Sudden Death (23 page)

For months, another Indian, who called himself a notary and said that he represented the interests of Don Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin and the newly founded village of Nearby, waited from sunup to sundown in the antechambers of the archdiocese without being received by Quiroga. Finally, the bishop made up some deeds just to get rid of him. Only then did he learn that in the perfect valley he had visited with the featherworker, a workshop had already been built, as had houses for five families and a communal dining hall.

T
he duke lost the composure that he'd been careful to maintain all through the match when he saw how the Lombard drilled the ball into the dedans. Motherfucker, he said. Barral whispered in his ear: We're in fine shape, boss. Neither of them had ever seen a drive like that, so fast it was almost invisible, so precise it was as if—instead of going into the hole—the ball had been swallowed up by the wall.

The duke asked for a time-out and beckoned to his protégé. The poet could still feel victory in his fingertips and he was convinced that his opponent's smash had been chance. We've been watching him try for it the whole match, he said to the duke, and this is the first time he's done it; it must have been luck. The duke shook his head. Barral raised a finger, requesting permission to have his say. What is it, asked his master. Or he's been stringing us along so that we'd bet the rest. A shadow of doubt crossed the poet's face. The man is crippled by his hangover, he said; I don't think he'd put himself through this just to win a few coins. Faugh, said the duke: For now, forget about backspin on your serve; aim for the end of the gallery so that he isn't so close to the dedans and he has to lob it.

The poet returned to his side of the court.
Tenez!
He served a slow ball with no backspin that floated like a balloon onto the far corner of the roof. He watched it go up and noted, from the moment it began its descent, that he'd put it just where he wanted it. It would bounce oddly, drop in an awkward spo
t, and the Italian would have to lunge for it, hopefully with his backhand.

The duke managed to cry, Cover the dedans, catching the gleam in the artist's eye as he waited. The artist retreated behind the baseline, smiling, and crossed his arm over his body, preparing for a backhand strike. The Spaniard ran back. When he saw the bullet coming at him he ducked his head. The ball went into the dedans.
Caccia automatica
per il milanese,
said the mathematician.
Tre–due.

All the people appear in the temple in white garments. The priests' vestments are parti-colored, more wonderful for their craft and form than for their materials. They are neither embroidered with gold thread nor set with precious stones, but are composed of the plumes of several birds, laid together with so much art and so neatly that they are greater in value than the richest cloth. In the ordering and placing of these plumes some dark mysteries are represented.

THOMAS MORE
,
Utopia
, 1516

H
uanitzin's mountainside establishment was devoted exclusively to the art of featherwork, though sheep were tolerated because they cropped the grass, driving away the snakes and field rats. Anyone who chose to persist in fishing or planting squash was invited to leave by Don Diego's apprentices during terrifying nighttime visits with sticks and stones.

The settlement, because of its proximity to Tzintzuntzan and its tininess, never had a name, or had one only in the minds of Huanitzin and Tata Vasco, even though it was formally baptized as Cercanías, or “Nearby,” in the sham deeds granted by the bishop, in honor of the stagecoach that ran between Toledo's main square, Talavera de la Reina, and Aranjuez when the featherworker was a visitor at the royal court: Huanitzin thought that Nearby was a place.

Of all the communities that made up the diocese, which was in reality Vasco de Quiroga's personal fiefdom, the bishop's favorite was Tupátaro, because it lay among the richest fields of New Spain; like all dictators for life, he was by nature better equipped to understand productive units than artist communities. Even so, when afternoons spent visiting the Tzintzuntzan
hospital grew long, he would make a detour to Nearby to while away the time: the sun spilling behind the blue mountains, the lethal minute when the water of the lake lay still to let the souls of the dead pass, the emerald slide of the sheep-sheared meadow, the sudden arrival of the children. If he could have, he would have established the archdiocese in Tupátaro, instead of Pátzcuaro, so he could live there, but he couldn't help thinking that if he continued to be good, when he died he would go to Nearby.

From a distance, Quiroga noted that the houses, once built of sticks and palm fronds, were now adobe, and that the workshop was already an imposing structure, whitewashed and with a tile roof, and that the
totocalli
was perfectly organized. He moved on to greet the women, who were hard at work in the communal kitchen. Are the men in the shop? he asked. One of the women, who didn't speak Castilian but did speak Nahuatl, answered that for eleven days Diego had kept the men working behind closed doors, and wouldn't let the women see them even when they brought food. If things go on like this, continued another in Castilian, the children will run wild. But what are they doing? asked Quiroga. You know Don Diego and his mysteries, said one of the Purépecha in Castilian; he's still a Mexica through and through. The Nahuas are cryptic folk, concluded the bishop. Exactly right, answered the Indian woman; always crippling things. The priest thought to himself that in addition to the featherworking shop, Huanitzin had established another workshop, of imaginary Spanish.

