—See—she said, returning to the conversation she had started to engage me in just moments ago—see Mama came back with a friend to bless you. —She spoke to her as if to introduce me to her, but she did not stop, or go to her, or touch her. The little one turned her little head anxiously toward her Mama. She was another little angel, except that this one was a little chubby. I stopped gazing at the first angel to focus on the second. The bigger angel did not go to her, and the little one followed her with her head, calling her with those little sounds she knew how to make.
—Can I hold her?—I asked her.
—No, no, don’t pick her up, she’ll get urine on you.
The little one was about to start crying.
—Tears again—said the heartless bigger one. —Don’t screech at me.
—Let me hold her—I said in my best voice. —I don’t care if she pees on me.
—Well, if you want to…
I did want to. I took her in my arms, reeking of pee, dirty not from dirt but from several days of filth, or that is the way it looked, as if she had never even been near water. She became happy, if you can say it that way, because she was saddest being I had ever seen. I do not know if her urine dirtied me or not but her dirty sadness penetrated me.
Not even when I picked her up did the Mama turn around to look at her. No telling what she was doing where there was nothing to do, but she was not preparing to greet her daughter. She came and went through the empty room, taking graceful little steps, quickly, as if she were in a hurry to get someplace. The little doll settled herself in my arms and made sweet expressions at me with her dirty little face.
—Listen—I said to her, because it was true—I have to go now, they are about to recite the Nones.
—Wait for me a moment, I’m leaving now, I’ll accompany you a little bit longer. Leave the baby in her place and let’s go.
No, for that I did not have the heart, to leave her there all alone.
—Can’t we take her?
—Why do you want to take her?
—So that she won’t be here alone. —I said, seeing that her place was just a single dark room in which there was nothing more than the mat where the mother and daughter must have slept. There was nothing else. Not even a table, nothing.
—Leave her alone, nothing will happen.
—Happen, nothing can happen, there is nothing she can hurt herself with. But she’ll be sad.
—She’s going to be sad…She’ll cry for a bit, because she’s fussy, but then she’ll be all right.
—Will you come right back?
—I don’t think so. I won’t come back until tonight.
—Aren’t you going to give her something to eat?
—When I come back with something to give her.
—Won’t she be hungry?
—Of course she will, she’s alive.
—Come, let’s take her, I don’t have the heart to leave her.
—How silly you are…
—I’ll carry her.
—You’ve got your woolen cloth.
—I can carry both.
—No you can’t, you’re a friar, not a tameme—you’re not an Indian porter. And anyway, who will carry her back? Tell me that. I’ll come back with her by myself.
—Your arms won’t fall off…
—No they won’t, but I don’t want to take her. Leave her there.
—Stay with her.
—What am I going to do here, sit around? I don’t have anything to keep me here, there’s nothing to do here…Let’s go.
At least let me give her a little bit of water or atole to drink if you have it…
All they had was water. I gave the sweet thing a few little sips of water, and left her, in her dark corner, the poor little girl, brooding in her daily sadness. I wondered silently how such a lovely angel, who appeared to be so pure, could have a heart so hardened against her own daughter.
—I know what we’ll do—she said to me, as soon as we left, not even in her mind had she given any attention to the little one—I’ll write a note to Father Sahagún and leave it at the Colegio, I can just go to Tlatelolco and I’ll explain to him.
It seemed like a very good idea to me.
—It’s just that I don’t have even a single cent to buy paper or to pay the scribe. Give me one of the coins I saved you, and as soon as I can I’ll pay you back. I’m only asking you so as to not lose any time. I don’t want you to misunderstand.
This she said as she had said everything earlier, gracefully, each of her sentences accompanied by an angelic movement of her head, occasionally raising her little hands to emphasize something she said. But even after she said it like that I did not believe it a bit, I might have been an innocent Franciscan but I was not an idiot, and I had already seen that my angel was not so good, she was horrible with her daughter. I gave her a coin that would pay for more than one round-trip between Tlatelolco and Mexico in a six-horse carriage. She did not even thank me. She disappeared among the people, practically flying, and I did not have the slightest doubt that she would not run off to spend the money while carrying her sad little girl in her arms, much less worry about me. I imagined she would spend the money on bows and petticoats to dress more prettily.
I returned to the Colegio convinced that the angel would not do anything for me, that everything she had done—tell me the story of Jerónimo López and lower the price on the woolen cloth—had been to get that money, so it took me by surprise when the friars called me the next day.
They were all there and in front of them was a piece of paper. Fray Bernardino, who was the one the letter was addressed to, spoke first.
—Hernando, we received this letter today. Read it and tell us if it is true.
