Heavens on Earth

by Carmen Boullosa

  —Yes, my face was sad, but you don’t understand my words. It should have been enough for you to just see my expression and we wouldn’t have to fight.

  —How can you believe that, Rosete? I couldn’t possibly have known what was making you sad, don’t be absurd.

  —Absurd? Don’t you see that words are the reason we misunderstand each other time and again? My expression already told you everything.

  —Calm down, Rosete. Don’t let yourself be fooled by the order that…

  We felt the alarm—warning us against the excessive use of words—vibrate under our feet. Without realizing it, Rosete and I had been conversing. As I’ve already mentioned, we weren’t supposed to converse inside the colony. But there we were again, Rosete and I, talking irresponsibly. How embarrassing! We quit talking as soon as we felt the warning alarm. The Center immediately and silently transmitted to each of us a string of pertinent notifications: N41, N42, N43, O87, and Y1.

  I’ll translate them here: N41 means that, “you are contaminating the air with unnecessary noise.” This pertains to anyone who makes any kind of noise. N42, “verbal proximity produces unpleasant sensations and bad feelings.” N43, “you make mistakes when you use words.” O87 means, “be careful not to infringe on the space of those around you,” and Y1 means that, “the number of notifications for the same infraction exceeds ten.”

  What could we do to soften the disapproving tone of the Y1? Without letting a moment pass, Rosete put his thin, warm hand on my neck, played with my hair and looked into my eyes; we smiled at each other and then began to make love. We took our time, as if we had met in my room expressly for that purpose, as if we had flirted precisely with the goal of being together. We spent all morning kissing, caressing, and cuddling in the darkness of silent lovemaking. When we were on the other side of the tunnel of kisses and penetration, it didn’t take long for me to realize that a cloud of sadness had darkened Rosete’s face and I tried to ask him silently, with my eyes, what had caused it.

  He responded gruffly by breaking eye contact abruptly. He turned his head to one side and looking away, as if he were talking to someone else, said to me:

  —Do you want to work on Team Save the Banana Leaf?—Though he wasn’t imitating anyone in particular, his normal tone of voice changed and became exceedingly cold and severe. He didn’t look at me again and instead directed his gaze toward some distant point. I was disconcerted. If I were to put it in human terms, I would say I was offended. Wasn’t he kissing me just a moment ago? Didn’t I kiss his entire body? Weren’t we just partners in the pleasures of the flesh? Hadn’t we both just let ourselves go, aroused by our marathon lovemaking? Hadn’t we just entered each other’s bodies like people desperately fleeing a fire, or boiling water, or a brandished knife? Weren’t we both just humbled, and having abandoned our own consciousness, inhabited each other’s skin more than our own, aroused by pursuing each other in an impossible chase? We started having sex to blot out the reproof of our behavior issued by the Center, but we really did make love—I was Rosete’s and he was mine—and then, afterward, he rewarded me with distance and a wall of silence. I felt an overwhelming desire to distance myself from him, but I didn’t have anything at hand to pierce him with except a few lines from my poet, not audibly, but silently, because a shred of sanity reminded me that they had just chastised me for conversing:

  Tonight rain returned to fall again on the coffee plantations.

  On the leaves of the bananas,

  on the upper branches of the cámbulos,

  rain returned again tonight, a rain so persistent and extensive

  fills acequias and swells rivers

  that groan with their nocturnal load of muddy plants

  Rosete received the poem and first became even paler and then his skin flushed bright red. But he still didn’t look me in the eye. I took his face in my hands and turned it toward me. He lowered his eyelids.

  —What’s wrong Rosete?—I asked him out loud.

  Stammering, he repeated his earlier question:

  —Do you want to join Team Save the Banana Leaf? Yes or no?

  —No! I already have my banana—this too, silently—I have my banana, my leaf, and even my nightingale—I started reciting Quevedo’s poem:

  Singing flower, flying flower,

  winged whistle, painted voice,

  lively feathered lyre

  tiny trilling bouquet;

  tell me, flying ounce,

  feather accented flower,

  lovely sum of

  beauty and delicacy,

  how does this harmonious sum

  fit inside one tiny bird?

