The Gold Eaters

by Ronald Wright

  “I’ve brought you something. From the mountains.” His father opens the plain cotton bag that hangs from his shoulder and takes out another, this one of wool and brightly coloured. “Open it.” Inside Waman finds a small, slim-necked gourd with a rubber stopper and some dried leaves wrapped in a square vicuña cloth. Coca and lime. A man’s gift! The boy grins happily and throws his arms around his father.

  “Let’s sit over there under the tree,” Mallki says. “Let’s chew.”

  He shows his son how to lay out the leaves on the cloth, how to pick five of the best and fan them out in his hand. He does the same himself. He then takes all ten leaves, lifts his face to the sunlight filtering through the pepper tree, and blows over them gently. Adding lime from the bottle, he makes up two small quids. They chew without speaking for a while. Waman feels a numbness in his cheek, a warmth flowing into his chest, an inner power.

  “I’m not sure I understood the Empire until now,” his father says at last. “And of course I’d never met the Emperor himself. People like us seldom do. You’re right that I used to grumble. The Empire makes demands. We must work for it, till its fields, pay taxes with our time, even risk our lives, as I’ve been obliged to do. The World is changing fast. When your granddad was born—in this house, just as I was—there was no Empire. Not down here. In those days we had our own kings and queens. They lived by the sea, as we do. They spoke our language. Everyone in Little River spoke only Tallan. There was no Quechua here then, except a little for trade.”

  Waman has heard much of this before. He is bursting with thoughts of his own. Brilliant thoughts. He wants to cut in, to answer, to argue. What is his father’s point? But, grateful for the fine woollen bag, for the honour of being allowed to chew, he holds his tongue by listening to voices in the street and the sounds of the yard, wind in the branches above them, the cuy-cuy of guinea pigs scuffling for scraps.

  “The Empire,” his father goes on, the coca making him talkative, “we have to do things for it, but in return the Empire does things for us. It builds new canals, new fields, new roads. When we have a bad harvest, the Empire feeds us from its granaries. If there’s an emergency, it sends help. Your cousin Tika, for example—Tika lives with us because the Empire rescued her and found her next of kin.”

  “But the Emperor makes war all the time,” Waman says, unable to keep quiet any longer. His father stops chewing, stares fixedly. As a llama does when about to spit in your eye.

  “Not all the time, Waman. Many provinces joined of their own free will. Some in fear of the Empire’s might, to be sure. But others welcomed an end to their own squabbles. I did see some fighting in Quito Province, yet only to secure the northern border. Mostly we were building roads and bridges. The Emperor has announced that these wars will be the end of war. The boundary is now fixed at the Blue River; the World is big enough.”

  Mallki chews on thoughtfully for a while. He wipes a little leafy spittle from his lip and moves the quid to his cheek, where it makes a small bulge. “Some doubt it. But I believe the Emperor meant what he said. Ask anyone in the highlands what they think of him and they’ll tell you he’s a good king. Open-handed with everybody, great and small—as those who hold power should always be. And affable. Twice while I was there he threw a big feast and drank with his troops. He could outdrink any of us—yet we never saw him drunk. His enemies fear him with good reason. But he’s a great friend to the weak. He opened the storehouses to the wounded and the widows—on both sides—after our victories.”

  Waman thinks: our victories?

  —

  Weeks later, in the cool time of mists and sea fog, when grass greens the desert like mould, a line of stakes appears across the sands. Then come imperial workers, teams of men who dress and speak strangely—in several different tongues. Waman knows only Tallan and Quechua. Now he hears languages for which he has no name. The workers build a bridge across the river, a great hammock of thick cables slung between stone piers. Through the dunes they cut a highway—with flagstones, walls, and a canal beside it—stringing the small valley like an emerald onto the great coast road, which it’s said will link all the seaports in the World. The road brings new sights, new sounds: the clicking toes of llama trains, the slap of many sandals on pavement, laughter and beery singing from a barracks outside the town.

