Tlaloc

The story

That year the rain was late.

The dry season was nearly over, and the lake grew smaller every day. Around the huts the earth was as hard as a broken pot and split into a thousand thin lines. The maize, sown in a hurry in the hope of rain, put up low yellow leaves that promised nothing good.

Every morning the girl looked at the sky. It was always the same: blue, empty, unmoved.

“Why doesn't it rain?” she asked her grandfather, who was sitting on the low wall with his hands on his knees.

Her grandfather did not answer straight away. He looked at the distant mountains, where the clouds usually piled up at that time of year.

“Because Tlaloc is thinking,” he said. “And when Tlaloc is thinking, you have to be patient.”

“Who is Tlaloc?”

Her grandfather smiled. It was the question he had been waiting for all morning, and his eyes lit up like a boy's.

“Sit down. I'll tell you the way people who know tell it.”

“Rain,” he began, “does not fall out of nowhere. It has a home. A huge home, hidden at the top of the mountains, where the peaks touch the sky. That is where Tlaloc lives, the Lord of Rain. If you met him, you would know him at once: his face is blue, and around his eyes he has two big rings, like goggles made of serpents. Fangs stick out of his mouth. He looks frightening, but he is not wicked. He feeds every field.”

“And the house?”

“The house has four courtyards. In every courtyard there are great clay jars, filled with water to the brim. And next to the jars live Tlaloc's helpers, the tlaloque. There are lots of them, and they are small. They run up and down the mountains, each of them has a stick, and they have only one job.”

“To break the jars?”

“Exactly. When Tlaloc gives the signal, a tlaloque raises his stick and strikes a jar. The jar cracks with a tremendous noise. That noise, my girl, is thunder. And the water that pours out is rain, which runs down the mountain all the way to our fields. Lightning, say the oldest people in the village, is the light of the shards flying off.”

The girl looked at the sky again, with different eyes now. It seemed to her that the blue had a bottom, and that behind it there was someone, somewhere, holding a stick.

“But then why doesn't he break the jars?”

“Because the jars are not all the same.” Her grandfather lowered his voice. “The one in the first courtyard holds the good water, the kind that makes the maize grow. The other three are something else. One holds water that rots the ears of maize. One holds water that brings frost. And one holds water that falls, and yet the maize still dries up. Everything depends on which jar is broken. And that is why, when Tlaloc is in a bad mood, we must go to him with respect.”

“How?”

“We bring him gifts, and we sing for him. Up in the mountains there are places where people call on him. During the festivals of his month, people climb up to bring him green feathers, jade, maize and flowers, and they tell him: we know it is you, we know everything depends on you. It is nothing to be afraid of. It is like knocking on the door of the one who feeds you.”

It was an afternoon without wind. Flies buzzed over the wall, and neither of them could be bothered to shoo them away. Far off, at the edge of the lake, a bird began to call, then stopped suddenly, as if it had realised that no one had summoned it.

“And what about people who die in the water?” asked the girl, who had sometimes heard talk of boats turning over and fishermen who never came home.

“They belong to Tlaloc too,” said her grandfather gently. “Whoever drowns, or is struck by lightning, does not go where the other dead go, into the darkness of Mictlan. Tlaloc calls them to himself. He takes them to Tlalocan, his garden. It is a place where it is always summer, where nothing is ever lacking, where the maize grows as tall as a house and the squashes are as big as oxen, and the flowers never wither. That is why lightning is not only something to weep for. Lightning is a call.”

The girl was quiet for a long time.

“So you shouldn't be afraid of storms?”

“A little fear is right,” said her grandfather. “A storm is a great thing. But the greatest fear is when the storm does not come.”

As if it had heard, at that very moment something stirred, far away, above the mountains.

It was a flash of lightning, a white thread in the middle of the grey. Then a silence, as long as a breath. Then a dull rumble, which seemed to roll along the floor of the sky like a great clay jar breaking.

The girl jumped.

“Did you hear that?” whispered her grandfather, and for the first time it was his eyes that were shining with tears. “They've started.”

The wind came first, bringing the smell of wet earth that you notice before the water falls. The maize leaves lifted all together, as if they were waking up. Then the first drops, as wide as coins, drummed on the wall, on the dust, on the girl's open hands.

Her grandfather took off his cloak and held it over her, laughing. From the lake, far away, someone shouted: “It's raining! It's raining!”

And down the streets, one after another, everyone came out to welcome the water.

Many years later, in Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs built the Templo Mayor, the great pyramid of their city. At the top it had two twin temples, side by side. One was for Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. The other was for Tlaloc, and archaeologists say it was painted blue and white, like water and clouds. So every time someone climbed the staircase, the two greatest gifts the Aztecs could ask for, victory and rain, stood next to each other.

And still today, among the ruins of that temple in the centre of Mexico City, when a storm comes the stones grow wet and dark, and those who look at them like to think that, for a moment, they turn blue again, as they were long ago.