They all foretold the fall of the empire.
The first omen was a burning ear of corn that appeared one night and that seemed to drip fire onto the earth.
The second omen was the conflagration that destroyed the temple of Huitzilopochtli, God of War, for which no cause was ever discovered, no one having started the fire, and which no one was able to extinguish.
The third omen was a deadly ray that struck a thatched roof of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlán—a solar strike that came from nowhere, for it had been drizzling.
The fourth omen was the appearance in the sky of a mantle of sparks that, three by three, created a giant tunic which traversed the sky with its long train, originating from the spot where the sun rises and heading toward where it falls. When the townspeople saw it they shrieked in horror.
The fifth omen was the boiling waters in one of the lakes near the Valley of Anáhuac. The waters rose and boiled with such fury that they demolished all the nearby houses.
The sixth omen was the appearance of Cihuacóatl, the goddess whose wails could be heard at night. “My children! Where shall I take you? We must flee far from here.”
The seventh omen was the appearance of an unfamiliar bird that some fishermen found and took to Montezuma. It was an ash-colored bird, like the crane, that had a mirror in its head; looking through it you could see the heavens and the stars. When Montezuma looked for a second time into the mirror on the bird’s head, he saw many men fighting among themselves, and interpreted this as a dreadful prophecy.
The eighth and final omen was the appearance of misshapen creatures who possessed two heads, or who were joined at the front or the back, and who would disappear as soon as Montezuma noticed them.
Shaken, Montezuma called forth his sages and soothsayers.
“I want you to tell me what is to come, be it sickness, plagues, hunger, locusts, earthquakes; be it rains or no rains. Tell me! I want to know whether wars will be raged on us or whether deaths may result from the apparitions of mirror headed birds. Don’t keep it from me. I also want to know if you have heard the renowned Cihuacóatl crying, for when anything is about to happen in this world, she knows about it first, long before it comes to pass.”
In the silence of dawn, Malinalli could swear that she heard the lament, the weeping of Cihuacóatl, and she felt an urgent need to urinate. She stood from her work at the grinding stone and went out to the patio. She lifted her blanket skirt and huipil, squatted and strained, but the liquid refused to leave her body. Malinalli then realized that the sensation in her belly came from fear and not from a physiological need. She missed her grandmother more than ever and remembered the day that they had given her away for the first time.
She was only a child of five. The thought of abandoning all that she treasured terrified her. She trembled from head to toe when they told her that she could take only what was absolutely necessary. She didn’t have to give it more than a moment’s thought, and grabbed a burlap sack, filling it with what her grandmother had left her: a jade necklace and bracelet, a turquoise necklace, some huipiles that her grandmother had embroidered for her, ceramic figures that they had made together, and some grains of corn from the fields that they had both harvested. Her mother took her to the outskirts of town. Malinalli, with her things on her back, clung to her mother’s hand as if she wanted to become one with it. As if she, a mere girl, were the very Quetzalcóatl, struggling to fuse himself with the sun to govern the world.
But she wasn’t a goddess and her wish was in vain. Her mother let go of her tiny grasping fingers, gave her away to her new masters, and turned away. Malinalli, upon seeing her go, peed on herself and felt at the moment as if the gods were abandoning her, that they wouldn’t be coming with her, that the liquid that ran down her legs was the sign that the god of the waters had forsaken her. She wept the entire way, spilling her tears over the trails she crossed as if she were marking the path by which, years later, she would return, then in the company of Cortés.
The sorrow of that fateful day was greatly diminished when the following dawn, tired of weeping, she looked up at the sky and saw the Morning Star. Her heart leaped in her chest. She greeted her eternal friend and said a blessing. At that moment, in spite of her age, or perhaps because of it, Malinalli saw clearly that she had lost nothing, that there was no reason to fear, that the gods were everywhere, not just at her home. Here, too, where she was, a breeze blew, there were flowers, there was song, the Moon and the Morning Star were present, and at dawn the Sun also rose.
With the passing days she confirmed as well that her grandmother had not died. She lived in her thoughts, lived in the cornfields where Malinalli had planted the grains that she brought in her sack. Together, she and her grandmother had chosen the finest grains from the last harvest to be planted before the following rainy season. And although Malinalli could no longer do the sowing with her grandmother’s blessings or on her own beloved terrain, it had been a success. The cornfield brimmed with giant ears that were impregnated with the essence of her grandmother and, after the harvest, Malinalli could achieve a kind of communion with her every time she brought a tortilla to her mouth.
Her grandmother had been her best playmate, her greatest ally, her best friend in spite of the fact that little by little, the years had left her blind. The funny thing was that the less her grandmother was able to see, the less she needed her eyes. She told no one about losing her sight. She got around the same as ever and she knew exactly where everything was. She never stumbled over anything or asked for help. It seemed as if she had sketched out in her mind all the distances, paths, and corners of her surroundings.
