Fray Arnaldo put his arm around my shoulders and we walked back chatting in Latin. I said to him:
—Now they will not bother us anymore Fray Arnaldo, now they have entered into reason, they have seen…
But he did not let me finish:
—The have seen nothing. They lost their eyes a long time ago, Hannibale vivo.36
—Their eyes will reappear…
And for my witty remark about eyes reappearing in the empty sockets of envy, Fray Arnaldo smiled, and said in a low voice:
—Deo favente.37
A few days later, maybe two or three after the scene I recounted with Fray Mateo, Francisco Sánchez, a cook and lay brother, came from the convent of San Francisco with the story that there was a scandal in Mexico City because Fray Mateo and Diego López and his brother Sancho López, secretary of the Real Audiencia, were saying that it is was wrong for them to teach us Latin—that it could be very bad for the Indians, that it will turn us into heretics, that we made poor use of everything. Because we Indians were nothing but children, we needed to be treated as such, which meant keeping us away from the knowledge of Latin. The cook heard about this in the convent, but he also said that the same sentiment was swiftly spreading among the lay Christians, that a resounding NO, regarding the little Indian friars, was hovering on everyone’s lips and that the worst reason for the scandal was that, not content with giving us weapons to become heretics, they had given religious habits to two of us. What did they think we could do sheathed in them but introduce Hispanics and Indians to unspeakable sins?
If it is true that we Indians are, as they say, like children, if that is true (and I will not spend any time on that bit about magpies and crows, a stupid claim that does not deserve to be heard), if it is true that we are like children, they cannot believe us to be manageable or innocent. To say that we are like children is to forget human nature. One cannot trust the nature of the children either, or depend on their innocence, subjugation, and docility.
Slosos keston de Hernando
35I kept the Latin because one can understand the flow of the dialogue. Estela’s note.
36“Meanwhile Hannibal lives.” Estela leaves this phrase in Latin in her manuscript. Lear’s note.
37“God willing.” Estela left this in Latin in her manuscript. Lear’s note.
EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO
I slept in fits and starts. Not because the Center was waking me up, but because they have stopped waking me up. It’s been a while now since I’ve received any communication from them. No messages, no instructions, nothing. Maybe I should ask them to tell me something so that I might be able to rid myself of a bit of the massive uneasiness I feel. It was this uneasiness that woke me up. The pain in my soul was so intense that for a moment I cursed the fact that I did not participate in the bath of oblivion. But then I immediately rejected that crazy idea. I am the only one who speaks. Lear is the only being who talks to herself. I don’t have anyone to talk to. They have people with whom they can speak their minds in their stupid code, on whom to unload their obscene gestures. That does not mean that their “language” is more speech than mine, because theirs is not a language, it’s an aberration. If I quit speaking and understanding, language and grammar will be lost forever. It will be the end of man; it will achieve what my people are trying to do. I would fulfill their horrible desire.
Last night the Center did not wake me up, it was only my heart roiling in the rough waters of its solitary anxiety. Ah, but solitary is an inadequate word to describe it. My anxiety has been left infinitely alone because there’s no one to keep it company, not even I can help it because I’ve lost my brothers, they’re all gone. All gone. I’m the last human being left on the Earth. The people of L’Atlàntide are no longer the children of men and women. Now they are what they wanted to be—their own children. They are godless beings—they don’t have parents, language, land, or Nature; they are timeless, pain-free, and senseless.
Since I had woken up (I want to talk about this, Lear, don’t get distracted), I was able to confirm that silence no longer reigns absolutely in the night of L’Atlàntide. They sleep in short stretches like animals sleep, but darkness makes them take shelter in L’Atlàntide and they remain there at night, lying on their backs like cats and dogs do, not making much noise. Then suddenly one of them will drink some water, another simulates copulation, another scratches his belly like an imbecile. Just as they are not asleep, neither are they completely silent, but their babbling doesn’t make enough noise to wake me up. I say they were “babbling” because they weren’t talking. They were trying to talk. One of them repeated the sound “gle” in her sleep, another something that sounded like “hm,” another, writhing in his sleep, produces “pes.” Their bodies command them “Talk!” but they can’t do it, their brains won’t let them.
