The Light of Machu Picchu

by [Incas 03] The Light of Machu Picchu (retail) (epub)

  They came to a halt in front of a cancha guarded by two orejones, as the Spaniards had taken to calling those Inca noblemen whose ears were distended by disks that, before the conquest, had been made of gold, but that since that time were more often made of wood.

  Gabriel was shoved into the building with little ceremony. He was familiar with its layout. The courtyard was full of soldiers. Behind them were the women, some busy preparing a meal, others gathered timidly together in little groups at the back of the courtyard just in front of the staircase leading up to the first floor shared with the neighboring cancha. Gabriel immediately recognized Manco sitting on his royal tiana in the center. He also recognized the emaciated and thin-lipped Villa Oma sitting on a bench, only slightly lower than the Emperor’s, to Manco’s side. Although his circumstances were greatly reduced, Gabriel felt that the young sovereign nevertheless exuded a far greater majesty and dignity than he had at the grand affair of his coronation on the Aucaypata in Cuzco. Gabriel couldn’t help but be struck by the dark but inflexible will that Manco seemed to embody. The puppet king installed on the throne by Don Francisco had died. In his place had been born a warrior who had almost defeated the Spaniards at Sacsayhuaman, and whose troops were still laying siege to Cuzco. But the one person Gabriel couldn’t see was Anamaya.

  A heavy silence filled the room.

  Gabriel looked from the Sage to the Inca and from the Inca to the Sage. Gabriel had learned from the Incas not to speak too soon, and to read the expression of his interlocutors’ faces before opening his mouth. Villa Oma broke the silence first.

  ‘The Stranger must die,’ he spat, rising slowly from his tiana. There was fury in his calm. All those present were frozen in their places.

  ‘He assaulted the tower at Sacsayhuaman. Many of our warriors died because of him. It is also because of him that the noble Cusi Huallpa sacrificed himself. The Strangers pretend that he has magic powers greater than those of any of our soothsayers, and that he is protected by their gods. These are ridiculous lies! Let us cut him into pieces and send them his skull; let us flay off his skin and make a drum with it and send them that too! That will show them that our warriors are far more powerful than their so-called gods! We should have killed him a long time ago. Only our weakness prevented us from doing so…’

  Villa Oma turned towards Manco and, with an exasperation clearly too long suppressed, continued:

  ‘…And it was to that same weakness that we relinquished complete victory over the mongrel Strangers!’

  No one had ever dared attack Manco so directly and unambiguously in public. Gabriel was aware of the insult and, oddly, since it was his own life that was the subject of the argument, he felt a calm sense of detachment, as though he were an onlooker, albeit one watching others decide his fate. He looked directly at Manco, ignoring the Sage, and said in a calm voice:

  ‘I am more indifferent to my own life than you are. My own people tried to take it from me, but God – or luck – let me keep it. You would take it for doing what soldiers do? Then kill me. It’s not my place to say whether that is justice or merely a pointless cruelty that would offend your gods as well as the one that my own people worship.’

  Manco still hadn’t said a word. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, almost completely inert. Villa Oma grew exasperated:

  ‘Let us do away with him, brother Manco! It will be the sign that the people and the gods are waiting for to give us a brilliant victory.’

  ‘This man will not die.’

  Manco had spoken without looking at anyone in particular. Villa Oma froze in his fury. He raised his arm, pointing at Manco. But before he had a chance to affront the Inca, he was interrupted by a commotion at the cancha’s entrance. Two chaskis, streaming sweat, entered the courtyard and prostrated themselves in front of Manco.

  ‘Speak,’ ordered the Inca.

  Without raising his head, the older of the two began:

  ‘Emperor, we bring you news of a brilliant victory. Our troops have destroyed an army of Strangers sent by their kapitu to reinforce those we have surrounded in Cuzco. We killed many of their men, and took many of their weapons and horses. These are being brought here, my Lord, as an offering to your glory.’

  Manco remained as impassive as he had been when Gabriel had been led into the cancha.

  ‘Sage Villa Oma,’ he eventually said in a slow, measured voice, ‘must realize now that it isn’t necessary to carry out injustices to ensure great victories.’

