcriptionsand their originals all located, a new round of scholarly analysiscan more precisely verify or disprove these tentative assertions. Life in the A1tepetl:The Setting of ''The Merchant" Other contributorsto this volume comment far more knowledgeably than I could on some of the otherwordly aspects of the dramas. I will discuss some of their more mundane features with a special focus on "The Merchant." Here as elsewhere the emphasis is on drawing out characteristicsof the plays that may not be obvious to the generalreader. The arena in which the plays' Nahua characters, Christian supernaturals, and biblical figures mingle and interact is the altepetl. The term is a quasi-compound derived from the metaphorical doublet (in) at1(in) tqetl (the water, the hill), which refers to two essentialsof community life. Postcolonial scholarshave variously ren- dered it as tribe, village, empire, city, city-state, people, settlement, nation, and kingdom. My own preferences run to characterizing it most often as an ethnic city- state of greatly varying ~ize.3~ This sociopoliticalentity and its subdivisions are the overwhelming referent in the notarial corpus when Nahua scribes referred to unit identity. Its infrequent appearance in the dramas belies its importance. It is only within the framework of altepetl roles and expectationsthat the characters are most fully under~tood.~~ A prime example is provided by the use of the term tlatoani (plural tlatoque), the traditional dynastic ruler of the altepetl and one of its defining features. The main thrust has to do with someone in charge who says things, that is, "Speaker" rather than "speaker," hence "one who issues commands, who gives orders," hence "ruler, governor." Since colonial times it has often been translated rey, "king." Indeed in "The Three Kings," Nahuatl tlatoque is paired a number of times with the Spanish loanword reyes, "kings."39 Here the more neutral designation"ruler" has been chosen to avoid too easily casting Nahua tlatoqueinto the role of exotic "Indian kings." The word is present in all the plays. It is used in several ways typical of the 1540-1650, or stage 2, period: as a title of the ruler of an altepetl (Abraham),as one of the most frequently used epithets of the Christian deity (God),and in the more general sense of an important person who is not a ruler or even of noble birth (the avaricious merchant). The tlatoani stood in a distinctly non-European relationship to the altepetl. Named subunits called tlaxilacalli (etymology uncertain) or calpolli, '%ig house," were the building blocks of the late prehispanic and colonial altepetl. They stood in relation- ship to each other in accordance with what Lockhart has termed a cellular or modu- lar type of organization. Altqetl were created by the "aggregation of parts that remain[ed]relatively separate and self-contained, brought together by their common function and similarity,their place in some numerical or symmetrical arrangement, their rotational order, or all three" (Lockhart 1992,436;brackets mine). He adds that this contrasts with the more urban-centered and nucleated Spanish municipality, which "stretched from a dominant center in the city to subordinateparts in the coun- try" (1999,100).
- 47. NAHUATL P L A Y S IN CONTEXT- I7 It is not surprising that Spaniardsconsidered the area encompassingthe residence of the current tlatoani-the central marketplace, nearby miscellaneous clusters of dwellings lying in distinct tlaxilacalli, and the main church (often the former site of the temple dedicated to the altqetl's patron deity in prehispanic times)-as a cabecera (head town) and outlying tlaxilacallior parts thereof as sujetos (dependencies;subject settlements).From their perspective, the early colonial tlatoani and his successor, the gobernador ("governor," or head of the local Spanish-style town council), was or should be in command of this so-called cabecera and its supposedly subordinate parts. However, from the Nahua perspective (at least for quite some time), this alleged urban center had no special status or name. Tlatoque and their later colonial counterparts were first and foremost based in their various tlaxilacalli and repre- sented them. Ideally the highest-ranking members of these subunits rotated the post of tlatoani/governor accordingto some fixed order. None of this is obvious in any of the plays, even in "The Merchant,'' which is the most naturalisticdrama and the one on which I will focus below. "The Three Kings," with its emphatic use of late prehispanic forms of speech and social terminology, quite unselfconsciously pairs Nahuatl tlatoque with Spanish rcyes (see above). This pairing may mislead the unwary reader. However, I take this usage to be no more or less expected than the many other shifting functional equivalencies that are rife within the extant Nahuatl and Spanish corpus when either party talked about the other. Each side long operated within its own conceptual framework and assumed that the other thought as it did (Lockhart [1992, 4-45]calls this process Double Mis- taken Identity;for a current restatement of his position, see also 1999,98-119). When communicating across cultural/linguistic borders, the tendency was to strive for pithy analogues rather than unwieldy longwinded definitionsthat took into account every conceivablesimilarity and difference.Both the Nahua and Spanish personages in question had power and authority over others, played vital roles in group unity and identity, and in other ways were essential parts of early modem Nahua and Spanish society. The inhabitants and routines of the colonial altepetl are most fully represented by "The Merchant." In order of appearance, the cast comprises an unidentified speaker giving the prologue, Merchant, Old Man and Old Woman (an elderly couple),Young Woman, two sick people, Lowly Servant, Mature Man (married),Lord, an unidenti- fied group of servants,Mother (accompaniednow or later by nonspeaking children), Notary, Alcalde, Constable, Priest, Doctor, Sick Man (Merchant in his final agonies), Nobleman, several demons, the Merchant/Sick Man's wife, Guardian Angel, and two noblemen. Here we can see some of the rich complexity of Nahua society: the old and the young, those of varying degrees of wealth and poverty, men and women, nobles and commoners, people who are single or widowed or married, employers and employees, crucial altepetl officials, the healthy and the sick, members of various occupations (although farm folk and petty craftspeople are mostly implied), and even the presence of non-Nahuas, such as Priest.I f one subtracts the obligatoryopening speech, three quarters of the play passes in selected worldly pursuits before the first supernatural being makes his appearance. Customary activities include bargaining, borrowing and lending money, engaging the services of municipal officials, creating documents, and soon.Theonlycomparablepiece is "Souls and TestamentaryExecutors."
- 48. 18-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO Lockhart suggeststhat these two dramas imply a subgenre (1992,597n.120).There is a definite tilt in these two instances toward the confessionals' detailed presentations of the seventh commandment against stealing than toward the oftentimes more abstract offerings found in doctrinals and sermonaries. Given a lingering popular conceptionthat Spaniardsoverwhelmed and controlled passive native subjects, it is noteworthy that the few non-Nahuas in the plays have ineffectual powers of persuasion and nothing more. The priest in "The Merchant" is completely unsuccessful when he tries to persuade Merchant to show mercy to Mother and her two children, or when he pleads with Merchant's metamorphosed self, Sick Man, to make the true confession that will spare him the torments of hell. The cleric in "Final Judgment" is shocked by Lucia's confession but can do nothing beyond registering shock and horror. The priest in "Souls and Testamentary Execu- tors" enjoysno real successwith the spouse of don Pedro, for she is already observing allnecessary Nahua and Christian protocols.In short, these church-sponsoreddramas seem to undercut the moral stature of priests by denying them an authority they allegedly possessed. Nahua altqetl often enjoyed considerable autonomy, survived in admirable fash- ion catastrophic imported epidemics that took off perhaps 95 percent of their num- bers by the beginning of the seventeenth century, and seemingly always bedeviled their official spiritual advisers with their non-Christian beliefs and behaviors.40 Among many pertinent colonial commentsis the following marginalnote (or lamen- tation?)from the Bautista and de la Fuente sermonary of 1606:"Lafacilidad con que 10s naturales sejuntan con Mestizos, y Espafioles para contra su ministro, y padre" (the ease with which the natives join with mestizos and Spaniards against their minister and priest; Bautista 1606,617).Earlier marginalia drive home the point that "base and vile people" provoke damaging testimony against priests, and later marginalia almost wistfully enjoin Nahua parishionersto follow the lead of Saint Francisby loving and revering their spiritual fathers (Bautista 1606, 49, 616; cited in Sell 1993, 225n.219, 226n.225, respectively). Bautista's dismal view of Nahua treatment of the clergy is echoed decades later by the secular cleric (and mestizo) don Bartolomk de Alva [Ixtlilxochitl]in his confessionalmanual of 1634.Regarding taking the name of God in vain, Alva asks: "Perhaps somebad Spanish Christianpaid you so that you would take an oath against a priest or some other honorable person, or someone who is a representative of the devil-through and because of you-wants to dishonor him, just taking his revenge and anger out on him?" (Selland Schwaller1999,91-93). The plays make no mention of one profound reality of early modem Nahua life: the nonclericaland nonroyal "mestizos and Spaniards" who evidentlyforrneda considerable part of the "baseand vilepeople'' who setNahuas againstGod's representativeson earth. The absence of ethnic, racial, or national diversity is perhaps the single most serious omission in the plays. The human landscape of Nahua Mexico has been reduced to a purist version of Nahua-only communities served by presumably Spanishpriests. The contradictionbetween dramatized impression and recorded fact is stark in "The Mer- chant." The brief remarks in Nahuatl at the beginning of this play place it in Tollan- tzincoin 1687.Ten years later, the noted FranciscanchroniclerfrayAgustin de Vetancurt would write that Tollantzinco, ministered to by his order, contained more than fifteen hundred natives and more than six hundred Spaniardsand mestizos (Vetancurt 1982,
