The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

  (30)

  1617: London

  Whiffs of Virginia in the London Fog

  Dramatis personae:

  The King (James I of England, VI of Scotland). He has written: Tobacco makes a kitchen of man’s interior parts, dirtying them and infecting them with a sort of oily and greasy soot. He has also written that anyone who smokes imitates the barbarous and beastly manners of the wilde, godlesse, and slavish Indians …

  John Rolfe. English colonist in Virginia. One of the most distinguished members of that peculiar people marked and chosen by the finger of God … for undoubtedly He is with us—as Rolfe himself defines his countrymen. With seeds brought to Virginia from Trinidad, he has produced good mixtures of tobacco on his plantations. Three years ago he sent to London in the hold of the Elizabeth four casks full of leaves, which have launched the recent but already very fruitful tobacco trade with England. It can well be said that John Rolfe has put tobacco on the throne of Virginia, as a queen plant with absolute power. Last year he came to London with Governor Dale, seeking new colonists and new investments for the Virginia Company and promising fabulous profits for its shareholders; for tobacco will be to Virginia what silver is to Peru. He also came to present to King James his wife, the Indian princess Pocahontas, baptized Rebecca.

  Sir Thomas Dale. Governor of Virginia until last year. Authorized the marriage of John Rolfe and Princess Pocahontas, first Anglo-Indian marriage in Virginia’s history, on the understanding that it was an act of high political convenience that would contribute to the peaceful supply of grains and hands by the native population. However, in his request for permission, John Rolfe did not mention this aspect of the affair; nor did he make any mention of love, although he did take pains to deny emphatically any unbridled desire toward his handsome eighteen-year-old fiancée. Rolfe said he wished to wed this pagan whose education hath been rude, her manners barbarous, her generation accursed, … for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my own salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbeleeving creature …”

  Pocahontas. Also known as Matoaka when she lived with the Indians. Favorite daughter of the great chief Powhatan. After marrying Rolfe, renounced idolatry, changed her name to Rebecca, and covered her nudity with English clothes. Wearing crown hats and high lace collars at the neck, she came to London and was received at court. She spoke like an Englishwoman and thought like an Englishwoman; she devoutly shared her husband’s Calvinist faith, and Virginia tobacco found in her the most able and exotic promoter it needed to plant itself in London. She died of an English disease. Sailing down the Thames en route to Virginia, while the ship awaited favorable winds, Pocahontas breathed her last in the arms of John Rolfe at Gravesend in March of this year 1617. She was not yet twenty-one.

  Opechancanough. Uncle of Pocahontas, elder brother of the great chief Powhatan. He gave the bride away in the Protestant church at Jamestown, a bare wooden church, three years ago. Spoke not a word before, during, or after the ceremony, but Pocahontas told Rolfe the story of her uncle. Opechancanough had once lived in Spain and in Mexico; he was then a Christian known as Luis de Velasco, but no sooner was he back in his country than he threw his crucifix, cape, and stole in the fire, cut the throats of the priests who accompanied him, and took back his name of Opechancanough, which in the Algonquin language means he who has a clean soul.

  Some Globe Theatre actor has put this story together and now asks himself, confronting a mug of beer, what he will do with it. Write a love tragedy or a moral play about tobacco and its evil powers? Or perhaps a masquerade with the conquest of America as its theme? The play would have a sure success, because all London is talking about Princess Pocahontas and her fleeting visit here. That woman … a harem all by herself. All London dreams of her nude among the trees, with aromatic flowers in her hair. What avenging angel ran her through with his invisible sword? Did she expiate the sins of her pagan people, or was her death God’s warning to her husband? Tobacco, illegitimate son of Proserpine and Bacchus … Does not Satan protect the mysterious pact between that weed and fire? Smoke that makes the virtuous giddy, isn’t it the breath of Satan? And the hidden lechery of John Rolfe … And the past of Opechancanough, formerly known as Luis de Velasco, traitor or avenger … Opechancanough entering the church with the princess on his arm … Tall, erect, silent …

  “No, no,” concludes the indiscreet hunter of histories as he pays for his beers and walks out into the street, “This story is too good to write. As the gentle Silva, poet of the Indies, used to say: ‘If I write it, what do I have left to tell my friends?’”

