The African accompanying the soldier is not doing so well. He defends himself by slapping the Indians, who want to rub his skin with dry corncobs. Water is boiling in a huge pot. They want to put him in it to soak out the color.
(166 and 185)
1528: Bad Luck Island
“People Very Generous with What They Have …”
Of the ships that sailed for Florida from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, one was hurled by a storm onto the treetops of Cuba, and the sea devoured the others in successive shipwrecks. No better fate awaited the ships that Narváez’s and Cabeza de Vaca’s men improvised with shirts for sails and horses’ manes for rigging.
The shipwrecked men, naked specters, tremble with cold and weep among the rocks of Mal Hado Island. Some Indians turn up to bring them water and fish and roots and seeing them weep, weep with them. The Indians shed rivers of tears, and the longer the lamentations continue, the sorrier the Spaniards feel for themselves.
The Indians lead them to their village. So that the sailors won’t die from the cold, they keep lighting fires at rest stops along the way. Between bonfire and bonfire they carry them on litters, without letting their feet touch ground.
The Spaniards imagine that the Indians will cut them into pieces and throw them in the stewpot, but in the village they continue sharing with them the little food they have. As Àlvar Nùnez Cabeza de Vaca will tell it, the Indians are horrified and hot with anger when they learn that, while on the beach, five Christians ate one another until only one remained, who being alone had no one to eat him.
(39)
1531: Orinoco River
Diego de Ordaz
The wind remains recalcitrant, and launches tow the ship upstream. The sun flagellates the water.
The captain’s coat of arms features the cone of the volcano Popocatepetl, because he was the first Spaniard to tread the snow of its summit. On that day he was at such an altitude that through the whirlwinds of volcanic ash he saw the backs of eagles as well as the city of Tenochtitlán shimmering in the lake; but he had to make a fast getaway because the volcano thundered with fury and threatened him with a rain of fire and stones and black smoke.
Today Diego de Ordaz, drenched to the bone, wonders if this Orinoco River will lead him to where the gold waits. The Indians of the villages keep gesturing, farther on, farther on, while the captain chases mosquitos and eases the crudely patched hull of the ship creakily forward. The monkeys protest and invisible parrots scream getoutahere, getoutahere, and many nameless birds flutter between the shores singing youwontgetme, youwontgetme, youwontgetme.
(175)
Piaroa People’s Song About the White Man
The water of the river is bad.
The fish take shelter
high in the ravines
red with mud.
The man with the beard passes,
the white man.
The man with the beard passes
in the big canoe
with creaking oars
that the snakes bite.
(17)
1531: Mexico City
The Virgin of Guadelupe
That light, does it rise from the earth or fall from the sky? Is it lightning bug or bright star? It doesn’t want to leave the slopes of Tepeyac and in dead of night persists, shining on the stones and entangling itself in the branches. Hallucinating, inspired, the naked Indian Juan Diego sees it: The light of lights opens up for him, breaks into golden and ruby pieces, and in its glowing heart appears that most luminous of Mexican women, she who says to him in the Náhuatl language: “I am the mother of God.”
Bishop Zumárraga listens and doubts. The bishop is the Indians’ official protector, appointed by the emperor, and also guardian of the branding iron that stamps on the Indians’ faces the names of their proprietors. He threw the Aztec codices into the fire, papers painted by the hand of Satan, and destroyed five hundred temples and twenty thousand idols. Bishop Zumárraga well knows that the goddess of earth, Tonantzin, had her sanctuary high on the slopes of Tepeyac and that the Indians used to make pilgrimages there to worship our mother, as they called that woman clad in snakes and hearts and hands.
The bishop is doubtful and decides that the Indian Juan Diego has seen the Virgin of Guadelupe. The Virgin born in Estremadura, darkened by the suns of Spain, has come to the valley of the Aztecs to be the mother of the vanquished.
(60 and 79)
1531: Santo Domingo
A Letter
He presses his temples as he follows the words that advance and retreat: Do not consider my lowly estate and roughness of expression, he entreats, but the goodwill that moves me to say it.
