"Tlaloc's hailstorms also destroy butterflies," I babbled on, "but never, I think, a single pestiferous housefly."

She said sharply, "Stop talking as if you were senile, or I were a child. I am the woman you tried to poison. Now I am here—"

To parry the expected next words, I would have said anything. What I said was, "I suppose I still do think of you as a child just turning woman... as I still think of my late daughter Nochipa...."

"But I am old enough to warrant killing," she said. "Lord Mixtli, if my power is such that you deem it dangerous, you might also consider its possible usefulness. Why try to end it, when you could turn it to your advantage?"

I blinked owlishly at her, but did not interrupt to ask what she meant; let her go on talking as long as she would.

She said, "You stand in the same relation to the Mexíca as I do to the white men. Not an officially recognized member of their councils, nevertheless a voice they hearken to and heed. We will never like each other, but we can help each other. You and I both know that things will never again be the same in The One World, but no one can say to whom the future belongs. If the people of these lands prevail, you can be my strong ally. If the white men prevail, I can be yours."

I said, with irony, and with a hiccup, "You suggest that we mutually agree to be traitors to the opposing sides we have separately chosen? Why do we not simply trade clothes and change sides?"

"Know this. I have only to call for my guards and you are a dead man. But you are not a nobody like Laurel. That would imperil the truce that both our masters have tried to preserve. Hernán might even feel obliged to hand me over for punishment, as Motecuzóma handed over Cuaupopoca. At the very least, I could lose some of the eminence I have already won. But if I do not have you eliminated, I must forever be on my guard against your next attempt on my life. That would be a distraction, an interference with my concentration on my own interests."

I laughed and said, almost in genuine admiration, "You have the cold blood of an iguana." That struck me as hilarious; I laughed so hard that I nearly rocked myself off my low chair.

She waited until I quieted, and then went on as if she had not been interrupted. "So let us make a secret pact between us. If not of alliance, at least of neutrality. And let us seal it in such a way that neither of us can ever break it."

"Seal it how, Malintzin? We have both proved ourselves treacherous and untrustworthy."

"We will go to bed together," she said, and that rocked me back so that I did slide off the chair. She waited for me to get up again, and when I remained sitting stupidly on the floor, she asked, "Are you intoxicated, Mixtzin?"

"I must be," I said. "I am hearing impossible things. I thought I heard you propose that we—"

"I did. That we lie together tonight. The white men are more jealous of their women than are the men even of our race. Hernán would slay you for having done it, and me for submitting to it. The four guards outside will always be available to testify—that I spent much time in here with you, in the dark, and that I left your house smiling, not outraged and weeping. Is it not beautifully simple? And unbreakably binding? Neither of us can ever again dare to harm or offend the other, lest that one speak the word which will doom us both."

At risk of angering her and untimely letting her get away, I said, "At fifty and four years old, I am not sexually senile, but I no longer lunge at just any female who offers herself. I have not become incapable, only more selective." I meant to speak with lofty dignity, but the fact that I hiccuped frequently between the words, and spoke them from a sitting position on the floor, somewhat diminished the effect. "As you have remarked, we do not even like each other. You could have used stronger words. Repugnance would better describe our feeling toward each other."

She said, "I would not wish our feelings otherwise. I propose only an act of convenience. As for your discriminating sensibilities, it is nearly dark in here. You can make of me any woman you desire."

Must I do this, I asked myself fuzzily, to keep her here and away from the plaza? Aloud, I protested, "I am more than old enough to be your father."

"Pretend you are, then," she said indifferently, "if incest is to your taste." Then she giggled. "For all I know, you really might be my father. And I, I can pretend anything."

"Then you shall," I said. "We will both pretend that our illicit coupling did take place, though it does not. We will pass the time simply conversing, and the guards can testify that we were together for a time sufficiently compromising. Would you like a drink of octli?"

I reeled away to the kitchen and, after breaking several things in the dark there, came reeling back with another cup. As I poured for her, Malintzin mused, "I remember... you said your daughter and I had the same birth-name and year. We were the same age." I took another long drink of my octli. She sipped at hers, and tilted her head inquisitively to one side. "You and that daughter, did you ever play—games—together?"

"Yes," I said thickly. "But not what I think you are thinking."

"I was thinking nothing," she said, all innocence. "We are conversing, as you suggested. What games did you play?"

"There was one we called the Volcano Hiccuping—I mean the Volcano Erupting."

"I do not know that game."

"It was only a silly thing. We invented it ourselves. I would lie down on the floor. Like this." I did not exactly lie down; I fell supine with a crash. "And bend my knees, you see, to make the volcano peaks Nochipa would perch up there."

"Like this?" she said, doing it. She was small and light of weight, and in the dark room she could have been anybody.

"Yes," I said. "Then I would wiggle my knees—the volcano waking, you see—and then I would bounce her—"

She gave a little squeak of surprise, and slid down to thump against my belly. Her skirt rucked up as she did so, and when I reached to steady her, I discovered that she wore nothing under the skirt.

She said softly, "And that was when the volcano erupted?"

I had been long without a woman, and it was good to have one again, and my drunkenness did not affect my capability. I surged so powerfully, so often, that I think some of my wits spilled with my omícetl. The first time, I could have sworn that I actually felt the vibration and heard the rumble of a volcano erupting. If she did too, she said nothing. But after the second time, she gasped, "It is different—almost enjoyable. You are so clean—and smell so nice." And after the third time, when she had her breath again, she said, "If you do not—tell anyone your age—no one would guess it." At last, we both lay exhausted, panting, entwined, and I only slowly became aware that the room had lightened. I felt a sort of shock, a sort of disbelief, to recognize the face beside mine as the face of Malintzin. The sustained activity of copulation had been more than pleasurable, but I seemed to have emerged from it in a state of distraction, or perhaps even derangement. I wondered: what am I doing with her? This is the woman I have detested so vehemently for so long that I am now guilty of having murdered an innocent stranger....

But whatever other thoughts and emotions rushed upon me in that moment of coming to awareness and at least partial sobriety, simple curiosity was the most immediate. I could not account for the lightening of the room; surely we had not been at it all night. I turned my head toward the light's source and, even without my crystal, I could see that Béu stood in the room's doorway, holding a lighted lamp. I had no idea how long she might have been watching. She swayed as she stood there, and not angrily but sadly she said: