12.06.08

Malinche & Another Story

Posted in Life Betwixt Book Covers at 10:08 pm by Miracle ♪♫

“The mouth, as feminine principle, as empty space, as cavity, was the best place for words to be engendered. And the tongue, as masculine principle, sharp, pointed, phallic, was the one to introduce the created word, that universe of information, into other minds in order to be fertilized.
But what would fertilize it? That was the great unknown.”
Malinche, Laura Esquivel

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Due to my being unwell for several days already, I am prescribed tsunamic amounts of fluids and “light-reading or none at all”.

The larger font size and apparent plot convinced me this was easy to read, and the thought that I needed some South American zest made me settle for Malinche. It was indeed an easy read and honestly quite inferior to Like Water for Chocolate. The seemingly rushed accounts did not appeal to me so much, although I have speculations that this might have been intended so that the narrative would resemble the recapitulation of epics in Mayan codices. On the other hand, it still turned out to be an interesting and unique tale. Scrutinizing beyond the historical affair of the controversial Malinalli and the conquistador Hernán Cortés, the lurking religious arguments make this story provoking, but the best thing about it is the abounding evidence of the author’s songlike language. Malinche teems with melodious passages and I am still excitedly awaiting my copy of Laura Esquivel’s The Law of Love.

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What piqued my interest were the words that Malinalli’s grandmother imparted to her. They reminded me of my own Lola (Mama’s mom who also happened to be Papa’s grade school literature teacher), who during our childhood entertained us with Greek mythology and other unconventional bedtime stories instead of the typical fairy tales. These story sessions dissolved as the grandchildren grew up and Mama’s siblings moved to different cities along with our cousins. We may have already forgotten details of mythologies, but until today, one story perseveres being told over and over everytime the family reunites during Christmas season. It is especially the favourite of our grandparents’ princesses (Arabela, Arantza, Kristine, and I). The Dalman girls are special – at least that is what we’d like to believe – since Mama has three siblings and they have only one daughter each out of their wealth of “thorns”. But that’s not why we fancy ourselves as princesses. Our fantasies involve the story of a real Subano princess and a wanderer from Borneo; our ancestors from several generations back.

Princess Daulanay was a beautiful and treasured daughter of a Subanen chief. The chief was overly protective that he sentenced Daulanay to a tower where ordinary men could not lay eyes on her. A fugitive seeking sanctuary in Mindanao after being involved in a coup d’état in Borneo heard of Princess Daulanay and was much intrigued. The daring man was determined to see the princess and schemed his way up to the tower where they both fell in love. A romanticized version of the story claims that the man had magic powers thus creating pyro-feats to divert the princess’ guards, but magic or no magic, the rest is history… and I’m sure I’ll hear about it again a few weeks from now. =)

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