by Max Besora
“Ye art lucky we were hunting in the area,” said Martulina, tanned and muscular from her new jungle lifestyle. “Otherwise, ye’d bee hamburger.”
“Thanks,” said Orpí, as he untied himself and hugged his friend. “Now we musteth convince these flesh-eaters to unite with New Catalonia.”
Orpí assured the Caribes that they wouldn’t impose any more numbers on them and they could live just as they had been on their lands. The only condition was that they had to stop eating people:
“And, on my worde, there art more ethically nutritional things to eat,” our hero explained, “like, for example, panbolibo.”
“Pan-boli-bo,” repeated the local chief.
“Exactley, bread with a splash of oil,” elucidated Orpí. “Or otherwise, ‘eat grass’ as the Black Virgin spake us.”
“Aya-huasca,” said the Caribe leader, as he ran to find some vines, chopped them up, and boiled them into an almost solid liquid—a liquor so strong it could walk—and offered it to our hero.
“When in Rome …” said Orpí, drinking that grass down and, after vomiting a little and less than two minutes later, it seemed to him that his mind was separating from his body and he felt himself endowed with magical powers to speak with animals and plants, and to turn himself into a jaguar or a coconut palm if he so desired. Then his body lifted off the ground and, floating, floating, passed over the forest’s canopy and shot up into the heavens, while the earthly atmosphere throbbed with life beneath him and, after two voyages around the sun like an Icarus, he returned, flying over the tops of the nearest trees and landing once more inside his earthly body.
“Lookie lookie! Now I understandeth why the Virgin of Montserrat wished for me to eat grass,” said our hero, when he regained consciousness.
And that was how Orpí made friends with the Caribes and since then there were no more problems of violence in the recently inaugurated New Catalonia.
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128. i.e. just okay
129. i.e. warlock, in his language
130. Native American anthropophagy is a recurring theme in colonial literature, constructing a type of representation of the indigenous population, a topos that Columbus himself, among others, contributed to perpetuating in his 1503 letter from Jamaica, despite the fact that various modern researchers believe there is no conclusive proof of this cannibalism. On the other hand, there is reliable evidence of Columbus’s exploitation of the Indians through forced labor.
Chapter XII
In which Orpí does the general accounting for New Catalonia and discovers a spy
Once the region was pacified, Orpí and his officers changed their army jackets for linen suits, much better suited to the scorching sun. They let their beards grow out and spent long days laboring in the new lands: they chopped down trees, prepared the firewood, gathered potable water, sowed the fields, and, with the help of hunting and fishing, waited for the first harvest. In short: they subjugated nature. And, with the fiercely rebellious American landscape under control, the newcomers felt sure they could make that region a more hospitable place, and more similar to the homeland they had left behind on the other side of the Atlantic. In the months that followed, soldiers and Indians felled the trees that bordered the small region like a firewall, and laid down dirt paths that interconnected and headed in every direction. That bit of land, located between the Unare and Neverí Rivers, was chockfull of God-given riches: a thousand different fruit species, easily domesticated livestock, fresh, clean water, everything. Furthermore, since there is no spring, autumn, or winter in the Amazon forest, soon the crops—maize, yucca, auyamá, sweet potatoes, and yams—began to sprout. They planted fruit trees, sugar cane, cotton, and smoking tobacco (which they would register under the brand Almogàvers Tobacco™) and they raised the first few wooden homes. The construction work was carried out by carpenters, painters, men of hammer and saw, and artillerymen who transported old cannons for the city’s defense. The first homes in New Barcelona were made of wood and cane, and our hero built a small rancho he named House Orpí, like the one back home in Piera. Soon they built a capitol building in the city and a small church in which Orpí hung up the engraving of the Black Virgin (since he had no larger effigy), and prayed a very intimate, heartfelt Our Father.
One day, as our hero was checking to make sure no one was loafing, he found Araypuro with his pants down and his hands beneath the petticoats of a criolla girl. Angry, our hero approached him and dealt him a slap.
“Whatever art thou doing, giant swine?” he said, grabbing the Indian by the ears, leading him to a desk, and sitting him down in front of a large pile of papers.