  Instead of spouting off and trying to pierce him with another poem, I should have backed up and explained to him what the verses I had recited just moments before evoked for me and then I should have continued with the next verse of the poem, “The rain on the zinc rooftops,” but when he turned away from me and refused to look at me, I felt just awful, I lost patience. But still, I should have paused and spent some time on all the secrets of the poem. I should have shown him how it speaks of the banana plant and the neighboring vegetation, shown him how it contains the fibrous stalk, the leaf, the flower with its purple tip, the surprisingly white and tender flesh of the fruit, and the bright yellow fibrous peel. I should have made him, not just understand the poem, but feel it—hear the sound of a river running through the thick trees of the tropical forest, smell its perfumed aroma, and touch the dewy freshness of the predawn hours. I should have shared the feeling of the poem with him. How could they possibly want more bananas, coffee plantations, cámbulos, rivers, or nightingales?

  But I didn’t do it. By reciting my poems, I only irritated Rosete. In his eyes, the verses are nothing more than vile creations of the men from the time of History. I should have explained the lines to him because my own irritation didn’t lead anywhere; it only distanced me from Rosete. And I don’t want to do that; I don’t have any reason to distance myself from him. Of course he started it, by looking at me the way he did he provoked me, but I (once the first impulse to respond to his aggression had passed), should have been kind to him to try to win him over to my side. Rosete is nothing without words. It’s absurd not to share his gifts.

  It’s a miracle. After writing down the story of what happened with Rosete, the bad feelings completely vanished. I’m not upset anymore. I’m no longer ill at ease. I can continue with my Hernando.

  Slosos keston de Learo

  EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO

  I cannot sing the soothing lullabies—such as Rorro, a la meme, riquirranes, tintón, dame dame, or dulce bien—from my childhood, not because I was deprived of them (Mama was always there to cuddle me), but because her murmurs were muffled by the cruel melody that had seized these lands during those years. Cortés’ departure triggered fights to the death over the real and imagined riches of these lands—homes were violated, crosses cast a pall over the streets, people were tortured, there was an excessive buzzing of languages, hangings and dismemberments were carried out by the hand of justice, stones rained on the heads of respected men and their wives and children, and we Indians danced to the sound of the violence sown by the conflict.

  Destiny did not spoil me because although it brought me into the world in the middle of a lavish fiesta, it left me among the shattered virtues. The inspector, the royal tax collector, the one who arbitrarily lost his encomienda, the treasurer, the attorney Suazo who was removed of his military and civil jurisdiction (simply because he obstructed them, he was falsely accused of not abiding by a cedula that did not even exist, was taken away in chains during the night, and shipped off to Medellín)—all of them (and I am not speaking of the Indians here, I will leave that story for another time if I live long enough) were performing a comedy of horrors.

  When Cortés returned as a great Lord, with the title of Marqués del Valle—having been dispatched to New Spain as Captain General and granted the gift of a lordship over twent
y-three thousand vassals; married to Doña Juana de Zúñiga, niece of the Duque of Béjar; and accompanied by an extensive retinue—those with bad memories of him were not soothed by his return and sent orders that the mayor should throw Cortés out of Veracruz, issued a proclamation that all who had gone to see him should return to their villages on pain of death, and forbade the Indians to give Cortés and his people anything to eat. And so the disputes continued, and I—endowed by the Creator with the gift of sight—was living there, suffering the spectacle of the atrocities even at that tender age.

  No lesson, advantage, or benefit could be gained from witnessing the above, and there were even more interminable atrocities, to which there is no sense returning and wasting ink or wearing out my already old hand. But even if there was no advantage or benefit, I did win a jewel for myself, expurgating it from among the wreckage, disgrace, and unbridled greed. I managed to find a keepsake in a place where nothing good could be found, where people were forced to surrender and suppress the better part of their honor, if not of their spirit, to survive unscathed. There are many examples of this but I will offer Rodrigo de Paz as one: not even by proffering his ring as a sign of his unconditional allegiance did he avoid being tortured for information as to where Cortés had hidden his treasures.

