A Signal Victory (10 page)

As soon as he heard the news, Valazquez sent out an expedition under Cortés. And under Cortés there was to be no respite for anyone.

The two men never met, and being so alike, could not have met, which is a pity, for they might well have understood each other, though we find it difficult to understand them.

About such great rapacious leaders, Alexander, Cortés, there is always something ambiguous. We know what they looked like, what they did, and what they said. But that is not the same as knowing anything about them. They are riddle, sphinx, and Oedipus too. At best we catch only the ripple of their well-oiled thighs, as they hunch themselves to ask the question. About those who have the smile of success, the smile of the sphinx, we know a good deal. But about those who drove her to her death, and whose expression is somewhat different, nothing, except the later fate of Oedipus, which those who have driven her to that extreme have always shared.

With Cortés there was no nonsense. He came from Spain’s dustiest province, and though he could lament the destruction of much beauty, that did not prevent him from destroying it. So when he arrived at Cozumel, he let those priests his government had foisted upon his expedition destroy the temples and pull down an idol or two. Though he was not a bigot himself, such actions upped the morale of the men and cost him nothing. Patrician by nature, he was above such things, but precisely because he was above them, they meant nothing to him, and it was important to keep his men content.

Besides, he was a lord. He looked a lord. Though he always dressed with care, stripped naked, he would have looked one, because he was one. And the natives recognized that. He was the first foreign lord they had ever seen, except for Kukulcan, or Quetzalcoatl, in whom they believed, but whom none of them had ever seen, that legendary ruler who had conquered them before.

It left them curiously relieved, who had fought among themselves for so long, to see a lord. Knowing only a two-class society, they had been puzzled by those uneasily ostentatious bourgeois hidalgos who were the only Spaniards they had seen before. Now they felt the difference at once. This man was a ruler.

Not that they were submissive, but like very old cultures and middle-aged men, there was about them something feminine. Even at their most manly, they still wished to be dominated by the father of them all, against whom they could rebel, only to learn in the end, from some odd ancestral gesture of the elbow, some way of holding the head, that it was the same pattern they repeated and that life went on. They were a people who proceeded by precedents. With Cortés they thought they knew where they were.

With its idols overturned, the life went out of Cozumel. One by one the natives came back to make their submission. And from these, Cortés learned of Aguilar and Guerrero, not by name, but as bearded men who had come among them from the sea. He guessed who they must be at once, and since he could do nothing without an interpreter, sent for both of them, and even posted a ship to patrol these shores, until they should appear.

He did not for a moment doubt that they would appear. Were they not Spaniards?

*

It was Aguilar, first, who received the news.

He was still alive, and still in the harem at Ecab. He had spent so many years in servile bending, to save his skin, so he claimed, for God, that it took him a while to straighten up.
But then he became very straight indeed. He still had his notched stick: the year was 1519. He had suffered indignities. He said a mass for himself. He wished revenge.

As Cortés’ interpreter, he would have it. A priest could do much.

But would the Maya let him go?

Of course they would. This foreign lord had, in the proper way, sent a ransom, two bags of round stamped golden disks. They meant nothing to the Lord of Taxmar, but they could be turned into gold ornaments, and gold ornaments were rare. He liked ornaments. Aguilar was a nuisance. He had ceased to be amusing years ago. He was just an oddity in the harem. Taxmar did not put much value on people who would rate such an idiot so high, when a dwarf would have been so much more entertaining.

Who would have thought he would have been worth so much?

The women of the harem took a new interest in him. They even asked him to tell them again about the Virgin Mary, some kind of goddess his people had, who could beget without men, and whose labour was never referred to. It seemed so odd.

No one had ever made much of him before, but he knew why they did so. It was because he was leaving. Nor did he expect any kindness of Cortés, or any man, that he could not extort. It was not as a Christian he was being ransomed, but as a possible interpreter. That left him with no real love of Cortés, for he foresaw difficulties. He did not speak the language well, first of all because it was a heathen language, and second because he had no curiosity.

He was also asked to summon Guerrero. He had not known Guerrero was alive, and would have preferred him dead. He did not admit to himself that this was because Guerrero, if he came, would supplant him. He preferred to believe that it was because the man was a renegade.

Yet he complied and sent a message to Chetumal. Compliance was one of the prices of his manumission. But he did
not wait for an answer. Nothing could have made him do so. Guerrero was a heretic. Guerrero had seen him at a disadvantage. He could only pray that the man would not come.

*

The man had no intention of coming.

Rumours had reached him from the north, and he had sent out spies. He realized what manner of man he had to deal with this time, and that now the Conquest would go on in earnest. Those first invaders had been ineffectual, but now, he could tell from the natives’ reports, that with Cortés there would be no turning back. Even garbled in Maya, that name had the sound of authority, the sound of a man of honour.

But gentleman or not, Cortés would have to make use of the Aguilars of this world, who were without honour, and therefore without mercy.

Guerrero also knew why he had been summoned. He would be a useful man on that expedition, even though the invitation made no mention of that. He was exhorted as a Christian to do his duty, he was commanded back into the fold. But when the wolf calls the sheep back to the fold, do they answer?

That sort of thing he would leave to Aguilar, and much good might Cortés make of him. Somehow he did not think Aguilar would be of much help.

He had forgotten the wretched man. But now, remembering him, he felt only disgust.

And yet he was unsettled.

When he had sent back his answer, he watched the messenger until he was out of sight, not so much to call him back, as to be sure that he had gone. Then, not wanting to see anyone, he had wandered about the city.

There it was, spread out around him, at dusk, white, gleaming, peaceful, clean, and orderly. His two sons, his wife, his father-in-law, were here, somewhere, going about their familiar, quotidian affairs with that good-humoured gravity which was their approach to life. There was no
ordinary detail of this daily life that did not give him a warm and customary thrill.

