Catalina

by Markus Orths

  All counter-measures taken by the natives were doomed to failure. The Aztec Montezuma found himself confronting Hernan Cortes. It was only a meagre troop of nervous soldiers that Cortes was leading into the interior, whereas Montezuma had the whole Aztec empire to draw on, with its hundreds of thousands of warriors. But the Aztecs hesitated, keeping out of sight while they tried to assess the situation, because they were uncertain of the intruders’ identity: this might, they thought, be their own god Quetzalcoatl, who had not yet made his long-prophesied return. Fear of the new and unknown was the Aztecs’ overriding reaction, and to begin with they tried, by peaceful means, to persuade the intruders to withdraw, sending them first gold and later women. The newcomers were happy to accept these gifts, but showed no intention of retreating. Finally Montezuma tried a ruse. He had noticed that one of his warriors bore a remarkable likeness to the white men’s leader. Taking an old helmet and other items of armour that had been found lying about, he kitted him out so convincingly that anyone would have sworn that this was a second Hernan Cortes. Montezuma dispatched the false Cortes, accompanied by a small party of men, to the real Cortes’s camp. He had no doubt that when the interlopers saw this powerful demonstration of Aztec magic they would take to their heels in terror and disappear for good. And indeed the conquistadors at first stood transfixed by the sight of this Aztec mummery, only to burst out laughing seconds later. So far from being awed by the Aztecs’ magic, they thought the false Cortes was an excellent joke which kept them amused for days. They gave the poor fellow nicknames, teased him, and held him prisoner in their camp, and once again Montezuma could not see where he had gone wrong.

  It was this mutual incomprehension that caused the whole problem. It first showed itself when the indigenous people were unable to understand a word of what the newcomers said whenever they left their big ships and came ashore. ‘Ci-u-than!“ (’We don’t understand you!”), or ‘Ma c’ubab than (’We don’t understand your words‘), or’ Uh yu uthan (‘Listen to the way they talk’), exclaimed the Maya when the conquistadors asked them the name of the peninsula which has been known as Yucatan ever since.

  The hairy-chinned newcomers then rammed a stick with some coloured cloth on it into the sand and spoke some sentences into the air, while one of them dipped a bird’s feather into a small pot and splashed black liquid onto an object, as flat as a leaf, that they had unrolled. After that they acted as if everything they saw belonged to them. Later on it became more baffling still, when the newcomers once more unrolled the flat leaf-like thing with the black marks on it, stared at it and began to talk to it, though the leaf did not reply. Then it was rolled up again, and the native people had only three options: to fight and be enslaved, not to fight and to be enslaved, or to flee. All this very quickly led them to the conclusion that the misfortune that had befallen them was caused chiefly by the speech-filled mouths of these strangers—by what came out of those mouths whenever and wherever they came ashore.

  So it is understandable that in 1600 some dozens of rebellious Indians banded together to perform an act of liberation: they would deprive the newcomers of the attribute that made them what they were. Night had fallen on the Caribbean beach where the crew of the Santa Isabella were encamped; they had lit an enormous fire and were drinking themselves into a stupor. A three-man watch had stayed behind on the Santa Isabella, together with the captain, Luis de Fajardo, and three officers. The men on the beach had drunk to their successful crossing, devoured nameless birds which they had barbecued on the open fire, bathed naked in the warm water which by day had had a seductive turquoise gleam—joking about the sharks that were supposed to infest these waters and surreptitiously diving down to grab a companion by the foot and give him a fright—and finally they had stretched out exhausted on the beach, sated with their orgies of swimming, eating and drinking. Relaxed and at peace, they were about to doze off when seventy or eighty resolute Indians fell upon them, so quietly, so stealthily, that the sailors did not notice what was happening. They were all tied up by the time they even tried to call for help, but their attackers cut out their tongues and vanished as silently as they had come.

  For the sailors this was the most terrible night of their lives. They did not know whether the savages would return, or why their comrades on board ship did not come to their aid; whether those comrades were even still alive, or whether they too, with tongues reduced to throbbing, bleeding stumps, were only capable of inarticulate moans. A few of the sailors died that night, but most of them were rescued the next morning by the men who had remained on the Santa Isabella. It was some days later, when pus was oozing from their mouths and the worst of the pain was over, that they succumbed to despair. They tried to speak but could not, opened their mouths to call for something but were unable to wrest any recognizable sounds from their lips, only deathlike, inhuman groans. Sitting on the Caribbean shore, the men began to grasp the full import of what had been done to them and what their fate would be from now on. In silent apathy they stared down at the sand.