- 49. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT- 19 63). Furthermore, the natives were not purely Nahuas: Tollantzinco was also home to Otomis, a people of distinct culture and language who were marginalized by the Nahuas in central Mexico (Lockhart 1991, 26-27). Interaction was intense among people of differing backgrounds and status in provincial capitalslike Tollantzincoand the kinds of places where the plays would havebeen performed. Operating within an increasingly variegated colonial context that is scarcelymen- tioned in the play, the chief protagonist of "The Merchant" is easy enough to recog- nize from the Nahuatl notarial record. Rebecca Horn's work provides a salient example close to 1630when the play may have been copied or composed. (The fol- lowing is drawn from Horn 1998, 75-76; Horn 1997b, 115, 135, 206; and from the testament of Juan Fabih that she used and that can be found in transcription and translation in Anderson et al. 1976, 58-63). Juan Fabik lived in Coyoacan, a large altepetl in the Valley of Mexico southwest of Mexico City. He made his testament in 1617. This well-to-do Nahua commoner traded in the native fruit called zapotl ("zapote"), probably grown on the orchard he possessed. He also owned a substan- tial amount of other land, at least one parcel of which had been purchased. He employed local Nahuas including carpenters. He had a horse, several mules, and sacks and pack gear. He very actively lent money to, and borrowed money from, both Nahuas and Spaniards. Neither this real-life example of a Nahua merchant nor Merchant from the play was overwhelmed by commerce, monetary dealings, or the market economy. Many routine economic activities largely escape Nahuatl do~umentation.~~ Even when they do appear, we often see only a part of the process. The initial contracting of obligationslike debtsis infrequentin the extant record.42Mention of such financial dealings is most recurrent in testaments, because the obligations remained outstand- ing and needed to be satisfiedby heirs or testamentary executors.Yet even while one often finds details about amounts, names, and circumstance^,^^ there are rarely any particulars regarding fixed schedules of payment of specific amounts of principal and interest. Therefore, a discussion of the details of Merchant's financial dealings is in order before proceeding to a consideration of how typical or atypical the general circumstances were, as well as whether they contain welcome clues to how such financial transactions were structured. For ease of presentation, I will follow the order in which they appear in the play. Merchant's first transaction involves Old Man and Old Woman. They need ten pesos so their son, now in police custody, will not be bound over to a textilemanufac- turing shop. Merchantcharges ten pesos at 50percent interest, that is, four tominesfor each peso lent (since each peso equals eight tomines). They are to pay within fifteen days. If they fail to meet the two-week deadline, they are to pay twenty pesos, that is, interest plus penalty will equal 100 percent of the principal. When the fifteen days have passed, Merchant sends an underling to collect the money. Lowly Servant threatens them with jail or seizure of their property if they do not immediatelymake payment. Evidently they were successfulin meeting the deadlinefor they hand Lowly Servantthe full amount due. Yomg Woman asks for a loan of twenty pesos so she can take care of her ailing parents, and she offers somepersonal items as collateral. She promises to make resti- tution in twenty days. She makes no mention of paying interest. Merchant cackles
- 50. 20-DEATH AND LIFE IN COLONIAL NAHUA MEXICO that he is not about the business of lending money to a crying pretty woman like herself but rather seeks an increase of his wealth. He proposes as absoluteconditions that she pay 50 percent interest, that is, the twenty pesos principal plus ten pesos in interest, and that he might knock a little off the interest if she services him sexually. Sheindignantlyrefuses. The two sick people who beg alms of Merchant mention no specific amounts before they are run off by his servants. Given the didactic character of the play, I would guess that a token amount such as a tornin or two was implied. This particular transaction is one of the instances that are most obviously gauges of the Merchant's propensityfor shortchangingthe spiritual side of his transactions. Mature Man approachesMerchant with a request. He is going to Guatemala to get his spouse. He asks Merchant to guard one thousand pesos for him until his return. Four months pass. Mature Man reappears and asks for his money back. Merchant greets him politely enough but claims to know nothing about the entrusted amount. Mature Man asks him to take an oath on a cross and affirm that he does not, indeed, have the money. Merchant compliesby laying his hand on the cross, swearing a false oath, and taking the name of God in vain. The episodeends with Merchant's servants driving Mature Man away with severe blows. This is another egregious instance of Merchant shortchanginghimself spiritually. Merchant deals quite differently with Lord. This high nobleman requests a loan of four thousand pesos for one month. Merchant agrees immediately, merely adding that Lord will need to pay four hundred pesos, that is, ten percent interest, on the principal. Lord agrees. The last episode is the most complicated. Mother asks Merchant to give her the testament of her deceased husband (perhaps held in trust or against some incurred debt)so that she and her two children can lay claim to his estate. Merchant denies he has such a document. He claims that he bought the land and fields she mentions from her spouse, and that he knows nothing of any money and gems. He then insult- ingly speculates that perhaps she herself dissipated the items in question, or that her late husband did not make a testament, or that she and some unnamed companion (perhapsan illicit lover?)squandered the property. He callsher a drunk, urges her to sleep it off, and peremptorily bids her farewell. She once again appeals to his com- passion only to be rudely rebuffed for a second time. He then summons Notary to create a false document (the testament mentioned below?), backdated three years, that supportshis theft. Notary asks to be paid for his counterfeit paper trail and Mer- chant promises recompense. Meanwhile, Mother appeals to Alcalde, who sendsConstable to bring Merchant to him. Merchant comesbefore this representative of the local cabildo, once more layshis hand on a cross, swears an even stronger false oath, inviting the devil to take him if he lies, and again takes the name of God in vain. Notary produces the sham docu- ment, which alleges that Merchant paid one thousand pesos for the husband's house and fields. He further substantiates Merchant's lies by asserting that he witnessed both the money changing hands and the making of the dead man's testament. Alcalde dismissesMother'S claims. Priest makes a final effort at moral persuasion but Merchant is adamant. This series of compounded transgressions against God and man evidently shifts the
- 51. NAHUATL PLAYS IN CONTEXT-2 I balance of Merchant's spiritual account too far into debt. Merchant becomes Sick Man, who in short order falls deathly ill. His ill-gotten earthly goods now do him no good. Justbefore he is strangledby demons, the once arrogant merchant calls in two noblemen to make his testament and take charge of distributing his spiritually worthless wealth. God's justice has been served. Of this wealth of details concerningtypicalbehaviors and attitudes, I will mention only a few. Merchanttwice swearsa false oath on the cross, taking the Lord's name in vain. The second time he adds for effect that if he is lyinglet it be God's will "that the devil take me." This clearly violates the second commandment: "HAVE you some- time falselysworn the honored name of God?You did it on a cross?You took an oath, by means of swearing, and you verified what you know is not true?" (Sell and Schwaller 1999, 91).44 Taking oaths on the cross was widespread although not always recorded. In a civil suit in Tlaxcala in 1568, a group of witnesses were required to swear in the name of God and SaintMary, with their right hands on the cross, which they had kissed, that they would answer truthfully.If they lied, the devil would pun- ish them; if they told the truth, God would have mercy on them (Sullivan 1987,125). In a Tlaxcalan criminal case of 1565, severalwitnesses were deposed in similar fash- ion, although there was no mention of diabolical punishment or divine mercy (Sulli- van 1987,308-9,310-11,314-15). Alcalde hears Mother's complaintagainst Merchant. Alcaldes ranked higher than regidores (citycouncilmen) in colonial Nahua municipal government,just the oppo- site of what was true in Spanish cabildos (Lockhart 1992, 36-37). They were cabildo members, judges, and high-ranking members of their altepetl. Alcalde's ultimate collusion with Merchant's nefarious schemes, even if unwitting, is perhaps already suggested by the good relations enjoyed between Merchant and Lord. I find no hint that Merchant is anything more than a very wealthy commoner who has success- fully parlayed his financial success into something approaching equality with the local high-born. Other sorts of incidents would have little reason to appear in the Nahuatl notarial record. Merchant treats Old Man and Old Woman with active disdain when they appeal to him in their time of great need. This goes against the fifth commandment: "Did you honor your mother and your father, your elder brothers, the elderly men and women who were born first?" (Sell and Schwaller 1999, 101).More specifically, dutiful Nahua Christians were instructed: "Did you honor elderly men and elderly women? Or did you hold them in no regard? Did their miseries not inspirecompas- sion in you?Did you not help them?" (Molina 1984,30r).45 This closelyaccorded with traditional Nahua notions concerning respect for the elderly as recorded in a collec- tion of traditional huehuetlatolli. A young person of high station who is traveling is given instructions on how to properly greet commoners of advanced age. An old man is to be greeted with "Nottatzine nocoltzine, notlatzine" (0my father, 0 my grandfather, 0 my uncle) and an old woman with "Nonantzine, nocitzine" (0my mother, 0 my grandmother), to be followed by "ma ihuiyan ma icemel xornmo- huicatiuh, ma cana tommohuetziti" (May you be going along calmly and happily, may you not falldown somewhere;Bautista 1600b,51v-52r). A thread of physical violence runs through the plays. "The Merchant" contains some of the more explicit scenes. Merchant's servants run off the two sick people.
- 52. Other documents randomly have different content
- 53. enimmältä osalta naamio kasvoillaan ja seuranaisensa rinnalla. Yksi hyvä vaikutus hänen ylpeydellään ja pidättyväisyydellään kuitenkin oli: ne synnyttivät miehissäni voimakkaan tunteen hänen arvostaan ja tärkeydestään ja siitä vaarasta, mikä heitä uhkaisi, jos he rupeaisivat häntä vastustamaan. Molemmat Fresnoyn pestaamat miehet määräsin ratsastamaan parikymmentä askelta edellä. Luukkaan ja Johanneksen sijotin viimeisiksi. Tällä tavoin arvelin pysyttäväni heidät hiukan erillään toisistaan. Itse puolestani aioin ratsastaa neidin rinnalla, mutta hän antoi minun niin selvästi oivaltaa läheisyyteni olevan hänelle epämieluisen, että minä jättäydyin jälemmäksi, antaen hänen ratsastaa Fanchetten kanssa ja tyytyen jälkimäisten evankelistain seuraan, joita koetin tehdä innokkaiksi kannattamaan tarkotuksiani. Onneksemme eivät pahimmat pelkoni toteutuneet, vaan me tapasimme tien miltei autiona — niinkuin valitettavasti oli suurin osa seutuakin sen molemmin puolin — emmekä kohdanneet muita kuin pieniä matkaseurueita, jotka, nähdessään esiratsastajien roistomaisen ulkomuodon, väistyivät kauas syrjään tieltämme ja olivat iloisia päästessään meistä pelkällä säikähdyksellä. Sivuutimme Lusignanin, karttaen sen katuja, mutta kulkien kuitenkin niin läheltä sitä, että saatoin osottaa neidille sen kuuluisan linnan paikan, joka tarun, mukaan oli vedenneito Melusinan rakentama ja jonka liigan joukot olivat hävittäneet kolmetoista vuotta sitten. Hän otti kuitenkin tiedonantoni vastaan niin kylmästi, etten halunnut jatkaa sen pitemmälle, vaan kohauttaen olkapäitäni jättäydyin jälemmäksi ja ratsastin äänettömänä, kunnes pari tuntia puolenpäivän jälkeen Poitiers'n kaupunki tuli näkyviin muuriensa ja torniensa ympäröimänä matalalla kummullaan keskellä seutua, joka
- 54. kesänaikaan oli rehevien viinitarhojen peitossa, mutta joka nyt näytti ruskealta, alastomalta ja kolkolta. Fanchette kääntyi ja kysyi minulta lyhyesti, oliko se Poitiers. Vastasin myöntävästi, mutta lisäsin, että erinäisistä syistä en aikonut pysähtyä sinne, vaan olla yötä eräässä kylässä penikulman päässä kaupungista, missä oli siedettävä majatalo. "Tulemme vallan hyvin toimeen täälläkin", vastasi nainen töykeästi. "Ja oli miten oli, neiti ei tahdo mennä sen edemmäksi. Hän on väsynyt ja hänellä on kylmä, ja lisäksi on hän kastunut. Hän on jo tehnyt tarpeeksi pitkän matkan." "Luulen kuitenkin", vastasin naisen tuttavallisuuden ärsyttämänä, "että neiti muuttaa mielensä kuullessaan ne syyt, joitten vuoksi tahdon mennä edemmäksi." "Neiti ei halua niitä kuulla, hyvä herra", vastasi asianomainen itse hyvin terävästi. "Arvelen kuitenkin, että teidän olisi parempi kuulla ne", väitin minä kääntyen kunnioittavasti häneen päin. "Nähkääs, neiti…" "Minä näen ainoastaan yhden asian", huudahti hän, siepaten pois naamionsa ja näyttäen kasvonsa, jotka tosin olivat kauniit, mutta sillä hetkellä suuttumuksesta ja kärsimättömyydestä punottavat, "ja se on se, että tapahtukoon mitä hyvänsä, minä jään yöksi Poitiers'hen." "Jos tyytyisitte lepäämään tunnin verran?" esitin minä kohteliaasti.
