by Laila Lalami
For once, his orders were greeted with no quarrel, just silent agreement. Señor Castillo had always insisted, alone at first and then with the support of Señor Dorantes, that the armada should not have been split; no two men in the company would have been more eager to find the ships now and return as saviors. Señor Cabeza de Vaca had stood by Señor Narváez and argued the opposite, but he was just as eager to find the ships, if only to prove that leaving them behind was not a foolish gamble but a measured risk. This was what made the governor’s choice so clever. If the mission succeeded, our struggles would be forgotten when the history of La Florida was told; if the mission failed, he would not be alone to bear the responsibility for its failure.
WE DEPARTED AT FIRST LIGHT, with dew still dripping from the petals of magnolia flowers, leaving behind us men wrapped in their blankets, dreaming of food and relief. The horses bore their riders obediently, but their pace was slow and their breath heavy. As we advanced into the wilderness, their hooves kicked up the gray ash that had settled overnight on the ground, so that we were soon covered with it again. Fortunately, when we had gone about two leagues away from the camp, the wind picked up and the air became freer of dust and ash. Before long, the captains began to chat amiably with one another. Once we return to the ships, Señor Cabeza de Vaca said, I want to pick up a charm my wife gave me for good luck. I left it behind on the day we disembarked. I hope it was not stolen.
Señor Dorantes sniffed. How strange that you forgot this charm, and yet remembered your books of poetry.
For some time, there had been a muted antagonism between Señor Cabeza de Vaca and Señor Dorantes, but now, away from the camp and from the governor, they were finally free to take a jab at each other.
It was an innocent oversight, the treasurer replied. You make too much of it.
I did nothing of the sort, my master said. I merely expressed my surprise at the strange work of memory.
My wife gave me that charm when we married, six years ago. I kept it in a silk pouch, which I packed inside my writing case. But the governor discouraged me from bringing the case; he said that the notary had all the writing implements I might need and that I could borrow them if I needed them. That was how I left it behind.
I did not know the governor took such interest in your luggage.
Friendship. Loyalty. You should try them sometime.
A blinkered horse is loyal, too, Álvar.
The sun had reached its zenith now and there was a great stillness in the air. The ground was dry and cracked under our feet. One of the horses moaned, shaking his head against the sweat that rolled down his sides. Farther ahead, the sky slowly melted into the green horizon.
In any case, Señor Cabeza de Vaca said suddenly, we will find the ships.
Is that a promise or a prayer? Señor Dorantes asked.
Neither, said the treasurer. But at least I never blame other people for honest mistakes.
Señor Castillo had not taken a side in this quarrel, but now that the two men had at last fallen silent, he tried to diffuse the tension. Everyone makes mistakes, he said, I make them all the time.
Señor Dorantes did not reply, and neither did Señor Cabeza de Vaca, but their bitter argument had cleared the air between them and for the rest of the day they seemed much more cordial to each other, like two men who now knew exactly what to expect from one another. They began to talk about the most efficient way to transport the sick men, while also limiting the risk of contamination.
At sunset, we reached a very large bay. It was as calm as a lake, with few waves disrupting the surface. Here and there, oyster beds of various shapes jutted out from the water. These oysters were a welcome change from the corn and beans we had consumed for so long. We ate them straight from the grill; the men who owned small knives pried the shells open for those who did not, so that the warm, slippery food was passed from hand to hand regardless of rank.
The meal greatly revived our spirits and we set out early the next morning to explore the areas around the bay. The first trail we took led us inland—the air grew drier, with no scent of salt in it, and the trees were taller and leafier—so we retreated, for fear of coming across any Indians who dwelled in these parts. From our starting point, we took a second trail, and a third, but each one led us to a small and shallow inlet, where the water rose no higher than a man’s knee. Our search went on like this for two days. Whenever we returned to our camp in the bay, we looked hopefully at the horizon, but there was no sign of the ships.
