Malinche (9 page)

Of course, this didn't assuage her guilt or make clear to her what she should say and what she should keep silent about. What kind of a life is worth defending with lies? And who could confirm that they were lies? Perhaps she was being too harsh. Perhaps the Spaniards had been sent by Quetzalcóatl and it was her duty to collaborate with them until she died, sharing with them privileged information that had come directly from the mouth of a woman in Cholula. This woman had loved Malinalli's confident personality, her beauty, and her physical strength, and she wanted her as a wife for her son. With the intent of saving Malinalli's life she had confided in her, warning her that in Cholula they were preparing an ambush against the Spanish. The plan was to arrest them, wrap them up in hammocks, and take them to Tenochtitlán alive. The woman suggested that Malinalli leave the city before this happened and that afterward she could marry her son.

Malinalli now had the burden of deciding whether or not to share this information with the Spaniards. Cholula was a sacred place. One of Quetzalcóatl's temples was situated there. The defense or attack of Cholula meant the defense or attack of Quetzalcóatl. Malinalli was more confused than ever. The only thing she was sure of was that she needed silence to clear her mind.

She implored the gods for silence. What most tormented her, aside from the external noises, were the noises within, the voices in her mind that told her not to say anything, not to give the Spaniards any valuable information that might save their lives, for something was wrong. Perhaps the foreigners were not who she thought they were, not the envoys of Quetzalcóatl. Certainly their recent behavior did not conform to the ideal model that she had devised. She felt disillusioned.

For one thing, there was a total incongruity between the meaning of the name Cortés (courteous) and the man himself. To be
cortés
was to be sensitive and respectful, and she didn't think the man possessed either of these attributes, nor did the men that he had brought with him. She couldn't believe that god's emissaries would behave in such a manner, that they would be so rough, so rude, so ill spoken, even insulting their own god when they were angry. Compared to the gentleness and lyricism of the Náhuatl, Spanish was a bit aggressive.

There was one thing, though, that was worse than the unpleasant manner with which the Spanish gave orders, and that was the odor that emanated from them. She never expected that the emissaries of Quetzalcóatl would smell so bad. Cleanliness was common practice among the natives. The Spaniards, on the other hand, did not bathe, their clothes reeked, and neither water nor the sun could rid them of their stench. No matter how much she scrubbed and scrubbed the clothes in the river, she wasn't able to wash from them the smell of rotted iron, of metallic sweat, of rusted armor.

Moreover, the interest that the Spanish and Cortés in particular expressed for gold did not seem right to her. If they in fact were gods, they would be concerned with the earth, with the planting, with making sure that men were nourished, but that was not the case. Never had she seen them interested in the cornfields, only in eating. Hadn't Quetzalcóatl stolen the grain of corn from the Mount of Our Sustenance to give it to mankind? Didn't the Spanish care how the gift had affected men? Weren't they curious to know whether or not they were reminded of its divine origin when they ate it? Whether or not they protected it and venerated it as something sacred? Did they care about what would happen if man stopped planting it? Didn't they know that if man stopped planting corn, it would die out? That the ear of corn needs man's intervention to strip it of the leaves that cover it, so that the seed may be free to reproduce? That there is no way for corn to live without man, nor man to live without corn? The fact that corn needed man to reproduce was proof that it was a gift from the gods to mankind, for without mankind there would have been no need for the gods to give away corn, and mankind, on the other hand, would not have been able to survive on the earth without corn. Didn't the Spaniards know that we are the earth, from earth we were born, that the earth consumes us, and when the earth comes to its end, when the earth is exhausted, when corn no longer sprouts, when Mother Earth no longer opens her heart, it will be our end as well? Then what was the point of accumulating gold without corn? How was it possible that the first word Cortés learned in Náhuatl was precisely the one for gold and not corn?

Gold, known as
teocuitlatl,
was considered to be the excrement of the gods, waste matter and nothing else, so she didn't understand the desire to accumulate it. She thought that when the day came that the grain of corn was not revered and valued as something sacred, human beings would be in grave danger. And if she—who was a mere mortal—knew this, how was it possible that the emissaries of Quetzalcóatl, who came in his name, though under a different guise, who communicated with him, did not know it? Was it possible that these men were more likely emissaries of Tezcatlipoca than Quetzalcóatl?

Quetzalcóatl's brother had once deceived him with a black mirror, and that is what it seemed the Spaniards were doing with the natives, but this time with resplendent mirrors. Tezcatlipoca, the god who sought to overthrow his brother, was a magician. Showing off his talents, he sent a black mirror to Quetzalcóatl in which Quetzalcóatl saw the mask of his false holiness, his dark side. In response to such a vision, Quetzalcóatl got so drunk that he even fornicated with his own sister. Full of shame, the following day he left Tula to find himself again, to recover his light, promising to return one day.

The great mystery was whether indeed he had returned or not. What was most troubling for Malinalli, independent of whether or not the Spaniards achieved victory over Montezuma, was that her life and liberty were at risk. All this had begun months earlier, when Cortés had accidentally found out that she spoke Náhuatl. Since Aguilar—who in all the years that they had spent in these lands had only learned Mayan—couldn't help Cortés in understanding Montezuma's messengers, Cortés asked Malinalli to help him translate and in exchange he would grant her her liberty. From that moment on, events followed one after another with extraordinary speed, and now Malinalli found herself trapped in a whirlpool that allowed no escape. Images of moments that had sealed her destiny, going back to the days when the Spaniards had first landed, appeared and disappeared in her mind.

