How many worlds do these fires illuminate? The one that was and was seen, the one that was and was not seen …
Exiled at the end of seventy-five years of rebellions, the Taironas flee into the mountains, the most arid and remote places, where there is no fish and no corn. Far up there the invaders have expelled them, seizing their lands and uprooting their memory, so that in their remote isolation oblivion may descend upon the songs they sang when they lived together, a federation of free peoples, and were strong and wore robes of multicolored cotton and necklaces of gold and flashing stones: so that they should never again remember that their grandparents were jaguars.
Behind them they leave ruins and graves.
The wind whispers, souls in travail whisper, and fire dances in the distance.
(189)
Techniques of Hunting and Fishing
Deep in the Amazon jungle a fisherman of the Desana tribe sits on a high rock and contemplates the river. The waters slide down, carry fish, polish stones—waters gilded by the first light of day. The fisherman looks and looks, and feels that the old river turns into the flow of blood through his veins. The fisherman will not fish until he has won the hearts of the fishes’ wives.
Nearby, in the village, the hunter gets ready. He has already vomited, and later bathed in the river, and is clean inside and out. Now he drinks infusions of plants that have the color of deer, so that their aromas may impregnate his body, and paints on his face the mask that the deer like best. After blowing tobacco smoke on his weapons, he walks softly to the spring where the deer drink. There he drops juice of the pineapple, which is the milk of the daughter of the sun.
The hunter has slept alone these last nights. He has not been with women nor dreamed of them, so that the animal he will hunt and pierce with lance or arrows should not be jealous.
(189)
1600: Potosí
The Eighth Wonder of the World
Caravans of llamas and mules carry to the port of Arica the silver that the Potosí mountain bleeds from each of its mouths. At the end of a long voyage the ingots arrive in Europe to finance war, peace, and progress there.
In exchange, from Seville or by contraband, Potosí receives the wines of Spain, the hats and silks of France, the lace, mirrors, and tapestry of Flanders, German swords, Genoese paper, Neapolitan stockings, Venetian glass, Cypriot wax, Ceylonese diamonds, East Indian marbles, the perfumes of Arabia, Malacca, and Goa, Persian carpets and Chinese porcelain, black slaves from Cape Verde and Angola, and dashing steeds from Chile.
Everything is very dear in this city, the dearest in the world. Only chicha corn liquor and coca leaves are cheap. The Indians, forcibly seized from the communities of all Peru, spend Sundays in the corrals dancing to their drums and drinking chicha till they roll on the ground. On Monday mornings they are herded into the mountain and, chewing coca and beaten with iron bars, they pursue the veins of silver, greenish-white serpents that appear and take flight through the entrails of this immense paunch, no light, no air. There the Indians toil all week, prisoners, breathing dust that kills the lungs, and chewing coca that deceives hunger and masks exhaustion, never knowing when night falls or day breaks, until Saturday ends and the bell rings for prayer and release. Then they move forward, holding lighted candles, to emerge on Sunday at dawn, so deep are the diggings and the infinite tunnels and galleries.
A priest newly come to Potosi sees them arriving in the city’s suburbs, a long procession of squalid ghosts, their backs scarred by the lash, and remarks: “I don’t want to see this portrait of hell.”
“So shut your eyes,” someone suggests.
“I can’t,” he says. “With my eyes shut I see more.”
(21 and 157)
Prophecies
Last night they were married, before the fire as tradition demands, and heard the sacred words:
To her: “When he ignites with the fire of love, do not be icy.”
And to him: “When she ignites with the fire of love, do not be icy.”
By the glow of the fire they awaken, embrace, congratulate themselves with their eyes, and tell their dreams.
During sleep the soul travels outside the body and gets to know, in an eternity or the blink of an eye, what is going to happen. Beautiful dreams are to be shared; and to share them, couples awaken very early. Bad dreams, however, are to be thrown to the dogs.