  Captain Luis de Fajardo knew that he could hardly risk sailing back to Spain with this crew. How was it to be done if an order could not be relayed by a shout from one sailor to the next, right up to the shrouds? At best they might perhaps make it to one of the nearby Caribbean settlements. There, the captain thought, he would have to take on a new crew. But in order to get there he needed the help of the mutilated men, and to obtain it he would first have to rouse them to action, inspire them with new courage, rekindle the fire in them. One evening he leaped to his feet and delivered a stirring speech. His voice rang out into the night. Originally he had meant to say only a few well-chosen words, but when he looked the men in the eyes, when he saw the sailors stand up, one after another, as if to show that they were on his side, he injected more passion into his speech, especially as he noticed that it was only the emotionally charged words that had any effect on the men, words like ‘destiny’, “brotherhood‘, ”comradeship’ and ‘undying loyalty’. Luis de Fajardo spoke with mounting fervour, heading inexorably towards some sort of climax—perhaps a grand gesture, a great, symbolic deed, or if not an actual deed, at least the prospect of one, a promise, a redeeming vow, and so for his conclusion he declared, without quite knowing what he was declaring: ‘If I or one of these others who can speak should ever abandon you, then you shall have the right to make the cut that leaves our mouths without tongues and our lips without speech. For we are united forever by what has befallen you and not us!“ The tongueless men cheered. That is to say, they cooed like doves, forced stammering sounds from their chests, and growled their approval as they threw their arms up in the air.

  Over the next three years it became clear that the men without tongues were taking the captain’s words far more seriously than he had intended. That speech had truly given them a new lease of life: they had discovered a new purpose which lay in that very sense of unity that he had invoked, and suddenly they felt themselves to be members of a secret fellowship that could throw all rules overboard and establish new ones, with a captain who had bound himself indissolubly to them by his promise. Moreover, the tongueless men proved, from the very start, to be far better at manoeuvring the ship than anyone had expected. They managed to reach La Habana without any major difficulties. And while they were lying at anchor there, they practised handling the sails and continued to develop the new skill that they had begun to learn on the short passage to La Habana: how to communicate without speech.

  With the help of their speaking comrades they worked out a silent system of nautical communication, translating all the commands into hand signals and other movements which could be seen and readily distinguished even from a distance. They bought ship’s bells with different tones, ship’s lanterns in various sizes, and two dozen animal hide drums. Equipped with these, they devised a combined system of light and sound signals for use when manoeuvring at night, which every sailor had to learn during the wait at La Habana. When the captain saw that there wa
s no getting out of the promise that he had made in the heat of his oratory, when he saw that he had no chance of exchanging his maimed crew for another—if only because the tongueless men never left the ship—he had no alternative but to embark on the return voyage to Spain with the existing crew. And the amazing fact was that during the crossing the men performed the manoeuvres more and more efficiently, and their signals functioned perfectly. On subsequent voyages the tongueless sailors even found time to expand their system of signals, initially designed purely for operating the ship, to include facial and manual signs for daily activities. Sleeping, eating or drinking could easily be mimed. Developing a sign language for abstract concepts was more difficult. During their crossings of the Atlantic they argued about which gesture might best represent which word. Some related the idea of thinking to the head, but others wanted to locate belief there, while a third group felt that belief belonged rather to the region around the heart, and others again claimed that region entirely for feeling. But these debates were never allowed to drift inconclusively: instead, after proposals had been put, a vote was taken and the decision of the majority was adopted by them all.

  *

  It was this ship, the Santa Isabella, that Catalina and Juan had boarded, without the least inkling of what awaited them. Their silent reception weighed oppressively on their spirits, and when the captain put a hushing finger to his lips, this was accompanied by a melancholy upward turn of the eyes and a jerk of his chin in the direction of the table in the cabin. Juan and Catalina sat down, and so did the captain. Then nothing happened. Twice Juan tried to say something, but each time a gesture from the captain restrained him. Three officers and three sailors entered the cabin, took their seats and joined in the silent waiting. More minutes passed before a gong sounded outside. Only then did the captain stand up and formally announce: ‘It is now time to talk.“

  The extraordinary scene that Juan and Catalina now witnessed lasted for an hour, from eight o’clock until nine. It was indeed time to talk, in the most literal sense. Grouped together here were the seven members of the ship’s company who could still talk, and that is what they did: they talked. Loudly, insistently—one might almost have called it shouting—and tremendously fast, all of them talking simultaneously and across each other, interrupting each other, cutting off each other’s words, finishing each other’s sentences, producing a babel of voices that was quite unintelligible. Juan’s pleas that they should take turns to speak were ignored. Only when Juan and Catalina hit upon the idea of listening to just one of the contending voices at a time could they at last begin to make out some of what was being said. And in this way they discovered what had happened, and heard the whole history of the men without tongues.