He was upset and angry.

What did they mean, to call him back to his duty as a Christian? What did they understand of such things, from Aguilar, with his crouched hatred of the world, to the great ones, who bought on Sundays the right to do whatever they chose during the rest of the week?

Did it mean they wanted to tear this world down, and needed him to help? Was that what their pious summons, what Aguilar’s revolting hypocrisy, meant? That he should go unshaven, spitting through the jungles, shooting down a culture they would not even comprehend, because they could not comprehend it, and because they thought it might be rich? That spoils system which led every illiterate foot soldier to believe he could become a millionaire, meant only that one or two grew prosperous by creating a universal squalor.

Cortés, yes, might be a gentleman, but a gentleman can at best ride unsullied on that universal wave of filth which is man’s hatred and ambition. Even he, in time, if he is not careful, will be sucked under by it.

These people loved life. No Christian does that. How can he, saddled with the ultimate impiety called Original Sin? There is nothing original about it. It is merely the same old irrational vindictiveness of those without the will to be good.

And yet he found himself shaking.

He could have sent no answer, but that was not his way. He did not like to leave decisions unmade. That was not the honourable way. And yet he could not help but feel cold, for though he was a grandee here, he had been born there.

It was not a matter of loyalty. It was not a matter of having anything to regret, of ever having had any desire to return. And yet a man is a little lost in any place where he was not born. It is a piece of the earth he carries around with him, and gives him something to stand on.

The city, lit by hundreds of lamps, was reflected in the Bay of Chetumal. He saw the lights of a fisherman’s canoe
on the water. Yet he also, for the first time in years, saw the bleak yellow landscape of his native place, Nieto. It made him blink. He had never felt at ease there, as he did here. And yet he had had a father and a mother, brothers, sisters, and as a child, those native hills to play in.

He had said no. He had meant no. And yet there was something about the sheer weight of the jungle behind the city that oppressed him, something about these people he would never understand, simply because he had not been born here.

Never mind, he had been reborn here. And there was Ix Chan. There was Nachancan, who would say nothing, but understand.

Who among the Spaniards had ever done or would ever do that?

At the top of the pyramid, someone had cast incense into a brazier. He looked around him. No, this was the world to fight for. We fight for the world we have. Only a fool looks back, for no one can fight time.

Meanwhile there was much to do, but only because it had to be done, and he was the only one who could do it. The motives of hate he left to Aguilar.

But he did not underestimate them.

*

Aguilar had worries of his own.

He had learned nothing during those eight years, except a little, a very little and that ungrammatical, Maya. In despair he went over his irregular verbs, but could find nothing but a series of uncouth infinitives. At least, no matter how little he knew, his redemptors knew still less. That was something. He hurried towards the coast, unable to believe that this ransom was not some kind of trick. He had never, in all his life, been able to believe that everything were not some sort of trick, even God. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was.

The harem had made him flabby. He sagged over his loincloth, and had never got over the shame of going naked, which made him move more awkwardly than ever.

Now he found himself in a canoe rowed by five slaves. It was how things should have gone, from the beginning, to have those five strong backs in front of him. Fingering his rosary and breviary, he baptized them at once. It is so easy to make converts if you only ask them about what you want to believe.

There was no ship at the coast, but he did not dare to turn back. That was unthinkable. He ordered the rowers on to Cozumel. At dawn he drew up alongside the boats of the Spaniards. But how could he present himself? He was naked. That showed the degree of his long martyrdom, but a European is nothing without his clothes.

He fingered his breviary. His Spanish was rusty, but his Latin was in better repair. The soft water lapped at the boats. He had himself announced to Cortés.

*

Cortés was a modern man, as all men who know how the world goes and say nothing live in the same now. He had his own amusements and recreations, but they were not those of a long voyage, and could come later. Meanwhile, he saw himself anchored off a low coast, of whose language he knew nothing, and whose strength he was beginning to perceive. He had also to impose order on several hundred avaricious men who, though they could be terrorized by their priests, in actuality respected nothing. Yet he himself could leave nothing to his descendants, and keep little for himself, unless he had this New Empire to offer to the Crown. Therefore he meant to have it. And for that an interpreter was indispensable. Therefore, when news came that Aguilar had arrived, he prepared to make himself agreeable.

That turned out to be more difficult than he had expected. He was disappointed. He had hoped for Guerrero, who by all accounts was more competent.

Instead he saw nothing but an Indian with a black beard, and not a very savoury Indian at that. Aguilar prostrated himself and began to creak Spanish. He claimed a distant Cortés cousin in Seville, a sixty-fourth cousin, but still, a cousin.

Cortés was taken aback, and tried not to show it. It was a little startling to hear this loinclothed Hottentot claim a cousinage in disjointed Spanish. But he did seem to know how to speak to the natives, and he was a priest. That would mean a lot to the men. Cortés sent him away, ostensibly to rest. He would hear his story tomorrow.

But he already knew what his story was. It was obvious. But it was also incredible. You gave men like that the wealth of a new world, and they said nothing except to complain that it was not the pottage they got at home. It was because they had no position, no rank, and no initiative. They were born slaves, and it is the servants of this world who keep the standards up. They cramp even their betters by doing so, demanding so much formality from people who have outgrown such things, that one complies only because it is so hard to get dependable servants any more.

And then, there are so many in this world who long to be servants. It makes the lot of their betters far from enviable, for how can they provide all those places, when in their innermost hearts they cannot bear to be waited on? Besides, servants are spies. They gossip among themselves. And if they serve one master, it is not out of loyalty, but professionalism. No valet would ever descend to curry-comb a horse. He would lose face. No priest would behave with common sense for the same reasons.