The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind
Page 41
The new capital occupies the most beautiful spot in the world. Here the mountains look like pairs of lovers, the air has aromas that make you laugh, and a warm breeze excites the birds. Things and people are made of music, and the sea so sparkles before your eyes that it would be a pleasure to drown yourself.
(48)
1763: Tijuco
The World Inside a Diamond
Among lofty red rocks which look like dragons undulates the red earth hurt by man’s hand. The region of diamonds exhales a fiery dust that reddens the walls of the city of Tijuco. A stream flows at its side and in the distance are mountains the color of the sea or of ashes. From the bed of the river come diamonds which will cross the mountains, and sail from Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon and from Lisbon to London, where they are cut, their price multiplying several times over, later to lend brilliance to the whole world.
Many diamonds escape as contraband. Although the corpus delicti may be the size of a flea’s eye, clandestine miners who have been caught lie without graves, meat for crows; and the slave suspected of swallowing what he shouldn’t gets a violent purge of hot chili.
Every diamond belongs to the king of Portugal and to Joāo Fernandes de Oliveira, who reigns here by right of the king’s contract. Beside him is Chica da Silva, also known as Chica Who Commands. A mulatta, she wears European clothes barred to the dark-skinned, and shows off by going to Mass on a litter followed by a cortege of black women decked out like princesses. In the church, she occupies the place of honor. There is no noble hereabouts who does not bend his spine before her hand covered with gold rings, and none who misses her gatherings at the mansion in the mountains. There, Chica da Silva throws banquets and theater parties—performances of The Charms of Medea or some other fashionable play—and afterwards takes her guests for a sail on the lake that Oliveira had dug for her because she wanted ocean and there was no ocean. They mount a gilded stairway to the dock and cruise in a grand vessel crewed by ten sailors.
Chica da Silva wears a wig of white rolls. The rolls cover her forehead and hide the mark left by the branding iron when she was a slave.
(307)
1763: Havana
Progress
A year ago the English arrived at Cojímar beach with guns blazing.
While Havana signed the surrender, after a long siege, the slave ships waited outside the port. When they anchored in the bay, buyers grabbed up their merchandise. Merchants customarily follow warriors. A single slave trafficker, John Kennion, sold seventeen hundred slaves during the British occupation. He and his colleagues doubled the work force on the plantations, which were so antiquated that they still grew all kinds of food and had only one machine, the mill that crushes sugarcane, turning at the pace of circling oxen.
British dominion over Cuba hardly lasts ten months, but the Spaniards scarcely recognize the colony they get back. The English have given it such a shaking that Cuba awakens from its long agrarian siesta. In times to come this island will turn into an immense sugar factory, grinding up slaves and ravaging everything else. Tobacco farms, cornfields, and vegetable patches will be razed. Forests will be devastated and streams dried up. Each black slave will be squeezed out in seven years.
(222)
The Slaves Believe:
The gods move blood and sap. In every blade of Cuban grass breathes a god, and that’s why the forest is alive. Temple of African gods, home of African ancestors, the forest is sacred and keeps secrets. If anyone fails to greet it, its anger rises and it denies health and fortune. One must offer it a gift to receive the leaves that heal wounds and ward off misfortune. One must greet it with ritual words—or whatever words come out. Everyone talks with the gods as he feels or is able.
No god is all good or all bad. The same one may save or kill. The breeze refreshes and the hurricane destroys, but both are air.
(56)
The Ceiba Tree
“Good evening, mother Ceiba. Bless you.”
The imposing ceiba is a tree of mystery. The ancestors and the gods favor it. The flood respected it. It is secure from lightning and hurricanes.
One may not turn one’s back on it or walk in its shade without permission. Anyone striking an ax to its sacred trunk feels the ax-blow on his own body. They say that at times it consents to die by fire, fire being its favorite son.
It opens when you ask it for shelter, and to defend the fugitive it covers itself with thorns.
