Zama

by Antonio Di Benedetto

  But now it was too late to flee.

  I turned, and in the time it took to move my head I knew that this was not the footstep of a beast; it lacked wariness.

  A man.

  A calm man.

  He said, as if delivering a witticism, “This whole wide country for the two of us and we’ve ended up choosing the same spot.”

  •

  When it was time to go back, he asked if we could stay a bit longer.

  He said, “Señor Doctor, there’s no moon, and we’d call attention to ourselves if we struck a light. My face can’t be seen, and therefore it behooves me to speak my name.”

  I was expecting the name. I knew it already.

  “Vicuña Porto.”

  I did not react. I sensed a dagger in his hands.

  It was him if he said as much, thereby risking his life. His voice summoned up my table, my office, my horse, my sword, my daily round of duties in another land. We were there in search of him, so it was not unreasonable for him to be there. But I did not understand how he could have approached without being seen, and still less how he had managed to identify me in the blackness of night.

  •

  He had revealed himself, and now undoubtedly waited to see what I would do. I was petrified with amazement at my singular destiny. I had fallen into his hands. All I could do was fear some treacherous blow.

  I did not speak, and he prodded me, “Perhaps the Señor Doctor doesn’t know me, doesn’t recognize Vicuña Porto?”

  I hastened to say I did, for the tone of the question was midway between jest and warning. And when I’d said that yes, I knew him, he commented, as if regretfully, “You know me, vaya! How unfortunate!”

  Was he allowing me a final word, before sacrificing me?

  I jumped back, not to take out a weapon but to escape. But I had a strange premonition that I was only delivering myself to my murderer, someone stationed behind me with a knife, ready to cut my throat. Porto’s cry would be the other man’s command. . . .

  And so, after jumping back, I jumped forward, a maneuver that Porto took for an attack. He stuck out a foot, I fell facedown, and he threw himself upon me, his knees pressing me flat as he dug a sharp point into my neck.

  “Piedad,” I begged.

  “Hand over your weapons,” he ordered.

  I told him my knife was in my boot. He seemed to grasp that I had not meant to attack him; the pressure on my legs diminished and I no longer felt the sharp metal on my neck.

  But he continued to straddle me while slapping me vigorously about the head. “You don’t know me, you don’t know me,” he said. “Su merced does not know me.”

  He was through with hitting me. He stood up.

  I lay sprawled on the grassy earth.

  I knew he was standing over me, observing my movements.

  After a time, we both calmed down.

  As if to breathe a little, as if to test me, he walked in a circle around me, never taking his eyes off of me.

  I looked toward the campfire. It was far away. If I tried to flee, Vicuña Porto, murderous knife in hand, would catch me.

  As I watched, someone in the camp rose to his feet by the fire, a black, ecstatic figure silhouetted against the blaze.

  It disappeared.

  It reappeared, surrounded by dogs, as if it knew precisely where to find me.

  Vicuña Porto stepped toward me, warning me anew. “You don’t know me, eh? You don’t know me.”

  But he did not leave. He stayed at my side and ordered me to get up and go meet the man coming toward us.

  I admired his temerity. He would confront the soldier and kill him, I thought. What he might do with me after that I hardly imagined.

  We walked side by side.

  The dogs raced forward.

  The sentry let out the precautionary cry.

  “Señor Don Diegooooo!”

  Vicuña Porto answered on my behalf, “Here we are. . . .”

  •

  Vicuña Porto was a soldier in the legion sent in pursuit of Vicuña Porto.

  39

  I wasted much of the night plotting how to turn him in without endangering myself.

  I came up with many strategies. On first consideration, each seemed easy and not the least bit dangerous. Then the drawbacks became clear.

  •

  My first concern the next morning was to see Vicuña Porto. Perhaps he had left us during the night, freeing me from the threat of him and the burden of concealment.

  He was there, indistinct among the others. When my eye fell on him, he could almost be described as docile.

  I did not wish to seem imprudent and moved away.

  As we broke camp, I carefully studied the features and outward indications of the other men. I was looking for anything that would reveal a henchman of the fearsome bandit. Three or four of them seemed like they might be. . . .They might all be, or perhaps none were. They were all coarse, filthy, tough, mettlesome, and strong. It had taken me two days to clap eyes on their faces and distinguish their features at all.

  Hipólito Parrilla, still sipping at his maté even after having drained it dry, was spewing entirely superfluous orders. Each man was perfectly well acquainted with the routine and was carrying it out— without haste, true, but none the faster because the jefe so ordained.

  The captain had just been awoken and could barely contain his agitation. The prospect of entering the territory of armed Indians was disturbing to him, though in theory these particular Indians were friendly neighbors to the Spaniards.

  Watching his irritation overflow, I began, for the first time, to savor my secret: I, who meekly bore the affront of Parrilla’s wrath, was the only one who knew that Vicuña Porto galloped behind his pursuer.

  Vengeance. Jubilation.

  Without being tormented by my own weakness, I could maintain my silence two, four, eight days longer.

