Aztec - Jennings Gary. Страница 274

Magnanimous in victory, or at least unctuous, Cortes said, "No, you did not surrender, and you have not ceded your rule. I decline to slay you, and I insist that you retain your leadership of your people. For we have much work to do, and I pray you will help me do it. Let us together build your city to a new grandeur, my esteemed Lord Cuautemoc."

Cortes probably pronounced it Guatemoc, as he always later did. I think I long ago mentioned, reverend friars, that the name Cuautemoc meant Swooping. Eagle, but I suppose it was inevitable and even fitting that, after that day—by our calendar the day One Serpent of the year Three House; by your calendar the thirteenth day of August in the year one thousand five hundred twenty and one—our last Revered Speaker's name was ever afterward translated into Spanish as Falling Eagle.

* * *

For some while after the fall of Tenochtitlan, life was not much changed in most of The One World. Outside the immediate area of The Triple Alliance, no other part of these lands had been so devastated, and there were probably many parts where the people were not yet aware that they resided not in The One World but in a place called New Spain. Though they were cruelly ravaged by the mysterious new diseases, they seldom saw a Spaniard or a Christian, so they had no new laws or gods imposed on them, and they went on with their accustomed ways of life—harvesting, hunting, fishing, whatever—as they had done through all the sheaves of years before.

But here in the lake lands, life was much altered, and it was hard, and it has never got easier, and I doubt that it ever will. From the day after Cuautemoc's capture, Cortes concentrated all his attention and energy on the rebuilding of this city—or I should say our energy. For he decreed that, since it was entirely the fault of us fractious Mexica that Tenochtitlan had been destroyed, its restoration as the City of Mexico should be our responsibility. Though his architects drew the plans, and his artificers oversaw the work, and his most brutal soldiers wielded the whips to make the work get done, it was our people who did the work, and we who supplied the materials, and if we would eat after our labors, it was we who had to provide the food. So the quarriers of Xaltocan worked harder than ever in their lives, and foresters laid naked the lakeside hills to cut beams and planks, and our former warriors and pochtea became foragers and carriers of what foodstuffs and other necessities they could forcibly extort from the surrounding lands, and our women—when they were not being openly molested by the white soldiers, even raped before the eyes of all who cared to watch—were pressed into service as porters and messengers, and even small children were put to work mixing mortar.

Of course, the first things attended to were those most important. The broken aqueducts were repaired, and then the foundations were laid for what would be your cathedral church, while directly in front of it were erected the pillory and the gallows. Those were the first functioning structures in the new City of Mexico, for they were much exercised to inspire us to unceasing and conscientious labor. Those who slacked at any job were strangled on the gallows, or were branded with the "prisoner of war" mark on the cheek and then were exposed in the pillory for the outlanders to pelt with stones and horse droppings, or they were broken by the whips of the overseers. But those who worked hard died almost as frequently as did the slackers, from such causes as being forced to lift a stone so heavy that they ruptured their insides.

I was far more fortunate then most, for Cortes gave me employment as an interpreter. With all the orders and instructions to be relayed from architects to builders, with all the new laws and proclamations and edicts and sermons to be translated to the people, there was more work than Malintzin alone could manage, and the man Aguilar, who might have assisted to some degree, had long ago died in a battle somewhere. So Cortes engaged me, and even paid me a small wage in Spanish coin, in addition to giving me and Beu accommodation in the splendid residence—what had once been Motecuzoma's country palace near Quaunahuac—which he had appropriated for himself and Malintzin and his ranking officers and their concubines, and where he also kept under his eye Cuautemoc and his family and courtiers.

Perhaps I should apologize, though I do not know to whom, that I took employment with the white men, rather than die defying them. But, since the battles were all over, and I had not perished in the struggle, it seemed my tonali ordained that for at least a while longer I should struggle not to perish. I had once been bidden, "Stand! Endure! Remember!" and that was what I determined to do.

For some time, a major part of my interpreting duties consisted in my translating Cortes's incessant and insistent demands to know what had become of the Mexica's vanished treasury. If I had been a younger man, and able to work at any other trade that would have supported myself and my ever-ailing wife, I would right then have quit that degrading occupation. It required me to sit with Cortes and his officers, as if I were one of them, while they bullied and insulted my fellow lords, calling them "damned, lying, greedy, treacherous, clutching Indians!" I was especially ashamed of myself when I had to participate in the repeated interrogations of the Uey-Tlatoani Cuautemoc, whom Cortes no longer addressed with unction or even the least respect. To Cortes's reiterated queries, Cuautemoc could or would say nothing but a disclaimer:

"To the best of my knowledge, Captain-General, my predecessor Cuitlahuac left the treasure in the lake where you threw it."

At which, Cortes would snarl, "I have sent down my best swimmers and yours. They find nothing but mud!"

And Cuautemoc could or would make only the rejoinder, "The mud is soft. Your cannons made the whole Lake Texcoco tremble. Any objects as heavy as gold would have settled ever deeper in that ooze."

I felt most ashamed on the day I had to watch the "persuasion" of Cuautemoc and the two old men of his Speaking Council who had accompanied him to that session of questioning. After I had many times translated those same words so many times exchanged before, Cortes exploded in a temper. He ordered his soldiers to rake from the palace kitchen's hearth three large bowls of embers, and made the three lords of the Mexica sit with their bare feet in those smoldering coals while he again asked the identical questions and they, gritting their teeth against the pain, gave the identical replies. At last, Cortes threw up his hands in a gesture of disgust and stalked out of the room. The three cautiously stood up from their chairs and stepped out of the bowls and began gingerly to make their way to their quarters. The two old men and the younger one, doing their best to support each other, hobbled on their blistered and blackened feet, and I heard one of the elders moan:

"Ayya, Lord Speaker, why do you not tell them something else? Anything? I hurt unbearably!"

"Be silent!" snapped Cuautemoc. "Do you think I am this moment walking in a pleasure garden?"

Though I loathed Cortes and myself and our association, I refrained from any deed or remark that might arouse his displeasure and endanger my soft situation, because, within a year or two, there were many of my fellows who would happily have replaced me as Cortes's collaborator, and could adequately have done so. More and more of the Mexica and other peoples—of nations both inside and outside The Triple Alliance—were hastening to learn Spanish and to apply for baptism as Christians. They did it not so much from servility as from ambition, and even necessity. Cortes had early promulgated a law that no "Indian" could hold any position higher than that of common laborer until and unless he was a confirmed Christian and proficient in the conquerors' spoken tongue.