  A time of fullness. The mountain snowmelt is heavy, the fields are well watered, the river runs fast under the hanging bridge. Now it is his father who takes the new boat to sea and comes back laden with fish. Waman is sent to school most days and given humbler tasks: weeding, clearing ditches, feeding ducks and llamas, scaring birds from the young corn with his sling. As if he were still a boy. But his voice is cracked and deepening. He’s had enough of children’s work.

  His daydreams follow the ships on the horizon. Above all he misses the sea.

  “Why won’t you let me take the boat out?” he asks his father one day, as he has many times. “No more of that!” Mallki snaps. “Do as you’re told.”

  Waman sees that mood on his father again, the mood brought home from the wars. He opens his mouth. Says nothing.

  “If you’re such a man, Waman, you’d better speak up like one. Out with it.”

  “Granddad made that boat for me.”

  “I’ll hear no me in this family!”

  Next morning, while the house is still asleep, Waman packs water and food in his woollen bag as if heading to the fields. Tika comes into the kitchen to light the fire, gathering dry stalks from under a bench, scattering the guinea pigs who live there. He worries their squeaks will wake his parents before he can talk to her alone. Tika knows of his daydreams—the dreams of many a youth. She has her own dream of becoming a Chosen. And she has ears. Waman is sure she will help, or at least understand. Crouching beside her as she tends the flame, whispering his news, he fails to see the flare of anger in her eyes.

  “You can’t mean it.”

  “I do. I must.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Say nothing. Not until I’m well away. You’re clever, you’ll know what to do. And what not to.”

  She is on him like a watchdog. He is knocked on his back, stunned by the strength of her blow. She holds him down, his wrists locked in her wiry hands, her long hair tenting his head. No, she hisses. No! The words are loud in his ear though her voice is low, her nose touching his, her tears running into his eyes, mingling with tears of his own. He bites her chin, frees one hand as she rears, tries to push her off. His hand connects with the softness under her shawl. He pinches hard. She hits him in the eye and pins his hand again. But still she has not yelled.

  Her face, warm and salty, is against his. She strokes his nose with hers. She draws his lower lip into her mouth. She lets his lip go and kisses him firmly, spreading his mouth. The way he has heard that grown women kiss their men. “You can’t go,” she says. “Stay longer. Then we can plan things. We can go together.” Still astride him, she sits up and pulls her shift over her head. He sees her small breasts in the firelight, her upturned nipples, the deep blush from his pinch.

  Often he has thought of this, longed for it, pictured how this moment might be. But he finds to his dismay that desire has left him like a tide. He is trembling, a strange fear stranding him on the earthen floor, a voice in his head saying he is unworthy and this is all too much, too soon. His mind is a welter, his face hot, pulse quaking in his ears. He must go, and think, be alone.

  “I will come back for you,” he whispers. “We’ll be together. But not now. Now I must get away.”

  She releases him, wipes her mouth. “You’re mad.”

  They listen to the house. It is still, except for snores. Mother, Father, Grandfather were drinking beer up on the roof last night. She stands, pulls on her shift and a shawl. “All right,” she whispers. “You’ve got what you want.”

  “What?”

  “I want yo
u gone. We’ll see how you do out there.” She scoops a guinea pig off the floor and wrings its neck. He hears the crack, a small, sad sound.

  “This hurts,” she says.

  Waman says nothing, burning with shame.

  “Oh, I don’t mean you,” she adds. “You can’t hurt me. It just hurts each time I take one of these little lives.”

  She presses the warm furred body and a bag of toasted corn into his hands. “We can’t have you getting hungry and slinking home tomorrow like a dog.”

  —

  Now Waman is glad of the Emperor’s new road. He had pondered taking the boat—which he still regards as his—and paddling north till he reached the big port where the ships come and go. Three days with luck, maybe four. But that would make him a thief. Even if he wasn’t caught and jailed by the authorities, his father and mother would never forgive him.

  He moves quickly as the morning lightens, at a trot on the stone flags. He pushes hard, as if wanting to wear himself out, test himself, make himself stronger. Older. How can he turn back now? He must go on, and to sea, if only for a month or two.

