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

by Eduardo Galeano

  THE CONFESSOR (pointing at Sister Juana with a wooden cross): Ingrate!

  SISTER JUANA (her eyes fixed on the Christ over the prosecutors’ heads): Indeed I repay badly the generosity of God. I only study to see whether studying will make me less ignorant, and I direct my footsteps toward the summits of Holy Theology; but I have studied many things and learned nothing, or almost nothing. The divine truths remain far from me, always far … I sometimes feel them to be so close yet know them to be so far away! Since I was a small child … at five or six I sought those keys in my grandfather’s books, those keys … I read and read. They punished me and I read secretly, searching …

  THE CONFESSOR (to Sister Filotea): She never accepted the will of God. Now she even writes like a man. I have seen the manuscripts of her poems!

  SISTER JUANA: Searching … I knew quite early on that universities are not for women and that a woman who knows more than the Paternoster is deemed immodest. I had mute books for teachers and an inkpot for a schoolmate. When books were forbidden to me, as happened more than once in this convent, I studied the things of the world. Even cooking one can discover secrets of nature.

  SISTER FILOTEA: The Royal and Pontifical University of the Pancake! The frying-pan campus!

  SISTER JUANA: What can we women know except the philosophy of the kitchen? But if Aristotle had cooked, he would have written much more. That makes you laugh, does it? Well, laugh, if it pleases you. Men feel themselves to be very wise, just for being men. Christ, too, was crowned with thorns as King of Jests.

  THE CONFESSOR (erases his smile, hits the table with his fist): Ever hear the like of that? The learned little nun! She can write little songs, so she compares herself with the Messiah!

  SISTER JUANA: Christ also suffered from this unfairness. Is he one of them? So he must die! He is accused? So let him suffer!

  THE CONFESSOR: There’s humility for you!

  SISTER FILOTEA: Really, my daughter, you scandalize God with your vociferous pride …

  SISTER JUANA: My pride? (Smiles sadly) I used that up long ago.

  THE CONFESSOR: The common people applaud her verses, so she thinks herself one of the elect. Verses that shame this house of God, exaltation of the flesh … (coughs) Evil arts of the male animal …

  SISTER JUANA: My poor verses! Dust, shadow, nothing. Vain glory, all the applause … Did I ask for it? What divine revelation forbids women to write? By grace or curse, it was Heaven that made me a poet.

  THE CONFESSOR (looks at the ceiling and raises his hands in supplication): She dirties the purity of the faith, and Heaven is to blame for it.

  SISTER FILOTEA (puts embroidery frame aside and clasps hands over stomach): Sister Juana has much to sing to the human spirit, little to the divine.

  SISTER JUANA: Don’t the Gospels teach us that the celestial expresses itself in the terrestrial? A powerful force pushes my hand …

  THE CONFESSOR (waving the wooden cross, as if to strike Juana from afar): Force of God, or force of the king of the proud?

  SISTER JUANA: … and I’ll continue writing, I’m afraid, as long as my body makes a shadow. I fled from myself when I took the habit, but I brought myself along, wretch that I am.

  SISTER FILOTEA: She bathes in the nude. There are proofs.

  SISTER JUANA: Oh, Lord, put out the light of my understanding! Leave only what suffices to keep Thy Law! Isn’t the rest superfluous for a woman?

  THE CONFESSOR (screaming harshly like a crow): Shame on you! Mortify your heart, ingrate!

  SISTER JUANA: Put me out. Put me out, my God! (The play continues, with similar dialog, until 1693).

