by Laila Lalami
Are you sure? Dorantes asked, taking the cup. The look on his face confirmed Castillo’s judgment.
At the Bay of Oysters, we had stripped the skin from the horses’ legs, dried it, and made water containers with it. But we had had no means to seal these pouches and now they had begun to turn rancid. So it was that, after only five days at sea, we found ourselves without drinking water. We cooled ourselves with rags dipped in seawater, we sucked on each kernel of corn in our rations before swallowing it, we tied our shirts over our heads to protect ourselves from the rays of the sun—we tried everything we could think of to distract ourselves from the thirst, but sleeping was the simplest remedy, even if the first sensation that came to us upon waking was of our tongues, swollen and pressing against our teeth. In the end, the only respite we could find was in the bottom of the rotten containers. We drank the fetid water we had at first refused and, when it ran out, began to quarrel over the juiciest ears of corn.
ON THE EVE of the seventh day, a large swath of hazy green and yellow appeared in the horizon. Land! one of the soldiers cried, standing up. Land! We were so excited at the prospect of drinking fresh water that, using our paddles, we raced the other rafts to the island. As we approached, we saw that the island was not far from the continent, forming a kind of strait that would finally lead us to the open ocean. Curious pelicans came to hover over our rafts and then returned to the seashore. From behind the bushes that bordered the beach, plumes of white smoke appeared—fires that had been hastily put out with water. Five painted canoes were moored on the rocks.
What a sight we must have made for whoever lived on this island: two hundred and sixty strange men of different ages and colors walking or hobbling to the beach, already scouring the world around us for anything to eat or drink. Our clothes, or what remained of them, hung absurdly on our bodies. Our faces were burnt, our lips were blistered, our limbs covered with sun rash. We were a plague in human form. But Narváez still managed to look better than the rest of us. On his head was his feather-adorned helmet—while the officers had all sacrificed their morions to the forge, he had decreed that his position entitled him to keep his—and he still had his doublet and breeches. In addition, his recent weight reduction made him look like a younger man.
Presently, he began to issue orders: this island would be called San Miguel, after the Christian saint whose feast day it was; Albaniz and Cabeza de Vaca were to look for the nearest river; Dorantes and Castillo would go to the Indian village to bring whatever supplies they could find; the friars would report on the health of the company; and Fernándes was to check the rafts for any needed repairs.
Dorantes did not relish the chance of intruding upon the Indians, even with the help of ten armed men, but being the one in charge of getting the supplies would give him the first choice of them, so he agreed without protest or complaint. I went with him, tucking under my belt one of the axes we had fashioned at the Bay of Oysters. The sandy path that led from the beach to the Indian village was covered with fresh footprints, and it seemed to us that we were watched from the bushes, but to our relief no Indians came forward to confront us and no arrows were shot at us.
The village was small: eight thatched-roof dwellings, arranged in two neat rows. A pyramid of firewood sat under a cluster of palm trees; some baskets made out of palm fronds were stacked beside it; and a large fishnet was laid out for repair. But behind each row of huts we found tall wooden racks, on which dozens of mullet fish were drying. What a gift this was for hungry men! The mullet tasted dry and salty and chewy and it was the most delicious thing we had eaten in a long time. We collected all of it, as well as some mullet roe, filling up several baskets.
Then we searched the huts. I was fortunate; in the first one I entered, I found a covered jar filled to the brim with cold water. I dropped on my knees, tipped the container, and drank and drank and drank until my stomach began to ache. It was the same kind of pain I used to get when I broke the fast on the first night of Ramadan, a feeling of being at once satiated and yet still thirsty. An odd feeling, but not altogether unfamiliar, and it made me dizzy. I fell down on the pelts to rest, allowing myself at last to look around me properly.
