The Reincarnationist Papers

by D. Eric Maikranz

  late afternoon the next day, Juan walked out of Bando’s shop with the second collar, a perfect copy of the chief’s, weighing heavily around his neck. Bando and his model walked with a gathering crowd to the chief’s door. The chief emerged from behind the tapestry with the original collar on and began to shout to the crowd.

  Bando smiled at Juan as fresh tears welled in his eyes. “It is done. There will be a festival tonight.”

  the men of the village brought dead brush in from the surrounding area and prepared a bonfire in the center of the village. The chief lit the pile at sunset, and the villagers sat in a circle around the growing fire. Teszin, Bando, and Juan all sat as guests of honor next to the chief. Across from them sat five young men, each with a different sized drum. The young men and women of the village gyrated and undulated in unison as the drummers began their rhythm. Bando danced in perfect synchronization with the others, and Juan could only tell him apart by his physical appearance. The roaring fire threw gigantic dancing shadows onto the surrounding sandstone cliffs.

  Bando danced around the fire to where Juan sat and pulled the conquistador into the circle. Juan joined in and mimicked the motions as best he could while being careful not to dislodge the new golden collar around his neck. He danced in the circle in front of Bando and behind the chief, keeping his eyes on the figure in front of him for cues to the strange dance. That was when he noticed that the chief was not keeping up with the others. The leader danced more slowly with each revolution, stumbling occasionally, until finally his tired legs gave out altogether on the fifth pass, and he collapsed facedown in the dirt, motionless. Teszin was on the ground at the chief’s side in an instant. The drumming stopped, and Teszin rolled the chief over onto his back. He regained consciousness quickly but motioned that he was too weak to continue and that the festival should continue without him. Teszin and two of the dancers carried him back to his home, and the dancing continued until the fire died.

  juan awoke the next morning to find the villagers clustered near the chief’s door. He walked past Bando’s open door on the way to the chief’s. Bando was not at his bench.

  Juan pushed his way into the chief’s room and found Teszin kneeling beside him. She blew smoke into his face as she chanted. The chief lay on his back with his tunic removed. His chest, neck, and arms were covered with thumbnail-sized white blisters. Bando stood behind Teszin. Juan leaned over and touched Bando on the shoulder, motioning for him to follow. They walked back to the workshop.

  “What’s wrong with the chief?” asked Bando.

  “A fever has him.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  Juan shook his head and mustered the courage to lie to his new friend. “It is difficult to say, perhaps it is best to leave him to the healers in your village.” Juan knew the disease and he knew there would only be a few that would survive. He had seen it run through Samarkand, leaving only two thousand of the original thirty thousand inhabitants fumbling around in a vacant city. Half of the survivors were children, and it didn’t leave anyone over the age of thirty-five.

  “Yes, you’re right. I’ll get back to my work,” said Bando, readying his tools.

  “I’ll be back later to check on you,” said Juan as he left.

  Bando worked quickly and tirelessly throughout the day and late into the night. The sound of his stone tools working was only interrupted when Teszin would bring in a basket of food. Later that day three more fell ill and awoke the next morning with the same white sores as the chief’s.

  bando came out to juan’s camp at midmorning the next day. “The chief wants to see us,” said Bando sullenly. He walked slowly back toward the village. Juan put his sketching materials away and followed him. They arrived to find Teszin with the chief again.

  “How many complain today?” Juan asked Bando in Spanish.

  “Twenty-two complain of the sickness,” Bando replied and pointed to his abdomen to show the location of their pain.

  The chief raised his head and spoke to Bando before motioning for Juan to come closer. He tried to speak to the Spaniard, but his lungs gurgled deeply before he could finish. Juan stepped forward but was careful not to touch him. Bando turned his head away and left the room as the chief spoke at Juan between increasingly shallow breaths. He wished he knew the language so he could know this man’s dying words. Minutes later the chief stopped speaking and then stopped breathing altogether. He stared into Juan’s eyes. Juan smiled. Breathless, the chief showed his irregular yellow teeth and closed his eyes.