  Villa Oma’s face was as green as the coca juice dribbling from his lips. But he said nothing. Without formally taking his leave, he cut through the crowd of astonished soldiers, shoved his way through the women, and swept up the stairs. When he reached the landing and was about to disappear onto the floor leading to the neighboring building, he wrapped his manta about himself, spun around on his heels, and said:

  ‘Manco, I have not forgotten that we are both sons of one father, the great Huayna Capac. Nor have I forgotten that you are the Son of the Sun. But Inti does what must be done to shine every day. Do you wish to bring eternal night upon us?’

  The Emperor’s soldiers moved towards the Sage after he had delivered this insult. But Manco stopped them with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Let him be,’ he said. ‘The Sage is no longer the Sage. Anger and hatred have overcome him, and his words are meaningless now – mere noises that he makes when he moves his lips.’ Looking at Gabriel, he continued, ‘I too suffered humiliations at the hands of the Strangers. They wanted to take my wife from me – they treated me worse than a slave, worse even than a dog. But I kept silent, and in the secret places of our mountains, and with the help of our gods, I prepared for this war that we are going to win…’

  Manco’s voice rose in volume as he spoke, and the murmur of approbation from his audience rose into a corresponding clamor, until the entire cancha echoed with their cries.

  ‘And now,’ said Manco, once the clamor had died down, ‘I wish to be left alone with the Stranger.’

  He stood up suddenly, waving away the women who rushed forward to sweep the ground in front of him. He approached Gabriel and took him by the arm. The audience couldn’t help but cry out in surprise, but the Inca himself remained indifferent. He led Gabriel into another room, the largest and most richly decorated in the cancha.

  Apart from that which passed through the door, the room was devoid of daylight. Gold and silver vases and animal statuettes sat in niches carved into the walls.

  ‘You know, of course, the reason for my clemency?’ said Manco dryly.

  Gabriel couldn’t hide his surprise.

  ‘No, Lord Manco.’

  ‘No? And yet my reason is called by a name dear to your heart.’

  Through the shadows, Gabriel saw the light in Manco’s eyes flare up. Only a moment before, the Inca had seemed as serene as the thoughtful sage that Villa Oma had once been. Now, the Emperor seemed to share Villa Oma’s present anger, and his eyes glowed with wrath.

  ‘Anamaya is the reason you still live,’ said Manco. ‘If it was not for what I know you mean to her, you would have been killed on the day of your capture, and the dust of your body would now be fertilizing our fields…’

  ‘I know it, noble Manco. But I also know that you meant what you said to Villa Oma! You may hate me, but you cannot prevent me from admiring you.’

  ‘I am the Inca, Stranger! Remember that you look upon me now only because I wish it. Even your feelings are not your own!’

  Gabriel did his best to keep control of himself. He said:

  ‘In that case, you will allow me to keep the one thing that you cannot take from me: silence.’

  Manco stared at him, saying nothing. Then he turned on his heels to leave the room. As he was about to pass through the door hanging, he turned, looked at Gabriel one last time, and spat spitefully:

  ‘The Puma! The mighty Puma has come!’

  CHAPTER 9

  Ollantaytambo, evening of 18 June 1536

&
nbsp; Gabriel sank into the cold night.

  He was dozing on his hard mat, listening to the constant sound of water running through the town, when the Indian slipped into the room that Manco had given him. No one had told Gabriel whether he was free or still a prisoner. His wrists had been untied and his ankles unshackled. He had been given two women to serve him and two Indian attendants, taciturn Kollas, to protect him or perhaps guard him – he wasn’t sure which. So when Katari slipped into his room, his heart leaped with joy: Katari was Bartholomew’s friend, and above all it was Katari who had saved him on the shore of Lake Titicaca.

  ‘Welcome, Master of the Stone! Are you here to bring me back to the world once again?’

  To his great surprise, Katari said nothing, not even smiling at his joke or making some gesture of friendship. His face, with its prominent cheekbones, remained completely impassive beneath his long hair.

  ‘Follow me,’ was all he said.