- 55. "Minä en tyydy!" vastasi hän pontevasti. "Ja tahdon sanoa teille kerta kaikkiaan", jatkoi hän kiivaasti, "että te menette rohkeudessanne liian pitkälle. Te olette täällä saattamassa minua ja antamassa määräyksiä noille ryysymekoille, joilla olette katsonut soveliaaksi häväistä seuraamme, mutta teidän tehtävänne ei ole antaa määräyksiä minulle eikä arvostella minun tekojani. Olkaa hyvä ja pysykää täst'edes velvollisuuksienne rajoissa." "Haluni on ainoastaan totella teitä", vastasin minä, tukahuttaen mieleni kuohunnan ja puhuen niin tyynesti kuin suinkin saatoin. "Mutta koska tärkein velvollisuuteni on pitää huolta teidän turvallisuudestanne, olen vakavasti päättänyt, etten jätä huomioon ottamatta mitään, mikä voi edistää sitä tarkotusta. Te ette ole ajatellut sitä, että jos meitä takaa-ajava joukkue ehtii Poitiers'hen tänä iltana, niin meitä tullaan etsimään kaupungista ja me joudumme kiinni. Jos taas saadaan kuulla, että olemme sivuuttaneet kaupungin, niin ajoa ei ehkä jatketa sen pitemmälle; varmastikaan sitä ei jatketa pitemmälle tänä iltana. Siitä syystä emme voi", lisäsin lujasti, "jäädä Poitiers'hen yöksi". "Herra", huudahti hän, katsoen minuun kasvot hämmästyksestä ja suuttumuksesta tulipunaisina, "uskallatteko…?" "Uskallan tehdä velvollisuuteni", vastasin minä kooten rohkeuteni, vaikka mieltäni kirvelikin. "Minä olen kyllin vanha mies ollakseni teidän isänne, eikä minulla ole paljon menetettävää, muuten en olisikaan nyt tässä. En välitä siitä, mitä te ajattelette tai sanotte minusta, kun vaan saan tehdyksi sen, minkä olen ottanut tehdäkseni, ja saatetuksi teidät turvallisesti ystävienne suojaan. Mutta kylliksi siitä, me olemme nyt portilla. Jos sallitte, niin ratsastan
- 56. rinnallanne kulkiessamme katuja pitkin. Siten herätämme vähemmän huomiota." Odottamatta hänen myöntymystään, mitä hän sangen todennäköisesti tuskin olisi antanutkaan, kannustin hevostani eteenpäin ja asetuin hänen rinnalleen, viitaten Fanchettea jäämään jälemmäksi. Tämä totteli sanattomana harmista, neidin heittäessä minuun murhaavan silmäyksen ja katsellessa ympärilleen voimattomassa vihassa, ikäänkuin hänellä olisi ollut aikomuksena pyytää ohikulkijoilta apua minua vastaan. Mutta hän malttoi sentään mielensä ja tyytyen mumisemaan sanan "hävytön" pani naamionsa jälleen kasvoilleen, mitä tehdessään hänen sormensa näyttivät vapisevan aikalailla. Sataa tihuutti hiljakseen ja iltapäivä kallistui lopulleen saapuessamme kaupunkiin, mutta huomasin että kaduilla vallitsi siitä huolimatta vilkas elämä. Ihmisiä seisoi ryhmissä vakavan näköisinä keskustellen. Jostakin kuului kellon kumahtelua, ja tuomiokirkon lähellä seisoi melkoinen väkijoukko kuuntelemassa miestä, joka näytti lukevan jotain seinään kiinnitettyä ilmotusta tai julistusta. Toisessa paikassa oli sotamies, joka oli liigan punaisissa väreissä, mutta tahraisena ja täpläisenä kuin juuri matkalta tullut, puhumassa jotakin kansanjoukolle, joka kuunteli häntä henkeään pidättäen, näyttäen riippuvan silmillään kiinni hänen huulissaan. Läheisessä kulmauksessa oli kourallinen pappeja, jotka kuiskailivat keskenään murheellisin kasvoin. Useat tuijottivat meihin ohikulkiessamme, ja jotkut olisivat puhutelleetkin, mutta minä ratsastin vakaasti eteenpäin antautumatta keskusteluihin. Pohjoisportille tullessamme värähdytti minua kuitenkin outo pelko, sillä vaikka päivänlaskuun oli vielä runsaasti puoli tuntia, oli portinvartija panemassa sitä kiinni. Meidät nähdessään hän odotti muristen, kunnes saavuimme paikalle,
- 57. ja mutisi sitten vastaukseksi ihmettelevään huomautukseeni jotakin kummallisista ajoista ja itsepäisistä ihmisistä, joille täytyi tehdä mieliksi. En kuitenkaan paljoa piitannut siitä, mitä hän sanoi, haluten vain päästä portin ohi ja jättää kulustamme niin vähän jälkiä kuin suinkin. Niin pian kuin olimme kaupungin ulkopuolella, jättäydyin jälelle, luovuttaen paikkani Fanchettelle. Kulkea nytkyttelimme vielä yhden pitkän ja aution penikulman, äänettöminä, hevoset ja miehet yhtä väsyneinä ja alakuloisina, naiset niin nääntyneinä, että jaksoivat tuskin pysyä satulassaan. Aloin jo pelätä verottaneeni neidin voimia liiaksi, kun vihdoinkin suureksi huojennuksekseni joen ja tien risteyksessä tulivat näkyviin, sen majatalon pitkät ja matalat rakennukset, johon olin aikonut pysähtyä. Paikka näytti tyhjältä ja kolkolta, sillä hämärä oli tihenemässä. Mutta kun peräkkäisessä jonossa etenimme pihaan yksi kerrallaan, loisti valovirta vastaamme ovista ja ikkunoista ja lukuisat elähyttävät ja virkistävät äänet tervehtivät korviamme. Huomatessani, että neiti oli turtunut ja jäykistynyt pitkästä istumisesta, olisin tahtonut auttaa häntä laskeutumaan satulasta. Mutta hän hylkäsi tarjoomukseni kiivaasti, ja minun täytyi tyytyä kehottamaan isäntää hankkimaan neidille ja hänen seuranaiselleen parhaat saatavissa olevat mukavuudet ja toimittamaan heille mahdollisimman rauhallisen huoneen. Mies suostui hyvin kohteliaasti ja vakuutti, että kaikki tulisi tehdyksi. Mutta huomasin, että hänen silmänsä harhailivat hänen puhuessaan ja että hänellä näytti olevan jotakin sydämellään. Kun hän palasi toimitettuaan heille, mitä olin määrännyt, sain sen tietää.
- 58. "Satuitteko koskaan näkemään häntä?" kysyi hän huokaisten; hänen murheellisuuteensa sekottui kuitenkin samalla ilmeistä mielihyvää. "Näkemään, ketä?" vastasin minä tuijottaen häneen, sillä ei kumpikaan meistä ollut maininnut ketään. "Herttuata." Tuijotin häneen jälleen ihmetyksen ja epäluulon vaiheilla. "Ei kai Nevers'in herttua liene näillä main?" sanoin vitkastellen. "Olen kuullut hänen olevan lännessä päin Bretagnen rajoilla." "Hyvä Jumala!" huudahti isäntä, kohottaen kätensä hämmästyksissään. "Ettekö te ole kuullutkaan?" "En ole kuullut mitään", vastasin kärsimättömästi. "Ettekö ole kuullut, että kaikkein mahtavin ja ylhäisin herra, Guisen herttua on kuollut?" "Guisen herttuako kuollut? Se ei ole totta!" huudahdin hämmästyen. Hän nyökäytti kuitenkin päätään moneen kertaan erittäin tärkeän näköisenä, näyttäen siltä, kuin olisi hän aikonut kertoa minulle joitakin yksityisseikkoja. Mutta muistaessaan, kuten minusta näytti, puhuvansa useitten vieraitten kuullen, jotka istuivat takanani suuren tulennoksen ääressä sekä silmät että korvat auki, tyytyikin hän muuttamaan pyyhinliinan toiselle käsivarrelleen ja lisäämään vain: "Niin, kuollut kuin kivi. Uutinen siitä saapui tänne eilen ja nosti aika
- 59. hälinän. Se tapahtui Blois'ssa joulun aatonaattona, jos tiedot paikkansa pitävät." Olin kuin ukkosenlyömä. Tämä oli uutinen, joka saattoi muuttaa Ranskan ulkonäköä. "Kuinka se tapahtui?" kysyin minä. Isäntäni peitti suunsa kädellään ja yskäisi, ja nykäisten minua salaa hihasta antoi hiukan häpeilevän näköisenä ymmärtää, ettei hän voinut sanoa enempää julkisesti. Olin esittämäisilläni jonkin tekosyyn vetäytyäkseni pois hänen kanssaan, kun äreä ääni, joka nähtävästi tarkotti minua, sai minut kääntymään äkkiä ympäri. Näin vieressäni pitkän, laihakasvoisen jakobiini-pukuisen munkin. Hän oli noussut tuoliltaan tulen äärestä ja näytti olevan hillittömän kiihtymyksen vallassa. "Kuka kysyy, kuinka se tapahtui?" huusi hän pyöritellen silmiään, mutta kuitenkin, jollen aivan erehtynyt, pitäen silmällä kuulijoitaan. "Onko Ranskanmaassa ihmistä, jolle sitä ei vielä ole kerrottu? Onko?" "Minä takaan ainakin yhdestä", vastasin minä katsellen häntä kaikkea muuta kuin suosiollisesti. "Minä en ole kuullut mitään." "Sitten saatte kuulla! Kuunnelkaa!" huudahti hän, kohottaen oikean kätensä ja heiluttaen sitä kuin jotakin läsnäolevaa henkilöä tarkottaen. "Kuulkaa syytöstäni, jonka teen Kirkko-Äidin ja pyhimysten nimessä ulkokullattujen päämiestä, valapattoa ja salamurhaajaa vastaan, joka istuu ylhäisillä istuimilla! Hän on oleva Anatema Maranata, sillä hän on vuodattanut pyhän ja puhtaan, taivaan valitun verta! Helvettiin hän on menevä, ja pian. Se veri, jonka hän on vuodattanut, vaaditaan häneltä takaisin ennenkuin hän on vuotta vanhemmaksi tullut."