The letter, which I was unable to read all at once due to emotion, went more or less like this:
“Dear Franciscan Friars: I am a woman obliged by the necessities of life to dance to give pleasure to men and women, to children and the elderly, for I am a widow and must support my daughter. Three weeks ago I was paid in cash to go to the Colegio de Santa Cruz, along with some prostitutes. I went there to dance for the students; the others were there to offer their flesh to the students for sinful purposes. The person (one of Jerónimo López’ men) paid us in hard cash and in advance. If he had not paid us in advance, we would never have been able to collect because your students were chaste and did not yield to any of the dirty provocations of the prostitutes I was forced to accompany out of necessity. I beg forgiveness before God for the harm we caused you. I also beg God to forgive me if I somehow contributed to marking your pure souls with the stain of sin. Dance is an art and I am devoted to it, and if I find myself obliged to accept unholy company to feed my little daughter, I ask your Excellencies’ forgiveness. Dear fathers, forgive me. Pray for me before God.”
Her scrawled signature was illegible. It was clear that the hand in which the rest of the letter was written was not the same.
—What can you tell us about this?—Fray Bernardino asked.
—That it is not a lie. —That was the only thing I managed to say because I started to cry. The friars did not say anything else. My tears displeased them.
They called Martín Jacobita, gave him the letter to read and asked him for an explanation; he explained to them in every way he could what had happened that night, which of the students had called them strumpets, why he and I had approached them, how they, the friars, had arrived, etcetera.
She, who was not a harlot, but rather a singer and dancer, had reconciled us with the friars. They did not put the Franciscan habit back on us, the law did not allow it. Fray Bernardino explained that this did not mean we had lost the robes and said as soon as the occasion arose, we would wear them again.
We never did have the occasion to wear the habit again and it would not have happened anyway, even though I might have worked hard to invoke it, because the friars never knew about what I am going to recount from here forward. The occasion never arri
ved, nor were the habits returned to Martín or to Hernando. Years later I wrote this with my own hand for Fray Bernardino:
“The habits of Saint Francis were given to two Indian youths, the most adept and reserved that there were, who testified the things of our Catholic Faith to the natives with great fervor…They had the habit and they might have been trained for the things of this Holy Religion, but we found through experience that they were not suited to such a state, and thus we took away their habits, and never again have we received an Indian into the religion, nor do we consider them to be qualified for the priesthood.” I spoke to Fray Bernardino a lot about this passage and we thought about writing it in several different ways. We ultimately agreed not to mention Elejos, because we did not need to glorify him in order to avoid greater violence.
I was also the hand of Daciano, when Fray Juan Gaona convinced him of his error in a public dispute and forced him to do penance:
“Come here, brother, you say that the Indians generally possess many talents and natural inclinations very suitable to helping them to be good Christians, and you have brought particular examples of Indians to whom God communicated his spirit, who have had the desire to serve him, renouncing the world and following the evangelical life. What then is the reason that you do not give them the habit of the religion, not just for laymen, but better yet to be priests, as in the early Church they chose heathens and Jews newly converted to the Faith to be priests and bishops?…And that is to say, that they are not for masters but rather for disciples, nor for prelates but rather for subjects, and for the best in the world…To some of the Indians raised and indoctrinated by your hand, and appearing to be well inclined, they gave them the habit of the order to test them and then in the novitiate year clearly understood that it was not for them, and that is why they let them go, and made the statute that they would not be received.”
Slosos keston de Hernando
EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO
Feeling the need to stretch my legs around mid-morning, I abandoned, halfway through, the work I had set for myself for this session. My ability to concentrate is diminishing because I sleep so poorly with all the ringing of the alarms. So I went out to stretch my legs when I realized that my concentration was so bad that I was only wandering through Hernando’s text, unable to translate Estela’s lines into my cesto.
I headed south.
A meeting was being conducted on one of the high peaks of the once-snow-covered cordilleras of the Andes. I drew near. They were all communicating in their new code—they were writhing around in their grotesque contortions, gesticulating obscenely. In a silence colder than the snow that should have been there, they writhed around like earthworms in salt, like the slugs the children from the time of History used to torture for fun. They really did look like slugs because their heads were no longer heads when they writhed around like that and their rear ends were no longer their bottoms. Headless, bottomless, their faces faceless, their hands handless…
What were they saying?
Nothing. With that stupid code they didn’t communicate anything. Each one repeated what they had learned through memorization, but they didn’t say anything to one another, simply nothing.
Nothing.
There were Rosete and Ramón, and Caspa, and Ezequiel and Jeremías, Italia and Lilia, now an adult.
They had already forgotten everything.
They had reached the heaven they were searching for. This is what man has evolved into—this idiotic dance where they put one hand on their buttocks while they stick their face to their knee and lift one foot…bending over and writhing and flinging themselves down and getting up, as if they were tired of their bodies.
I wanted to talk to them, but what good would that have done? This gave me a lump in my throat. They wouldn’t have been able to understand me anyway, they wouldn’t have comprehended me. They’ve already forgotten language and their power, they weren’t capable of understanding a single one of my words. They’ve already forgotten everything.
