Death Benefits (12 page)

“Where were they?”

“Cortés never found out. He first tried ordinary cross-examination, but his interrogations produced no leads. So he used a branding iron to emphasize his questions. He eventually branded the faces of thousands of men, women, and children. But that brutality yielded little more than a handful of treasures that had been dumped into a nearby lake. Cortés eventually leveled the city and built Mexico City in its place, but he never recovered the bulk of the vast treasures of the Aztecs.”

Panzer stood and walked behind the desk chair.

“What happened to the treasures?” I asked, caught up in the story almost against my will.

“Most are lost forever.” Scholars, Panzer explained, believe that the Aztecs sneaked the treasures out of the city at night during the siege. They buried some in the jungle, hid some at the bottom of lakes, hid others in caves. The locations of the secret hiding places may have been passed down from generation to generation. But memories faded, family lines died out. He gestured toward the Spanish inventory in the book. “Very little of what is on this list has ever been found.”

“But some have?”

“Oh, yes.”

The mystery of Sandy Feldman's research project was revealed in a flash. “And Stoddard Anderson was helping you bring one of those Aztec treasures into this country, right?”

Panzer nodded. “You are a quick study, Rachel.”

“Is it on this list?” I asked, nodding toward the inventory.

“It certainly is. Indeed, among the courtiers of Charles the Fifth, the object in question was clearly the
pièce de résistance
.” He pronounced the phrase with a thick French accent. “It was the most eagerly awaited of all the treasures of Montezuma.” He pulled the book toward him and scanned the list, turning the page. “Here,” he said as he turned the book to me and pointed.

“
El Verdugo de Motecuzoma Xocoyatzin
,” I read slowly, sounding out each word.

Panzer nodded. “Literally, ‘the Executioner of Montezuma the Younger.'”

“The Younger?”

“His grandfather was the first Montezuma.”

I looked down at the list. There was a clump of text after the words
El Verdugo de Motecuzoma Xocoyatzin
. “What's this say?” I asked, pointing.

“That is the infamous description of El Verdugo. It was in the original inventory sent to the King by Cortés. Let me translate it for you.” He took the book. “‘Blade handle,'” he translated. “‘Solid gold, with channel for insertion of itzli blade—'”

“What's that?”

“The itzli blade is a sharp knife the Aztec craftsmen made from volcanic stone. It was as hard as steel and honed sharp as a razor.” He returned to the text. “‘With channel for insertion of itzli blade—sprinkled with emeralds and pearls—in shape of erect organ of generation—said to be cast from Montezuma—used in Tezcatlipoca rituals.'” He looked up. “Some of the words are archaic, but that's a close translation.”

“This El Verdugo thing, it's a blade handle?”

“Exactly.”

“In the shape of…Montezuma's penis?” I asked, my face reddening. It seemed kind of ridiculous.

“Correction: in the shape of his erection. Indeed, purportedly cast from his erection. Think of it, Rachel. In their religion, he was a god. El Verdugo was the symbol of the power and the glory of the Aztec empire. It is a truly magnificent specimen. Whether cast directly from Montezuma's genitals or from the sculptor's imagination, it is a most extraordinary link with one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen. The ultimate phallic symbol.”

I shook my head in amazement. Wait until Benny heard. “You said this thing was used in a ritual?” I asked.

“The Tezcatlipoca rituals,” Panzer responded.

“Which are what?”

He stood and turned to his bookshelves. “Tezcatlipoca was an Aztec god. I have a lithograph of the Aztec sacrificial rituals.” He pulled another book off the shelf. “Human sacrifices played a central role in the Aztec religion,” he said as he paged through the book. “By the time of Cortés, there were close to fifty thousand sacrifices a year. Most were awful, primal death orgies. Cortés himself wrote that the temple walls were splashed and encrusted with dried blood, and that the stench was horrendous. But not so at the Tezcatlipoca pyramid, which was located on the grounds of the royal palace. Ah, here we go.”

He turned the volume toward me. It was a series of lithographs of a ritual Aztec sacrifice. I stared at the pictures as Panzer continued the tale.

