As Abuelo drilled sparks into the tinder I blew softly, then, as little pink and tangerine flames licked up, blew myself dizzy. It was like coaxing a flower into bloom. Once it took, I backed up, my bottom seeking out the smooth hollow I liked to sit in. Finding it I sat, facing east toward our mountains. Less trusting of his bottom, Abuelo reached out a tentative hand and settled stiffly into his place.
The first of Grandfather’s three tales was about Nezahualcoyotl. FastingCoyote. Emperor of Texcoco and the greatest poet and philosopher of all the Mexica.
Abuelo turned and fixed me with his light green eyes. “This FastingCoyote founded a Council of Music—not just musicians but painters, astronomers, physicians. Poets and historians. This, at the exact moment the Medicis were founding their Academy. Can you imagine if they had known of the other’s existence? Here was such a ruler as even Lorenzo the Magnificent would have been honoured to know. Such a synod that would have been!”
There came a time in the Triple Alliance when a particularly brutal general was to take the throne. To block his ascension, FastingCoyote offered to subject his people, the city of Texcoco, to the rule of Tenochtitlan. Forever. “This is the calibre of man we are dealing with, Angelina. A generation before the Conquest, FastingCoyote will give proof of his vision yet again. The leadership of the Mexica is now in the hands of one man, Moctezuma the First. FastingCoyote goes forth from Texcoco to warn him, as the poet’s son will one day go to repeat his warning to Moctezuma the Second as Cortés approaches. Do you see, Angel? Disaster was near.”
Sparks shot up like molten beads as Grandfather poked at the flames. I had never really seen the boyishness in him. The soft pelican pouch at his neck seemed almost to pout as his chin nodded and wagged at the fire. His thoughts turned to a temple that FastingCoyote had raised, a temple to the Unknown God. My grandfather praised the king’s delicate poetry, regretted how many of his writings had been lost when the archives of Texcoco were burned by the friars. Abuelo recited a beautiful fragment in Castilian for me, and I decided to try to put it in Nahuatl again for him. I would ask for Xochitl’s help with the translation and tomorrow night recite it. It did not occur to me that she knew it in the original.
I, Nezahualcoyotl, ask this:
Is it true one really lives on the earth?
Not forever on earth,
only a little while here.
Though it be jade it falls apart,
though it be gold it wears away,
though it be quetzal plumage it is torn asunder.
Not forever on earth,
only a little while here.20
Abuelo grew quiet for a while. A three-quarter moon rose and shimmered through the plume of Popocatepetl. A few tongues of flame sputtered up. Once clear of the volcano, the moon bathed the courtyard in a creamy radiance. It softened the edges of everything, smoothed the lines and creases away as even our cream of avocado and honey could not do.
As Abuelo tried to tip the unburnt end of a log into the embers, I watched the big-knuckled hands grip and waggle his traveller’s staff. From earliest memory my eyes had been drawn to those sausage fingers, and in that soft, milky light I thought of the blankness just below the elephant’s eyes where its trunk seems grafted on. The thought seemed to come from such a long way back….
After a while he began to talk of the last great sorcerer, who had no doubt sat at many campfires on this very spot. Now I learned that he had not lived all his life in the mountains. Just before the Conquest, Ocelotl had gone to live in Texcoco and study at the archives, for it was a time of restlessness. Then, great temples of sail were sighted off the coast. Moctezuma II, disturbed by the portents, summoned the seers and historians. But he imprisoned them. Their pronouncements displeased him. Next he summoned the sages and the sorcerers, and Ocelotl first among them.
“We do not know, Angelina, the precise words Ocelotl chose. But from what I have been able to learn of his character, I believe they ran to something like this: ‘Lord Speaker, I can dispel certain mysteries for you. The auguries have become ever more evasive and strange because those who brought them were afraid and had no taste for prison. Whatever is coming is rooted in the past, and I have come from Texcoco just as others have in the past to say this: The Speaker has not listened. The levies have become excessive. Tenochtitlan is feared and detested far and wide. And this, for generations. Whatever advantage the Mexica might have gained from fear, we have lost to hatred, for a sufficient hatred overcomes much fear and caution.’ And so Ocelotl spoke to an emperor. You know how Moctezuma thanked him for his troubles?”
“He threw him into prison!”
“Eso, hijita. As Ocelotl must have expected.” Abuelo’s smile was less rueful than wry. It was good to share such things. “And as far as I can tell, he was not released until some time after Moctezuma was himself Cortés’s prisoner….”
The moon had swung high into the south. The light fell slant on the rock faces and the snowfields, faintly purple now, like the milk in a bowl of moras.† The sloping cone of the volcano above Grandfather rose pale and featureless, like a tall Bedouin, I thought, in his flowing headdress, or a jinni, its face in shadows of amethyst.
The fire had burned down. Sleepy now, I looked up at the sky as I listened, the constellations just visible in the starry profusion. The Great Bear, Gemini … the Fire-Bow that Amanda had known how to find for Abuelo in Orion.