“Aaayyy, don’t abuson me, master! I was all cozy with that lovely lady, reciting from The Dialogues of Love by León Hebreo: ‘The penis be analogous to the tongue in position, shape, and power of extension and retraction; both art centrally placed, and the tongue works in much the same way as the penis, whose movement generates physical progeny; the tongue is spiritually generative of specific speech, and gives birth to spiritual offspring just as the penis does physical. The kiss is common to both, one often provoking the other.’”
“Sssh! Silence, how ungodly! And thou art drunke! Abandon the spirits and listen to me: since thou hast study’d as a scribe with the monks, pick up the quill, moisten it—the quill, minde you!—and write out all these inventories that are bedeviling me, before one of those greenly envious governors comes to hook his clawes into what ritefully belongs to New Catalonia,” our hero ordered, accountably. “Come on over and don’t look at me like that. Thou shallt be in charge of the accounting for New Catalonia, in the following manner:
First Column: gross national product.
Second Column: transnational sales produkt (when there be surplus).
Third Column: 5% of proffits for the church, the crippled, and the olde.
Fourth Column: legall costs for shipping of goods to the Peninsula.
Fifth Column: preemptry rights to all future leaseholders in these lands.
Sixth Column: the approv’d percentage to be used to pay the anata131 to the Crown of Castile.
Seventh Column: restitution of private assets, including honours, dignities, etc, etc.
“Is that clear, injun? Continue on, now that thou knowst how it’s done.”
“Come on, bro,” complained Araypuro. “That shit is super boring. I’d much prefer to assist Father Claver. That poor priest lit’rally gets more laughs than converts with his terrible prununciation of the native tongues. His improperlee used verbs & nowns, undetter’d by much saintly intent, rather than saving souls for the Christian cause, mere maketh the lokals burst into houls of laffter.”
Indeed, Father Claver, by then known as The Saint because he always begged for victuals that he carried around to give away to the poor, was performing baptisms and giving catechism to hundreds of Indian neophytes from all over to convert them to the Catholic faith; however instead of these being ceremonies worthy of the divine design, most of the Indians were rolling on the floor, laughing like lunatics and pointing at the poor priest with one hand while clutching their bellies with the other.
“Very well,” said Orpí. “Once agayn, much as I hate to, I musteth agree with thee, injun. Go and help him translate his sainted words. And, while thou be at it, teach some basick Catalan with these old codices. Tally ho!”
While Araypuro went to help Father Claver, a scribe sent as a mole by Domingo Vázquez de Soja approached our hero.
“Good afternoon, milord,” said the scribe, a deformed man with a serpent gaze. “I see that thou dost not comply with the ordinances—”
“With whom do I have the honor of speaking?”
“Don Calixto Conejo, scribe of the Court,” informed the scribe. “And I must informe thee, by royal decree, that each conquistador with exploratory license must order the Requerimiento be appositely read to all, inclusive of women and children. And thou hast failed to do so. Proceeding plus ultra be not lega
l without fulfilment of the decrees of the Holy See & our belov’d King. Anon I must inform on such conduct to our Majesty!”
“Do what thou will, maistre. Howsoever I shall do no suche thing, since the Requerimiento bringeth me only bad memories and I refuse to force anyone ynto submission, all whosoever come here do so at their owne behest!”
“That is verily contempt of the Crown,” pointed out the scribe.
“I didst not hire you for my expedition and was tolde of no scribe,” said Orpí, drawing his sword. “Therefor I have reach’d the conclusion that thou beest none other than a spy! Am I mistaken? Speak, Conejo!”
All the scribe said in response was a hasty “c’ya!” as he fled down the street. No one ever saw him again, nor did anyone miss him. But the news of Orpí’s successful conquest and his humanistic skills spread like wildfire through the regions, contributing to the aggrandizement of this story, in such a way and to such an extent as will be revealed in the Chapter that follows.
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131. i.e. A fixed amount paid to the King.