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas is writing to the Council of the Indies. It would have been better for the Indians, he maintains, to go to hell with their heresies, their procrastination and their isolation, than to be saved by the Christians. The cries of so much spilled human blood reach all the way to heaven: those burned alive, roasted on grills, thrown to wild dogs …
He gets up, walks. His white habit flaps amid clouds of dust.
Later he sits on the edge of the studded chair. He scratches his nose with the quill pen. The bony hand writes. For the Indians in America to be saved and for God’s law to be fulfilled, Fray Bartolomé proposes that the cross should rule over the sword. The garrisons should submit to the bishops; and colonists should be sent to cultivate the soil under protection of strong fortresses. The colonists, he says, could bring black or Moorish or some kind of slaves to serve them, or live by their own labor or in some other way not prejudicial to the Indians …
(27)
1531: Serrana Island
The Castaway and the Other
A wind of salt and sun mortifies Pedro Serrano, who wanders naked along the clifftop. Sea gulls flutter in pursuit of him. Shaded by an upraised hand, his eyes are fixed on enemy territory.
He descends into the cove and walks on the sand. Reaching the frontier line, he pees. He does not cross the line but knows that if the other is watching from some hideaway, he will appear at one bound to settle accounts for such a provocation.
He pees and waits. The birds scream and fly off. Where has the man stuck himself? The sky is a dazzling white, a light of lime, and the island is a burning stone; white rocks, white shadows, foam over the white sand: a small world of sand and lime. Where can that bastard be hiding?
Much time has passed since Pedro’s ship broke up on that stormy night, and his hair and beard already reached his chest when the other appeared, riding a board that the furious tide threw onto the shore. Pedro wrung the water from his lungs, gave him food and drink, and taught him how not to die on this desert island, where only rocks grow. He taught him to turn over turtles and finish them off with one slash, to cut the meat in strips to dry in the sun, and to collect rainwater in their shells. He taught him to pray for rain and to dig for clams under the sand, showed him the crabs’ and shrimps’ hideouts and offered him turtle eggs and oysters that the sea brought in attached to mangrove branches. The other knew from Pedro that it was necessary to collect everything that the sea delivered to the reefs so that the bonfire would burn night and day, fed by dry algae, seaweed, stray branches, starfish, and fish bones. Pedro helped him put up a roof of turtle shells, a bit of shade against the sun, for lack of trees.
The first war was the water war. Pedro suspected that the other was stealing while he slept, and the other accused him of drinking like a beast. When the water gave out and the last drops disputed with fists were spilt, they had no alternative but to drink their own urine and the blood they got from the only turtle that was to be seen. Then they stretched out to die in the shade and had only enough saliva left for muted insults.
Finally rain saved them. The other thought that Pedro could well reduce by half the roof of his house now that turtle shells were so scarce: “Your house is a turtle-shell palace,” he said, “and in mine I spend the day all twisted up.”
“I shit on God,” sai
d Pedro, “and on the mother that calved you. If you don’t like my island, get lost!” And he pointed a finger at the vast sea.
They decided to divide the water. From then on, there was a rain deposit on each end of the island.
The fire war came second. They took turns tending the bonfire, in case some ship passed in the distance. One night, when the other was on guard, the fire went out. Pedro cursed and shook him awake.
“If the island is yours, you do it, you swine,” said the other and showed his teeth.
They rolled in the sand. When they tired of hitting each other, they resolved that each would light his own fire. Pedro’s knife lashed a stone until it produced a few sparks; and since then there is a bonfire at each end of the island.
The knife war came third. The other had nothing to cut with, and Pedro demanded payment in fresh shrimp each time he lent the knife.
Then the food war and the shell-necklace war broke out.
When the latter war ended in an exchange of stones, they signed an armistice and a border treaty. There was no document, since in this desolation not even a cupay leaf can be found on which to scribble anything, and furthermore neither can sign his name; but they marked off a frontier and swore by God and king to respect it. They tossed a fish into the air. Pedro drew the half of the island that faces Cartagena; the other, the half facing Santiago de Cuba.