  (58 and 75)

  1691: Placentia

  Adario, Chief of the Huron Indians, Speaks to Baron de Lahontan, French Colonizer of Newfoundland

  Nay, you are miserable enough already, and indeed I can’t see how you can be more such. What sort of men must Europeans be? What species of creatures do they retain to? The Europeans, who must be forc’d to do good, and have no other prompter for the avoiding of Evil than the fear of punishment …

  Who gave you all the countries that you now inhabit? By what right do you possess them? They always belonged to the Algonquins before. In earnest, my dear brother, I’m sorry for thee from the bottom of my soul. Take my advice, and turn Huron; for I see plainly a vast difference between thy condition and mine. I am master of myself and my condition. I am master of my own body, I have the absolute disposal of myself, I do what I please, I am the first and the last of my nation, I fear no man, and I depend only upon the Great Spirit. Whereas, thy body, as well as thy soul, are doomed to a dependence upon thy great Captain, thy Vice-Roy disposes of thee, thou hast not the liberty of doing what thou hast a mind to; thou art afraid of robbers, false witnesses, assassins, etc., and thou dependest upon an infinity of persons whose places have raised them above thee. Is it true or not?

  (136)

  1692: Salem Village

  The Witches of Salem

  “Christ knows how many devils there are here!” roars the Reverend Samuel Parris, pastor of the town of Salem, and speaks of Judas, the devil seated at the Lord’s table, who sold himself for thirty coins, £3/15/0 in English pounds, the derisory price of a female slave.

  In the war of the lambs against the dragons, cries the pastor, no neutrality is possible nor any sure refuge. The devils have planted themselves in his own house: a daughter and a niece of the Reverend Parris have been the first ones tormented by the army of devils that has taken this Puritan town by storm. The little girls fondled a crystal ball, wanting to know their fate, and saw death. Since that happened, many young girls of Salem feel hell in their bodies, the malignant fever burns them inside and they twist and turn, roll on the ground frothing at the mouth and screaming blasphemies and obscenities that the Devil puts on their lips.

  The doctor, William Griggs, diagnoses evil spells. A dog is given a cake of rye flour mixed with the urine of the possessed girls, but the dog gobbles it up, wags his tail, and goes off to sleep in peace. The Devil prefers human habitations.

  Between one convulsion and the next, the victims accuse.

  Women, and poor ones, are the first sentenced to hang. Two whites, one black: Sarah Osborne, a bent old woman who years ago cried out to her Irish servant, who slept in the stable, and made her a place in her bed; Sarah Good, a disorderly beggar who smokes a pipe and grumbles when given alms; and Tituba, a black West Indian slave, mistress of a hairy devil with a long nose. The daughter of Sarah Good, a young witch aged four, is in Boston prison with fetters on her feet.

  But the agonized screams of Salem’s young girls do not cease, and charges and condemnations multiply. The witch-hunt spreads from suburban Salem Village to the center of Salem Town, from the town to the port, from the accursed to the powerful. Not even the governor’s wife escapes the accusing finger. From the gallows hang prosperous farmers and businessmen, shipowners trading with London, privileged members of the Church who enjoy the right to Communion.

  A sulphurous rain is reported over Salem Town, Massachusetts’ second port, where the Devil, working harder than ever, goes about promising the Puritans cities of gold and French footwear.

  (34)

  1692: Guápulo

  Nationalization of Colonial Art

  In the sanctuary of Guápulo, a village overlooking Quito, Miguel de Santiago begins to show his canvases.

  In homage to the local Virgin, who is a great miracle worker, Miguel de Santiago offers these mountains and plains, this cordillera and this sky, landscapes that would have little life if the people who move in them did not light them up: local people moving through local settings in procession or alone. The artist no longer copies works from Madrid or Rome about the life of St. Augustine. Now he paints the luminous city of Quito surrounded by volcanos, the towers of these churches, the Indians of Pujilí and Machángara Canyon, Bellavista Hill and the Valley of Guápulo; and the suns behind the mountains, the rising bonfire-smoke clouds, and the misty
rivers that never stop singing all belong here.

  Nor is it only Miguel de Santiago. The anonymous hands of indigenous or mestizo artisans sneak contraband llamas into their Christmas paintings instead of camels, and pineapples and palms and corncobs and avocados into church-façade greenery carvings; and even head-banded suns up close to the altars. On all sides there are pregnant Virgins, and Christs that grieve like men, like men of these parts, for the sadness of this world.

  (215)

  1693: Mexico City

  Juana at Forty-Two

  Lifelong tears, springing from time and pain, soak her face. She sees the world as profoundly and sadly clouded. Defeated, she bids it farewell.

  For days she has been confessing the sins of her whole existence to the implacable Father Antonio Núñez de Miranda, and the rest is all penitence. With her own blood as ink she writes a letter to the Divine Tribunal, asking forgiveness.

  Her light sails and heavy keels will no longer sail the seas of poetry. Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz abandons her human studies and renounces literature. She asks God for the gift of forgetfulness and chooses silence, or accepts it, and so America loses its best poet.

  Her body will not survive long this suicide of the soul. Let life be ashamed of lasting so long for me …

  (16, 49, and 58)

  1693: Santa Fe, New Mexico

  Thirteen Years of Independence

  Thirteen years have passed since the bells of Santa Fe went mad celebrating the death of the God of the Christians and of Mary, his mother.

  Thirteen years the Spaniards have taken to reconquer these wild lands of the North. While that truce of independence lasted, the Indians recovered their liberty and their names, their religion and their customs, but they also introduced into their communities the plow and the wheel and other instruments that the Spaniards brought.

  For the colonial troops, the reconquest has not been easy. Each pueblo of New Mexico is a huge, tightly shut fortress, with board walls of stone and adobe several stories high. In the Rio Grande Valley live men not accustomed to obedience or servile labor.

  (88)

  Song of the New Mexican Indians to the Portrait That Escapes from the Sand

  So I might cure myself,

  the wizard painted,

  in the desert, your portrait:

  your eyes are of golden sand,

  of red sand now your mouth,

  of blue sand your hair

  and my tears are of white sand.

  All day he painted.

  You grew like a goddess

  on the immensity of the yellow canvas.

  The wind of the night will scatter your shadow

  and the colors of your shadow.

  By ancient law nothing will remain for me.

  Nothing, except the rest of my tears,

  the silver sands.

  (63)

  1694: Macacos

  The Last Expedition Against Palmares

  The great Indian-hunter, killer of Indians over many leagues, was born of an Indian mother. He speaks Guaraní, very little Portuguese. Domingos Jorge Velho is captain of the mamelukes of Sao Paulo, mestizos who have sown terror over half of Brazil in the name of their colonial lords and in ferocious exorcism of one half of their blood.

  In the past six years, Captain Domingos has hired out his services to the Portuguese Crown against the Janduim Indians, rebelling in the hinterlands of Pernambuco and in Rio Grande do Norte. After a long campaign of carnage he arrives victorious at Recife, and there is contracted to demolish Palmares. They offer him fat booty in lands and blacks to sell in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires and also promise him infinite amnesties, four religious orders’ habits, and thirty military grades to distribute among his men.

  With telescope slung over his naked chest, his greasy jacket open, Captain Domingos parades on horseback through the streets of Recife at the head of his mestizo officers and his rank-and-file Indian cutters of Indian throats. They ride amid clouds of dust and whiffs of gunpowder and rum, to applause and the fluttering of white handkerchiefs: this Messiah will save us from the rebellious blacks, the people believe or hope, convinced that the runaways are to blame for the lack of hands in the sugarmills as well as for the diseases and droughts that are devastating the Northeast, since God will not send health or rain while the Palmares scandal endures.

  And the great crusade is organized. From all directions come volunteers, impelled by hunger, seeking sure rations. The prisons empty out, as even the jailbirds join the biggest army yet mobilized in Brazil.

  The Indian scouts march ahead and the black porters bring up the rear. Nine thousand men cross the jungle, reach the mountains, and climb toward the summit, where the Macacos fortifications stand. This time they bring cannons.

  The siege lasts several days. The cannons wreck the triple bulwark of wood and stone. They fight man to man on the edge of the abyss. There are so many dead that there is no place left to fall down, and the slaughter continues in the scrub. Many blacks try to flee, and slip down the precipice into the void; many choose the precipice and throw themselves off it.

  Flames devour the capital of Palmares. From the distant city of Porto Calvo, the huge bonfire can be seen burning throughout the night. Burn even the memory of it. Hunting horns unceasingly proclaim the victory.

