by Laila Lalami
Looking back on these events now, I realize that something changed when Diego was killed. Dorantes became a different man. He rarely spoke anymore and whenever Castillo tried to engage him in conversation, regardless of its subject, Dorantes rebuffed him. It was as if all of the love and friendship he had spent on Castillo haunted him now that his brother was gone for good; he no longer wanted to have anything to do with Castillo. At night, Dorantes tried to muffle his sobs, but I could hear him just the same, even when he turned on his side, with his face buried in his furs.
After Diego’s death, the Carancahuas tired of our presence overnight. The tasks that, a few weeks earlier, would have guaranteed us a good meal now seemed to assure us only that we would not be kicked or beaten. We gave them the last things we owned—what remained of our clothes, the ax, León’s gloves—in the hope that they would treat us better. We played with their children. We even tried to join in one of their dances. But it did not seem to change their minds about our thieving, our lack of honor, or our uselessness. Not a month later, Gutiérrez, Huelva, and Valdivieso had the misfortune of going into a tent that the Carancahuas had forbidden them to enter. They were put to death that evening. Before the spring season was over, there remained only three of us—Dorantes, Castillo, and this servant of God, Mustafa ibn Muhammad.
Our life with the Carancahuas was filled with misery—I know that my Castilian companions have testified to the Audiencia at length about this, but my reasons for mentioning this are different—I say, our life with the Carancahuas was filled with misery because what started out as indifference developed into such intense hostility and violence that we did not dare disobey them. We began talking about escaping but, having witnessed so many of us killed for the slightest infraction, we were afraid of being caught. And even if we managed to escape, we did not know if we could survive for very long in the wilderness, without Indians who were familiar with the area, and its sources of food and water. In the evening, when we sat like pariahs on the side of the camp where we were allowed to sleep, I watched the faces of Castillo and Dorantes, lit by the flickering light of the fire, fill with despair. These faces were, I knew, reflections of my own.
I AWOKE EARLY ONE MORNING to find the space beside me empty—only the impression of Dorantes’s body remained on the bedding. Instantly, I knew something was wrong, because he never left the hut before me. We were both under the same orders to gather firewood at first light, but Dorantes had developed the habit of staying in bed just a moment longer than I, waiting for me to stand up and leave the hut before he did the same. It was his way of maintaining the illusion that, though we both served the Carancahuas, he had once been my master and I his slave. No lies are more seductive than the ones we use to console ourselves.
I reached across the empty space and shook Castillo awake. Quietly, we went around the camp looking for Dorantes, but could not find him. The Carancahua women, early risers like us, took notice of his absence, too. Over the morning meal, they told their menfolk, who immediately turned on us. Where did your brother go? the cacique asked.
It was common for the Carancahuas to refer to us as brothers, a custom I had not minded or paid much attention to, but today the word carried an implication that frightened me.
He did not tell me, I replied. I know nothing of this.
Balsehekona took a long sip from his flask. He ran away, he said.
After all we have done for him, the cacique said.
He must have stolen something.
Like his brother before him.
And he was lazy, Balsehekona said.
In the eyes of a Carancahua, there was no greater shame in the world than idleness. Now, with the wood side of his lance, Balsehekona caned the back of my legs. The next blow was for Castillo; it caught him on the shoulders and he fell on his knees. We ran away to do our tasks before Balsehekona became angrier.
As I gathered firewood that day, and scraped and washed deerskins, I felt a multifarious anger well up within me. Dorantes had brought me to the Land of the Indians, where I had known nothing but misery; he was the reason for the beating I had endured; and he had left just when I had begun to let myself believe that the bond between us had evolved into one of fellowship. In my own attempts at consolation, I had been lying to myself, too.
When we were finally alone in our tent that night, Castillo asked me: Why do you think he left?
He did not want to do the work they wanted him to do.
But why did he not wait for us?
Because, I thought, this was Dorantes—he cared only about himself. But just as I was about to say as much, I wondered if he had left simply because he could no longer bear to be anywhere near the young Castillo, who reminded him of the brother he had lost. So I said nothing.