- 60. "No, no. Kaikki tuo kuuluu kyllä hyvin komealta, hyvä isä", sanoin minä tullen kärsimättömäksi, ja samalla hiukan halveksivasti; sillä näin, että hän oli yksi noita vaeltavia ja usein puolihulluja munkkeja, joista liiga sai tehokkaimmat asiamiehensä. "Mutta minä hyötyisin enemmän teidän kohteliaista sanoistanne, jos tietäisin kuka se on, jota kirouksenne tarkottaa." "Se on verinen mies!" huusi hän. "Se, jonka kautta viimeinen, mutta ei vähin Jumalan pyhimyksistä ja marttyyreista astui kunniaan joulun edellisenä perjantaina." Loukkautuneena tuollaisista häpäisevistä sanoista ja arvellen, että hän hurjista puheistaan ja eleistään huolimatta oli vähemmän hullu kuin miltä hän näytti, ja ainakin yhtä paljon konna kuin hullu, käskin häntä ankarasti lopettamaan kiroilunsa ja ryhtymään kertomukseensa, jos hänellä sellaista oli. Hän mulkoili minuun hetken, ikäänkuin aikoisi sinkauttaa hengenaseensa minun päätäni kohti. Mutta kun vastasin hänen mulkoiluunsa värähtämättömin silmin — ja minun neljä lurjustani, jotka olivat yhtä malttamattomia kuulemaan uutisia kuin minäkin ja joissa ajeltu päälaki tuskin herätti sen enempää kunnioitusta, alkoivat murista — niin hän muuttikin mielensä ja tyyntyen yhtä äkkiä kuin oli leimahtanutkin, alkoi viivyttelemättä tyydyttää uteliaisuuttamme. Huonon palveluksen tekisin kuitenkin itselleni, jos panisin tähän sen mielettömän ja usein herjaavan sekamelskan, jolla hän, ylistäen Guiseä Jumalan marttyyriksi, kertoi tuon tarinan, joka nyt on kaikille tuttu — tarinan siitä talvisesta aamusta Blois'ssa, jolloin kuninkaan lähettiläs tuli varhain koputtamaan herttuan ovelle pyytäen häntä
- 61. joutumaan, sillä kuningas tarvitsi häntä. Nyt on tuo tarina kylläkin kulunut. Mutta kuullessani sen ensi kerran Clain'in majatalossa se oli kauttaaltaan uusi ja hämmästyttävä. Ja munkki, joka kertoi tarinan ikäänkuin olisi omin silmin ollut näkemässä tapahtumia, ei jättänytkään pois mitään, mikä saattoi vaikuttaa hänen kuulijoihinsa. Hän kertoi, kuinka herttualle annettiin varotus toisensa perästä ja hän vastasi vielä esihuoneessakin: "Hän ei uskalla!" Kuinka hänen verensä, salaperäisesti aavistaen lähenevää loppuaan, kylmeni, ja hänen silmänsä, joka oli haavottunut Chäteau-Thierry'n luona, alkoi vuotaa vettä, niin että hänen täytyi lähettää noutamaan nenäliinaansa, jota hän. ei ollut muistanut ottaa mukaansa. Hän kertoi myöskin, kuinka herttua laahasi murhaajiaan pitkin huonetta, kuinka hän huusi armoa ja kuinka hän viimein kuoli kuninkaan vuoteen viereen, ja kuinka kuningas, joka hänen elävänä ollessaan ei milloinkaan uskaltanut häntä vastustaa, tuli ja survaisi herjaten jalallaan hänen ruumistaan! Kun hän lopetti, oli lieden ympärillä kalpeita kasvoja, kumartuneita otsia ja yhteenpuristettuja huulia. Kun hän kirosi Ranskan kuningasta — kirosi häntä avoimesti Valois'n Henrikin nimellä, seikka, jota en olisi koskaan odottanut kuulevani Ranskanmaassa — vaikka ei kukaan sanonut "amen", ja kaikki katsahtivat olkapäänsä ylitse ja isäntä livisti pois huoneesta kuin olisi nähnyt kummituksen, niin ei kukaan näyttänyt pitävän itseään velvollisena vastustamaan häntä. Minulla puolestani oli mieli täynnä ajatuksia, joita olisi ollut vaarallista lausua siinä seurassa niin lähellä Loirea. Heitin silmäyksen kuusitoista vuotta taaksepäin. Eikö juuri Henrik Guise ollut silloin herjannut Colignyn ruumista? Eikö juuri Henrik Guise ollut upottanut Pariisia verivirtoihin, ja eikö juuri Valois'n Henrik ollut ratsastanut hänen rinnallaan? Kuukauden 23:s päivä — päivä, jota ei koskaan
- 62. voida pyyhkiä pois Ranskan aikakirjoista — oli hankkinut hänelle suuruuden maineen. Toinen 23:s päivä näki hänen maksavan sen hinnan — näki kuinka hänen tomunsa heitettiin salaa öiseen aikaan, kenenkään tietämättä minne! Noitten ajatusten liikuttaessa mieltäni ja huomatessani, että munkki kiersi ympäri seuruetta keräten rahaa herttualle pidettäviin sielumessuihin, mihin tarkotukseen minä en voinut antaa hyvällä omallatunnolla enkä myöskään kieltäytyä antamasta herättämättä epäluuloja, pujahdin ulos. Ja huomatessani siivonnäköisen miehen puhelemassa isännän kanssa pienessä huoneessa keittiön vieressä, tilasin pullon parasta viiniä ja tuon esittelyn avulla sain syödä illalliseni heidän seurassaan. Mies oli normannilainen hevoskauppias, joka oli palaamassa kotiinsa myytyään laumansa. Hänellä näytti olevan laajat asiat, ja ollen luonnoltaan vapaa ja ujostelematon, kuten useat normannilaiset ovat, oli hän ensin halukas kohtelemaan minua enemmän tuttavallisesti kuin kunnioittavasti, sillä kun hevoseni, josta hän olisi tehnyt kauppaa, oli parempaa maata kuin nuttuni, otaksui hän minut joksikin isännöitsijäksi tai tilanhoitajaksi. Toimialallansa hän oli kuitenkin tullut tekemisiin monenlaisten ihmisten kanssa, joten hän pian huomasi erehdyksensä. Ja kun hän tunsi Seinen ja Loiren väliset maakunnat kuin viisi sormeaan ja piti alaansa kuuluvana nähdä ennakolta rauhan ja sodan mahdollisuudet, sain minä häneltä paljon hyödyllisiä tietoja ja miellyinkin häneen muuten koko paljon. Hän uskoi että Guisen murha vierottaisi Ranskan kuninkaasta niin, ettei hänen majesteetilleen jäisi paljon muuta kuin Loiren varrella olevat kaupungit ja joitakin muita paikkoja hänen Blois'ssa olevan hovinsa ulottuvilla.
- 63. "Mutta", sanoin minä, "kaikkihan näyttää nyt rauhalliselta. Ainakin täällä", "Se on tyventä myrskyn edellä", vastasi hän. "Tuolla on muuan munkki. Oletteko kuullut mitä hän puhuu?" Nyökkäsin myöntävästi. "Hän on vain yksi sadoista — ja tuhansistakin", jatkoi hevoskauppias katsoen minuun ja nyökäyttäen merkitsevästi päätään. Hän oli ruskeatukkainen ja hänellä oli älykkäät harmaat silmät, niinkuin useilla normanneilla. "He saavat kyllä tahtonsa läpi, sen saatte nähdä", pitkitti hän. "No, hevosten hinta nousee, niin etteipä minulla ole syytä nurista. Mutta jos minä olisin matkalla Blois'han naisväkeä tai muuta senkaltaista tavaraa mukanani, niin enpä pysähtyisi tänä aikana poimimaan kukkia tienvarrelta. Koettaisin päästä sisäpuolelle porttien niin pian kuin suinkin." Mielestäni oli hänen puheessaan paljon järkeä. Ja kun hän jatkoi, väittäen, että kuningas huomaisi joutuneensa kahden tulen väliin — Pohjois-Ranskaa hallitseva liiga toisella puolellaan ja Etelä-Ranskaa hallitsevat hugenotit toisella — ja oli pakotettu tekemään ajoissa sopimuksen viimeksimainittujen kanssa, oivaltaen, ettei ensinmainittu tyytyisi vähempään kuin hänen valtaistuimeltasyöksemiseensä, niin aloin olla yhtä mieltä hänen kanssaan siitä, että saisimme ennen pitkää nähdä suuria muutoksia ja sangen levottomia aikoja. "Mutta jos he panevat kuninkaan viralta", sanoin minä, "niin Navarran kuningas tulee hänen seuraajakseen. Hän on Ranskan kruununperillinen."
