Malinche (5 page)

“Memory,” she told the girl, “is seeing things from the inside. It gives shape and color to words. Without images, there is no memory.”

Afterward, she would ask the child to draw on a piece of parchment a codex, a sequence of images that narrate an event. It could be real or made up. The girl spent long hours drawing and at night, the grandmother would ask her to narrate her codex before going to sleep. This is how they played together. The grandmother greatly enjoyed the intelligence and creativity with which her granddaughter elaborated on the images she had made on the parchment.

Malinalli never imagined that her grandmother was blind. She thought her grandmother behaved normally and spoke beautifully. The tone of her grandmother's voice caressed her ears and made her feel an enormous joy. It could even be said that Malinalli was in love with her grandmother's eyes and with the sound of her voice. When the grandmother told a story, Malinalli watched her grandmother's eyes with an unbridled curiosity, for she saw there a beauty that she had not seen in any other person. What most attracted her was that her grandmother's eyes lit up only when she spoke. When the grandmother was silent, her eyes lost all their vivacity, they faded out. It was only by accident that Malinalli discovered that this happened because her grandmother could not see.

One afternoon, when the grandmother was resting in the back of the house, Malinalli, without making a sound, approached her grandmother carrying a small bird cupped in her hands.

“Grandma, see how it suffers?”

“What suffers?” the grandmother asked.

“Can't you see it here in my hands? It's hurt and I want to heal it.”

“No, I can't see it. Where is it hurt?”

“One of its wings.”

The grandmother reached out her hands and Malinalli put the small bird in them. For Malinalli it was a great surprise to watch her grandmother try to find the bird's injury by touch.

“Citli, how can it be that you who see everything, see nothing? If your eyes don't see colors, don't see my eyes, don't see my face, don't see my codices, what is it that they see?”

“I see what is behind things,” the grandmother answered. “I can't see your face, but I know that you are beautiful; I can't see your outside, but I can describe your soul. I have never seen your codices, but I have seen them through your words. I can see all the things that I believe in. I can see why we are here and where we will go when our games end.”

Malinalli began to weep silently.

“Why are you crying?” the grandmother said.

“I'm crying because I can see that you do not need your eyes to look or to be happy,” she answered. “And I'm crying because I don't want you to go.”

The grandmother tenderly took her into her arms. “I will never leave you. Every time that you see a bird in flight, there I'll be. In the form of the trees, there I'll be. In the mountains, the volcanoes, the cornfields, there I'll be. And, above all things, each time that it rains I will be near you. In the rain we will always be together. And don't worry about me, I went blind because I was disturbed at how the appearances of things would confuse me and not allow me to see their essence. I went blind to return to the truth. It was my own decision, and I am happy with what I now see.”

The sun had risen. That morning the light was more fluid and the clouds sketched fantastic animals in the sky. Malinalli, accompanied by the memory of her grandmother, stopped her work at the grinding stone to light the fire that would heat the
comal,
the clay dish where the corn flour would become tortillas.

She did this slowly and in reverent silence, for it was to be the last time she would light the fire there. For a moment she watched the shapes of the flames, trying to guess their meanings. The god Huehuetéotl, the Old Fire, showed her his finest shapes and colors. The red and yellow sparks mingled with the green and blue to paint stellar maps in Malinalli's eyes, which put her in a place outside the realm of time. For a moment, she was filled with peace.

In this state, Malinalli shaped the dough with her palms and made two tortillas that she set to cook in the
comal
. She ate the first one slowly, so that she could feel the presence of her grandmother and of the Lord Quetzalcóatl inside her body. The other she let burn completely and later crushed in the grindstone until the tortilla was nothing but a fine ash that she tossed in the air to leave a trace of its presence in that place, so that the wind would speak for her about her past, about her childhood, about her grandmother.

After completing this intimate personal ceremony, Malinalli proceeded to pack her belongings. In a burlap sack she put the necklaces that her grandmother had bequeathed to her, a few grains of corn from her field, plus a few cacao beans, very valuable coins that she could use if the need arose. As she put them in the sack, she yearned to be as precious as a cacao bean, for then she would be highly valued and no one would think of giving her away again.

As soon as she had finished, she washed, dressed, and combed her hair with great care. Before leaving, she blessed the earth that had nourished her, as well as the water, the air, and the fire, asking the gods to be with her, to guide her, to lend her their light so that she might come to know their wishes and commands, in order to be able to fulfill them. She asked their blessing so that anything she might do or say from that moment on would be beneficial to herself, to her people, to the cosmos. She asked the Sun to lend her the strength of its voice so that she might be heard by all; and the Rain to help her fertilize all that she had planted.