  Gabriel had had a chance to wash and to throw away the filthy clothes that he had been wearing since the attack on the tower. He was now wearing an ample Indian tunic made of alpaca wool. But his muscles still ached, and his body was stiff, as though he had just been in battle. He didn’t question Katari, but simply rose and followed him through the heavy wool door hanging.

  Katari spoke quietly with the two attendants there, and they stepped aside. Out in the street, Gabriel followed him past the silent canchas. Their sandaled feet moved silently over the flagstones. Katari crossed the great square without slowing and without saying a word, and soon they passed through a monumental gate. Gabriel followed behind as they climbed up six platforms linked by flights of steps. Then, despite the feeble light of the waning moon, Gabriel made out the base of a stairway before them, one that rose vertiginously in a straight line up the side of a hill. It was the hill on which he had seen the stepped terraces and massive structure when he had arrived earlier that afternoon.

  With each step he climbed, Gabriel shed the weight of both his exhaustion and his concern at Katari’s odd attitude. He saw in the shadows, beyond the terraces shored up with stones, a building with many niches, which he took to be a temple because of the quality of its walls. But his increasing shortness of breath, together with Katari’s persistent silence, prevented him from asking the young man about it. Even when they reached the base of the massive walls enclosing the great temple that he had seen from the valley, Katari didn’t stop or even slow down. The slope here, however, was a little less steep, affording Gabriel some small relief. Only when they reached a massive wall blocking the way further up the hill did Katari stop.

  Gabriel bent forward, bracing his hands against his thighs, and inhaled deeply. When he had recovered his breath, he looked up at the Master of the Stone and asked:

  ‘Now will you talk to me?’

  Katari said nothing, but at least his face had lost that neutral expression which Gabriel had mistaken for hostility.

  ‘She is the one who will talk to you.’

  Gabriel felt the breath go out of him once again, but this time not from exertion. Anamaya! Ever since he had first seen Ollantaytambo, he had banished to a corner of his mind the thought that had jolted his heart like a bolt of lightning: seeing her, holding her… it was both so wonderful and so painful that he lowered his head and held it in his hands.

  Katari pointed beyond the wall at the gentle winding path leading to the top of the hill.

  ‘Go,’ was all he said.

  He turned and disappeared without further explanation or even a goodbye. Gabriel looked at the path, then set off. Each step he took felt as though his feet weighed a ton each. And he was trembling more than he ever had in battle.

  * * *

  Anamaya had been waiting alone in the little temple at the top of the hill since sundown. The small structure wasn’t visible from the valley, which was why she and Katari had chosen it. When they had told Manco of their idea, the Inca had listened without giving anything away before agreeing and sighing: ‘You know things that I don’t.’

  So Katari had overseen the construction of the building, carried out by a small number of his Kolla brothers, so that the secret would be kept. It had been built in only one day: a simple supporting wall and a small edifice with four niches, each one big enough to hold a man. Three nights previously, they had taken the Sacred Double there. They had wrapped it in mantas so that no soldier or priest or anyone else other than Manco would know about it. The Sacred Double was now installed in the first niche, facing south.

  Anamaya hadn’t looked at the Sacred Double in the same way ever since her Great Voyage. It was as though the knowledge that she had gained had quenched her thirst and done away with her anxiety. It was no longer he who held what she needed, but rather she who had to guard and protect him through the war.

  And yet, when the last rays of the sun had disappeared beyond the mountains behind her, when she found herself in the company of only the night’s cold and wind, she couldn’t help but be overcome by the anxiety of waiting. Seeing Gabriel again, seeing him at last: she rose, stared out into the darkness, and listened carefully for his step. She remembered how she had glanced at Katari when the chaski had brought the news that the prisoner was on his way. She stopped her imagination from picturing herself running into his arms and holding him, or from imagining herself telling him all the things that she had kept to herself for so many moons. A jumble of Quechua and Spanish rested in her throat, and she felt the urge to both laugh and cry.

  Anamaya looked at the immobile, eternal Sacred Double, and some semblance of calm returned to her.

