Enter CORTÉS and ALVARADO.

CORTÉS
            Hail, friends, from the Atlantic potentate!
            [of ALVARADO] This wandering star is my bright satellite.

ATTENDANT
             He glitters like a flax-haired god of hell.

TEUHTLILLI    [aside]
             A god? Gaudy, perhaps.

ALVARADO                                  Hail, gentlemen.

TEUHTLILLI    [to Malinalli]
             How like a brilliant sun does he arise!
             Let’s drench them with these superfluities.

                          (Enter SANDOVAL, ESCUDERO, DÍAZ,
                          MARÍA DE ESTRADA, and GARRIDO.
             TEUHTLILLI produces the helmet, filled with gold dust.)

             Your helmet, with its brim-full quarry, sir.
             A drained mine’s monthly yield all ground to dust.
             What fortunes else, I furnish for your eyes.
                                                                              (The gifts are presented.)
CORTÉS
             See, Alvarado, how much more they give,
             When left to give it voluntarily?

TEUHTLILLI
             Will you now, otherworldly men, make march
             To where Motecuhzoma, in your name,
             Still keeps the throne warm for his ancestor?

MALINALLI
             They will enjoy the presence of the king,
             Wherever he might be, to lavish him
             And do all he might order us to do,
             For to this end, they’ve charted seven seas,
             And journeyed distant lands.

TEUHTLILLI                                          Then let them come.
             [Aside]  (Let’s see how far they’ll take their godly fraud.)
             Let us now pierce our tender tongues with thorns,
             For your divine desire, if gods you be,
             That you may taste our blood.

CORTÉS                                                    Certainly not!
             We’re no more gods than you are penitents.
             If this is all you have to offer, go.
             I’ll summon you at leisure, by and by.
                                                       (Exit Mexicans. The Spanish converse.)
SANDOVAL
             [indicating gifts] What do you make of these gratuities?

ALVARADO
             A gesture of submission.

CORTÉS                                            No, not so.
             It was to be a show of dominance:
             Great wealth in unmatched liberality,
             Which their profuse humility in giving
             Makes glorious. But they mistake their man,
             For I might mask this bounty as a meek,
             Submissive yielding, binding legally.
                                                       (Exit Cortés, Alvarado, and Sandoval.)

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
             But oh, to storm so rich a capital!

AGUILAR
             We’re far too insignificant a force.

GARRIDO
             I wish that we already lived with them.
                                                                 (Exit all but Escudero and Díaz.)

[May 1; In a Mexican-controlled territory on the Gulf Coast.]

                          Enter AGUILAR and MALINALLI.

AGUILAR             Blood.
MALINALLI         Sangre.
AGUILAR             Gold.
MALINALLI         Oro.
AGUILAR             War.
MALINALLI        Guerra.
AGUILAR            God.
MALINALLI        Dios. Yo soy Marina. Yo soy traducidora. Enough lessons, Aguilar!

AGUILAR
            Cortés insists you must perfect his tongue.
            I’ll have succeeded once I’m obsolete.

MALINALLI          
            Aguilar,
            Sometimes, I think of that Guerrero.

AGUILAR                                                                 Why?

MALINALLI
            He entered my world; now I enter his.
            At first, a forced exchange, but in the end,
            We both embrace our foster families,
            And shall go as enigmas to our graves.

AGUILAR
            Hush now, here comes that meddling Mexican.

                     (Enter TEUHTLILLI, with two attendants.)

MALINALLI
            Where do you come from?

TEUHTLILLI
                                                                 From where do I come?
            From Mexico.

MALINALLI                         You may, or you may not.
            Perhaps you tease. I know we all would like
            To claim that we’re from Mexico these days.

TEUHTLILLI
            I come to greet my sovereign, who is here.

MALINALLI [to Aguilar]
            He says he’s here to meet his sovereign lord.

AGUILAR
            You err, my dear. He must’ve said, “your lord.”

MALINALLI
            In fact, he claims his king is here with us.

AGUILAR
            Captain, come forth! Our emissary’s here.
            And, sir- I’d look as kingly as you can.

