Malinche Read Online Free PDF Page B

feel an enormous joy. It could even be said that Malinalli was in love with her grandmother’s eyes and with the sound of her voice. When the grandmother told a story, Malinalli watched her grandmother’s eyes with an unbridled curiosity, for she saw there a beauty that she had not seen in any other person. What most attracted her was that her grandmother’s eyes lit up only when she spoke. When the grandmother was silent, her eyes lost all their vivacity, they faded out. It was only by accident that Malinalli discovered that this happened because her grandmother could not see.
    One afternoon, when the grandmother was resting in the back of the house, Malinalli, without making a sound, approached her grandmother carrying a small bird cupped in her hands.
    â€œGrandma, see how it suffers?”
    â€œWhat suffers?” the grandmother asked.
    â€œCan’t you see it here in my hands? It’s hurt and I want to heal it.”
    â€œNo, I can’t see it. Where is it hurt?”
    â€œOne of its wings.”
    The grandmother reached out her hands and Malinalli put the small bird in them. For Malinalli it was a great surprise to watch her grandmother try to find the bird’s injury by touch.
    â€œCitli, how can it be that you who see everything, see nothing? If your eyes don’t see colors, don’t see my eyes, don’t see my face, don’t see my codices, what is it that they see?”
    â€œI see what is behind things,” the grandmother answered. “I can’t see your face, but I know that you are beautiful; I can’t see your outside, but I can describe your soul. I have never seen your codices, but I have seen them through your words. I can see all the things that I believe in. I can see why we are here and where we will go when our games end.”
    Malinalli began to weep silently.
    â€œWhy are you crying?” the grandmother said.
    â€œI’m crying because I can see that you do not need your eyes to look or to be happy,” she answered. “And I’m crying because I don’t want you to go.”
    The grandmother tenderly took her into her arms. “I will never leave you. Every time that you see a bird in flight, there I’ll be. In the form of the trees, there I’ll be. In the mountains, the volcanoes, the cornfields, there I’ll be. And, above all things, each time that it rains I will be near you. In the rain we will always be together. And don’t worry about me, I went blind because I was disturbed at how the appearances of things would confuse me and not allow me to see their essence. I went blind to return to the truth. It was my own decision, and I am happy with what I now see.”

    The sun had risen. That morning the light was more fluid and the clouds sketched fantastic animals in the sky. Malinalli, accompanied by the memory of her grandmother, stopped her work at the grinding stone to light the fire that would heat the comal, the clay dish where the corn flour would become tortillas.
    She did this slowly and in reverent silence, for it was to be the last time she would light the fire there. For a moment she watched the shapes of the flames, trying to guess their meanings. The god Huehuetéotl, the Old Fire, showed her his finest shapes and colors. The red and yellow sparks mingled with the green and blue to paint stellar maps in Malinalli’s eyes, which put her in a place outside the realm of time. For a moment, she was filled with peace.
    In this state, Malinalli shaped the dough with her palms and made two tortillas that she set to cook in the comal . She ate the first one slowly, so that she could feel the presence of her grandmother and of the Lord Quetzalcóatl inside her body. The other she let burn completely and later crushed in the grindstone until the tortilla was nothing but a fine ash that she tossed in the air to leave a trace of its presence in that place, so that the wind would speak for her