Is this really the end of man, as I’ve just described it—this succession of spastic movements, this disarticulation of the body?
It was enough to see them and feel the horror that their gestures produced to comprehend that what was breaking apart was more than language. Or maybe in breaking with language they broke with everything man was or could be.
In this they’ve made a mistake. Because they can no longer appreciate the beauty of the shining moon, the roar of a breaking wave, or the strange beauty of a mollusk, or the sunset…
They didn’t imitate animals or things. They were…they were imbeciles, atrocities…Ghastly…They were soulless beings; they were not even imitations of apes or stones.
Slosos keston de Learo
EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO
Another two weeks would pass before I saw my angel again, exactly one month from the first time I had seen her. I had gone to Mexico to pick up some paper for the Colegio, which had been ordered by the Franciscans quite some time earlier for our printing press. I had to complete the transaction, take care of the payment (with Franciscan money), find a porter to help me, and take it back before night fell and, with it, the rain. That is what I was doing (the paper had been paid for) when I saw her—she was more beautiful and had the same aura of purity. She smiled when she saw me.
—How are you Don Hernando? Better, I hope.
—Yes, better, I want to thank you…
—There is nothing to thank me for. Nothing. Why should you thank me? I did not do anything, I only undid a bit of the damage I had done. And I have some of the money left from what you gave me, only I do not have it with me right now…How will I get it to you? Should I stop by to give it to you or would the other Franciscans look poorly on that? I should not even ask, should I? I saw it in your face. Do not worry, I will not go to see you, the last thing I want to do is cause problems for you. Where are you going?
I told her what I was doing.
—What a coincidence. I have a friend who would be happy to take your load of paper at no charge because he has to go to Tlatelolco today, and he will not mind taking it for you, I promise. And do not worry, I will not ask for the money I saved you for transporting the paper, like I did last time to pay for the scribe. But I do want to ask you for something in return. Look, let us arrange the transport of the paper first (hopefully it will not rain) and I will explain.
I walked along behind her to arrange for the transport of the paper. I felt like I was running, though she seemed to be walking so calmly, so full of grace. She was so beautiful, even more so than last time. We arranged for the paper to be picked up and delivered to the Colegio for a ridiculously small amount of money.
—You see? Spend more time with me, Don Hernando, and the Colegio de Santa Cruz will overflow with blessings…Now, as I already told you, I wanted to ask you something for myself…—she looked at me so naughtily. Her look embarrassed me so much that I wondered if it were not a sin of the worst kind just to allow myself to be looked at that way. —I wanted to ask you a favor. A tiny little favor. A little nothing. May I?
Since I did not respond to her “may I?” she asked again:
—Well, may I?
—What?—I managed to reply, coming out of my surprise.
—May I ask you…a favor?
—As I owe you so much, I have no wish other than to quickly repay you if it is something that the Christian law allows. Since I am still a Franciscan to all intents, if it has anything to do with sin, even though all of my will is to obey you, I cannot.
—Do you think I would ask something sinful of you?—she asked with an angelic face. Then I would have bet my soul that she was incapable of sin, with that beautiful, innocent face.
—No, no, no—I was embarrassed—it is just a manner of speaking.
—What I want to ask you is in accordance with Christianity, but I want to talk to you calmly, and it makes me nervous that we are being observed. Will you come home with me
?
The last thing I thought prudent (I had had time to think about what I had done the last time I saw her) would be to go with her to the room she called a home.
—I prefer not to do that, they will see us go inside and…
—Nothing will happen. My neighbors know perfectly well that I am not a strumpet and that I never dance or sing at home, but, in order not to arouse the least suspicion, we will leave the door open, and I will explain everything to you there…
—No…
—Besides—she used this as a pretext and I am aware she brought this up because she knew that this would touch my heart—my daughter is alone and I have not seen her since this morning, and she might be hungry, poor little thing…
I did not say anything else. I walked behind her. That day I did pay attention to the route. Mexico was not a city I was very familiar with. I had jumped straight from Tezcoco to Tlatelolco, and even though we often came here to run errands, and I usually did them alone since the friars left the Colegio, it was not a town I managed very well. I needed to pay attention to where I was going; I needed to exercise my powers of reason to understand it. In Tlatelolco, on the other hand, I could walk with my eyes closed and know where I was. It was like the palm of my hand. This city was not. I knew it, but I had not lived there long enough to have it engraved in my brain. So I was walking behind her, paying attention to the route she took to what she called a home. We arrived. It did not manage to be outside of the Spaniard’s blueprint where the streets were not yet cobblestoned and where circumstances dictated disorder, instead it was practically next to the Salto del Agua, the public fountain. I had walked a good distance last time and had not even realized it, as I was focused only on her graceful step. We were at the other end of the city, next to a church. Hers might be the priest’s house; in fact, it seemed to be part of it because it was right beside it.
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