- 64. "Pyh!" vastasi kumppanini hieman halveksivasti. "Kyllä liiga sitä varoo. Hän menee samaa tietä kuin toinenkin." "Sittenhän kuninkaat ovat samassa vaarassa, ja te olette oikeassa", sanoin minä vakuuttavasti. "Heidän täytyy yhtyä." "Sen he tekevätkin. Se on vain ajan kysymys", sanoi hän. Seuraavana aamuna hän tarjoutui liittymään matkueeseemme Blois'han asti, hänellä kun oli mukanaan vain yksi mies ja, kuten saatoin otaksua, melkoisen suuri rahasumma. Suostuin ilomielin ja hän tekikin niin, ja tämä lukumäärämme lisäys vapautti minut heti suurimmasta osasta pelkoani. En pitänyt todennäköisenä, että neiti de la Virellä olisi mitään sitä vastaan, se kun lisäisi sekä hänen ulkonaista arvoaan että turvallisuuttaan. Eikä hän vastustanutkaan. Hän tervehti luullakseni mielihyvällä millaista joukonjatkoa hyvänsä, joka vain teki sen, ettei hänen tarvinnut ratsastaa minun vanhan nuttuni seurassa. VI. Äitini asunto. Matkustettuamme Châtelhérault'n ja Toursin kautta saavuimme Blois'n lähistölle kolmantena päivänä vähän jälkeen puolenpäivän ilman mitään onnettomuuksia tai takaa-ajon merkkejä. Normanni osottautui hauskaksi matkatoveriksi, kuten hän jo oli osottanut olevansa järkevä ja terävähuomioinen mies, ja hänen läsnäolonsa teki miesteni kurissapidon helpoksi. Aloin pitää seikkailua jo itse asiassa loppuunsuoritettuna, ja katsoen neiti de la Viren todellisuudessa jo parooni de Rosnyn huostaan saatetuksi, uskalsin
- 65. kääntää ajatukseni omien suunnitelmieni kehittämiseen ja sellaisen turvasataman valitsemiseen, missä voisin levätä Turennen kreivin kostolta suojattuna. Toistaiseksi olin säästynyt hänen takaa-ajoltaan ja Guisen kuoleman kaikkialla aiheuttaman sekasorron turvin onnistunut tekemään tyhjäksi hänen suunnitelmansa ja uhmailemaan hänen valtaansa verrattain helposti. Mutta tunsin siksi paljon hänen mahtavuuttaan ja olin kuullut siksi monta esimerkkiä hänen tuliluonteisuudestaan ja lujatahtoisuudestaan, etten toivonut liikoja lyhytaikaisesta säästymisestäni enkä tulevaisuutta ajatellessani tuntenut muuta kuin levottomuutta ja huolta. Seuralaisteni huudahdukset Blois'n ilmestyttyä näköpiiriimme herättivät minut näistä mietteistäni. Yhdyin heihin ja tunsin aivan yhtä suurta mielenliikutusta kuin hekin katsellessani noita muhkeita torneja, jotka olivat nähneet niin monta kuninkaallista juhlaa ja — surullista kyllä! — yhden kuninkaallisen murhenäytelmän. Mielikuvituksen liekki kietoi tuon synkän rakennuksen satojen vakavien ja iloisten muistojen köynnöksiin. Mutta vaikka rehevä Loiren tasanko levisi uljaan kaupungin juurella hartaan kunnioittavana kuten ennenkin, näytti rikoksen varjo kuitenkin synkentävän kaikki ja himmentävän velttona ilmassa riippuvan kuninkaallisen lipun loisteenkin. Olimme kuulleet niin paljon huhuja kaupungissa vallitsevasta pelosta ja epäluulosta ja kaikkiin sinne saapuviin kohdistuvasta ankarasta tarkastuksesta — kuningas nimittäin pelkäsi Pariisin kapinapäivien uudistumista — että pysähdyimme pieneen majataloon neljännespenikulman päähän kaupungista ja hajotimme siinä seurueemme. Erosin normannilaisesta ystävästäni
- 66. molemminpuolisilla kunnioituksen vakuutuksilla, ja omista miehistäni, joille olin maksanut palkan jo aamulla lisäten jokaiselle sievoisen lahjan, yhtä vilpittömin huojennuksen tuntein. Toivoin — vaikka kohtalo ei suonut tuon toivon toteutuvan — etteivät nuo lurjukset enää koskaan joutuisi tielleni. Ei ollut enää täyttä tuntia auringonlaskuun, kun saavuin ratsastaen portille muutamia askeleita neidin ja hänen seuranaisensa edellä; ikäänkuin olisin todellakin ollut sellainen tilanhoitaja, joksi hevoskauppias oli minua luullut. Tapasimme vahtihuoneen sotilasrivin reunustamana, joka tähysteli meitä hyvin tarkasti ja jonka ankarat muodot ja valmiina olevat aseet osottivat, ettei se ollut siinä vain näön vuoksi. Se seikka, että tulimme Tours'ista, mikä kaupunki vielä oli kuninkaan käsissä, riitti kuitenkin hälventämään epäluulon, ja niin pääsimme esteettömästi porttien sisäpuolelle. Saavuttuamme kaduille, missä ratsastimme peräkkäisessä rivissä talojen välissä, joitten asukkaat näkyivät rientävän ikkunoihin pienimmänkin hälinän sattuessa — niin kauhun täyttämä oli ilma — tunsin mielessäni verratonta huojennusta. Olimme vihdoinkin Blois'ssa. Muutamien kymmenien sylien päässä oli "Vertavuotava sydän". Muutamien minuuttien perästä saisin loppukuittauksen ja pääsisin pitämään huolta ainoastaan itsestäni. Eikä mielihyväni paljonkaan vähentynyt siitä tosiasiasta, että minun oli pian erottava neiti de la Virestä. Suoraan sanoen en pitänyt hänestä ollenkaan. Minusta näytti, että hovi-ilma oli turmellut kaikki miellyttävät luonteenominaisuudet, mitä hänessä mahdollisesti oli joskus ollut. Hän käyttäytyi vielä, ja oli käyttäytynyt koko ajan, minua kohtaan yhtä kylmän epäluuloisesti kuin matkan alussa; eikä hän ollut kertaakaan ilmaissut pienintäkään huolehtimista minun puolestani eikä näyttänyt vähääkään ajattelevan, että me hänen
- 67. palveluksessaan ollen olimme vaaroille alttiina. Häikäilemättä oli hän alinomaa asettanut omat oikkunsa yhteisen edun ja turvallisuudenkin yläpuolelle, samalla kuin hänen omanarvon-tuntonsa oli käynyt niin suureksi, ettei hän katsonut olevansa kiitoksen velkaa yhdellekään inhimilliselle olennolle. En voinut kieltää, että hän oli kaunis — muistelinpa useinkin häntä katsellessani sitä päivää, jolloin olin nähnyt hänet Navarran kuninkaan esihuoneessa kaikessa viehätyksensä loistossa. Mutta siitä huolimatta tunsin voivani kääntää hänelle selkäni — hänet turvaan saatettuani — ilman kaipausta, ja olevani kiitollinen siitä, ettei hänen polkunsa tulisi koskaan toisten kohtaamaan minun polkuani. Tällaiset ajatukset rinnassani käännyin St. Denys'n kadulle ja näin heti edessäni "Vertavuotavan sydämen", joka oli pieni, mutta siistin näköinen majatalo lähellä kadun päätä, vastapäätä erästä kirkkoa. Karkeatekoinen, harmaapäinen mies, joka seisoi ovella, astui pysähdyttyämme esiin ja katsoen uteliaasti neitiin kysyi mitä minä olin vailla, lisäten kohteliaasti, että talo oli täynnä ja ettei heillä ollut yhtään makuuhuonetta vapaana, viimeaikaiset tapahtumat kun olivat vetäneet kaupunkiin suuren väenpaljouden. "Haluaisin tietää ainoastaan erään osotteen", lausuin kumartuen satulassani ja puhuen matalalla äänellä, jotteivät ohikulkijat kuulisi sanojani. "Parooni de Rosny on kaiketi Blois'ssa vai kuinka?" Mies säpsähti kuullessaan tuon hugenotti-johtajan nimen ja katsahti hermostuneesti ympärilleen. Mutta nähdessään, ettei ketään ollut aivan lähellä meitä, hän vastasi; "Hän on ollut, mutta hän lähti kaupungista toista viikkoa sitten. Täällä on tapahtunut merkillisiä asioita, eikä herra de Rosnyn mielestä ilmanala täällä ollut hänelle oikein sopiva."
