Vicuña Porto.
Turn him in. Go back.
I raised my head a bit, letting my eyes wander.
He wasn’t among the men sprawled around me.
Parrilla was asleep. On his back, mouth open, head twisted to one side.
Wake him. Tell him to call the two, six, eight sleeping soldiers nearest at hand and go after him.
Yes.
I had to do it. Call out to Parrilla, tell him.
I thought through these actions but did not succeed in moving.
I had my arms around my legs, my body in a ball. Others might carry it, but not its own feet.
It would have been terrible if someone forced me to make it stand up, that body.
A soldier appeared, from where I did not know. Another. A third, who was Vicuña.
They stared at us, perhaps watching to see when the jefe would get to his feet.
I placed my forehead on my knees.
To sleep . . . to sleep. . . .
41
Nalepelegrá took our cattle, promising to pay more for them than they were worth. He paid by telling us that the fugitive cows of all the haciendas to the north had retreated to the forests of y-cipó.
He advised us to take all these cows, herd them together, and drive them back to our land, abandoning the search for the white man. All white men, he said, are equally wicked, except for Capitán Parrilla, myself, and our soldiers, whom he called by their names or approximations thereof. He was quite vain about having learned them all.
We lacked fresh meat.
One day we ate charquí.
Another day we fished. I caught a manguruyú that weighed five arrobas.
To find water, we turned away from the forest and plunged into the scrublands, losing sight of the Indian towns where, Parrilla remembered, Porto might have taken shelter.
We lived in tight cohesion. Parrilla stuck very close to Vicuña; in appeasing the cacique, Vicuña had demonstrated his knowledge of the native character.
There were fewer of us now, and fewer relief horses, too.
I had decided to denounce him, but I could not envision the occasion. Nothing, when considered in detail, would provide me with sufficient cover. I was waiting until an opportunity presented itself in reality, with all circumstances favorable.
Our goal had at first lain somewhere to the far end of the lands of converted Indians. Now our journey was taking us across the realm of the Mbaya and toward the northeastern country of the Guanás. Our goal seemed to run ahead of us, a moving target, as in fact it was, since it traveled with us. Why? Why? Parrilla’s motives were not known to me and I did not dare initiate a conversation with him that might provide some clarification but might also bring all the more violence and pain down upon me.
Or I could simply forget about Vicuña and see him as the soldier Gaspar Toledo. That required no effort; he looked exactly as any Gaspar Toledo, soldado de Indias, would.
I pondered the fact that there he was, among us, even as we endured deprivation, exhaustion, dire obstacles, and death to find him, and it struck me that this was very much like the search for freedom, which is not out there but within each one.
•
Perhaps Parrilla had postponed the pursuit of Vicuña until such time as we’d replenished our provision of charquí or salt meat. We still had coarse salt in abundance.
Without explanation we veered north. But we understood.
This was not haplessness, if his aim was the forest of y-cipó.
To drive out cows, the general practice was to set fire to the forest. Nalepelegrá had told us not to do this and Parrilla was strangely influenced by Nalepelegrá.
To me, the vegetation seemed too dense for cows to penetrate. Parrilla’s opinion was that they might have found a way in at a place we had yet to reach. I told him we should seek that place, then, or someplace less densely overgrown.
We wasted the rest of the day.
At night, by the fire, Parrilla’s eyes were on me, filled with recrimination and insult. That didn’t matter: I had higher motives for living than mere honor.
We rose at dawn. We were ordered to carve out a way through the forest.
Not all of us had a torch. Those who didn’t worked with the knife.
I cut bejucos that were like strong ropes lashing the trees together. There was no need to cut down any tree; after the vines that bound it to its neighbors were eliminated, a tree fell with a single push. The ground was suzú—spongy—and the plants were barely rooted in it.
I don’t know how many varas we went in. At first the light had reached us from above, where we were cutting; now it grew dimmer. I looked up and saw other palms springing from the forked limbs of trees that sprang from the earth, pindo palms and unknown plants, ferns, and flowers, forming another, aerial forest above us, sometimes as dense as the one we tunneled through.
I saw us as a figure trying to enter the sketch of a forest, with another forest sketched on top, and above it, still attached to the first, the sketch of a third forest, mingling with a fourth forest.
•
At one point, Vicuña Porto was cutting away at my side, silent, sweaty, and intent.
He struck a bejuco, the same one I was working on only a short distance away: The ax slipped and metal knife clashed against metal ax-head.
A provocation, I thought. It was not.
Gruffly and with some effort, he said he’d been clumsy and begged my pardon.
He moved away.
Another day, the very next day, he came out to me and remained at my side. We both cut with all our might, as if each sought to prove to the other that he cared for nothing but clearing a way through the forest.
Exhausted, gasping anxiously for air, I broke off. So did he. Then he said, “I have my sins, but not such as are attributed to Vicuña Porto. This Vicuña Porto does not exist. I am not he, nor is anyone else. It’s a name. And mine is Gaspar Toledo. I am Gaspar Toledo, I’ve spent a long year being him and don’t want to be anything else.”