Grandfather’s third tale too was about Ocelotl. It had to do with the Inquisition and Ocelotl’s new friend the Bishop. We spoke of Ocelotl often here—Abuelo and Xochitl both. There was nothing strange in this. As she would say, Truly his mist has not scattered. And yet as Abuelo began, something was bothering me.
“The races of Man come and go, Angelina. This I understand. And I have seen enough of the rest of Europe to know no other nation would have done better than Las Casas, Sahagún—and Antonio Vieyra, today….”
No, what bothered me was this: We never all of us spoke together—of Ocelotl or anything else.
“And Lord knows, Angel, an honest man expects no thanks, even from a Bishop. But God, O God, how we lied to them….”
And then I asked, as if it were nothing, a question I had not asked for years.
“Abuelito, what happened between you and Xochita?”
Now that I had startled myself by asking it, I expected him to be angry. He was staring into the ember glow. Drafts played in shadows over the coals. The tip of his traveller’s staff lay among them, smoking, motionless.
“Some things are better left unsaid, Juanita. It does not mean we were not friends.”
After another moment or two he looked up and turned stiffly to face me. He did not look angry at all. “But it is good you ask about this. I have need of your help.”
“With what Abuelo?—anything.”
“Her.”
“Xochi?”
“And Amanda, yes. Your mother is pregnant…. You knew.”
“Josefa said.”
“From now on, it will be harder for Amanda and her mother.”
“De acuerdo, Abuelito. We’ll watch over them together.”
At that, his frown eased. He scratched at the ruff under his chin.
“Yes we will. Now do you want to hear about our Ocelotl and his Bishop or not? Good. Well, you remember I once told you Ocelotl had a twin….”
When I awoke, he had one arm still under me and was bending to pull back the sheets. He had not carried me to bed for years and I wouldn’t have thought he still could. Moonlight flooded into the room through the doorway. Moonlight spilled under the eaves and in through the window. Pure white now … the tint of amethyst was gone, as if a trick of light from the fire. In that milky light his face was rinsed clear and clean of lines, as if the blankness had spread from his sausage finger to an eye, a cheek, finally to fill the room, the moon …
My arms were still around his neck. So close above me, the eyes in that big fine head were like opals, black yet clear, like smoke thr
ough lantern glass. Reluctantly I let go of him, regretted it. Over my forehead a big hand hovered ever so lightly now as if cupped to shield a candle. He smoothed my hair and kissed it.
His mouth was firm, resolute, an old lion’s. The smile was only in his voice.
“Has it not been the finest of days, Angelina?”
Ah, sí, Abuelito. The very finest.
We had the most wonderful time.
†blackberries
JORGE MANRIQUE
B. Lomosneros, trans.
I
Recuerde el alma dormida,
avive el seso e despierte
contemplando
cómo se passa la vida,
cómo se viene la muerte
tan callando;
cuán presto se va el plazer,
cómo, después de acordado,
da dolor;
cómo, a nuestro parescer,
cualquiere tiempo passado
fue mejor.
II
Pues si vemos lo presente
cómo en un punto s’es ido
e acabado,
si juzgamos sabiamente,
daremos lo non venido
por passado.
Non se engañe nadi, no,
pensando que ha de durar
lo que espera
más que duró lo que vio,
pues que todo ha de passar
por tal manera.
I
Recall the soul from its sleep
kindle the slumb’ring brain and wake
to contemplate
how life passes by,
how death arrives
so quietly …
How soon pleasure leaves—
how its memory
returns as pain;
how, it seems,
any past time
was better.
II
When we see the present,
how in a heartbeat it is finished
and gone,
if we judge wisely
we shall wonder if what is past
has ever come.
Let no one be deceived, no,
to think what is hoped for
shall last,
any more than what we’ve seen go,
since all things must pass
so.
III
Nuestras vidas son los ríos
que van a dar en la mar,
qu’es el morir;
allí van los señoríos
derechos a se acabar
e consumir;
allí los ríos caudales,
allí los otros medianos
e más chicos,
allegados, son iguales
los que viven por sus manos
e los ricos….
IV
Dexo las invocaciones
de los famosos poetas
y oradores;
non curo de sus ficciones,
que traen yerbas secretas
sus sabores.
Aquél sólo m’encomiendo,
Aquél sólo invoco yo
de verdad,
que en este mundo viviendo,
el mundo non conoció
su deidad …
III
Our lives are rivers
running to the sea
that is death;
there run all our dominions
straight to their end,
to be consumed;
there, the mightiest streams,
there, the lesser
and small,
all lie together now, equals,
those who live by their hands,
those who command….
IV
Here I let fall the invocations
of the famous poets
and orators;
I am not healed by their fictions,
though they bring secret herbs
strange flavours.
To this alone do I commend me,
This alone do I invoke,
truly,
that in a world of living,
this world knew not
its deity …
EARTH TEARER
Amanda was the one who brushed the damp earth from my knees and walked me back from the plot in the shady spot where she and I used to read. It was Amanda who sat close beside me at the table in the kitchen as Xochitl did her best to console me without ever quite speaking of him. It was Amanda who, for weeks, waited just inside my room each morning for me to rise, and waited near the library for me to come out again, just to walk me back to my room. Every day she brought each meal there. Was there anything else I needed, was there anything special Xochitl could make for me? Anxious, almost anguished, she wore an expression I saw often during that time but would not recognise, because she was the mirror I did not want to look into.
