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

by Eduardo Galeano

The moon shines bright as the church bells announce one o’clock. Don Juan de Mogrovejo de la Cerda leaves the tavern and starts walking through the orange-blossom-scented Lima night.

  At the Bargain Street intersection he hears strange voices or echoes; he stops and cups his ear.

  A certain Asmodeo is saying that he has moved several times since his ship sailed from Seville. On arriving at Portobello he inhabited the bodies of various merchants who call dirty tricks “deals” and robbery “business.’ and a picklock a measuring stick: and in Panama he lived in a phony gentleman with a false name, who knew by heart how to act like a duke, the routine of a marquis, and the litanies of a count …

  “Tell me, Asmodeo. Did this character observe the rules of modern gentry?”

  “All of them, Amonio. He lied and never paid debts nor bothered himself with the Sixth Commandment; he always got up late, talked during Mass, and felt cold the whole time, which is said to be in the best of taste. Just think how hard it is to feel cold in Panama, which makes a good try at being our hell. In Panama the stones sweat and people say: ‘Hurry up with the soup, it’ll get hot.’”

  The indiscreet Don Juan de Mogrovejo de la Cerda cannot see either Asmodeo or Amonio, who are talking at some distance, but he knows that such names do not occur in the Lives of the Saints, and the unmistakable smell of sulphur in the air is enough to get the drift of this eloquent conversation. Don Juan flattens his back against the tall cross at the Bargain Street intersection, whose shadow falls across the street to keep Amonio and Asmodeo at a distance; he crosses himself and invokes a whole squadron of saints to protect and save him. But pray he cannot, for he wants to listen. He is not going to lose a word of this.

  Asmodeo says that he left the body of that gentleman to enter a renegade clergyman and then, en route to Peru, found a home in the entrails of a devout lady who specialized in selling girls.

  “So I got to Lima, and your advice about operating in its labyrinths would be most helpful. Tell me what goes on in these provincial wilds … Are. the fortunes here honestly won?”

  “If they were, it would be less crowded in hell.”

  “What’s the best way of tempting the businessmen:’”

  “Just put them in business and leave them to it.”

  “Do people here feel love or respect for their superiors?”

  “Fear.”

  “So what do they have to do to get ahead?”

  “Not deserve to.”

  Don Juan invokes the Virgin of Atocha, searches for the rosary he has forgotten, and clutches the handle of his sword as the questioning and Amonio’s quick answers proceed.

  “About the ones who presume to be the best people, tell me, do they dress well?”

  “They could, considering how busy they keep the tailors all year round.”

  “Do they grumble a lot?”

  “In Lima it’s always time for beefing.”

  “Now tell me, why do they call all the Franciscos Panchos, all the Luises Luchos, and all the Isabelas Chabelas?”

  “First to avoid telling the truth, and second so as not to name saints.”

  An inopportune fit of coughing attacks Don Juan at that moment. He hears shouts of “Let’s go! Let’s be off!” and after a long silence he detaches himself from the protecting cross. Shaking at the knees, he moves on toward Merchant Street and the Provincia gates. Of the garrulous pair, not a puff of smoke remains.

  (57)

  1624: Seville

  Last Chapter of the “Life of the Scoundrel”

  The river reflects the man who interrogates it.

  “So what do I do with my crook? Do I kill him off?’

  From the stone wharf his ill-fitting boots go into a dance on the Guadalquivir. This guy has the habit of shaking his feet when he is thinking.

  “I have to decide. I was the one who created him the son of a barber and a witch and nephew of a hangman. I crowned him prince of the underworld of lice, beggars, and gallows-fodder.”

  His spectacles shine in the greenish waters, fixed on the depths as he fires his questions: “What do I do? I taught him to steal chickens and implore alms for the sake of the wounds of Christ. From me he learned his trickery at dice and cards and fencing. With my arts he became a nuns’ Don Juan and a notorious clown.

  Francisco de Quevedo wrinkles his nose to keep his spectacles up. “It’s my decision, and I must make it. There never was a novel in all literature that didn’t have a last chapter.”