I cannot believe he left us, Castillo said. Just like that.
I was thirty-three years of age by then and had seen my fair share of misfortune. But Castillo was much younger than me—he looked about twenty years old, more or less—and his shock at being betrayed awoke in me a protective feeling, not unlike what I had felt when I witnessed his grief at being separated from the doctor’s daughter. (Have I mentioned her yet? She had been a passenger on the Gracia de Dios. Castillo used to spend hours on the upper deck, pretending to be busy with something or other, until she made her appearance. She looked a little older than him, and rumor had it that she had already been promised to a settler, but Castillo would try to talk to her anyway. In the end, Narváez’s decision to split the armada had forced the lady to remain on the ship.)
How did you become friends with Dorantes? I asked Castillo.
He fought alongside my older brother, Miguel, in the Comunero rebellion, Castillo said. They became very close. After my brother died of consumption, Dorantes suggested I come with him to the Indies. He said that I would become very rich or at the very least I could be made a mayor of a new town. But my father did not want me to go. He had already lost a son to disease and he did not want to lose the other to conquest.
But you would not listen, I said, recognizing in his story my own tale of disobedience and stubbornness.
No, Castillo said. I was too eager to follow in Miguel’s footsteps, so I sold a piece of land that had come to me from a maternal uncle in Salamanca and joined the expedition. And now …
Now, we are here, I said. In the bushes, the crickets were singing, suddenly interrupted by the wailing of a baby. It was a hungry wail and, after a moment, the baby was cradled to its mother’s breast and the crying subsided. We will find a way out of this land, I said. You will see. I think I was trying to reassure him as much as myself.
As it happened, I did not have to wait long. One of the Carancahua boys, for whom I had made a reed flute and to whom I was teaching an old Zamori tune, told me that Dorantes had gone to live with a tribe called the Yguaces, a nomadic band that sometimes traded with the Carancahuas. Castillo wanted to leave right away; he was sure the Carancahuas would kill us, as they had killed the others, and that it was simply a matter of time. I tempered his excitement. Not for another week, I said. In a week’s time, the moon would be new—and the wilderness dark enough to conceal us. And a week would give me enough time to find out the best way to reach the Yguaces’ camp.
All right, Castillo said. And then: Gracias.
It was a word I had never heard another Castilian say to me.
15.
THE STORY OF THE YGUACES
Along the winding path, drops of dew sat like diamonds on blades of grass. Sparrows watched us with curiosity from the high branches of poplar trees. Under our feet, fallen leaves lay deep. Then the trail dropped toward a river, where a woman was cleaning an animal skin, scraping with such zeal that she did not hear us approach until Castillo and I came near her. She turned—and I saw that she was really a he, a man whose slender body and seashell-trimmed dress had fooled my senses. A streak of white ran from the center of his part through his black hair, though he was still young. From his right ear
hung a bone earring, of the kind worn by the Yguaces. He had small, graceful features and a genial look about him that immediately put me at ease. I had not seen anyone like him before: a man who dressed as a woman, did a woman’s chores, and took another man to his bed, but was in all other respects an ordinary member of the tribe. I did my best to hide my surprise at his attire. He expressed no astonishment at our appearance either, for he had already heard about us, both from Dorantes and from traders who passed through the encampment of the Yguaces.
His name was Chaubekwan and, in addition to his household duties, he was a healer. As he rinsed a deerskin, he asked us about our winter with the Capoques on the Island of Misfortune. A great many of them died of a bowel disease, he said, but not you. How did you cure it?
I crouched beside him, taking one end of the deerskin and helping him wring out the water. I cannot claim to have cured anything, I said.
But why were you spared when so many others perished?
I thought about this for a moment. I had noticed that those of us who drank an infusion of oak leaves for the morning meal had not been afflicted, so I told Chaubekwan about it.