In one corner were two children’s rattles, made of bone and wood. A thick garment of animal skin lay in a heap by the entrance, as if discarded in a hurry, next to a woman’s comb. I ran my finger on its even teeth and was reminded of the tattoo on Ramatullai’s right hand. The shame of my theft settled upon me all at once. How low I had sunk as a man. But once again I told myself that I had no other choice: I was trying to flee from La Florida and in order to do that, I needed food and water. It was necessity, rather than greed, that had driven me to this.
When I came out, I saw that Dorantes had already raided the village storehouse. Having run out of baskets, he and Castillo were using the edges of their shirts to carry corn and fruit out of the hut. Beneath their round burdens, their white waists and thin legs were exposed, making them look like half-stuffed rag dolls. We need clean containers for water, I said, lifting up the jar in my hand to show them. As I went into the next hut to look for another one, I heard Dorantes call out to his brother. Diego. Diego, leave that. Help Estebanico round up all the pots. Hurry!
We carried our loot back to the beach, where we found Narváez’s men destroying the painted dugouts with their axes. What are you doing? Dorantes asked, unfurling his shirt and letting all the fruit inside roll to the ground.
Oh, good, you brought some food, Narváez said. Set it aside, I will divide it. His brows were furrowed as he watched the men work.
What are you doing? Dorantes repeated.
Breaking up these canoes. We can use the wood as gunwales.
You should not have done that. It is one thing to take food from them and another to destroy their property. They will come after us now.
How? They will have no canoes with which to pursue us.
What if there are others who do?
We will be gone by then.
You should have consulted with us before taking such a drastic measure.
Castillo stepped forward, eager to support Dorantes in his complaint. You have endangered all of us, he said.
Narváez regarded Dorantes and Castillo wearily. Their doubts no longer angered or saddened him; he was now resigned to them. We are about to reach the ocean, he said, and we need to ensure that the rafts remain dry. Do you have a better idea?
A brown sandpiper had walked up from the shoreline and was eyeing the fruit that was on the ground. I shooed the bird away before it got too close.
Dorantes’s reply, when it finally came, was quiet and grudging. No, he said.
By the time all the rafts were fitted with gunwales and the containers filled with water from the river, it was late afternoon. The men wanted to spend the night on the island—to be able to stretch out on the sand and sleep alone, without having to smell another man’s bad breath or dirty feet, seemed like a wonderful luxury. But Narváez’s decision meant that we could not take that risk; we had to leave San Miguel Island right away if we wanted to avoid retribution for breaking up the canoes. We departed under a darkened sky, eager to reach Pánuco—a word that, for every one of us now, was synonymous with salvation.
IN THE MORNING, WE passed the strait and reached the open sea. We sailed westward under skies the color of mackerel, with patches here and there of darker gray. The oppressive heat of the past two weeks had finally broken, but that was little comfort to two men on our raft, a cobbler from Segovia and a crossbowman from Sicily, who were burning with fever. They had been well at the Bay of Oysters, but the journey on the raft had weakened them; they lay indolently at the far edge of the boat, sometimes using the pot and sometimes helplessly soiling themselves. It was a horrible sight and a cruel reminder that the sickness had followed us out of La Florida.
Dorantes sat at the other end of the raft, far from the sick men, and he took frequent naps, but Diego stayed up all day, carving up his little bi
rds. It surprised me that a nobleman like him should be so skilled with his hands. Where did you learn how to do that? I asked him.
The whittling knife stopped midair. Diego looked up. I taught myself, he said.
You have already made two birds, I said. Why are you making another one?
This one is the older brother of those two, he replied with a little smile.
I took the little sparrows in the palms of my hands. How expertly he had shaped their beaks and tail feathers. And look how alive their eyes seemed. Diego could have been an artist if he had not been a nobleman. I have twin brothers, I said, more to myself than to Diego. A memory, buried away in a corner of my mind, surfaced now: we were walking by the side of the Umm er-Rbi’ River, returning home from a trip to the shrine, where we had given prayers for my father’s health. Yahya had grown tired; he threw up his little hands, wanting me to carry him on my back. Right away, Yusuf proclaimed himself the more tired of the two. I lifted them both up and carried them home. I could still remember the weight of their bodies against mine.
