Jaramillo gave Cortés an incredulous and surprised look. He didn’t know if this was a joke, if what his superior was saying was due to drunkenness or delirium, or if he was mocking him. There was uncertainty in Jaramillo’s eyes and joy in his heart. He looked away so that Cortés would not notice that Malinalli was the woman he had longed for since that long ago day, on the shores of the river, when Cortés penetrated her for the first time. That woman that he was now offering was the one that had heated his thoughts countless times, the woman that he had always wanted naked in his arms. Nonetheless, Jaramillo took Cortés apart to question him.
“Hernán, what do you mean by this? Why are you making me Marina’s lord? Why this wish, suddenly risen from nowhere and without reason, that I be her husband?”
“Jaramillo, don’t lie to yourself,” Cortés responded. “For days, months, and years Marina has appeared in your dreams. You are already a husband since you think so insistently about her. Just as I see these stars above us, I have seen in the depth of your mind how many times you have desired her. You are my friend and I give you your wish in exchange for which you will give Marina a name, a status, and bring protection to my son. This is the biggest charge I have bestowed upon you, the greatest mission I can place in your hands. Jaramillo, help me make history.”
Later, Cortés and his retinue were witnesses at the wedding of Jaramillo and Malinalli. On the night of the wedding, Jaramillo, by then already drunk and full of desire, penetrated her again and again. He drank from her breasts, kissed her skin, submerged himself in her, emptied all his being in Malinalli, and fell asleep.
Cortés, completely inebriated, slept spread-eagled. He looked half dead, like someone still oblivious to the fact that he had torn away the best part of himself. The only one who was awake was Malinalli. The desire to set herself on fire kept her alert, the desire to evaporate, to become a star, to melt into the sun, just as Quetzalcóatl had done. She longed to stop being herself, to fly, to be a part of everything and nothing, not to see, or hear, or feel, or know, but, above all, not to remember. She felt humiliated, sad, alone, and she could not figure how to let out the frustration from her being, how to cast her grief to the wind, how to change her decision to be present in this world.
She thought of the moments in which Cortés’s mouth and her mouth had been one mouth only, and the thought of Cortés and his tongue one single idea, one new universe. The tongue had joined them and the tongue had separated them. The tongue was the cause of everything. Malinalli had destroyed Montezuma’s empire with her tongue. Thanks to her words, Cortés had made allies that ensured his conquest. She decided then to punish the instrument that had created that universe. At night, she crossed through the jungle until she found an agave plant from which she pulled a thorn and with it, pierced her tongue. She spat blood as if she were ridding her mind of a poison, her body of shame, and her heart of its wound. After that night, her tongue would never be the same. It would not create marvels in the sky or worlds in the ears. It would never again be the instrument of any conquest, nor order thought, nor explain history. Her tongue was bifurcated and broken, it was no longer an instrument of the mind. As a result, the expedition to Hibueras was a failure. Cortés’s defeat was buried in silence. Reality saw them return vanquished.
In the ship that brought them back from Hibueras, silence reigned. From the gunwale Malinalli watched the sea, its constant movement, its colors. The thought occurred to her that the sea was the best image of god, because it seemed infinite, because her eyes could not take it all in.
Malinalli was about to be a mother for the second time. Her heart guarded a silence and in that silence all the sounds of the world were evident. To feel a life within her life deeply affected Malinalli’s heart. Not only did she bring with her a piece of flesh in her flesh but she shared her soul with its soul. And perhaps, as these two souls joined, all souls were, and a heaven of souls was perhaps like a heaven of stars. A few days afterward, as Malinalli gazed at the stars, she was surprised by contractions and gave birth squatting on the deck of the ship. Her daughter came out covered in blood and in the light of the stars. Malinalli remembered that Marina, her mestizo name, the one with which Cortés had baptized her, meant she who comes from the sea. The sea, “el mar,” was also contained within the name of her son Martín. Her daughter, since she came from the womb of the sea, was also water from her water. She decided to return her daughter’s umbilical cord to the sea, to the broken vessel of the universe, from which all beings had come. She felt great relief when the umbilical cord came loose from her fingers and crashed into the salty waters. For a few moments it floated on the surface and then it was embraced and brought down into the deep dark waters. For some strange reason she understood that eternity was an instant, an instant of peace where everything is understood, everything makes sense, even if it could not be explained in words, for there was no language to name it. With her tongue paralyzed by emotion, Malinalli took her small daughter and offered her breast to her so that she might drink milk, drink the sea, so that she might feed from love, poetry, the light of the moon, and so doing she understood that her daughter should be called María. María, like the Virgin. In María she would renew herself.
She didn’t hesitate in responding to Jaramillo, her husband, who had asked her if it was true that women who nursed died a little.
“No, they are reborn,” she said categorically.
Jaramillo also liked the name of María for his daughter. He remembered that when he was a child he had helped during the funeral of a woman close to the family. The adults were so busy that they didn’t notice when Jaramillo approached her to look at her. His child’s sensibility was deeply affected by the tranquillity and stillness of the woman. On looking at her face without a soul, he understood that death was a necessary act and it filled him with terror. He did not want what he loved to die. Despairing, he sought aid and his eyes found a wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary with a naked child in her arms. The child Jaramillo asked her silently:
“Why is it that whatever gives life, must die?”