Foremost was the day when the chief of Tabasco had gathered her along with the nineteen other women to tell them that they would be given away as spoils of war to those who had recently arrived, since the foreigners had battled and defeated the people of Cintla.

She remembered in detail the conversation that had taken place among the women on the journey to the Spanish camp. Almost in secret they mentioned the possibility that there might be a connection between the men that arrived from the sea and Quetzalcóatl. The current year was a One Sugarcane year which, according to the Mexica calendar, was the year of Quetzalcóatl, who had been born during a One Sugarcane year and died after a cycle of fifty-two years, also a One Sugarcane. It was said that the coincidence of the Spaniards having arrived during a One Sugarcane year was too powerful to ignore. One of the women said that she had heard that One Sugarcane years were disastrous for kings. If something bad happened during a One Lizard year, the evil befell men, women, and the old. If it happened during a One Jaguar, One Deer, or One Flower year, it befell children, but if it happened during a One Sugarcane year, it befell kings. This had been made evident by the fact that the foreigners had battled triumphantly against the citizens of Cintla and would likewise triumph if they confronted Montezuma. This was a sign that they had come to conquer and to reinstate the kingdom of Quetzalcóatl. And so Malinalli accepted it in her heart; on listening to these words, she was filled with joy and hope and illusion, with a longing for change. To know that the kingdom that permitted human sacrifices and slavery was in peril made her feel at peace with herself.

Far from there, in the palace of Montezuma, the same conversation had taken place but between Montezuma, his brother Cuitláhuac and his cousin Cuauhtémoc. Cuitláhuac and Cuauhtémoc thought that Cortés and his men, rather than gods arrived from the sea, were a simple band of plunderers. Montezuma, on the other hand, decided that whether or not they were gods, he would give them preferential treatment, since it was considered that even plunderers were protected by Quetzalcóatl. So he sent off his principal envoy with the following message: “Go with haste, make reverence to our lord, saying that his deputy Montezuma has sent you in honor of their arrival.”

Maybe Montezuma was not aware of the great uncertainty that his actions caused among his people, for when they heard that the emperor himself had paid respect to the foreigners, and not just that, but that he put himself at their service, they saw themselves obliged to behave likewise. The preferential treatment toward the Spaniards signified to everyone that the Spaniards were superior to the emperor Montezuma.

But in the light of certain recent events, Malinalli was no longer sure this was so. From the first instance that he had made contact with the messengers from Montezuma, Cortés betrayed his insatiable desire for gold. He wasn't impressed by the feathered arts, or the beauty of the cloths and jewels with which they paid him respect, but with gold. Cortés had forbid the members of his party from trading gold privately, and he set up a table near the camp so that the natives made their trades officially. Every day Totonacans as well as Mexicas came with offers of gold for Cortés that he traded through his servants for pieces of glass and mirrors, for needles and scissors.

Malinalli herself was given a necklace made with pieces of glass and mirror. She very much liked the reflections it produced. She understood mirrors well. When she washed clothes in the river she examined herself in the water and her reflected image spoke to her of fear. She did not like seeing it, for it bothered her, sickened her. She remembered that once as a girl, when she was ill, they had made her watch her image reflected in a pail of water and she had gotten better. She asked the river to speak to her, to heal her, to tell her if she was doing the proper thing, whether or not she was making a mistake. She knew the waters spoke in all receptacles. Her grandmother had told her that in the Anáhuac region there was an enormous visionary lake, where images of what was to come were reflected on the waters, and in that place the holy men had seen an eagle devouring a serpent. The river where she was washing the clothes, however, did not speak to her, said nothing to her, and she could see nothing in it but the filth from the clothes of the Spaniards arrived from the sea.

The sea was a vast expanse of reflections. The lakes and the rivers, as well. In them were contained the sun and the god of the waters. Malinalli knew that she could find something of herself behind each reflection, like the sun reflected in the moon, as well as in the waters, on the stones, in the eyes of others. When using resplendent stones or objects, one is reflected in the cosmos as in a game of mirrors. The sun doesn't realize that it shines, for it cannot see itself. It would have to see itself reflected in order to understand its greatness. That is why we need mirrors, to understand ourselves. That is why Tula, Quetzalcóatl's city, was created to be a mirror of the sky, and that is why Malinalli liked to use shiny objects as mirrors where Quetzalcóatl could be amply reflected. Her necklaces were her most beautiful mirrors.

Taking from her sack the necklace that Cortés had given her, she fastened it around her neck with the intention of being seen by the god. Of meeting him in the reflections. She looked at herself again in the river, and this time the water revealed to her a series of small images, one after the other, in an undulating line. Immediately, it reminded her of the silvery snake that the Spanish soldiers made when they marched one behind the other, the sun reflecting off their armor. She also connected it to the soldiers of Tula, who marched one behind the other, seeing their reflection in the mirror that the one before them carried on his back.