According to eyewitness reports by one of Cortéz's men, Panzer explained, the victim at Tezcatlipoca was always a magnificently handsome young man, clothed only in a gold and green gown. In a solemn procession, he was led up to the top of the pyramid, where he was received by five priests. They removed the victim's gown and turned him naked toward the crowd below. The priests wore sable robes covered with hieroglyphics. Their hair was long and matted, like dreadlocks.

The sacrificial stone was a huge block of jasper with a slightly arched upper surface. The five waiting priests placed the naked victim in the middle of the stone and held him down by his head, arms, and legs. The convex surface of the sacrificial stone thrust the victim's chest upward.

As the five priests recited the ritual chants, their long hair swaying over the victim, a sixth priest emerged from the temple. He wore a robe made of scarlet feathers, with a hood that shrouded his features. When the chanting reached its climax, the sixth priest raised his itzli dagger toward the sun, and, with an expert downward thrust, he sliced open the chest of the victim. In a quick motion, he shoved his other hand into the opening and tore out the heart; the victim's body heaved and shuddered in its death spasms, blood spraying from the open chest. As the spectators roared in ecstasy, the red-shrouded priest held the still-pulsing organ to the sun for a long moment, and then cast it on the ground, where it rolled and bounced down the stairs of the pyramid.

“Later that evening,” Panzer added with a cold smile, “the corpse would be served at a banquet hosted by Montezuma himself.”

“He ate human flesh?”

“Oh, yes. According to Cortés' men, the Emperor Montezuma was particularly fond of one delicacy his chefs prepared: a stew made with the fingers of the little boys who were occasionally sacrificed to another deity.”

I sank back in my chair, nauseated, as Panzer continued the tale.

Although the red-shrouded executioner at the Tezcatlipoca sacrifices was generally the highest ranking priest, Cortés himself was an eyewitness on at least three occasions when Montezuma emerged as the sixth priest. The Aztec emperor's tall, slender carriage and long, spare face were easily identifiable, even beneath the scarlet robe and hood. He wielded his unique itzli dagger with the skill of an experienced priest—which in fact he was, having spent his youth in the priesthood.

And thus, El Verdugo, cast from Montezuma's genitals and linked by his own hand to the human sacrifices and cannibalism that so titillated and repulsed the courtiers of Charles V, became the most talked of treasure among the Spanish royalty awaiting the return of Cortés. “El Verdugo was even mentioned in the diary of one of the king's mistresses,” Panzer added. “When reports of the vanished treasures crossed the Atlantic, the disappointment among the courtiers was keen.”

Cortés returned to Spain two decades later. By then, El Verdugo had been forgotten. Cortés, who began his career as a lawyer, ended as a frustrated litigant before the Court of Charles V, seeking a declaration of his rights in the land he had discovered.

By this point in the story, Panzer had pulled down a book by someone named Prescott. He read an excerpt:

“‘Cortés lingered at court from week to week and month to month, beguiled by the deceitful hopes of the litigant, tasting all the bitterness of the soul which arises from hope deferred.'” Panzer looked up from the book. “Some things never change.”

The lawsuit dragged on for seven years, finally terminating in Cortés' death in 1547. As for El Verdugo, rumors of its existence remained unconfirmed until 1719.

“Yet another lawyer entered the fray,” Panzer explained. “His name was Giovanni Francesco Gamelli Careri.”

I sat upright. “Who?”

Panzer paused, taken aback by the tone of my voice. “Giovanni Francesco Gamelli Careri.” He gave it a rich Italian pronunciation, trilling the
r
's. “You are familiar with his works?”

“No,” I said after a moment. “Just the name.” I flipped back through my legal pad to my notes from my morning meeting with Mouse Aloni. “Go on,” I said to Panzer.

Careri was a Neapolitan lawyer, Panzer explained. In the early 1700s, he gave up his practice and left his home to travel around the world. The trip took him eighty months, including almost a year in Mexico.

Careri wrote of his travels in a five-volume book entitled
Giro del Mondo
. Published in 1719, it included the most detailed description of Mexico to reach the outside world. Incredulous readers of Careri's descriptions of Aztec ruins included Oliver Goldsmith and Adam Smith, Panzer said. Smith labeled Careri a fraud who had written “nothing more than a work of fiction from his study in Naples.” Not until the nineteenth century would explorations of Mexico confirm the truth of Careri's account of the Aztec ruins.

