Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [83]
MONTEZUMA: You too speak as though reading from a book long written. For us, at that time, the only thing written was the book of our gods, the prophecies that could be read in a hundred ways. Everything had to be deciphered, the first thing we had to do with every new fact was to find a place for it in the order that upholds the world and outside of which there is nothing. Everything we did was a question waiting for an answer. And for every answer to have a further reliable confirmation I had to formulate my questions in two ways: one in one sense and the other in the opposite sense. I asked a question by making war and I asked a question by making peace. That's why I led the people in their resistance and at the same time stood beside Cortes as he cruelly subdued them. You say we didn't fight? Mexico City rebelled against the Spanish; rocks and arrows rained down from every roof. It was then my subjects stoned me to death, when Cortes sent me to appease them. Then the Spanish got reinforcements; the rebels were massacred; our peerless city was destroyed. The answer from that book I had been trying to decipher was: no. That is why you see my shadow creeping stooped about these ruins, as it has ever since that day.
MYSELF: But you were as alien to the Spanish as they were to you. You were the other, the incomprehensible, the unimaginable for them. The Spanish had to decipher you as much as you them.
MONTEZUMA: You appropriate things for yourselves; the order that upholds your world is one of appropriation; all you had to understand was that we had something which, as you saw it, was more worthy of appropriation than anything else, while for us it was just an attractive material for jewellery and ornaments: gold. Your eyes sought gold, gold, gold; your thoughts circled like vultures around that one object of desire. For us on the other hand the order behind the world consisted in giving. Giving so that the gods' gifts might go on being heaped upon us, so that the sun might go on rising every morning slaking its thirst on the blood that issues forth…
MYSELF: The blood, Montezuma! I was afraid of mentioning it, and now you bring it up yourself, the blood of human sacrifice…
MONTEZUMA: That again. That. And what about yourselves? Let's add it up, let's add up the victims of your civilization and ours…
MYSELF: No, no, Montezuma, that argument won't wash, you know I'm not here to justify Cortes and his men, you certainly won't catch me playing down the crimes that our civilization has committed and still commits, but now it's jour civilization we're talking about! Those young people lain on the altar, the stone knives dashing out the heart, the blood showering all around…
MONTEZUMA: And so? So what? Men of every time and clime toil to but one end: to keep the world together, to prevent it from falling apart. It's just the way they do it that differs. In our cities, all lakes and gardens, that sacrifice of blood was as necessary as turning the soil, as channelling the water of the rivers. In your cities, all wheels and cages, the sight of blood is terrifying, I know. But how many more lives are ground to pulp in your cogs!
MYSELF: Okay, every culture has to be understood from within, that much I've understood, Montezuma, the times of the Conquest that destroyed your temples and gardens are behind us now. I know that in many respects yours was a model culture, but by the same token I'd like you to admit its monstrous side: that prisoners of war had to meet that fate …
MONTEZUMA: Why would we have gone to war otherwise? Our wars were courteous and playful in comparison with yours, a game. But a game with a