Bad dreams, nightmares about abysses or vultures or monsters, may portend the worst. And the worst, here, is being forced to go to the Huancavélica mercury mines or to the far-off silver mountain of Potosí.
(150 and 151)
Ballad of Cuzco
A llama wished
to have golden hair,
brilliant as the sun,
strong as love
and soft as the mist
that the dawn dissolves,
to weave a braid
on which to mark,
knot by knot,
the moons that pass,
the flowers that die.
(202)
1600: Mexico City
Carriages
Carriages have returned to the broad streets of Mexico. More than twenty years ago the ascetic Philip II banned them. The decree said that use of a carriage turns men into idlers and accustoms them to a pampered and lazy life; and that this costs them muscle for the arts of war.
Now that Philip II is dead, carriages reign again in this city. Inside them, silks and mirrors; outside, gold and tortoise shell and coats of arms on the door. They exude an aroma of fine woods, roll smoothly as a gondola, rock like a cradle; behind the curtains the colonial nobility wave and smile. On his lofty perch, amid silken fringes and tassels, sits the disdainful coachman, almost like a king; and the horses are shod with silver.
Carriages are still banned for Indians, prostitutes, and those punished by the Inquisition.
(213)
1601: Valladolid
Quevedo
For twenty years Spain has reigned over Portugal and all its colonies, so that a Spaniard can walk the earth without treading on foreign soil. But Spain is the most expensive country in Europe: It produces ever fewer things and ever more coins. Of the thirty-five million escudos born six years ago, not even a shadow remains. The data recently published here by Don Martin González de Cellorigo in his Treatise on Necessary Policy are not encouraging: by virtue of chance and inheritance, every Spaniard who works maintains thirty more. For those with incomes, work is a sin. The gentry have the bedroom as a battlefield; and in Spain fewer trees grow than monks and beggars.
Galleys laden with the gold of America sail for Genoa. The metals arriving from Mexico and Peru do not even leave a smell in Spain. The feat of the conquest seems to have been achieved by German, Genoese, French, and Flemish merchants and bankers.
In Valladolid lives a crippled and myopic youth of pure blood, with a sharp sword and tongue. In the evenings, while his page removes his boots, he dreams up couplets. In the morning his snakes slither under the doors of the royal palace.
Head buried in his pillow, young Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas personifies in his head the force that turns a coward into a warrior and that softens up the most severe judge; and cursing this trade of poet, he rubs his eyes, draws up the lamp, and with one tug hauls from inside his head the verses that won’t let him sleep. The verses tell of Don Doubloon, who
is honorably born in the Indies,
where the world accompanies him,
comes to die in Spain
and is buried in Genoa.
(64, 183, and 218)
1602: Recife
First Expedition Against Palmares
In the mills that press and squeeze sugarcane and men, each slave’s work is measured as the weight of the cane and the pressure of the crusher and the heat of the oven are measured. The strength of a slave is exhausted in five years, but in only one year the owner will recover the price paid for him. When slaves cease to be useful hands and become useless mouths,
they receive the gift of freedom.
In the mountains of northeastern Brazil hide the slaves who win freedom before sudden old age or early death topples them. The sanctuaries where the fugitives take refuge, in the groves of lofty palms in Alagoas, are called Palmares.
The governor general of Brazil sends out the first expedition against Palmares. It consists of a few poor whites and mestizos anxious to capture and sell blacks; a few Indians who have been promised combs, knives, and little mirrors; and many mulattoes.
Returning from the Itapicurú River, the commander of the expedition, Bartolomeu Bezerra, announces in Recife: The core of the rebellion has been destroyed. And they believe him.
(32 and 69)
1603: Rome
The Four Parts of the World
An illustrated and enlarged edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconology is published in Rome. This dictionary of symbolic images shows the world as it looks from the north shore of the Mediterranean.