You will see them again someday, Diego said.
My longing for Yusuf and Yahya was so plain that Diego had seen it. And rather than ignore it, the way Dorantes would have, he had tried to soothe it. Ojalá, I replied. A word of hope in his native language, borrowed from a word of prayer in mine—Insha’llah.
Once again, Father Anselmo stood up to distribute the rations. The water and mullet we brought from the island had lasted only a few days, after which we returned to eating corn. We did not mind the small rations so much; it was the thirst that was unbearable. We were weak with it. It gave us headaches and made us dangerously lazy, so that when the rafts drifted away from their course, we did not have the strength to use our paddles and depended increasingly on our sails. So you can imagine, gentle reader, how relieved we were to find another island.
THE BEACH WAS NARROW and ended in a small dune that was covered with bright green palmetto, hiding whatever lay on the other side. No Indian trail was visible, nor any dugouts. We would have to walk over the dune to look for water. The argument about the gunwales had deepened Narváez’s dislike for Dorantes and Castillo, so he chose two different captains for this mission: Tellez and Peñaloza. Everyone else was to remain on the shore.
I gathered some firewood to toast the last of the corn and walked the shoreline looking for crabs or oysters, but could not find any. The men had scattered into smaller groups on the beach, quietly waiting for the captains to return. The only sound came from the rattling of the rafts on the waves; even the herons and egrets we had grown used to seeing in these parts were gone. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sky was darkening steadily by the time Tellez returned. He was a slight man, with narrow shoulders and a handsome face. When he spoke, he kept his eyes on the ground, as if embarrassed by the sound of his own voice. Don Pánfilo, he said, I did not find a river.
Nothing?
No, not even a spring.
Narváez pursed his lips in a way that suggested he had once again been disappointed by one of his lieutenants. But Peñaloza came back from the other side of the beach soon after, bearing the same news. No river.
The panic that gripped our company was so sudden and so strong I felt as if I could touch it. How would we survive without water? The ration master, unable to bear the thirst any longer, filled up his flask with seawater and, despite warnings from the more experienced soldiers, drank all of it at once. With a sigh of relief, he lay on the beach and closed his eyes. Not an hour later, while the commissary was taking the confession of a dying man, the ration master began to convulse. His arms and legs seemed to acquire a life of their own, kicking up the sand in all directions. There was no expression in his eyes and his mouth was white with foam. The friars tried to comfort him by holding down his limbs, but this did nothing to stop his seizures. He looked for all the world like a man possessed by a demon. Peace came to him only when his soul left his body.
When we carried the ration master to the shallow grave that had been dug for him, I noticed that he still had, hanging from his belt, the native hatchet he had bartered me for some water. Now the ration master was gone, and so was the poor horse the barter had helped. The elders teach us: we all belong to God, and to Him we return. I knew that I was not supposed to rebel against the will of God. Yet the death of the ration master, so sudden and so brutal, stoked my anger. Had I built a raft and sailed this far away from La Florida only to die on a barren island? Had I been forsaken?
Then, quite suddenly, the gray clouds that had followed us all day rumbled with the sound of thunder and the wind picked up, blowing through the beach at furious speed. A good wind could not be wasted—it was a chance to travel a greater distance toward the port—so we ran to the rafts and hoisted the anchors. The air was thick with the smell of our fear. As we moved away from the shore, flashes of thunder interrupted the eternity of darkness around us. We turned our faces up to the heavens and when at last it began to rain, we opened our mouths to catch the raindrops. Like beggars, we held up every jar, every bucket, every cooking pot we had toward the skies. We had waited so long for this mercy.
