So I set out early with a few matés and two horses, the first mine, the better one belonging to someone else. I thought of buying it, along with some other things, with the promised bounty. The saddlebag was ready for the proof: his head.
What I knew about him, to start, was that he was in Indian territory. Why? Because he had enemies everywhere.
I thought I knew everything about the desert, but had to learn the worst: a shout, suddenly silenced. As for the rest, the thirst and cold, nothing was lacking. From what I can recall, that was the worst time.
After a month or so travelling, I came across a fugitive captive. French, he said. Engineer, he cried. I don’t know why, but I preferred that he die. I left him there.
In Indian territory I met with such a commotion that no one asked me a thing. The chief had died. With him alive, they had put the government itself in a tight spot. Without him, little hope remained for them. A huge gathering had been arranged for the funeral.
Where could I go where I wouldn’t know anyone? The men there found themselves on one side or other of the line out of sheer luck. I greeted one of them.
They pointed him out to me without my asking. He rode at the head of his people; he was blond and wore a black poncho and hat with coloured feathers.
There will never be another funeral like that one. But I only mourned the horse and the silver, which they buried with the dead man and his women.
That night I made the most of the occasion to drink mare’s blood. I didn’t have to be asked twice.
Passing over to his camp – far-flung tents and even some houses – took me time, weeks. It is said that few were as suspicious-minded as he was.
I behaved myself, and a few months later was put on lookout. The moon appeared late that night, and I got the horses ready, keeping the saddlebags close. The weapons seemed to unsheathe themselves on their own.
While I waited, I spied on him through a chink. I saw him sitting there, three of his women with him, all young. One was a captive about fifteen years old who hadn’t been there long. They served him and he ate. He was given water to wash. There were fine ponchos and blankets on the ground.
When he undressed and got up I saw that there had never been a man like him. I looked at him and my life seemed to scroll past before me in its entirety. It seemed hollow.
I couldn’t kill him.
I didn’t return, I didn’t ask for payment. What’s worse, I passed for a coward. In this campsite, away from everything, I came to stay.
It was fate.
THE THIRTY-THREE WIVES OF EMPEROR BLUE STONE
1
BEHIND THE GREAT KING hangs a painted hide. It can shake; it’s the wind. Or not: the queen is listening. I count on me those dead by his order. Those dead by his hand are in me. The women who cry for their lost youth are fools: they do not know the secrets of fermentation. Look at the drunken revelries under the stars. If water is for day, alcohol is for control.
Old age is a drunkenness. I’ve lost my teeth, but influence nourishes me. I plait my white hair. What would be plaited without me?
Yet I have a longing. I’d have that girl killed. And the little boy in her arms.
2
I like to soften hides. Eat. Go to get water. Spin fleece, prepare threads, weave. Look at smoke, see if it will rain tomorrow. Defecate calmly among the shrubs. Season the deer through the wound. Prepare maté and drink it. Dye ostrich feathers.
Each day its own. A good life. Sleep.
3
I make people travel. Rider, beware. Of what we visit nothing can be told. The most terrible of kings moans like a lamb. I have never needed beauty.
I am she who travels. The gateway of journeys.
It’s true I take risks; I see death at each step. How can I limit to just one this body of mine, of a thousand lives?
No one is as young or as old as I am.
4
I tortured them. I remain thirsty. I saw them die, naming unknown people in other tongues. I was not satisfied. Even if each blade of grass could be subject to shame and each star were an eye to blind, my yearning would persist.
5
Woollen, woollen is the morning. Shoos out the dew, kills off the chill. Red it dyes, warms the eyes. It ties the paths of life. Black, a knot, white, across. Form is pattern, pattern is my form. Here, the line of silence, the fringe, madness, the rake of the sun, the peaks of the night, treads, traces, footprints. Life is among these steps: the yes, the no, the now, the never.
This is the poncho I wove for the king.
6
Friend, give me your mouth. Open your legs for me. I picked fleas from your hair. Fat ones for you, middling for me, thin ones to die between the fingernails. Something happened. It matters little to me to be the king’s wife. It matters little to you to be the king’s wife. Is it possible to hide it? There are so many eyes.
7
I won’t speak of another time, another tongue, another man, other children.
Here, the wind, the horror.
Rocking, sleeping, I am the oven and the bread. Nine batches. Nine loaves of bread.
I see six with the horse trainer. One, with the bolas. One, with the lance. One, with the dagger. One, with the hobbled gallop. One, with the footrace. One, lying down.
They will speak amongst themselves, I will be a single ear: horses, horses. Only horses. Can other words matter to me? Can they matter?
There are two more: they run close to my steps. What steps do I hear but those?
