Firmly I put her away from me. "I wish you a pleasant stay in this house, Béu Ribé. But, if you cannot hide your dislike of me, will you at least refrain from demonstrating it in such maliciously insincere coquetry? Cannot we both manage simply to ignore each other?"

When I strode away, her face was as flushed as if I had surprised her in some indecent act, and she was rubbing her face as if I had slapped her for it.

* * *

Señor Bishop Zumárraga, it is an honor and a flattery to have you join us once again. Your Excellency is just in time to hear me announce—as proudly as I announced it those many years ago—the birth of my beloved daughter.

All my apprehensions, I am happy to say, proved unfounded. The child evinced intelligence even before she emerged into this life, for she waited prudently in the womb until after the lifeless nemontemtin days had passed, and made her appearance on the day Ce-Malinali, or One Grass, of the first month of the year Five House. I was then thirty and one years old, somewhat overage to be starting a family, but I preened and strutted just as preposterously as younger men do—as if I had alone conceived and carried and been delivered of the infant.

While Béu stayed at Zyanya's bedside, the physician and the mid-wife came to tell me that the child was a female and to answer all my anxious questions. They seemed to think me demented when I wrung my hands and said, "Speak the truth. I can bear it. Is it really two girls in one body?" No, they said, it was not any kind of twins, but a single daughter. No, she was not of extraordinarily great size. No, she was not monstrous in any respect and she appeared unmarked by any portents. When I pressed the doctor as to the acuity of her eyesight, he replied in some exasperation that newborn babies are not notable for eagle vision, or for boasting about it if they have it. I must wait until she could talk and tell me herself.

They gave me the child's navel string, then went back into the nursery to dip One Grass in cold water, to swaddle her and to subject her to the midwife's cautionary and instructive harangue. I went downstairs and, with unsteady fingers, wrapped the moist string around a ceramic spindle wheel and, mouthing a few silent prayers and thanks to the gods, buried it under the stones of the kitchen hearth. Then I hurried upstairs again to wait impatiently to be admitted for my first look at my daughter.

I kissed my wanly smiling wife and, with my topaz, examined the dwarf face cuddled in the bend of her elbow. I had seen the new offspring of other parents, so I was not shocked, but I was a bit disappointed to find that ours was in no way superior. She was as red and wrinkled as a chopini chili pod, as bald and ugly as an aged Purémpe. I tried to feel a proper rush of love for her, but without success. I was assured by all present that it was indeed my daughter, a new fragment of humankind, but I would have been equally prepared to believe them if they had confessed that it was a newborn, still-hairless howler monkey. It had the howl, at any rate.

I need hardly say that the child day by day appeared more human, and that I viewed her with more appreciative and affectionate regard. I called her Cocóton, a common nickname for girl children; it means the crumb fallen from a larger piece of bread. It was not long before Cocóton began to manifest a resemblance to her mother, and necessarily her aunt, which is to say that no baby could have become more quickly more beautiful. Her hair grew in, in ringlets. Her eyelashes appeared, and they had the same abundance, in miniature, as the hummingbird-wing lashes of Zyanya and Béu. Her eyebrows grew in, and they had the same winglike uptilt as those of Zyanya and Béu. She began to smile more frequently than she howled, and her smile was that of Zyanya, compelling all about her to reflect it. Even Béu, who in recent years had been so dour, was influenced often to smile that same radiant smile again.

Zyanya was soon up and about, though her activities were for a time centered only on Cocóton, who insisted that her milk-animal be frequently available. Béu's presence made it unnecessary for me to watch over the welfare of Zyanya and our baby, and I was often ignored by both women, even by the baby, when now and then I proffered uninvited suggestions or attentions. Nevertheless, I did occasionally insist on being obeyed, simply as the man of the household. When Cocóton was nearly two months old, and was no longer so frequently needful of her milk supplier, Zyanya began to show signs of restlessness.

She had been pent in the house for months, getting no farther outdoors than our rooftop garden, to bask in the beams of Tonatíu and the breezes of Ehecatl. She would like to venture farther outside, she said, and reminded me that the ceremony honoring Xipe Totec was soon to be held in The Heart of the One World. She wanted to attend. I positively forbade it.

I said, "Cocóton was born unmarked and unmonstrous and with seemingly unimpaired eyesight, thanks to her tonáli, or ours, or the gods' good will. Let us not now put her at hazard. As long as she is nursing, we must take care that evil influences do not get into your milk, through your being frightened or upset by some shocking sight. I cannot think of anything more likely to horrify you than the Xipe Totec celebration. We will go anywhere else you ask, my love, but not to that."

Oh, yes, Your Excellency, I had often seen the honoring of Xipe Totec, for it was one of the most important religious rituals observed by us Mexíca and by many other peoples. The ceremony was impressive, I might say unforgettable, but even in those days I could scarcely believe that any participant or onlooker enjoyed it. Though it has now been many years since I last saw Xipe Totec die and come back to life, I still can hardly bear to describe the manner of it—and my revulsion owes nothing to my having become Christian and civilized. However, if Your Excellency is so interested and insistent...

Xipe Totec was our god of seedtime, and that came in our month of Tlacaxipe Ualiztli, which can be translated as The Gentle Flaying. It was the season when the dead stumps and stalks of last year's harvests were burned off or cleared away or turned under, so the earth was clean and ready to receive its new planting. Death making way for life, you see, as it does even for Christians, when at every seedtime the Lord Jesus dies and is reborn. Your Excellency need not make noises of protest. The impious similarity goes no further.

I will not describe all the public preliminaries and accompaniments: the flowers and music and dancing and colors and costumes and processions and the thunder of the drum which tears out the heart. I will make this as mercifully brief as I can.

Know, then, that a young man or girl was selected beforehand to act the honored role of Xipe Totec, which means The Dear One Flayed. The personifier's sex was less important than the requirement that he or she be grown to full stature but be still a virgin. Usually it was a foreigner of noble birth, captured in some war when still a child and saved especially to represent the god when grown. Never was a slave purchased for the purpose, because Xipe Totec merited and demanded and was provided a young person of the highest available class.

For some days before the ceremony, the youth was housed in the temple of Xipe Totec and was treated with every kindness, lavished with every pleasure of food and drink and entertainment. Also, once the youth's virginity had been acceptably substantiated, it was quickly disposed of. He or she was allowed unlimited sexual license—encouraged to it, even forced to it when necessary—for it was a vital part of playing the god of springtime fertility. If the xochimíqui was a young man, he could name all the girls and women of the community whom he had ever desired, unwed or not. Assuming those women consented, as did many even of the married ones, they would be brought to him. If the xochimíqui was a girl, she could name and summon all the men she wanted, and spread herself for them.