Cortés and Montezuma
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Because Cortés lands on a day specified in the a writings, because he is dressed in black, because his armor is silver in color, a certain ugliness of the straaken as a group -- for these reasons, Montezuma siders Cortés to be Quetzalcoatl, the great god who left Mexiany years before, on a raft of snakes, vowing to return.Montezuma gives Cortés a carved jade drinking cup.
Cortés places around Montezumas neck a necklace of glass beads strung on a cord sted with musk.
Montezuma offers Cortés ahenlatter taining small pieeat lightly breaded and browned which Cortés dees because he knows the small pieeat are human fingers.
Cortés sends Montezuma a huge basket of that Spanish bread of which Montezumas messengers had said, on first entering the Spaniards, "As to their food, it is like human food, it is white and not heavy, and slightly sweet. . ."
Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. Little green flies fill the air. Cortés and Montezuma are holding hands; from time to time one of them disengages a hand to brush away a fly.
Montezuma receives new messages, in picture writing, from the hills. These he burns, so that Cortés will not learn their tents. Cortés is trimming his 藏书网black beard.
Do?a Marina, the Indian translator, is sleeping with Cortés in the palace given him by Montezuma. Cortés awakens; they share a cup of chocolate. She looks tired, Cortés thinks.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma walk, holding hands. "Are you acquainted with a Father Sanchez?" Montezuma asks. "Sanchez, yes, whats he been up to?" says Cortés. "Overturning idols," says Montezuma. "Yes," Cortés says vaguely, "yes, he does that, everywhere we go."
At a cert later that evening, Cortés is bitten on the ankle by a green i. The bug crawls into his velvet slipper. Cortés removes the slipper, feels around inside, finds the bug and removes it. "Is this poisonous?" he asks Do?a Marina. "Perfectly," she says.
Montezuma himself performs the operation upon Cortéss swollen ankle. He lahe bitten place with a sharp khen sucks the poison from the wound, spits. Soon they are walking again, down by the docks.
Montezuma writes, in a letter to his mother: "The new forwardness of the nobility has e as a wele relief. Whereas formerly members of the nobility took pains to hide among the general population, to pretend that they were ordinary people, they are now flaunting themselves and their position in the most disgusting ways. Once again they wear scarlet sashes from shoulder to hip, even on the boulevards; once again they prance about in their great powdered wigs; once again they employ lackeys to stand in pairs on little shelves at the rear of their limousihe din raised by their incessant visiting of one another is with us from noon until early in the m. . .
"This flagrant behavior is, as I say, wele. For we are all tired of having to deal with their manifold deceptions, of unc their places of cealment, of keeping track of their movements -- in short, of having to think about them, of having to remember them. Their new assertiveness, however much it reminds us of the excesses of former times, is easier. The iing question is, what has emboldehe nobility to emerge from obscurity at this time? Why now?
"Many people here are of the opinion that it is a direct sequence of the plague of devils we have had retly. It is easily seen that, against a horizon of devils, the reappearance of the nobility only be sidered a more or less tolerable circumstance -- they themselves must have realized this. Not sihe late years of the last Bundle have we had so many spitting, farting, hair-shedding devils abroad. Along with the devils there have been roaches, roaches big as ironing boards. Then, too, we have the Spaniards. . ."
A group of great lords hostile to Montezuma holds a secret meeting in Vera Cruz, uhe special prote of the god Smoking Mirror. Debate is fierce; a heavy rain is falling; new arrivals crowd the room.
Do?a Marina, although she is the mistress of Cortés, has an Indian lover of high rank as well. Making her fession to Father Sanchez, she touches upon this. "His name is Cuitlahuac? This may be useful politically. I ot give you absolution, but I will remember you in my prayers."
In the gardens of Tenochtitlán, whisperers exge strange new words: guillotine, white pepper, siy, temperament.
Cortéss mehrough many more walls but behind these walls they find, invariably, only the mummified carcasses of dogs, cats, and sacred birds.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma walk, holding hands. Cortés has employed a detective to follow Montezuma; Montezuma has employed a detective to follow Father Sanchez. "There are only five detectives of talent in Tenochtitlán," says Montezuma. "There are others, but I dont use them. Visions are best -- better than the best detective."