  I had, I was certain, a perfectly valid excuse: By deferring my revelation I avenged the hand that Parrilla had placed on me, making silent mockery of the efforts that bore him farther and farther, for no reason.

  40

  To the east rose barely perceptible hills that gradually burgeoned into the aerial blue of far-off mountains.

  To the west, sometimes directly before us, was the vast stretch of scrubland, with vegetation tall enough to conceal a man’s full height.

  A detachment of three scouts had to be sent ahead. They marched at five hundred paces distant from one another, about three hundred varas in front of us.

  At a certain moment, I saw one of them slow down. He wheeled his horse around and raised his arm to signal the alarm.

  Quick preparations and the sound of the jefe’s voice as he snaked through the troops.

  Even before Parrilla’s review of the men was complete, the scout signaled that there was nothing to fear.

  We approached at a fast trot.

  Two tall Indians emerged from the brush, both well built and with no eyebrows, only a stripe of blue paint that bisected their foreheads and ran down their noses. They both had spears.

  The guide explained that their weapons were no threat.

  They were Guanás, and peaceful. The spears were for hunting deer and ostrich and defending themselves against wild beasts. They needed horses for hunting, and were going to the Mbaya town to acquire them.

  •

  They joined our troops.

  Along a gentle slope, an Indian village engendered a reiterated silhouette of huts, rising against a background of delicate, elongated clouds tinged pink by the sunset.

  Parrilla sent the Indians as our emissaries.

  They came back opening and closing their arms in the air. They meant by this that they had found the huts empty.

  I didn’t believe them and neither did Parrilla.

  Foreseeing a trap, a detachment went ahead, weapons at the ready. On their return, they confirmed the Indians’ observation.

  The Guanás probed the ashes next to th
e dwellings and said they had been abandoned only a short while before. They concluded that either the Mbaya were having a fiesta, over in the direction of the sun, or had retreated to some hidden spot to lie in wait for us, or in fear of some reprisal from the Caaguaes, their enemies.

  Parrilla gave the command for combat formation, which confirmed that he was at a loss; with so many horses and cattle in our midst, no orderly formation was possible. Furthermore, night would overtake us within less than a league, and an advance held out the certain danger of embroiling us in an ambush by the natives.

  I understood all of this but did not dispute the order, partly because I was unable to but mainly because the adventure presented me with a new dimension for action.

  I had departed on an impulse to win back my titles through some impressive feat. At no moment since had I approved of or taken pleasure in my own conduct as I did then.

  I believe I had no thought that I might die.

  I thought of the fight.

  •

  We left the Indian camp behind. After something more than half an hour of cautious marching I discerned no cause for alarm, nor did the scouts give any warning.

  We proceeded along an almost imperceptible rise. On reaching the shoulder, the lookouts came to a halt.

  Our column stopped.

  They neither moved forward nor sent word back to us.

  Parrilla took off with sudden impetus. I refused to be left behind.

  We arrived. I saw what the scouts were gazing upon in silence.

  About half a league below us lay another huddle of huts, with the vital signs of great campfires and blurred figures in movement around them. But this was not merely the population of a single tribe; this was a multitude.

  March, Parrilla ordered. We took the descent head-on.

  •

  The keen anticipation of a fight was over. For me. For Capitán Parrilla, perhaps not. The phantom of battle may still have led him on. He forgot to rescind the order to proceed in combat formation, and though the formation was entirely chimerical, it required a display of weaponry that would prove fatal. I failed to notice this myself.

  Night favored the natives, and it fell upon us in what seemed to be the span of a few seconds.

  All that was visible in the distance were the campfires’ shifting flames.

  Then the ululation burst upon us.

  Sometime earlier I had slung my musket across my chest. I’d forgotten it was there.

  I was unarmed, then, as the floating, unbroken mass of shrieks encircled us like a belt.

  I could hear nothing from our midst, no sound. All of it came from outside.

  Our multiple body of soldiers, horses, and cows was beginning to disintegrate. I, at one extreme, felt myself driven toward the enveloping, thunderous wall.

  It stopped.

  The Indians withdrew.

  Then came the cries of pain, the pleas for help intermingled with the braying and lowing of the poor beasts, terrified or wounded, which sometimes drowned out the human voices.

  The natives had pulled back. To prepare to ambush us anew, I presumed.

  The two Guanás knew better. They offered to cross enemy lines and explain that we did not come to make war.

  Parrilla, for once, did not feel up to resolving everything on his own. I was at his side. He consulted me. He wished to punish the natives, he said. I pointed out that we did not know how many attackers there were, nor were we acquainted with the terrain, which they had already shown was to their advantage.

  Parrilla accepted my opinion.

  Perhaps it was his, as well. But he needed someone else to take responsibility for the surrender, if only in part.

  •

  The Guanás returned with a Mbaya emissary.

  Our explanations were accepted, the spilled Spanish blood was regretted, and we were invited to join in their fiesta, a celebration of victory over the mountain tribes.