  Teszin folded the chief’s arms across his chest and straightened his loose-fitting robe as Juan stepped outside.

  Juan noticed as he walked back to Bando’s shop that for the first time the village was silent. His young squire was inside working feverishly to distract himself, tossing his tools down as he finished, only to pick them up from the same pile when he needed them again. “What did the chief say, Bando?”

  Bando was shaking visibly. “He thinks I came back for their souls, he asked that I take only his and go.” He threw the curved stone he was working with against the wall. “He’s wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong!” he shouted angrily.

  “I know, Bando, I know,” Juan said, picking up the curved tool and handing it back to him. “Bando, it seemed to me that the chief didn’t like you.” Bando nodded his head, his eyes still cast down. “Well, now that he is gone, perhaps things will be easier for you here.” Bando took back the tool without looking at him.

  “I’ve seen this sickness before, in Asia,” Juan continued. “It usually kills only the old and weak, like the chief. The others should recover in a few days, and in a few days we’ll be gone.”

  Bando looked up at Juan, his eyes watering. “You will leave soon?”

  “Yes, and I want you to come with me.”

  “I cannot,” Bando said, shaking his head. “I traveled too far to find this place again.”

  Juan thought about his options. “Well, I must leave soon to meet Tovar and tell him that there is nothing here, so that he will pass and you can live here in peace.”

  “You would do that?”

  “Yes, I will, but I need more of these to take with me,” Juan said, holding up a piece Bando had just finished.

  “I can make more in two days and two nights.”

  “In gold?”

  “Some will be gold and some silver. I have supplies of both metals,” Bando said, pointing with a stone hammer to clay pots in the corner of the workshop.

  Juan walked over to the crude earthen pots and looked inside to see an amazing sight of gleaming nuggets and what looked like frozen spills of shining liquid metal. “Bando, how did your people get all of this?”

  “We find nuggets for some, and sometimes we throw the shining rocks in the fire and collect the metal. This is only what they have found in the last few years. Is that enough for you?”

  Juan kept his eyes locked on the shimmering metals in the simple pots. “Yes, it will be enough.”

  back at his camp, Juan picked up the pad again and continued to sketch the outline of the buildings and the cliffs above. If he left tomorrow and stayed away from the village, perhaps he could leave without contracting it, he thought as he drew the details of two young men carrying a body to the edge of the blackened circle where the bonfire had been.

  Bando worked late into the night, oblivious to the worsening condition of the stricken villagers. He slept in his shop and ventured out late the next morning to find seven bodies laid out parallel to each other near his door.

  Juan sat at his camp, pad and charcoal in hand, occasionally looking up at his subjects. Juan looked up to find a weary Bando staring with disbelief at the seven bodies. They looked as if they might have gone to sleep on the ground next to each other, if it were not for the numerous blisters visible on their exposed skin.

  Juan watched Bando look around at a city that appeared a
bandoned. Bando walked past a row of dwellings and saw a small girl peeking around the edge of a doorway. He remembered her from when he first arrived. Her hair was cropped short like a boy’s, but there was no mistaking she was a girl. She looked to be about five years old. She had been one of the first to approach him. Bando slowly walked up to her and crouched down to match her size. She peered around the edge of the portal so that only half of her small face showed. Her tiny arm crept around the corner and clung to the outside of the stone wall. Bando placed his hand on the wall for support about six inches from hers. He looked at her for a few seconds and smiled. The girl smiled broadly so that a dimple appeared on her visible cheek. Bando moved his hand along the wall toward hers. Her dark eyes looked at his hand and then back at his white teeth. She let go of her hold on the wall and grabbed Bando’s fingers. She giggled when she touched him. He breathed a sigh of relief and clutched her tiny hand.