There is one more, and he sleeps. Happy bosom. I once had a garden. No petals but these eyes exist now.
Nine loaves of bread. They will go, in this same wind, to kill other children.
8
To go, without footsteps. Ants. Air. Nothing.
9
I glory in his glory.
I repeat, so the wind carries it:
Two thousand five hundred leagues of confederation.
Two thousand lancers.
Four horses for each lancer.
This is how a king’s grandeur is counted
I walk, heavy with grandeur.
Why did he mount me only once?
10
The marquis murmured: The chaise is tied. Madam, all that remains is to flee. She raised her mask. Her light blue pupils were goodbye. She slipped a ring with a seal into his hands.
I can’t remember how it went on…
11
I will forever see him as ridiculous. Every night watching over his females. He found me with my friend. He sunk in my face with his bolas. Then he went to sleep. In the morning he called in my companion. He asked for twenty sheep.
I remained blind.
Twenty sheep.
In the land of shadow I continue to see him. Ridiculous.
12
My grandmother – such a long time ago, on the other side of the great mountain – had an ear for the dead. Walking through the fields she said:
‘Here, people are buried. Dig and you will see.’
We dug. The bones appeared.
With the years that sense of hearing was opened to me.
Others, from the taste of the wind, know where the enemy is. I have dealings with the dead.
While looking for a herb to dye the wool I often go walking. At some point the dead call.
They call out, like a warrior in the drunkenness of sleep, like small children in the night. Their yellow bones are already dust. I tell them to sleep.
‘We walk during the day. Soon night will come.’
13
There everything was glory. With my cousin I raced horses. We tamed them. Mine braked without reins. It didn’t stop to drink, it knew how to wait. We had an example, the most beautiful: Nahuel, a horse of my father’s. We were barely more than children.
One night I heard the witch sing, like the water in the cooking pot. She was speaking with the devil. The smoke from her fire responded.
‘What frightened you, lord?’
‘What drew you away?’
‘I will tell you.’
‘Come back to me, I’m an orphan. I can’t fly any more.’
‘What frightens me is the creature that eats from the chief ’s hand. Its neigh frightens me, its smell scares me, its mane suffocates me. Its feet break my strength. Each blade of grass it swallows chokes me.’
‘Do not fear, lord, you will return. It will die.’
I crawled and woke my cousin. I told him. Nahuel, my father’s horse, heard us. He did a turn around his peg. My cousin talked in my ear: ‘Go to sleep.’ I didn’t sleep. Hardly more than a boy, he slit the witch’s throat. Dawn found her face to the fire, burned to the bone.
There was a shout in the morning. We played with our horses.
What a meeting, what talk, what raised arms, the children hid, the women sharpened their nails. My father put on his cloak, the crown of wool.
‘Dead she is,’ he said. ‘And dead she will remain.’
Much was spoken in low voices, not in front of him. Who killed her, how was it that no one was being punished? Not even my father knew. But a great prosperity came.
What did it come for?
The king of kings – but king among kings – asked for me in marriage.
I asked my cousin, ‘What have we trained our horses for, if not for this?’
And we escaped.
My father mounted Nahuel. Nahuel caught up with us.
My father carried his spear. He lifted it and shouted.
‘It’s true I love you like a son. It’s true you were going to be chief.’
He killed my cousin. He shut himself away in his tent. He drank for three days. On the third I said, ‘Your prosperity was due to the one that you killed. Nahuel witnessed what happened. Your prosperity attracted the king of kings. Now he will leave you, you will see.’
Covered in silver, I was brought to the old man of the blue stone.
Now Nahuel has died, my father is a beggar, and his scattered tribe gnaws on rubbish.
14
He was born. I always dreaded it: blue eyes. The king, my cousin and an uncle came to see him. The wives concealed their pleasure. I expected death. He smiled.
‘Good blood,’ he said. ‘He will be king.’
15
May he die, defeated. May he, foot on the ground, see himself fettered by chiefless soldiers. May his sons betray him, and he know it. May he lose his manly force.
May he die. And his race be erased from the earth. Myself along with it.
Cursing him.
16
My father found me trying to fly. I have never understood the tastes of men. Less so, those of women. Lives of shadows.
Now I know. I look for snake eggs. Toads. Sleeping bats.
The sorceress receives my adulation.
I will learn.
17
A traveller saw me: hopeless, moribund, very beautiful.
It was a mistake. I never existed at all.
Outside I can hear the birds sing.
18
I am two. I have two names and I am two. One morning I lost my first tooth. My mother – who cried all the time – said, ‘María of the Angels, bury it, so a miracle sprouts.’
