Malinche (21 page)

The search for the gods is the search for oneself. And where do we find ourselves hidden? In the water, in the air, in the fire, in the earth. We are in the water, hidden in the river. Water makes up part of our body, but we do not see it; it courses through our veins, but we do not feel it. We only see the water on the outside. We only recognize ourselves in our reflections. When we look at ourselves in the water, we know too that we are light or we would not be reflected. We are fire, we are sun. We are in the air, in the word. When we say the names of our gods, we say our own. They created us with their word and we re-create them with ours. Gods and men are the same. Child of the sun, child of the water, child of the air, child of the corn; born in the womb of Mother Earth. When one finds the sun, the moving fire, the water, the hidden river, the air, the sacred song, the earth, and the flesh of corn within oneself, one is transformed into a god.

For Malinalli it was urgently necessary to find herself once again, by finding once again her gods. After the terrible argument with Cortés the previous day, she felt as if she wasn't inside her own body, that her soul had escaped, that it had fled, that it had evaporated with the rays of the sun. To see herself reflected in Hernán Cortés had left her confused. She had to confront her dark side before recapturing the light. To achieve this, she had to take the same journey that Quetzalcóatl had taken through the inner earth, through the underworld, before becoming the Morning Star. The cycle of Venus was the cycle of purification and rebirth. At a certain moment, Venus-Quetzalcóatl disappears, is not seen in the sky because he enters the womb of Mother Earth, he descends to recover the bones of his ancestors. Bones are the seed, the origin of the human body planted in the cosmos. Before recovering his body, Quetzalcóatl has to face his desires, see himself in the black mirror to achieve purification. If he is able to do it, the sun under the earth, under the hills, will lend its strength so that the earth opens and lets sprout the seed that is nourished with water from the hidden river. Quetzalcóatl, who descended as a fleshless spirit, in contact with the forces that bring forth life, will reunite his bones with his flesh.

Malinalli spent all night preparing for the journey. At dawn, she said goodbye to Jaramillo, her dear husband, and entrusted him with taking care of the children while she went in search of herself on the hill of Tepeyac. She felt aching, wounded. She felt that by attacking Cortés she had attacked herself. As she climbed the hill, she said: Water does not attack water. Corn does not attack corn. Air does not attack air. The earth does not attack the earth. It is the man who doesn't see himself in them that attacks them, destroys them. The man who attacks himself does away with the water, with the corn, with the earth, and stops saying the names of his gods. The man who doesn't see that his brother is also wind, also water, also corn, also air, cannot see god.

Malinalli wanted to see Tonantzin, the feminine deity, the Mother. She wanted to say her name to be part of her, to be able to look into her children's eyes without the fear of seeing anger reflected in them. She knew that to achieve integration with the forces of nature, of the cosmos, the first thing she had to do is keep silent and turn her heart toward heaven, full of devotion. Tepeyac, according to the tradition of her ancestors, was where Tonantzin could be found, but Malinalli was not sure where.

“Where are you?” she asked in silence. “Where are you, soul of things, essence of the visible, eternity of the stars? Where can I search in order to find you, if you are forbidden, if they have made you disappear, if they have ripped you from our faith, if they have tried to erase you from our memory?”

As she formulated these questions, she received the answers. It was truly as if, on the moment of thinking about her, she had entered into communication with Tonantzin. She heard in her mind that the essence of Tonantzin had returned to the depths of the mirror, the depths of the water, to be renewed as well. She too required it. In the deepest earth she had undone her appearance, her word, her touch, her strength. Now she was wind, water, fire, earth contained in a seed, and would soon reappear in new garments, a new form. She would arise from the dreams, the desires, the voices of those who summoned her, who remembered her. She would appear when her people awoke from the dream of death they had sunken into, the deceitful dream that made them believe that the reflection of their body had been erased from the sky. When they recovered their faith in the forces of nature, of creation, along with her they could paint her spirit. She would come dressed in the rays of the sun, sustained by the moon, in midair. Trembling in the wind, in a new shape, since the transformation of man, the transformation of the world, is the transformation of the universe. The Mexicas had changed, and so had the gods.

Our rituals would change in form, our language would become another, our prayers others, our communication different—Tonantzin told Malinalli—but the ancient gods, the immovable ones, the gods of all things, those that have no beginning and no end, will only change in form.

After listening to these words, Malinalli felt as if the air around her became perfumed, making evident the presence of the sacred. It was in the stillness of her mind that she had established contact with Tonantzin, and in the same manner she now addressed her reverently.