  The more effectively the mute sailors had learned to communicate with each other, the closer the bonds between them had become. Each sought the company of the others maimed like himself. As their silent communication improved, they depended less and less on the tongues of those who had escaped their fate. Indeed, they suddenly began to find speech uncomfortably loud; noticed that the words enunciated by the seven men with tongues hurt their ears. To them the speech of those seven became a distorting mirror: they saw them doing what they themselves could not do, and heard the sounds that they had lost the power to make. But before feelings of pain and envy could grow and fester, they drowned them in a sea of contempt. To the men without tongues, speech, with its movement of tongue, lips, soft palate, teeth, vocal cords and air, came to sound more and more ugly and perverse, while the art of wordless communication grew into a majestic choreography of silence. And were not they, the tongueless men, the ones who mattered? Were not they the heart, the flower of the brotherhood? They were the Elect! The men of destiny! The true, the only ones! The New Men! The others still had their tongues. They were not really part of the group, they were outsiders. They lacked the lack of a tongue: they were poor, primitive creatures, still spitting out words, poking and prodding at language with tongues like elephants’ trunks.

  Over the last three years the balance of power on board had shifted. On the Atlantic crossings the captain and officers were still responsible for deciding on the destination, for setting a course and navigating, but in all other matters the only ones with a say were those who could not say anything: the wordless men had the last word. They set the rules for life on board—for they were in the majority. They were the dominant ones. They had the power. And since they regarded speech as so much dross, the first rule was silence. Except during that one hour when speaking was allowed.

  It is hardly surprising that in the miserly hour allotted to them each day the seven speakers tried to talk as much as possible so as to give the moving parts of their speech mechanism a good oiling. All open or covert attempts to speak at other times had been instantly nipped in the bud by the non-speakers. The penalty for the illicit uttering of sounds of whatever kind was two days’ incarceration in the notoriously unsavoury hold. Escape was impossible, for threats hung over the ship, powerful, unexpressed threats: anyone who left the crew in the lurch by jumping ship and trying to run away was breaking the alliance that had been forged on the island, and anyone breaking that alliance would pay for it by having the power of speech cut out of his mouth, just as the captain had promised. Actually by now the tongueless men no longer saw that ‘cut’ in the light of a punishment at all: on the contrary, they constantly urged the speakers to join their ranks voluntarily, holding out as bait a comforting sense of belonging.

  A second gong sounded, and the seven speakers abruptly fell silent. Not another word was spoken that evening. Every time one of the two passengers was about to say something, this was prevented by a finger placed on the lips of one of the ‘speakers’. They ate the food, which had turned cold. Finally one of the crew showed Juan and Catalina where they were to sleep: in the fo’c‘sle. A comfortable enough place in itself, but on the Santa Isabella it was cluttered with barrels, which left little room for them. They had hoped that now, in the darkness of night, they would be able to whisper together, exchanging whatever information they had each managed to hear, but their cramped quarters were already occupied by two of the tongueless men, who were dozing in hammocks. Talking was completely ruled out. Catalina and Juan lay down, as they were, on the floor. Their questions would have to wait.

  Chapter twelve

  Talking sickness

  After my young friend Francisco Loyola, [spurred on?] by exceeding haste, had set off for Seville and—barely interrupted by the wing-beats of his own breath—had attempted to persuade me to share his journey with him,“ writes Juan Bautista de Arteaga in one of the few readily legible passages in his memoir, ”I quickly perceived that I had suffered a loss of most grievous magnitude. My thoughts, instead of pursuing their habitual straight course, constantly looped back on themselves. My every train of thought was cut off by the sad image of my departing friend.“ In this manneristic style, Juan writes several more pages about the reasons which led him to gather up his money, leave his house and follow Francisco. ”Those matters which required to be ordered‘ he ’guided into the channels of order‘, and he persuaded one of his friends to move into the house to keep an eye on it while he was away. Then, finally, he was ready to leave. On his arrival in Seville he at once began his search. The inns, the harbour, the Arenal, the ships, the Casa de Contratacion: nothing. It was three days before he chanced to hear that a Basque named Loyola had smashed the skull of a local boy with a stone. Juan asked to be directed to the injured boy’s home, and gained entry by saying that he was a doctor, had heard about the mishap and wanted to offer his help. The boy was not in too bad a state: the gash in his head was healing and the concussion abating. Juan bought some ointments, which he applied to the wound. Then he went to the authorities, gave them an account of the blameless life of his assistant Loyola, wrote testimonials on his behalf and deployed all his powers of persuasion to convince them that Francisco’s act of violence was an inexplicable lapse that w
ould certainly not be repeated. When he added, finally, that the injured boy was now restored to health, the officials agreed to release Francisco Loyola from prison after a few more days.