Malinche by Laura Esquivel Page B

they could plunge themselves into the chest and cut out the heart.
    She liked the eyes of her new master Portocarrero better. They were eyes that looked on her indifferently; but since for her indifference was what she knew best, the familiar treatment with which she had always lived, she was happy to be with him. And in order to please him she had to carry out the first task that he had assigned to her. Hastily, she grabbed a handful of dry grass and with it had no problem starting the fire in order to make tortillas for her new master.
    Her heart filled with relief. She was building a new fire, in a different way, with a new name and new masters that brought with them new ideas and customs. She was grateful and convinced that she was in good hands and that these new gods had come to end human sacrifices.

    Malinalli, with her new name, recently baptized and purified, would now, at Cortés’s side, begin the most important phase of her life. The bonfire was powerful and to give it even more life, Malinalli took a fan to it. The lighting of the fire was an important ceremony. Malinalli remembered with surprising clarity the last time that she had lit a fire in the presence of her grandmother. She was a young girl, and it was early in the morning when her grandmother spoke to her.
    â€œToday I will leave these lands. I will not see the destruction of this world of stone, the writings of stone, the flowers of stone, the cloths of stone that we built as mirrors for the gods. Today the songs of birds will carry my soul into the air, and my lifeless body will stay behind to return to the earth, the mud, and one day it will rise again in the sun that is hidden in the corn. Today, my eyes will open in bloom and I will leave these lands. But before I do, I will sow all my affection in you.”
    Without warning, a sudden rain began to fall over the region. The grandmother laughed, and with her laughter filled the room with music. Malinalli did not know whether or not her grandmother had been in jest when she spoke of going away some place. The only thing she knew was that her grandmother and she were the same age, that there was no time or distance between them, that she could always play and share her longings, her uncertainties, and her fantasies with her beloved grandmother, who had become a child again. The grandmother asked Malinalli to go out and play in the rain. Thrilled, the girl obeyed. Soon, everything was mud outside the house. They both sat down on the ground and eagerly began to play with the wet earth. They made animal shapes and magical figurines. A kind of madness seemed to possess the grandmother and in a frenzy she shared it with her granddaughter. The grandmother asked the child to cover her eyes with mud, to refresh them with the mud. The child, amused, caressed her grandmother’s face trying to comply exactly with the old woman’s crazy wishes.
    â€œLife always offers us two possibilities,” the grandmother said after she was completely caked in mud, “day and night, the eagle or the serpent, creation or destruction, punishment or mercy, but there is always a third possibility hidden that unites the other two. Find it.”
    After saying these words, the grandmother raised her mud-covered eyes to the sky.
    â€œLook, my child! The swimmers of the sky!”
    Malinalli observed the amazing flight of eagles soaring above them.
    â€œHow did you know that they were there if you can’t see them?”
    â€œBecause it was raining and when it rains, the waters speak to me. The waters tell me the forms of the animals as it caresses them. They tell me how tall and how hard a tree is by the way it sounds on receiving the rain. And they tell me many other things, like the future of each person as it is sketched in the sky by the fish of the air. One has only to interpret it, and mine is very clear: the four winds have given me their signal.”
    At that moment their surroundings turned