Catalina

by Markus Orths

  While Francisco paid no attention to the dead men, the others could not take their eyes off them. They felt they were looking into a mirror that showed them the future, and that what they saw was themselves in a mere matter of days. And so it proved: one collapsed after another week, and the other soon afterwards. While Francisco registered the death of the first man with his usual equanimity, he closely observed the second man’s dying. It’s the other who’s dying, he thought as he watched, his eyes riveted on the spectacle. The man was leaning his head against the rock, with his eyes half closed. His breathing made his ribcage heave as if he were vomiting, and the breaths were irregular and came less and less frequently. Finally there was a pause as if something in the dying man were gearing itself up, and then a last breath burst from his lips. He stayed in the same sitting position, and an invisible hand stroked his body smooth. The incessant beating in his chest had stopped.

  Now there was only the clattering of the vultures’ beaks. Showing due decorum, they sat some distance away, waiting, their throats ringed with red and white as if they had tied serviettes round their necks. Francisco had to go on. He left the birds to their meal. That night he could not sleep—something made him start up. It was really only a noise; an odd, flapping noise, as if someone had tossed a long black cloak back over his shoulder. But there was nothing there. He was alone. And he suddenly knew that what awaited him out here was meant for him alone. No one would take it from him.

  Francisco left that place while it was still night, and went on his way, just so as not to have to sleep any more, just to get on. He was on a dangerous path which took him past fissures, past precipitous slopes and deep chasms. He saw the end of the path, rising up before him more and more clearly. And now at last his indifference gave way to a deep fear, a fear which, once present, refused to be banished. Not like this, he kept thinking, not like this. Again and again he sank to the ground, again and again he struggled to his feet. He felt hands gripping his shoulder. He shook them off. Not yet, he thought, not yet. There was nothing left in him but instinct driving him on, a last powder-charge of life. His one desire was not to hear the flapping of that cloak again. And he walked on, even when all his strength was gone, even when the blood was barely flowing in his veins. The only muscle that kept him moving was his willpower, propelling him round this bend and the next and the one after that. He put everything into this last march, his eyes gazing fixedly ahead towards the one hope that still remained, for he knew he was so deep in the Andes that he could never find his way out again by himself, and so over there, around this bend, behind this hill, here, now, up ahead, some people must appear and reach out a hand to him. Only that image sustained him, the image of rescuing human hands offering food and warmth—an image that he tried with all his might to superimpose on reality. And Francisco Loyola must have looked like a walking skeleton, emaciated to his very bones, pallid and bloodless, when he rounded a rocky corner and saw two Indians. Francisco did not know whether to feel joy or terror; with a last flash of awareness he wondered, Are these cannibals or Christians?“ He would have loaded his musket, but he had thrown it away long ago, and so he could only resign himself to whatever was to come. ”And I wept,“ we read, ”for what I think was the first time in my life.“

  Chapter twenty-four

  A feather

  Now, surely, we may expect to see a change in Francisco, a profound transformation, a new life-altering understanding. For he returned to the religious life for a full half-year. He never left his monastic cell, but confined his life to the ten square yards that they had given him, ate what they brought him, sat on his stool, lay on the bed or sometimes beneath it so as to have the underside of it before his eyes, stood with his back to the wall or rested his forehead against the door, and when he did move about, it was only an endless circling, six months of pacing round his cell and round his life. His rescue had come like a bolt from the blue. Ironically, after all that he had done, it was two Indians who had saved him from death, had covered him with blankets and made him drink hot water with herbs, men who knew exactly what and how much they should give him to eat, knowledgeable men who had experience of desperate situations like this and who saw no reason to let someone die or actually kill him in order to tear the last few clothes off his body ‘They’re Christians!“ it says in Francisco’s text. His rescuers not only gave him what he needed in order to regain his strength, but also guided him out of that labyrinth of bitter cold, to the nearest place of human habitation. They left him when the town was within easy reach, and just as they had appeared from nowhere, so they vanished again.

  On reaching the town Francisco Loyola immediately went to a monastery and agreed a price with the monks for a secluded cell. There he gave himself over to introspection. Looking back in time, he drew the events of his life like beads from a necklace and laid them out in front of him. The contorted faces of the men he had killed fused into a single face. Their screams merged into a single scream. Then, going back still further, he saw the great quest, his life’s mission, on which he had embarked so long ago. And lastly, he considered Juan Bautista de Arteaga: the feeling he had once had, that had twined itself around Juan like a vine, had been hacked to pieces. For six months he plumbed his own depths. Surely he would find something there. Something pointing towards the future, towards the life ahead of him. He was looking for something inside himself that was not modelled on what others did; not the piety of the convent, not the soldier’s obedience—something of his own. Like a burrowing animal, Francisco dug down through the layers of himself, shovelling aside the dirt and debris of his life so far, yearning to make some discovery, to come upon a treasure, an answer, a direction. He was indefatigable in his search. But instead of light, illumination, alleviation, or any pointer for the future, he saw only desolation. He was gripped by the fear of finding nothing but what he was creating: a hole.