On top appears Europe, the queen, with her emblems of power. Horses and lances support her. With one hand she holds up the columns of the temple, with the other she holds a scepter. She has a crown on her head and other crowns lie at her feet, amid miters and books and paintbrushes, zithers, and harps. Next to the horn of plenty lie compass and ruler.
Beneath, to the right, Asia. She offers coffee, pepper, incense. Garlands of flowers and fruit adorn her. A kneeling camel awaits her.
At one side, Africa, a dusky Moorish woman topped by an elephant’s head. On her breast, a necklace of coral. Around her the lion, the snake, the scorpion, and ears of grain.
Beneath everything America, a woman with face fearsome to look upon. She wears feathers over her naked olive skin. At her feet she has a newly severed human head and a lizard. She is armed with bow and arrows.
(125)
1603: Santiago de Chile
The Pack
Santiago’s town council has purchased a new branding iron—of silver—to brand Indian slaves on the face. The governor, Alonso de Ribera, orders that a fifth part of the value of each Araucanian sold at the ports of Valdivia and Arica should go to the costs of war and maintenance of the soldiery.
One hunting expedition follows another. The soldiers cross the Bío-Bío and do their lashing out at night. They burn and butcher and return with men, women, and children roped around the neck. Once branded, they are sold to Peru.
The governor raises the spouted wine pitcher and toasts the battles won. He toasts in the Flemish style, like Pedro de Valdivia. First, swig after swig to the gentlemen and ladies who come to his mind. When he finishes with people, he toasts saints and angels; and he never forgets to thank them for the pretext.
(94)
1605: Lima
The Night of the Last Judgment
Right after Christmas, nature’s heavy artillery blew up the city of Arequipa. The cordillera exploded and the earth vomited the foundations of houses. People were left in fragments under the wreckage, crops burned under the cinders. The sea rose up, meanwhile, and smothered the port of Arica.
Yesterday, at dusk, a barefooted friar assembled a throng in Lima’s plaza. He announced that this libertine city would collapse in the next few hours, and with it all its surroundings as far as the eye could see.
“No one will get away!” he howled. “Not the fastest horse nor the swiftest ship will be able to escape!”
At sunset, the streets are already filled with penitents scourging themselves by torchlight. Sinners proclaim their sins on the corners, and from the balconies rich folk throw silverware and party dresses down into the street. Hair-raising secrets are revealed out loud. Unfaithful wives tear up pavingstones and use them to beat their breasts. Thieves and seducers kneel before their victims, masters kiss the feet of their slaves, and beggars have not hands enough for so much charity. The Church receives more money than in all the Lents in its history. If not seeking a priest to confess to, people seek one to marry them. The churches are crammed with folk who want to nestle within their protection.
Then the dawn.
The sun shines on Lima as never before. Penitents look for ointments for their flayed backs, and masters pursue their slaves. Newlyweds inquire for their just-acquired husbands whom daylight has evaporated; people who repented of their sins wander the streets in search of new ones to commit. Sobs and curses are heard behind every door. There is no beggar who hasn’t dropped from sight. The priests have also hidden themselves, to count the mountains of coins that God accepted last night. With the leftover cash, Lima’s churches will buy in Spain the authentic feathers of the archangel Gabriel.
(157)
1607: Seville
The Strawberry
Captain Alonso González de Nájera, who has lived six years in Chile, remembers and relates.
He speaks of those who are born amid trumpets and drums, the noble host who wear coats of mail from the cradle and make a wall of their bodies against attacks by the Indians. He insists that rain pulls grains of gold out of the Chilean soil and that the Indians pay tribute with gold they take from the bellies of lizards.
He also tells of a rare fruit, with the color and form of the heart, which explodes with sweet juices at the touch of the teeth. For vividness, flavor, and scent it could well compete with the most delectable fruits of Spain, although over there in Chile they insult it by calling it a strawberry.