Atop the great Cue, or pyramid, Cortés strikes an effigy of the god Blue Hummingbird and knocks off its golden mask; an image of the Virgin is installed in its place.
"The heads of the Sp<samp></samp>aniards," says Do?a Marina, "Juan de Este and the five others, were arranged in a row on a pike. The heads of their horses were arranged in another row on another pike, set beh the first."
Cortés screams.
The guards run in, first Cristóbal de Olid, and following him Pedro de Alvarado and then de Ordás aapia.
Cortés is raving. He runs from the palato the plaza where he meets and is greeted by Montezuma. Two great lords stand oher side of Montezuma supp his arms, which are spread wide iing. They fold Montezumas arms around Cortés. Cortés speaks urgently into Montezumas ear.
Montezuma removes from his bosom a long cactus thorn and pricks his ear with it repeatedly, until the blood flows.
Do?a Marina is walking, down by the docks, with her lover Cuitlahuac, Lord of the Place of the Dunged Water. "When I was young," says Cuitlahuac, "I was at school with Montezuma. He was, in trast to the rest of us, remarkably chaste. A very religious man, a great student -- Ill wager thats what they talk about, Montezuma and Cortés. Theology." Do?a Marina tucks a hand inside his belt, at the back.
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who will one day write The True History of the quest of New Spain, stands in a square whittling upon a pieesquite. The Proclamation of Vera Cruz is read, in which the friendship of Cortés and Montezuma is denounced as trary to the best is of the people of Mexico, born a unborn.
Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. "I especially like the Holy Ghost. Qua idea," says Montezuma. "The od, the Father, is also --" "One God, three Persons," Cortés corrects gently. "That the Son should be s９9liｂ?acrificed," Montezuma tinues, "seems to me wrong. It seems to me He should be sacrificed to. Furthermore," Montezuma stops and taps Cortés meaningfully on the chest with a brown forefinger, "where is the Mother?"
Bernal asks Montezuma, as a great favor, for a young pretty woman; Montezuma sends him a young woman of good family, together with a featherwork mantle, some crickets in cages, and a quantity of freshly made soap. Montezuma observes, of Bernal, that "he seems to be a gentleman."
"The ruler prepares dramas for the people," Montezuma says.
Cortés, sitting in an armchair, nods.
"Because the cultivation of maize requires on the average only fifty days labor per person per year, the peoples energies may be ied in these dramas -- for example the eternal struggle to win, to retain, the good will of Smoking Mirror, Blue Hummingbird, Quetzalcoatl. . ."
Cortés smiles and bows.
"Easing the psychological strain on the ruler who would otherwise be forced to face alohe prospect of world collapse, the prospect of the world folding in on itself. . ."
Cortés blinks.
"If the drama is not of my authorship, if events are not trollable by me --"
Cortés has no reply.
"Therefore it is incumbent upon you, dear brother, to disclose to me the ending or at least what you know of the dramas probable course so that I may attempt to manipulate it in a favorable dire with the application of what magic is left to me."
Cortés has no reply.
Breaking through a new wall, Cortéss men discover, on the floor of a chamber behind the wall, a tiny puddle of gold. The Proclamation is circulated throughout the city; is sent to other cities.
Bernal builds a stout hen coop for Do?a Marina. The sky over Tenochtitlán darkens; flashes of lightning; then rain sweeping off the lake.
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma take shelter in a doorway. "Do?a Marina translated it; I have a copy," says Cortés.
"When you smashed Blue Hummingbird with the crowbar --"
"I was rash. I admit it."
"You may take the gold with you. All of it. My gift."
"Yhness is most kind."
"Your ships are ready. My messengers say their sails are as many as the clouds over the water."
"I ot leave until all of the gold in Mexico, past, present and future, is stacked in the holds."
"Impossible on the face of it."
"I agree. Let us talk of something else."
Montezuma notices that a certain amount of white lint has accumulated on his friends black velvet doublet. He thinks: She should take better care of him.
In bed with Cortés, Do?a Marina displays for his eyes her beautiful golden buttocks, which he strokes reverently. A tiny green fly is buzzing about the room; Cortés brushes it away with a fly whisk made of golden wire. She tells him about a vision. In the vision Montezuma is stru the forehead by a large stone, and falls. His enraged subjects hurl more stones.