- 68. Hän lausui tämän niin merkitsevällä äänenpainolla ja samalla niin huolellisesti varoen päästämästä sanojaan syrjäisten kuultaviin, että minä, vaikka olinkin kovasti hämmästynyt ja katkerasti pettynyt, onnistuin tukahuttamaan tunteeni, niin etten ilmaissut niitä huudahduksilla enkä eleilläkään. Tyrmistyneen äänettömyyden perästä kysyin, minne parooni de Rosny oli lähtenyt. "Rosny'hin", oli vastaus. "Ja missä on Rosny?" "Chartres'in tuolla puolen, melkein Nantes'issa asti", vastasi mies, silittäen hevoseni kaulaa. "Noin kolmekymmentä peninkulmaa täältä." Käänsin hevoseni ja ilmotin kiireimmältään saamani tiedot neidille, joka odotti muutamien askelien päässä. Jos ne olivat vastenmielisiä minulle, niin hänelle ne olivat vielä vastenmielisempiä. Hänen harmillaan ja suuttumuksellaan ei ollut rajoja. Hetkeen hän ei saanut sanaa suustaan, mutta hänen salamoivat silmänsä puhuivat selvemmin kuin hänen sanansa, kun hän huusi minulle: "No, hyvä herra, mitä nyt? Tällainenko on teidän kauniitten lupaustenne loppu? Missä on teidän Rosnynne, jollei kaikki olekin omaa valheellista keksintöänne?" Tuntien, että hänen suuttumuksensa ei ollut aivan aiheeton, nielin harmini, ja kertoen nöyrästi, että Rosny oli maatilallaan kahden päivämatkan päässä ja etten minä nähnyt muuta keinoa kuin mennä hänen luokseen, kysyin isännältä mistä voisimme saada yösijaa. "Sitä minä todellakaan en voi sanoa", vastasi hän tähystellen meihin uteliaana ja ajatellen varmaankin mielessään, että minä kuluneine levättineni ja hienoine hevosineni ja neiti naamioineen ja lokapärskeisine ratsastusviittoineen muodostimme omituisen parin. "Ei ole yhtään majataloa, joka ei olisi täynnä ullakkokomeroita,
- 69. vieläpä vajojakin myöten; ja mikä on tärkeämpää, ihmiset eivät ole juuri kärkkäitä ottamaan vieraita taloonsa. Nämä ovat kummallisia aikoja. Puhutaan", jatkoi hän matalammalla äänellä, "että vanha kuningatar on linnassa kuolemaisillaan, ja ettei hän enää näe aamua." Minä nyökkäsin. "Meidän täytyy päästä jonnekin", sanoin. "Auttaisin teitä kyllä, jos voisin", vastasi hän olkapäitään kohauttaen. "Mutta minkä sille tekee! Blois on täynnä harjasta kellariin." Hevonen värisi allani, ja neiti, jonka kärsivällisyys oli lopussa, huusi minulle käskevästi, että minun oli tehtävä jotakin. "Me emme voi olla yötä kadulla", sanoi hän kiivaasti. Näin, että hän oli lopen uuvuksissa ja jaksoi tuskin hallita itseään. Ilta alkoi hämärtyä ja rupesi satamaan vettä. Katuojan löyhkä ja taloista leviävä ummehtunut ilma tuntuivat tukahduttavan meidät. Takanamme olevan kirkon kello alkoi soittaa iltarukoukseen. Joitakin ihmisiä, joitten huomio oli kiintynyt majatalon edessä seisoviin hevosiimme, oli kerääntynyt paikalle ja katseli meitä. Näin, että jotain oli tehtävä, ja tehtävä pian. Kun en epätoivoissani nähnyt mitään muutakaan keinoa, tein esityksen, josta siihen saakka en ollut uneksinutkaan. "Neiti", sanoa tokasin, "minun täytyy viedä teidät äitini asuntoon." "Äitinne asuntoonko?" huusi hän suoristaen ryhtinsä. Hänen äänessään ilmeni kopeata hämmästystä.
- 70. "Niin", vastasin minä terävästi; "kun, kuten sanotte, emme voi olla yötä kadulla, ja kun en tiedä minne muuallekaan voisin teidät sijottaa. Viimeksi saamistani tiedoista päättäen luulen hänen seuranneen hovin mukana tänne. Tiedättekö", jatkoin isännän puoleen kääntyen, "erästä rouva de Bonnea, jonka pitäisi olla Blois'ssa?" "Rouva de Bonne?" mutisi hän miettien. "Olen kuullut tuon nimen nykyisin. Odottakaahan vähän." Hän hävisi sisälle ja palasi melkein samassa, seurassaan hoikka, kalpeakasvoinen, mustaan, rikkinäiseen kauhtanaan puettu nuorukainen. "Kyllä", sanoi hän nyökäten, "eräs sen niminen arvoisa rouva kuuluu asuvan tästä seuraavalla kadulla. Tämä nuori mies sattuu asumaan samassa talossa ja opastaa teidät sinne, jos sitä haluatte." Minä myönnyin, ja kiittäen häntä tiedonannoistaan käänsin hevoseni ja pyysin nuorukaista kulkemaan edellä. Ehdimme kuitenkin tuskin kääntyä kulman ympäri ja tulla toiselle hiukan kapeammalle ja vähempiliikkeiselle kadulle, kun neiti, joka ratsasti jälessäni, pysähtyi ja kutsui minua. Kiristin ohjakset, käännyin ja kysyin mikä oli. "Minä en tule", sanoi hän, ja hänen äänensä värähteli hiukan, mutta levottomuudestako vai harmista, sitä en voinut päättää. "En tunne teitä ollenkaan, ja minä — minä vaadin että viette minut herra de Rosnyn luokse." "Jos huudatte tuota nimeä ääneen Blois'n kaduilla", vastasin minä, "niin teidät sangen todennäköisesti viedään minne ette lainkaan mielellänne menisi! Ja olenhan sanonut teille, että herra de Rosny ei ole täällä. Hän on mennyt maatilalleen Nantes'in lähelle." "Viekää minut sitten sinne!"
- 71. "Näin myöhään illalla?" sanoin kuivasti. "Sinne on kahden päivän matka täältä." "Sitten tahdon mennä johonkin majataloon", vastasi hän nyreästi. "Te olette kuullut, että majataloissa ei ole tilaa", sanoin minä niin maltillisesti kuin saatoin. "Ja majatalosta majataloon kulkeminen tähän vuorokauden aikaan saattaisi aiheuttaa meille ikävyyksiä. Voin vakuuttaa teille olevani yhtä tyrmistynyt kuin tekin herra de Rosnyn poissaolosta. Olemme nyt lähellä äitini asuntoa, ja…" "Minä en tiedä mitään teidän äidistänne!" huudahti hän kiihkeästi, korottaen ääntään. "Te olette houkutellut minut tänne valheellisilla verukkeilla, enkä minä kärsi sitä kauempaa. Minä tahdon…" "Mitä te sitten tahdotte tehdä, sitä en voi ymmärtää", vastasin minä pulassani, sillä sade ja pimeys sekä tuntemattomat kadut — joilla viivyttelemisemme saattoi millä hetkellä tahansa aikaansaada väenkokouksen — ja tuon itsepintaisen tytön vastahakoisuus yhdessä tekivät sen, etten tiennyt minne kääntyä. "Minä puolestani en voi keksiä mitään muuta. Ei ole sopivaa minun ruveta puhumaan äidistäni", jatkoin sitten, "muuten voisin sanoa, ettei neiti de la Virenkään tarvitse hävetä suostuessaan nauttimaan rouva de Bonnen vieraanvaraisuutta. Eivätkä äitini olosuhteet", lisäsin ylpeästi, "niin vaatimattomat kuin ne ovatkin, kuitenkaan ole niin ahtaat, että hänen olisi ollut luovuttava syntyperänsä oikeuttamista eduista." Viimeisillä sanoillani näytti olevan jotakin vaikutusta seuratoveriini. Hän kääntyi ja puhui jotakin seuranaiselleen, joka vastasi matalalla äänellä, pudistellen päätään aina väliin ja heittäen minuun vihaisia katseita. Jos olisi ollut jokin muu mahdollisuus tiedossa, olisivat he epäilemättä vieläkin halveksien hylänneet tarjoukseni; mutta
- 72. Fanchette ei nähtävästi voinut keksiä mitään, ja niin käski neiti äkeän näköisenä minua jatkamaan kulkua. Hintelä, mustakauhtanainen nuorukainen, joka koko keskustelun ajan oli pidellyt hevoseni suitsia vuoroin kuunnellen ja vuoroin ällistellen, otti tämän määräyksen itselleen ja nyökäyttäen lähti jatkamaan matkaa. Ja minä seurasin. Kuljettuaan lähemmäs sata kyynärää hän pysähtyi halvannäköisen oven eteen, jonka kahta puolta oli ristikoilla varustettuja ikkunoita ja vastapäätä korkea muuri, jonka otaksuin jonkun aatelis-asunnon puutarhan taustamuuriksi. Katu oli sillä kohtaa valaisematon ja tuskin leveämpi kuin kuja. Eikä talokaan, joka oli kapea ja ränstynyt, vaikka korkea, ollut ulkonäöltään, mikäli pimeässä saatoin arvostella, omiaan hälventämään neidin epäluuloja. Mutta kun tiesin, että arvokkaittenkin henkilöitten on kaupungeissa usein pakko asua huonoissa asunnoissa, en huolinut siitä sen enempää, vaan riensin auttamaan neitiä alas satulasta niin joutuin kuin mahdollista. Poika haparoi seinää ja löysi oven vierestä kaksi rengasta, ja niihin minä sidoin hevoset. Käskien hänen mennä edellä ja pyytäen neitiä seuraamaan, työnnyin sitten pimeään käytävään ja tulin hapuillen portaitten juurelle, jotka olivat aivan pimeät ja haisivat ummehtuneelta ja epämiellyttävältä. "Mikä kerros?" kysyin oppaaltani. "Neljäs", vastasi hän levollisesti. "Tulimmainen!" mumisin minä alkaessani nousta ylös kädelläni seinästä pidellen. "Mitä tämä oikein merkitsee?" Olin aivan ymmällä. Tulot Marsacin maista eivät tosin olleet suuret, mutta olisi niitten kuitenkin pitänyt riittää hankkimaan äidilleni, jonka
