A Signal Victory

by David Stacton

  As Cortés’ interpreter, he would have it. A priest could do much.

  But would the Maya let him go?

  Of course they would. This foreign lord had, in the proper way, sent a ransom, two bags of round stamped golden disks. They meant nothing to the Lord of Taxmar, but they could be turned into gold ornaments, and gold ornaments were rare. He liked ornaments. Aguilar was a nuisance. He had ceased to be amusing years ago. He was just an oddity in the harem. Taxmar did not put much value on people who would rate such an idiot so high, when a dwarf would have been so much more entertaining.

  Who would have thought he would have been worth so much?

  The women of the harem took a new interest in him. They even asked him to tell them again about the Virgin Mary, some kind of goddess his people had, who could beget without men, and whose labour was never referred to. It seemed so odd.

  No one had ever made much of him before, but he knew why they did so. It was because he was leaving. Nor did he expect any kindness of Cortés, or any man, that he could not extort. It was not as a Christian he was being ransomed, but as a possible interpreter. That left him with no real love of Cortés, for he foresaw difficulties. He did not speak the language well, first of all because it was a heathen language, and second because he had no curiosity.

  He was also asked to summon Guerrero. He had not known Guerrero was alive, and would have preferred him dead. He did not admit to himself that this was because Guerrero, if he came, would supplant him. He preferred to believe that it was because the man was a renegade.

  Yet he complied and sent a message to Chetumal. Compliance was one of the prices of his manumission. But he did not wait for an answer. Nothing could have made him do so. Guerrero was a heretic. Guerrero had seen him at a disadvantage. He could only pray that the man would not come.

  *

  The man had no intention of coming.

  Rumours had reached him from the north, and he had sent out spies. He realized what manner of man he had to deal with this time, and that now the Conquest would go on in earnest. Those first invaders had been ineffectual, but now, he could tell from the natives’ reports, that with Cortés there would be no turning back. Even garbled in Maya, that name had the sound of authority, the sound of a man of honour.

  But gentleman or not, Cortés would have to make use of the Aguilars of this world, who were without honour, and therefore without mercy.

  Guerrero also knew why he had been summoned. He would be a useful man on that expedition, even though the invitation made no mention of that. He was exhorted as a Christian to do his duty, he was commanded back into the fold. But when the wolf calls the sheep back to the fold, do they answer?

  That sort of thing he would leave to Aguilar, and much good might Cortés make of him. Somehow he did not think Aguilar would be of much help.

  He had forgotten the wretched man. But now, remembering him, he felt only disgust.

  And yet he was unsettled.

  When he had sent back his answer, he watched the messenger until he was out of sight, not so much to call him back, as to be sure that he had gone. Then, not wanting to see anyone, he had wandered about the city.

  There it was, spread out around him, at dusk, white, gleaming, peaceful, clean, and orderly. His two sons, his wife, his father-in-law, were here, somewhere, going about their familiar, quotidian affairs with that good-humoured gravity which was their approach to life. There was no ordinary detail of this daily life that did not give him a warm and customary thrill.

  He was upset and angry.

  What did they mean, to call him back to his duty as a Christian? What did they understand of such things, from Aguilar, with his crouched hatred of the world, to the great ones, who bought on Sundays the right to do whatever they chose during the rest of the week?

  Did it mean they wanted to tear this world down, and needed him to help? Was that what their pious summons, what Aguilar’s revolting hypocrisy, meant? That he should go unshaven, spitting through the jungles, shooting down a culture they would not even comprehend, because they could not comprehend it, and because they thought it might be rich? That spoils system which led every illiterate foot soldier to believe he could become a millionaire, meant only that one or two grew prosperous by creating a universal squalor.

  Cortés, yes, might be a gentleman, but a gentleman can at best ride unsullied on that universal wave of filth which is man’s hatred and ambition. Even he, in time, if he is not careful, will be sucked under by it.

  These people loved life. No Christian does that. How can he, saddled with the ultimate impiety called Original Sin? There is nothing original about it. It is merely the same old irrational vindictiveness of those without the will to be good.

  And yet he found himself shaking.

  He could have sent no answer, but that was not his way. He did not like to leave decisions unmade. That was not the honourable way. And yet he could not help but feel cold, for though he was a grandee here, he had been born there.

  It was not a matter of loyalty. It was not a matter of having anything to regret, of ever having had any desire to return. And yet a man is a little lost in any place where he was not born. It is a piece of the earth he carries around with him, and gives him something to stand on.

  The city, lit by hundreds of lamps, was reflected in the Bay of Chetumal. He saw the lights of a fisherman’s canoe on the water. Yet he also, for the first time in years, saw the bleak yellow landscape of his native place, Nieto. It made him blink. He had never felt at ease there, as he did here. And yet he had had a father and a mother, brothers, sisters, and as a child, those native hills to play in.

  He had said no. He had meant no. And yet there was something about the sheer weight of the jungle behind the city that oppressed him, something about these people he would never understand, simply because he had not been born here.

  Never mind, he had been reborn here. And there was Ix Chan. There was Nachancan, who would say nothing, but understand.