SO OUR MOOD WAS somber when we returned to Aute. None of us felt at ease with himself; any private jealousies or ambitions had disappeared from our minds as we pondered the full extent of our joint predicament. I think, too, that we were filled with doubt that we had missed some clue along the way, something that could have led us to where the ships were waiting for us. When we reached the edge of the camp, we found one of the friars standing by himself in a clearing, his head bowed in prayer, the bottom of his robe soiled with mud. A dozen graves surmounted by wooden crosses lay at his feet. Hearing our approach, the friar turned toward us, raising his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. It was Father Anselmo. Capitán, he said. His gaze drifted from Señor Dorantes to Diego and back again. Welcome back.
What happened here, Father? Señor Dorantes asked.
The fever, Father Anselmo replied. Some of the sick men did not have the strength to eat or drink, he explained, and they had begun to die on the day we left.
Who died?
We lost fourteen Christians. And, pointing to each grave, the friar gave the full name of the man who had died, his voice slow and solemn.
We all grew quiet as we contemplated the mounds. It was one thing to lose men to a swamp, a river, or a battle with the Indians, and quite another to lose them to the fever. An accident could be easily dismissed as a rare occurrence, a stroke of bad luck. As for combat, we had each conceived a reason why we had been spared: we had fought valiantly or had better weapons or had found a good place to hide. But disease did not discriminate—it could strike the rich as well as the poor, the brave as well as the coward, the wise as well as the fool. Disease leveled all the differences between us and united us in a single abiding fear.
We walked in a slow procession toward the camp. A guard with wild eyes, eyes like a jinn’s, sat in the dirt, his musket trained on five soldiers whose hands had been tied behind their backs. As we passed by, Señor Cabeza de Vaca recognized two of his own men and asked the guard what it was they had done. Deserters, the guard spat. We caught them trying to leave with their horses in the middle of the night.
My first thought upon hearing this was: leave to go where? We did not know how to get to the ships, so this desertion was nothing more than the last rebellion of the doomed, like the lambs that stagger back on their feet after their throats have been cut.
In the camp, the men were huddled in small groups along the river, talking or praying or napping under the shade of poplar and cedar trees. The soldiers in our company recounted the story of our failure to those who had stayed, and the news spread quickly from group to group. Their disappointment made the men critical: How well did you look? they asked. Did you take every trail? Was there not one you missed?
Faced with so many questions, those of us who had gone on the mission were tormented by even greater doubt. So when the three captains went to the governor’s tent to give their report, they spoke with urgent voices. Don Pánfilo, Señor Dorantes called. We are back.
The governor did not come out of his tent to greet the captains. Instead, he threw open the flap and spoke to them through this opening. He had traded his formal doublet for a simple cotton shirt and plain breeches, with no embellishments of any kind.
We found only a shallow harbor, Señor Dorantes said, but nothing resembling a port.
A port, the governor said, sounding like an echo from an empty well.
We will have to send a second mission, Señor Dorantes said.
A smaller grou
p of men, this time, Señor Cabeza de Vaca added, all of them on horses, so that we can cover greater distances.
There was no response from the governor.
Don Pánfilo? Señor Cabeza de Vaca asked.
When the governor’s voice finally came, it was very low. Five of the horsemen tried to desert me, he said.
Yes, we saw them on our way here, Señor Dorantes said.
And do you know that the Indians attacked us while you were gone?
No. The friar did not speak of it.
They killed one of the horses. We cannot stay by the river any longer. We will go with you to the bay you found.
Señor Dorantes exchanged a thoughtful look with Señor Cabeza de Vaca. The Bay of Oysters would provide safer camping ground than the river, and missions could more easily be mounted from there. For the first time, their bitter rivalry had given way to agreement.