When he said he was Gaspar Toledo he pounded his chest.
I listened to him, paying close attention all the while to the sounds around me. Would Parrilla arrive and, without any intervention on my part, participate in this unsolicited confession?
We were alone, the two of us, in a wretched hollow we’d excavated together over the course of the afternoon.
The aim of Vicuña Porto’s speech was not to shower me with excuses or protest his own virtue. He was trying to persuade me, make me complicit, convince me of his innocence.
When he stopped speaking and I was sure no one else was listening, I told him, “I believe you.”
I planned to expose him that night.
•
I was waiting for the hour of repose to say a word in Parrilla’s ear.
When all the men were prone and wrapped in skins, I feigned sleep and did sleep, though without abandoning myself to it entirely. It was the pleasant rest that the body sinks into when its position is right and silence surrounds it.
After two days of southern wind, the atmosphere was cool with a hint of rain. The soldiers no longer built a shack or any sort of shelter for the jefe and myself.
I was sheltered by the gray sky, blanketed in voluptuous sleep, the temptress that overcame me and did not, released me and returned, released and returned, gaining ground each time. . . .
A thing slender as a whip but alive slipped silently into the leather that enveloped me. A snake.
Upon me, slithering fast. Impotence. My whole body a cramp.
It reached my waist, curled up, and stayed put.
I avoided breathing, so as not to move. After a time my muscles relaxed.
The snake sought out warmth and knew where to find it. I was aware of its habits and knew I wouldn’t be bitten if I didn’t grow agitated or attack.
If I cried out, whoever attempted to remove it would excite it. My flesh would pay for its rage.
Eyes wide open, I obs
erved the course of the moon for more than half the night.
Sleep came in a secret invasion. I slept, for a few moments, I believe, and awoke with death at my temples, thinking I had stirred involuntarily.
There was no longer a weight on my belly. It was the snake that had moved, as it left its warm nocturnal nest.
Day was dawning. I freed myself from my stiff posture and turned happily over onto my left side.
I wanted to sleep without fear, if only for a few minutes.
42
Parrilla awoke me.
We were leaving; the men had saddled the horses.
The captain’s sword could not slash through that sketch.
•
The tense, sleepless night had left me weak and submissive, perhaps even thinner and lighter, or so I felt. My horse seemed to bear me with no effort at all.
•
The woodlands stretched onward but thinned, as if to match my mood that day. After the forest of y-cipó, so fecund, so vigorous, a meadow scorched by the sun or by fire gave way to a sickly grove of bitter orange trees.
The dogs had been scattered around us, ahead or behind, but now formed a pack, with more than three vying for the lead, and went off. They ranged alongside the woods for a moment, then were lost within.
They seemed to me like rats abandoning a sinking ship. Given the power, I’d have tied them all up. They were like a sign of my impending shipwreck, of our shipwreck, perhaps.
To Parrilla they were something else altogether.
He ordered a halt, and with five men backing him up, went in pursuit of the dogs.
I couldn’t hold back but galloped off into the dust they raised, as if throwing myself over a cliff. When I caught up to Parrilla, I was trembling from the effort.
•
A clearing, full of lush grass.
A cow and her calf.
Eight, ten dogs were pursuing the mother while the others held back, tongues lolling, skittish, strategically contained.
Parrilla signaled us to let them alone.
The cow was defending herself with short but powerful kicks. The dogs snapped at her legs and leaped around her.
The calf was left helpless. The bulk of the pack had remained behind, inactive. Now they brought it down and killed it, tearing open the neck. It was their prey.
The dogs left the cow to us without a fight. One of the men captured it with a lasso.
I stood apart, observing the calf and its hunters: a hunk of meat crawling with a pullulation of famished worms.
This, I suggested, constituted a rather large banquet for a few dogs.
Parrilla may have had the same thought. He took action, dismounting, whip in hand, to scatter them.
They resisted, growling.
One dog, inflamed by long hunger and hot blood, bounded up in a burst of snapping teeth and knocked Parrilla to the earth. Fifty paces.
I gave the horse rein, to trample it underfoot.
A clean metal blade sliced into the dog’s underbelly and turned.
With a jerk of the reins I stopped my mount.
The body had fallen on Parrilla. He pushed it away. He was drenched in the liquid from its veins.
I knew now that I could hand Vicuña over to him: Parrilla knew how to finish off a dog.
I dismounted. I think I needed my mind to be free of any other thought but this one. I walked toward Parrilla.
I told him, “Capitán, Vicuña Porto is among us.”
He stopped wringing the blood from his clothing. One of his hands grasped the other and held it captive—bitten by the dog, perhaps, or to keep from hitting me.
But he struck me a blow with his eyes.
“Where? Which one is he?”
I told him.
“How can . . . how can this be?”
He seized my garments, as if to enter into me and know with complete certainty now.
“It’s him. He served me when I was Corregidor. It’s him. He threatened me when we were two days out.”