- 73. olin viimeksi nähnyt Pariisissa ennen Nemours'in ediktiä, siedettävät mukavuudet — ainakin sellaiset kohtalaiset mukavuudet, että niitä tuskin saattoi odottaa olevan tarjolla tällaisessa talossa — syrjäisessä, rappeutuneessa, valaisemattomassa. Neuvottomuuteni lisäksi tuli, ennenkuin olin päässyt portaitten yläpäähän, levottomuus — levottomuus sekä äitini että neidin puolesta. Tunsin, että jotakin oli kierossa, ja olisin antanut paljon voidakseni peruuttaa viimemainitulle tyrkyttämäni kutsun. Mitä nuori nainen itse ajatteli, sen saatoin hyvin arvata kuunnellessani hänen kiivasta hengitystään vieressäni. Joka askeleella odotin hänen kieltäytyvän menemästä edemmäksi. Mutta tehtyään kerran päätöksensä seurasi hän minua itsepintaisesti, vaikka portaissa oli niin pilkkopimeä, että minä ehdottomasti irrotin tikarini ja valmistauduin puolustautumaan siinä tapauksessa, että tämä kaikki olisikin meille viritetty ansa. Saavuimme kuitenkin portaitten yläpäähän ilman onnettomuuksia. Oppaamme koputti hiljaa eräälle ovelle ja avasi sen samassa odottamatta vastausta. Heikko valo hohti portaitten ylätasanteelle, ja taivuttaen päätäni, sillä ovenkamana oli matalalla, astuin huoneeseen. Kahden askeleen päässä ovelta seisahduin ja katselin ympärilleni harmistuneen hämmästyneenä. Kaikkialla, mihin silmäni käänsin, oli vastassani äärimäisen köyhyyden alastomuus. Rikkinäinen savilamppu savusi ja ratisi tuolilla keskellä lahonnutta lattiaa. Lasittoman ikkunan edessä riippui seinään naulattuna vanha musta päällysviitta heiluen edestakaisin ilmanvedossa kuin ruumis hirsipuussa. Nurkassa seisoi saviruukku, johon katosta vuotava vesi tippui. Liedellä oli kourallinen tuhkaa ynnä pieni rautainen keittopata
- 74. ja toinen tuoli — joka viimemainittu heitti pitkän varjon lattian yli. Siinä olivat kaikki huonekalut mitä saatoin nähdä, lukuunottamatta sänkyä, joka täytti pitkän ja kapean huoneen peräseinän ja oli verhottu uutimilla jonkinlaiseksi komeroksi. Yhdellä silmäyksellä olin nähnyt kaiken tämän, samoinkuin senkin, että huone oli tyhjä, ainakin näennäisesti. Katsoin kuitenkin tyrmistyneenä yhä uudelleen ja uudelleen. Viimein sain äänen suustani ja kysyin meidät tänne opastaneelta nuorukaiselta kiukkuisesti kiroten, mikä hänellä oli tarkotuksena. Hän vetäytyi hätkähtäen avonaisen oven toiselle puolelle, mutta vastasi kuitenkin jonkinlaisella yreällä kummastuksella, että minä olin kysynyt rouva de Bonnen asuntoa ja että tämä oli se. "Rouva de Bonnen asunto!" mumisin minä. "Tämäkö rouva de Bonnen asunto?" Hän nyökkäsi. "Tietysti se on! Ja te tiedätte sen kyllä!" sähisi neiti korvani juuressa, ääni kiihtymyksestä käheänä. "Älkää luulko, että voitte pettää meitä kauempaa. Me tiedämme kaikki! Tämä", jatkoi hän katsellen ympärilleen hehkuvin poskin ja leimuavin silmin, "tämä on äitinne asunto, toden totta! Äitinne, joka on seurannut hovia tänne — jonka varat ovat vaatimattomat, mutta ei niin pienet, että hänen olisi ollut luovuttava arvonsa oikeuttamista mukavuuksista! Tämäkö on teidän äitinne vieraanvaraisuutta? Te olette petturi, ja ilmitullut petturi! Lähtekäämme täältä! Antakaa minun mennä, sanon minä!" Kahdesti olin yrittänyt keskeyttää hänen sanatulvansa, mutta turhaan. Vihdoinkin, suuttumuksen vallassa, joka oli sadoinkerroin
- 75. rajumpi kuin hänen — sillä kuka, joka sanoo itseään mieheksi, tahtoisi kuulla itseään nimiteltävän äitinsä läsnäollessa? — minä siinä onnistuin. "Vaiti, neiti!" huusin minä tarttuen hänen ranteeseensa. "Vaiti, sanon minä! Äitini on tuolla!" Ja juosten vuoteen luokse lankesin polvilleni sen viereen. Heikko käsi oli vetänyt uutimen puoleksi syrjään, ja aukosta katsoivat äitini kuihtuneet kasvot, kuvastaen suurta kauhua. VII. Simon Fleix. Muutamiksi minuuteiksi unohdin neidin osottaessani äidilleni sitä huolenpitoa ja huomaavaisuutta, mitä hänen tilansa ja minun velvollisuuteni vaativat. Ja osotin sitä hartaammin, kun huomasin tuskaisin sydämin, kuinka ikä ja sairaus olivat muuttaneet häntä sitten viime näkemän. Neidin sanojen säikähdyttämänä hän oli pyörtynyt, ja kului kotvan aikaa ennenkuin hän virkosi, silloinkin paremmin omituisen oppaamme avulla kuin minun ponnistuksistani. Vaikka malttamattomasti halusinkin tulla tietämään, miten hän oli joutunut tällaiseen puutteeseen ja tällaiseen paikkaan, ei nyt ollut kuitenkaan sopiva aika tyydyttää uteliaisuuttani, vaan valmistauduin sensijaan koettamaan hälventää sitä tuskallista vaikutusta, minkä neidin sanat olivat häneen tehneet. Ensiksi tajuihinsa tultuaan ei hän niitä muistanut, vaan tyytyväisenä nähdessään minut vierellään unohtui hyväilemään minua heikoin käsin ja katkonaisin sanoin. Äidinrakkaudessa on sellainen taikavoima, että minun läsnäoloni varmaankin muutti hänen ullakkohuoneensa palatsiksi. Mutta sitten hänen silmänsä
- 76. sattuivat neitiin ja hänen seuranaiseensa, jotka olivat jääneet seisomaan lieden luo heittäen meihin silloin tällöin synkkiä katseita, ja silloin hän muisti, ensin säikähdyksensä ja sitten sen syyn, ja ryntäilleen kohoten hän katseli kauhistuneena ympärilleen. "Gaston!" huusi hän tarrautuen käteeni luisevilla sormillaan. "Mitä minä kuulin? Joku puhui sinusta — joku nainen. Hän sanoi sinua — vai untako näin — petturiksi! Sinua!" "Äiti, äiti", sanoin minä, koettaen puhua huolettomasti, vaikka hänen harmaitten, hajallaan ja epäjärjestyksestä olevien hiuksiensa näkeminen sai mieleni liikutetuksi, "olisiko se ollut todennäköistä? Olisiko kukaan uskaltanut käyttää minusta sellaista sanaa sinun läsnäollessasi? Kyllä sinä varmaan olet sen uneksinut!" Mutta sanat palasivat hänen muistiinsa yhä elävämpinä, hän katsoi minuun hyvin huolissaan ja pani käsivartensa kaulalleni, ikäänkuin olisi tahtonut suojella minua vähäisillä voimillaan, jotka juuri auttoivat häntä hiukan kohoamaan vuoteeltaan. "Mutta joku sanoi niin, Gaston", mumisi hän, katse vieraisiin kiinnitettynä. "Minä kuulin sen. Mitä se tarkotti?" "Kuulit varmaankin", vastasin minä koettaen tekeytyä iloiseksi, vaikka kyyneleet olivat silmissäni, "tämän neidin toruvan Tours'ista tullutta opastamme, joka vaati juomarahaa kolme kertaa tavallisen määrän. Se hävytön lurjus ansaitsi kyllä kaikki mitä hänelle sanottiin, sen vakuutan." "Sitäkö se oli?" kuiskasi hän epäillen. "Varmasti se ei voinut olla muuta, äiti", vastasin minä, ikäänkuin en lainkaan epäilisi.
- 77. Hän vaipui jälleen vuoteelle helpotuksesta huoahtaen, ja hänen kalpeille kasvoilleen tuli hiukan väriä. Mutta hänen silmänsä viipyivät vieläkin uteliaina ja levottomina neidissä, joka seisoi äkeänä tuleen tuijottaen. Ja tämän nähdessäni tunsin sydämessäni kipeän aavistuksen, että olin tehnyt mielettömästi tuodessani tytön tänne. Aavistin, että tulisi tehtäväksi lukemattomia kysymyksiä ja syntyisi lukemattomia selkkauksia, ja tunsin jo häpeän punan kohoavan poskilleni. "Kuka on tuo?" kysyi äitini hiljaa. "Minä olen sairas. Hänen täytyy suoda minulle anteeksi." Hän viittasi raukealla sormellaan seuralaisiini. Nousin ylös ja pitäen yhä hänen kättään omassani käännyin niin, että kasvoni tulivat lieteen päin. "Hän on", vastasin kaavamaisesti, "neiti … mutta sanon sinulle hänen nimensä myöhemmin, ollessamme kahdenkesken. Riittää kun sanon, että hän on jalosyntyinen nainen, jonka eräs korkea-arvoinen henkilö on uskonut huostaani." "Korkea-arvoinen henkilö?" toisti äitini vienosti, katsahtaen minuun hymyillen mielihyvillään. "Eräs kaikkein korkeimmista", sanoin minä. "Kun sellainen luottamus on minulle suuri kunnia, tunsin, etten voinut täyttää sitä paremmin kuin pyytämällä sinun vieraanvaraisuuttasi hänelle, kun meidän on kerran viivyttävä yksi yö Blois'ssa." Puhuessani katsoin uhmaavana neitiin, vaatien häntä vastustamaan minua tai keskeyttämään puheeni, jos hän uskaltaisi. Vastauksen asemesta hän katsahti minuun kerran pää hiukan
- 78. taivutettuna pitkien silmäripsiensä alta. Sitten hän kääntyi takaisin tuleen päin, ja hänen jalkansa polkaisi jälleen kiukkuisesti lattiaa. "On ikävää, etten voi ottaa häntä vastaan paremmin", vastasi äitini heikosti. "Olen kärsinyt vahinkoja viimeaikoina. Olen … mutta siitä tahdon puhua joskus toisella kertaa. Neiti arvattavasti tuntee", jatkoi hän arvokkaasti, "sinut ja sinun asemasi etelässä liian hyvin ottaakseen pahakseen sitä tilapäistä ahdinkoa, mihin hän näkee minun joutuneen." Huomasin neidin säpsähtävän, ja se peitettyä halveksimista ja hämmästynyttä suuttumusta ilmaiseva katse, jonka hän minuun sinkautti, sai minut vääntelehtimään. Mutta kun äitini taputti minua hellästi kädelle, vastasin maltillisesti: "Neiti ei voi ajatella muuten kuin ystävällisesti ja hyväntahtoisesti, siitä olen vakuutettu. Ja asuntoja on tänä iltana vaikea hankkia Blois'ssa." "Mutta kerro minulle itsestäsi, Gaston!" huudahti äitini innokkaasti. Ja hänen kätensä levätessä kädelläni ja hänen silmiensä tähystäessä kasvoihini ei minulla ollut sydäntä riistäytyä pois, niin pelokkaana kuin odotinkin, mitä oli tuleva, ja niin hartaasti kuin halusinkin lopettaa tämän kohtauksen. "Kerro minulle itsestäsi. Olet kai vielä … kuninkaan suosiossa — en tahdo mainita hänen nimeään täällä?" "Olen, äiti", vastasin, katsoen järkähtämättä neitiin, vaikka poskiani poltteli. "Vai olet vielä — ja vieläkö hän kysyy sinulta neuvoa asioihinsa?" "Vielä, äiti."
