(64, 218, and 223)
1500: Florence
Leonardo
He is just back from the market with various cages on his back. He puts them on the balcony, opens the little doors, and the birds make off. He watches the birds lose themselves in the sky, fluttering joyously, then sits down to work.
The noon sunshine warms his hand. On a wide board Leonardo da Vinci draws the world. And in the world that Leonardo draws appear the lands that Columbus has found toward the sunset. The artist invents them, as previously he has invented the airplane, the tank, the parachute, and the submarine, and he gives them form as previously he has incarnated the mystery of virgins and the passion of saints: He imagines the body of America, which still doesn’t have that name, and sketches it as new land and not as part of Asia.
Columbus, seeking the Levant, has found the West. Leonardo guesses that the world has grown.
(209)
1506: Valladolid
The Fifth Voyage
Last night he dictated his last testament. This morning he asked if the king’s messenger had arrived. Afterward, he slept. Nonsense mutterings and groans. He still breathes, but stertorously, as if battling against the air.
At court, no one has listened to his entreaties. He returned from the third voyage in chains, and on the fourth there was no one to pay attention to his titles and dignities.
Christopher Columbus is going out knowing that there is no passion or glory that does not lead to pain. On the other hand, he does not know that within a few years the banner that he stuck for the first time into the sands of the Caribbean will be waving over the empire of the Aztecs, in lands yet unknown, and over the kingdom of the Incas, under the unknown skies of the Southern Cross. He does not know that with all his lies, promises, and ravings, he has still fallen short. The supreme admiral of the ocean sea still believes he has reached Asia from the rear.
The ocean will not be called the Sea of Columbus; nor will the new world bear his name, but that of his Florentine friend Amerigo Vespucci, navigator and pilot master. But it was Columbus who found dazzling color that didn’t exist in the European rainbow. Blind, he dies without seeing it.
(12 and 166)
1506: Tenochtitlán
The Universal God
Moctezuma has conquered in Teuctepec.
Fire rages in the temples. The drums beat. One after another, prisoners mount the steps toward the round, sacrificial stone. The priest plunges the obsidian dagger into each breast, lifts up the heart, and shows it to the sun, which rises above the blue volcanoes.
To what god is the blood offered? The sun demands it, to be born each day and travel from one horizon to the other. But the ostentatious death ceremonies also serve another god who does not appear in the codices nor in the chants.
If that god did not reign over the world, there would be no slaves nor masters nor vassals nor colonies. The Aztec merchants could not wrest a diamond for a bean from the defeated peoples, nor an emerald for a grain of corn, nor gold for sweetmeats, nor cacao for stones. The carriers would not be crossing the immensity of the empire in long lines with tons of tribute on their backs. The common people would dare to put on cotton tunics and would drink chocolate and audaciously wear the forbidden quetzal feathers and gold bracelets and magnolias and orchids reserved for the nobility. Then the masks hiding the warrior chiefs’ faces would fall, the eagle’s beak, the tiger’s jaws, the plumes that wave and sparkle in the air.
The steps of the great temple are stained with blood, and skulls accumulate in the center of the plaza. Not only so that the sun should move, no; also so that that secret god should decide instead of man. In homage to that god, across the sea inquisitors fry heretics on bonfires or twist them in the torture chambers. It is the God of Fear. The God of Fear, who has rat’s teeth and vulture’s wings.
(60)
1511: Guauravo River
Agüeynaba
Three years ago, Captain Ponce de León arrived at this island of Puerto Rico in a caravel. Chief Agüeynaba opened his home to him, offered him food and drink and the choice of one of his daughters, and showed him the rivers from which gold was taken. He also gave him his name. Juan Ponce de León started calling himself Agüeynaba, and Agüeynaba received in exchange the name of the conquistador.
Three days ago the soldier Salcedo came alone to the banks of the Guauravo River. The Indians offered their backs for him to cross on. When they reached midstream, they let him fall and held him down against the river bottom until he stopped kicking. Afterward they laid him out on the grass.