  They tortured him with water, rope, and fire until his toes fell off, and they took him to be hung, first walking him around the public plaza on the back of an ass, where he then stood naked with a dirty rag on his head for an entire day. Just two weeks prior he had marched with five halberdiers and twenty on horseback. And that is not counting what Rodrigo de Paz’s soul had to suffer for obtaining the halberdiers and those twenty on horseback, which included wearing a dirty rag on his head while riding around on the back of an ass and being tortured with water, rope, and fire. And worse than the excoriations, gashes, bruises, and wounds they inflicted on him, were the ones he committed in order to get rich so quickly. Two quotes from Juvenal come to mind:

  Dare to be worthy of tiny Giano and of prison, if you want to be something. Integrity is praised, but tremulously. It is to crime we owe gardens, country houses, tables, antique silver platters, and wine glasses embossed with goats.

  And when was vice the greater? When was the bosom of greed opened widest? When were the games of chance most vigorous?…Is it not sheer folly to lose one hundred thousand sesterces and deny a tunic to a shivering slave?

  Not being an alchemist, magician, or evil warlock, I could not have found anything of value in the putrid slaughterhouse of virtues this land had become, but even though I was not Merlin or Titlacahuan (the sorcerer who tricked Quetzalcóatl), I did find, and steal, a jewel. And if it is true that stealing is never a good thing, it is also true that my act of stealing was not a bad thing, because even though I took what was not mine and did not ask permission, nobody would notice its absence. Because even though I stole it, I did not take it from anybody. And if it is also true that jewels are not good when they are mere vanity, when they satisfy greed and lust, it is also true that my jewel was not entirely reprobate and impious because it neither awakened ambition, nor was it taken out of meanness and covetousness. Mine was a pure jewel, even though it was a fruit reaped from where nothing good can come. Nothing good, and to complicate things, the court of the conquistador had arrived.

  When Cortés was in Tlaxcala, en route to Mexico, after he and his company had starved due to the order given to the Indians that they should gather up all their food (so much starvation, according to the story, that some of the retinue died, among them Doña Catalina Pizarro, Cortés’ mother), the Marqués del Valle received an order from the court that read like this:9

  “For compliance in our service and the execution of our justice, we have decided to send provisions for our new president and judges of the Royal Audiencia of New Spain, and until they arrive your (and that of the Marquesa, your wife), entrance into Mexico might be inconvenienced; therefore, I order that in the meantime and for that reason, as has been said, that we have sent provisions to arrive in that land for our president and some of the judges, neither you nor the Marqueza, your wife, shall enter in the City of Mexico, you shall not travel within ten leagues of there, on pain of our mercy, and of ten thousand Castilian coins for our house and treasury.”10

  The order was sent on 22 March 1530 and was received on 9 August 1530. Cortés kissed it, held it over his head and obeyed, leaving Tlaxcala for Tezcoco. That is how he came to the village in which I had already learned to take my first steps, where I was living happily alone with my mother (but had not yet discovered playing with my friends), the same village where he left the brigantines with which he attacked Tenochtitlan by water.

  Don Hernán’s court was larger than the one in Mexico City, and the entire village was uneasy when they settled in Tezcoco. But it was not from that Court that I stole the above-mentioned jewel (though they certainly had plenty of gold, gems, beautiful clothing, and excellent horses), but rather from the situation I am about to recount right now. One day, when I was walking hand in hand with Mama, on our way back from some errand or other that I do not remember, we ran into some armed men from the Audiencia, or high court, who were taking a noble lord from one of the neighboring areas into custody with a lot of noise and ruckus. The noble lord was screaming at the top of his lungs in perfect Spanish, “It was not me,” and then “I will not do it again,” and then, “Let me go, let me go, let me free, by everything that is holy, for the love of God, my children and my village are waiting for me,” pulling with all of his strength to free himself, crying an ocean of tears.