Oak leaves for the bowels? Chaubekwan asked. He tilted his head to the side, pondering this for a moment. As a healer, he was naturally curious about diseases and always on the lookout for new remedies. He was so intrigued by the mention of our infusion that he invited us to the Yguaces’ camp.
It was a modest site. A dozen tents that could be easily struck were arranged around a larger one that was used for religious ceremonies. Months with the redoubtable Carancahuas had taught me to bow before the cacique, to avert my eyes when maidens passed by, to let children reach for my beard without recoiling in anticipation of the pain, so as I proceeded into the encampment I had a good notion of the behavior that was required of me. But the Yguaces seemed to pay no attention to my overt deference; they went about their tasks and expected me to do the same.
It was our great luck to have met Chaubekwan. We were his guests now, and the cacique Oñase had no objection to our joining his band, provided that we worked for our food and followed their laws and customs. Except for bits of fabric and tattered animal skins, we had no possessions to speak of, but we spread these out in a shaded area of the camp, under the curious gaze of a handful of bright-eyed boys who had stopped their games to come watch us. At sunset, Dorantes finally appeared, bent under a huge load of firewood. A woman came to help him unstrap the bundle from his back and he made his way over to us, unhurriedly and without any display of emotion. You came, he said a little dully.
You forsook us, Castillo began. His voice was high, and its nasal tone made him sound childish, an effect he was aware of but was powerless to stop.
I did nothing of the sort. I ran away from the Carancahuas.
What about us? Did you not care what happened to us?
You were not in any danger. They killed my brother. They would have killed me next if I had not run away.
But they could have killed us because of you. Did you think about us at all?
I left you with Estebanico, who speaks their language and understands their mores. I knew he would find a way out of their camp. And you made it here safely, did you not?
That is not what troubles me, and you know it.
I have heard quite enough of your accusations, Castillo. Besides, this tribe is not much better.
Now Dorantes turned to me and began to list his complaints, counting them on the fingers of his right hand: the Yguaces made him carry enormous quantities of firewood, which left deep cuts on his skin and gave him unendurable pain in his lower back; they had taken him on a deer hunt that had lasted all day, leaving him so exhausted that he fell asleep before the evening meal was even cooked; they drank a mixture that left them intoxicated well into the night, dancing and singing so loudly that he could never get a proper night’s rest; they accepted and even celebrated sodomites, when they should have cast them out. This is why I intend to leave the Yguaces as well, he said.
How thoughtful of you to give us advance notice, Castillo replied.
You cannot say that you were not warned, Dorantes shot back.
Castillo shook his head slowly, in a way that suggested that Dorantes was either too proud or too foolish to acknowledge a legitimate grievance. I listened to my companions quarrel, but all the while I wondered whether the Yguaces were really as harsh as Dorantes had made them sound. Having just completed one frightful escape, I felt unprepared for another one. What would happen if the Yguaces treated us as poorly? What if I had to run away again? Was I meant to go from tribe to tribe, fearing for my life at every moment? The prospect of an endless exile weighed so heavily on me at that moment that I would have given anything not to feel adrift.
But when the Yguaces took us on a hunt the next day, I discovered that unlike other tribes with whom I had lived they ran after the deer for great distances, sometimes for as long as three or four hours, before attempting to spear them. If it was arduous work, at least it did not require as much skill with a bow and arrow. Castillo and I managed to hit a young stag and the taste of its meat over the fire that evening made up for the labor it had cost. As for Dorantes’s other complaint, the mosquitoes in these parts were so numerous and so vicious that the only way to keep them away was to burn damp wood; the smoke chased them off, although it also made our eyes water. We had to take turns feeding the fire at night, but even that was not an impossible task.
And yet, Dorantes persisted in his intention to go live with another tribe, one that would not make him work as much as the Yguaces. As soon as the spring rains ceased, he began to make preparations to leave. He had fashioned himself a small satchel from scraps of deerskin, and this he filled with nuts, dried strips of meat, and other provisions for the road.
Dorantes, I said. Stay with us. Traveling alone is too dangerous.
I will manage, he replied.
