Malinche (17 page)

There was no wind. The sun was hidden behind thick gloomy gray clouds, appearing like a dull, weak moon that struggled to remain in the sky behind the smoke that rose from the funeral pyres. It could be stared at without its rays causing harm. It had lost its brilliance and with that, the ability to see its reflection in the lakes and canals of the Valley of Anáhuac, whose dark turbid waters were soiled with blood.

The zoological garden in Montezuma's palace was empty. There were no animals. Nothing was left of the beauty and elegance of the empire.

In the ovens, the countless customary dishes for Montezuma were no longer being cooked.

The craftsmen who made jewels and clothes for the emperor were dead or had fled.

The silence was interrupted by the cries, the weeping of Cihuacóatl/Tonantzin, the snake woman known as “Our Mother.”

And the fate of Cuauhtémoc passed in a whisper from mouth to mouth.

“Today our sun has been concealed; our sun has gone hiding and left us in complete darkness. We know that one day it will again shine over us. But as long as it remains hidden there in Mictlán, we should join together during this long night of this our sun of consciousness, which is the fifth sun, and we will do so by concealing in our hearts all that is dear to us: our way of speaking and rearing our children, our way of organizing and coexisting, and in so doing come to the aid of one another.

“We will conceal our Teocaltin (temples), our Calmecameh (schools of higher learning), our Tlachcohuan (ball games), our Telpochcaltin (schools for the young), and our Cuicacaltin (hymn houses), and leave the streets deserted to lock ourselves in our homes.

“From this day forth, our homes will be our Teocaltin, our Calmecameh, our Tlachcohuan, our Telpochcaltin, and our Cuicacaltin.

“From this day forth, until the day the new sun rises, the fathers and mothers will be the teachers and guides who while they live will lead their children by the hand. May the fathers and mothers never forget to tell their children what the Anáhuac has been to this day, under the protection of the Lord of All Things, our Lord Ometeotl—Ometecuhtli, and resulting from the customs and teachings that our elders instilled in our parents, and that with such great effort they in turn instilled in us. Also never forget to tell your children what one day this Anáhuac will be again; that after this long night the sixth sun, the sun of justice, will rise.”

Malinalli asked herself what she had done wrong. Where had she failed? Why hadn't she been granted the privilege of helping her people? Just as Cortés had been the answer to Montezuma's fears, and the gold obtained, to Cortés's ambition, she wanted to know what end was fulfilled by Tenochtitlán's destruction. The wishes of the Tlaxcaltecans? Of the gods? A necessity of the universe? To a cycle of life of death? She did not know at all. The only thing that she was certain of was that she hadn't been able to save anything.

Malinalli thought about her grandmother, about how fortunate she had been not to see the destruction of her world, her gods. Malinalli was confused. She felt guilty and responsible for what had happened. To justify herself, she thought that perhaps what was dying was not dying at all; that it was clear from the human sacrifices that the only thing that died on the stone was the body, the shell, but in exchange for the liberation of the spirit. The lives of the sacrificed belonged to the gods and to them they returned when sacrificed; the priests did not destroy anything, for the life that they freed from the prison of the body continued its destiny in the heavens in order to feed the Sun. Her emotional well-being depended on accepting all this as certain, but she did and did not agree, believed and did not believe.

If she looked around her, everything spoke of an eternal cycle of life and death. The flowers died and became fertilizer for other flowers. The fish, the birds, the plants nourished each other. Yes, but she was convinced that Quetzalcóatl had come to this world to proclaim that the gods did not feed on the blood of the sacrificed, but rather, on their thoughts and intentions. That the dream of mankind was the apprenticeship of the gods and the apprenticeship of mankind was the eternal thought of the gods. And that the gods fed off their own essence, from the soul they had created. This was not accomplished through physical death, but through the medium of the word. When one prayed, when one named the gods, nourished them, honored them, returned to them the life that they had given us at birth.

The warriors believed that the body is what maintains the soul prisoner. Whoever controlled the body was the owner of the spirit it sheltered. That was one of the beliefs that had worked against the Mexicas. In their first confrontations with the Spaniards, they were surprised to see that their intention was the annihilation of the enemy, and not the capture. Their own great forces of war functioned in completely the opposite way. The Mexicas believed that a good warrior should capture the enemy. If he did so, he became a sort of god, for the control of the body gave him access to the control of the spirit. That is why they did not kill in the battlefield, but took prisoners. If they killed their enemies, they immediately liberated the spirit and that was a defeat, not a victory. Capturing them to later sacrifice them before their gods was what gave their deaths meaning.

Malinalli agreed only in the sense that life was defended not by struggling to save a body from death, but its spirit. Only if the idea of death did not exist, could she understand eternity, and from that perspective she had not acted wrongly. The only thing she had wanted was to save the spirit of Quetzalcóatl, which the Mexicas had kept imprisoned for so long through the practice of human sacrifices; to free it from its captors and allow it to purify itself and be reborn to men, completely renewed. But who was she for such lofty ambitions? Could she really decide what should live and what should die? At least she was sure that in her own self she could, and there Quetzalcóatl's spirit was more alive than ever. The Spaniards could not destroy it because they could not even perceive it. They had only destroyed what they could see and touch. The rest was intact.