  Chief Zumbí, wounded, has managed to escape. From the lofty peaks he reaches the jungle. He wanders through green tunnels, seeking his people in the thickets.

  (38, 43, and 69)

  Lament of the Azande People

  The child is dead;

  let us cover our faces

  with white earth.

  Four sons I have borne

  in the hut of my husband.

  Only the fourth lives.

  I want to weep,

  but in this village

  sadness is forbidden.

  (134)

  1695: Serra Dois Irmāos

  Zumbí

  Jungle landscape, jungle of the soul. Zumbí smokes his pipe, his eyes locked on the high red rocks and caves open like wounds, and does not see that day is breaking with an enemy light, nor that the birds are flocking off in terrified flight.

  He does not see the traitor approaching. He sees his comrade Antonio Soares and rises to embrace him. Antonio Soares buries a dagger several times in his back.

  The soldiers fix the head on a lance point and take it to Recife, to putrefy in the plaza and teach the slaves that Zumbí was not immortal.

  Palmares no longer breathes. This broad space of liberty opened up in colonial America has lasted for a century and resisted more than forty invasions. The wind has blown away the ashes of the black bastions of Macacos and Subupira, Dambrabanga and Obenga, Tabocas and Arotirene. For the conquerors, the Palmares century whittles down to the instant when the dagger polished off Zumbí. Night will fall and nothing will remain beneath the cold stars. Yet what does the wakeful know compared with what the dreamer knows?

  The vanquished dream about Zumbí; and the dream knows that while one man remains owner of another man in these lands, his ghost will walk. He will walk with a limp, because Zumbí had been lamed by a bullet; he will walk up and down time and, limping, will fight in these jungles of palms and in all the lands of Brazil. The chiefs of all the unceasing black rebellions will be called Zumbí.

  (69)

  1695: Sāo Salvador de Bahia

  The Capital of Brazil

  In this radiant city, there is a church for every day of the year, and every day a saint’s day. A glow of towers and bells and tall palms, of bodies and of air sticky with dendê oil: today a saint is celebrated, tomorrow a lover, in the Bahia of All Saints and of the not-so-saintly. São Salvador de Bahia, seat of the viceroy and the archbishop, is the most populated of all Portuguese cities after Lisbon, and it envies Lisbon its monumental monasteries and golden churches, its incendiary women and its fiestas and masquerades and processions. Here strut mulatto prostitutes decked out like queens, and sla
ves parade their masters on litters down leafy avenues amid palaces of delirious grandeur. Gregorio de Matos, born in Bahia, thus portrays the noble gentry of the sugar plantations:

  In Brazil the gentlefolk

  are not all that gentle;

  their good manners, not all that good:

  So where do they belong?

  In a pile of money.

  Black slaves are the brick and mortar of these castles. From the cathedral pulpit Father Antonio Vieira insists on gratitude toward Angola, because without Angola there would be no Brazil, and without Brazil there would be no Portugal, so that it could be very justly said that Brazil has its body in America and its soul in Africa: Angola, which sells Bantu slaves and elephants tusks; Angola, as the father’s sermon proclaims, with whose unhappy blood and black but happy souls Brazil is nourished, animated, sustained, served, and preserved.

  At almost ninety this Jesuit priest remains the worst enemy of the Inquisition, advocate of enslaved Indians and Jews, and most persistent accuser of the colonial lords, who believe that work is for animals and spit on the hand that feeds them.

  (33 and 226)

  1696: Regla

  Black Virgin, Black Goddess

  To the docks of Regla, poor relation of Havana, comes the Virgin, and she comes to stay. The cedar carving has come from Madrid, wrapped in a sack, in the arms of her devotee Pedro Aranda. Today, September 8, is fiesta day in this little town of artisans and sailors, always redolent of shellfish and tar; the people eat meat and corn and beans and manioc, Cuban dishes, and African dishes, ecó, olelé, ecrú, quimbombó, fufú, while rivers of rum and earthquakes of drums welcome the black Virgin, the little black one, patron protector of Havana Bay.