Read Online Malinche by Laura Esquivel - Free Book Online Page A

clothes charged the place with music through the force of the waters crashing on the stones. Added to this sound was that of the birds, who were as agitated as ever, the frogs, the crickets, the dogs, and the Spaniards themselves, the new inhabitants of this land, who contributed with the clamorous sounds of their armor, their cannons, and their harquebuses. Malinalli needed silence, calm. In the Popol Vuh, the Sacred Book of their elders, it stated that when everything was at silence—in complete calm, in the darkness of night, in the darkness of the light—then would creation arise.
    Malinalli needed that silence to create new and resonant words. The right words, the ones that were necessary. Recently she had stopped serving Portocarrero, her lord, because Cortés had named her “The Tongue,” the one who translated what he said into the Náhuatl language, and what Montezuma’s messengers said, from Náhuatl to Spanish. Although Malinalli had learned Spanish at an extraordinary speed, in no way could it be said that she was completely fluent. Often she had to turn to Aguilar to help her to translate it correctly, so that what she said made sense in the minds of both the Spaniards and the Mexicas.
    Being “The Tongue” was an enormous responsibility. She didn’t want to make a mistake or misinterpret, and she couldn’t see how to prevent it since it was so difficult translating complex ideas from one language to the other. She felt as if each time she uttered a word she journeyed back hundreds of generations. When she said the name of Ometéotl, the creator of the dualities Omecíhuatl and Ometecuhtli, the masculine and feminine principles, she put herself at the beginning of creation. That was the power of the spoken word. But then, how can you contain in a single word the god Ometéotl, he who is without shape, the lord who is not born and does not die; whom water cannot wet, fire cannot burn, wind cannot move, and earth cannot bury? Impossible. The same seemed to happen to Cortés, who couldn’t make her understand certain concepts of his religion. Once she asked him what the name of God’s wife was.
    â€œGod doesn’t have a wife,” Cortés answered.
    â€œIt cannot be.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause without a womb, without darkness, light cannot emerge, life cannot emerge. It is from her greatest depths that Mother Earth creates precious stones, and in the darkness of the womb that gods and humans take their forms. Without a womb there is no god.”
    Cortés stared intently at Malinalli and saw the light in the abyss of her eyes. It was a moment of intense connection between them, but Cortés directed his eyes somewhere else, abruptly disconnected himself from her, because he was frightened by that sensation of complicity, of belonging, and he immediately tried to cut off the conversation between them, for, aside from everything else, it seemed too strange speaking about religious matters with her, a native in his service.
    â€œWhat do you know about God! Your gods demand all the blood in the world in order to exist, while our God offers His own to us with each Communion. We drink His blood.”
    Malinalli did not understand all of the words that Cortés had just uttered. What she wanted to hear, what her brain wanted to interpret, was that the god of the Spaniards was a fluid god, for he was in the blood, in the secret of the flesh, the secret of love; that he was contained in the eternity of the Universe. And she wanted to believe in such a deity.
    â€œSo then your god is liquid?” Malinalli asked enthusiastically.
    â€œLiquid?”
    â€œYes. Didn’t you say that he was in the blood that he offered?”
    â€œYes, woman! But now answer me, do your gods offer you blood?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAha! Then you shouldn’t believe in them.”
    Malinalli eyes filled with tears as she replied.
    â€œI