  Who among the Spaniards had ever done or would ever do that?

  At the top of the pyramid, someone had cast incense into a brazier. He looked around him. No, this was the world to fight for. We fight for the world we have. Only a fool looks back, for no one can fight time.

  Meanwhile there was much to do, but only because it had to be done, and he was the only one who could do it. The motives of hate he left to Aguilar.

  But he did not underestimate them.

  *

  Aguilar had worries of his own.

  He had learned nothing during those eight years, except a little, a very little and that ungrammatical, Maya. In despair he went over his irregular verbs, but could find nothing but a series of uncouth infinitives. At least, no matter how little he knew, his redemptors knew still less. That was something. He hurried towards the coast, unable to believe that this ransom was not some kind of trick. He had never, in all his life, been able to believe that everything were not some sort of trick, even God. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was.

  The harem had made him flabby. He sagged over his loincloth, and had never got over the shame of going naked, which made him move more awkwardly than ever.

  Now he found himself in a canoe rowed by five slaves. It was how things should have gone, from the beginning, to have those five strong backs in front of him. Fingering his rosary and breviary, he baptized them at once. It is so easy to make converts if you only ask them about what you want to believe.

  There was no ship at the coast, but he did not dare to turn back. That was unthinkable. He ordered the rowers on to Cozumel. At dawn he drew up alongside the boats of the Spaniards. But how could he present himself? He was naked. That showed the degree of his long martyrdom, but a European is nothing without his clothes.

  He fingered his breviary. His Spanish was rusty, but his Latin was in better repair. The soft water lapped at the boats. He had himself announced to Cortés.

  *

  Cortés was a modern man,
as all men who know how the world goes and say nothing live in the same now. He had his own amusements and recreations, but they were not those of a long voyage, and could come later. Meanwhile, he saw himself anchored off a low coast, of whose language he knew nothing, and whose strength he was beginning to perceive. He had also to impose order on several hundred avaricious men who, though they could be terrorized by their priests, in actuality respected nothing. Yet he himself could leave nothing to his descendants, and keep little for himself, unless he had this New Empire to offer to the Crown. Therefore he meant to have it. And for that an interpreter was indispensable. Therefore, when news came that Aguilar had arrived, he prepared to make himself agreeable.

  That turned out to be more difficult than he had expected. He was disappointed. He had hoped for Guerrero, who by all accounts was more competent.

  Instead he saw nothing but an Indian with a black beard, and not a very savoury Indian at that. Aguilar prostrated himself and began to creak Spanish. He claimed a distant Cortés cousin in Seville, a sixty-fourth cousin, but still, a cousin.

  Cortés was taken aback, and tried not to show it. It was a little startling to hear this loinclothed Hottentot claim a cousinage in disjointed Spanish. But he did seem to know how to speak to the natives, and he was a priest. That would mean a lot to the men. Cortés sent him away, ostensibly to rest. He would hear his story tomorrow.

  But he already knew what his story was. It was obvious. But it was also incredible. You gave men like that the wealth of a new world, and they said nothing except to complain that it was not the pottage they got at home. It was because they had no position, no rank, and no initiative. They were born slaves, and it is the servants of this world who keep the standards up. They cramp even their betters by doing so, demanding so much formality from people who have outgrown such things, that one complies only because it is so hard to get dependable servants any more.

  And then, there are so many in this world who long to be servants. It makes the lot of their betters far from enviable, for how can they provide all those places, when in their innermost hearts they cannot bear to be waited on? Besides, servants are spies. They gossip among themselves. And if they serve one master, it is not out of loyalty, but professionalism. No valet would ever descend to curry-comb a horse. He would lose face. No priest would behave with common sense for the same reasons.

  This was the wrong man. It was the other man he was after. The other man, by all accounts, had done well in this world, therefore he must understand it, and would have been worth the having.

  For Cortés, like Guerrero, had no illusions. He belonged to the little company of those who are sane, even though they may have to change worlds in order to remain so. That little company has been piped away a thousand times, but thank God, it does not matter whose, it always comes back again.

  While Aguilar slept the message from Guerrero arrived. It was hard to interpret it, without an interpreter, and yet “no” is never hard to interpret. The other man would not come, and perhaps Cortés respected him for that, knowing that the men worth having are not those so easily to be had.

  He must do with Aguilar.

  Aguilar knew very well he was the second-best choice. He had to raise himself somehow in his own estimation, and now that he had borrowed a Franciscan robe, and had something to justify him, he had his explanation ready. Guerrero, he explained, had had his hands tattooed, his nose, lower lip, and ears pierced, and was living in sin with the natives. No doubt he had been ashamed to show himself.

  Somehow Cortés did not think so. Men such as Guerrero, if what he had heard of Guerrero were true, were never ashamed of themselves. Nor did he believe what Aguilar said.

  But he could not loiter here. He weighed anchor and swept north, and then west, around the peninsula, bound for Tabasco and his place in history.

