by Aaron Thier
“I know it’s not a pleasant spectacle,” says Daniel de Fo, speaking loudly so I can hear him over Castellana’s screams, “but you have to have a strong stomach if you’re going to be a mutineer.” He is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I’m a little surprised that my plan worked so well.”
So now Castellana is gone. We waste no time thinking about it. We have shed a great burden and even I feel better, although by now I have ceased to exist, and I feel nothing.
We descend through the clouds and into the forest, where there are mushrooms as big as houses, more monkeys than leaves, no up and no down and no heaven or hell. Instead of trees there is only one tree, as large as the world, with innumerable trunks, with leaves and fruits of every possible variety. The forest does not exist in Spanish, language of cows and wheat and war. It does not exist in Pirahao, language of city streets. Only the Muro can see the forest because only the Muro have words for it, and suddenly these five men are much more considerable than they were in the mountains. They walk one in front of the other, making no sound, their hands crossed on their chests. They show us what roots to eat. They hunt and fish. Their reasons for helping us are their own. They could escape very easily. They burn their hair into a rounded fringe.
Daniel de Fo speaks to the Muro and together they decide our route. The rest of us are lost. In this state of helplessness a surprising thing happens. Miguel Oreja, who has taken charge of the expedition by universal acclamation and by the bloody suppression of alternative claimants, grows mild and cheerful. He claims to perceive in all of this the hand of a benevolent God. He makes speeches in which he says that in El Dorado we will found a new church, free of the corruptions of the apostle Paul. He says that God will be served and honored there more than in any other place on earth. He rejoices to think that we are the agents by whom God is pleased to bring the Indians to an understanding of the Faith.
“Truly they must be a godly people,” he says, “if they are anything like our beautiful Maria.”
We will not conquer the city at all, he says, shaking his fists in the underwater gloom of the forest. Instead we will simply reduce it to civility by introducing private property, wages, horses, industry, the use of money, and Spanish goods. We will teach the people to wear shoes, to speak as we speak, to cook meat in the right way, to walk properly, to cut their hair.
“Indians in a state of nature are just like children,” he says, “easy to persuade, and under the influence of a hot and humid temperament that inhibits them from making rational choices and exercising free will.”
Everything he says is wrong, and everything he says is the truth, and I can’t tell the difference in any language, but now I understand something about the distinction between the Christians and the Pirahao. It is true that none of us can see the forest, but for me it is a void and for the Christians it is populated by the familiar ghosts and devils they carry with them wherever they go. This is why the Christians can cross the ocean so easily. This is why they can live in cities and in the forest and in the mountains. This is why they never flicker in and out of existence, as I do. Christianity is the world of things that don’t exist, and nothing can harm it, and nothing can intrude upon it, and it is everywhere all the time, and they are always at home in it. That is how I come to understand that I am not a Christian, and never have been. After I realize this, I begin to exist again, if only a small amount.
This is also why they can disagree so profoundly among themselves. Each of them lives in a world apart, and each has his own relationship to the ghosts and spirits and gods. Now we have an illustration of this, because not all of them agree with Miguel Oreja. There is a one-eyed man named Avellaneda who says that the violence with which we’ve been living on our expedition, and all the violence of the religious wars in Europe, and the destruction of Tenochtitlan and Tahuantinsuyu, is in truth the violence of Armageddon. If we can look forward to a period of harmony in El Dorado, it’s only because our arrival there will be marked by the return of no less a person than Jesus himself. He will rejoice at the conversion of the Indians, he will reign in love for a thousand years, but at the same time he will ring in the horror and majesty of judgment day. At this time the great majority of us will be damned forever.
“Do you think it’s strange,” says Daniel de Fo, “that a thousand years does not seem so long to me? To me it’s like saying ‘all afternoon’ or ‘a whole week.’”
These theological differences are irreconcilable, but at least there is no more violence. Avellaneda and a few other men simply depart one morning with cordial wishes for our happiness and success. Avellaneda makes the argument that because no one knows where El Dorado is, it cannot be said that, in striking off on his own and traveling in an entirely different direction, he is not also, as surely as we are, going to El Dorado.
