by Laila Lalami
Tell them we are not all like Ruíz, Diego said.
We are not cannibals, I said, we do not eat each other. Tell them that.
But Kwachi called to his dog and returned whence he came. We were never able to convince him to bring us back to the village.
The bowel disease combined with constant deprivation to decimate our ranks. By the end of that cold winter, twenty-three Castilians, one Angolan, and three Portuguese lay buried in the clearing south of the river, their long journey to conquer this terra firma having at last come to an end. Only twelve men survived: Andrés Dorantes, Diego Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, Pedro de Valdivieso, Ricardo Gutiérrez, the friar Anselmo de Asturias, Álvaro Fernándes, Felipe Benítez, Jorge Chaves, Pedro Estrada, Diego de Huelva, and this servant of God, Mustafa ibn Muhammad. But more than one hundred and twenty Capoques perished during that same interval, and were buried in ceremonies whose terrible noise carried all the way to our camp, reminding us of the evil we had brought with us to the island and which we would yet carry with us when we left.
ON THE RARE OCCASIONS when Dorantes or Castillo had gone to visit Cabeza de Vaca in the Han village, I had stayed behind. I was not fond of the treasurer. He displayed an unflagging disregard for men of lower station—not unusual among noblemen, of course, but in his case the disregard was particularly pronounced. And there was, too, his support of every one of Narváez’s foolish decisions, which, given our present condition, I could neither overlook nor forget. But now spring was here, and in order to make plans for our joint departure from the Island of Misfortune, I agreed to go with Dorantes and Castillo to the Han village.
The huts were similar to those of the Capoques, but they were much smaller and squarer, which gave them the appearance of little squat boxes. A Han youngster, wearing an officer’s boots, had cut the head of a sea turtle and now was hanging it to bleed. A few paces away, a woman was repairing the roof of her home with the help of her children. A brown dog slept in a patch of sunlight, flies hovering above him. I could not hear a river, and wondered briefly where the Han procured their drinking water; the location of their camp did not seem to be as advantageous as that of the Capoques, who had established themselves near several sources of water. The entire camp was quiet, as if its people were away on a hunting expedition. A pestilential smell hung over the place.
We found Cabeza de Vaca at the far end of the square, sitting on his haunches, so occupied with skinning a squirrel that he did not hear us. He held the brown head in his left hand and with his right slowly ran the knife between the meat and the fur, with the careful, deliberate movements of a man who had not been born to such a task, but enjoyed doing it well. When he finally noticed us, he poured water over his hands and, wiping them on a loincloth cut from his own doublet, stood up to greet us. I could have counted his ribs had I been inclined to, so thin had he become. His eyes sunk inside his face and his thin yellow beard pointed like an arrow down his chest.
Presently Cabeza de Vaca handed the animal to a handsome woman, who smiled when she noticed us. He shook hands with Dorantes and Castillo, but only raised his chin in my direction. Dorantes reported the most recent deaths in our group, and the names of the twelve who were still alive. The bowel disease had spread much faster in Cabeza de Vaca’s group, however, and only three of his men remained: the notary Jerónimo de Albaniz, a settler by the name of Lope de Oviedo, and Cabeza de Vaca himself.
Castillo said he would be forced to trade the last of his possessions for dried meat we could take on the journey to Pánuco, but because the Capoques were no longer excited by the novelty of Castilian items, the amount of meat he hoped to receive in exchange for them would likely not last our party more than a day or two. How much food do you think you can bring for the journey? Castillo asked.
I am not going with you, Cabeza de Vaca replied.
What?
I am not going.
I mean—why. Why are you not coming with us?
We have not had any rain in three weeks, Dorantes added. We need not wait any longer.
It is not the weather.
Then what is it?
I have a wife now. I cannot leave her behind.
My gaze drifted to the handsome woman standing behind him. Her hair was glossy in the sunlight and her face had that rare pairing of grit and grace. She wore a necklace made of white seashells interspersed with red doublet buttons, a simple yet appealing jewel. Though Cabeza de Vaca had his back to her, the bond between the two of them was obvious. I thought of what the elders teach us: love is like a camel’s hump, for it cannot be disguised.