I’ve tried to see in their eyes if their spirits also demand words. There is nothing in their eyes that seems to suggest such a desire. I do, though, I ask them for words. Speak, people of L’Atlàntide. Exchange two, three, a few words with me. Or understand the words I say. But they don’t understand what I say to them. They did something to their ears, something that breaks down the words I articulate. I know this because Rosete imitates what I say to him:
If Lear says: “Rosete, stop for a moment, I want to tell you something. Pay attention, Rosete. Do you understand me?” Rosete, mimicking me, acting like he’s my mirror, answers: “pit-pot-pot, mch mch, pit-pot-pot, mch mch,” repeating my intonation with astonishing precision, but mixing up the sounds of my words, babbling them.
What did the people of L’Atlàntide do to their ears to disarticulate the sounds that make up words? What did they damage to make words sound different, to make them lose their rich sound, their nuanced notes?
I need to stop complaining in order to write down what I want to record here. Since I slept so poorly, I lingered longer than usual when I awoke, letting fantasy, instead of my uneasiness, completely overtake me. In a very bad state, seized by a profound unhappiness, I got up, took a bath, but took in almost nothing of the waters that are our fluid and nutrition. My stomach was upset and I didn’t want to drink or eat anything. I even thought of going back to sleep, but force of habit took me toward the Punto Calpe; however, I abandoned the bridge and thus, was defenseless when I took a route that I had never taken before. I started wandering. I didn’t have the strength to work on my Hernando and I hadn’t been able to rid myself of the uneasiness. And I did not want to take the gigantic steps of my people, though it would be more precise to say that I didn’t know what I wanted, maybe sleep, but I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to sleep and the idea of going back to my fantasies in my room in L’Atlàntide terrified me. I was like a lost soul. I could have pleaded for what Fortunata did in Santa: “I pray that God might give me the most horrible of the diseases,” because that would weigh less on me than not having god, or not being able to get sick, or not having anyone in L’Atlàntide who might have made me wish for an illness.
This was the state I was in when I realized I was walking down the middle of a cobblestoned street (but I can’t give the details of my route, because I wasn’t paying any attention). The first thing I saw were the cobblestones themselves: round stones that had been placed with meticulous care and precision made up the surface of the street. The buildings on both sides of the street, also made of stone, were still intact. I kept walking. The city opened up with my steps, as if the men who lived there had just abandoned it. A window was broken here and there, but the walls and the roofs were still in place. I arrived at the remains of the wall that surrounded the city, then at the bridge, and the river. The river wasn’t colored, like all the others I had seen with my eyes, nor was it full of scum and debris, rather it was like those rivers I had learned of through the Image Receptor during my time in the Conformación—it was a river of clean water.
From the jaws of two shining metal grapnels came the tensors that supported the bridge. I st
ood on one of these to watch the river run. On my left, the water was the color of mud, and on the other side it was a clearer blue, as if there were two separate currents that circulated in the same riverbed. I heard the river run. The nearly intact city wall rose above, and bordered, the river. Behind it, inside the city limits, I thought I saw something that made me quite uneasy—a living thing disturbed by the soft breeze. I went back into the city and followed the streets along the city wall. I was able to open a massive door by simply turning the latch. The entryway of the house was dark and dank and the closed-up smell turned my already upset stomach. At the back I could see a light. I walked toward it. I found the interior courtyard of the large house. In the center of the courtyard was a tree. It was the swaying crown of the tree I had seen from the bridge that crossed the river. A tree. Alive? Dead? A tree!
