Malinche (16 page)

Cortés left Tenochtitlán headed for Cempoallan, where Narváez had established camp. On arriving there, he found out that Narváez was taking cover in the great temple of that city. Since Cortés knew the place well, he decided to attack at night, when he was least expected. A tropical storm appeared to change his plans, but in fact the opposite occurred. He decided to attack like the rain, unexpected and untimely. He sent eighty men into the great temple and left the rest of his army, Malinalli, the horses, and provisions on the outskirts of Cempoallan.

For Malinalli, it was a tempestuous night, by all accounts. That day she had begun to menstruate. The horses sensed it and were restless. She had to move far away from them and the men to wash her bloodstained clothes so that the horses would not become anxious. Malinalli thought that it was more likely that the Moon and not the Sun fed on blood, the blood of menstruating women, because she had noticed that each time that she menstruated the Moon was full, and so she discovered the lunar cycle was exactly the same as the menstruating cycle. The light of the Moon spread the blood in her intimate spaces. The light of the Moon—the light that would shine over victory or tragedy that night, abundance or defeat, ecstasy or death; the silver light that controlled the seas, that brought to life all the liquids in the body so that they could sing a bloody hymn to the beginning of new life, to regenerate her—this was the only one that could become her ally.

She offered her blood to the Moon, so that this night she would be with Cortés, despite the fact that she was hidden behind gray clouds. Malinalli did not want to think about what would happen to her if he was defeated. And so it seemed that the Moon had listened to her and received her offer; had contemplated the ecstasy of her liquids and responded favorably. That May night, Cortés caught Narváez by surprise and defeated him soundly even though his combined forces were less than three hundred men against the eight hundred commanded by Narváez, the majority of whom, after the battle, allied themselves with Cortés, amazed by the stories that they heard about Tenochtitlán, where there was gold for everyone.

But Cortés did not have time to celebrate his victory, for he received news that there was a Mexica uprising in Tenochtitlán, in response to a massacre conducted by Pedro de Alvarado in the great temple.

A
fter that night and Seven for many nights later, Malinalli could not sleep. She was tormented by the images of a massacre that she had not seen. Ever since she was a girl she had developed a technique for falling asleep, which consisted of closing her eyes and painting a codex in her mind. When faces, figures, glyphs, signs began to appear in her mind, she knew that she was already in the land of dreams, in the fantastic universe that belonged to her alone. That place was where she came upon her most luminous thoughts, but also her most horrifying ones.

After listening to the story about what had happened in Tenochtitlán in her absence, images came into her head as soon as she shut her eyes. Heads, legs, arms, noses, and ears flying through the air. Although she had not witnessed the killings in the Great Temple, she had Cholula as a precedent, so with utmost clarity her mind reproduced the sounds of flesh tearing, the screaming, the weeping, the explosion of harquebuses, the sound of bells on the ankles of fleeing people trying to scale the walls. Malinalli felt a shuddering in the center of her body and she opened her eyes. This would happen various times until, exhausted, she would be conquered by sleep.

Then came the worst part. A repeating dream imprisoned her mind. At the beginning of the nightmare, Malinalli was a butterfly held aloft by the wind, who observed the dancing Mexica nobles and warriors from high above. She saw how they gave themselves to the dance, concentrating, entering a state of religious exaltation. From the center of the circle in which they danced, a pillar of light rose and united the sky with the earth and cast a powerful yellow light over the dancers, who were adorned in their finest costumes, their finest feathers, their finest hides. But suddenly, a shower of bullets fell over them, piercing their chests, and their bleeding hearts turned into stone and rose to the heavens. In her nightmare, Malinalli spoke.

“Hearts of stone can also fly.”

On saying this, a fascinating and terrifying image captured her attention. The stone carving of the mutilated body of the goddess Coyolxauhqui—who was sister to the god Huitzilopochtli, and who had died torn to pieces when she tried to prevent the birth of her brother from the womb of his mother, Coatlicue—came to life. She abandoned her stillness to bring together her mutilated parts; the fragments of the legs and the arms that had been separated reunited with the torso and the stone turned to flesh and the sculpture became a living thing.