Daniel de Fo and I stay with Oreja because the Muro stay with Oreja and they are our only hope of remaining alive. We do whatever they tell us. When the Muro say that August is the month for ridding oneself of parasites, we eat the leaves they gather and in the morning we eliminate a menagerie of diverse creatures. We feel stronger afterward. And this is also how I learn that Daniel de Fo is a Jew after all. If he were a Christian, he could not take the cure, because for the Christians Indian medicine is a terrible poison that sends them directly to hell.
“But what is a Jew?” I ask him. “In what world do the Jews live?”
“Good questions,” he says, but he doesn’t answer them.
Soon Oreja has gone mad, as every captain general must, but it is the madness of love. He gives speeches each night on the subject of the Indians of El Dorado. He says that God has told him everything. He says the Indians already have a rudimentary knowledge of Christianity. He says they know that God has given us a heaven and a day of rest. He says that even though they worship the lightning, there is no witchcraft. He says there is no evil of any kind in El Dorado.
“And there are no whores!” he says. The men look disappointed, but Oreja is beaming. “The women are not given liquor and they are always pure until marriage! Isn’t it true, Maria?”
“It’s true,” I say. And it may be. El Dorado is a Christian city that I have never visited.
He asks me to share some Indian prayers. I invent one that will please him. “O Lord,” I say, “where are you? In the sky? On earth? In the inferno? Where are you?”
“This prayer demonstrates an aspiration to be Christian,” he says.
This is the central problem for the Christians in America. If God is infinitely powerful, then how could there be so many people with no knowledge of him? Oreja imagines that they have simply lost this knowledge in the long journey from Jerusalem to the New World. But it is a problem that bothers him more and more as we travel deeper into the forest, because now we begin to see wild Indians. They are naked, bewildered people. They speak languages that neither I nor the Muro have ever heard. They make their arrows in an unfamiliar way and they are as far from a knowledge of Christianity as a rock is from singing the tapir song. The Muro say we must leave them alone. This is not the season for making friends. But Oreja feels he must comply with the letter of Spanish law and make an attempt to bring these people into the faith, so he orders the reading of the Requerimiento. This is a Christian story that describes the origins of the world, the nature of the Spanish monarchy, the existence of God, the existence of his representative on earth, who is called the Pope, and all manner of other things. Its purpose, says Daniel de Fo, is to establish a legal basis for conquest.
“It works like this,” he says. “We claim the lands and territories for the monarchy, which makes the Indians Spanish subjects. Then, if they refuse to convert, they’re said to be in rebellion and they can be attacked. This is just simple jurisprudence and legal maneuvering. Of course it’s not the same thing as justice.”
The royal notary is gone, so Daniel de Fo reads the Requerimiento himself. He reads it in Spanish. It must be read in Spanish because only in Spa
nish do these things exist. He reads the story each time we see wild Indians, and they do not understand what he tells them. Then Oreja decides that I should translate the story into Pirahao. Some of the men believe this is a heresy because it suggests that God does not have the power to make the story comprehensible to the Indians regardless of the language in which it’s read. Oreja argues that I myself am the agent through whom God will make it comprehensible. It doesn’t matter because it is not possible to speak a translation, nor do the Indians understand Pirahao. In place of a translation, I tell stories of my own.
“I am the mother of bees,” I say. “I am the mother of bats. Look at my army of dead men. They have stomachs in their heads and brains in their bellies.”
Daniel de Fo is the only one who understands what I’m saying. He thinks it is a fair translation. Oreja asks the Muro to translate it into their own language as well, but they refuse.
We make slow progress through the forest. The mosquitoes don’t bite me because I only exist for a few moments at a time. They don’t bite Daniel de Fo because his blood is thin and sour, like vinegar. They bite the Christians and the Christians speak of heaven, where there are no mosquitoes. Meanwhile the Muro hunt and fish. They find roots. They milk the trees. The mosquitoes bite them but they don’t care. September is the month in which it is proper to die, but we try to stay alive.