Chapter XII
Joan Orpí and Father Claver draft the constitution of New Catalonia and are interrupted with bad tidings
Matters were going along increasingly swimmingly in the burgeoning New Catalonia, since our hero had managed to achieve peace between the various tribes in his territory and some of them had come to live in New Barcelona following the rainy season because the rivers had overflowed their banks and carried off whole villages.
After mass at his brand-spanking-new church, bells still ringing, Joan Orpí paid a visit to Father Claver, whom he’d named provisional superior religious commissioner since there was no bishop, and who was working on an Arte132 of the regional indigenous languages at his desk made of palm wood.
“Goode day, Father.”
The Jesuit looked up from his desk with inquisitively furrowed brows, searching for the party guilty of that intellectual distraction, while Araypuro, who lay in a hammock beside him, lazed contentedly.
“Ah … good daye to thee, Don Orpí,” said Claver, placing his quill in the inkwell. “Pray tell …”
“Father, I wish for us to draft an official constitution for Newe Catalonia, cojoinedly,” explained Orpí, placing a page filled with inked characters on the priest’s desk.
“Very well,” said the Jesuit, willingly. “I do expecte the first item shall be that New Catalonia must become a munificence of Christian love, ethics, and universall human morality.”
“Well, furst of all we shall invoke Lady Justice.”
“Bizarre faith, yours,” said Father Claver, dipping the quill and starting to write. “And how wouldst thou desire to baptise the flocke? As the Dominicans, like Bartolomé de Las Cases, do, with complete indoctrination beforehand, or as the Franciscans like Motolínia, who preferr mass baptisms, without any pryor catechisation?”
“The only sacred baptism be that of educating just people,” clarified our hero. “The vulgar preceedeth the divine, Father; first we must thinke of their material needs.”
“Thine hintentions art clean, fresh, and honorable, but I know not this baptism of which thou speak, Milord Orpí,” said the Jesuit, reluctantly taking dictation. “We must resuscitate nascent Christianity, live a true theocracy as in Plato’s Republic and Campanella’s City of the Sun, and as prescribed by the Jesuit José de Acosta in De procuranda Indorum salute (1588), viewing colonisation as a (re)invention of Christ in the New Worlde, a repetition of history in the guise of an hevangelisation very akin to Christianity’s initial expansion led by Sainted Paul.”
“Don’t get ahead of theeself, Father. We’ll have none of that Platonic collectivism or theocratick despotism,” said Orpí. “No shared goods, like in Augustine’s City of God. This be no Xanadu, but rather a business of progress and objective reason.”
“Avarice is pecatus … !” complained Father Claver, now copying so rapidly that a thin line of smoke emerged from the page. “We must fairly distribute goods, as in Christian monasteries!”
“And share all the tidas133, like in Campanella’s Politics?” asked Araypuro, who had been smoking calmly in his hammock up until then.
“Never!” said the Jesuit, smacking him on the behind with a macana.134
“Mmmm, these chubby little light-skinned tidas, so chévere-chévere with their luscious booties … make me so horny! Spicy like sofrito …” continued Araypuro.
“We shall abide no barraganeria!”135 bellowed the Jesuit. “Intermingling religion and eroticism leeds to the unification of opposites and the wastering of time … Lucifer!”
“We shall promote usury (in other wurds, interest on loans),” continued Orpí, ignoring them both. “As well as the building of homes by the local inhabitants dependent on our interest-yielding loans. Write, Father … write!”
“Be heedful we aren’t undone by thine vision of progress!” the Jesuit, who was having trouble keeping up, pointed out. “I am of the view that we should promote a subsistence economy. Abolish money in favor of a barter system, in which the wealthee art obliged by law to give to the poor.136 Slavery of both indigenous peoples and blackes must also be prohibit’d. New Catalonia shall be a true Eden, an Arcadia, a Garden of the Hesperides! We shall learn from antiquity and progress!” philosophized Father Claver with encyclopedic frenzy, dipping the quill in the inkwell and staining his habit. “Where no man is above another, like in Lucian’s Saturnalia, where masters and serfs art one and the same! Pray let us abolish the exploytation of the workers! Let us create a commonwealth in whych equality reigns! Fame, honours, titles, be they by law or social condition, allways create distinctions!”