When Malinalli turned three, her grandmother gave her clay figurines and toys, a dress she had embroidered when already almost blind, a turquoise necklace, and a small bracelet made of grains of corn. Malinalli felt truly loved. She went out to the patio with her grandmother to play with her new toys. Soon afterward a dark cloud covered them and loud thunder interrupted their games. A bolt of lightning caught Malinalli’s attention. It was silver in the sky. What did it mean? What was that silvery splendor on the gray? Before her grandmother could answer her it began to hail. The noise was such that no voice could be heard, only the sound that deafened everything. Malinalli and her grandmother took shelter from the storm inside the house. When the rain stopped, Malinalli asked for permission to go outside and play. Happy and excited, she buried her hands in the ice stones; she erected figures and made circles of ice, till little by little they melted into water. She played for two hours in the mud and water. She soiled her new dress, her knees, and her hands. She made clay dolls and mud balls, and finally she grew tired. When night was already falling, she went back inside the house and said to her grandmother, “Of all the toys that I have been given, I like the toys of water the best.”
“Why?” the grandmother asked.
“Because they change shapes.”
“Yes, child,” the grandmother explained, “they are your prettiest toys not only because they change shapes, but because they always return, for water is eternal.”
The girl felt as if she had been understood and she kissed her grandmother. On receiving the kiss, the grandmother noticed that the child smelled like wet earth and that she was covered in mud from head to toe. It didn’t bother the grandmother that Malinalli had soiled her dress or that the child had ruined so quickly what her blind eyes had made with such great effort. On the contrary, she talked to her about the joys of finding pleasure in the water, the earth, and the wind, how giving oneself over to them was a way to relish life.
After the showers, the heat again took hold and gradually it became intolerable. Although it was already night, Malinalli asked for permission to go out and play again and her grandmother, since it was the girl’s birthday, let her. The old woman sat by the doorway while her granddaughter laughed and played outside.
After a while, a silence arose. Not another sound was heard. The grandmother grew frightened and
went out to look for her granddaughter whom she loved more than her own flesh, than sight itself, than the stars. As she walked, she stumbled upon her and realized that the girl had fallen asleep in the mud. She caressed her with great tenderness, picked her up and carried her into the house. She placed her in her own bed to sleep and remained beside her, watching the stars. She could not see them with her physical eyes but with those of her spirit, eyes with which she had long ago mapped out a planetarium in her heart.
That day the house had been silent and only Malinalli’s tiny bell of laughter had filled the spaces and distances of the home. Only the grandmother and Malinalli had celebrated the girl’s birthday, for her mother had left a few days before, accompanied by a Tlatoani with whom she had fallen in love, to be in the audience at the ceremony of New Fire, which was celebrated in those parts every fifty-two years. It was an important event, but Malinalli’s mother had taken longer than necessary to return. After midnight, laughter and noises were heard coming from Malinalli’s mother and her new lord. They returned cheerful and very lively, for the man, by the heat of the New Fire, had proposed and she, very pleased, had immediately accepted. She invited him in and prepared his hammock. When Malinalli’s mother was about to lie down to sleep, her mother-in-law interrupted her.
“Three years ago today,” she said, “your daughter was born. Today is her birthday. Why weren’t you with her? Why didn’t you care enough to place the red conch over her pubis?”
“Because then when she is thirteen I would have to perform for her the ceremony of ‘rebirth,’ and I will not be there to do it.”
“How is it that you will not be by her side?”
“I am going to give her away.”
“You cannot rip her from me. She belongs to my heart, she belongs to my feelings. In her is the image of my son. Or have you forgotten him?”
“Everything is forgotten in this life,” she answered in a cutting tone. “Everything lapses into memory. Every event ceases to be present, loses its value and meaning, everything is forgotten. Now I have a new lord and I will have new children. Malinalli will be given to a new family who will take care of her, for she is a part of the Old Fire that I want to forget.
“No,” the grandmother demanded, “I am the one who is here to show her the way, to smooth out her existence, to prove to her that the dream in which we live can be a pleasant one, full of songs and flowers.”
“We don’t all dream the same thing,” the daughter-in-law replied. “The dream can be cruel and sorrowful as mine has been. She will be given away because everything in this life is forgotten.”
“It is obvious,” the grandmother said in an authoritative voice, “that you will neither shed a tear nor worry over what happens to your daughter. I see that you have forgotten the advice of your mother and father. Do you think that you came to this earth to act wildly, to go to bed and rise merrily with your new lord? Have you forgotten that it was the God of All Things who gave you that girl so that you may show her the way through life? If that’s the case, then let me care for her. As long as I live, let Malinalli remain by my side.”
Malinalli’s mother complied with the grandmother’s wishes, and so it was that from that day forward the girl was lovingly educated by her grandmother.
As a result of the long talks between grandmother and granddaughter, from the age of two the girl’s speech had been precise, abundant, and well structured. By the time Malinalli was four, she could express doubts and complex concepts without difficulty. The credit was her grandmother’s. Very early on, she had taught Malinalli how to sketch out codices in her mind so that she could exercise both language and memory.
“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 as
h 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.