I have forgotten my desire for vengeance. I have left it in the mountains. Now I understand that it doesn’t matter whether Anaquitos is destroyed or not, because as soon as the Christians arrive it will be known to their gods and it will become a Christian city. It will become El Dorado. What can be done? The Christians are only the groping fingers of their gods.
Oreja laughs and raves and pulls at his hair. He is dissatisfied with the Requerimiento and offers explanatory appendices. He asks me to explain how wonderful everything will be in El Dorado. It will be a place of concord and harmony. There will be bread every day, and wine, and meat. He pauses after each wild sentence so that I can translate. He does not understand that Pirahao means nothing to these people.
“October is the season in which it is evil to sleep under the moon,” I say. “The white men are ghosts. Daniel de Fo is looking for his wife. Who will help him?”
We reach the confluence of two enormous rivers and camp there for a month in order to build a small flotilla of brigantines. Now we will travel by boat. The Muro say they will have to leave us because for them it is not the season for traveling on the water. They tell us to continue down the river until we reach a place where there are high cliffs, flattened on top by the feathered forehead of their own god, Xagigai, to whom they now address the prayer of homecoming. They say we will reach the city in twenty days. Oreja tries to compel them to stay but they slip their chains and vanish into the forest.
We eat sweet potatoes that we find in abandoned Indian villages. Daniel de Fo and I eat the white worms that live in palm stumps in the gardens, but the Christians don’t know how to eat them.
We know the city is nearby because the villages are closer and closer together. There are wide clearings. There are large rounded buildings with thatched roofs like those I remember from my childhood. We know the city is close because we see people wearing the simple clothing of the Pirahao, a strip of cotton cloth hanging from the waist and no ornament but a necklace of palm nuts. These people are not Pirahao but they live within the dominion of the city.
Suddenly I recognize a hill, a bend in the river, a rock. Suddenly I am not able to speak. It is not a failure of language but a failure of the spirit. I have brought the Christians to this place, which is the only place, the last place, and it vanishes before us like corn before a knife. Daniel de Fo must translate the Requerimiento for me, which he does in the same spirit.
“I am coming home from death,” he says. He speaks Pirahao very well, though I am supposed to be the only translator. “I am just appearing around the bend. Come with us. You will enjoy a bigness of honey in the rivers of the sky.”
And at last we receive an answer. An old man in a canoe tells us, “I do not remember how to eat honey.”
And Daniel de Fo says, “Hello, little father.”
And these two old men have a conversation. They discuss fish and rain. The Indian does not fear us. He is a Pirahao and has never had to fear anything. He tells us that a terrible thing has happened in the city and then he laughs. I laugh also. A laugh that emerges from the empty air of the river.
The city is a short distance downriver and we know now that we will reach it within three days. Oreja stands in the bow with a beatific smile. He proclaims his love for all the people we see. Daniel de Fo translates.
“Where is Anna Gloria?” he says. “In the sky? On earth? In the world beneath the world?” He shouts at everyone we see. “She is a pretty woman. She has hair like the Xagai River.”
2200
* * *
It were dead wind platforms all up the coast one mile off shore in a long line. Each night we come close inshore for we didn’t want to get ourselves smashed to pieces. We bobbed in the sea we was at ease we was sailors. Have some corn whiskey said the captain passing it to Old Dan. Not me he said. Not me said Peaches I am a abstinent. Joseph and me and the captain we drank corn whiskey passing it back and forth. As I drank I longed for women again like always it were tiresome. However I also thought some day I will meet my Anna Gloria. This were a new type of thought for me. Usually I only thought oh I am sad oh I want riches oh I have got a reseca.
One day I said to Old Dan I don’t know what kind of treasure to hope for anymore I don’t know if I want the treasure of Anakitos or my own Anna Gloria which is the true riches as you say. You want both said Old Dan. Maybe I said. You are young he said you want the whole world. Oh no I said I really just want small things my desires fit in a little green bag. Haha he said. It’s true I said sometimes I just want a cool place to sit not even air condition just a shady tree and no bugs. Well said Old Dan there are many kinds of treasure and a shady tree is one kind. Yes I said and reading is a treasure too it is probably as good as streamy media. That’s the spirit he said think positive. Who needs streamy media I said. Yes he said who needs it I never even understood what it was.