“To you, silence of the morning, perfume of thought, heart of desire, luminous intention of creation; to you, who give rise to the caresses of flowers, and who are the light of hope, the secret of the lips, the design of the invisible; to you I entrust that which I love, I entrust my children, who were born from the love that knows no flesh, who were born from the love that has no beginning, who were born from the noble, from the sacred; to you, who are one with them, I entrust them, so that you will dwell in their minds, guide their steps, inhabit their words, so that they never grow sick from their feelings, so that they never lose the will to live. Of you, dear mother, I ask that you be their reflection, so that on seeing you, they feel pride, they who do not belong to my world or to the Spaniards', they who are a mixture of all bloods—Iberian, African, Roman, Gothic, Native, and Middle Eastern—they, who along with all those now being born are the new vessel whereby the true thought of Christ-Quetzalcóatl is installed again in the hearts of men and casts its light on the world. Let them never be afraid! Never feel alone! Present yourself to them in your jade necklace, in your quetzal feathers, in your blanket of stars, so that they may recognize you and feel your presence. Protect them from illness; let the wind and the clouds sweep away all danger, all evil that pursues them. Don't allow them to gaze into a black mirror that tells them they are inferior, not worthy, that they should accept mistreatment and violence as their only due. Make sure that they never come to know treason, or hatred, or power, or ambition. Appear to them in their dreams so that the dream of war never establishes itself in their heads, that dream of collective madness, that sorrowful hell. Heal their fears, erase their fears, make them vanish, flee, drift away; erase all their fears along with mine, dear mother. That is what I ask of you, Great Lady. Strengthen the spirit of the new race that with new eyes looks on itself in the mirror of the moon, so that they may know that their presence on the earth is a fulfilled promise of the universe, a promise of plenty, of life, of redemption, and of love.”

This was Mexico and Malinalli knew it. When she finished her prayer, she took off the necklace of ceramic beads with the image of the lady Tonantzin—which was always hanging on her chest. It was the same one that her grandmother had given her when she was a girl. She also took out her rosary, the one she had made with the grains of corn with which, years before, her fate had been read to her. She buried both and with them buried her mother, her grandmother, herself and all the daughters of the corn. She asked the mother Tonantzin to nourish those grains with the waters from her hidden river, to help them bear fruit, to allow them to be food for the new beings that populated the Valley of Anáhuac.

Not knowing why, she remembered the Virgin of Guadalupe, that dark Virgin whose image Jaramillo and she had hung over their headboard. She was a revered virgin in the region of Extremadura, Spain. Jaramillo told her that the original image of the virgin was carved in black wood and showed the Virgin Mary with the Child God in her arms. Jaramillo carved a reproduction for her and as he did he told her that during the Arab conquest of Spain, the Spanish friars, fearing a desecration of the Virgin Mary, had buried her near the shores of the Guadalupe River—a name that was the Castilian rendering of the Arab
wad al luben
—and that meant
hidden river.
So when, years later, a pastor found her buried they named her after the river, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

That day Malinalli, seated on the hill of Tepeyac, after having buried her past, found herself, knew she was god, knew that she was eternal and that she was going to die, and that what gave life also died. She was at the apex of the hill. The wind blew in such a fashion that it almost knocked down the trees. The leaves fell away from them, filling her ear with music. The sound of the wind became clear. Malinalli felt the force of the wind on her face, her hair, over all her body and the heart of the sky opened itself for her.

Death did not frighten her. Everything around her spoke of change, of transformation, of rebirth. Tenochtitlán had died and in its place a new city rose that was ceasing to be a mirror, converting itself into earth and stone. Cortés had left off being a conquistador, and was becoming the Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. And she was soon going to experience her last transformation. She accepted it gladly. She knew that she would always belong to the universe, would change shape, but continue to exist. She would be in the water where her children played, in the stars Jaramillo watched at night, in the corn tortillas that they ate daily, in the wind that held up the hummingbirds that danced around their spikenard. She would exist in the streets of the new city, in what had been the market of Tlatelolco, in the woods of Chapultepec, in the sound of drums, in the seashells, in the snow of the volcanoes, in the sun, in the moon.

Malinalli, seated and in silence, became one with the fire, with the water, with the earth. She dissolved in the wind, knew she was in everything and in nothing. Nothing could contain her, or make her suffer. There was no grief, no rancor, only the infinite. She remained in that state until the birds announced that they would be taking the afternoon away with them among their feathers.

When Malinalli returned to be by her husband and children, she looked different. She radiated peace. She embraced them tightly and kissed them, then played with her children before putting them to bed. She made love to her husband all night. Then, she went out to the patio and by the light of the moon and a torch, a sun and a moon, she tried to express in one image the experience of that magical day. She opened her codex and painted the luminous lady Tonantzin, the protector, covering with her blanket the house where her family was sleeping. Afterward, she washed her brushes in one of the fountains in the patio.

The silence was complete.

She breathed in the aroma of the spikenard, put her feet in the water, walked through the middle of the canal, and reached the center of the patio. There, she entered into the center of the Cross of Quetzalcóatl, the center of all crossroads, where the Cihuateteo, the women who had died during childbirth, who made up the entourage of the women who follow Tlazolteotl, Coatlicue, and Tonantzin, the different manifestations of the same feminine deity, appeared; and there, in the center of the Universe, Malinalli became liquid.

She was water of the moon.

Malinalli, like Quetzalcóatl before her, on facing her dark side, became aware of the light. Her will was to be one with the cosmos, and she forced the limits of her body to disappear. Her feet, in contact with the water, bathed by the moonlight, were the first to experience the transformation. They no longer held her. Her spirit became one with the water. It scattered in the air. Her skin expanded to the limit, allowing her to change shape and become one with everything that surrounded her. She was spikenard, she was orange tree, she was stone, she was aroma of copal, she was corn, she was fish, she was bird, she was sun, she was moon. She abandoned this world.