Castillo intervened. What if you come across a hostile tribe? The Carancahuas journey through these parts as well.
You need not concern yourself with my safety, Dorantes replied. His voice had taken a sharp edge. He was still grieving for his dead brother and rebuffed any signs of friendship from Castillo.
The next morning, when Dorantes left, I did not join him and neither did Castillo. The Yguaces had treated us fairly and, although the work was not always easy, we had learned how to do it properly. Why leave them now?
In the summer, the Yguaces struck their camp and moved southward to the bank of a long and winding river, which in their language is called the River of Nuts. All along its slopes were leafy trees that yield a fruit much like the walnut, although the shell is smoother in appearance and the seed sweeter in taste. The Yguaces fed on these nuts for the entire summer and harvested more for the cold months. They also hunted deer and fowl, and traded with neighboring tribes whose peregrinations brought them to this river as well. Whenever I think back about that summer, what I remember most is how the sound of cracking nutshells filled the entire valley. Other sounds added to that cacophony: new arrivals pitching their tents, neighbors calling out to one another, children playing hide-and-seek, the wind rustling through the leaves of the trees, the fires crackling in the night, the singing and dancing that accompanied the many betrothals and weddings that took place over the summer.
The music often started out slowly, with only two or three drummers sitting in line on their knees. Once the camp had begun to quiet down, a flute player would join in with a melody, and another, and another. Then the dancers would step forward, in twos or threes, their seashell anklets echoing every movement of their feet. In many ways, the dancing reminded me of the great feasts we had on market days in Azemmur—everyone coming out to enjoy the cool evening, singing and dancing and gossiping until the early hours of the morning. One night, spellbound by the music, I joined the Yguace dancers, at first imitating their movements and later letting the rhythm guide me as I moved about the field with the other dancers.
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As the days passed, I began to look upon my fate with new eyes. I often lamented the wicked turns my life had taken, but I rarely considered how much I had to be thankful for, how I had survived so long where so many others had perished, how I had seen wonders that no other Zamori had. Had even Ibn Battuta witnessed the things, both terrible and wondrous, that I had seen? I had been so intent on counting all the miseries and humiliations I had endured that I had neglected to thank the Almighty for the blessings he had bestowed upon me: saving me from disease, from the treacherous seas and rivers, and from the Carancahuas.
LITTLE BY LITTLE, the Land of the Indians, which I had viewed first as a place of fantasy and later as a temporary destination, became more real to me, and I began to take greater notice of its beauty. Often, I took a break from my work just to sit under the lilting branches of a magnolia tree and smell its fragrant flowers. Or I would watch the dance of dragonflies and the flitting of hummingbirds all around me, and, for a while at least, I would stop worrying about the fate of the world or the end of my exile. At night, when everyone settled down to sleep, I watched the peerless evening skies or listened to the crickets singing to their mates. In this way, I taught myself to savor what joy was within my reach. The world was not what I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive. I set my mind to surviving my trials, which would end soon enough, delivering me only to the eternity of death.
Even my appearance began to change. Since I had bartered my scissors for food on the Island of Misfortune, I usually trimmed my hair by borrowing a comb and a blade from one of the women. But now I allowed my hair to grow and began to braid it in tight plaits along my scalp. I made myself a deerskin vest and a pair of slippers, in the style worn by people of the tribe. These alterations, however modest, made it easier to live and work with the Yguaces.
My days followed a comforting pattern. In the morning, I attended to my duties, usually in the company of Castillo. Life among the Indians had tempered both his candid belief that he was right all the time and his constant need to have the approval of others. Now, free of those pressures, his true nature blossomed; I discovered he had a good sense of humor and a great resilience, qualities that were most helpful in our new environment. We worked side by side, taking turns with the more unpleasant tasks: curing animal hides or removing the entrails from the game the hunters caught. Whenever I trace back the history of my friendship with Castillo, I always return to that summer we spent with the Yguaces and to the work we did together. I still cannot smell cured deerskin without thinking of him.