“When stone turns to flesh, the heart turns to stone.”

As if Malinalli had called them, some of the hearts of stone approached her face and burst into a thousand pieces, spitting streams of blood; others fell like hail and pummeled Montezuma, burying him. Malinalli's butterfly wings were bathed in blood and became heavy. Unable to fly, she fell noisily to the ground. Malinalli, having then turned into one of the dancers, tried to flee from the shotguns and the shower of stone hearts, stepping over the dismembered to scale the walls, but the blood dripping from the stones made that impossible. Her feet and hands slipped and made her fall. At that moment, she wanted to scream, to plead to heaven for help, but no voice came from her throat. Turning her face, she saw a rain of stone hearts fall on Montezuma until he was buried under them, and then a rain of swords was directed at Malinalli's chest, piercing her heart in countless spots, from which beautiful bloody feathers emerged. At this point, Malinalli opened her eyes, out of breath and full of tears.

It did no good to open her eyes. The nightmare continued. Malinalli walked without walking, saw without seeing, spoke without speaking, was there and was not there. She lived through the dramatic events of the killings without having seen them, heard them, or registered them in her memory. She had no space in her mind for the present because the images of the past, images of horror, took up all the room.

She experienced the return to Tenochtitlán as in a dream. They returned through Lake Texcoco, their canoe sliding smoothly through its waters. This time there was no welcome, no escort of nobles awaiting them, for the majority of them were dead. It had been a month since the massacre in the Great Temple and the smell of death still lingered in the air. As they made their way into the city, Malinalli's heartbeat grew faster as sorrow ran through her veins. To calm herself, she closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing. She did not want to see the signs of the calamity.

When they arrived at the place of Axayácatl, Cortés went directly to Pedro de Alvarado to ask for explanations. He had left him in charge because he had thought that he would be able to handle the Tenochans, who looked on him as a representation of Tonatiuh, the God of the Sun. When they addressed him they did not use his name but instead called him “Sun.” Cortés had not counted on the fact that the responsibility he entrusted the man with would be more than he could handle. The fear of losing control had caused him to organize the massacre.

It was true that ever since the Spaniards arrived, the proud Tenochans looked on them with suspicion. They did not understand the actions of their governor Montezuma. As a ruler, he had distinguished himself for his valor, his wisdom, his intense religiosity, and his firm hand in controlling the empire. Confronted with the Spaniards, however, he proved to be weak and submissive, which did not cease to amaze the Tenochans. People in the street asked themselves if Montezuma had lost his mind, if Tenochtitlán was without a head, without a leader. It did not take long for a resistance movement to arise, headed by the lords Cacama of Tezcoco, Cuitláhuac of Iztapalapa, and Cuauhtémoc, Ahuizotl's son. From this perspective, it seemed logical that Pedro de Alvarado, fearing an insurrection that he could not control with the few men that he had been left with, decided to murder the finest warriors and most distinguished nobles who had participated in the celebrations.

The massacre provoked the feared insurrection. Cortés asked Montezuma to speak to his people from the roof garden of his palace to pacify them, but the governor was not well received by the people. The Tenochans, enraged, hurled insults and stones at him. Montezuma was hit three times. The Spanish said that this had been the cause of his death, but according to the testimony of the natives, he was assassinated by the Spaniards themselves.

Malinalli did not enter the game of explanations. She did not say anything. The effect of having been the last one to have looked into the emperor's eyes before they took him to his quarters kept her living in a time that wasn't the present. She asked herself if her nightmare was part of reality or reality part of her nightmare. And where was she anyway? Without knowing it, she saw how the Mexicas elected Cuitláhuac, Montezuma's brother, as the new emperor, who immediately organized his people to confront Cortés and his men. He did it so well that he forced the Spanish to initiate a retreat. They decided to flee at night, when the city was peaceful, so that they could take with them all the treasures that they had accumulated.