  Twice he hears running feet, but they belong to postmen who streak by in their checkered uniforms without a glance, intent on handing their messages to the next relay.

  His mind runs over what happened in the kitchen, and what did not. To keep going takes all the will he can muster. If Tika had not shamed him—dared him—with her parting words, he might turn back. But then there’d also be Grandfather Waman to face, a bold man who went to sea in much the same way when he himself was young. And who has given him his name. The boy fortifies himself by recalling the elder Waman’s tales of twenty-day voyages west over deep water, with no sight of land until the Tortoise Islands, where he caught the giant in whose shell he brews his beer. And onward many more days, to the place called the Fire Islands where the Sea People live, those who skim the waves like flying fish in boats with tall sails and twin hulls of hollowed trees. And the long coastal runs up north to the hotlands where the desert ends and a thick jungle runs down to the surf—a land of wild beasts and cannibals. And yet further to other kingdoms with wooden towns on stilts, strange people eager to trade.

  Anywhere. I will go anywhere.

  —

  The road leaves the sea and cuts through low hills, taking the shortest way to Tumbes, northernmost port of the Empire. He rests that afternoon in a gully shaded by tall cactus and a carob tree. Others have just been there; he is able to breathe life into the embers of their campfire and grill the guinea pig before it spoils. A sad meal, the last he will receive from Tika in . . . how long? I want you gone.

  On the second day the country begins to change, scattered bushes thickening into dry woods in the folds of the hills. That night, he sleeps by the roadside in a cutting, glad of retaining walls between himself and the trackless bush. The darkness is alive with cries of foxes, monkeys, parrots, owls, and other things he doesn’t know and tries not to imagine. Once or twice he stirs at the quick feet and breath of an imperial runner, but they never stop between relays. There are no other travellers, no fires in the night, nothing but the new highway and the woods. He has never felt so alone.

  On the third day the road drops down from the foothills to rejoin the desert. He sees a wide river, fields and canals spread like green wings over the tawny land. The sea beyond. And a great town on a rise, buildings blazing in the sun.

  —

  Waman has never seen a city before, nor such a throng: farmers and fishermen in plain cotton like those at home; lofty officials of the Empire with checkered tunics and gold earspools; lords or wealthy traders in multicoloured cloaks and turbans; splendid ladies in long gowns, hair braided and studded with gems. He is dismayed by the human din, not the drowsy murmur of a village but a flurry of cries and tongues—his own, spoken here with a slight accent, others he has never heard, and the crisp mountain speech of the Empire, which all must learn or at least understand.

  It is about midday. The boy passes fruit and vegetable stalls shaded by awnings, and an inn where people are drinking beer and palm wine. The place is smoky with cooking. Smells of seared meat, steamed maize, and spices torment him—he finished all but a handful of his corn at first light and has nothing to give for a meal. Nor is it a weekend, when the Empire lays on a public feast in every town.

  He goes on towards the centre, which he must cross to reach the docks. At home he would be greeted by passersby, but here no one pays any mind to a fisherboy. Parts of the town are old and plain, of mud brick and poured adobe like Little River, but around the square are newer, grander buildings. One, filling a whole block, is startling—its façade painted with whales, birds, conches, and swordfish, in red and black on ochre walls. Uniformed sentries stand outside, and Waman guesses this must be the famed hall of the city’s Governor: a great lady, he has heard.

  A few townsfolk are sitting drowsily in the middle of the square, on the edge of a low dais with a trickling fountain. He joins them to take a drink and eat the last of his grain. His eyes roam over the city sights, particularly a strange and even larger building opposite the painted palace. He strolls by for a closer look on his way out. This must be a temple of the Empire, for its roof is steeply pitched—not flat like the others—and trimmed with sheets of gold. The doorway, twice his height, is made of smooth masonry, the work so massive and precise it looks impossible, as if stone blocks had magically been rendered soft as clay and pressed together in a perfect fit. A crimson curtain hides the mysteries beyond the threshold. In the heat, his hunger, his light-headedness, the boy feels a little of his father’s awe for the highland emperors who can build such things—who long ago, when Grandfather was young, swept down from their city in the clouds to rule the World.