WITH THE ORDER PASSED DOWN, the captains retired, and I was left alone. I took off my clothes and went into the river, as naked as the day I was born. Had I been asked what I was doing, I would have said that I was going for a swim, but no one in the camp asked. No one cared—each man was worrying about his own ability to survive the fever. The water was very cold; I felt a shudder running through me, numbing all the pain in my body. The current carried me away from the bank, and I did not resist it. Soon, the voices of the soldiers faded, and the only sound I could hear was that of my own breathing, as calm as in times when my life had been free of the troubles of conquest.
I had put my life in the hands of others and now here I was, at the edge of the known world, lost and afraid. All along, I had told myself that I did not have a choice, that I had been the one to put myself into bondage and I had to accept this fate. Somehow I had also convinced myself that my redemption could only come from some force outside of me—that if I were useful to others, they would save me. What a terrible thing to believe. I had to stop playing a part in my own misery. I had to save my own life. Time passed, and a feeling of tranquility settled inside me, as if some old, nagging question had at last been answered. The hair on my chest uncoiled, the goose bumps faded. I rubbed one foot against the other, feeling the hardened edge of the heels and the soft surface of the blisters that had formed under my toes.
At length, I felt the water pulling me with greater force downriver. I stood up and saw that I had drifted well apart from the others, so that I could no longer see the camp. I could walk straight into the green wilderness and disappear forever, a free man once again. But I would have to go alone into the unknown. Where should I go? East toward the rising sun or west toward the bay? Neither alternative seemed safe to me, as I had no provisions and no weapon with which to hunt or defend myself. Here, in the Land of the Indians, I was as much of an intruder as the Castilians were—and I would be treated the same. Even if I survived, naked and alone, in the wilderness, I would never be able to return to my family, my people, and my hometown. So I made my way back to the camp. There had to be another way. There was always another way.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, we marched toward the Bay of Oysters. Their misery had silenced the men afflicted with fever, but the healthy among us were quiet out of a renewed awareness of all the dangers we faced. Thus the noise of the wilderness grew in our ears: the chirping of birds, the buzzing of mosquitoes flying in thick clouds, the rattling of snakes in the bushes, the melancholy calls of strange creatures, even the fluttering of a grasshopper on a leaf—all of these added to an unbearable cacophony that was a torment to us all. But in spite of the heat, our pace was good and when the ground turned sandy we looked at the horizon, hoping to see the ships in that shallow bay. It was a wild hope, yet strangely our disappointment was all the more intense.
The beach was quite large. It was possible now to separate the sick from the healthy in order to limit the spread of the disease. There was a decent supply of food: oysters from the reefs, of course, but also crabs, seaweed, and waterfowl. And, past the line of bushes that bordered the beach on the west side, there was wild grass for the horses.
Narváez waited until the men had eaten their dinner before he stood up to address them. Amigos y compañeros, he said. From the beginning of this enterprise, your bravery and your patience have been a credit to Castile. We have had a few setbacks because of the heat and the terrain, but mostly because of the deceitful nature of the Indians. They have misled me. Their minds are as devoid of honor as their bodies are devoid of clothes. I know that this expedition has been difficult. Some of you are sick. Some are tired. Some may even wish you had not decided to join.
From the back came the voices of the men. Aye, they said. Aye.
But remember: the conquest of New Spain was not accomplished in two months. It took two years. Two years! Imagine if those soldiers had given in to despair—México would not be under Christian rule and they would not be the richest men in the empire today. But they did not give up and nor will you. La Florida is a large territory. Once we regain the ships, and we have had time to resupply ourselves with all that we need, we will find a better place to land. Remember that those who risk the most, but remain steadfast in the face of hardship, will gain the most in the end.
But how will we get to the ships?
This question exercised the men for the greater part of the evening. Some wanted to remain in the bay until the ships came looking for us. But, even with the addition of oysters and crabs to our rations, our reserves of food were limited. What would we eat if the ships did not come for weeks or even months? Others proposed that we march past the bay, keeping the ocean in our sight, until we reached the port of Pánuco. But this, too, seemed perilous because too many of the men were afflicted with fever and would not be able to march for such a long distance.
After a while, everyone fell silent, pondering the fact that either of the alternatives offered was impossible. The beach, which had seemed to us such a welcome sight, now felt like nothing more than the little corner of the new world where we would all die. Yet we were sitting under a canopy of stars, so bright and so close that it seemed to us we could reach out and touch them.
There is another way, I said. We can build rafts.
All eyes fixed themselves upon me. So accustomed were the Castilians to my silence—one or two of the lieutenants might even have thought me deaf and dumb—that only shock greeted my pronouncement. But my idea had already been spoken. It could not be unheard.
We cannot build rafts, Cabeza de Vaca said after a moment. It would be too—
Dorantes interrupted him. No. Estebanico is right. This might be the only way we have of leaving the bay. Miruelo said that we were only fifteen leagues by sea from the port. If we sail westward, we cannot fail to reach it. We have carpenters, do we not?
Nárvaez called upon Fernándes, the man whose hammer he had borrowed to torture the Indians, and put the question to him. Fernándes replied that he could indeed build rafts large enough and sturdy enough to carry all of us into the ocean, and that there was plenty of wood nearby, but that such an undertaking was impossible because he would need tools the porters had lost in a swamp, when they were attacked by the Apalaches.
We can make the tools, I said.
Suppose you have the tools, Dorantes said to Fernándes, how long would it take you to build the rafts?
It depends on how many men we commit to it.
Por Dios, Narváez said. All of the men. All the healthy ones. How long, then?
Three weeks. Maybe.
But what about the horses? Cabeza de Vaca asked.
We cannot take them, Dorantes said. The horses are too heavy for the rafts and too weak to endure another sea voyage.
It is not fair to ask the horsemen to give up their horses, Cabeza de Vaca said. The horses are all they have.
Is it fair that five of them tried to desert me? Narváez replied sharply.
The treasurer, whose contingent had been home to two of the deserters, lowered his gaze and did not reply.
If we
are going to reach Pánuco, Narváez said, everyone has to make sacrifices. We can eat the horses for sustenance.
He was right, I thought. We were too weak to work the long hours it would require to build the rafts and we needed to be fed somehow. We all loved horses and could not have conceived of slaughtering healthy ones for the sake of food. But this was another disgrace we were willing to take upon ourselves in order to escape from the bay.
THE PLAN WAS AMBITIOUS, complicated, dangerous—but it was a plan. And for two days, there was no word from Narváez about it. He prayed with the commissary in his tent, ate his meals alone, and took long walks along the beach, followed at a respectable distance by his page and three of his men. He seemed always to be in deep thought, weighing the possibilities that had been presented to him: stay in the bay and hope that the ships dare to come in its shallow waters; venture on land yet again, looking for the port; or build rafts and try to reach the ocean, from which we could either sail to Pánuco or be seen by some passing ship or other. But perhaps I was wrong; perhaps he was not considering the proposals at all but was instead contemplating the failure of his expedition. Was he thinking about Cortés—the lucky, cunning Cortés—who had found unbelievable riches and become famous?
At last, Narváez issued the order: we would build rafts and go to Pánuco. It gladdened my heart to hear him agree to the plan and I began to feel a kind of purpose I had not experienced in a long time. It seemed to me, too, that Dorantes had had enough of his adventures under the command of Narváez, and that, when he reached Pánuco, he would make his way back to Seville. I swore to myself that, once in Seville, I would find a way of returning to my people; I would make in reverse the journey I had made five years earlier. This was how I went from the complete despair of uncertainty to the feverish dream of a new beginning.
In our company was a blacksmith from Bilbao, a man by the name of Echeverría, who said he could make all the tools we needed if we helped him build a forge and provided him with a pair of bellows. For an entire morning, Echeverría searched the beach around the Bay of Oysters for the most suitable spot, and, having finally found it, he had us gather stones to build the forge. We had no leather with which to make the bellows, but Gonzalo Ruíz, the soldier who had lost an eye to his confrontation with the Indians, had the idea of using horse skin.