Malinche by Laura Esquivel Page A

as you would say, he sinned and later fled.”
    â€œDid he steal? Did he murder?” Cortés asked, more interested by the moment.
    â€œNo, he was deceived by a sorcerer who changed his destiny. It was Tezcatlipoca, a sorcerer, his brother and the shadow to his light, who one day put a black, deceitful mirror before his eyes, and when Quetzalcóatl looked into it, he saw a deformed face, with giant ears and sunken eyes. He saw the mask of his false identity, his dark side, and he was disturbed by the reflection and frightened by his own face. Right afterward he was invited to drink pulque, which made him intoxicated and frenzied. While drunk, he asked for his sister Quetzalpetatl to be brought before him and with her he drank more still. Completely inebriated, the siblings were overcome with desire, and it was then that they lay down together, driving each other crazy with caresses, making their bodies madly collide with each other, touching and kissing each other till they fell asleep. At dawn, when Quetzalcóatl had regained his consciousness, he wept and set off for the east—toward the place where you arrived—and boarded a raft made of serpents. He went to the black and red land of Tollan, to find himself again, and afterward set himself on fire.”
    By chance, just at that moment a drop of Cortés’s sweat slid past the exact spot where he had been bitten by the scorpion, and he remembered the hallucination of the serpent. He felt thirsty and asked if he could have some water. Malinalli told him that they would give it to him as soon as he went outside.
    â€œWill we be here much longer?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell then, finish your story,” he said.
    Their bodies seemed to have become all sweat and pureness by the time Malinalli concluded the story.
    â€œWhen Quetzalcóatl set fire to himself, a blue spark came from his heart. His heart, all of his being, freed itself from the fire, rose toward the sky, and was transformed into the Morning Star.”
    With these words, Malinalli ended the ritual of the bathhouse and invited Cortés to leave that womb. Malinalli was relieved, knowing full well that water cleanses everything, softens everything. If it was capable of polishing stones in a river, what then could it not do inside the human body? Water could utterly purify and brighten even the hardest of hearts. Although Malinalli had not been able to pray to the God of Water as was her custom inside the bathhouse, since Cortés had done nothing but interrupt her, she felt in some way that the ritual had been effective. She watched Cortés emerge from the bathhouse purified, reborn, changed. Like a serpent, he had shed his old skin; he had left his old shell inside the bathhouse. She felt that the ritual had brought them closer together, had made them accomplices. They drank tea with honey, tea from the petals of flowers, on that night of transformations, that night of revelations. They were not able to speak. The weight of the full moon made their silence more immense; and now, immersed anew in the outside world, in battle plans and the world of intrigues, they connected in some other manner, communicated their thoughts differently.

    Migration is an act of survival. Malinalli wished she could have relied on the lightness of butterflies and migrated on time, flown through the high skies, far above the clouds, where she would not have to hear weeping and lamenting, where you could not distinguish the mutilated corpses, the rivers of blood, the smell of death. She wanted to flee before her eyes grew blind, before her heart froze and her spirit disconnected from her gods.
    Cortés had decided to move on and slaughter the inhabitants of Cholula, which he considered an act of self-defense. He wanted to prevent any act before he could be caught defenseless. He wanted to teach a lesson to the natives who were harboring thoughts against him and, at the same time, send a clear