(66)
1608: Puerto Principe
Silvestre de Balboa
In the mud and palm-frond house of Silvestre de Balboa, clerk of the Puerto Principe town council, the first epic poem in Cuba’s history is born. The author dedicates his royal stanzas to Bishop Altamirano, who four years ago was kidnaped by the French pirate Gilbert Giron in the port of Manzanillo.
From the kingdom of Neptune rose seals and sea nymphs to the pirate’s ship, sympathizing with the bishop, who would accept nothing in his defense. The people of Manzanillo managed to raise two hundred ducats, a thousand hides, and other provisions, and finally the Lutheran pirate freed his prisoner. To welcome the rescued bishop satyrs, fauns, and centaurs came down to the beach from the woods bringing guanábanas and other delicacies. From the meadows came nymphs loaded with mameys, prickly pears, pineapples, avocados, and tobacco, and petticoat-clad dryads descended from trees with arms full of wild pitahayas and fruit of the birijí and the tall jagua tree. The bishop also received guabinas, dajaos, and other river fish from naiads; and fountain and pond nymphs brought some tasty hicatee turtles from Masabo. When the pirates were ready to collect the ransom, a few lads, the flower of Manzanillo youth, fell on them and valiantly gave them what they deserved. It was a black slave named Salvador who pierced pirate Gilbert Giron’s breast with his lance:
Oh Creole Salvador, honorable slave!
May your fame go soaring without end;
for in praise of soldier so brave
never should weary the tongue or the pen.
Filled with admiration and awe, Silvestre de Balboa invokes Troy and compares the Manzanillans with Achilles and Ulysses, after mixing them up with nymphs, fauns and centaurs. But amid all the portentous deities, the people of this village have been humbly immortalized—a black slave who behaved like a hero, and many of this island’s fruits, herbs, and animals that the author calls and loves by their names.
(23)
1608: Seville
Mateo Alemán
Mateo Alemán boards the ship that is sailing for Mexico. To travel to the Indies he has bribed the king’s secretary and demonstrated purity of blood.
Jewish on both father’s and mother’s sides, with one relative burned by the Inquisition, Mateo Alemán has invented for himself a super-Christian lineage and an imposing coat of arms and incidentally changed his mistress Francisca de Calderón into his eldest daughter.
The novelist knew how to learn the arts of his character Guzmán de Alfarache, skilled in the business of flamboyant roguery, who changes dress, name, and city to wipe away disgraces and esca
pe from poverty. I must dance to the same tune as all the others, as long as it may last, explains Guzmán de Alfarache in the novel that all Spain is reading.
(6 and 147)
1608: Córdoba
The Inca Garcilaso
At sixty he leans over the table, wets the pen in the horn inkpot, and writes apologetically. He writes a meticulous and handsome prose. He praises the invader in the invader’s tongue, which he has made his own. With one hand he salutes the conquest as the work of Divine Providence: the conquistadors, arms of God, have evangelized the New World, and tragedy has paid the price of salvation. With the other hand, he bids farewell to the kingdom of the Incas, destroyed before it was known, and invokes it with a nostalgia for paradise. One hand belongs to his father, a captain of Pizarro’s. The other to his mother, Atahualpa’s cousin, whom that captain humiliated and threw into the arms of a soldier.
Like America, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega has been born of a rape. Like America, he lives torn to pieces.
Although he has been in Europe for half a century, he still listens, as if they were something recent, to the voices of his childhood in Cuzco, things received in the mantillas and the milk: in that devastated city he came into the world eight years after the Spaniards arrived, and in that city he drank from his mother’s lips the stories that come down from that distant day when the sun dropped over Lake Titicaca the prince and princess born of his loves with the moon.
(76)
1609: Santiago de Chile
How to Behave at the Table
They told him of it this morning when they brought the steaming, aromatic chocolate. At one bound, the governor detached himself from the Holland sheets: The king of Spain has decided to legalize the enslavement of Indians captured in war.
The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 22