"Dont worry," says Cortés. "Trust me."
Father Sanchez fronts Cortés with the report of the detective he has hired to follow Do?a Marina, together with other reports, dots, photographs. Cortés orders that all of the detectives iy be arrested, that the profession of detective be abolished forever in Tenochtitlán, and that Father Sanchez be sent back to Cuba in s.
In the marketplaces and theaters of the city, new words are passed about: tranquillity, vinegar, entitlement, sell.
On another day Montezuma and Cortés and Do?a Marina and the guard of Cortés aai lords of Tenochtitlán leave their palaces and are carried in palanquins to the part of the city called Cotaxtla.
There, they halt before a great house and dismount.
"What is this place?" Cortés asks, for he has never seen it before.
Montezuma replies that it is the meeting place of the Aztec cil islature whiulates the laws of his people.
Cortés expresses surprise and states that it had been his uanding that Montezuma is an absolute ruler answerable to no one -- a statement Do?a Marina tactfully s to translate lest Montezuma be given offense by it.
Cortés, with his guard at his bad Montezuma at his right haers the building.
At the end of a long hallway he sees a group of funaries each of whom wears in his ears long white goose quills filled with pold. Here Cortés and his men are fumigated with inse from large pottery braziers, but Montezuma is not, the major-domos fix their eyes on the ground and do not look at him but greet him with great reverence saying, "Lord, my Lord, my Great Lord."
The party is ushered through a pair of tall doors rant cedar into a vast chamber hung with red and yellow banners. There, on low wooden benches divided by a broad aisle, sit the members of the cil, fag a dais. There are perhaps three hundred of them, each wearing affixed to his buttocks a pair of mirrors as is appropriate to his rank. On the dais are three figures of siderable majesty, the one in the ter raised somewhat above his fellows; behind them, on the wall, hangs a great wheel of gold with mutricate featherwork depig a whirlpool with the features of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue in the ter. The cil members sit in attitudes id attention, arms held at their sides, s lifted, eyes fixed on the dais. Cortés lays a hand on the shoulder of one of them, then recoils. He raps with his knuckles on that shoulder which gives forth a hollow sound. "They are pottery," he says to Montezuma. Montezuma winks. Cortés begins to laugh. Montezuma begins to laugh. Cbbr>.９9liｂ.</abbr>ortés is choking, hysterical. Cortés and Montezuma run around the great hall, dodging in and out of the rows of benches, jumping into the laps of one or another of the clay figures, overturning some, turning others backwards in their seats. "I am the State!" shouts Montezuma, and Cortés shouts, "Mother of God, five this poor fool who doesnt know what he is saying!"
In the ki possible way, Cortés places Montezuma under house arrest.
"Best you e to stay with me a while."
"Thank you but Id rather not."
"Well have games and in the evenings, home movies."
"The people wouldnt uand."
"Weve got Pitalpitoque shackled to the great ."
"I thought it was Quintalbor."
"Pitalpitoque, Quintalbor, Tendile."
"Ill send them chocolate."
"e away, e away, e away with me."
"The people will be frightened."
"What do the omens say?"
"I dont know I t read them any more."
"Cutting peoples hearts out, forty, fifty, sixty at a crack."
"Its the around here."
"The people of the South say you take too much tribute."
"t run an empire without tribute."
"Our Lord Jesus Christ loves you."
"Ill send Him chocolate."
"e away, e away, e away with me."
Down by the docks, Cortés and Montezuma are walking with Charles V, Emperor of Spain. Do?a Marina follows at a respectful distance carrying two piic baskets taining many delicacies: caviar, white wiuffed thrushes, gumbo.
Charles V bends to hear what Montezuma is saying; Cortés brushes from the person of the Emperor little green flies, using a fly whisk made of golden wire. "Was there no alternative?" Charles asks. "I did what I thought best," says Cortés, "proceeding with gaiety and sce." "I am murdered," says Montezuma.
The sky over Tenochtitlán darkens; flashes of lightning; then rain sweeping off the lake.
The pair walking down by the docks, hand in hand, the ghost of Montezuma rebukes the ghost of Cortés. "Why did you not throw up your hand, and catch the stone?"
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