  As a matter of fact, Guerrero had had his lower lip pierced. It was the ultimate honour, and the honour was a heavy one, made of gold, in the Aztec fashion, a serpent with a flickering tongue, held by a stud on the inner side of the lip. When nothing was worn there, one could press one’s tongue in and out of the hole, which helped one to think.

  It also made certain other things possible. When Ix Chan was pleased, she had so many gestures to prove that she was so.

  Meanwhile, he settled down to await developments. He waited, first, until 1521. It was a respite, after all. His sons were growing up, and Nachancan was growing older. He kept himself informed, but also he had his daily life to lead. It seemed the more precious now, that perhaps it was in danger.

  XIII

  He learned the news, the Maya learned the news, in September of 1521. At first it frightened all of them. But then, should they not rather rejoice in the destruction of their hereditary enemy, and was not Mexico very far away? Surely what happened there, could have nothing to do with them?

  Guerrero could do nothing to rouse them, nothing to put them in a state of defence. Yet even he had heard of the glories of Mexico, and that they could be swept away so easily filled him with despair.

  It was the traders who brought the news: on the 13th of August Technoctitlán had fallen.

  It was the chute of a world.

  That city of the robber barons, that great city in the middle of its lake, that city of the eagle on the cactus, who holds the snake, that city had been swept away.

  A few years ago it had glittered there, white, polychromed, and secure, its altars fed on human hearts, smoking to heaven, the greatest city in the known world.

  Now it was gone. And those people who had come from the dark bat-hung caves of the north, perhaps in Sonora, who knew where, with their wooden hell and their hell on earth, they too were gone. The Spaniards had marvelled, but knew no mercy. Aguilar was with them, somewhere. Faced with a culture higher than their own, they could think of nothing better to do than to destroy it.

  The traders said it was terrible. The Maya were not impressed. Guerrero, looking at the intact temples of Chetumal, swore, but listened to the traders’ tale.

  Once we know how bad things are, then there is hope, for then we can begin to plan.

  The Spaniards had levelled the great temple and the city, and ignorant of sanitation, had filled the drainage canals with the massive carved blocks of an alien world.

  They were ignorant of so many things. It gave them, as it gives all such, a dreadful strength.

  Moctezuma, the Great Speaker, had been stoned by his own people and then tortured by his conquerors. That, too, was the way the world goes. What they wanted, said the Spaniards, was gold. Moctezuma did not understand. Gold was only an ornamental mineral, of no value in itself. Would they not rather have jade?

  Bernal de Diaz, being prudent, took a little jade. It was to ransom his life later. But the others wanted only gold.

  Moctezuma II, who had never doubted his own preeminence, but only the survival of the world that made his own pre-eminence possible, died, was succeeded by Cuitlahuac, and he, in four months, by Cuauhtemoc. As usual the Indians had fought among themselves. That was what had, as usual, defeated them, until Cuauhtemoc, that true and supple hero, had nothing left to defend but his own four acres of palace in the desolation of Tenochtitlán. Again and again these hairy savages attacked him, across the raped boulders of the city.

  The traders made a chronicle of it, that Guerrero had no will to hear. He had heard of none of these people, but a rehearsal is a rehearsal.

  Finally Cuauhtemoc had fled, with his favourite wife, across the shallow lake, by night, in search of allies. Since he had none left, the Spaniards had taken him easily.

  All around that lake, the subsidiary cities were empty, deserted, and smoking, He had the bitterest fate of all, the one war gives us, unless we are careful to die: he survived his own world.

  Guerrero quite understood that. He knew it must not happen to him. His boys were now seven and six, and he had had a daughter. Men not male want sons, but men most male, once the continuance of their n
ame is assured, a daughter. For women are the conservators. They could not make something out of nothing, like men. They needed something already there, to rearrange and pass on in order. Hence his daughter, who would be beautiful, no doubt. Ix Chan was so pleased. They had not the habit of kissing, and yet he kissed her.

  Somehow, by some miracle, though he was alert to trouble, they lived in peace for three years. He knew the dangers of that peace, but could not make even Nachancan understand them. The Maya had been conquered themselves. It meant no change in the order of their days. One treated with the conqueror to keep one’s place, that was all. That far Nachancan could understand, but no further. Even the old tales the travellers brought from Mexico could not dissuade him from a belief that the world went on as it had always done, conqueror or not. Chetumal had been secure for too long, and besides, the Maya could conceive of a moderate hunger, but the immoderation of Europe was something beyond their ken.

  There was nothing Guerrero could do, except wait, and undertake a certain modest diplomacy. So much of his time, during those three years, was taken up in travel and the effort to make allies. But allied, the natives wanted to know, against what, and to what advantage to themselves?

  He could not make them understand that the advantage was their own survival. Had they not always survived?

  Yet, if the whole peninsula was to be some day one battleground, at least he had the opportunity to learn the topography of that coming war.

  And then, in 1524, came the terminal event, the event that stunned even Nachancan. The event which proves that even the noblest man cannot avoid one fatal error, the event that, in proving each life a tragedy, improves, somehow, the sense of comedy, for without tragedy, there could be no comedy.

  When a man does something against his own nature, he begins to fail. That is what happened to Cortés.