“How does Careri fit in?” I asked.

“He was the first European after Cortés to actually see El Verdugo. Indeed, he was the first European to actually hold it in his hands.”

Careri arrived in Mexico in 1699, Panzer explained. There he met Don Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, a sad-eyed priest in his fifties. Gongora was the chaplain at the Hospital del Amor de Dios, an infirmary devoted to treating Indians suffering from bubas. He was also an amateur archeologist with a passionate curiosity about Mexico before the arrival of Cortés. The Indians loved Gongora, and responded to his interest in their heritage by bringing him manuscripts, paintings, and treasures that had been hidden from the Spaniards during the siege of Cortés back in 1521.

The traveling attorney cultivated Father Gongora, who took him to view Aztec ruins, translated manuscripts from the time of Montezuma, and permitted him to view the Aztec treasures he had received as gifts over the years from his grateful Indians.

Careri's accounts of his travels with Father Gongora drew derision from Goldsmith and other incredulous readers, Panzer told me. But because everything about the Aztecs seemed so unbelievably fantastic, most of the derision was aimed at the big, easy targets—such as Careri's descriptions of the Moon Pyramid of San Juan Teotihuacan and the huge statue of Tonacatechuhtli on the summit of the Sun Pyramid.

“As a result,” Panzer said, “no one paid attention to Careri's description of a much smaller treasure.” He had pulled volume four of the English translation of Careri's
Giro del Mondo
off the shelf. “It's here on page 197. Read it for yourself, Rachel.” He leaned across the desk to hand me the open book.

The pertinent text was marked with a yellow marker pen:

Don Gongora then brought out a most remarkable piece of craftsmanship. It was gold and encrusted with jewels, and it was in the unmistakable shape of that part of the body which is between a man's legs. It rested upright, like a miniature obelisk. At the apex of the object was an opening, not round as in nature but narrow and rectangular.

Don Gongora explained that this extraordinary object, through which a blade could be inserted, had been, according to Aztec legend, cast from the generative organs of Montezuma II and was occasionally used by the last Aztec emperor of Mexico in barbarous ceremonies atop a pyramid near the palace. For that reason, Don Gongora told me, the Indians call this sculpture Montezuma's Executor.

“Remarkable, is it not?” Panzer said when I looked up from the text.

I nodded, glancing down at the text again. “Executioner or Executor?”

“Good eyes, Rachel. Only a lawyer would have spotted that on the first reading. The word ‘Executor' appeared for the very first time in this English translation. Either an error in translation or in typesetting. It began as a mistake but has gradually become the rule. The error was not discovered until the 1960s, when a scholar went back to the original Italian text. By then it was too late. The most influential scholarly journals on pre-Columbian art are published in English. As a result, El Verdugo has become Montezuma's Executor.”

The strange tale had me enthralled. “What happened next?”

“Father Gongora died in 1719,” Panzer said, “the year the first volume of Careri's work appeared.”

The Jesuits in Mexico City salvaged most of Gongora's Aztec manuscripts, paintings, and treasures, including, according to church records, a gold object described as a “bejeweled dagger handle of obscene design, used in ritual executions.” However, when the Jesuit order was thrown out of Mexico a few decades later, Father Gongora's Aztec artifacts and treasures were not on the bills of lading of the items shipped across the Atlantic Ocean.

“It would appear, however, that El Verdugo had left Mexico years before the Jesuits did, for it made its next appearance in the journal of Fra Carlo Lodali of Venice.”

“Who was that?”

“A wealthy and eccentric cleric,” Panzer answered. “One of the most fascinating art collectors of all time. He was a pack rat, a man who spent the last two decades of his life acquiring art the way junk collectors acquire junk.”

By now, Panzer had an entire file of papers in front of him, which he had removed from a locked file drawer. He leafed through them as he spoke. “Fra Carlo Lodali frequented pawn shops, he cultivated rag collectors, he wined and dined ship captains on shore leave. He viewed them all as potential sources of objects to add to his extraordinary collection. During his final years the man purchased an absolutely phenomenal quantity of objects—some of it outright junk, some priceless works of art.”