For two days there is peace. But on the third day food is no longer supplied. Old men come bringing only water and firewood and stating that no food is left. Montezuma’s latest envoy arrives and is conducted to Cortés, whom he advises, “Do not come to the city of Mexico.” There are throttled screams, a faint stench of blood as the Cholulans make sacrifices for victory; during the night seven children have been killed on the altar of Huitzilopochtli. Cortés orders continuous alert and has two priests from the great pyramid brought before him. Wearing robes of black-dyed cotton, the priests converse with Malinche, the princess whom the Spaniards call Doña Marina. They reveal Montezuma’s orders and the Cholulans’ secret plans. The Spaniards are to be seized and twenty are to be sacrificed on the pyramid by Montezuma’s direct command; he has sent the caciques promises, jewels, garments, a drum of purest gold. He has dispatched twenty thousand of his Aztecan warriors and they lie concealed in the brushy thickets and ravines around the city, even in houses within the city, their arms ready. Parapets have been raised to protect those who will fight from the rooftops. Deep holes have been dug in the streets and covered over with matting, to impede the Spaniards’ horses. Other streets have been barricaded.
None of you spoke as you walked. You had been infected by the living death of the town, a deadness accentuated rather than opposed by the paradoxical racket of the loudspeaker in the plaza. In a bicycle shop three youths naked to the waist and smeared with grease exchanged whispered cracks and presented idiotic smiles as you passed. A smell of sulfur floated from the bathhouse where in the shadow a woman showed her rosy flanks while her open hand paddled a little boy who refused to step into the water. At the register of elections a painter was sweeping his brush across the façade, back and forth, back and forth, slowly erasing stroke by stroke the slogan of the old election, CROM WITH ADOLFO LÓPEZ MATEOS, and that of the recent one, CROM WITH GUSTAVO DÍAZ ORDAZ. The billiard parlor “Mother’s Day” empty behind its swinging doors with the notice: Minors prohibited. An old man in a collarless striped shirt and an unbuttoned vest slowly rubbed chalk on the tip of his cue and yawned, showing the black gaps in his teeth. At the corner, a man sat in a cane chair before the doctor’s office where silver letters on a black ground announce: Diseases of childhood, of the skin, venereal infections. Analyses of blood, urine, sputum, and feces.
Cortés calls a council. One voice suggests that they take another route, proceed to the city of Mexico, only twenty leagues distant by way of Huejotzingo. Another advises coming to terms with the Cholulans, then return to Tlaxcala. A third points out that if the treachery of the Cholulans is countenanced, more treachery will follow. We must fight them, destroy them. Square-jawed Cortés decides to make a show of departure tomorrow. They pass the night armed and alert. The slow watches succeed one another, the torches burn out. Late at night, a toothless old woman creeps in and draws Doña Marina aside: Montezuma is bent on vengeance but Malinche can escape, if she will. The old woman will give her a son to marry and she will be safe. As for the Spaniards, they are doomed, everything has been prepared for their death. Malinche thanks her. She asks the old woman to wait while she collects her jewels and clothing. Instead, she goes to Cortés and tells him.
At dawn the next morning the Spaniards are awakened by the echoing laughter of Cholula. The trap is ready; now it will be sprung. But Cortés and his lieutenants calmly make their way to the Great Pyramid, accompanied by part of the artillery. There he confronts the caciques and priests in the central patio of the temple. Kettles of salt, chile, and tomatoes have already been made ready for the flesh of the twenty Spaniards whose sacrifice has been ordered by Montezuma, Emperor of the Golden Chair. On horseback, Cortés quietly gives a command and the guns explode. Cholula’s caciques fall, their cotton tunics turning red; the black-clad priests fall. It is the signal for general battle. Whinnying horses charge. Plumed headdresses rise from the brush outside the city and advance running. A din of drums, whistles, conch horns, trumpets, kettledrums, cannon fire. The twang of crossbows. The crash of ballista stones. Screaming, armed with two-handed swords, protected by shields matted over with cotton, the thousand Tlaxcalans enter the city and advance smashing doors, setting fires, climbing to the rooftops to rape women while in the streets below the battle goes on man to man, hand to hand, feathered headdresses and iron helmets, humming arrows and darts, brown flesh and white flesh, cotton doublets and steel breastplates, ripped chinchilla cloaks and sweat-soaked wool, slings whirling fist-sized rocks, the cannon depressed to fire level across the flat ground, trumpets and whistles, copal incense burning in the temples, smashed casks of pulque drenching the streets with sticky alcohol that mixes with flowing blood, bags of grain slashed and spilling, dogs running swiftly and quietly, their muzzles greasy from bacon and white from cassava, burned arrow shafts in dark flesh, crash and shout, finally the red and white standards fall, the Tlaxcalans trot through burdened with captured gold, garments, cotton, salt, freed slaves swarm in naked crowds, Cholula reeks of fresh blood and eternal copal, of bacon, pulque, of guts. Cortés orders the towers and fortresses put to the torch. The Spaniards overturn and destroy the idols. In a shrine they hurriedly purify with a splatter of whitewash, they set up a cross. They free those the Cholulans had destined for sacrifice. The battle has lasted only five hours. Three thousand lie dead in the streets, in the ashes of the temples.
“They are gods,” the word passes through the city. “They divine treachery and take their vengeance. No power can oppose them.”
Thus the way to the city of Mexico, Great Tenochtitlán, is opened. Upon the ruins of Cholula are built four hundred churches, their foundations the razed cues, the platforms of the pyramids.
I watched the four of you cross the plaza toward the church of San Francisco. The convent. The fortress surrounded by a wall that in olden times turned back Indian attacks. You, Elizabeth, saw me as you passed, but you pretended not to see me. But you, Pussycat, little Isabel, abruptly stopped, staring nervously. Fortunately the others were looking across the wide expanse of the esplanade and no one noticed. Three ash trees, two pines, and a stone cross. The church has a series of arches and a walled-up porter’s lodge. Like the wall of the surrounding fortress, it is battlemented. A yellow façade, the buttresses brown stone sprinkled with black. Javier pointed to the center of the façade: the favorite motif of the native sculptors, a serpent — the serpent, always the serpent, Elizabeth thought for the second time today — worked in stone surrounds the high window. The inscription is above the stone urns in relief over the entrance. Javier read it aloud:
IHS
SPORTAHECAPERTAIPECATORIBUSPENITENCIA
Indians fill the atrium on the Day of Resurrection. They move forward slowly carrying their offerings: folded cloaks of rabbit skin and cotton embroidered with the names of Jesus and Mary, fringed, decorated with flowers and crosses. Before the wide steps they spread the garments and kneel. They lift the cloaks to their foreheads and bow. Silently they pray. They push their children forward so that they may show their offerings also and learn how to kneel. A great multitude, each patiently waiting his turn. They wait in silence, their faces dark, dressed in the remnants of their old ceremonial robes, many in everyday work clothing carefully washed and mended. Their feet are bare. Above their heads float the fumes of burning copal, the scent of roses.