  Bando hadn’t noticed the curtain rustling behind her and was startled when the girl’s mother exploded from behind the tapestry and jerked the child back into the house, shouting all the while. In an instant, he was alone again. There was no activity in the village except for the rustling of other curtains.

  Bando turned around and returned to his shop, which once more rang with the sound of his stone tools on soft metals.

  two new bodies had been placed at the ends of the other seven when Juan stepped into Bando’s shop late in the afternoon. He had completed seven more gold bracelets and a silver medallion. Juan walked over to the newly completed pieces and donned one of the bracelets.

  “How many more have died?” asked Bando, still working.

  “Two,” answered Juan, removing the bracelet.

  “Will more die soon?”

  “Yes, Bando, they might all die,” Juan said, trying on another bracelet. “We might die too if we don’t leave.”

  Bando stopped working and looked up at Juan.

  “I’m going to leave tomorrow. It’s not too late for you to come with me. It’s probably safer than staying here,” Juan said.

  “To go where?”

  “Zurich, to meet the others I told you about.”

  Bando walked to the open door and looked at the nine bodies. “No, I’m staying. I want to fix this.”

  “What’s the point, Bando? There’s nothing you can do for them now.”

  Bando pointed out at the corpses. “These are my people,” he said, on the verge of tears.

  Juan stepped in front of Bando and placed his hands on both sides of his dark face. “Come with me tomorrow. Let’s leave this place together, like we came,” Juan pleaded. “Bando, please, there is so much for me to show you, so much you don’t know about yourself.”

  Bando looked into Juan’s eyes but was not moved. He reached up and gently pulled Juan’s hands away. “No, my home is here. I’m staying.”

  “Fine,” Juan said, turning toward the door in frustration. “I’ll see you again anyway.”

  Juan walked around the bodies outside Bando’s shop and noticed that the latest one had a bracelet almost identical to the one he had tried on.

  by sunset, there were five new bodies laid next to the others. The wailing, which had been sporadic before, now came from all parts of the village. Cries rang out from every quarter, only to be answered in like kind. I hope it’s not too late, Juan thought. I’ve traveled too far not to get it now, and the gold would finally be enough to compete with the others in the Cognomina. He could feel his opportunity was here, and tomorrow he would finally join their ranks as an equal.

  the collective lamenting of the village finally stopped at first light. Juan sat up wide awake as the dawn broke brilliantly on the cliffs above Latsei. He had stowed most of his gear for the ride south when he caught sight of them.

  There were a dozen of them, half women and half men. Some of them waved crude clubs over their heads. They moved in a cohesive group toward Bando’s door. Teszin was not among them.

  Juan began to walk toward the mob. No, no, no, not today, he thought, any day but today. “Bando, look out!” he shouted in Spanish.

  The mob formed a semicircle around the entrance at the same time Juan drew his sword. The group hesitated a moment at the doorway before three men and a woman entered silently.

  Bando was shouting at them as he emerged and struggled against the two men holding him by his upper arms. Juan broke into a full run toward the village. Bando tore free from their grasp and fell at the feet of the angry villagers. Bando got to his hands and knees and looked up in time to see the club blow that landed squarely above his left eye, knocking him flat again. “Teszin! Teszin!” shouted Bando in between kicks and club blows to his head.

  Juan screamed, and the mob stopped attacking and turned toward the noise in unison. Juan was about fifty feet away and running rapidly while waving his sword menacingly overhead.

  Bando got to his knees and looked out through the legs of the mob before crawling along the outside wall away from them. Juan slowed his pace when the group turned their attention on him.

  The man with the club turned and saw Bando get to his feet and start running. He swung and caught Bando against the ear, knocking him off stride and into the wall. The rest of the crowd turned and pursued his black shadow around the corner. Juan could see that Bando had a ten-pace head start and was pulling away from them as he ran up a trail leading into the cliffs.