  I quit squeezing Mama’s hand. The noble lord’s fear was contagious. I wanted to run, but I could not move because my eyes were glued to the man being taken prisoner. He was dressed in fine clothing, the fabric of which was the whitest white, and he maintained his elegance even while trying to escape from his captors. His refinement contrasted sharply with the coarseness of the armed men. If they were men, he was a swan and his robes were his wings. If he was a man, the ones who held him captive were dogs, agitated hounds, smelly, muddy, growling threats while they held their crying white prey in their slobbery maws, a prey who even in such a difficult situation continued to shine with refinement and elegance.

  One of the soldiers pulled at his victim’s white robe with his paws, holding the front of the man’s robe with his closed fist. Then he plunged a dagger into the fabric he clutched in his paw—slowly, tip first and then the blade—as if he were sticking it into something hard and solid, until the sharp tip emerged from underneath the cotton mantle. The noble lord appeared to be skewered in his clothes by the dagger. Not content with such boldness, the soldier pulled his arm back and in one swift motion stabbed his captive in the stomach. Without stopping, he pulled the knife back out, ripping the fabric of the robe and revealing a bloody wound. The time it took the weapon to enter and exit the fabric, wounding the body of the noble lord, was filled with a profound silence. The noble lord had remained immobile, like a statue impaled on the point of the dagger, and not a cry of pain escaped his lips when the blade wounded him in the stomach. The first sound we heard was the voice of the soldier who owned the weapon:

  —No bawling, that’s good; you surprise us, you stupid Indian.

  They took him away, in silence, subdued, and crying again. The other soldiers who accompanied him did not know what to do, I saw them running in different directions, like ants scattering from a destroyed anthill. Then we heard that the principal lord had come to Tezcoco to greet Cortés and they took him prisoner because they were looking for a fight and wanted to irritate the Conquistador. We also heard that the armed men of the Audiencia were already on the outskirts of Tezcoco, supplied and ready to wage war on Cortés.

  We never saw that noble lord again, perhaps because he did not want to return to a place that evoked such a horrific memory or because the cruel judges of the Audiencia took his life. Only God knows. But what I can say is that this is where I stole the
jewel. If there had not been a dispute between the inspector and the royal tax collector on the one hand and the treasurer and the auditor on the other, and everyone against Zumárraga and Cortés, I would not have gotten it. I stole the dagger. The dagger was my jewel. From that time forward I could always see it in my imagination. That weapon became an important part of me that day. Not because I possessed it, but because I engraved it in my mind, stealing it so it would become part of my very being. I armed myself with it in hundreds of ways—I was a hero, a warrior, triumphant in thousands of righteous disputes; in my tireless private adventures I defended both Mama and myself (I cannot say I defended my people, because at the time my people were only myself and Mama) with that dagger.

  Instead of taking something from the noble Indian, I stole something from the despicable soldier. Instead of taking the Indian’s enviable elegance, or his fear that was not blind or naïve, I stole a prop from the scene. And not even the noblest one. The weapon was not white like the cloth was, the weapon was not fine like the linen was, and the dagger was not strong, only the noble lord’s panic and cries were just. Even his tears seem to me to be a better keepsake, if I were to take something for my own use. Without minimizing the miserable quality of my spirit, I can say one thing in its defense: I corrected the destiny of the weapon, because in my imagination it was never again brandished against a defenseless person or anyone with a good heart.

  I have said a little about the evil that was a matter of course at that time in New Spain, and I am sure that you all will hear much more about that, so it should be easy to imagine that I did not have to exert any effort at all in order to find evil adversaries against whom to brandish my dagger. In my childish imagination I saw myself fighting valiantly as a full-grown man armed with my brilliant, sharp-edged weapon. My weapon, and it was mine (even though the brute’s dagger would never be mine), never left my sight. All I had to do was squint my eyes a little in order to see myself using it against this one or that one, always coming out victorious, because my private jewel was an infallible weapon of defense. I kept it with me, sheathed in the forefront of my memory. It was my closest companion and it never left me. There were times that it appeared in my dreams to save me; it was always at hand, held securely in my fingers, as faithful as a third leg (that is, those of my youth, since the two I have now do not even add up to one). My weapon was not kept in an isolated space, tucked safely away as my jewel, but was always with me everywhere I went.