I buried it near the tent. The next day I went to look for the miracle. I didn’t see anything. I sat down and waited. When I returned, my mother – you could count her bones – had died. Clubbed to death. It seemed to me she was smiling.
No one else called me María of the Angels. Only I said that. No one said miracle.
When I buried my eighth tooth I shouted in the middle of the field, ‘Miracles: I won’t wait any longer! I will forget the name María of the Angels! I will just be White Cloud.’
That night, asleep, I heard a song. It said things I had never heard:
Boat on the sea, rowed ever so softly
Castle on the river, take away the shiver
Snow on the hill, it stays with me still
Angels and saints, go sing your plaints
I asked one, an interpreter with a red beard: what is boat, what is river, what is rowing? What castle, what snow, what hill? He told me, and I repeated his answers to myself while collecting wood and fetching water.
One day an old man came to us.
‘The king of kings living on the other side of the desert gives notice of what he has learned from the man of the red beard. A white, fat, blonde child lives here. He is sending for her. He will deliver many cattle, many horse blankets, a great deal of silver.’
‘What child is that?’ I asked.
They poured riches on me. We were poor. That king didn’t know our village, or our chief.
Now I am a wife, far away from there. I have two names and I am two.
When I find my mother she will tell me why.
19
The pleasure that remains to me is to contemplate the dew.
The dew on the bushes. The favourite queen making her debut with her child in her arms. She laughs. The king wants her close.
On the spiderweb are beads of dew.
In the afternoon I shut myself away, I light a fire.
In the afternoon there is no dew on the bushes. The web is heavy with insects. The dust clouds on the horizon fly.
20
Sometimes I cross paths with the king. If he feels like it he greets me and goes on. Youth, I do not know where it went.
We have been accomplices.
He is not lacking for anything. In triumph, punishment, killing, glory, luxury.
But only I have seen his tears.
21
I gave myself up to mystery.
What was it?
A path of darkness
to a land that perhaps does not exist.
I am faithful. I persevere.
22
This happened when we crossed the big mountain. While playing, my brother and I climbed up to where the ice is very quiet.
In a cave a girl was sleeping.
Gold on her crowns and on her chest. Her sandals were of green beads, and she wore a mask of pearls. She slept.
When we descended he died of cold. I lived.
We never said a thing.
They call me wife of a king. I wear a silver necklace.
No one knows about kings until he has seen the princess asleep in the mountain.
23
I waited ten years. Then he saw me.
He came from the war. Black blood ran down his chest. I saw his children, his grandchildren. The feathers on his spears, black also, mad with victory. Women, old men, dogs, children were one single howl. And the captive women were the colour of death.
I kept my gaze fixed on him. He reined in his horse right by my feet. I didn’t budge. My grandmother slapped me.
They celebrated for many days. The warriors slept, vomited. I waited. The king walked among the tents. I saw him open the leather flap of my house.
I never named him. He never named me. I was king, he a girl. I learned to rule, he to laugh.
People talk often. They know little of love.
24
The moon has a halo: kings are travelling.
My brothers arrived.
The rain erased all the signs. I wept.
My brothers left.
25
The story, which still makes people talk, actually happened this way.
My female cousin had a favourite dog, used to nipping heels. I saw that young man had his heel wounded.
I got hold of some poison seeds and kept them in my hand.
While dyeing wool with the old queen, I cried. She promised me a necklace of beads if I said why. A necklace of beads.
I said: ‘My cousin and her sisters are preparing a poison. That young man brought them the seed. They want to kill the king.’
I showed them my hand.
My cousin, her sisters and that young man were burned alive.
They have been dus
t and ash for seven years now. I wear the bead collar.
That fire keeps me awake.
I asked for his love and he made fun of me. And was he visiting my cousin at night?
26 AND 27
We are sisters and different. The day of that double feast – that bloodbath – we worked together. Without warning, the small chief and his two hundred men arrived to visit. They were having lunch and his brothers arrived, four hundred lancers in the dust. Another feast.
They gorged themselves both times.
The king in person passed through the rows of those eating and drinking. He spoke and laughed.
I can assure you: it was a proud day. To be the wife of a king, to feed six hundred and laugh.
But my sister said, ‘I know the salt from the kitchen of those kings. Tears and sweat. Sorrow and weariness.’
28
While preparing the king’s pipe I have heard how he dictates his letters. The men who serve him make lines and dots, the way white men do.
In the afternoons I sit. I am old. Words don’t interest me.
I see birds. Lines and dots. Each afternoon the same letter written in the sky.
Always the same one, which I can’t say:
Defeat, end.
Land of Smoke Page 7