The ladies set him a place at the table: Go on, Tata, eat something before the children come back. He couldn't resist a perhaps overly large helping of Mechuacán tamales even though
that night he had to dine with Zumárraga's envoys, who would be coming late to the hospital to discuss the positions that the bishops of New Spain should take at Trent.

The situation was complicated: Charles V was in favor of including the dissident bishops of Germany and England in the sessions—the former because they were his subjects and the latter because Henry VIII was his great friend and he couldn't countenance not playing tennis with him again. In this regard, the presence of the novo-Hispanic bishops was essential, and especially that of Vasco de Quiroga: he had built a successful community on the very fringes of empire based on the ideas of a British humanist who also happened to be Henry VIII's laureled adviser. No one knew yet in New Spain that the English king had already ordered More's beheading and that this made Charles's position at Trent absolutely untenable: Rome now had the first martyr of what would soon be the Counter-Reformation, and it canonized him so fast that the novo-Hispanic bishops, like the Spaniards, never made it to Trent in the end.

But all this is what we know, we who live in a world in which past and present are simultaneous because history is written to make us believe that A leads to B and therefore progresses logically. A world without gods is a world in history, and in stories like this one: history and stories alike offer the consolation of order. Back then, the world—the world that Quiroga had invented—was a dizzying and directionless one, growing in the palm of one acknowledged God and other clandestine gods, all battling one another for the meaning of things; the basin of Lake Pátzcuaro was a drop of divine saliva in which, as in a dream, all mysteries were revealed.

He finished his last
tamal
and went to the door to watch the sun set behind the water and the hills. The children were on their way back from the lake; children who spoke a mix of Purépecha, Nahuatl, and Castilian; children of Quiroga whom Quiroga believed to be children of God. He thanked the ladies and went walking along the emerald bank of the hill, slapping the mosquitoes on his neck. At the end of the path, the wild light of the candles that Huanitzin required for his work swelled along the bottom of the barred door.

The bishop had no memory of a recent featherwork commission. Not one so big that it would require the artist to shut himself away for eleven days with all his apprentices. He clapped a few times to scatter the sheep that had already settled with their young on the path, and to let the featherworkers know that he was coming. He caught his breath, and knocked at the door. He cried: It's me, Don Diego; Tata Vasco. The featherworker opened the door to him with the dazed look and clenched jaw of those who aren't entirely with us; he had obviously been working without pause for eleven days as the ladies had claimed, sleeping as little as possible and scarcely eating. Can I come in, asked the bishop. Huanitzin—the creases under his eyes reddened—smiled with a pride that the priest always found a little frightening, as if a sudden awareness of his artist's mastery could abruptly turn into action and erase in a single sweep the passage from these lands of the Christian God, who might in the end not be needed after all. Come in, he said, blowing at his hair with a half smile; all the candles lighting the workshop flickered.

Inside, laid out on the table, blazed the most astonishingly
delicate and powerful group of luminescent pieces the bishop had seen in his life. What are they? he asked the Indian. The peasant for the pope. A peasant is a common campesino, said the bishop, a bit exasperated at being suddenly returned to the vulgarity of language and politics. The Indian shrugged: If you want we'll get him an Otomi, but I think this peasant is nicer.

The bishop came up and took one of the pieces in his hands. Careful, the glue isn't dry yet, said the Indian. Are they miters? Easter miters, explained the featherworker, for His Holidays to wear during Holy Week, a reminder that we are his warriors. Holiness, said the bishop, though his intention wasn't to correct the featherworker's Spanish, but to point out that if ever a human entity could be described with such an adjective, this was it. What a load we have to bear, Huanitzin, he said; you're the man of God. The mushrooms help, even if you don't like them; will you have some? There are a few left, I think. Are they
derrumbes
or
pajaritos
?
Derrumbes
and also
pajaritos
. A little handful of
pajaritos
, then, but that's all, I have a meeting soon.

They went out to watch the fading of the last light of day. They were silent until Quiroga noticed that the meadow had begun to breathe and the surface of the lake had become a window onto the world of the old gods. They were playing ball, indifferent to their extinction. Aren't the light-sheep mellifluous, Huanitzin said to the bishop, giving him a nudge to shake him from his stupor. The trees, my dear Don Diego, the trees; how lovely to see them grow fat with sap. Now you are truly ready to appreciate His Holidays' miters, said the Indian, seized with laughter.

GAME PLAYED WITH ROSES AS IF WITH BALLS
—Tsitsiqui apantzequa chanaqua

GAME PLAYED BY TOSSING TWO OR THREE BALLS UP IN THE AIR AND CATCHING THEM
—Tziman notero tanimu apantzen mayocxquareni

BALL GAME PLAYED WITH THE HANDS
—Apantzrqua chanaqua

BALL GAME PLAYED WITH THE KNEES
—Taranduqua hurincxtaqua

BALL GAME PLAYED WITH THE BUTTOCKS
—Taranduqua chanaqua

FRAY MATURINO GILBERTI
,
Art of the Language of Mechuacán
, 1558