Now everything was clear. Everything. I felt clean in every fiber of my being.
Parrilla relinquished me with a look that showed there was no gratitude in his heart.
He mounted. Racing past the soldiers, he shouted an order to sacrifice the cow.
He crossed through the forest with me behind, as if he owed me an answer and I were pursuing him to get it.
•
Porto was at some distance from the bulk of the men, as if exposed, as if everything were foreordained.
I thought Parrilla was going to ride right over him. But no. He turned aside in time, though the threat hung in the air.
He made him a sign to follow, I believe, and Porto may have thought Parilla picked him simply because he was the nearest available man.
I kept my distance, expectant, not fully grasping the maneuver.
Parrilla passed before me, followed by Vicuña Porto; the captain had set a quick trot, and Porto was adjusting his speed to it.
Then I saw what the trick was.
Suddenly the captain reined in his mount and wheeled it about. Vicuña was bewildered, and in an instant the captain had drawn his pistol and demanded surrender.
The subterfuge revealed, Vicuña dug in his spurs. This, I thought, meant our defeat. In a moment he would be transformed into a figure moving off into the distance, and we knew nothing could stop him. He would remain entirely out of our reach.
A shot, and the horse declared its condition by falling heavily to one side.
Porto leaped in the air and landed on his feet, hand at his waist.
He stood alone on the smooth, bare earth. Helpless. Beyond the strength of his arm or the vengeance or defense of his knife.
The captain came back into my mind. He, Vicuña, and I formed a triangle. Each of its angles sharp with rancor.
I knew I could not yet consider myself safe.
As if my safety or danger depended on something other than myself, I looked around for the troops. There they were, disturbed, ready to break out of order, as if order itself were a corral.
Parrilla gave them a sign, I don’t know what.
Four horsemen approached at a gallop.
In two pairs, they advanced along the two sides of the triangle. One pair to Vicuña; the other to me.
43
A swarm of insidious carachai were biting my neck, my face. Now a small cloud attacked my forehead and I could not see, so dense was the veil before my eyes.
Bound by a rope behind my back, my hands were useless to defend me against the misery of these insects. I missed my hands, as if they were gone. I pressed them together, wanting to feel that they were mine again.
Lacking hands, I squeezed the horse’s flanks with my legs to hold myself upright.
It felt as if each bite left a grain of dust lodged in the invisible wound it made, which caused a sharp burning. I felt I was being smothered in blood.
My nose dripped a bit and my mustache grew dirty. A fly settled on the filthy coating and I blew upward to scare it off, but it did not budge. The mosquitoes chased it away.
I imagined our entrance to the city.
All the flesh of my face swollen. Nose, mustache, and lips filthy and stuck all over with greedy, sinister flies.
Behind me, my feckless hands.
To the crowd, Vicuña Porto, the bandit, would be no more defeated, repugnant, and wretched than Zama, his accessory.
•
The scouts sounded the alarm, which I had been on the alert for.
In the distance, on the move, was an agglomeration of variable form.
I imagined an army of natives, a famished gang of runaway slaves, a herd of wild animals. . . .
I thought Parrilla might leave me to die with my hands bound behind me.
Still, hope came with the realization that, whatever it was, man or beast, was marching far too openly to be an enemy.
Though if they were natives contemplating an attack, they would know that night, whic
h hardly hindered their movements but hemmed us in and blinded us, was soon to fall.
The captain had the men make ready and sent the lookouts as far as they could go, to see what it was.
Within half an hour they were back, wonder in their faces.
These were natives, they affirmed, five hundred or more in number, on foot and in procession, but without a cross or the image of a saint before them, perhaps even without praying.
Parrilla asked if they were led or accompanied by any priest.
“No, Señor Capitán,” the leader answered, and the other two scouts shook their heads along with him.
Perhaps only at that moment did they realize how mistaken the assumption that it was a religious procession had been. Now the Indians were coming toward us, garbed in the gray of twilight. Parrilla had aligned his men in two equal rows, perhaps to construct a double wall, which in an actual battle would clearly have been no more than a fantasy.
Porto and I were sent to the rear, next to the relief horses, with a guard.
That position was disheartening. I could see very little.
I watched as the thing drew nearer.
If it spread out, it could surround us and cut us off entirely.
The procession arrived at a certain prudent distance, perhaps the length of a horseman’s charge, and came to a halt.
Across this neutral territory eight or ten children walked.
They moved, I thought, with that air of resolve and confidence in themselves and their powers that confers even greater immunity on certain diplomats.
Before Parrilla’s horse, they all set one knee to the ground.
I noticed a scout running to his side.
They parleyed. The King’s captain and the native children.
I could not know what they were saying.
Once, just once, the soldiers spoke among themselves, but their words died out in the long empty space between them and us.
•
Blind. All the adults were blind. The children were not.
44
We set up camp together.
It was their generous hospitality, rather than the agreement that emerged from the parleys, that brought us into proximity.
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