  Juan stopped at Bando’s empty doorway and bent over to catch his breath. Two small pools of blood dried into the dirt at his feet. He looked inside and saw the finished pieces. They were piled together at the end of the workbench, glistening brilliantly even in the dim light of morning. Juan couldn’t help but step inside to get a better look at them. The pile was larger than he dared think it would be, heavier too. His mind raced between the tasks in front of him: the gold, the mob, Bando, the gold. He walked backward out the door, not taking his eyes off the pile. When he was clear of the doorway, he closed his eyes and threw his head back.

  “Bando! Bando!” Juan’s shouts echoed back off the cliffs. “Meet me by the horses and we go!” He shouted the words slowly so that each one had a chance to echo back before the next rang out.

  He couldn’t see Bando, but he saw that the crowd had stopped pursuing him up the trail. Confident that his friend had escaped, Juan reentered the shop, grabbed a rug, and began placing the finished pieces onto it. He worked as quickly as he could without risking damage to Bando’s works. Taking another rug from the corner, he emptied the clay pots of their brilliant nuggets onto it, grabbed each of the rugs by their four corners, and left with his heavy makeshift bags.

  Outside, Juan scanned the surroundings for the angry mob and did a double take at the nearest corpse. His eyes locked on the fibrous rope around the dead man’s waist. He untied it and pulled at one end until the man’s weight shifted and it came free. When the corpse rolled back into its original position, Juan noticed a silver bracelet on the man’s wrist. He leaned over and spun it around on his arm, examining it, but being careful not to touch the clammy brown skin. Juan searched the bodies until he found another section of rope and removed it. Sword in hand, he quickly made a small buttonhole incision in each of the four corners of the rugs and laced the ropes through to increase the capacity of each bag. He listened carefully for the crowd, they were quieter now. He bent over the first corpse, removed the bracelet, and put it in the nearest bag without taking his eye off the necklace on the third woman over. He removed the necklace and stepped carefully to the next woman for her gold collar.

  Juan was about halfway through the bodies when he heard a woman’s shrill scream behind him. He turned suddenly and lost his balance, almost falling into the bodies at his feet. It was Teszin, looking up to the cliffs above the village.

  Bando stood at the edge of the cliff, his black figure silhouetted against the blue sky. His deer hide shirt was torn off, and blo
od ran from his head onto his shoulders and chest. The wind atop the high wall whipped at his hair. Bando didn’t respond to Teszin’s shouting but instead stared directly at Juan who held a large silver necklace still partially draped around a dead woman’s neck. Juan threw his head back and squinted against the bright-blue background to return Bando’s stare. He smiled up at Bando.

  “Are you ready?” Juan asked in a tone just strong enough to echo up to him.

  Bando closed his eyes and pitched forward off his perch. He stayed aloft only for an instant, but he looked graceful and confident, as if he knew he could fly all along, and had waited patiently to demonstrate his unique skill. Juan saw him fly for that graceful instant then closed his eyes tight as Bando started his descent. Teszin let out a scream that echoed well past the impact. It took longer than Juan thought it should have for Bando to land, or perhaps his friend really had flown in that instant of grace.

  Antonio de Mendoza was indeed the Viceroy of New Spain at the time of this letter(The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, translated and edited by Genaro García and Alfred Percival Maudslay, 1967.)

  Samas’s identification of Hernando de Alvarado as being a captain in the expedition and finding the Zuni people of Hawikuh is accurate. (The Journey of Coronado, Fulcrum Publishing, 1990.)

  Samas’s dramatic firsthand description of the start of the battle of Hawikuh seems to be corroborated by author Neil Mangum, who described Coronado as likely having a bruised face after being hit with stones in the battle. (In the Land of Frozen Fires by Neil Mangum.)

  Captain Pedro de Tovar did indeed venture out ahead of Coronado in a northwesterly direction. He ventured all the way to the edge of the Grand Canyon. (Coronado’s Expedition in 1540 from the City of Mexico to the Seven Cities of Cibola by Merrill Freeman, 1917.)

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