He got no answer, but ever since, he was very moved when looking at a dead woman or a woman nursing.
Jaramillo tenderly kissed his daughter’s brow and caressed his wife’s face. Malinalli remembered the moment that Cortés had wedded her to him, and it was no longer a bitter memory. What’s more, she felt tenderness for Hernán, that little man who wanted to be as immense as the sea. In the depth of her being she was very grateful to him for marrying her to Jaramillo. He was a good man, respectful, loving, brave, and loyal. And finally, Cortés had done her a favor by distancing her from his side. Her marriage had perhaps saved her from death, because she, like many others, also suspected that Cortés had murdered his wife, that it hadn’t been an accident, that she hadn’t died naturally, and that, one way or another, if she had married him, Cortés inevitably, for some hidden reason, would have killed her. This man not only conquered, but murdered what he loved. He killed his women so that they would be his alone. She had to face the fact then that Cortés loved her, not as she would have wanted it, but that he loved her. If not, he would not have given her part of her freedom or respected her life. Although, thinking it over, perhaps it was not love but convenience. The truth was that Cortés needed her by his side as translator.
“What is it that joined me with the abyss of this man?” Malinalli asked herself silently. “Where did the stars interweave our history? Who wove the thread of our lives? How is it that my god and his god could speak and design our union? A child of his blood was born from my womb and a daughter from the will of his whim was also born of my womb. He chose the man who would insert his seed in my flesh, not me. But I am grateful to him. I had no eyes to look on anyone who was not him and by forcing me, he made me discover a man who always had been watchful of me, of my eyes, my body, my words.”
Then Malinalli became liquid, milk in her breasts, tears in her eyes, sweat on her body, saliva in her m
outh, water of gratefulness.
When Malinalli stepped on solid earth, the sound of her heart was a drum of anxiety that demanded from the depths of her life an embrace with her son. The embrace of a child whom she had abandoned to give herself over to the delirium of conquest of a man who set her against her own will, against her wishes, against her love, against her thoughts. An absurd conquest that had been a failure and broken her inside.
It was unforgivable to have abandoned her son when he had needed her most, when it was necessary that he identify himself with the force of her love, with the wisdom of his ancestors, with her caresses, with the silence of her gaze, where words weren’t necessary. The lost silence, the absent smiles, and the empty arms pained her. Like her mother, she had abandoned what she had given birth to. The welcoming ceremonies seemed endless, the speeches that she had to translate, everything that impeded her from seeing her son immediately. When she was finally able to go look for him in the house of one of Cortés’s relatives where the boy had stayed, she was afraid. A fear of seeing in the eyes of her son the same indifference with which she had looked at her own mother.
The child was playing in the patio of the house, caressed by the sun, amidst trees and puddles of water. When she saw him, Malinalli recognized him right away. He had grown. He was making mud figures, creating a fantastic universe which, painfully, she was not a part of. The child fit the same image of tenderness and beauty that Malinalli kept in her memory. The child was the same, yes, but also so different! She noticed that some of his gestures were like hers, but his manners were like his father’s. Beautiful and proud. Loving and innocent. Whimsical and horrible. Full of nuances, full of colors, full of songs, such was the child she had abandoned.
She walked toward him full of love, full of tenderness, full of anxiety. She wanted to feel his skin on hers, his heart on her heart. She wanted to return to him in an instant, all her presence, all her company, erase with one stroke the months of absence, the months of abandonment.
When she embraced him, when she said his name, when she touched him, Martín looked at her as if he did not know her, as if he had never seen her, and went off running. Malinalli, in a fit of rage, of despair, of madness, ran after him, ordering him to stop, screaming that she was his mother. The boy did not stop, he continued to run as if he wanted to flee from his destiny, flee from her forever. The more his mother ran after him, the more he was afraid, and the more he was afraid, the more full of rage Malinalli became. Rage chased fear. The wound chased freedom. Guilt chased innocence. Finally, Malinalli was able stop her son by force, and doing so, without meaning to she hurt him and the boy looked at her full of panic and began to cry. His cries were so deep, as razor-edged as a sharpened knife, that they were easily able to penetrate the mantle of flesh that covered Malinalli’s heart, and opened an unhealed wound, that of her own abandonment. In a great paradox, the abandoned one wounded the abandoned one with his scorn. Malinalli felt as if each caress, each attempt at love toward her son was torture, a nightmare, an injury to both of them. Then in a gesture of madness, she slapped her son so that he would calm down, so that he would not try to flee from her.
“Maltín!” she screamed in a thunderous voice. “Don’t run from me!”
“I am not Maltín. I am Martín. I am not your son.”
Malinalli wanted to rip out her tongue, break it, make it flexible so that it could finally pronounce the letter “r.” In the pain that her child’s words caused, Malinalli turned to the Náhuatl so that she would not make any mistakes, to speak from her heart.
