The friars are in front, followed by the boys in their purple cassocks and the multitudes that crowded together on either side that could easily, given the slightest provocation, spill out into the street, seemingly both jubilant and somehow menacing at the same time. The Blessed Sacrament, many crosses, and palanquins on which the saints are carried are also in the procession. The arms of the crosses and the adornments of the palanquins are made of well-wrought gold leaf. Twelve friars are dressed as apostles with their insignias, and many who are accompanying the procession carry lit candles in their hands. When we pass in front of a chapel or a church we see well-adorned altars and altarpieces through the doors opened as if for a grand fiesta and people come out of each church or chapel, singing and dancing in front of the Blessed Sacrament. If the chapel is Franciscan, the singers are also wearing flowers. The entire street is covered with sedge and bulrush over which the procession joyfully dances, throwing roses and dianthus.
We pass ten triumphal arches en route, and each one has three parts like the naves of a church, like the church of Santiago that has three naves. The Blessed Sacrament, ministers, crosses, and palanquins pass under the ten triumphal arches, which are about twenty feet wide; all the people pass under the medium arches that are on both sides and are also made of flowers. A thousand shields made of flowers are distributed among the arches, and there are large rosettes like onionskins, very round, very well made on the arches that do not have flowers.
At four of the corners, or turnabouts, that we have to make on the route, they have recreated real mountains. From each one of these arises a very tall rocky outcropping with tufts of grass and flowers and everything you normally find in a field, many trees (fruit trees, flowering trees, and trees with just leaves) and toadstools and mushrooms. The trees are so perfectly arranged and there are even some that are broken as if by time or the wind. There is moss growing on the trunks and at the top of the crown of the tree there are many large birds, falcons, crows, and owls. The mountains—sometimes sparse or bare of trees, and sometimes thick with them—are also populated by deer, hares, rabbits, jackals, and many snakes (with the fangs and teeth removed, because they were not insignificant little vipers but rather serpents as long as a man and as thick as an arm at the wrist). If you look closely you can see the hunters (who are so well camouflaged with twigs and moss and the leaves of trees that it is difficult to see them) with their bows and arrows.
In addition to the singers who join us, there is also a large choir in the procession and Indian music is being played continuously on both small and large flutes.
The procession passes a plaza where noble lords sit comfortably on a platform that has been prepared for the occasion and another enchanted mountain where Saint Francis is portrayed preaching to a great variety of birds (they are actually real birds, not fake ones) that sit all around the saint. Saint Francis starts to tell them (in Nahuatl) all the reasons that they should talk to and praise God: because he takes care of them and they do not have to work, sow and reap like men, and also for the plumage that God adorns them “with such a variety of feathers, that you do not have to spin and weave your own clothing, and for the space in the world He has given you: the air through which you fly.”
Then the birds move closer to the saint to receive his blessing as he commands them again to praise and sing to God in the mornings and afternoons. And the birds are real, not tricks, but instead are perfectly trained by the men of these lands.
As the saint descends the mock mountain, a horrendous and ferocious beast comes running down from the mountain onto the road, startling us all even though we know this is a trick and part of the performance. The saint makes the sign of the cross toward him. “I recognize you as the beast that destroys the livestock and does evil things to the creatures made by God and attacks that which He has made for the good of man, I now reprimand you and invite you to submit yourself to the law of peace,” to which the beast replies, between howls, “I repent and hope for forgiveness!”
The saint brings the beast close to the platform where the noble lords are and the beast indicates that he will obey and pledges that he will not do any more harm. He gives his paw to each of the noble lords who is willing to accept it, and that done he very peacefully goes back to the densest part of the mock mountains, having lost some of his frightful appearance.
The saint is left alone. He takes the opportunity to harangue us with a sermon on obedience, which is interrupted when someone dressed as a macehual pretending to be drunk, approaches singing, or rather shouting, as drunkards do. The saint humbly asks him to be quiet, while the rest of us do so loudly and make noises, for which the saint quiets us as well and explains to the drunkard that if he does not stop singing right now he will go to hell. But because the drunkard does not pay any attention, two frightening devils come from the side of the mountain to grab him and, even though the drunkard resists, they take him to where the fires of the mock hell are burning.