You already have a wife, Castillo said. In Jerez.
Not like her.
But your wife is a lady! Have you thought of her at all?
Castillo, you know nothing about the lady in Jerez. Leave her out of this.
You would desert your own kind for this Indian? Dorantes asked, casting a disbelieving glance at the woman.
Cabeza de Vaca shot his friends a dark look. I will not leave her.
Then bring her if you must, Dorantes said. But come with us.
I already told you, I am not going. We do not know how far Pánuco is. Do you believe we will survive another long journey through this land? We will die in the wilderness, and no one will ever know what happened to us.
This woman has poisoned your mind.
On the contrary. She has taken the poison out.
I leaned on my walking staff. Beside me, Castillo and Dorantes had fallen into an uncomprehending silence, but I could see that Cabeza de Vaca loved this woman and that his heart was filled with yearning for her. I knew only too well what that felt like, and so I was drawn to him as I might to a fellow sufferer, a sentiment that surprised and befuddled me.
What about Albaniz and Oviedo? Dorantes asked. Do they have Indian wives, too?
There is something wrong with Albaniz, Cabeza de Vaca replied. But you can try talking to him if you like. And Oviedo is still recovering from the bowel disease. If they wish to go, I will not stop them.
We found Albaniz wandering through the village, trailed by two scrawny dogs, faithful in the way of mangy animals. His beard had grown bushy and he was thinner now, but otherwise he looked much the same as before. He wore a blue cotton doublet and black breeches. In his right hand was a short stick, which he used as a cane. Slung across his chest was his leather satchel, filled with the requisitions, contracts, and petitions he had been entrusted with when the armada left Seville, but also with the names the governor had given to the places, people, and animals of the new world—Portillo and Santa María, Pablo and Kamasha, lagartos and castores.
Albaniz, Dorantes called. The notary smiled when his name was called. With a wave of the hand, he invited us to sit with him on Indian benches that had been placed under an oak tree. He leaned forward on his cane and rested his chin on his hands. We are crossing to the mainland, Dorantes explained. We are going to Pánuco. Come with us.
Albaniz smiled, baring teeth that had turned mossy green. Adios, he said.
No, Mochuelo, Dorantes said. He stabbed his forefinger in Albaniz’s chest and then turned it back against himself. You come with us.
Adios.
Are you deaf? Castillo said. We want you to come with us.
Albaniz smiled heartily, as though the words Castillo had spoken were some great joke, to which only he was privy. With his cane, he scribbled something in the dirt—words in a language I could not read, though the Castilians later said that it was no language at all, just gibberish.
Oh, Lord, Dorantes said. The man is mad. He ran his hand on his forehead, as if he were having trouble keeping up with the thoughts inside. Let us find Oviedo.
Oviedo was in the woods behind the village. He sat with an old, toothless woman, weaving what looked like a basket. Although he smelled terrible and his clothes were filthy, something about the way he sat suggested that he was in fine health and would be able to walk. But when Dorantes explained our plan, Oviedo ref
used to come. He said that our fate on the mainland might not be better than here on this island and could very well be worse, and that in any case he was finished risking life on a journey to someplace we were not certain we could find.
Why was it that Cabeza de Vaca’s men agreed so readily with each other, while those of us from the Dorantes group agreed on the opposite? It was as though we belonged to different tribes now and could think no differently than the clan we called our own. In the winter, when the men all around us were dying of the bowel disease, I had heard Dorantes wonder aloud, around the campfire, why it was that this land refused us, why it would not grant us a reprieve. Our sins cannot be washed away so easily here, someone had replied, we have to go back to Castile. I felt much the same. My heart ached with the desire to return home to the country where I belonged, where everything would once again make sense. But maybe Cabeza de Vaca and the others believed the opposite. Maybe they believed that if they became people of this land, living alongside its natives, they could find some semblance of peace.