  It’s a tiring walk to the docks, longer than expected, though Waman is cheered by the familiar sight of fishing craft upended along the shore. There is little business at this hour. Most people are indoors or under trees and shelters, resting after lunch.

  Three big ships are tied at a jetty that bends into deep water. Men and women are working by the furthest, stowing freight briskly as if aiming to catch the tide. Delicious smells of pineapple, coconut, sweet potato, peppers, and jerked meat waft from the ship’s stores, contending with the burnt sharpness of pitch from timbers and ropes. Bales of cotton and wool are being slung aboard and fastened on deck beneath oiled tarpaulins. In charge is a burly man wearing nothing but a white cloth tied up around his loins, a red turban on his head, and a tattooed band of pelicans marching in faded blue across his chest. He is bent over a tangle of rigging, sweating heavily, cursing to himself.

  “Are you the owner?” Waman asks.

  “Owner? If it’s the owners you want, you won’t find them here. They’re fifteen days south, and that’s the way I like it.”

  “But this is your ship?”

  “I’m her skipper. And I’m busy.”

  “Do you need men?”

  “Men, maybe. Boys, no.”

  “I can paddle, steer, and fish. I’m strong . . . I’ve sailed to the Tortoise Islands.”

  “How so?” The captain looks the boy up and down for the first time.

  “With my grandfather.”

  “Why aren’t you sailing with him now, then? What’s his name? Has he got one? I know every skipper from here to Chincha.” Seeing that his lie is about to unravel, Waman glances aside, to where several ships are moored abreast in the channel. The serpents-and-rainbow flag of the Empire hangs limply from each masthead. Soldiers are dozing against a deckhouse.

  “The Emperor took his ship. For the wars. But not him—he’s too old.”

  The captain looks up from his work again, a sly grin on his face.

  “I’ll say one thing for you, boy. You’re quick-witted. Get loading there. We’ll see what kind of worker you are.”

  “I ask nothing. Only food.”
<
br />   A single cough of mirth from the tattooed chest.

  “Food is all you’ll get.”

  At the dock, in Tumbes, the ship had seemed huge—thirty paces in length, eight in beam, made of giant balsa logs cunningly notched and lashed, with a raised deck of slatted timber and a long split-cane deckhouse between the masts. But alone on the heaving vastness of the sea, the craft has shrunk in Waman’s eyes to a floating cage. They are twenty-three on board: ten crew, himself, and a dozen traders, men and women who between them have more than thirty tons of cargo. At first the boy is entrusted only with tending the cook fire, fishing on calm days, tightening lashings over the freight whenever seas are high. But he is quick to learn the ship’s ways—how to spread and reef a sail, how to raise and lower the centreboards that make her tack into the wind.

  —

  They are eleven days out, in a region where twice a year the noonday sun stands straight overhead, when the lookout spies another sail. A ship is approaching from the north, running before the wind as if homeward bound to the Empire. The merchants get angry with the captain: he should have told them others had sailed this way already. Their goods will fetch less. The choicest products of the hotlands—the best gems, chocolate, conches, corals—will have been snapped up. The captain glares at them, makes no reply. He climbs the foremast and stays aloft at the crosstree for a long time, staring, gripping the perch with his knees, roofing his eyes with both hands.

  “Rigged like us,” he says, upon regaining the deck. “But I don’t recognize that ship.” He stands by the foremast, arms folded, waiting. When all the traders have gathered and calmed themselves, he speaks with the air of someone who knows more than he will say.

  “That ship isn’t one of ours—though it’s rigged like ours. It looks as big as we are. It is sailing swiftly. There’s a strange emblem on the sail. You should worry less about your prices and more about your skins.”

  They are far out on the open sea, the white cusp of a mountain the only trace of the World in sight. He orders the crew to fall off and make for land.