(56)
The Royal Palm
In this haughty palm lives Shangó, the black god who calls himself Saint Barbara when he disguises himself as a Christian woman. The leaves of its crest are his arms. From on high he fires his heavenly artillery. Shangó eats fire, wears lightning, talks thunder, and shakes the earth with his rays. He turns enemies into ash.
Warrior and satyr, Shangó never tires of joking and loving. The gods hate him; the goddesses are crazy about him. He took his brother Ogum’s woman Oyá, who is said to be the Virgin of Candelaria and fights at Shangó’s side with two swords. In the rivers he makes love to Oshún, and together they eat delicacies of sugar and cinnamon.
(28 and 56)
1766: The Fields of Areco
The Wild Horses
In Buenos Aires, the twenty Indian children from the Jesuits’ San Javier mission choir have sung in the cathedral and in several full churches; and the public has shown its gratitude for these voices from heaven. The Guaraní orchestra of violins and one-stringed trompas marinas has also worked miracles.
The musicians set out on their return journey, led by Fray Hermann Paucke. Two weeks’ traveling separates them from their homes on the coast. On the way, Paucke collects and sketches all he sees: plants, birds, customs.
In the fields of Areco, Paucke and his Guaraní musicians witness the sacrifice of maverick horses. Peons bring these wild horses to the corrals mixed in with domesticated ones, and there they halter them and take them out one by one into open country. Then they turn them over and with a single slash, open their bellies. The mavericks still gallop, treading on their entrails, until they roll on the grass; and the next day dawns on bones whitened by dogs.
The wild horses wander through the pampa in troops that are more like shoals, flying fish slithering between air and grass, and spread their contagion of freedom among the domesticated horses.
(55)
1767: Misiones
The Story of Seven Villages
The king of Spain had made his father-in-law, the king of Portugal, a present of seven villages. He offered them empty, but they were inhabited. Those villages were seven missions founded by Jesuit fathers, for Guaraní Indians, east of the upper Uruguay River. Like many other missions of the Guaraní region, they had served as bulwarks for the constantly assaulted frontier.
The Guaranís declined to get out. Change their pasturelands, like a flock of sheep, because the man said so? The Jesuits had taught them to make clocks, plows, bells, clarinets, and books printed in their Guaraní language; but they had also taught them to make guns to defend themselves against the slave hunters.
Portuguese and Spanish soldiers chase the Indians off and the Indians slip back by night. Again they are chased off and again they return, but this time transformed into thunderous winds, a storm of lightning that sets fortresses afire.
Everyone knows the monks are on their side. The will of the king is the will of God, say the superiors of the Order of Loyola, an impenetrable will that puts us to the test: When Abraham obeyed the divine voice, and raised the sword against the neck of his own son Isaac, God sent an angel to stay the blow at the critical moment. But the Jesuit priests refuse to immolate the Indians. To no avail the archbishop of Buenos Aires threatens to excommunicate both Indians and priests. In vain the Church hierarchy orders the burning of the gunpowder and destruction of the guns and lances with which the missions have a thousand times stopped Portuguese attacks against the Spanish frontier.
Long is the war of the seven villages against the two cro
wns. In the battle of Caybaté hill, fifteen hundred Indians fall. The seven missions are razed, but the king of Portugal cannot enjoy the king of Spain’s gift.
The kings never forgive the offense. Three years after the battle of Caybaté, the king of Portugal expels the Jesuits from all his dominions. And now the king of Spain follows suit.
(76 and 189)
1767: Misiones
The Expulsion of the Jesuits
The instructions arrive from Madrid in envelopes sealed with wax. Viceroys and governors execute them immediately throughout America. They seize the Jesuit fathers at night by surprise and immediately ship them to far-off Italy. More than two thousand priests go into exile.
The king of Spain punishes the sons of Loyola, who have become such sons of America, for repeated disobedience and the suspected planning of an independent Indian kingdom.