In the end, Castillo had to give up his beloved game of chess, Dorantes his marten and ermine cloak, and I my scissors, in exchange for passage to the mainland on a canoe. I sat at the fore of the dugout, so eager was I to begin the journey out of the island. When we reached the other shore, I was the first man to step off, and turned around to help Dorantes; he looked up at me gratefully, his eyes shielded from the sun by my shadow. As the twelve of us gathered on the shore of the mainland, I realized with a start that, although no rope tied our hands and feet together, I was as bound to these Castilians as I had been to the Barbary slaves under the colorful glass windows of a church in Seville, all those years ago.
13.
THE STORY OF THE THREE RIVERS
Across the sky, groups of geese flew north in formation. We walked in twos and threes, with our shadows in front of us made soft and shapeless by the passing clouds. The oak trees all around us were heavy with spring leaves. Bees hummed among the wild flowers. The wilderness that had once seemed so alien to us had grown familiar and the calls of animals in the distance no longer alarmed us. When we came upon a river, none of the Castilians thought to give it a name, I noticed; they had stopped thinking of themselves as unchallenged lords of this world, whose duty it was to put it into words. Later, much later, whenever we spoke of this first river, we called it the Primero Río—not Río Primero, but simply the Primero Río, in order to distinguish it from the other rivers we would yet cross.
Because the Primero Río was too deep to cross on foot, we all agreed to build two small rafts—each one would carry about half of our number. With only one ax, the work was slow, but no one complained. This changed once Fernándes the carpenter started tying the logs together. You are using too much horsehair, we said. What if we come across another river tomorrow?
I am using just enough, Fernándes replied. I have done this before, you know.
And why are you making only two paddles for each raft?
Am I the carpenter or are you? Fernándes said testily. His ax was raised, its iron blade catching the light.
Father Anselmo had to intervene. Let Fernándes do his work, he told us. He knows what is best.
Once the first raft was ready, we set it onto the water. The oak logs were rough and splintery, barely held together by precious strands of horsehair. Diego and I sat on either end of the vessel, with the paddles in our hands, while Dorantes, Castillo, and Father Anselmo sat in the middle. A cold wind blew from the east, making their shirts flap violently against their bodies.
We should stand against the wind, Castillo cried.
It was an ingenious idea: the bodies of those who were standing arm in arm became a kind of sail, so that the wind propelled the raft forward. The water was fast, but murky. It could easily conceal a dangerous boulder or a fallen tree trunk. With fear and excitement coursing in equal measure through our veins, we paddled in the direction of the current, and to our great relief we made it to the other bank.
From there, we beckoned the others to cross. Oddly, both of the paddlers on the second raft sat at the fore of the vessel, which made it difficult for them to maintain a good balance. And, although they must have seen how Castillo had used the wind to our favor, they did not imitate us. They paddled more vigorously than they needed and their raft quickly acquired speed. Standing on the riverbank, we were as tense as captives—we could watch them, but could do nothing to help them. They were going downriver at a frightful pace. As soon as they passed within earshot, Dorantes called out to his friend Valdivieso: Jump, amigo! Jump, you can swim the rest of the way.
Valdivieso threw himself in the river, gasping as his body hit the cold water. His raftmates were left in a panic. The vessel was very plain; it was a squarish structure with no sweeps to control speed or direction. Now, with Valdivieso gone, it became lighter and even faster than before. The current carried it about like a dry twig. After a moment, several others jumped into the water, too, but Estrada and Chaves, who did not know how to swim, stayed on. We never saw either of them again.
To lose two of our number when we had been away from the Island of Misfortune for only one day was a terrible blow to us. It was hard to escape the feeling that our journey was doomed. Sitting on the riverbank afterward, my limbs trembling despite the crackling fire, I began to wonder whose turn would come next. And when would mine be? In two days? Three? A week? And yet, at the same time, I tried to tell myself that no, this was it—this had to be—the final test. I had gone through enough. I would be found innocent of whatever evil we were all being punished for, I would reach Pánuco soon, I would return home. I would be saved.