Now, standing at the frontier, Pedro bites his nails, looks upward as if seeking rain, and thinks: “He must be hiding in some cranny. I can smell him. Mangy. In midocean and he never bathes. He’d rather fry in his own grease. There he goes, yes, on the dodge as ever.”
“Hey, asshole!” he yells.
For answer, the thunder of surf, the racket of gulls, the voices of the wind.
“Ingrate!” he shouts, “Son-of-a-bitch!” and shouts until his throat bursts, and runs from one end of the island to the other, backward and forward, alone and naked on the sand without anybody.
(76)
1532: Cajamarca
Pizarro
A thousand men sweep the path of the Inca into the great square where the Spaniards wait in hiding. The multitude trembles at the passage of the Beloved Father, the One, the Only, lord of labors and fiestas; the singers fall silent, and the dancers freeze up. In the half light, last light of the day, the crowns and vestments of Atahualpa and his cortege of nobles of the realm gleam with gold and silver.
Where are the gods brought by the wind? The Inca reaches the center of the square and gives the order to wait. A few days ago, a spy penetrated the camp of the invaders, tugged at their beards, and returned to report that they were no more than a handful of crooks from the sea. That blasphemy cost his life. Where are the sons of Wirachocha, who wear stars on their heels and send forth thunders that provoke stupor, stampede, and death?
The priest Vicente de Valverde emerges from the shadows and goes to meet Atahualpa. He raises the Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other, as if exorcising a storm on the high seas, and cries that here is God, the true one, and that all the rest is nonsense. The interpreter translates and Atahualpa, at the head of the throng, asks: “Who told you that?”
“The Bible says it, the sacred book.”
“Give it here so it can tell me.”
A few paces away, Pizarro unsheathes his sword.
Atahualpa looks at the Bible, turns it over in his hand, shakes it to make it talk, and presses it against his ear: “It says nothing. It’s empty.”
And he drops it to the ground.
Pizarro has been awaiting this moment ever since the day he knelt before Emperor Charles V, described the empire as big as Europe that he had discovered and proposed to conquer, and promised him the most splendid treasure in human history. And even earlier: since the day when his sword drew a line in the sand and a few soldiers dying of hunger, bent with disease, swore to follow him to the end. And earlier yet, much earlier: Pizarro has awaited this moment since he was dumped at the door of an Estremadura church fifty-four years ago and drank sow’s milk for lack of anyone to suckle him.
Pizarro yells and pounces. At the signal, the trap is sprung. From the ambush trumpets blare, arquebuses roar, and the cavalry charges the stunned and unarmed crowd.
(76, 96, and 221)
1533: Cajamarca
The Ransom
To buy the life of Atahualpa, silver and gold pour in. Like a swarm of ants down the empire’s four highways come long lines of llamas, and people with shoulders bent under their loads. The most splendid booty comes from Cuzco: an entire garden, trees and flowers of solid gold, and uncut precious stones, and birds and animals of pure silver and turquoise and lapis lazuli.
The oven receives gods and adornments and vomits bars of gold and silver. Officers and soldiers shout to have it divided. For six years they have had no pay.
Of each five ingots, Francisco Pizarro sets one apart for the king. Then he crosses himself. He asks the help of God, who knows all, to see justice done and asks the help of Hernando de Soto, who knows how to read, to keep an eye on the scribe.
He assigns one part to the church and another to the military vicar. He handsomely rewards his brothers and the other captains. Each soldier of the line gets more than Prince Philip makes in a year, and Pizarro becomes the richest man in the world. The hunter of Atahualpa assigns to himself twice as much as the court of Charles V, with its six hundred servants, spends in a year—without counting the Incas’ litter, eighty-three kilos of solid gold, which is his trophy as general.