MOTECUHZOMA
            They say the first, inchoate age of man
            Met its demise by monsters from the earth,
            The second, brought extinct through violent winds, 
            The third by fire, the fourth by worldwide floods. 
            This fifth and final age, as we all know,
            By earthquakes’ rampant motion shall dissolve. 
            And yet, who could foresee this cataclysm
            Would find its epicenter in this room?
            For now my oscillation shakes the realm,
            My rattling teeth, my quivering, palsied hands, 
            The fearful quaking of my feeble knees,
            So agitates the contents of the earth
            To pitch its crust in spasms to a wrack,
            And crack the planetary fundament.
            Ach, what a bandied shuttlecock I’ve been!
            But from henceforth, by heaven’s crowded hall, 
            I’ll shake my feeble fears, or rattle all.                     *Exit.

MOTECUHZOMA
            I tried to bear up to necessity,
            To steel self-conquest through my fears, and thus, 
            In stoic resolution, greet my fate.
            But then this temperance, to the common eye, 
            Seemed but a fatalistic resignation,
            A shrug, a sigh that what shall be shall be,
            In abdication to a fancied doom.
            So then I heap my irons in the fire
            To undertake all means I can devise,
            And now that versatile defense is seen
            As paranoia, and hysteria,
            The fickle indecision of a fool,
            Who- like a pup between two bowls of food- 
            Would waver till the flyblown point grew stale. 
            And they are right, these forward serfs are right:
            I am a knock-knee, and a juggler!
            Who could foresee the vortex of my mind
            Should be the whirlpool that would drain the sea?

MOTECUHZOMA
            My lowly hoop of servile sycophants
            Arise to stands of judges, triple-tiered,
            Grave, gyral, escalating arbiters,
            Who shake their damnatory, hooded heads
            At me- Their blotch, their convict, and their prey, 
            Caught in their spotlight of interrogation,
            To twitch and quiver in disclosure’s sight.
            And now, what plan can salvage my appeal?

MOTECUHZOMA
            The locusts swarm in ever tighter arcs,
            And dizzy whisperings pollute the air.
            The time was, in my long-lost halcyon days,
            I hubbed the compass of this spiraled realm
            Like to the turbine of a tempest’s eye,
            The axis of a great panopticon,
            Whose every vassal gaze was trained on me,
            Arrested in a well-lit wheel of cribs.
            The glaring of my ever-watchful eye
            Flushed out all glint of scandal from my slaves.
            I was the copy-text to check their conduct,
            And all examples I would radiate
            Reflected warmly from each ardent face.
            But now this ring of watchers weighs on me.

MOTECUHZOMA
            It is their chief that most perplexes me.
            Send him my greeting, and convey to him
            The gifts I have equipped for your encounter:
            A turquoise serpent mask, a pearl-decked shield
            With feathered fringe as gossamer as foam,
            I’ll send the rain god’s legendary headdress
            Of quetzal feathers, green as sprouting grass,
            Fine, snail-shell collars, dainty golden bells,
            A saffron helmet chased with dazzling stars,
            Sandals obsidian-black- What riches more,
            I have not breath in this old chest to list.

TEUHTLILLI
            By your good will, I might unfold for him
            The vestments which are worn by several gods:
            Tezcatlipoca’s mirror, and Tlaloc’s jades,
            Huitzilopochtli’s gilded helm, and such.
            If he reach straight for the regalia
            Of Quetzalcoatl- Well, who need say more?

MOTECUHZOMA
            A thoughtful move. And, if not gods themselves,
            They yet may be our wandering ancestors.
            See if their speaker is the picture of
            A homeward-bound, long-absent patriarch.
            Especially take note if he admits,
            Or claims, he is your rightful king. What more?

TEUHTLILLI
            Should I purvey a spread of birds and game,
            And mark how fluently he dines or not?
            If he is from our far-flung lineage,
            He ought to be familiar with our fare.

MOTECUHZOMA
            Do so. But if, by chance, he shuns your board,
            And does not hanker for such bill of fare,
            But rumbles with a yen for human flesh,
            Why, then allow yourself to be consumed.
            I will ensure the welfare of your wife,
            And guide your children.

TEUHTLILLI                                 As you wish, my lord.           *Exit.