  He cranes his neck toward the galleons that lower their sails as they approach the docks.

  “Nobody has suffered with him more than I have. Didn’t I make his hunger my own when his belly groaned and not even explorers could find any eyes in his head? If Don Pablos has to die, I ought to kill him. Like me, he is a cinder left over from the flames.”

  From far off, a ragged lad stares at the gentleman who is scratching his head and leaning over the river. “Some old hag,” the boy thinks. “Some crazy old hag trying to fish without a hook.”

  And Quevedo thinks: “Kill him? Doesn’t everyone know it’s bad luck to break mirrors? Kill him. Suppose I make the crime a just punishment for his evil life? A small dividend for the inquisitors and censors! Just thinking about their pleasure turns my stomach.”

  A flight of sea gulls explodes. A ship from America is weighing anchor. With a jump, Quevedo starts walking. The lad follows him, imitating his bowlegged gait.

  The writer’s face glows. He has found on the decks the appropriate fate for his character. He will send Don Pablos, the scoundrel, to the Indies. Where but in America could his days end? His novel has a denouement, and Quevedo plunges abstractedly into this city of Seville, where men dream of voyages and women of homecomings.

  (183)

  1624: Mexico City

  A River of Anger

  The multitude, covering all of the central plaza and neighboring streets, hurls curses and rocks at the viceroy’s palace. Paving stones and yells of Traitor! Thief! Dog! Judas! break against tightly closed shutters and portals. Insults to the viceroy mix with cheers for the archbishop, who has excommunicated him for speculating with the bread of this city. For some time the viceroy has been hoarding all the corn and wheat in his private granaries, and playing with prices at his whim. The crowd is steaming. Hang him! Beat him up! Beat him to death! Some demand the head of the officer who has profaned the Church by dragging out the archbishop; others want to lynch Mejia, who fronts for the viceroy’s business deals; and everybody wants to fry the hoarding viceroy in oil.

  Pikes, sticks, and halberds rise above heads; pistol and musket shots ring out. Invisible hands hoist the king’s pennon on the roof of the palace, and trumpets wail for help; but no one comes to defend the cornered viceroy. The realm’s top people have shut themselves in their palaces, and the judges and officials have slipped away through crannies. No soldier is obeying orders.

  The walls of the prison on the corner do not resist the attack. The inmates join the furious tide. The palace portals fall, fire consumes the doors, and the mob invades the rooms, a hurricane that pulls draperies off the walls, breaks open chests, and devours whatever it meets.

  The viceroy, disguised as a monk, has fled through a secret tunnel to the San Francisco monastery.

  (72)

  1625: Mexico City

  How Do You Like Our City?

  Father Thomas Gage, newly arrived, amuses himself on the Alameda promenade. With hungry eyes he watches the ladies float along beneath the tunnel of tall trees. None wears her fichu or mantilla below the waist, the better to show off swaying hips and a pretty walk; and behind each lady comes a retinue of flashy black and mulatto women, their breasts peeping from their décolletage. Fire and fun, they wear roses on their extra-high-heeled shoes, and amorous words are embroidered on the silk bands around their foreheads.

  On an Indian’s back the priest arrives at the palace.

  The viceroy offers him pineapple preserve and hot chocolate and asks ho
w he likes the city.

  In the middle of Father Gage’s eulogy of Mexico, its women, carriages, and avenues, the host interrupts: “Do you know that I saved my life by a hair? And a baldpate’s hair at that …”

  From the viceroy’s mouth bursts a torrential account of last year’s uprising.

  After much smoke and blood and two helpings of chocolate drained sip by sip, Father Gage learns that the viceroy has spent a year in the San Francisco monastery and still cannot put his nose outside the palace without risking a hail of stones. However, the rebellious archbishop is suffering the punishment of exile in remote, miserable Zamora, a few priests have been sent to row in the galleys, and the hanging of three or four agitators sufficed to crush the insolence of the hoi polloi.