  (36, 159, and 207)

  1618: Lima

  Small World

  The owner of Fabiana Criolla has died. In his will he has lowered the price of her freedom from 200 to 150 pesos.

  Fabiana has spent the night without sleeping, wondering how much her guaiacum-wood box full of powdered cinnamon would be worth. She does not know how to add, so she cannot calculate the freedoms she has bought with her work through the half century that she has been in the world, nor the price of the children who have been made on her and taken from her.

  With the first light of dawn, the bird comes and taps its beak on the window. Every day the same bird announces that it is time to wake up and get going.

  Fabiana yawns, sits up on the mat, and inspects her worn-down feet.

  (31)

  1618: Luanda

  Embarcation

  They have been caught in the hunters’ nets and are marching to the coast, tied to each other at the neck, as drums of pain resound in the villages.

  On the African coast, a slave is worth forty glass necklaces or a whistle with a chain or two pistols or a handful of bullets. Muskets and machetes, rum, Chinese silks, or Indian calicoes are paid for with human flesh.

  A monk inspects the column of captives in the main square of the port of Luanda. Each slave receives a pinch of salt on the tongue, a splash of holy water on the head, and a Christian name. Interpreters translate the sermon: Now you are children of God … The priest instructs them not to think about the lands they are leaving and not to eat dog, rat, or horse meat. He reminds them of St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians (Slaves, serve your masters!) and Noah’s curse upon the children of Ham, who remained black through centuries of centuries.

  They see the ocean for the first time, and the enormous, roaring beast terrifies them. They think the whites are taking them to some remote slaughterhouse to eat them and make oil and fat from them. Hippopotamus-hide whips drive them onto enormous canoes that cross the breakers. In the ships they face fore-and-aft guns with lighted fuses. The fetters and chains keep them from throwing themselves into the sea.

  Many will die on the voyage. The survivors will be sold in the markets of America and again branded with hot irons.

  They will never forget their gods. Oxalá, at once man and woman, will be disguised as St. Jerónimo and St. Barbara. Obatalá will be Jesus Christ; and Oshún, spirit of sensuality and fresh waters, will turn into the Virgins of Candelaria, the Conception, Charity, and Pleasures and will be St. Anne in Trinidad. Behind St. George, St. Anthony, and St. Michael will lurk the lances of Ogum, god of war; and inside St. Lazarus, Babalú will sing. The thunders and fires of fearsome Shangó will transfigure St. John the Baptist and St. Barbara. In Cuba, Elegguá will continue having two faces, life and death, and in southern Brazil, Exú will have two heads, God and the Devil, to offer the faithful Solace and vengeance.

  (68, 127, 129, and 160)

  1618: Lima

  Too Dark

  The friends toss back their tattered capes and sweep the ground with their hats. Their respects duly paid, they exchange compliments: “That stump of yours, a bloody marvel!”

  “Your chancre—what a masterpiece!”

  Pursued by flies, they cross the empty lot.

  They talk as they pee, backs to the wind.

  “L
ong time no see.”

  “I been on the run like a fly. Suffering, suffering.”

  “Ay.”

  Lizard takes a crust from his pocket, breathes on it, polishes it, and invites Breadbeggar to be his guest. Seated on a rock, they contemplate the flowers on the thistles.

  Breadbeggar takes a bite with his three teeth and reports: “Up at the courthouse, good handouts … Best damn place in Lima. But the porter threw me out. Kicked me out, he did.”

  “You don’t mean Juan Ochoa?”

  “Satan, more likely name for him. God knows I didn’t do nothing to him.”

  “Juan Ochoa ain’t there no more.”

