For the Indians, herbs speak, have sex, and cure. It is little plants, aided by the human word, that pull sickness from the body, reveal mysteries, straighten out destinies, and provoke love or forgetfulness. These voices of earth sound like voices of hell to seventeenth-century Spain, busy with inquisitions and exorcisms, which relies for cures on the magic of prayer, conjurations, and talismans even more than on syrups, purges, and bleedings.
(4)
1655: San Miguel de Nepantla
Juana at Four
Juana goes about constantly chatting with her soul, which is her internal companion as she walks on the bank of the stream. She feels all the happier because she has the hiccups, and Juana grows when she has the hiccups. She stops and looks at her shadow, which grows with her, and measures it with a branch after each little jump of her tummy. The volcanos also grew with the hiccups when they were alive, before their own fire burned them up. Two of the volcanos are still smoking, but they don’t have the hiccups now. They don’t grow anymore. Juana has the hiccups and grows. She gets bigger.
Crying, on the other hand, makes you smaller. For that reason old women and the mourners at funerals are the size of cockroaches. That isn’t in her grandfather’s books, which Juana reads, but she knows. These are things she knows from talking so much to her soul. Juana also talks to the clouds. To talk to the clouds you have to climb the hills or to the top branches of the trees.
“I am a cloud. We clouds have faces and hands. No feet.”
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1656: Santiago de la Vega
Gage
In a hammock stretched between two palms, the Anglican clergyman Thomas Gage dies in Jamaica.
Since the old days when he roamed the lands of America in a Catholic friar’s cassock, preaching and spying and enjoying the chocolate and guava desserts, he dreamed of being the first English viceroy of Mexico. Back in London he switched sects and convinced Lord Cromwell that it was necessary and possible to fit out a good fleet to conquer the Spanish colonies.
Last year, Admiral William Penn’s troops invaded the island of Jamaica. England seized from Spain the first bit of its American empire, and the inheritors of Columbus, marquises of Jamaica, lost the best of their revenues. Then the Reverend Thomas Gage delivered a patriotic Protestant sermon from the pulpit of the largest church in Santiago de la Vega, while the Spanish governor came in the arms of his slaves to surrender his sword.
(145)
1658: San Miguel de Nepantla
Juana at Seven
She sees her mother coming in the mirror and drops the sword, which falls with a bang like a gunshot, and Juana gives such a start that her whole face disappears beneath the broad-brimmed hat.
“I’m not playing,” she says angrily as her mother laughs. She frees herself from the hat and shows her mustachios drawn with soot. Juana’s feet move awkwardly in the enormous leather boots; she trips and falls and kicks in the air, humiliated, furious; her mother cannot stop laughing.
“I’m not playing,” Juana protests, with tears in her eyes. “I’m a man! I’ll go to the university, because I’m a man!”
The mother strokes her head. “My crazy daughter, my lovely Juana. I ought to whip you for these indecencies.”
She sits beside her and says softly: “Better you were born stupid, my poor know-it-all daughter,” and caresses her while Juana soaks her grandfather’s huge cape with tears.
(16 and 75)
Juana Dreams
She wanders through the market of dreams. The market women have spread out dreams on big cloths on the ground.
Juana’s grandfather arrives at the market, very sad because he has not dreamed for a long time. Juana takes him by the hand and helps him select dreams, dreams of marzipan or of cotton, wings to fly with in sleep, and they take off together so loaded down with dreams that no night will be long enough for them.
(16 and 75)
1663: Old Guatemala
Enter the Printing Press
Bishop Payo Enríquez de Ribera is one of the most fervent advocates of forced labor for Indians. Without the allotments of Indians, the bishop reasons, who will cultivate the fields? And if nobody cultivates the fields, who will cultivate souls?
When the bishop is preparing a document on the subject, he receives from Puebla the first printing press to reach Guatemala. The learned spiritual head of this diocese has had it brought with cases of type, typography and all, so that his theological treatise Explicatio Apologetica may be printed here.
The first book published in Guatemala is not written in Mayan or in Castilian but in Latin.
(135)
1663: The Banks of the Paraíba River
Freedom
The hounds’ baying and the slave-hunters’ trumpeting have long since faded away. The fugitive crosses a field of stubble, fierce stubble higher than himself, and runs toward the river.
He throws himself on the grass, face down, arms open, legs wide apart. He hears the accomplice voices of grasshoppers and cicadas and little frogs. “I am not a thing. My history is not the history of things.” He kisses the earth, bites it. “I got my foot out of the trap. I’m not a thing.” He presses his naked body to the dew-soaked ground and hears the sound of small plants coming through the earth, eager to be born. He is mad with hunger, and for the first time hunger gives him happiness. His body is covered with cuts, and he does not feel it. He turns toward the sky as if embracing it. The moon rises and strikes him, violent blows of light, lashes of light from the full moon and the juicy stars, and he gets up and looks for his direction.
Now for the jungle. Now for the great screen of greenness.
“You heading for Palmares, too?” the fugitive asks an ant crawling up his hand. “Guide me.”
(43)
Song of Palmares
Rest, black man.
The white doesn’t come here.
