She does not need to hate her mother. Ever since the lords of Yucatán made a present of her to Hernán Cortés four years before, Malinche has had time to avenge herself. The debt is paid: Mexicans bow and tremble at her approach. One glance from her black eyes is enough for a prince to hang on the gallows. Long after her death, her shadow will hover over the great Tenochtitlán that she did so much to defeat and humiliate, and her ghost with the long loose hair and billowing robe will continue striking fear for ever and ever, from the woods and caves of Chapultepec.
(29 and 62)
1524: Quetzaltenango The Poet Will Tell Children the Story of This Battle
The poet will speak of Pedro de Alvarado and of those who came with him to teach fear.
He will relate that when the native troops had been destroyed, and when Guatemala was a slaughterhouse, Captain Tecum Umán rose into the air and flew with wings, and feathers sprouted from his body. He flew and fell upon Alvarado and with one fierce blow severed the head of his horse. But Alvarado and the horse divided into two and stayed that way: the conquistador detached himself from the decapitated horse and stood up. Captain Tecum flew off again and rose higher, all aglow. When he dived down from the clouds, Alvarado dodged and ran him through with this lance. The dogs dashed up to tear Tecum Umán apart, and Alvarado’s sword held them back. For a long time Alvarado contemplated his beaten enemy, his body slashed open, the quetzal feathers sprouting from his arms and legs, the wings broken, the triple crown of pearls, diamonds, and emeralds. Alvarado called to his soldiers. “Look,” he said to them, and made them remove their helmets.
The children, seated in a circle around the poet, will ask: “And all this you saw? You heard?”
“Yes.”
“You were here?” the children will ask.
“No. None of our people who were here survived.”
The poet will point to the moving clouds and the sway of the treetops.
“See the lances?” he will ask. “See the horses’ hooves? The rain of arrows? The smoke? Listen,” he will say, and put his ear against the ground, filled with explosions.
And he will teach them to smell history in the wind, to touch it in stones polished by the river, and to recognize its taste by chewing certain herbs, without hurry, as one chews on sadness.
(8 and 107)
1524: Utatlán The Vengeance of the Vanquished
The Indian chiefs are a handful of bones, black as soot, which lie amid the rubble of the city. Today in the capital of the Quichés there is nothing that does not smell of burning.
Almost a century ago, a prophet had spoken. It was a chief of the Cakchiqueles who said, when the Quichés were about to tear out his heart: Know that certain men, armed and clothed from head to feet and not naked like us, will destroy these buildings and reduce you to living in the caves of owls and wildcats and all this grandeur will vanish.
He spoke while they killed him, here, in this city of ravines that Pedro de Alvarado’s soldiers have just turned into a bonfire. The vanquished chief cursed the Quichés, and even then it had already been a long time that the Quichés had dominated Guatemala’s other peoples.
(8 and 188)
1524: Scorpion Islands Communion Ceremony
The sea swallowed them, vomited them out, gobbled them up again, and dashed them against the rocks. Dolphins and manatees flew through the air, and the sky was all foam. When the little ship fell to pieces, the men did their best to embrace the crags. All night long the waves fought to tear them off, blow by blow; many were dislodged, smashed against the stones, and devoured.
At dawn the storm let up and the tide receded. Those who were saved left their destination to fate and set themselves adrift in a ramshackle canoe. For five days they drifted among the reefs, finding no drinking water nor any fruit to put in their mouths.
This morning they landed on one of the islets.
They crawl forward on all fours beneath a sun that fries the stones. None has the strength to drag anyone who is left behind. Naked, badly wounded, they curse the captain, lawyer Alonso Zuazo, a good litigant and a bad navigator, and curse the mother who bore him, and the king, the pope, and God.
This little slope is the highest mountain in the world. The men keep climbing and console themselves counting the hours that remain before death.
And suddenly they rub their eyes. They can’t believe it. Five giant turtles await them on the beach. Five of those turtles that in the sea look like rocky islands and that make love unperturbed as ships graze against them.
The men rush for them, grab their shells, howling with hunger and fury, and shove until the turtles turn over and lie pawing the air. They stick in their knives, open the turtles’ bellies with slashes and fists, and bury their heads in the gushing blood.
And they fall asleep, submerged to their necks in these barrels of good wine, while the sun continues its slow march to the center of the sky.
No one listens to lawyer Alonso Zuazo. His mouth smeared with blood, he kneels in the sand, raises his hands, and offers the turtles to the five wounds of Our Redeemer.
(166)
1525: Tuxkahá Cuauhtémoc
From the branch of an old ceiba tree, hung by the ankles, swings the body of the last king of the Aztecs.
Cortés has cut off his head.
He had arrived in the world in a cradle surrounded by shields and spears, and these were the first sounds he heard: “Your real home is elsewhere. You are promised to another land. Your proper place is the battlefield. Your task is to give the blood of your enemy to the sun to drink and the body of your enemy to the earth to eat.”
Twenty-nine years ago, the soothsayers poured water over his head and pronounced the ritual words: “Where are you hiding, misfortune? In which limb do you conceal yourself? Away from this child!”
They called him Cuauhtémoc, eagle that falls. His father had extended the empire from sea to sea. When the prince took over the throne, the invaders had already come and conquered. Cuauhtémoc rose up and resisted. Four years after the defeat of Tenochtitlán, the songs that call for the warrior’s return still resound from the depths of the forest.
Who now rocks his mutilated body? The wind, or the ceiba tree? Isn’t it the ceiba from its enormous crown? Does it not accept this broken branch as one more arm of the thousand that spring from its majestic trunk? Will red flowers sprout from it?
Life goes on. Life and death go on.
(212)
1526: Toledo The American Tiger
Around the Alcázar of Toledo the tamer parades the tiger that the king has received from the New World. The tamer, a Lombard with a broad smile and pointed mustachio, leads him by a leash like a little dog as the jaguar slips over the gravel with padded steps.
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s blood freezes. From afar he yells to the keeper not to be so trusting, not to be chummy with this wild beast, that such animals are not for people.
The tamer laughs, turns the jaguar loose, and strokes its back. Oviedo hears its deep purr. He well knows that that clenchedteeth growl means prayer to the devil and threat. One day not far off, he is sure the tamer will fall into the trap. He will stretch out his hand to scratch the tiger and be gobbled up after one quick lash of a paw. Does this poor fellow believe God has given the jaguar claws and teeth so that a tamer may serve him his meals at regular hours? None of his lineage has ever sat down to dinner at the sound of a bell, nor known any manners but devouring. Oviedo looks at the smiling Lombard and sees a heap of minced meat between four candles.