“Very well, Father. But forgetth not that equality entails epicurian and pagan bliss and we’re here to make coin, not pies in the sky,” declared Orpí. “I’m the one in charge here, but I shall be impartial and in keeping withe God. This is no In terram utopicam, no Golden Age, no El Dorado. Many are those who hath told us about the New World: Aristotle, Averroes, Strabo, Pliny, Solinus, Marco Polo, Mandeville, Pierre d’Ailly, and obviously, Columbus himself in his Book of Prophecies, but, as thou hath surely noticed, this be a far crye from paradise, what this be now is a business adriven by a mightily strong kapitalist ideology.”
“Yes, clearly, but the purpose of life in community is to shed vices and increase virtues …” said the Jesuit, his nerves making him wrinkle the pages in front of him.
“Mayhaps, Father. Notwithstanding, I came here to conquer in name of the Crown of Castile!”
And having said that, Orpí signed the constitution that had been drafted, while Father Claver and Araypuro discussed the whole affair, drawing severe philosophical conclusions on the inequality of the races and the greed for power.
“One moment, keepe calm, milord Orpí,” said the Jesuit. “Let us be realistic, rather than mystic. Let us think logically, not pieskyly.”
“Whatsoever dost thou mean, Father Claver? Don’t beat about the bushel.”
“Well, just that when the Castilians find out that thou hast sacked a royal scribe thusly, beleefee me, the Crown will soon retaliate.”
Just as the Jesuit said that, two men on horseback arrived from Santo Domingo. One was Alonso de Amadís, and the other Álvaro Narváez, both tax functionaries for His Majesty who had come to make an inspection for the Royal Chamber of Castile and demand the tribute due to the Castilian Crown. After our hero hastily forked over the royal fifth to them, one said, “And that’s not all. We come bearing two pedimentos137 for thee, Doctor.”
Orpí opened the first letter, which was from his old enemy, Captain Vázquez de Soja, and said things like “thou hath recruit’d outlanders & vagabonds … (and that) thou hath neither the knowledge nor the provisions to populate said lands … (and that) thou hath dismissed improperly a Court scribe and that is a crime … (and also that) thou art not only a furr’ner but also reside here without permission of His Majesty.” In short, Captain De Soja had managed to get the C
ouncil of the Indies and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo to revoke his title of conquistador, fairly won by our hero a year earlier in the grant. Vázquez de Soja and other likeminded noblemen had managed to take from our hero everything he had achieved. And what’s more, said the letter, everything he owned now belonged to Vázquez de Soja himself! The second letter left him even more nonplussed, as it was from none other than King Philip IV. Among other things, it said:
… I hath been informed that ye haveth bestowed uponst Doctor Juan Orpín, a man without fortune, experience, and without titles, powers, nor faculties to enter in that land of Indians as a conquistador, causing much harm, and as such I order ye, as soon as this letter be received, to revoke and nullify the commission endowed uponst Doctor Juan Orpín.
Signed: Philippus IIII
“Blast! Thou shouldst spake sooner, Father,” our hero lamented, as the royal functionaries rode off. “I canst rid meself of those criollo noblemen and their trickery. The only recourse to ensure mine undertaking is to speak personally with the King. I shall leave today on the first boat bound for the Peninsula. This vile affair shall not go unpunished!”
“And whom shall be left in charge?” asked the Jesuit.
“Piece of cake: I name thee First Lieutenant General of New Catalonia in my absence, if thou donst mind. And, well, even if thou dost. And I shall leave my loyal horse Acephalus in thine charge, to care for as a distinguished personage, since when we say that all human beings, independent of sex, race, or creed, are equal, without hierarchies, the same goest for animals.”
“Very welle. May God be with thee,” said Father Claver in farewell, returning to his Arte.
Receiving the King’s letter and setting off for Spain were two sides of the same coin for our hero who, accompanied by Araypuro, set off on a merchant ship that very morning to Cumanagoto, where they embarked on a nave de aviso138 headed for the Iberian Peninsula.