If he comes,
the devil will take him.
Rest, black man.
The white doesn’t come here.
If he comes, he’ll leave
with a taste of our cudgels.
(69)
1663: Serra da Barriga
Palmares
On some nights when there is lightning, the incandescent crest of this mountain range can be seen from the Alagoas coast. In its foothills the Portuguese have exterminated the Caeté Indians, whom the pope had excommunicated in perpetuity for eating the first Brazilian bishop; and this is where fugitive black slaves have found refuge, for the last many years, in the hidden villages of Palmares.
Each community is a fortress. Beyond the high wooden palisades and the pointed-stake traps lie vast planted fields. The farmers work with their weapons within reach; and at night, when they return to the citadel, they count bodies in case anyone is missing.
Here they have two harvests of corn a year, and also beans, manioc, sugar, potatoes, tobacco, vegetables, and fruits; and they raise pigs and chickens. The blacks of Palmares eat much more and better than the people of the coast, where all-devouring sugarcane, produced for Europe, usurps all of everyone’s time and space.
As in Angola, the palm is king in these black communities: with its fiber they weave clothing, baskets, and fans; the fronds serve as roof and bed; from the fruit, the flesh is eaten, wine is made, and oil for lighting is extracted; from the husk, cooking fat and smoking pipes are made. As in Angola, the chiefs perform the noble office of blacksmith, and the forge occupies the place of honor in the plaza where the people have their assemblies.
But Angola is multiple; still more Africa as a whole. The Palmarians come from a thousand regions and a thousand languages. Their only common tongue is the one heard from the mouths of the masters, accompanying lash-delivered orders on slave ships and in canefields. Sprinkled with African and Guaraní words, the Portuguese language is now a bond of communication for those it formerly humiliated.
Folga nêgo.
Branco não vem cá
Since t
he Dutch were expelled from Pernambuco, the Portuguese have launched more than twenty military expeditions against this land of the free. An informant writes from Brazil to Lisbon: Our army, which could tame the pride of Holland, has produced no result against those barbarians on its many and frequent incursions into Palmares …
The Dutch had no better luck. Its expeditions, too, were without glory. Both Dutch and Portuguese have burned down empty villages and gotten lost in the thickets, turning this way and that like madmen in the violent rains. Both have made war against a shadow, a shadow that bites and runs; and each time they have claimed victory. Neither has succeeded in crushing Palmares nor in stopping the flight of slaves who leave King Sugar and his court without labor, although the Dutch crucified rebellious blacks and the Portuguese flog and mutilate to instill fear and set an example.
One of the Portuguese expeditions against Palmares has just returned, empty-handed, to Recife. It was headed by a black captain, Gonçalo Rebelo, who had two hundred black soldiers under his command. They cut the throats of the few prisoners they could take.
(69)
1665: Madrid
Charles II
The new monarch rocks and weeps. They hold him up from behind with braces tied to armpits and waist. At four, he does not know how to talk or walk, and they have to tear him from the nipples of his fourteen wet nurses to sit him on the throne of Spain.
He weeps because the crown, slipping down over his eyes, hurts him, and because he wants to go back to play with the elves and drink the warm milk of the fairies.
The weakling survives by a miracle, or thanks to the fact that they never bathed him even when he was born, although his head and neck are covered with purulent scabs. (Nobody bathes at the court, ever since Domingo Centurión died of a cold nine years ago.)
“Arrorró,” babbles the king and cradles his foot against his ear.
(201)
1666: New Amsterdam
New York
With a few shots from their guns the English bring down the flag that waves over the fortress and seize the island of Manhattan from the Dutch, who had bought it from the Delaware Indians for sixty florins.
Recalling the arrival of the Dutch over half a century ago, the Delawares say: The great man wanted only a little, little land, on which to raise greens for his soup, just as much as a bullock’s hide would cover. Here we first might have observed their deceitful spirit.
New Amsterdam, the most important slave market in North America, now becomes New York; and Wall Street is named after the wall built to stop blacks from escaping.
(136)
1666: London
The White Servants
Three ships full of white servants slip down the Thames toward the sea. When they open their hatches in the remote island of Barbados, the living will go to the sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations and the dead to the bottom of the bay.
Spirits they call the traffickers in white servants, very skilled in the magic of evaporating people: They send to the Antilles whores and vagabonds kidnapped in the poor quarters of London, young Catholics hunted down in Ireland and Scotland, and prisoners awaiting the gallows in the Brixton jail for having killed a rabbit on private property. Stored under lock and key in the holds of the ships, the drunks captured on the docks wake up; with them on the voyage to the Americas are some lads lured by sweets, and many adventurers deceived by the promise of easy fortunes. Over there on the plantations of Barbados or Jamaica or Virginia, the juice will be squeezed from them until they have paid their price and the price of the passage.
The white servants dream of becoming owners of land and blacks. When they recover their freedom, after years of hard penitence and unpaid toil, the first thing they do is buy a Negro to fan them in the siesta hour.
There are forty thousand African slaves in Barbados. Births are registered in the plantation account books. At birth, a little Negro is worth half a pound sterling.