No one weeps for them as do the Guaranís. The Jesuits’ many missions in the Guaraní region announced the promised land without evil and without death; and the Indians called the priests karaí, a name reserved for their prophets. From the wreckage of the San Luis Gonzaga mission, the Indians send a letter to the governor of Buenos Aires. We are not slaves, they say. We don’t like your custom of every man for himself instead of helping one another.
Soon all is broken up. Common property and the communal system of production and life disappear. The best missionary estancias are sold to the highest bidder. Churches, factories, schools fall apart. Undergrowth invades pastures and wheat fields. Pages are torn from books to make cartridges for gunpowder. The Indians flee into the forest or stay to become vagabonds, whores, and drunks. To be born Indian is once again an insult or a crime.
(189)
1767: Misiones
They Won’t Let Their Tongues Be Torn Out
In the print shops of the Paraguay missions some of the best books of colonial America have been published, religious books in the Guaraní language, with typefaces and engravings carved in wood by Indians.
Guaraní was the spoken and written language of the missions. After the expulsion of the Jesuits, Castilian is imposed as the obligatory and only language.
No one resigns himself to becoming dumb and without memory. No one pays any attention.
(117)
1769: London
The First Novel Written in America
Ten years ago the bells of London wore themselves out celebrating the victories of the British Empire. The city of Quebec had fallen after intense bombardment, and France had lost her dominions in Canada. The young general James Wolfe, who commanded the English army, had announced that he would crush the Canadian plague, but died before seeing it happen. According to the gossip, Wolfe would measure himself when he awoke and find himself a bit taller each day, until a bullet interrupted his growth.
Now Frances Brooke publishes a novel in London, The History of Emily Montague, which depicts Wolfe’s officers conquering hearts in the land conquered by their guns. The author, a plump and pleasant Englishwoman, lives and writes in Canada. In the form of two hundred and twenty-eight letters, she relates her impressions and experiences in the new British colony and weaves in some romances between uniformed English gallants and the breathless young ladies of Quebec high society. Their well-educated passions lead to matrimony, via the fashion house, the ballroom, and picnics on the islands. The magnificent waterfalls and noble lakes provide a fitting backdrop.
(50, 52, and 176)
Indians and Dreams in the Novel of Frances Brooke
The Indians retain most of their ancient superstitions. I should particularize their belief in dreams, of which folly even repeated disappointments cannot cure them … As I happened to smile at the recital a savage was making of a prophetic dream, from which he assured us of the death of an English officer whom I knew to be alive, “You Europeans,” said he, “are the most unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief in dreams, and yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible.”
(50)
1769: Lima
Viceroy Amat
At the hour when families kneel to say the rosary, the holy, holy, holy, the novena, and prayers for the dead, the trot of the viceroy’s carriage heading for the theater is heard. A murmur of scandal echoes through half-open Venetian blinds. Prayers stop short. Gossip breaks forth. The brusque viceroy of Lima, a rascal, rogue, and knave, has lost his head to a small-time comedienne.
Night after night, Don Manuel de Amat y Junyent attends any zarzuela, farce, mystery or comedy in which Micaela Villegas waggles her hips and stomps her heels on the stage. He doesn’t care about the plot. When Micaela, that exquisite pure cinnamon, that cinnamon in flower starts singing her cajoleries, the old viceroy’s wig flies off. He applauds madly and punches holes in the floor with his cane. She answers him rolling her eyes, smiling beneath the indispensable beauty spot, and offering her breasts in sequined curtsies.
The viceroy has been a man of the barracks, not of parties and balls. A scowling bachelor with five big scars won in the North African wars, he came to Lima to clean horse- and cattle-thieves off the roads and throw out idlers and loafers. Under this leaden sky, more roof than sky, he wanted to kill himself, but conquered the temptation by hanging people.
Eight years after his arrival the viceroy has learned to steal, to eat rocote chilis and spicy guinea pig, and to study décolletages with an opera glass. The ship that brought him from Valparaíso had a naked woman as figurehead on its prow.