(76 and 184)
1533: Cajamarca
Atahualpa
A black rainbow crossed the sky. The Inca Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
In the days of the fiesta of the sun, a condor fell lifeless in the Plaza of Happiness. Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
He put to death messengers who brought bad news and with one ax blow decapitated the old prophet who announced misfortune. He had the oracle’s house burned down and witnesses of the prophecy cut to pieces.
Atahualpa had the eighty sons of his brother Huáscar bound to posts on the roads, and the vultures gorged themselves with that meat. Huáscar’s wives tinted the waters of the Adamarca River with blood. Huáscar, Atahualpa’s prisoner, ate human shit and sheep’s piss and had a dressed-up stone for a wife. Later Huáscar said and was the last to say: Soon they will kill him as he kills me. And Atahualpa didn’t want to believe it.
When his palace turned into his jail, he didn’t want to believe it. Atahualpa, Pizarro’s prisoner, said: I am the greatest of all princes on earth. The ransom filled one room with gold and two rooms with silver. The invaders melted down even the golden cradle in which Atahualpa heard his first song.
Seated on Atahualpa’s throne, Pizarro told him he had decided to confirm his death sentence. Atahualpa replied: “Don’t tell me those jokes.” Nor does he want to believe it now, as step by step he mounts the stairs, dragging his chains, in the milky light of dawn.
Soon the news will be spread among the countless children of the earth who owe obedience and tribute to the son of the sun. In Quito they will mourn the death of the Shadow That Protects: puzzled, lost, memory denied, alone. In Cuzco there will be joy and drunken sprees.
Atahualpa is bound by the hands, feet, and neck, but still thinks: What did I do to deserve death?
At the foot of the gallows, he refuses to believe that he has been defeated by man. Only gods could have done it. His father, the sun, has betrayed him.
Before the iron tourniquet breaks his neck, he weeps, kisses the cross, and accepts baptism with another name. Giving his name as Francisco, which is his conqueror’s name, he beats on the doors of the Paradise of the Europeans, where no place is reserved for him.
(57, 76, and 221)
1533: Xaquixaguana
The Secret
Pizarro marches on Cuzco. Now he heads a great army. Manco Cápac, the Incas’ new king, has added thousands of Indians to the side of the handful of conquistado
rs. But Atahualpa’s generals harry the advance. In the valley of Xaquixaguana, Pizarro captures a messenger of his enemies.
Fire licks the soles of the prisoner’s feet.
“What does this message say?”
The Chasqui is a man experienced in endless trottings through the icy winds of the plain and the scorching heat of the desert. The job has accustomed him to pain and fatigue. He moans but won’t talk.
After very long torment his tongue loosens: “That the horses won’t be able to climb the mountains.”
“What else?”
“That there’s nothing to fear. That horses are scary but do no harm.”
“And what else?”
They make him tread on the fire.
“And what else?”
He has lost his feet. Before losing his life, he says: “That you people die, too.”
(81 and 185)
1533: Cuzco
The Conquerors Enter the Sacred City
In the noon radiance, the soldiers make their way through the cloud of smoke. A whiff of damp leather mixes with the smell of burning, while the clatter of horses’ hooves and cannon wheels is heard.
An altar rises in the plaza. Silk banners embroidered with eagles escort the new god, who has his arms open and wears a beard like his sons. Isn’t the new god seeing his sons, battle-axes in hand, pounce upon the gold of the temples and tombs?
Amid the stones of Cuzco, blackened by fire, the old and the paralytic dumbly await the days to come.
(50 and 76)
1533: Riobamba
Alvarado
Half a year before, the ships anchored in Puerto Viejo. Inspired by promises of a virgin kingdom, Pedro de Alvarado had sailed from Guatemala. With him went five hundred Spaniards and two thousand Indian and Negro slaves. Messengers had reported to him: “The power that awaits you makes what you have seem like dirt. To the north of Tumbes you will multiply your fame and wealth. To the south, Pizarro and Almagro have now become the masters, but the fabulous kingdom of Quito belongs to no one.”
The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 13