Salcedo is now a glob of purple contorted flesh squeezed into a suit of armor, attacked by insects and quickly putrefying in the sun. The Indians look at it, holding their noses. Night and day they have been begging the stranger’s pardon, for the benefit of the doubt. No point in it now. The drums broadcast the good news: The invaders are not immortal.
Tomorrow will come the rising. Agüeynaba will head it. The chief of the rebels will go back to his old name. He will recover his name, which has been used to humiliate his people.
“Co-qui, co-qui,” cry the little frogs. The drums calling for struggle drown out their crystal-counterpoint singsong.
(1)
1511: Aymaco
Becerrillo
The insurrection of chiefs Agüeynaba and Mabodamaca has been put down and all the prisoners have gone to their deaths.
Captain Diego de Salazar comes upon the old woman hidden in the underbrush and does not run his sword through her. “Here,” he says to her, “take this letter to the governor, who is in Caparra.”
The old woman opens her eyes slightly. Trembling, she holds out her fingers.
And she sets off. She walks like a small child, with a baby-bear lurch, carrying the envelope like a standard or a flag.
While the old woman is still within crossbow range, the captain releases Becerrillo. Governor Ponce de León has ordered that Becerrillo should receive twice the pay of a crossbowman, as an expert flusher-out of ambushes and hunter of Indians. The Indians of Puerto Rico have no worse enemy.
The first arrow knocks the old woman over. Becerrillo, his ears perked up, his eyes bulging, would devour her in one bite.
“Mr. Dog,” she entreats him, “I’m taking this letter to the governor.”
Becerrillo doesn’t know the local language, but the old woman shows him the empty envelope.
“Don’t do me harm, Mr. Dog.”
Becerrillo sniffs at the envelope. He circles a few times the trembling bag of bones that whines words, lifts a paw, and pees on her.
(166)
1511: Yara
Hatuey
In these islands, in these Calvaries, those who choose death by hanging themselves or drinking poison along with their children are many. The invaders cannot avoid this vengeance, but know how to explain it: the Indians, so savage that they think everything is in common, as Oviedo will say, are people by nature idle and vicious, doing little work. For a pastime many killed themselves with venom so as not to work, and others hanged themselves with their own hands.
Hatuey, Indian chief of the Guahaba region, has not killed himself. He fled with his people from Haiti in a canoe and took refuge in the caves and mountains of eastern Cuba.
There he pointed to a basketful of gold and said: “This is the god of the Christians. For him they pursue us. For him our fathers and our brothers have died. Let us dance for him. If our dance pleases him, this god will order them not to mistreat us.”
They catch him three months later.
They tie him to a stake.
Before lighting the fire that will reduce him to charcoal and ash, the priest promises him glory and eternal rest if he agrees to be baptized. Hatuey asks:
“Are there Christians in that heaven?”
“Yes.”
Hatuey chooses hell, and the firewood begins to crackle.
(102,103, and 166)
1511: Santo Domingo
The Firs
t Protest
In the log-walled, palm-roofed church, Antonio de Montesinos, Dominican friar, hurls thunder from the pulpit. He denounces the extermination:
“By what right and by what justice do you hold the Indians in such cruel and horrible bondage? Aren’t they dying, or better said, aren’t you killing them, to get gold every day? Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves? Don’t you understand this, don’t you feel it?”
Then Montesinos, head high, makes his way through the astounded multitude.
A murmur of fury swells up. They didn’t bargain for this, these peasants from Estremadura and shepherds from Andalusia who have repudiated their names and histories and, with rusty arquebuses slung over their shoulders, left at random in search of the mountains of gold and the nude princesses on this side of the ocean. A Mass of pardon and consolation was what was needed by these adventurers bought with promises on the steps of Seville Cathedral, these flea-bitten captains, veterans of no battle, and condemned prisoners who had to choose between America and jail or gallows.
“We’ll denounce you to King Ferdinand! You’ll be deported!”