Diego moved in. My sisters went to live with my aunt in Chalco. I did not think to wonder if they’d asked to go. Yet even with Diego around, there came a time when I could no longer spend all my days alone in the library.
I had been sitting at the desk, a book open before me, staring out the window at the mountains, just as I had sometimes surprised him doing. When caught, he gave such a sheepish little smile. And at last, there it was in my mind, that little smile.
Abuelito, I’ll put your books away now. And clear off your desk …? If that will be all right.
The ones jumbled on the right were easier; these he had read. But four, he had not finished. It took a moment to touch them, a little longer to shelve. The last one dropped. Cursing my clumsy hands I bent to pick it up where it lay face down in the aisle, awkwardly folded. A little roof unevenly pitched. A small hawk covering a kill. It was like finding him all over again, turning that book face up. On the stone floor underneath lay a scrap of paper, a crude map. Mountains, sea, two stick figures dressed as tars with oars and banners. A girl and an old man with a sunflower face, waving grandly from Tierra del Fuego.
When I came out that day Amanda was there. It was early evening, the air already cool, the sun behind the hills. Her eyes looked searchingly into mine, her eyes big and full, colt’s eyes of softest brown. She came to a decision, drew a little bundle wrapped in sacking from the folds of her rebozo.
She had made a doll. Body of hemp, arms of braided wool bound tight with cotton thread. Corncob head, cut cross-wise to make a round sun face. Cornsilk hair, faintly red. I was without a thought in my head but could not stop staring at the doll.
Numbly I asked what this was. She was afraid I did not like it. She said I could take him with me now, wherever I went. I could feel my face working as I tried to find the words. I should have hugged her, held her and never let go.
Just then, Isabel came in from the fields.
She looked so tired and dusty, and so pregnant, a giant egg lumped under her dress, a camel’s hump come uncinched and slipped round to her stomach. Huge—hatted booted skirted—she grimaced, wrenching her chin back and forth as she tugged at a knot in the cord of her riding cloak. Hands high, chin high, head cocked to one side, a dangerous exasperation in her black eyes. Seeing us malingering at the library door she barked at Amanda to go help her mother.
Amanda’s face went wooden. As she turned for the kitchen I clutched at her arm. Isabel brushed past. I remember shouting back, something about Isabel’s touching concern for Xochita all of a sudden. For an instant her gait faltered, but her physical distress must have been such that she could not turn back. I led Amanda into the kitchen by the hand, showed the doll to Xochitl, railed against all my mother’s injustices. After a few minutes of this, Xochitl broke in brusquely to tell me not to make such a stew of my chameleons, by which I took her to mean that I made too much of my travails, dressing them up in colours not their own. Even Xochita, now.
Once the baby was born we started seeing a great deal of Diego, and of Diego’s black mastiff. No matter how far up the river we walked or how deep into the woods, the dog found us. It clambered over us e
xcitedly—panting, lolling, trembling—insolent snout, yellow eyes dead, corrupt, breath foul like an animal rotting in the brush. Though the mastiff smirched and pawed and slavered over both of us it took special interest in Amanda. This was the breed so efficient against the Mexicans during the Conquest—to this in peacetime come the war dogs and warmongers. It could smell a difference between us.
I had never felt a hatred so intense for any living thing, and fury and disgust. It was not a difference of race it smelled, but that Amanda was a woman and I was not. Yet it was not only that it found difference where I wanted there to be none. And it was not that I was shocked. We had lived on ranches all our lives. These things were natural with animals. And this was not natural at all. It followed us with its nose, it followed us as Diego’s eyes followed us at home—all of us, my sisters, Amanda, me, even Xochitl. And lo, after a while, on his big pied gelding, handsome Diego would come riding along to liberate us and let himself be gazed upon … the glossy hair kinked in the manner we call chino and drawn tight into a short pigtail of briars … the wide, full lips such as any woman might wish for herself, the thick gleaming brows, the fine pale forehead under the splendid sombrero, the eyes deep-set, a turbulent dark brown, and yet in their darkness a little dull. Dullish knots twisting in smooth white pine.
It was Amanda they watched. Each time he caught up with his dog he waited a little longer before calling him away: Bad dog. But once he had, the thing came instantly, and we knew it had not wandered off. It had been sent, like a message. How I detested that animal. Amanda was afraid of it, I was not. And I was not afraid of its master either. Such a striking figure he cut—of the soldier clown, preening varlet in battle dress. Was there nowhere an uprising to put down, did he never go anymore in to the garrison?
He sat at the head of the table, the man of the household now, to whom all its appurtenances and comforts fell. I was not afraid, but then, it was not me he looked upon as property. Protecting her or hating the sight of him in that chair—what played the larger role in what I did next? It occurs to me that I may have hated him for something I had discovered in myself.
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