(11 and 224)
1666: Tortuga Island
The Pirates’ Devotions
Jean David Nau, known as El Olonés, has just sacked Remedios and Maracaibo. His cutlass has made mincemeat of many Spaniards. Due to the weight of the stolen wealth, his frigates return at half speed.
El Olonés lands. Between his boots, his one friend and confidant, companion of his adventures and misadventures, wags his tail and barks. Behind comes a pack of men newly released from the spider web of the rigging, hungry for taverns and women and solid ground underfoot.
On these sands hot enough to boil turtles’ eggs, the pirates stand in silence through a long Mass. Patched-up bodies, jackets stiff with filth, greasy prophets’ beards, faces like knives notched by the years: If anyone dares to cough or laugh during the Mass, they fell him with a shot and cross themselves. Each pirate is an arsenal. At his waist, four knives and a bayonet in alligator-hide sheaths, and two naked pistols, boarding sword knocking against the knee, musket slung across his chest.
After Mass, the booty is divided. First, the mutilated. Whoever has lost his right arm gets six hundred pesos or six slaves. The left arm is worth five hundred pesos or five slaves, which is also the price of either of the legs. Anyone who left an eye or a finger on the coasts of Cuba or Venezuela has the right to a hundred pesos or one slave.
They stretch out the day’s work with long drafts of spiced rum and end it with the turtle barbecue grand finale. Beneath the sand and covered with embers, the chopped turtle meat has been slowly baked in its shell with egg yolks and spices—the supreme party dish of these islands. The pirates light their pipes reclining on the sand, and abandon themselves to smoke and nostalgia.
When night falls, they cover with pearls the body of a mulatto woman and whisper horror stories and marvels to her, tales of hangings and boardings and treasure, and swear into her ear that they won’t be sailing again soon. They drink and love without removing their boots: boots that tomorrow will polish the stones of the port, seeking a ship for another raid.
(61 and 65)
1667: Mexico City
Juana at Sixteen
In ships, the bell marks off the quarter hours of the watches. In mines and canefields, it summons Indian serfs and black slaves to work. In churches, it marks the hours and announces Masses, deaths, and fiestas.
But in the tower over the palace of the viceroy of Mexico there is a silent bell. It is said that inquisitors took it from the bell tower of an old Spanish village, removed the clapper, and expatriated it to the Indies no one knows how many years back. Ever since the maestro Rodrigo constructed it in 1530, this bell had always been clean and obedient. They say it had three hundred tones, according to the bell ringer’s whim, and the whole village was proud of it. Until one night its long and violent pealing made everybody jump out of bed. The bell was sounding the alarm, unleashed by fear or joy or who knows what, and for the first time no one understood it. A crowd gathered in the atrium as the bell pealed madly on, and the mayor and the priest went up to the tower and, frozen with fear, confirmed that no one was there. No human hand moved it. The authorities took the case to the Inquisition. The Holy Office tribunal declared the pealing of the bell to be totally null and void, and it was silenced forever and exiled to Mexico.
Juana Inés de Asbaje walks out of the palace of her protector, the viceroy Mancera, and crosses the great plaza followed by two Indians who carry her trunks. Reaching the corner, she stops and looks back at the tower, as if called by the voiceless bell. She knows its history. She knows that it was punished for singing all on its own.
Juana heads for the Santa Teresa la Antigua convent. She will no longer be a lady of the court. In the serene light of the cloister and the solitude of a cell she will seek what she cannot find outside. She would have liked to study the mysteries of the world at the university, but women are born condemned to the embroidery frame and the husband chosen for them. Juana Inés de Asbaje will become a barefoot Carmelite and will call herself Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
/> (58 and 213)
1668: Tortuga Island
The Dogs
No Indians remain in this islet north of Haiti. But the dogs brought by the Spaniards to hunt them down and punish them stay on. The mastiffs, which have multiplied and go about in packs devouring wild boars, dispute the dominion of this land with French corsairs. Night after night their howls are heard from the thickets. Within their ramparts, the pirates tremble in their sleep.
Tortuga Island belongs to the enterprise created by French minister Colbert to run the slave traffic and piracy. The enterprise has named Bertrand d’Ogeron as governor, a gentleman of shining prestige among buccaneers and freebooters.
From France the governor brings a cargo of poison. It will be used to kill a few horses whose bodies will be spread about the island, bellies full of venom. This way he expects to put an end to the threat of the wild dogs.
(65)
1669: Town of Gibraltar
All the Wealth in the World
Henry Morgan’s men keep scratching along the shores of Lake Maracaibo, seeking the buried treasure that El Olonés could not take with him. For all the time and effort invested, El Olonés did not have days long enough nor ships’ holds big enough to load it.
After the usual cannonade, the landing. The pirates jump from their skiffs and enter the smoking village with drawn swords.
No one there, nothing there.
In the middle of the plaza, a tattered lad receives them, laughing. The enormous hat that covers his eyes has a broken brim hanging down over his shoulder.
“Secret! Secret!” he cries. He moves his arms like a windmill, beating off imaginary flies, and never stops laughing.
The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind Page 29