  “If it were up to me, I’d hang the lot,” says the viceroy. He rises from his chair, proclaims: “Yes, the lot! The whole of this damned city!” and sits down again. “These are lands always ready for rebellion,” he breathes. “I have cleaned the bandits off the roads of Mexico!”

  Confidentially, stretching his neck, he adds: “D’you know something? The children of Spaniards, the ones born here … Who was at the head of the mob? It was them! The Creoles! They think the country belongs to them, they want to rule …”

  Father Gage stares with the eyes of a mystic at the heavy crystal candelabrum that threatens his head and says: “They give grave offense to God. A second Sodom … I saw it with my own eyes this evening. Worldly delights …”

  The viceroy nods confirmation.

  “For they shall soon be cut down like the grass.” The priest passes sentence. “They shall wither as the green herb.”

  He takes the last sip of chocolate.

  “Psalm Thirty-seven,” he adds, gently resting the little cup on his plate.

  (72)

  1625: Samayac

  Indian Dances Banned in Guatemala

  The monks proclaim that no memory or trace remains of the rites and ancient customs of the Verapaz region, but the town criers grow hoarse proclaiming the succession of edicts of prohibition.

  Juan Maldonado, judge of the Royal Audiencia, now issues in the town of Samayac new ordinances against dances injurious to the Indians’ consciences and to the keeping of the Christian law they profess, because such dances bring to mind ancient sacrifices and rites and are an offense to Our Lord. The Indians squander money on feathers, dresses, and masks and lose much time in rehearsals and drinking bouts, which keep them from reporting for work at the haciendas, paying their tribute, and maintaining their households.

  Anyone dancing the tun will get a hundred lashes. In the tun, the Indians have a pact with demons. The tun, or Rabinal Achí, is a fertility dance dramatized with words and masks, and the tun is also the hollow log whose beat is accompanied by long, resonant trumpets as the drama of the son of the Quichés, prisoner of the Rabinals, proceeds: The victors sing and dance in homage to the greatness of the vanquished, who says a dignified farewell to his land and mounts to the stake at which he will be sacrificed.

  (3)

  1626: Potosí

  A Wrathful God

  The lake stampedes, smashes the dike, and invades the city. Many are ground to pieces by the flood. Mules drag bits of people out of the mud. A mixture of Spaniards, Creoles, mestizos, and Indians ends up in common graves. Potosí’s houses look like broken corpses.

  The fury of Lake Caricari does not abate until priests parade the Christ of the True Cross through the streets. When they see the procession approaching, the waters halt.

  From the pulpits of all Peru the same sermons are heard in these days: “Sinners! How long will you play games with the mercy of the Lord? God has infinite patience. How long, sinners? Have not the warnings and punishments been enough?”

  In these broad and opulent realms, the bursting of Potosí’s lake is nothing new. Forty-five years ago a huge rock plunged suddenly onto a community of Indian sorcerers in Achocalla, a few leagues from the city of La Paz. The only survivor was the chief, who was struck dumb and told the story by signs. Another immense rock buried a community of heretical Indians shortly afterward in Yanaoca, near Cuzco. In the following year, the earth opened and swallowed men and houses in Arequipa; and as the city had not learned the lesson, the earth showed its fangs a little later and left nothing standing except the San Francisco monastery. In 1586, the ocean overwhelmed the city of San Marcos de Arica and all its harbors and beaches.

  When the new century began, the Ubinas volcano blew up. Its anger was such that the ashes crossed the cordillera by land and reached the coasts of Nicaragua by sea.

  Two warning stars appeared in this sky in 1617. They would not go away. Finally they moved into the distance thanks to the sacrifices and promises of the faithful all over Peru, who prayed five novenas without a stop.

  (142)

  1628: Chiapas

  Chocolate and the Bishop

  He doesn’t put in black pepper, as do those who suffer from chills on the liver. He doesn’t add corn, because it bloats. He generously sprinkles cinnamon, which empties the bladder, improves the sight, and strengthens the heart; nor does he spare the hot, well-ground-up chilis. He adds orange-blossom water, white sugar, and achiote spice to give color, and never forgets the handful of anise, two of vanilla, and the powdered Alexandria rose.