  “That right?”

  “They chucked him out like a dog. Now he ain’t porter at the courthouse, nor nothing.”

  Breadbeggar, feeling avenged, smiles. He stretches his bare toes.

  “Must’ve been because of his misdeeds.”

  “It wasn’t that.”

  “Because he was too stupid, then?”

  “No, no. Because he’s the son of a mulatto and grandson of a nigger. Too bloody dark.”

  (31)

  1620: Madrid

  The Devil’s Dances Come from America

  Thanks to the corpse of St. Isidro, which slept beside him for the past few nights, King Philip III feels better. This noon he ate and drank without choking. His favorite dishes lit up his eyes, and he emptied the wineglass at a gulp.

  Now he moistens his fingers in the bowl offered by a kneeling page. The pantryman reaches out the napkin to the majordomo of the week. The majordomo of the week passes it to the chief majordomo. The chief majordomo bows to the duke of Uceda. The duke takes the napkin. Bowing his head, he holds it out to the king. While the king dries his hands, the trencherman brushes crumbs from his clothes, and the priest offers God a prayer of thanks.

  Philip yawns, loosens his high lace collar, asks what is the news.

  The duke reports that the Hospital Board people have come to the palace. They complain that the public refuses to go to the theater since the king banned dances; and the hospitals live from the takings of the comedies. “Sir,” the board people have told the duke, “since there have been no dances there have been no takings. The sick are dying. We have nothing to pay for bandages and doctors.” Actors recite verses by Lope de Vega extolling the American Indian:

  Taquitán mitanacuní,

  Spaniard from here to there.

  … In Spain there is no love

  so it seems to me:

  there selfishness is king

  here love’s the thing.

  But what the public wants from America are the kind of salty songs and dances that set the most respectable folk on fire. No use for the actors to make the stones weep and the dead laugh, nor for proscenium arts to draw lightning out of cardboard clouds. “If the theaters stay empty,” say the board people, groaning, “the hospitals will have to close.”

  “I told them,” says the duke, “Your Highness would decide.”

  Philip scratches his chin, investigates his nails.

  “If Your Majesty has not changed his mind … What is banned is banned and well banned.”

  The saraband and chaconne dances make sex shine in the dark. Father Mariana has denounced these dances, inventions of negroes and American savages, infernal in words and in movements. Even in processions their couplets eulogizing sin are heard; and when their lascivious tambourine and castanet rhythms burst forth, the very nuns in the convents can no longer control their feet and the Devil’s ticklings galvanize their hips and bellies.

  The king’s eyes are following the flight of a big, lazy fly among the remains of the banquet. “You—what do you think?” the king asks the fly.

  The duke thinks he is being addressed: “These clownish dances are music for a witches’ sabbath, as Your Majesty has well said, and the place for witches is in the bonfires in the central plaza.”

  The goodies have disappeared from the table, but the smell sticks in the air.

  Babbling, the king orders the fly: “You decide.”

  “Your Majesty’s worst enemy couldn’t accuse you of intolerance,” insists the duke. “Your Majesty has been indulgent. In the time of the king your father, whom God keeps in glory …”

  “Aren’t you the one in command?” babbles Philip.

  “… anyone who dared to dance the saraband got a different reward. Two hundred lashes and a dose of the galleys!”

  “You, I say,” whispers the king and closes his eyes.

  “You”—and a gob of foam, saliva that his mouth always produces to excess, appears on his lips.

  The duke smells a protest and immediately shuts up and withdraws on tiptoe.

  Drowsiness overtakes Philip, heavy eyelids, and he dreams of a plump, nude woman who devours playing cards.

  (186)

  2622: Seville

  Rats

  Father Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, newly arrived from America, is the guest of honor.

  While the servants serve slices of turkey with sauce, foamy waves break in the air; a high, white sea maddened by storm; and when the stuffed chickens come on, tropical rains explode over the table. Father Antonio relates that on the Caribbean coast it rains so hard that women become pregnant and their children are born waiting for it to stop; by the time it clears, they are already grown up.