The only time that Malinalli reacted and placed herself in the present moment was when they were fleeing. The Tenochans were chasing them. One of their arrows wounded the horse that had always been her ally, the one who had been with her during the baptism, at the massacre in Cholula, in the battle against Pánfilo de Narváez; her eternal and unconditional friend. When Malinalli saw him fall wounded, time stopped. The sounds of the battle froze in the air. She could not hear anything. Everything that surrounded her disappeared from her field of vision. Only the horse existed, only the horse was dying. Malinalli felt a profound sorrow. She did not want to leave him there fallen and suffering. She embraced him and in his eyes saw fear, pain, suffering. Immediately it brought to mind Montezuma's eyes after he had been wounded by the stones. There was kindness in those eyes. There was greatness. There was elegance. Malinalli forcefully grabbed the cudgel she was using to fight the Tenochans and delivered a mortal blow to the horse's head. Then she pulled out a blade and in a fit of madness cut off its head. She wanted to take it with her, to honor it as it deserved. She did not want it to be a feast for worms. She was so wound up in her task, that she lost sight that she was still fleeing, that the battle continued, that her life was in danger. Juan Jaramillo was the one who noticed a Tenochan grab Malinalli by the hair, about to behead her. Jaramillo fired his harquebus and killed him, then ran and took hold of Malinalli, who was still cutting the horse's head off, and dragged her to the outskirts of the city, where they sat to lament their defeat. Malinalli, again absent, remained with her head on the shoulder offered by Jaramillo. He had displayed great strength and courage that night. Malinalli regretted not having made off with the horse's head; Cortés, with all of his treasures.

The defeated Cortés took up refuge in Tlaxcala, where he recovered and gathered his strength. Meanwhile, an epidemic of smallpox, brought over by the Cuban slaves that had arrived with the Spanish, ravaged the people. One of the victims was the emperor Cuitláhuac himself, who perished from it.

Then Montezuma's cousin, the young Cuauhtémoc, took the throne. One of his first actions was to order the execution of six of Montezuma's sons who were attempting to yield to the Spaniards. In spite of the epidemic, he gave orders and took measures for the defense of the city. He knew that Cortés, supported by the Tlaxcaltecans, was preparing a new invasion of Tenochtitlán.

Cortés had thirteen ships built to seize the city from the lakes surrounding it. Warriors from Cholula, Huexotzingo, and Chalco joined him. According to his calculations he would be able to bring together more than seventy-five thousand men.

Cuauhtémoc confronted the Spaniards by attacking them from the rooftops as they passed through the streets. Cortés ordered all houses destroyed, and so began the devastation of the city.

In one of his campaigns, Cortés was able to reach the Great Temple, but the Mexicas attacked him from the rear and were able to capture more than fifty Spanish soldiers. That night, from their camp, the Spaniards heard the hymn of triumph, and knew that the captured soldiers had been sacrificed in the Great Temple itself.

Cortés decided to lay siege to the city, taking hold of the roads that connected it to the mainland, while controlling access by water with the ships and canoes of his allies. At the same time, he had the aqueducts of Chapultepec, which provided Tenochtitlán with fresh water, destroyed. He intended to make them surrender from thirst and hunger.

The Tenochans resisted in Tlatelolco. It was in the market, in the heart of the empire, that the final blow was dealt to the people of Tenochtitlán. There had been so many deaths from smallpox and hunger that the Spanish were finally able to overcome them. The day of the fall, they killed and captured over forty thousand natives, amid a loud chorus of screaming and weeping.

Cuauhtémoc tried to flee, but was captured and brought before Cortés.

“Lord Malinche,” he said when in his presence, “I have done my duty in defense of my city and vassals and I cannot go on. So I come by force, a prisoner before your person and power. Take that knife from your belt and kill me with it.”

Cortés did not kill him, but instead took him prisoner, having his feet burned until he would reveal where the gold was hidden, the gold that his troops had lost during their flight on the Sorrowful Night.

When Cortés went to Hibueras, he took the emperor with him. A Tlatelolcan in the expedition accused Cuauhtémoc of planning an insurrection against Cortés. Cortés then, after having christened the emperor with the name Fernando, ordered that he be hanged from a great ceiba, the sacred tree of the Mayans, in a place near Tabasco.