“You have already erased me from your memory? I haven’t. I have kept you in my memory all this time. You are my human creation, born from me. You are my quetzal feather, my turquoise necklace.”
The boy, not understanding her well—since no one else had spoken to him in Náhuatl—but absolutely feeling all of his mother’s energy, her body language and what her look said, remained paralyzed, still, silent and on looking at her recognized in the eyes of his mother his own eyes, and he cried in a different manner. He cried to retch through his eyes all the emotional poison that a four-year-old child can keep. Then he ran again, as he screamed at his mother.
“Let me go! I’m scared of you! Leave! I hate you!”
Malinalli, even more hurt, went after him again. The boy screamed desperately, “Palomaaaa! Mama, Paloma!”
The fact that her son thought of another woman as his real mother drove her crazy. Malinalli felt as if she was leaving her body. Her head was about to burst. Her heart was a war drum. The child reached the arms of the woman named Paloma and hugged her tightly. Malinalli, who had thought that she had felt the wound of love before, realized that nothing had been as painful and as hurtful as this moment that presented itself like a nightmare. Beside herself, having lost all control, she ripped the child from the arms of Paloma, even though he was kicking and swinging. Malinalli took him by force by one of his arms and dragged him violently the whole way home.
The child cried until he grew tired, until there were no tears left in him, until his hoarse voice gave out. When her son closed his eyes, it was Malinalli’s turn. She cried so much that her eyes became deformed, till she made peace with herself. Silence reigned. Malinalli looked at the light of the stars through her window, her face as innocent as when she had been four. That night, Malinalli was a girl frightened that love was not certain; she was a girl frightened that the fruit would not recognize the seed; a girl frightened to imagine that the stars disdained the sky. She turned and looked at the beautiful face of her son. For some strange reason, she remembered her father, whom she had never seen, whom she knew only in spirit. She came near him and with a timid hand caressed her son’s brow. Afraid that he would wake up, she whispered.
“My tiny son, my hummingbird feather, my jade bead, my turquoise necklace, eyes lie, they make mistakes, they see things that don’t exist, that are not there. My boy, look at me with your eyes closed. See me that way and you will remember me and know how much I love you. For a time I stopped looking with my eyes and I was mistaken. Only when we are children do we see the truth because our eyes are true, we speak the truth because what we feel is true. Only when we are children do we not betray ourselves, do we not deny the rhythm of the cosmos. I am only eyes that cry for your pains. When you cry, my chest tightens and my thoughts are lost in your memory. You are engraved in the bottom of my heart, with my grandmother, with my gods of stone, with the sacred songs of my ancestors. I put flesh and color in your spirit. I washed your skin with tears when you were given to me by the Lord of All Things.”
The child, with his eyes closed, in that blindness that sees everything, seemed to hear her, seemed to forgive her, seemed to love her.
“If I could only feel that you love me, that you understand me, that I am not a stranger to you, that I am not what frightens you, that I am not what hurts you, I would be capable of abandoning my life, leaving everything, if with it you, my adored son, son of my blood, son of my heart, could receive my love.”
Malinalli tenderly kissed her son’s eyelids and sang him a beautiful lullaby in Náhuatl, the language of his ancestors. It was the same song with which hundreds of times she had put him to sleep in her arms when he was an infant. Her son’s soul seemed to recognize the song and at that instant the room where he was seemed to acquire a new light. It was as if it were illuminated by a light source that came from none other than Malinalli’s heart, a blue light that passed through the body of the boy, who couldn’t help but feel the profound love, and even though he was asleep, he smiled and the smile said everything. For Malinalli, that smile became an instant of love much more powerful than the long months of separation. Understanding and beauty had settled in the hearts of both mother and child. Malinalli remained awake till dawn, till the first light of day grazed her son’s eyelids and he awoke. When the boy looked at his mother he did not cry, but amply took her in, before falling asleep again in her lap.
Martín, like his
blind great-grandmother, experienced that in the silence of the gaze is where one can truly see. For Malinalli this was a knowledge that she had acquired as a child.
In all the months that she had been apart from her son and it had been impossible for her to see him, she had imagined him much better than now as she watched him at length. Inspired by that truth that illuminates all things, she spoke to her son in Spanish. It was at that moment that she discovered the beauty of Cortés’s language and appreciated that god had given her that new method with which to express herself, in a language which opened new spaces in her mind. Thanks to it, her son could understand his mother’s love.
The relationship between Martín and Malinalli improved little by little, and the silver cord that nourished their union was reestablished completely.
EIGHT
The sky had tones Eight of orange and pink. The air carried the aroma of spikenard and orange trees in bloom. Malinalli embroidered and Jaramillo, next to her, smoked. Martín and María played in the patio of the house that their parents had built together. It was a beautiful patio surrounded by a series of arches and with a fountain in each of the cardinal points. From each fountain there was a canal that carried water to the center of the patio, forming a silver cross.
The patio was not only an architectural creation, a harmonious play of spaces, but it was a mythical center, a point of convergence for various spiritual traditions. It was the place where Malinalli, Jaramillo, and the children interwove the threads of their souls with the cosmos. In the water they recognized each other, they reencountered themselves. They were renewed.