Each time we come to a new place I compared it with Boston. How the air smelled how the sky looked the plants the weeds ecksekera. I asked Old Dan if the place you grow up always did get in the way of your imagination. Oh sure he said. Then I asked him where he grew up. A man never forgets where he grew up he said. I said where was it then. He scratched his head. He said Lisbon I think yeah I am pretty sure it was Lisbon or else it was a town in La Mancha. Suddenly Peaches said how old are you. 750 said Old Dan. You are joking said Peaches. I am not said Old Dan. It is amazing I said you have seen everything nothing surprises you. No said Old Dan it is not true everything surprises me for I keep forgetting I have seen it already. Wait said Peaches you are 750 years old. Yes said Old Dan. Are you a demon said Peaches. A demon said Old Dan laughing I am not a demon. Are you a vampire said Peaches. I am not said Old Dan vampires are not hardy I think they have gone the way of extinction like everything. Are you Satan said Peaches. Now there is a possibility said Old Dan laughing again. Are you Satan said Peaches now very loud. Maybe I am said Old Dan. You are a creature of Satan at least cried Peaches you are a creature of darkness damn you damn you.
The captain now turned to me he said Peaches must be neutralized. What would you like me to do sir I said. He has got religious madness said the captain. Would you like me to restrain him I said. No said the captain we will wait.
Next it begin to blow and gust after all these days of calm. We crossed into Florida running before the wind however the wind were not steady. It had a calm again and then suddenly a great storm come up. You could see the hills and mountains of cloud glowing like they was luminated with electronic light. They was like the hills where the rich people lived. Then the sea come up very suddenly whereafter our yacht rolled up lik
e a carpet. The masts was broken the hull split and we was all tossed overboard. Call me Jonah shouted Old Dan. However we was close to shore we was tossed upon the shore alive all of us except Joseph who was drown sad to say.
This were another terrible vicissitude which followed close on the vicissitude of Lun-Biao but I guess I were getting use to it. Maybe I were tougher now at least by a little bit. Old Dan of course were not troubled. He stood up he tightened his belt he said ah Florida this were my home smell the air. Joseph is drown I said. Oh he said. Then he saw the captain and Peaches who was both lying down stunned coughing. Well he said one bonus is that the treasure of Anakitos is somewhere pretty close we won’t have to make a special trip. Okay I said are you sure. No he said I am never sure of my treasure. It’s okay I said. Maybe we can also find Quaco he said. Quaco I said. It were not his true name said Old Dan it were only his slave name you should not tell your true name it is why I call myself Daniel Defoe. Aha I said. We was having a conversation you see. We was on the shore the yacht rolled up and Joseph drown and at our backs the great dark forest mile after mile yet Old Dan were standing with his hands behind his back talking like he were a old man in a city park. This is my twenty-ninth shipwreck he said I am Robertson Crusoe I am Crusoe at large. He were just thinking positive like always.
Old Dan made a fire in the rusted skull of a truck and we talked while the captain and Peaches recovered. He told me about a device it used to have which were a computer that told you the probability of everything. It were a supercomputer he said. You pointed it at a man in a chair and it said he had got a ninety-eight percent chance of nothing happening a one percent chance of falling asleep a half percent chance of falling out of his chair. Okay I said. But listen said Old Dan eventually they made this instrument so sensitive it could show how this man had also got a tiny percent chance of growing wings a chance of being raptured straight up to heaven a chance of the house falling down. Okay I said. You could mathematically demonstrate that everything were possible he said. Could you tell the future I said could you tell that the world was going to be halfway destroyed. It was only accurate to several hours he said but once we did see there were a chance an asterisk would strike the earth. Interesting I said. For example he said it could also tell you the probability of shipwrecks. I could tell you too I said for the probability of shipwrecks is one hundred percent.