Malinalli embroidered feathers on a cape she had made for her son, with feathers that she had saved from the palace of Montezuma; with cotton that she had found in what had been the market of Tlatelolco; with jade stones and sea shells that Cortés had given her because for him they held no value. It was a cape for a prince. That's how Malinalli wanted him to appear on the day of his baptism. He had been born a week before, in a house in Coyoacán, where she lived with Cortés. She gave birth to him as her mother had given birth to her, squatting. Except that she did not have a bathhouse, or a midwife, or a burial for the umbilical cord in the field of battle so that the boy would become a warrior. That was fine with Malinalli. She did not want her son to kill. She was tired of the dead. Cortés's eyes were also sick of looking at death, so many mutilated bodies, so much destruction. His arms were tired of taking up the sword, of cutting, of severing. That is why, months before, they had gone to live in Coyoacán and seek rest. They both yearned to rest.

Nevertheless, Cortés was not a man who could live in repose. If he was not planning strategies of attack or defense, he felt as if time was getting away from him. The worst was that when he had time to think on his own, feelings of guilt assaulted him. He did not know if it had been the right thing to demolish so many pyramids, burn so many codices. His justification was that there had been no choice, that he had done it defending life, but sometimes he asked himself for what. Before him he had the opportunity to create everything anew. He had destroyed everything to create everything. But what? He could design plans for new cities, distribute lands, approve laws, but deep down—very deep down—he knew that life continued to be a mystery. It didn't belong to him. He could destroy it but not create it. That made all the difference. In other words, he was not a god.

Suddenly he had been overcome with the desire to create a life and had sought out Malinalli to do it.

When Malinalli became pregnant she felt complete, happy. She knew that in her womb there was beating the heart of a being that would unite two worlds. The blood of Moors and Christians with that of the Indians, that pure, unmixed race.

During her pregnancy, when she did not know whether she would have a boy or a girl, she wove blankets from
malinalli
fiber in a loom. Malinalli braided
malinalli.
The “Braided Grass” prepared the warp of her fabric, weaving the grass. She was going to dress her child with all her being. he was going to cover it like the shell that covers the seed in order to reverse the process taking place in her womb. Malinalli knew that just as every plant fulfilled the cycle of being sown, sprouting, flowering, and death, always going from darkness toward the light, likewise within her a seed was germinating that would come out into the light. The seed of a plant, in order to germinate, had to cast off the shell that was covering it. She wondered if that was why priests who sacrificed prisoners flayed them and then wore their skin. The seed loses everything to gain everything. It loses its shell to become a plant, which is in turn everything, earth, water, sun, and wind. But when her child came out of the womb, she wanted to continue to cover it and that is why she made blankets of
malinalli
.

When the boy was born, Cortés celebrated for three days. It was his firstborn, a male child. Now he had an heir, someone to perpetuate his name. But a black thought tarnished his joy, that his son was a son born outside of wedlock, and moreover, from a slave. His son would not be well looked upon in the court of Spain. His son was a mestizo. To complicate matters, his wife, Catalina Xuárez, had arrived in Mexico. From the very first day, she made great effort to ruin whatever satisfaction remained in Cortés.

Catalina had not been able to give him children and was terribly jealous of Malinalli and her child. Cortés, attempting to please her, organized a welcoming party. During the feast, Catalina pursued Cortés everywhere, not to enjoy his company, but to argue. The quarrel grew so loud that most of the guests decided to leave early. Cortés and Catalina continued arguing in their bedroom.

The day after, while Malinalli nursed her son, she was told by one of the servants that Catalina had been found dead that morning. A servant woman had found her in bed, dressed in the same clothes that she had worn to the party. There were bruises on her neck. Her pearl necklace had been torn off and the bed urinated on. The rumor of a possible murder spread all over.

One of the things that most affected Malinalli was that the necklace had been torn off. Someone had disconnected Catalina from the necklace of creation.

The starry infinite night watched over Cortés and Malinalli. hey were sitting around a bonfire, surrounded by soldiers who ate in silence. In the field, there were various fires that were reflected in the stars. Malinalli watched Cortés, who was looking all around, now at the sky, now at the fire, now at the ground. From the day that she had watched him cleaning his weapons and sharpening his sword, she knew that an obsidian wind was threatening her. She knew perfectly well how he was the father of her son, how his blood had been re-created in her entrails. She thought that she had always known him; he was so familiar, so near, that she accepted him as part of her destiny, as if he had been born from her own womb, as if he had been born to listen to her tongue, as if he had been born to injure her heart. On noticing Cortés's restless gazing, she easily discovered in it a permanent dissatisfaction, a constant disappointment, as if the only thing that could bring him satisfaction and pleasure was the act of conquering. Not the goals achieved. Not the victories. Not the infinite power he possessed.

“This man is insatiable,” she told herself. “It seems that the only thing that awakens him to life is death. The only thing that gives him joy is blood, the urge to destroy, to break apart, to tear, to transform.”

She felt pity for him and for the first time had compassion for this obsessive and terrible man. She felt it a shame that he could not be at peace. They were on the way to Hibueras, with plans of conquest, and Malinalli was afraid that if he was successful his desire for conquest would grow and he would go mad wanting more and more. She imagined that there would never be any rest.