The saint wants to continue with his sermon, but then some believable witches appear and dance provocatively around him, and because they are disturbing the preaching and are not paying attention to his pleas for them to leave, the devils return with the mock inferno. They open the doors of hell and we can see the fire they have lit, and the devils, evil women, and the drunkard shout and scream as if they were really burning.
We get up and continue the procession with solemn music, walking over flowers and surrounded by beautiful music until we arrive at the church of Santiago where a stage has been prepared on which the Earthly Paradise has been reproduced. All is completely silent, except for the music of the choir, as we look at a scene depicting the tree of good and evil, the apple, the serpent, the angel with his sword, and the fall of man.
Finally, we celebrate a mass to complete the formal inauguration of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz, during which Fray Alfonso de Herrera preaches the second sermon in the great convent (which is what we called the convent of Mexico City so as not to confuse it with that of Tlatelolco). Fray Alfonso is originally from Castilla la Vieja, near Burgos, and he studied law at Salamanca, where he took the habit. His Sunday and Saints’ Day sermons are much admired. His person is always praised in writing. It falls to Fray Pedro de Rivera to deliver the final sermon, which he preaches in the friar’s refectory where food is served to Viceroy Mendoza, Bishop Zumárraga, President Fuenleal (who had not yet departed for Spain), the invited lords (among whom was my false father), and to the sixty original and founding students.
We all eat together at seven tables. The older students (the ones who came from the school of San José de Gante) converse with the dignitaries and the Bishop in Latin, and in Nahuatl and Castillian, as they are able.
During the meal they ask us to stand up and say our name and cite our lineage aloud and I almost make a mistake regarding “my” family. But one look, like a dagger, from my false father, makes me quickly correct it, and the fact that I initially said the first syllable of a name that was not mine merely makes everyone laugh.
The meal ends and the noble lords, the fathers of the students, take their leave. I pretend to say goodbye to mine, though we took our leave of each other long ago, and that night I pretend to sleep in the light of an eternally burning lamp until, by pretending so long, I truly am. For this one night we do not get up to sing the Angelus or the matins.
Slosos keston de Hernando
EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO
When we were children, the men from the time of History invented something for us they called skin…Wait a moment. Why am I starting there? I’ve gone back to a memory from my childhood because yesterday when I was coming back from work, I felt the need to move my legs and see the world, jumping from cloud to cloud:
Sie schreiten von Berge
Zu Bergen hinüber:
Aus Schlünden der Tiefe
Dampft ihnen der Atem
Erstickter Titanen,
Gleich Opfergerüchen,
Ein leichtes
Gewölke
That was when I saw Caspa playing around with something in such an odd way that I stopped to watch her more closely, ignoring my legs that were demanding to walk around after having spent the entire day inactive.
Caspa was holding a small object in her arms, next to her body. She was talking to it and rocking. It took me more than a couple of minutes to realize that what Caspa was rocking in her arms was a small, anthropomorphic living being—a human about the length of my arm. I was sure when Caspa quit holding it against her body for a moment and held it in her hands as she extended her arms to readjust and make it more comfortable before she resumed her rocking. The only thing visible, other than the blankets that covered it, was the little head of the baby that lolled from side to side as if it were lifeless. I could clearly see the slightly puffy face, the two red ears, and the bald head.
Caspa’s rocking reminded me of the movement of the Cradle. It’s not very easy to describe the Cradle because I’ve never seen it through adult eyes. The Cradle, as its name suggests, was a place to feel warmth and movement, though it didn’t move from place to place; it embraced us, enveloped us, it almost swallowed us in its fake, doughy flesh, rocking us untiringly, lulling us to sleep. The men from the time of History devised it for our first years with the object of providing us with what they called skin. I remember the smell of the Cradle perfectly. It didn’t only have a smell, it also made sounds—it made syllabic noises, hummed, laughed, hiccupped, cried, whistled melodies, and spoke to us. It was a great mother-like body, a body that enveloped each one of us, usually individually, but occasionally embracing several of us at once, playing with two or three at the same time.