  Parrilla had the Guanás explain that the Mbaya invitation honored us but we could not accept, obliged as we were to attend to our wounded.

  The Mbaya departed with the Guanás.

  •

  With negotiations under way, no reconnaissance could be made, no fire lit.

  We remained on guard.

  The moaning of the wounded struck me full in the face.

  I thought of spears. Of a spear coming at me in the darkness and piercing my belly, a spear I would take in my hands, knowing it to be the agent of my irremediable death. But not in the forehead. Not in the mouth. Not in the eyes.

  •

  The negotiators returned with a blazing torch.

  Nalepelegrá, the cacique, had demanded that before this flame went out, those of us who had survived and those among the wounded who could mount a horse must present ourselves at the fiesta. It was a victor’s command.

  Aware that certain of our men were presumed to be dead, he sent assurances that by reason of the long friendship between Mbayas and Spaniards he would not scalp them. In the morning, we could bury their bodies intact. The Mbaya would lament the deaths of our comrades-in-arms alongside us, and one of the cacique’s daughters would remain within her tent for three days with fish spines stuck into her arms as a sign of mourning.

  •

  The torch was quite small. We had to work quickly.

  Three were dead and five wounded: two by the cruelty of the spear, three trampled by the terrified beasts.

  Vicuña Porto retained full health and vitality.

  •

  It was not a fiesta but a battle.

  A deliberate, ritual battle.

  We reached their tents without announcing our presence and without any special reception.

  We joined the spectators—children, women, old men—all seated on the ground and making no display of concern, passion, or sympathy.

  I sought to comprehend this barbaric performance. The Indians were hitting one another in a volley of fisticuffs from which, it seemed, no male adult or adolescent was exempt.

  At first I doubted the real power of these blows. My mind would not accept that having beaten us, some discord immediately erupted among them. But I saw bloody noses, split lips, bruised eyes. One of them halted for a moment, finished loosening a tooth, threw it to the ground, and went looking for a new adversary who soon did him further damage.

  Beyond were the four campfires. Between them, a clearing.

  Something was piled up there. I distracted myself from the brawl by staring at it.

  Heads with jagged necks, scalps with hair plastered down by coagulated blood, recently severed limbs. The trophies.

  Meanwhile, the melee had been suspended, though it was still fierce in some sectors. A number of the natives tried to pacify the remaining contenders, which only further goaded them on. I supposed that soon the combat would once again become general. But no.

  Then an Indian approached, filthy with dirt, blood, and sweat from the fight.

  This part of the fiesta was over, he said. Now it was time to drink.

  His name, he said, was Nalepelegrá. He said he wished to know ours.

  “Capitán Hipólito Parrilla,” said Parrilla, and stood rigid as if saluting a superior officer, though without saluting, to demonstrate that he was not humbling himself. Nalepelegrá touched his cheeks with open palms.

  I took a step forward. Nalepelegrá noticed me and approached. I said my name without adding any titles or adopting an exaggerated posture. The cacique ran his fingers through my beard. He stank and his stench subsequently clung to me.

  After that I thought drink would be distributed.

  The wait went on. I did not know what for.

  Parrilla looked over at me, seeking my help in case it came to that.

  Nalepelegrá stamped the ground. In an instant he became a horse. He neighed.

  My flesh was lacerated with terror. I could not, must not move.

  Without requesting authorization from the captain, Vicuña Porto stepped forward be
fore the cacique, touching his forehead with his left hand.

  Nalepelegrá was appeased.

  Vicuña Porto said “Gaspar Toledo,” his name in that militia. The Indian chief lifted his hand to his beard.

  We understood.

  The ceremony was repeated with all the remaining soldiers.

  Then we drank chicha made from honey.

  A good deal of chicha.

  I needed to slake my thirst and to sleep like a brute.

  •

  The sun was a dog with a hot, dry tongue that licked and licked me until it woke me up.

  The dog had shown great fidelity, waking me first. Many sleepers its tongue had yet to rouse lay across the ground.

  Indians, soldiers, the captain. . . .

  I dragged myself up to a sitting position and pulled in my legs. Steadying them with my arms, I dropped my head, which would not hold itself upright, upon my knees.

  But my mind still functioned.

  It came to me that the horses had run off and it would be exhausting to retrieve them. That the cows had fled into the forest and those that had not would have fallen into the Indians’ hands and were perhaps already slaughtered.

  That three of our number had been slaughtered.

  I wished to feel pain and could not.

  I did not know which men we’d lost. I was not acquainted with them. I had seen them only dimly, by night.

  I reflected that we would have to bury them.

  They would remain there, at the foot of that hill, with a cross and a stone above.

  The wind would topple the cross. Later, someone would carry off the stone.

  Bare earth.

  No one.

  Nothing.

  I shuddered, without moving.

  This could not be. This could not be for me.

  I must go back, expose myself to this no further.

  Give up the search.

  Parrilla would never agree to that, not with his honor as a soldier injured by the Indians, and without having captured Vicuña Porto or even getting so much as a whiff of him.