One bewildered man remains silent. He came to these lands nine years ago. Owner of Indians, gold mines, and plantations, he has made a small fortune. His name is Bartolomé de las Casas, and he will soon be the first priest ordained in the New World.
(103)
1513: Cuareca
Leoncico
Their muscles almost burst through the skin. Their yellow eyes never stop flashing. They pant. They snap their jaws and bite holes in the air. No chain can hold them when they get the command to attack.
Tonight, by order of Captain Balboa, the dogs will sink their teeth into the naked flesh of fifty Indians of Panama. They will disembowel and devour fifty who were guilty of the abominable sin of sodomy, who only lacked tits and wombs to be women. The spectacle will take place in this mountain clearing, among the trees that the storm uprooted a few days ago. By torchlight the soldiers quarrel and jockey for the best places.
Vasco Núñez de Balboa chairs the ceremony. His dog Leoncico heads up God’s avengers. Leoncico, son of Becerrillo, has a body crisscrossed with scars. He is a past master of capturings and quarterings. He gets a sublieutenant’s pay and a share of each gold or slave booty.
In two days’ time Balboa will discover the Pacific Ocean.
(81 and 166)
1513: Gulf of San Miguel
Balboa
With water up to his waist, he raises his sword and yells to the four winds.
His men carve an immense cross in the sand. The scribe Valderrábano registers the names of those who have just discovered the new ocean, and Father Andres intones the Te Deum Laudamus.
Balboa discards his fifteen kilos of armor, throws his sword far away, and jumps in.
He splashes about and lets himself be dragged by the waves, dizzy with a joy he won’t feel again. The sea opens for him, embraces him, rocks him. Balboa would like to drink it dry.
(141)
1514: Sinú River
The Summons
They have crossed much water and time and are fed up with heat, jungles, and mosquitos. They carry out, however, the king’s instructions: not to attack the natives without first summoning them to surrender. St. Augustine authorizes war against those who abuse their liberty, because their liberty would make them dangerous if they were not tamed; but as St. Isidore well says, no war is just without a previous declaration.
Before they start the rush for the gold, for nuggets possibly as big as eggs, lawyer Martin Fernandez de Enciso reads, complete with periods and commas, the ultimatum that the interpreter translates painfully by fits and starts.
Enciso speaks in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Juana, his daughter, tamers of barbarous peoples. He makes it known to the Indians of the Sinú that God came to the world and left St. Peter as his representative, that St. Peter’s successor is the holy father and that the holy father, lord of the universe, has awarded to the king of Castile all the lands of the Indies and of this peninsula.
The soldiers bake in their armor. Enciso slowly and meticulously summons the Indians to leave these lands since they don’t belong to them, and if they want to stay to pay their highnesses tribute in gold in token of obedience. The interpreter does his best.
The two chiefs listen, sitting down and without blinking, to the odd character who announces to them that in case of refusal or delay he will make war on them, turn them into slaves along with their women and children, and sell and dispose of them as such and that the deaths and damages of that just war will not be the Spaniards’ responsibility.
The chiefs reply, without a glance at Enciso, that the holy father has indeed been generous with others’ property but must have been drunk to dispose of what was not his and that the king of Castile is impertinent to come threatening folk he doesn’t know.
Then the blood flows.
Subsequently the long speech will be read at dead of night, without an interpreter and half a league away from villages that will be taken by surprise. The natives, asleep, won’t hear the words that declare them guilty of the crime committed against them.
(78, 81, and 166)
1514: Santa Maria del Darién
For Love of Fruit
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a new arrival, tries out the fruit of the New World.
The guava seems to him much superior to the apple.
The guanábana is pretty to look at and offers a white, watery pulp of very mild flavor, which, however much you eat of it, causes neither harm nor indigestion.
The mamey has a finger-licking flavor and smells very good. Nothing better exists, he finds.
But he bites into a medlar, and an aroma unequaled even by musk invades his head. The medlar is the best fruit, he corrects himself, and nothing comparable can be found.
