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10

Brother, asked the head, are you ready now to fly to Spain? The King and Queen are anxious to receive you.

Brother, replied Agustín, something stays wrong in my mind, or maybe in my heart.

Your ships arrive tomorrow. You’ll be Captain General of New Spain if you play the right cards.

My ships? They’re your ships, too.

Only because you love me, which will help you to become good. Brother, will you allow all your treasure to fall into the hands of the King’s agents? You’ll be poor and ignominious again.

Our treasure’s not for them! Please, brother, don’t let them get any of it!

Laughing, the head sped across the waves and bit holes in the ships, so that they all sank, and every man with them. When it told Agustín what it had done, he sat down with his head in his hands.

Well, brother, was that wrong? We can be kings in Ziñogava again, and make our slaves dig out just as much and more.

Never.

At the head’s behest, they flew back to Ziñogava incognito, just in time to see the public burning of an Indian sorcerer. Juan the Rapist had become Regent. The Amazons were nearly all exterminated, and the province was very highly spoken of.

What do you say? asked the head.

I care not.

For Agustín sickened ever more with that melancholy which had crept over him without his knowing the reason. Perhaps it had something to do with María Platina, for when he thought of her lying sad and naked on their bed, with the marks of his hands around her throat, he nearly longed to quit his errors. So he cast his mirrorlike sword into the sea.

Brother, the head remarked, the trouble is this. Never have you sincerely asked me which deeds are good.

Are you so good, then? Teach me how to be good.

Yes, brother. Well, the thing is, you must have a cause.

A cause for what?

For anything.

Teach me more, brother.

But at this the poor head began to sweat, and flies descended on it.

Brother, he said, I’m becoming lonely.

But the head remained silent.

In the hottest localities of Veracruz, there grows a shrub called hueloxóchitl, whose seeds have sometimes availed against Saint Vitus’s dance. Salvador sometimes used to suffer from headache, and then Agustín would gather these seeds, and Herlinda would boil and strain a decoction from it. So by night (although no one would have recognized him in his kingly attire) they returned to Veracruz, where on the beach, unchallenged by the cavalry on account of his royal clothes, the younger brother again collected hueloxóchitl seeds, boiling them himself, in hopes of curing the head, but it told him: Although I have no tomb for you to pray at, brother, please pray for my soul.

Don’t abandon me, brother! I have no one but you!

Then I’ll keep you company awhile longer. But since you feel sick, I too have sickened.

What do you need, brother?

I need to drink blood.

And so they withdrew a league or two, and commenced to prey on travellers by night, until the head was restored to the sort of vigor it had. And Agustín, not knowing what to aim for anymore, himself tried drinking blood, but it failed to agree with him. Finally he said: Brother, should I try to be good in your way?

By asking that, you’ve taken the second step.

Why won’t you tell me what to do?

Will you go under the earth with me?

Brother, I’ve been there! You rescued me—

That’s where you became foul.

And you?

I was always good, the head assured him.

11

Well disguised in his silver Ziñogavan cloak, with the head pretending to be a jade effigy bead on the golden necklace he wore, by night he wandered into Veracruz, where in the zócalo there was a harp dance about an evil little kiss, a malicious little kiss, and he almost smiled at the sweetness of those dancers in white, the women flashing their long sleeves and foamy dresses like butterflies, but he knew that if one of them were to smile at him he would hate her, and should she lie down with him he would need to murder her. But he could not understand why. From a doorway, an old man in immaculate white gazed at him, spitting carefully onto the sidewalk

Brother, he said, have you done everything you can for me?

Asking that question was the third step.

How many more steps are there?

Only one.

Brother, can you bring back the dead?

That’s a trifle, said the head. Shall I fetch your wife?

Oh, no! I couldn’t bear to have her look at me—

A little squeamish there, brother. Well, did you have Mother or Father in mind?

Where are they?

Mother’s in hell, because the pirates took her chastity. Father’s in heaven, because he died saying Ave Maria.

Have you met them?

They’re ashamed of me, the head admitted. But when I sink my teeth into anyone’s ear he has to come, like it or not.

If they’re ashamed of you, I reject them. It was you who helped me—

Because I love you, brother.

Brother, please bring me that silent Indian we killed.

Do you need all of him or just his head? I prefer it when they’re my size.

As you wish, brother.

So the head dived down into hell, and soon rushed back up with the grinning cranium of Agustín’s Indian cellmate who had never done him either good or harm, and its dome was as lovely as the slices of fan coral and fossilized shell fitted together at San Juan de Ulúa, while its eyesockets were as prison arches.

Agustín said: I forgive you for not defending me, because you didn’t know me and we were two against many. And I beg your pardon for taking your life.

The Indian’s skull, of course, said nothing, which entertained the flying head.

12

But now the head began to sicken again, and this time it wept. — Brother, it said, I can’t keep you company much longer, unless you come down to hell with me. You asked if I’ve done everything I can for you. It’s for you to answer that question.

Brother, tell me once and for all how I can become good.

Whom would you follow, if not me?

Brother, should I follow you?

Would you like to fly as I do?

That won’t make me happy, I fear. Please, brother, tell me what to do. I’m unwise, and don’t know my own happiness.

So at last the head brought him down into hell, where they were greeted by demons dressed in French livery in imitation of the pirate Lorencillo. The head flew before him down that same long weird corridor he sometimes used to dream of, with the curtain of rotten hide at the end and white light all around the edges. It lifted the curtain in its teeth, and Agustín saw green water in which fire-colored sharks swam round and round. Utterly at sea, with no way forward but to follow the head, he descended steep steps from the squat stone island straight down to the water, where he gripped the head against his chest, and was flown to another polyhedral island of this prison or palace; jutting from an embrasure were two corroded fangs of iron which must have once formed part of a grate or something to hold a cannon; then the fangs moved; the narrow windows above them winked, and Agustín realized that he was gazing at Satan’s face, which was not entirely unlike the coarse lava-flesh of a decapitated Olmec statue.