  Father Thomas Gage adores well-prepared foamy chocolate. If not dunked in chocolate, sweets and marzipans have no flavor. He needs a cup of chocolate at midmorning to keep going, another after dinner to get up from the table, and another to stretch out the night and keep drowsiness at bay.

  Since he arrived in Chiapas, however, he hasn’t touched it. His belly protests; but Father Thomas prefers living badly between dizziness and faintings if it avoids the fate that killed Bishop Bernardo de Salazar.

  Until recently, the ladies of this city would go to Mass with a retinue of pages and maids who, in addition to carrying the velvet hassock, brought along a brazier, boiler, and cup to prepare chocolate. Having delicate stomachs, the ladies couldn’t endure the ordeal of a prayer service without the hot elixir, still less a High Mass. So it was, until Bishop Bernardo de Salazar decided to ban the custom because of all the confusion and hubbub it caused it in the church.

  The ladies took revenge. One morning the bishop turned up dead in his office. At his feet, broken in pieces, the cup of chocolate that someone had served him.

  (72)

  1628: Madrid

  Blue Blood for Sale

  Off the coast of Matanzas, in Cuba, the Spanish fleet has fallen into the hands of the pirate Piet Heyn. All the silver coming from Mexico and Peru will end up in Holland. In Amsterdam, Heyn gets promoted to grand admiral, and a national hero’s welcome is prepared for him. From now on, Dutch children will sing:

  Piet Heyn, Piet Heyn

  Short is your name

  but long is your fame.

  In Madrid, heads are clutched. Of the royal treasure, only a hole remains.

  The king decides, among other emergency measures, to put new noble titles on the market. Nobility is granted for distinguished deeds. And what deed more distinguished than having the money to pay for it? For four thousand ducats, any plebeian can wake up a noble of ancient lineage; and he who last night was the son of a Jew or grandson of a Muslim can start the day with pure blood.

  But secondhand titles can be had cheaper. Castile has plenty of nobles who would go around with their arses in the air if their capes didn’t cover them, gentlemen of illusory grandeur who live brushing invisible crumbs from their jerkins and mustaches: they are offering to the highest bidder the right to use the Don, which is all they have left.

  Those who have come down in the world have in common with those who ride in silver carriages only a sense of honor and nostalgia for glory, a horror of work—begging is less unworthy— and a disgust for bathing, which is a custom of Moors, foreign to the Catholic religion, and frowned on by the Inquisition.

  (64 and 218)

 
; Song About the Indies Hand, Sung in Spain

  To Ronda one goes for pears,

  for apples to Argonales,

  to the Indies for money

  and to the Sierra for follies.

  My husband went to the Indies

  his poverty to end:

  came back with a lot to tell me,

  but precious little to spend.

  My husband went to the Indies

  and brought me back a dirk

  with an inscription on it that tells you:

  “If you want to eat, work.”

  The men go off to the Indies,

  to the Indies for a golden lark.

  Right here they have the Indies,

  if they only wanted to work!

  (19)

  1629: Las Cangrejeras

  Bascuñán

  His head creaks and hurts. Stretched out in the mud amid the pile of dead, Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán opens his eyes. The world is a mess of blood and mud, riddled with rain, which whirls and bounces and splashes and whirls.

  Indians throw themselves on him. They tear off his armor and his iron helmet, dented by the blow that knocked him out, and jerkily strip him naked. Francisco manages to cross himself before they tie him to a tree.

  The storm lashes his face. The world stops spinning. A voice from inside tells him through the yells of the Araucanians: “You are in a swamp in the Chilián region in your land of Chile. This rain is what dampened your powder. This wind is what blew out your fuses. You lost. Listen to the Indians who are arguing about your death.”

  Francisco mutters a last prayer.

  Suddenly a gust of colored feathers bursts through the rain. The Araucanians make way for the white horse that charges up spurting fire from its nostrils and foam from its mouth. The rider, masked by a helmet, sharply reins in his horse. The horse rears up on two legs before Maulicán, winner of the battle. Everyone falls silent.