There was a certain evildoer named Dzum; he was wider than the cathedral at Veracruz and his flesh was harder than steel. Agustín felt daunted, but the head buzzed round his ear, saying: Remember those Inquisitors who condemned us! and at once rage empowered him into leaping forward like a picador about to thrust the lance over his horse’s head and gore the bull again. And even Dzum could not withstand those two brothers. When he fell, Agustín kicked his teeth in, wondering whether this might be happiness. — Back in Veracruz, when Señora Marín was still able to walk, she and her husband used to cudgel Herlinda and Salvador for their own good, sometimes kicking their heads a few times, and if they caught Agustín miserably eavesdropping they would command him to come in, which of course he was not required to do, not being their slave; but for Salvador’s sake he always marched stonily in, bowing his head and never crying out when they began to beat his head, which in truth they did but moderately, since he had barely entered the years of reason; and this proved to be a valuable education for the boy, who as he grew found ever less pity within himself. This memory increased the zeal with which he finished off the giant. Suddenly he remembered his brother’s execution, and sobbed. By then the head was out of sight, swooping about its business, most likely devouring birds and insects, for it sometimes grew so thirsty that even a battle wasn’t enough. Agustín gave thanks that it had not observed his tears. By the time it returned, he had recovered himself, and was cutting away Dzum’s leather armor in hope of discovering something precious.
There remained the Poison King, whose touch was death. — That’s nothing! crowed the head. Have you forgotten the night when you were weeping for hunger, and I burgled the glovers’ guild?
Yes, brother. A pretty loaf of bread you got me—
And meat. Don’t you remember that?
I remember that bread—
And I got myself Herlinda. She loves money far more than you do.
She’s still alive?
Never mind.
And now I’ll have María Platina for my wife.
Yes you will, brother. Perhaps then you’ll begin to grow good.
Thus conversing, they slew the Poison King safely from a distance, Agustín shooting him with arrows while the head hovered dropping stones from its jaws.
These were but a few of Agustín’s battles. Although many monsters fought against him with courage, his deeds kept passing as straight and useless as do the sentries through the endless colonnade of San Juan de Ulúa, the head weaving noble treacheries for him, as industrious as a skilled clothmaker at eight reales a day. Thus they felled all those miscreants, or Turks as they are often called in New Spain. I consider our two heroes nearly the equal of those great lords in New Spain who find time to go a-hawking.
When all the evildoers were dead, the two brothers flew home to Ziñogava, and María Platina gazed at him as if he were taller than Seville’s highest churchtower.
I am yours more than mine, she whispered.
Reader, here is the story’s happiest turn — that by virtue of marrying her, he instantly led her and her entire realm to the True Faith.
It was a very fine wedding, with musicians, singers and dancers, and a thousand Amazons looking on; Agustín taught them how to dance the Jarocho fandango. The head flew in, gripping a hogshead of Andalusian wine. Agustín prayed aloud for the perpetual glory and security of Ziñogava. As soon as he had been crowned, he enslaved all the Amazons, and under pain of death set them to working the silver mines.
She was very rich of person; even her single breast was as high-silvered as Mexican pesos. No one could deny her purity of blood. He took her maidenhead, together with all that is referred to in that measure and demarcation. At once she lost her powers. She was very learned, and sometimes composed chamber music in the musical notation which is aped by certain slave brands. She was meant to be his earthly bliss. He ruled her like some cunning pork-farmer who buys up all the grain for his pigs, so that the townspeople go hungry.
For him, the joy, so he had supposed, was to be witnessing the sunlight on the buttocks of María Platina, Queen of Ziñogava. For her, it was to continue supposing his soul to be as white-coraled as the Island of Sacrifices. And indeed, he sought sincerely to inhabit goodness, like an Aztec warrior crawling inside his captive’s flayed skin.
But once he had possessed her, he felt like an unwanted child sucking from a sour-breasted nurse, and of course he always hated to be touched. Every night he dreamed most weirdly or sorrowfully. Sometimes he struggled to breathe. Bitterness rose up out of him in bad vapor from his heart, and he wondered why he could not get his happiness even when María Platina remained as pliable as a slave of the correct blood. Perhaps he would rather have had his brother’s former novia Herlinda. But wasn’t he supposed to love life here in Ziñogava? What should he say to anyone? All he had wished for was to rule a kingdom; but the misery haunted him like the mosquitoes of Veracruz; he could not decide whether he had become foul, as his co-ruler said, or whether the judges had spoken true in asserting that he had always been filthy and malicious, perhaps on account of the color of his skin — or might it be that he needed but to pursue one thing of which he had not yet conceived, a thing perhaps even easy to get, and then he would be happy?
He caused a special fortress to be built after the fashion of San Juan de Ulúa, and here raised a tower where his silver ingots were locked away; to this stronghold he alone kept the key, although his wife looked surprised and sad, as if she were seeking something to say to him. Upon pain of death he required the architect to copy everything which could be remembered about the prison-island, right down to the low outer parapet with its iron ship-rings within each of which two people could have embraced. Once the place was constructed and dedicated, he never went there.
Brother, he said, I’m feeling almost murderous.
Yes, brother. Then shall we go forever under the earth?
No, not yet.
Then go to your wife. And when you have a moment, get that servant to fetch me another bowl of fresh dog’s blood.
His wife said: I am struggling to understand you.
She said: I shall not be rid of this feeling until I regain what you have taken from me.
Presently she said: I beg you now to let me go my own way and entrust me to God.
Divorce is a sin, replied Agustín, seeing his angry face reflected in each of her silver tears.
At first his rage was so often soothed by the gentle shining of silver. His Empress, who meant only to please him, gave him everything, but still he could not contain his rage, because he had lost the ability to be happy. Her gentle entreaties made as much headway against his heart as did the sea against the white-flecked black walls of Baluarte de Santiago. Now that they had been reduced to reason, the Amazons crept around below the palace on their allotted labors, in proof of that canticle in Isaiah, they are dead; they will not live; they are shades; they will not arise—which did please him in a way, of course, because thus ought all such stories to end. The way that silver can be at times both warm and cold, infinitely indefinable, ought to have contented him more than it did, but his sufferings had been, as would now be his excuses, too painful, too deep. Although he reminded himself that he had never been happier than this, he had not been sadder, either. He ruled his wife of silver, although she might not have been a human being; beneath their bed he also kept a great sack of silver plate, in case he should suddenly decamp. Why shouldn’t he have been satisfied? In fact the more readily she obeyed him the worse he hated her, especially when she tried to caress him. (Of course she could not resist his punishments, for here in New Spain the woman remains always a legal dependent.) Woe to her silver belly, lovelier than the moon; woe to her bewildered silver eyes! If she were only an enemy, like one of those trolls and ogres he had killed! Then he would have known what to do. Thus he began to beat her. The servants learned to withdraw when they heard certain sounds. So came the morning when, peering back once more into the great sunny bedchamber, he saw her lying there with her hands outstretched, her eyes squinted shut and her mouth screaming darkness. A thick stone cap weighed down her forehead.