- 79. Hän huokasi onnellisena ja vaipui vielä alemmaksi vuoteessaan. "Ja virkasi?" kuiskasi hän mielihyvästä väräjävin äänin. "Ei kai sitä ole vaihdettu? On kai sinulla se vielä?" "On, äiti", vastasin minä hien pusertuessa otsalleni, häpeäni kasvaessa niin että tuskin jaksoin sitä kestää. "Kaksitoistatuhatta livreä vuodessa, eikö niin?" "Aivan niin, äiti." "Ja palveluskuntasi? Entä lakeijoja — kuinka monta nykyään?" Vastaustani odottaessaan hän silmäsi ylpeällä katseella ensin molempiin tulen ääressä seisoviin äänettömiin olentoihin, sitten köyhyydestä kertovaan huoneeseen, ikäänkuin sen alastomuuden näkeminen lisäisi hänen iloaan minun rikkaudestani. Hänellä ei ollut ollenkaan aavistusta hämmingistäni eikä surkeasta asemastani, ja hänen viimeiset sanansa olivat vähällä saada kurjuuteni maljan vuotamaan ylitse. Tähän saakka oli kaikki mennyt helposti, mutta nyt tuntui kuin olisin tukahtunut. Minä änkytin enkä tahtonut saada ääniä. Neiti katseli tuleen pää kumarassa. Fanchette tuijotti minuun mustat silmänsä pyöreinä kuin suitsirenkaat ja suu puoleksi auki. "Niin, äiti", mumisin viimein, "sanoakseni sinulle totuuden, on minun nykyään ollut pakko tehdä…" "Mitä, Gaston?" Äitini kohosi puoleksi istumaan vuoteessaan. Hänen äänensä oli muuttunut, ilmaisten pettymystä ja pelokasta odotusta, ja hänen sormensa puristivat kättäni tiukemmin. En voinut vastustaa tuota tuskaista pyyntöä. Viskasin pois viimeisenkin häpeän riekaleen. "Jonkun verran supistuksia
- 80. talouteeni", vastasin, katsoen surkean uhmaavana neidin poispäin kääntyneeseen olentoon. Hän oli kutsunut minua valehtelijaksi ja petturiksi — tässä samassa huoneessa! Minä olin nyt hänen edessään itse tunnustautunut valehtelijaksi ja petturiksi. "Minulla on nyt vain kolme lakeijaa, äiti." "Se on vielä sentään arvokasta", mutisi äitini ajatuksissaan, silmät loistavina. "Sinun pukusi, Gaston, on kuitenkin … silmäni ovat tosin heikot, mutta minusta näyttää…" "No, no, se on vain valepuku", ehätin minä vastaamaan. "Se minun olisi pitänyt tietää", virkkoi hän vaipuen jälleen pitkälleen hymyillen ja tyytyväisenä huoaten. "Mutta kun ensin näin sinut, pelkäsin meikein että jotakin oli tapahtunut sinulle. Ja minä olen ollut niin huolissani viime aikoina", jatkoi hän, päästäen irti käteni ja alkaen hypistellä peitettä, ikäänkuin tuo muisto olisi tehnyt hänet levottomaksi. "Täällä kävi joku aika sitten eräs mies — tämän Simon Fleix'n ystäviä — joka oli ollut etelässä päin Pau'ssa ja Nerac'issa, ja hän sanoi, ettei ollut ketään Marsac-nimistä hovissa." "Hän tunsi arvattavasti vähemmän hovia kuin viinikapakkaa", vastasin niinä koettaen hymyillä. "Juuri niin minäkin sanoin hänelle", virkkoi hän nopeasti ja innokkaasti. "Vakuutan sinulle, ettei hän saanut minua lainkaan uskomaan." "Luonnollisesti", sanoin minä. "Niitä on aina olemassa sellaisia ihmisiä. Mutta nyt, jos sallit, ryhdyn toimittamaan niitä järjestelyjä, mitä neidin täällä-olo tekee tarpeelliseksi."
- 81. Pyysin häntä siis lepäämään toipuakseen — sillä niinkin lyhyt keskustelu tulomme aikaansaaman järkytyksen jälkeen oli kovasti uuvuttanut hänen voimiaan — ja vedin nuorukaisen, joka juuri oli palannut toimittamasta hevosiamme talliin, hiukan syrjään, ja saatuani kysyessäni kuulla, että hän asui pienemmässä huoneessa saman porrastasanteen päässä, pyysin hänen luovuttamaan sen neidin ja hänen seuranaisensa käytettäväksi. Vaikka hänessä toisinaan ilmeni jonkunverran närkkäyttä, näytti hän olevan terävä ja näppärä poika, ja hän suostui mielellään myöhäisestä hetkestä huolimatta lähtemään kaupungille hankkiakseen vähän ruokavaroja ja hiukan muutakin, mikä oli kipeään tarpeeseen niin äidilleni kuin meillekin. Toimitin Fanchetten auttamaan häntä toisen huoneen kuntoonpanemisessa ja jäin siten joksikin aikaa neidin kanssa kahden. Hän oli ottanut toisen tuoleista ja istui tulen ääressä kyyristyneenä, vaippansa huppukaulus syvälle pään yli vedettynä, niin että silloinkaan, kun hän katsoi minuun, en nähnyt juuri muuta kuin hänen halveksivasta harmista säihkyvät silmänsä. "Siis, herra", alkoi hän, puhuen matalalla äänellä ja kääntyen hieman minuun päin, "te harjotatte valehtelemista täälläkin?" Minulla oli niin voimakas tunne kiellon taikka selittelyn hyödyttömyydestä, että kohautin vain hartioitani enkä vastannut mitään hänen ivaansa. Vielä kaksi päivää — vielä kaksi päivää kun menisi, niin olisimme Rosny'ssa, tehtäväni olisi suoritettu ja neiti ja minä eroaisimme ainiaaksi. Mitäpä olisi silloin väliä sillä, mitä hän minusta ajatteli? Mitä väliä sillä oli nytkään? Ensi kerran yksissäolomme aikana näytti äänettömyyteni saattavan hänet hämille ja olevan hänelle epämieluista. "Eikö teillä ole mitään sanottavaa puolustukseksenne?" mutisi hän terävästi, rusentaen
- 82. hiilenpalasen jalallaan ja kumartuen tähystämään tuhkaan. "Eikö teillä ole vielä jotakin valhetta varastossanne, herra de Marsac? De Marsac!" ja hän kertasi aatelisnimeni pilkallisesti naurahtaen, ikäänkuin ei hän ollenkaan uskoisi sen aitouteen. Mutta minä en vastannut mitään — en kerrassaan mitään; ja me olimme molemmat äänettöminä, kunnes Fanchette tuli sanomaan huoneen olevan valmiina ja valaisi herrattarelleen tietä ulos. Käskin naisen tulla jonkun ajan perästä noutamaan neidille illallista, ja jäätyäni sitten yksin äitini kanssa, joka oli vaipunut uneen, hymy ohuilla, riutuneilla kasvoillaan, aloin ihmetellä, mikä hänet oli saattanut tällaiseen hirveään köyhyyteen. Pelkäsin kiihottavani hänen mieltään ottamalla sen puheeksi. Mutta myöhemmin illalla, kun vuoteen uutimet oli vedetty eteen ja Simon Fleix ja minä olimme jääneet kahden, katsellen toisiamme hiiloksen yli kuin kaksi erirotuista koiraa — hiukan vieraina ja epäluuloisina — palasivat ajatukseni tuohon kysymykseen. Ja päättäen ensin ottaa vähän selkoa toveristani, jolle hänen kalpeat, terävä-ilmeiset kasvonsa ja rikkinäinen, musta pukunsa antoivat hiukan erikoisen ominaisleimansa, kysyin häneltä, oliko hän tullut Pariisista rouva de Bonnen mukana. Hän nyökkäsi äänettömänä. Kysyin häneltä, oliko hän tuntenut hänet kauan. "Vuoden ajan", hän vastasi. "Minä asuin viidennessä, rouva toisessa kerroksessa samassa talossa Pariisissa." Kumarruin eteenpäin ja nykäisin hänen mustan kauhtanansa lievettä.
- 83. "Mikä tämä on?" sanoin hiukan halveksivasti. "Ethän sinä ole pappi." "En", vastasi hän, hypistellen itsekin vaatetta ja tuijottaen minuun omituisella, hajamielisellä ilmeellä. "Olen Sorbonnen ylioppilas." Vetäydyin hänestä erilleni mumisten kirouksen, ja katsoen häneen epäluuloisin silmin ihmettelin mielessäni, kuinka hän oli tullut tänne, ja varsinkin, kuinka hän oli joutunut seuraamaan äitiäni, joka lapsuudestaan saakka oli kasvanut protestanttisessa uskossa ja tunnustanut sitä salaisesti koko elämänsä ajan. En voinut ajatella, kuka olisi entisinä aikoina ollut hänen taloonsa vähemmän tervetullut kuin sorbonnelainen, ja aloin aavistaa, että tästä oli etsittävä syy hänen surkeaan tilaansa. "Ettekö pidä Sorbonnesta?" sanoi hän, lukien ajatukseni, jotka kylläkin olivat selvästi nähtävissä. "En enempää kuin pidän pirusta!" tokaisin minä. Hän kurottautui eteenpäin, ojensi kiihkeästi laihan kätensä ja laski sen polvelleni. "Entä jos he kuitenkin ovat oikeassa?" mutisi hän käheällä äänellä. "Entä jos he ovat oikeassa, herra de Marsac?" "Kutka oikeassa?" kysyin töykeästi, vetäytyen jälleen erilleni. "Sorbonnelaiset", toisti hän, tuijottaen silmiini herkeämättä, kasvot kiihtymyksestä punottavina. "Ettekö näe", jatkoi hän, pusertaen polveani innoissaan ja työntäen kasvonsa yhä lähemmäksi minua, "että yksi asia on kaiken ytimenä? Että kaiken ytimenä on — pelastusko vai kadotus! Ovatko he oikeassa? Oletteko te oikeassa? Te myönnätte yhden asian, kiellätte toisen, te valkokauhtanat; ja te teette sen kevyesti, mutta oletteko oikeassa? Oletteko oikeassa?
- 84. Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world, offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth. That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to self-development guides and children's books. More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading. Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and personal growth every day! ebookbell.com