An immense panic seized me. Was I delirious? Were the city, the river, and the tree the fruit of delirium? Had I (alone, alone!) lost my head, like all of the people of L’Atlàntide had? Was I taking the painful route toward madness, instead of taking, as the others had, the road to stupidity? I couldn’t trust my eyes, or my ears. Just as I had heard the river, I heard the leaves of the tree rustling.
I ran out of the house and kept running until the city was well behind me. Once I was sure I was outside of it, I took the giant steps my people take and left the surface of the Earth with my head absolutely spinning. Once above, I ran like crazy until I ran into L’Atlàntide. I threw myself into the bath like a crazy person, unsettled and terrified. I stayed in the water for a long time. I drank until I was full. I don’t know how I managed to calm myself down, setting all reason aside. For a moment everything I thought I had seen in my entire life, with my own eyes, seemed to have been equally fantastic, but I pushed this thought away from me with all my strength as I rejected all other kinds of speculations. I questioned my own existence. I questioned the Earth, I questioned the destruction, I questioned Mother Nature. I questioned language.
I came back here to write these notes. Since I saw, or thought I saw, the thing that I must call a tree, words are ricocheting around in my head, deafening my thoughts with their meaning. They’re from Mutis, my poet, from “The Dream of the Prince Elector”:
I’ve never seen a similar being…No, Your Most Serene Highness, that flesh you now appear to have in your arms is not for you. Return, sir, to your path and try if you can to forget this moment that was not destined for you. This memory threatens to undermine the substance of your years and you will not end without this: the impossible memory of a pleasure born in regions that you have been forbidden from.
Although I have little strength, I have to work on my Hernando and on future occasions write notes about everything that I can’t explain to myself. But above all I must write what Hernando wrote one day. I have to do it because I am beholden to him. Hold onto me, Indian, hold onto me, give me meaning, don’t abandon me, don’t let me be abandoned like the dust in the air. Only you, Hernando, can keep me from falling apart, or I will end up worse than the rest of the people of L’Atlàntide, I might lose my body, reason for being, and heart, in this whirlwind.
Slosos keston de Learo
EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO
I remember a simple triviality that I cannot get out of my head: when I was young and urinating into the dormitory’s chamber pot, I would sometimes hear a sharp little sound, like a high-pitched cry that was almost obscured by my healthy stream. A mournful, continuous, irritating sound that resonated after the falling stream, which I repeatedly and mistakenly interpreted as someone’s cry, and which left me full of compassion and moved by the cry that I know was not a cry because when I stopped urinating I was surprised to hear silence, surprised to see that, after my urine fell, no part of the sound remained; it left me surprised and not knowing what to do with the remnant of sadness that the little sound attached to the urine had provoked in me. Because while I heard the urine fall, in those long precious moments that did not respect the law of time, I did not think, held as I was by the repeated mistake that I seemed unable to avoid, that it was the urine that made the noise that sounded like a cry and the idea that someone suffered intensely in that moment left me ruled by an uncontrollable sadness, and there seemed to be no way to stop it. I would say I even thought—though it was more of a notion because I was overwhelmed by the effect of a sound that did not correspond to that which had caused it—I even thought it was a trick. Because of that simple trick I embarked on a journey of uncontrollable sadness that made me cry. And while I was crying, I imagined (because I had to justify my crying somehow) that something horrible had happened to hurt a child or an elderly person, and to feed my tears I remembered the tattooed faces of the slaves, a whizzing arrow flying to pierce a mother’s breast, a sick child, a cripple. When the stream stopped ringing in the chamber pot, leaving behind the empty sound of the cry I had imagined, I was unable to immediately halt the sad and tearful journey I had embarked on. If someone had surprised me while I was crying and offered me consolation or asked for an explanation, I would tell him that the tears had come over me when I was praying for the unfortunate ones of my imagination (the cripples, the ill, the widows, the injured, those unjustly stripped of their lands, orphans), and would never confess to the urinary origin of my crying because by this time I myself would have already forgotten it.