And there was Caspa yesterday, in the middle of the sky, rocking from side to side like the Cradle, as if she was a living cradle for the child.
All of a sudden, Caspa hurriedly departed. Since there wasn’t a storm clouding my vision, I could see that she disappeared through a crevice in the surface of the Earth. In a few minutes I saw her reappear without the live little bundle in her arms, and she headed toward L’Atlàntide. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to investigate what was inside the crevice into which she had disappeared. The narrow opening in the rock led into a cement and asphalt vault, apparently made to house bombs (non-atomic ones).
The child was lying upon a marble and stone table, which was the topmost object of a pile of things. Lifting my feet off the ground, I flew closer. Wrapped up in blankets, making strange sounds, changing expressions from crying to laughing, making angry faces, puckering its lips, opening and closing its mouth, yawning and whimpering, the newborn changed expressions with a rapidity that suggested that there was no meaning behind those expressions, that the expressions weren’t the expression of a feeling, but rather an exercise of unconscious gesticulation, reflex, and simple mimicry. It looked drowsy, as if it might fall asleep at any moment.
The vault looked like a grotesque, enormous temple erected to the art of war and the pile was its altar. The altar was stable, so there was not the slightest risk that it would fall. I sat on top of it next to the child and unwrapped the blankets in which Caspa had swaddled it in a kind of cocoon. I didn’t dare pick it up. I had already seen how its head appeared to fall from its body. It put a chubby little finger to its lips and had fat little rosy-pink cheeks too. It breathed. It was warm. It had a peculiar smell. On its rosy-pink face there were some tiny round, white formations, like little drops of milk. Between its two eyebrows, a purple spot was just beginning to appear. As hard as it tried, the child couldn’t manage to get its finger into its mouth. It searched for its finger with its mouth, but its hand took the finger to its eye, to its ear. It seemed to have all its parts—two eyes, two arms, ten fingers, two legs, two knees. It was a boy. I can’t say anything else about it, I don’t even know if his anatomy was even completely human, I just don’t know. I’ve never studied that branch of science; I’ve never worked with a living body. I am revolted by the mere thought of the organs, bones, and veins inside our skin. I worked with plants for one very simple reason: the inside of the body disgusts me. Dealing with organs, glands, and viscera is more than I can bear. Fortunately, not everyone in L’Atlàntide feels as I do. Carson, among others, has dedicated all of her energy to the study of, and surgical operations on, the internal organs and other things inside our bodies.
The baby was wearing clothes like the men from the time of History did. Seeing the diaper, I understood that along with it came urine and feces, that he would nurse, know illness, and, at some point, death. Before my very eyes he fell asleep, without taking his finger away from his lip, and moved his little mouth as if he were nursing. His little eyelashes were dark. He looked very much like Caspa. He was as beautiful as Caspa, and even more so. He was like the perfection of Caspa in a smaller version, but even more beautiful. I thought to myself: “And if that little boy urinates and nurses, Caspa menstruates. Her breasts fill with milk.” The idea of menstruation and milk disgusted me; I put the blankets back on the baby’s body and left him there.