WE SAILED FOR ANOTHER WEEK, keeping the continent in our sight as best as we could manage, but seeing no sign of a river. If we could not be certain to find water, we dared not risk another landing, even though our supplies were dwindling. But early one morning, a dozen Indian fishermen in painted dugouts, much like those Narváez had broken up, approached us. They rowed in a wide circle around our rafts, taking stock of our pitiful condition and our meager possessions. We could see no food or water in their canoes, but in our state of utter exhaustion the Indians seemed to us more like guardian angels than men of flesh and blood. We followed them to the continent.
Upon landing, Narváez produced two necklaces made with blue beads, handing each one slowly and ceremoniously to the fishermen. The Indians were surprised by the gift and delighted by the clattering sound the beads made when the necklaces were slung together. His gift earned Narváez an invitation to the Indians’ village, but since some of the men were too sick to walk and others unwilling to trust the Indians, only a small party of healthy men—no more than fifty or sixty of us—went with him.
We marched behind Narváez down a narrow path that cut straight through the green wilderness like a fresh scar. It led to a village of a dozen dwellings, arranged around an earthen mound of the kind we had seen in Apalache. Three boys were racing each other on stilts while their friends urged them to go faster, faster, faster; some women were spreading red paint over a deerskin stretched upon a triangular frame; and two young girls were taking turns pounding something in a mortar. The air smelled of fish and smoke, a combination that, in our state of deprivation, was a particular torment. As we proceeded to the village square, the women and children stopped what they were doing and watched us. The cacique, an old man with heavy-lidded eyes and droopy earlobes, was waiting for us, his sentinels having given him advance notice of our arrival. He wore a cloak of marten and ermine skin, whose front ends he held in his hands, so that they would not drag on the ground. Armed with plumed lances, his deputies appraised us from where they stood.
Head bowed, Narváez offered the cacique some bells and a long string of yellow beads. The chief accepted the items with a nod, then took off his magnificent fur cloak and gave it to Narváez, who immediately wrapped himself in it. The village, so still and quiet for a moment, returned to life. The children resumed their play, the women went back to grinding corn, the men invited us to sit. Up in the trees, turtledoves cooed to one another. Pablo, Narváez’s prisoner and interpreter, was asked to come forward. From him, we learned that this cacique’s name was Echogan and that he ruled over this village and two others some distance away along the coast. In reply, Narváez told Echogan that he was the emissary of a powerful king, more powerful than anyone here could imagine. He had come to this land as a friend, he said, to teach the Indians all that he and his Christian brothers
knew, but for now he was looking for his comrades, from whom he had been separated. Have you seen men who look like us in these parts? he asked.
No, Echogan replied. Have you lost some of your brothers?
They are waiting for us on our ships. Perhaps you have seen their ships sail nearby?
No. The cacique was quiet for a while. Then, his eyes darting from Narváez to the lieutenants standing behind, he asked: And your powerful king, will he come to your aid?
To admit that his powerful king had no idea where he was would have made Narváez look insignificant, so he chose to lie. Surely, he said. As soon as he hears from us.
Narváez then asked the cacique about any rivers nearby; Echogan told him that a few leagues west of the village was a wide river, which in his language was called the Great River. This news was a great comfort to all of us, for what other great river could there be in these parts but the Río de las Palmas? We were finally in the vicinity of Pánuco.
The cacique offered us great quantities of fish and squash, and a drink made from fermented fruit. To the men who had remained on the beach, he sent baskets of victuals. In all ways, he was a generous host, honoring us with his presence until sundown, when visitors from a nearby tribe arrived to see him and together they retired into their temple for the rest of the evening.
Now that we were left alone, we broke up into smaller groups, warming up by the side of the campfires. The thought that we would soon reach the port made the men fantasize about everything they would do once we arrived there. Diego said he wanted to take a hot bath. Imagine the sensation of soap against your skin, he said. Cabeza de Vaca said he would settle for some paper and ink, so that he could write to his wife. But Dorantes wanted to hear good music. All the fiddles in our company, including the friar’s, had been stripped of their strings, which had been used to tie the sails. He missed music the most, he said. Castillo was about to say something too, when a rock landed on his hand.