(26 and 245)
1769: Lima
La Perricholi
Like all women of Lima, Micaela Villegas displays her bosom but hides her feet, protects them with tiny shoes of white satin. Like the others, she enjoys wearing rubies and sapphires even on her belly, be they only paste, as hers were.
Daughter of a poor provincial mestizo, Micaela made the rounds of this city’s shops for the pure pleasure of seeing or feeling Lyons silks and Flanders woollens, and bit her lips when she discovered a gold and diamond necklace around the neck of a highborn lady’s kitten.
Micaela got into the theater and was transformed into queen, nymph, fashion plate, or goddess as long as the performance lasted. Now she is First Courtesan all day and all night, too. A cloud of black slaves surrounds her, her jewelry is above suspicion and counts kiss her hand.
The ladies of Lima avenge themselves by calling her Perricholi. The viceroy himself had so baptized her, trying to say perra chola (mestizo bitch) with his toothless mouth. They say he put this curse on her, as a sort of exorcism, while carrying her up the steps to his lofty bed, because she stirred in him dangerous panics and burnings and wet and dry sensations that took him back trembling to his early years.
(95, 245, and 304)
The Snack Clock
With the milkwoman at seven o’clock begins the bustle of Lima. Behind her, in an odor of sanctity, comes the vendor of herb teas.
At eight the curds-seller passes.
At nine, a voice offers cinnamon candies.
At ten, tamales seek mouths to delight.
Eleven is the hour of melons and coconut candies and toasted corn.
At noon, bananas and passion fruit, pineapples, milky chirimoyas of green velvet, and avocados promising soft pulp promenade through the streets.
At one, come the cakes of hot honey.
At two, a hawker offers picarones, buns that invite choking; and behind her come the corn sugarcakes steeped in cinnamon that no tongue can forget.
At three, appears the vendor of anticuchos, roasted broken hearts, followed by the peddlers of honey and sugar.
At four, the chili-vendor sells spice and fire.
Cebiche, raw fish steeped in lime, marks five o’clock.
At six, nuts.
At seven, mazamorra pastries baked to a T on open tile roofs.
At eight, ice creams of many flavors and colors, fresh gusts of wind, push the doors of night wide open.
(93 and 245)
1771:
Madrid
Royal Summit
Big crates arrive at the palace from the incandescent deserts of Peru. The Spanish monarch reads the report of the official who sends them: this is the complete tomb of a Mochica chief, much older than the Incas; the descendants of the Mochicas and of the Chimús now live in dire penury and there are ever fewer of them; their valleys are in the hands of a few greedy Spaniards.
The cases are opened. A seventeen hundred-year-old king appears at the feet of Charles III. He has teeth, nails and hair still intact, and flesh of parchment stuck to his bones, and his majestic raiment gleams with gold and feathers. His scepter, a god of corn garlanded with plants, accompanies the remote visitor; and the vases that were buried with him have also made the journey to Madrid.
The king of Spain, dumbfounded, contemplates the ceramics that surround his defunct colleague. The king of the Mochicas lies amid pleasures. The ceramics represent pairs of lovers embracing and entering each other in a thousand ways, ignorant of original sin, enjoying themselves without knowing that for this act of disobedience we have been condemned to live on the earth.
(355)
1771: Paris
The Age of Enlightenment
In Europe the venerable walls of cathedrals and palaces are cracking. The bourgeoisie is on the offensive, armed with steam engines and volumes of the Encyclopedia and other unstoppable battering rams of the industrial revolution.
Budding from Paris are defiant ideas which, flying over the heads of hoi polloi, set their seal on the century. A time of the fury to learn and the fever of intelligence, the Age of Enlightenment raises up human reason, the reason of the minority who think, against the dogmas of the Church and the privileges of the nobility. Condemnations, persecution, and exile only stimulate the learned sons of the English philosophers and of prolific Descartes, he who started by doubting everything.