  The other guests, captives of the story and the banquet, eat and are silent; the priest has his mouth full of words and forgets the dishes. From the floor, seated on hassocks, children and women listen as if at Mass.

  The crossing from the Honduran port of Trujillo to Sanlúcar de Barrameda has been quite a feat. The ships proceeded bump by bump, tormented by squalls; several ships were swallowed by the angry sea, and many sailors by sharks. But nothing was worse, and Father Antonio’s voice lowers, nothing was worse than the rats.

  In punishment for the many sins committed in America, and because no one bothers with confession and Communion as they should before going aboard, God filled the ships with rats. He put them in the storage holds among the victuals, and beneath the quarterdeck; in the stern saloon, in the cabins, and even on the pilot’s seat; so many rats, and such big ones, that they aroused fear and admiration. Four quintals of bread the rats stole from the cabin where the priest slept, plus the biscuits that were under the hatchway. They wolfed the hams and the sides of bacon in the stern storechest. When thirsty passengers went looking for water, they found drowned rats floating in the containers. When hungry ones went to the hen coop, all they found were bones and feathers and perhaps one sprawling chicken with its feet gnawed off. Not even the parrots in their cages escaped. Sailors kept watch over the remaining water and food night and day, armed with clubs and knives, and the rats attacked them and bit their hands and ate each other.

  Between olive and fruit courses, the rats have arrived. The desserts are intact. No one touches a drop of wine.

  “Would you like to hear the new prayers I composed? Since old ones just didn’t placate the wrath of the Lord …”

  No one answers.

  The men cough, raising napkins to mouths. The women who were on their feet giving orders to the servants have all disappeared. Those listening from the floor are cross-eyed and open-mouthed. The children see Father Antonio with long snout, enormous teeth, and mustachio and twist their necks looking for his tail under the table.

  (201)

  1624: Lima

  People for Sale

  “Walk!”

  “Run!”

  “Sing!”

  “What blemishes does he have?”

  “Open that mouth!”

  “Is he drunk, or just cantankerous?”

  “How much do you offer, sir?”

  “And diseases?”

  “He’s worth twice that!”

  “Run!”

  “Better not cheat me, or I’ll bring him back.”

  “Jump, you dog!”

  “You don’t get goods like that for not
hing.”

  “Make him lift up his arms!”

  “Make him sing good and loud!”

  “This woman, with kids or without?”

  “Let’s see her teeth!”

  They pull them by one ear. The buyer’s name will be marked on the cheeks or forehead, and they will be work tools on the plantations, fisheries, and mines, or weapons of war on the battle-fields. They will be midwives and wet nurses, giving life, and executioners and gravediggers taking it. They will be minstrels and bed-flesh.

  The slave corral is right in the center of Lima, but the town council has just voted to move it. The blacks on offer will be lodged in a barracoon the other side of the Rímac River, beside the San Lázaro slaughterhouse. There they will be far enough from the city for the winds to carry off their rotten and contagious vapors.

  (31 and 160)

  1624: Lima

  Black Flogs Black

  Three African slaves have paraded the streets of Lima with bound hands and a rope around their necks. The executioners, also black, walked behind. At every few steps, a stroke of the lash, up to a total of a hundred; and when they fell down, extra lashes as a dividend.

  The mayor gave the order. The slaves had brought playing cards into the cathedral cemetery, turning it into a gambling den, using gravestones as tables; and the mayor well knew that the lesson would not be lost on the blacks in general who have become so insolent and so numerous, and so addicted to making trouble.

  Now the three lie in the patio of their master’s house. Their backs are raw flesh. They howl as their wounds are washed with urine and rum.

  Their master curses the mayor, shakes his fist, vows vengeance. One just doesn’t play such games with other people’s property.

  (31)

  1624: Lima

  The Devil at Work