  Eventually he called a halt. He had dug so deep that nothing at all could be seen now. Only an emptiness quite unlike the emptiness of Ekain. An emptiness that crushed him. No sign of a new possibility, of a fresh start. Just a deep pit that showed him where his life had been heading from the outset: he knew now that it would end in darkness. He wished he had not seen what he had seen in the Andes and now in the monastery. But the flapping of the cloak and the blackness of the hole formed a pair that were to haunt him from that point on.

  After he left the monastery nothing changed. Francisco Loyola lived exactly as before. He still often had to draw his sword, defend himself and sometimes cause an adversary to ‘fall to the ground’, for by now he was widely known—he was the card-player, the intrepid lieutenant, who was easily provoked and given to violence. A man who gave way to his gut reactions and did not stop to think before making his thrust. An impulsive man who acted instead of waiting, who was quicker to kill than to show compassion, who gave vent to his rage, and yet did so calmly and smoothly, with movements that belonged to a different world. Frequently shadows from the past caught up with him. Everywhere there were people with a score to settle, people thirsting for revenge.

  By now, Francisco Loyola was Francisco Loyola through and through. His creation—the man he had incorporated into himself— had been developed to the point of perfection. All his gestures and movements seemed utterly natural. His voice was where he wanted it and had rusted solid in that position. Sometimes he himself actually forgot about his real body, remembering it only when he touched himself at night or when he found blood in his underclothes, when his breasts hurt or when he fancied having a full beard. In any case, there seemed to be no way back. Francisco no longer knew who the person called Catalina really was. She was a distant figure whom he had once known, but had lost sight of over the years—just like Miguel and what he had called the burr. No, he really wanted to be the person he was, because he wholeheartedly believed in himself, because he enjoyed being held in high esteem, because he loved his freedom to do and say what he pleased, because he had become someone w
ho could set his own stamp on things.

  Even so, there were times when he was uncomfortably aware that something was not right, that he was concealing something; that he was a deceiver and an impostor, pretending to be someone he was not. And on those rare occasions, he had a sense of being not genuinely alive, of being a puppet version of himself, an unconvincing substitute, a dubious creature controlled from outside, a traitor to his own self and to reality. And he would sometimes feel an urge to throw off everything he was wearing in a once-and-for-all act of liberation, to show the world who he really was. But he did not do it, for he could easily foresee the devastating consequences. The news would get around. Everyone would know who he really was. His secret would be out, and with it his advantage over others would be lost. People’s respect for him would crumble away. They would start to whisper and point, to laugh at him behind his back and make malicious comments. No, he must keep the secret to himself. He had no need of anyone else. Being in control was what mattered to him most of all. It suited him to go on being his own master.

  *

  From this point on Francisco Loyola drifted ‘like a feather in the wind’, as it says in his memoirs. He took on all kinds of work and, letting fortune’s donkey carry him where it would, blundered at random from place to place, never staying anywhere for more than a few months, working as a shepherd, shop assistant, hired hand to load and unload goods, porter and mule-driver, and once even for the forces of law and order. Francisco writes: ‘I was sent to Piscobamba and the plains of Mizque, to investigate and punish certain crimes that had been reported in that region. When I reached Piscobamba I arrested a certain Lieutenant Francisco de Escobar, who lived there with his wife. I accused him of having robbed two Indians and of having treacherously murdered them and buried them under his house, which was in a quarry. We dug down and found the bodies. I followed up every clue, however slight, and when I had finished I summoned the parties before me and condemned the defendant to death. He appealed, I allowed the appeal, and the case was transferred to the court at La Plata, together with the defendant. But at La Plata the verdict was upheld and Escobar was hanged.“ In his very next breath Francisco turns his back on this occupation too. ”I went on to La Paz,“ we read, ”where I stayed for a time, during which nothing of note occurred.“

  Over the next two years, since he found no goal or aspiration within himself, Francisco resumed his habit of observing the people he came across in the course of his various employments. He looked at the humdrum everyday pattern of civilian life, the men and women who had their lives neatly laid out like flower beds, tidy, clean, raked smooth: there was the wedding and the vows they exchanged, the house and home they shared, there was the work they did, there were the children who might be produced, and all of this under the benign, warming sun of ordinariness. People were born, ate, worked, had babies, suckled them and died. However much Francisco tried to view all this with contempt, however much he looked down on this ordered futility, it seemed nonetheless to radiate a magical calm, and secretly he felt a growing desire for what he saw. Once he went to stay with a friend called Pedro de Chavarria and his wife Maria. The couple were still childless after ten years of marriage. This did not seem to cloud their idyll. Francisco was much moved by what he saw during his visit. It was something of which he had no experience— namely, happiness, sparkling like a multi-faceted jewel; a life shared by two people, their intimacy a kind of mutual absorption. Was this what was called love? Each was there for the other. The brightness that enfolded the two of them, their gentleness towards each other, the passion conveyed by their looks, their permanent state of happy contentment: to all of this Francisco found himself sentimentally attracted. He wished he could be like these people, he yearned to find someone who might be his to share his life with.