I am recounting this because it occurred to me that I am trapped again by the same old mistake, though in a different way today. I am talking about it because I am afraid that everything I have been writing here did not happen that way, I am afraid that the shining facts came into my consciousness because I made myself believe them to be true. That all of this came from urine falling into a chamber pot; that I embroider, interpret, explain something that did not happen, that the reflection of something I did not understand correctly left its mark in my imagination, as if it were something real that moved me to compassion and to tears.
Slosos keston de Hernando
EKFLOROS KESTON DE LEARO
There’s no way to understand them now. Without words, without grammar, their code is more incomprehensible every day. Today I saw a group of ten descending in silence during the off-hours on the Punto Calpe. I took one of them, Jeremías, by the arm and followed along. They were going toward the Jardín de Delicias.
When we arrived, we found Ramón, Italia, Ulises, and a young girl, who was at most eleven years old—a young girl who was Lilia. Lilia at age eleven. Our Lilia, but at age eleven. Lilia, our companion, the one who grew up with us, but Lilia turned back into a young girl.
Everyone surrounded the girl. Lilia had fistfuls of dark sand in her hands and she was letting it fall artfully and carefully over the light-colored sand. We watched her do this in silence. She was outlining (drawing with the dark-colored sand) a beautiful and touching figure that non-figuratively represented a destroyed figure, or, better said, a figure of destruction and its casualties. The figure Lilia outlined with the light-colored sand over the dark sand was one there are no words for; however, that fact doesn’t match the stupidity of those who have renounced language.
Everyone who was present looked at it and understood it. When she finished, Ramón repeatedly made a string of snorting sounds, raising and lowering his “voice,” blowing through his nose with greater and lesser force. Though it was nothing like a melody and was really just the repetition of unpleasant noises, he was so inspired in repeatedly making them that you could say that Ramón was singing, in a grotesque and ridiculous way, but singing nonetheless. At the sound of the noise, the image we created by looking at the image drawn by the young Lilia (that is, the impossible Lilia)—the representation of the destruction—as I was saying, the image that we created started to dissolve. I’m going to repeat it, but I’m going to repeat it very clearly. The image we created by looking at it, as well as the bi-colored sand, the light-colored sand that fell from her fists, and the dark sand that came from her little hands, the island, and ea
ch one of us, dissolved.
For me it was not at all pleasant. When I came to, I was back in my room in L’Atlàntide, lying down, resting, not thinking about anything.
I wondered if it was a dream. But that’s stupid because it had to be a dream, there is no other explanation. It had to be a dream—one dreamt with such intensity that it seemed real, like the one with Mutis’ friends.
I went back down to the Jardín de Delicias on my way here and found Lilia’s sand painting. It’s a perfect representation of the destruction. If they can still express it, maybe they haven’t lost their souls. Are they conscious of their expression, or do they draw like a bird flies, like a fish swims, like a tiger leaps? In the end do they obey a superior grammar? Am I the only reader?
A rare calm reigned over the atmosphere. Far in the distance you could see a huge dust storm slowly advancing, moving across the sea like someone who walks with a lame step.
Slosos keston de Learo
EKFLOROS KESTON DE HERNANDO
The Franciscans left the Colegio de Santa Cruz. They walked out and left the Indians under the protection of the Indians. Their departure had been partially to defend us from the grumbling, because they naively believed that the attack on the Colegio de Santa Cruz was meant to hurt the Franciscans and their work in these lands. I say naively because there were many more reasons behind the anger against the Colegio. With the intention of saving us, they left us to our own mercy and even more defenseless. When the Franciscans departed, they decided to move us—Martín Jacobita and me—from their two rooms back to the dormitory of the Colegio, leaving us to live among the rest of the students. They thought we would be a good influence on our companions and that the other students would have the utmost respect for the discipline the friars themselves had taught us, so that they would follow us. Perinde ac cadaver.38
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