  She took a short stroll outside the building. The breeze’s murmur had grown as distant as those of the two rivers. ‘He will only come to you when he leaves you. Although separated, you will be united as one.’ Those were the words of the great Huayna Capac. Did they refer to what had been or to what was to be? Anamaya’s blood raged as she asked herself more questions than the prophecy had given her answers. There was another door on the other side of the door of knowledge, and then yet another, and so it continued until the end of life in this world, until one reached the steps leading to the Under World.

  A cloud hid the moon: the night turned pitch black. As the wind picked up again, Anamaya at last heard Gabriel’s step. Then she saw his silhouette. She ran, not towards him but into the temple. He found her inside on the ground, her arms around the Sacred Double.

  He slid down next to her.

  They couldn’t say a word or make a gesture.

  They couldn’t even look at one another.

  The breeze picked up Gabriel’s long blond locks and tangled them with Anamaya’s black hair. They sat beside each other, only their shoulders touching. In their emotional turmoil, they couldn’t tell their own trembling from the other’s.

  Anamaya pulled herself together first.

  Slowly, she slid her honey-skinned hand onto Gabriel’s shoulder, then let it slide between his unku and his skin. Slowly, she ran her hand over his chest, and Gabriel’s entire body shuddered at her touch. She traced the mark of the puma, knowing from memory exactly where it was, and scratched him lightly. He moaned.

  Then she held her body against his back in a grip of passionate intensity and fervently pressed her lips to the mark that foretold his destiny.

  * * *

  They rediscovered one another in the night.

  Uncertain gestures preceded any words between them: a nervous giggle, a sudden tear. Gabriel’s hand stroked sensuously through Anamaya’s hair, again and again; Anamaya’s nails trailed through his beard before she ran her palm over his cheeks, his chin, his entire face. They drew in deep breaths of one another, touched one another with their fingers, their skin, their tongues. They struck one another playfully, not painfully, but still hard enough so that the marks they left roused forgotten appetites.

  Then the length of their prolonged separation and of the hunger that this abstinence had produced drove them into a furious embrace, and the
y clasped one another almost violently, so that there was a fierceness to their sweet pleasures. They rolled over and over like two young wildcats and bit one another playfully, each surprised by the fervour of the other’s bite. Gabriel had the advantage of superior strength, but Anamaya had the reflexes of a forest animal, and she slipped away from him just as he thought he had her, only to jump on his back. He managed to turn around and take hold of her: with a single movement, he took hold of her añaco and an instant later it fell to the ground.

  They stopped and stood absolutely still.

  She was naked in front of him. The urgency of their desire to take one another quietened in the calm of the night. They stared at each other for a moment, and then it all began again, but more slowly this time, each gesture performed with a considered gentleness.

  Anamaya held her breath as Gabriel’s mouth approached her breast. He kissed it as though he intended to caress every pore of her body with his lips. His desire was so deep and so strong that he intensified it by being patient to the point of cruelty with her. Anamaya stretched towards him and encouraged him, calling him to her not with words but rather with soft moans, short, wordless cries that nevertheless conveyed her desire for him. But he continued kissing her as lightly as he could, despite the urgency rising in his loins that was gradually wearing away the restraint of his exploration. Finally, she took his head between her hands with such ardor that he raised his lips to hers from the smooth lower slopes of her body in one movement. He kissed her forever, kissed her as though he was drinking from a mountain spring after crossing the desert, kissed her as one loves, as one breathes, as one lives – he kissed her as though he had never kissed before.

  Their clothes formed a bed on the ground, and they rolled around on it. If it had not been for the different colors of their skins, it would have been hard to tell that they were two separate people. Yes, they wanted to be one, the conquistador and the strange young girl from the forest, the Spaniard and the Inca. In that moment, all each of them had was the other’s body, and Anamaya felt herself slipping into a place of happiness that reminded her of her journey with Katari. She came almost at the very instant he entered her, but as he continued the dimensions of her pleasure broadened to include the universe itself, the stars, and the streams hidden in rocky mountain chasms. As for Gabriel, he was happy as he thrust and thrust again, feeling as powerful as a waterfall whose roar filled valleys. He wasn’t frightened of his body and all that was hidden in it, and he felt able to push back all his own limits. In one corner of his mind, he laughed at the irony of his past exploits. On his white horse, he had been but a boy. Only now was he a man.