But I didn’t go back out into the open. I decided to conduct a thorough search of the vault. It appeared to be about the height of the dome of a cathedral, but it wasn’t as long and it didn’t have a nave. I saw the memory of man engraved inside. It was untouched by the final disaster; it didn’t know the atmosphere had burned one day, scorching the plants, drying up the streams, roasting the bodies of every living thing. The vault didn’t know that everything had been destroyed, that crystals, cement, and metal had all liquefied. The vault didn’t have any idea of this, because it had been created from an earlier death; in the same way that Goethe and Heine didn’t know about the end of man because their works were written by the light of an earlier death, that of the gods. The vault, a ruin under the asphalt, still preserved traces of the men who had died in the explosion that had created it. One part of its curved walls was made of asphalt, and on this remained an imprint in the shape of a foot. Its owner must have exploded, bursting in the glycerin. I moved closer to get a better look. A fragment of the sole of a shoe was still stuck in the wall. Just beyond that, the rounded imprint of a head and two or three strands of hair bore witness, and a few centimeters away was a handful of splinters from a skull. The altar the child was lying on was made of parts of a chair, an intact table, along with cans, a cash register, metal shelves, and boxes with glass bottles, all absurdly arranged. In this tomb slept a newborn. Nothing protected him from the unhealthy air. How much longer could he live? Only a few short months before he would oxidize completely and then he would literally fall to pieces.
Two steps further on, I realized that Caspa wouldn’t allow him such a horrific end. Some twisted rebar on one side of the vault formed a long, low chamber that I slipped into by crouching down. Under a protective air lock, lined up in front of me, were dozens of newborns piled up in an orderly fashion, in clear sight, in perfect condition, feet and more or less bald little heads. Rows of newborn corpses had been arranged in perfect order, the head of one on the feet of the other to make the best possible use of the space.
The vaulted crevice was a cellar of dead newborns. How many were there? A hundred? Yes, or at least more than double the population of L’Atlàntide. Caspa had put all of them to sleep for eternity before the unhealthy air devoured them, taking care that the corpses would not decay or deteriorate over time. Who knows with what terrible lullaby Caspa had transported them, in her own arms, to the arms of death. Once they were dead, she protected them from decay. That’s what the cats the Egyptians embalmed must have looked like, arranged in interminable rows in the Vatican Museum, except that this new collection is much more horrific, harmonizing with the sinister environment of the vault that shelters them. That’s how the heads of sacrificial victims must have been arranged in the Aztec tzompantli, the skull rack. That’s how the piles of corpses from plagues, famines, and concentration camps must have been arranged too.
Looking at the row of those dead
newborns, I thought: “And what if Caspa comes back and discovers that I have discovered her secret?” I left, practically running, without finishing my exploration of the vault. Seeing the piles of baby corpses produced less horror in me than the idea of Caspa discovering that I had discovered her. What would have happened then? Caspa’s crime is unspeakable. It seems to me that it would be less so if she didn’t kill the fruit of her sins; however, in the eyes of the people of L’Atlàntide what would be unpardonable would be to bring more members (or even one more being, one would be enough) to the Earth who would steal our energy and space, which has been so carefully calculated to conform to the exact number of members in our community. In my eyes, as I said, what is unpardonable is to kill the beings she created. It seems to me that it is unpardonable to create in order to destroy, to assassinate as a matter of course, to unthinkingly kill what you love. Because putting so much love and lullabies into those little bodies, the newborns had to have awakened something in her breast akin to love, some kind of attachment.
Her crime is so huge that if she had seen me witnessing it, I don’t know what would have happened. If she kills what she loves, without it touching her heart, she would have wanted to kill me. But how could she kill me if I can’t die?
Can I really not die? Or is it that I can’t die of natural causes? Couldn’t Caspa have manufactured an accident to do away with me? Couldn’t she kill violently, like the men from the time of History used to do? Even though there aren’t knives or swords in L’Atlàntide, she could pick up a stone, like Cain’s, and smash me with it and hide my body so that nobody would be able to help me. But that’s impossible, my vital alert would inform the Center for Research and they would find me and treat me immediately.
Caspa wouldn’t be able to kill me. If she had discovered me discovering her unspeakable crime (that is what it seems to me to be), we would have been like two immortal gods in conflict, we would have performed the duel of the Titans. We would have jumped from peak to peak of the cordillera, drunk with rage, throwing our golden chairs and our tables across the abyss at each other in order to destroy each other’s eternal celebration. No, I really don’t know what would have happened. (“Nothing more sad than a titan who cries…victim of his own fatal martyrdom”).
Heavens on Earth Page 15