We continued along the trail all of the next day, eating nothing but blueberries and meadow grass. Our beards had already grown long and bushy, but now, with our teeth stained blue and our stomachs bulging with undigested grass, we began to look like figures from some ancient story, told by generation after generation to warn young children about the dangers that lurked far away from home. At length, we came to a beautiful green lagoon, where a man was floating peacefully. It was the flash of yellow hair and white skin in the glinting waters that made the friar call out to him. The man swam to the shore in quick, smooth strokes, emerging as naked as the day he was born.
It was Francisco de León, a settler from Cabeza de Vaca’s company, a cobbler who had proven himself useful to the captain during our long journey through La Florida. (On a long march, nothing was more precious than shoes and no one more vital than a shoe mender.) Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a scar on his cheek, just beneath his right eye. We had not seen him since our crossing of the Great River and had thought him dead long ago, but León explained that, after landing at the Island of Misfortune, he and two others had walked to a beach nearby, where they had found an abandoned Indian canoe. They had taken it here, to the continent, but had failed to moor it properly and now it was lost. We were all stunned into silence, imagining what we could have done with a canoe if only we had known about it.
But why did you not tell Cabeza de Vaca about the canoe? Dorantes asked, his voice made shrill with indignation.
The dugout would have been too small to carry all of us, León replied.
You could have taken turns.
Cabeza de Vaca had let the Indians come to our beach. And he wanted us to go with them to their camp.
So you chose not to tell him about the canoe? You fool! He could have used it to shuttle all of his men to the continent and maybe my men, too. They would not have needed to spend the winter on the island. Do you know how many of them have died? Their deaths are your fault.
How are they my fault? The captain did not ask me what I thought about going with the savages to their camp. Why should I ask him what to do about the canoe?
This response so angered Dorantes that he turned away from León and faced the lagoon. His authority had been challenged nearly every day since our departure from the Bay of Oysters, and he did not know how to res
pond as his power frittered away.
It was Castillo who tried to fill the awkward silence. What happened to the others who went with you? he asked.
They died of the fever, León replied.
What about you? What did you eat all winter?
Oysters. Seaweed. Grass. Bird eggs. Lizards. Whatever I could find.
Once again, Father Anselmo tried to diffuse any friction. He placed his arm around León’s shoulders and, squeezing him affectionately in spite of his terrible revelation, he said: We lost two Christians yesterday, but now the Lord has delivered you to us and us to you. He whispered a long prayer, thanking God for the blessing of a new companion and asking for our safe return to Pánuco. Gratefully, León kissed the friar’s hand. Then, with the ease of a squirrel, he climbed up a nearby tree, from which he retrieved his clothes, a knife, and a pair of gloves that looked too large for him. He was the first addition to our party, which had known nothing but loss for the last year. In spite of everything, we tried to take this as a good sign. We needed one.
SOME DAYS LATER, we came upon an immense forest of oak trees, a landscape of deep green cut through by sharp, brown lines. As we made our way through the woods, yellow warblers congregated on the branches above us, though their sweet melodies were eventually muffled by the sound of a mighty river. This was the Segundo Río. On its gray and rocky bank, half in and half out of the water, the wind whistling through the logs, was one of the rafts we had made at the Bay of Oysters. A white vestment stitched to the sails—I had sewn it there myself—helped me identify it as the raft captained by the comptroller. It had also carried the commissary and forty-seven other men. How did it arrive here?
We looked for clues of the men’s whereabouts, but there was no sign of them anywhere. No remnants of a campfire, no traces of food, no tracks leading away from the raft into the wilderness. It was as if Enríquez and all his men had simply vanished into thin air, leaving their raft behind. Silently, and with eyes cast down, Fernándes the carpenter began to undo the horsehair rope from the part of the raft that sat above the water. Dorantes tore the sails from the masts; they could be used for bedding. As for the logs, they were rotten; they broke easily and fed our fire that evening.