She covered with earth the ashes remaining from that which had been her old fire, and left, the weight of fifteen years on her back and the presence of her grandmother and Quetzalcóatl in her gut.

That day, Cortés had arisen at dawn, restless. The few snatches of sleep he had managed to obtain had been interrupted by dreadful nightmares. The most terrifying was the one that came from a dream that he had had years before, in which he saw himself surrounded by strangers who indulged him with courtesies and honors, treating him like a king. At the time, that dream had filled him with joy and had given him the certainty that he would one day become someone important. However, the night before, the dream had become a nightmare, the honors this time appearing as ridicule, as whispering intrigues, as knives with eyes that fixed themselves on his back … as death. The worst of it was that upon opening his eyes, the dream continued, the fear still there, crouching in the darkness. He did not like the dark. It shrunk his soul. During his long sea voyages, he would always look for the North Star in the sky, the sailor's star, so that he would not feel lost. When it was cloudy and he could not see the stars, sailing through a black sea filled him with anxiety.

Not knowing the language of the natives was the same as sailing through a black sea. For him, the Mayans were as inscrutable as the dark side of the moon. Their unintelligible voices made him feel insecure, vulnerable, and he had no trust in his translator. He did not know how faithful Friar Jerónimo de Aguilar was to his words, or how capable he was of betrayal. The friar had arrived practically as if dropped from the heavens. The survivor of a shipwreck years before, Aguilar had been imprisoned by the Mayans. In captivity, he had learned their language and the customs of their culture. Cortés had felt very fortunate when he found out about him and promptly had him rescued. From the very beginning, Aguilar gave Cortés crucial information about the Mayans and, above all, about the extensive and powerful Aztec empire. Aguilar had proved useful as interpreter between Cortés and the natives of the Yucatán, but he had shown little ability to negotiate or persuade since, clearly, had he possessed those skills, the first battles between the Spaniards and the natives would not have been necessary. Cortés preferred to resort to dialogue rather than arms. He fought only when he failed in the field of diplomacy. He soon had no choice.

He had won the first battle. His instinct for victory had led to the defeat of the natives in Cintla. Of course, the presence of horses and artillery had also played a very important role in that, his first triumph on foreign soil. However, far from feeling festive and wanting to celebrate, he was seized by a sense of helplessness.

At an early age he had developed confidence in himself through the ease with which he managed words, interweaving them, applying them, and using them in the most suitable and convincing fashion. Throughout his life as he matured, he confirmed that there was no better weapon than a good speech. Yet now he felt vulnerable and useless, disarmed. How would he be able to use his best and most effective weapon on those natives, who spoke other languages?

Cortés would have given half his life if he could master the languages of that strange country. In Hispaniola and Cuba he had advanced and won positions of power thanks to his speeches, which were embellished with Latin phrases and showed off his knowledge.

Cortés knew that there would not be enough horses, artillery, and harquebuses to achieve dominion over these lands. These natives were civilized, different from those in Hispaniola and Cuba. Cannons and horses were effective when dealing with savages, but in a civilized context, the ideal thing was to seal alliances, negotiate, win over, and all this could be done only through dialogue, of which he was deprived from the very start.

In this recently discovered world, Cortés knew that he had the opportunity of a lifetime in his hands, yet he felt shackled. He couldn't negotiate and he urgently needed some way to master the language of the natives. He knew that by any other means—sign language, for example—it would be impossible to accomplish his aims. Without the mastery of the language, his weapons were useless; it would be like using a harquebus as a club instead of firing it.

His thoughts came so swiftly that in a matter of seconds he could devise new purposes and new truths that would serve him in maintaining life according to his convenience. But these ideas and goals rested upon the strength of his speeches. He was also convinced that fortune favored the brave, but in this case, courage—which he possessed in abundance—was of little use to him. This was a mission that would be built from the start on the basis of words. Words were its bricks, courage its mortar. Without words, without language, without speeches, there was no mission, and with no mission, no conquest.

The night that had ushered in the new day had filled Montezuma's head with nightmares. The emperor had dreamed of children who were walking naked on the snow that covered the volcanoes of Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. They did it willingly, even though they would be sacrificed so that Huitzilopochtli would be nourished. Montezuma saw how those children were drowned in a spring and how their bodies floated. Then he saw that the God of Water was walking over them and that fat drops of water fell from the sky, the same as the emperor Montezuma held in his eyes when he awoke. Later, not sleeping, he imagined that the skulls of the children would be the cups from which all of them would drink water. This image caused him to feel at once both fear and pleasure. Perhaps the latter was what most horrified him. Suddenly, a violent wind blasted the door open and let the sunlight fall on Montezuma's face.