  Francisco stayed with the Chavarrias for a week. And then came the catastrophe. After taking his leave of them he went to buy a few things, and when he had got everything he wanted and was heading out of the town, deep in his own thoughts, he saw three people hurrying towards him. Two of them were monks, and they were escorting a woman between them. It was Maria de Chavarria. Francisco came to a halt; Maria was frantically pointing at him. He had no idea what was going on. It was some time before he could make head or tail of what they were saying, as they were all shouting at once. All three were hysterical. There had been a murder, Pedro had killed someone, the bishop’s nephew, Pedro had caught him, the nephew, in flagrante with Maria, his wife, and now he was after her too, after Maria, he was going to kill her as well, she must get away, disappear fast, someone must take her to Huamanga, to the convent, to her mother, that was the only safe place for her, and before Francisco could object the monks had lifted Maria up and sat her behind him on the mule, and from either side their flat hands, more often joined in prayer, gave it a slap on the rump, so that it set off with somewhat more alacrity than usual.

  Chapter twenty-five

  The ride to Huamanga

  Francisco did as the monks told him, but he could not believe what he had heard. It was beyond anything he could imagine, and it utterly demolished his previous assumptions. He demanded to know exactly what had happened, and as they rode along he forced Maria de Chavarria to tell him every detail. He needed certainty. He wanted to wash his illusion right out of his head. Completely. And that required words.

  His agitation mounted. Not only as a result of Maria’s vivid descriptions, but also because of his own increasingly disturbing thoughts. Everything, thought Francisco, absolutely everything that he had seen there, the whole sugary idyll of the Chavarrias, that togetherness, the depth of that so-called love, that intimacy, even the happiness in Maria’s eyes, was merely an appearance which was utterly different from the reality. All of it untrue, thought Francisco. All of it a sham. And a new idea formed in his mind, and hardened to a certainty that was as simple as it was terrible: people were all like that. It was the same everywhere. They pretended to one another. They deceived one another. Just as he put on an act in front of people, so they put on an act for each other. They deceived and were deceived in return. The whole time. And that meant that they were no different from him. Not a whit. But did they know what they were doing? Did they know what they wanted? Did he know what he was doing? Did he know what he wanted? He had spent six months confined in the monastery, searching, and had found nothing worth pursuing, nothing that was worthy of him and of his strength of will. So what made him still live as he did? What made other people live as they did? The whole thing was unbearable! How could anyone find their way in this morass? How could anyone tell what was real and what was not? Surely it was high time for him to come out and show himself at long last, to let people see him, if only for a moment, as his true self?

  In parallel with the agitation aroused by these thoughts, he was also being aroused in another way: the constant up-and-down motion, his widely splayed legs, the contact with the animal’s scratchy back, the way they were sitting close together and their sweat was mingling…Maria was holding on to Francisco, clasping him round the middle, her breasts pressing into his back; Francisco could feel the woman’s softness from behind and Maria could feel his breath from in front. Each had the feeling that the mule’s pace was growing quicker and the contact with the other’s body closer, the boundaries seemed to dissolve, in their minds their clothes fell away and their skin touched, Francisco heard Maria moaning and did not know if it was real or if he was only imagining it, but now Maria laid her hand on his thigh, and Francisco unhesitatingly seized it, opened the cord of his breeches and guided the woman’s hand inside, and delved with it beneath the pouch of padding—now at last there would be no more doubt, now at last someone would know him for what he was. Francisco sat more upright, held Maria’s hand firmly clamped between his fingers and drew it down through the bush of hair to what should not have been there; he felt Maria suddenly go rigid behind him, but he had no intention of giving up now, and far from releasing her hand he kept
on putting her fingers just where he wanted them, until at last, in a shower of relief, he closed his eyes.

  Francisco brought the mule to a halt and they both dismounted. Just ahead of them was a river. Francisco walked right up to the bank and looked across. Maria, who was trembling, stayed close to the mule. Francisco pointed to the water. “No sign of a ford,” he said. “We’ll have to go along the river for a bit.”

  Maria had her hand clamped tightly under her armpit.

  “Do you know this area?” Francisco asked.

  Maria shook her head.

  “Let’s hope your husband isn’t following us,” said Francisco. “I only know roughly which direction Huamanga is in. He’ll know the best routes for getting there. Are you ready?”

  Maria said nothing.

  “Let’s ride on then,” said Francisco.

  Maria did not stir.

  “Come on, nothing is going to happen. Or would you rather stay here and wait for your husband?”

  Maria shook her head and sat on the mule behind Francisco, but tried to avoid touching him. They soon reached a point where the river could be crossed, and although they got into deep water half way across and the screaming, overburdened mule drifted downstream a little, they made it to the other side and rode on. Before the fading daylight could blur the outlines the fugitives saw the first houses of Huamanga in the distance.