Then he peels a pineapple. The golden pine smells as peaches would like to and is able to give an appetite to people who have forgotten the joys of eating. Oviedo knows no words worthy of describing its virtues. It delights his eyes, his nose, his fingers, his tongue. This outdoes them all, as the feathers of the peacock outshine those of any bird.
(166)
1515: Antwerp
Utopia
The New World adventures bring the taverns of this Flemish port to the boil. One summer night, on the waterfront, Thomas More meets or invents Rafael Hithloday, a sailor from Amerigo Vespucci’s fleet, who says he has discovered the isle of Utopia off some coast of America.
The sailor relates that in Utopia neither money nor private property exists. There, scorn for gold and for superfluous consumption is encouraged, and no one dresses ostentatiously. Everybody gives the fruits of his work to the public stores and freely collects what he needs. The economy is planned. There is no hoarding, which is the son of fear, nor is hunger known. The people choose their prince and the people can depose him; they also elect the priests. The inhabitants of Utopia loathe war and its honors, although they fiercely defend their frontiers. They have a religion that does not offend reason and rejects useless mortifications and forcible conversions. The laws permit divorce but severely punish conjugal betrayals and oblige everyone to work six hours a day. Work and rest are shared; the table is shared. The community takes charge of children while their parents are busy. Sick people get privileged treatment; euthanasia avoids long, painful agonies. Gardens and orchards occupy most of the space, and music is heard wherever one goes.
(146)
1519: Frankfurt
Charles V
A half century has passed since Gutenberg’s death, and printeries multiply all over Europe; they publish the Bible in Gothic letters, and gold and silverprice quotations in Gothic numerals. The monarch devours men, and men shit gold coins in Hieronymus Bosch’s garden of delights; and Michaelangelo, while painting and sculpting his athletic saints and prophets, writes: The blood of Christ is sold by the spoonful. Everything has its price: the pope’s throne and t
he monarch’s crown, the cardinal’s cape and the bishop’s miter. Indulgences, excommunications, and titles of nobility are bought. The Church deems lending at interest a sin, but the holy father mortgages Vatican lands to the bankers; and on the banks of the Rhine, the crown of the Holy Empire is offered to the highest bidder.
Three candidates dispute the heritage of Charlemagne. The electors swear by the purity of their votes and cleanliness of their hands and pronounce their verdict at noon, the hour of the Angelus: they sell the crown of Europe to the king of Spain, Charles I, son of the seducer and the madwoman and grandson of the Catholic monarchs, for 850,000 florins, which Germany’s bankers Függer and Welser plunk down on the table.
Charles I turns himself into Charles V, emperor of Spain, Germany, Austria, Naples, Sicily, the Low Countries, and the immense New World, defender of the Catholic faith, and God’s warrior vicar on earth.
Meanwhile, the Muslims threaten the frontiers, and Martin Luther nails up his defiant heresies on the door of a Wittemberg church. A prince must have war as his sole objective and thought, Macchiavelli has written. At age nineteen, the new monarch is the most powerful man in history. On his knees, he kisses the sword.
(116, 209, and 218)
1519: Acla
Pedrarias
Noise of sea and drums. Night has fallen, but there is light from the moon. Around the plaza, fish and dried ears of corn hang from the straw roofs.
Enter Balboa, chained, hands bound behind his back. They untie him. Balboa smokes his last cigar. Without saying a word, he places his neck on the block. The executioner raises the ax.
From his house, Pedro Arias de Avila peers furtively through the cane wall. He is sitting on the coffin that he brought from Spain. He uses the coffin as a chair or a table, and once a year, year after year, covers it with candles, during the requiem that celebrates his resurrection. They call him Pedrarias the Buried ever since he got up out of this coffin, wrapped in a shroud, as nuns sang the office of the dead and relatives sobbed uncontrollably. Previously they had called him Pedrarias the Gallant, because of his invincibility in tournaments, battles, and gallantries; and now, although he is nearing eighty, he deserves the name of Fury of the Lord. When Pedrarias wakes up shaking his white mane because he lost a hundred Indians at dice the night before, his glance is better avoided.
The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 10