The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (68 page)

Her whole posture was also unusual. In the way she moved could be detected an initial passionate impulse which was repressed by self-control. In her, immobility did not look like repose but hid some inner turmoil.

Too often the blood of the Montezumas reminded Tlascala that she had been born to reign over a vast region of the world. People who addressed her would be met by the haughty air of an outraged queen. But before she had even opened her mouth to make a gracious reply her tender gaze already enchanted them. When she entered the viceroy's state rooms, she seemed to be indignant at finding herself among equals but soon she had no equals. Hearts formed for love had recognized their sovereign and crowded round her. Tlascala was no longer a queen; she was a woman, and basked in their homage.

I detected her haughty temperament from the very first ball. I thought it incumbent on me to address a compliment to her which related to the character of her mask and my role as her subject allotted to me by the viceroy, but Tlascala did not receive me well. ‘Señor,' she said, ‘royal status conferred by a mask can only flatter those who have not been called to the throne.'

At the same moment she glanced at my wife. Just then Elvira was surrounded by Peruvians who were offering her their service on their knees. Her vanity and joy almost reached the point of ecstasy and I felt a sort of shame for her. I spoke to her about it that very evening. She received my counsel distractedly and my advice frostily. Vanity had entered her soul and driven out love.

The intoxication which the incense of flattery instils takes a long time to dissipate. Elvira's could only grow. All Mexico was divided between her perfect beauty and the incomparable charms of Tlascala. Elvira's days were spent glorying in yesterday's successes and preparing those of the morrow. A precipitous slope swept her down to every form of pleasurable pastime. I wanted to stop her but could not. I was myself being drawn down but in a different direction, very far from the flowery paths on which, as my wife trod them, pleasure after pleasure was springing up.

I was not yet thirty years old, nor even twenty-nine. I was at that age at which feeling still has the freshness of youth and passions the force of the grown man. My love, which had come into being close
to Elvira's cradle, had never grown up; and her mind, nourished from the first by romantic folly, had never acquired maturity. My own mind had not progressed much further, but my reason had advanced enough to allow me to see that Elvira's thoughts turned around petty interests, petty rivalries and often petty backbiting in the narrow circle in which women are confined, not so much by the limits of their character as by those of their mind. Exceptions to this are rare, and I had thought that there were none at all. I was, though, completely disabused of this when I came to know Tlascala. No rivalry born of jealousy had found its way into her soul. The fair sex seemed all to have a claim on her benevolence and those who brought honour to it by their beauty, their grace or their tenderness aroused the keenest interest in her. She would have liked to have them about her, to earn their trust and to win their friendship. As for men, she seldom spoke about them and then always with reserve, unless she found noble and magnanimous acts to praise. Then her admiration was expressed openly and even with warmth. Otherwise her conversation turned on general topics and only became very animated when it was a question of the prosperity of the New World or the happiness of its inhabitants: her favourite subjects, to which she returned whenever she thought she could do so without impropriety.

Many men seem destined by the influence of fate and no doubt of their characters to live their lives governed by that sex which dominates all those who are not able to master it. Indubitably I am one of those men. I had been Elvira's humble worshipper, then a quite submissive husband. But she had loosened my chains by the small worth she seemed to place on them.

Masquerade followed masquerade and the social round obliged me to follow the marquesa everywhere; but much more than this, my heart made me follow her. The first change I noticed in myself was to sense my thoughts grow more lofty and my soul swell. My character took on greater decisiveness and my will more energy. I felt the need to turn my feelings into actions and to influence my fellow-men. I solicited an office and obtained it.

The duties with which I was entrusted placed several provinces under my authority. I saw natives oppressed by their conquerors, and took their side. I had powerful enemies and incurred the minister's
wrath. The court itself seemed to threaten me. I put up the most spirited resistance. I won the love of Mexicans, the respect of the Spaniards and, what was of greatest value in my eyes, I inspired a deep interest in the person who already governed my whole heart. In truth, Tlascala was just as reserved with me, if not more so; but her eyes sought mine, looked into them with pleasure, then uneasily looked away. She said little to me even about what I had done for the Americans. But when she spoke to me she found it difficult to breathe. Her respiration was agitated and her timid, sweet voice endowed even the most unimportant speech with a tone of growing intimacy.

Tlascala thought that she had found in me a soul kindred to hers; she was wrong. Her soul had occupied me. She inspired me and she it was who determined my actions.

As for me, I deluded myself about the force of my character. My dreams became reveries, and my ideas about the happiness of America risky schemes. My pastimes took on a heroic hue. I hunted jaguar and puma in the forest, or even fought with these ferocious animals. But what I did most often was to go down into wild valleys amid solitary echoes which were the only confidants of a love which I feared to confess to the person who had inspired it.

But Tlascala had seen through me. I began to divine her feelings, and we might easily have betrayed ourselves to the eyes of a discerning public but we escaped its attention. The viceroy had to deal with serious matters, which put an end to the series of splendid festivities for which he had developed a very marked taste, and all of Mexican society a veritable passion. Everyone then adopted a less dissipated form of life. Tlascala retired to a house she possessed on the north side of the lake. I started by going there frequently; in the end I went to see her every day. I cannot explain to you very clearly how we behaved together. On my side it was a cult bordering on fanaticism; on hers it was a sacred fire whose flame she nurtured in fervent and deep contemplation. We were always on the point of confessing our passion for each other but did not dare to utter it. This was an exquisite state of affairs. We appreciated its sweetness and feared changing it.'

Tlascala was persuaded of the truths of our holy faith, but at the same time she was imbued with respect for the memory of her ancestors, and in her mitigated faith she had provided a separate paradise for them, which was not heaven but was in some other region between that place and earth. She shared to a certain degree her compatriots' superstitions. She believed that the illustrious ghosts of the kings of her race came back to earth on dark nights and haunted an old cemetery situated in the mountains. Nothing in the world would have been able to persuade Tlascala to go there at night. But we sometimes would go there during the day and spend many hours there. She would decipher the hieroglyphs engraved on the tombs of her forefathers and elucidate them by traditions which she knew all about.

We soon were acquainted with most of the inscriptions and, by extending our investigations, we would find new ones from which we would remove the moss and thorns growing over them.

One day Tlascala showed me a spray of a spiny shrub and told me that it was not where it was by chance. The person who had planted it had had the intention to call down celestial vengeance on enemy spirits. She told me that I would be doing a good action by destroying the ominous plant. I took an axe which a Mexican had with him and
cut down this ill-starred shrub. We then came upon a stone covered with more hieroglyphs than those we had seen up to that point.

‘This was written after the conquest,' said Tlascala. ‘At that time the Mexicans mixed some letters of the alphabet, copied from the Spaniards, with their hieroglyphs. Inscriptions of this period are the easiest to read.'

Tlascala then began to read, but as she read her features showed growing anguish; then she fell unconscious on the stone which for two centuries had hidden the cause of her sudden horror.

Tlascala was carried back to her house and regained consciousness to some degree, but only to utter disconnected words which expressed no more than her mental anguish. I returned home sick at heart and the next day received the following letter:

The next day Xoaz came to my house and brought me the translation of the Mexican inscription, which read as follows: