by Laila Lalami
Why wear them if you do not like them? I asked.
He shrugged. I have to. I cannot walk around the capital barefoot, you know.
Something crackled under the lavender bushes and one of the greyhounds at my feet lifted its head, but, sensing nothing, went back to sleep. Did you enjoy the walk? I asked.
I did, Castillo said. Doña Isabel sailed all the way from Castile to be with her husband, the alderman of the city, but not six months later he was killed, leaving her alone in New Spain. She has no family here in the capital, only friends she has made since her arrival.
Like you, then?
Yes. And she is from Tordesillas, not far from Salamanca.
Castillo’s face was concealed by the darkness, but from his voice I sensed his excitement at the acquaintance he had made. In the bushes, the grasshoppers began to sing. A candle was lit at the kitchen window, as if the house had opened one eye and was watching us.
What about Kewaan? I asked after a moment.
Nothing will change between us, he said earnestly. This is different.
Everything was different in New Spain, I thought. Cabeza de Vaca had left. Dorantes was rarely home now; he was courting the widow de la Torre, to whom the viceroy had introduced him. The chair that he normally occupied sat between us now, empty. The memory of that day with the Carancahuas, when I had woken up to find he had escaped without us, returned to me all of a sudden. I asked Castillo: Did you ever talk to Dorantes about the notary?
Castillo ran his tongue on his lips. He looked so much older now than when I had first met him and, although he had always been very thin, our prolonged stay in Tenochtitlán had filled out his narrow frame to the point that he had become portly. With his eyes to the ground, he said: I asked Dorantes several times why he would not sign your papers, Estebanico.
And what did he say?
That it was none of my concern.
Reader, I should not have been surprised by this retort, but I was. I think there was still some small part of me that stubbornly held on to the belief that Dorantes had been changed forever by our common experience in the Land of the Indians. We had been hungry together. We had shivered in the cold together. We had worked side by side for the Carancahuas and side by side we had tried to heal the Indians in the Land of Corn. But whatever transformation had taken place within him had slowly been undone by his prolonged stay in the capital, where there was endless talk of money and power.
BY THE TIME the fall season started, Dorantes announced that he would marry the widow de la Torre. Castillo, too, decided that Doña Isabel, and her estate, were a good match for him. The three men I had once thought of as brothers were moving on: they were seeking royal grants, or getting married, or acquiring estates, forgetting everything that we had been through in the north. But I did not have the luxury to put the past behind me. I had made the mistake of once again placing my fate in the hands of another man and I had to find a way out.
I was sitting with my greyhounds by the window one afternoon when Dorantes came in. He began to chatter about the expedition that the viceroy was preparing. It was to be led by a young man named Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, and it would include a friar from France, a certain Marco de Niza, and several hundred Aztecs. The viceroy had once again asked Dorantes to sell me to him so that he could use me as a scout.
And what did you say? I asked.
I refused, of course, Dorantes said.
Outside, the shadows of the orange trees had begun to lengthen; it would be dark soon. The lavender bushes swayed in the wind. Dead leaves eddied across the courtyard.
But the Seven Cities of Gold, I said. What an incredible opportunity!
It is, he sighed.
And if the friar and I manage to reach them, just imagine what we will find. You would have a claim to all those riches.
The thought of the Seven Cities silenced Dorantes for a long while. All his fantasies of gold and glory returned to him and he found them hard to resist. Perhaps he could have a second chance at making them come true. Perhaps he could finally receive the rewards that had been promised to him when he was a younger man in Seville. Perhaps he could become famous for a success, rather than a failure.
Turning away from the window, I added: Besides, who could refuse an offer from the viceroy of New Spain?
No one, he replied.
Dorantes was lost in thought, weighing the alternatives that had been presented to him: keep me with him in Mexico, where he faced the daily drudgery of running an estate; or send me to the north, where fortune might smile on him. From above the fireplace, the king of Castile watched us with equanimity, confident in the knowledge that, whatever the outcome, his share was secure.
You are right, he said at last. You must go.
I looked at his face—the scar on his right cheek, the lines around his eyes that had deepened over the years, the gray hair on his temples and beard. Now he started to chew his lower lip. I wondered if he had ever learned to read the expressions on my face the way I had learned to read his. I suspected he had not or he would have realized that I was finally going to set myself free.
COME, I SAID. COME. Oyomasot smelled of lavender—a new scent on her, a scent acquired from living in this guesthouse—but I loved it, for it mixed together the memory of old and new, past and present. From very far away came the sound of horns, celebrating one imperial triumph or another, but in the bedroom it was very quiet, the only sound the ruffling of her dress. I unlaced her corset, but when finally I freed her of it, Oyomasot still turned away from me. What is it? I asked.
Are you sure your plan will work?
Yes.
You have made promises before.
It will be different this time, I said. You will see.
24.
THE STORY OF THE RETURN
I left Tenochtitlán in the year 945 of the Hegira. Once again, I was part of an expedition to the farther reaches of the empire, surrounded by a governor, friars, and horsemen. But this time there were no soldiers or settlers—no soldiers because the viceroy did not want to pay their salaries without the certainty of profit, and no settlers because he did not wish to put civilian lives at risk just yet. Instead, he had sent with us more than a hundred Amigos, who would carry supplies, set up our camp, cook our meals, fight any hostiles, and generally do what needed to be done. The Amigos were Aztecs who had allied with the Crown of Castile against other Aztecs—and for this betrayal they had earned the privilege of losing their tribe’s true name, replacing it with a common and unthreatening Spanish noun. Whatever their talents, the Amigos could not know what lay beyond the range of mountains that bordered Nueva Galicia; nor did the newly appointed governor, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, or the two friars, Father Marco and Father Onorato. They were all venturing into the unknown, unaware of the landscape, unfamiliar with the people, and ignorant of the languages.
Except for the forty horses Coronado had brought and the mules the friars rode, most of our company trudged on foot, burdened by baskets of provisions. So our progress was slow. Having been idle in the capital for so long, it took me a while to get used to day-long marches again, but I walked resolutely toward the north, pausing only when the governor complained that it was time for a break from the heat. At such moments, while he dabbed the sweat from his face with a white lace handkerchief, I shed some of my clothing. I took off the too warm doublet first, and later the frilly shirt, and later yet the uncomfortable shoes and tight belt.
Four weeks into the journey, when we had just crossed into the province of Nueva Galicia, we came across a group of Indian slaves, thirty of them shackled together with irons, shuffling quickly to keep up with the two Castilian horsemen who were riding on either side of them. One of the horsemen squinted at us with great curiosity. His face was wrinkled and darkened by the sun, and his hair was white. The other, younger and taller, was indifferent. He chewed on a blade of grass and waited, his hands resting on the pommel of his saddle.
The go
vernor opened his right arm, in a gesture that took in the slaves and their drivers. Where might you be going? he asked.
To the capital, the older horseman said. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he had just taken a sip from his flask.
The different groups of Indians, brought here by different groups of Castilians, stared at one another with envy, pity, or contempt. Envy came from the shackled Indian slaves; pity from my wife and others in our party; and contempt from the Amigos, who thought that their station guaranteed they could never be reduced to slavery. I had felt both the envy and the pity at some time in my life, but I could not allow myself the luxury of contempt. I knew only too well how precious and how fragile a man’s freedom was.
You must undo their shackles, Father Marco said.
They are slaves, Father, the younger one replied. And then, as if suddenly aware he was addressing a friar, he took out the blade of grass from his mouth. They will run away, he said.
You cannot enslave them, Coronado said.
Who says we cannot?
His Majesty, you fool.
The two men looked at each other across the heads of their slaves. What are we supposed to do for money? the younger one asked.
For a few moments, Coronado watched them in silence. Then he said, I am the new governor.
The horsemen seemed unsure what they were supposed to do with this announcement. They climbed down from their horses and in their dusty clothes approached the governor. Are you taking them from us? the older one asked in a voice that was barely audible.
Coronado looked beyond the men at the horizon. The midday sun was melting the road, the boulders, and the trees into one hazy, indistinguishable mass of brown, yellow, and green. You must remain in your town and build up your settlements, he said. If you remain in your town, I will see to it that you get some help. Then he shook his head, in the weary manner of a man already resigned to the vicissitudes of running an imperial province. Go, he said. Go, before I change my mind.
Before the day was over we encountered another group. Coronado did not give the order to stop this time, and the horsemen moved their slaves to the side of the road so that our procession could pass. For the governor these encounters were already a nuisance, but for me they were a frightful reminder of what I was trying to escape.
IN GUADALAJARA, we were greeted by a terrible thunderstorm. Rain pooled on the only road in the town, turning it into a giant puddle of mud, and the somber clouds that hung in the sky showed no sign of clearing. White flashes intermittently lit our quarters, making the darkness that followed even bleaker. At times, it seemed as if we were stationed in the middle of a dark swamp. To add to my worries, the air in Guadalajara did not seem to agree with Oyomasot; she suffered from constant nausea, which was particularly pronounced in the morning.
Could it be that you are pregnant? I asked her.
The light from the window was on her hair, bringing out shades of red. She turned from the bowl where she had been washing her face and gave me a look of surprise. So accustomed had she become to childlessness that the possibility of a pregnancy had not crossed her mind. It stunned me that the baby we had wanted for so long had chosen this delicate moment in our lives to announce its presence. I put my arms around her and found her trembling. A baby, she whispered.
At last a good omen, I replied. But I resisted saying what I feared—that the risk we were taking was so much greater now. The empire’s men were all around us. We could never hope to defeat them with force. We had to use other means.
The weather was not the only reason for our tarry in the town; as the new governor of Nueva Galicia, Coronado had to attend to the complaints of the people of Guadalajara. Of which there were many: the Indians, the settlers said, were either dying of the pox and the measles, or they had run away to join the rebellion of a cacique named Ayapín. The fields remained untilled for lack of labor. Ayapín was torching homes and crops, the settlers said, making it impossible for good, decent people like them to have a single day of peace. And there was no school in the town, so that many of the wives wanted to go back to a more civilized place, closer to Tenochtitlán.
Coronado promised to change all this. There would be no more slavery in the province, he said. The Indians would soon return to work, more lands would be given to the settlers, money would be spent to build the town of Guadalajara. And, of course, this Ayapín character would be captured and dealt with appropriately.
Know this, he said to the alcalde on the day of our departure. The era of people like Guzmán is over. There is a better way to run the empire.
It was a speech Coronado had prepared in the capital and it seemed to me that the more he told it, the more he believed in it: that the empire brought order where there was chaos, faith where there was idolatry, peace where there was savagery, and since its benefits were so indisputably clear, it could be spread through peaceful means. I waited for him to finish telling his tall tales so that we could leave, and go north.
COMPOSTELA WAS IN DISARRAY. Nearly half the houses that had been standing when I was last in the city looked abandoned now. There were few people walking about on the streets and, I noticed, the bathhouse where my hair had been shorn was boarded up. I left Coronado at the governor’s mansion and took his deputies and the two friars to the barracks. There, I found the flagpole bare, the gate unguarded, the sentry box empty. I was well inside the courtyard before the sentinels took any notice of me: they were sitting under the shade of the arcade, playing a game of cards with an Indian man. It was Satosol.
The guards rushed to greet the new governor and apologize for their careless protection of military quarters. There were no Indians around here anymore, they explained, and most of the settlers preferred to stay on their plantations rather than in town. Fumbling with their keys, they unlocked the doors to the rooms and let in the governor and the friars. But I stayed behind with Satosol under the arcade. He wore a white shirt, which looked tight over the paunch he had grown since I had last seen him. His eyes flickered with a fierce curiosity. Are the others with you? he asked.
No.
They stayed in the big city?
Cabeza de Vaca went back to his country. Dorantes and Castillo married women of their kind. They have estates now, not far from Tenochtitlán.
Did my sister come back with you?
No, she is still with Dorantes. She had a baby.
Boy?
Girl.
What about my cousin? (He meant Kewaan, the wife of Castillo.)
She stayed behind, too. But what are you doing in the barracks? I asked him. Guzmán had been arrested only a few weeks after our passage through his town, so I knew that the reconnaissance mission for which he had hired Satosol had not taken place.
I still have the room, Satosol said. He pointed upstairs. And look, he said. He pulled out a knife and, by way of demonstrating its sharpness, he pricked his thumb with it. Instantly a bead of blood appeared; he licked it.
But what do you do here? I asked.
Same as you, brother. Whatever needs to be done.
We are not the same. Brother.
Then what are you doing with these new white men?
You ask too many questions.
I had never been close with Satosol, but for the three weeks I stayed in Compostela he shadowed me, asking me where I was going and what I was doing. If I sold my frilly shirt in order to buy paper and ink, he asked me why I had gotten rid of such fine cloth. If I sat down to write by the light of a candle, he asked me when I had become a notetaker like the white men. If I spoke to one of my companions in a hushed voice, he asked me what I was plotting. If I looked for wild garlic in the fields around the town, he asked me if my wife was pregnant. The more guarded my answers were, the more insistent he became, so that I spent much of my time avoiding him altogether.
The reason for our long stay in Compostela was that Coronado was interviewing the settlers to find out why they had abandoned their homes. The town w
as too far from their estates, they complained, where they needed to remain if they wanted to keep a close eye on their laborers. In addition, the Indians who were slaves were too lazy to work, while those who were free did not pay the tribute imposed on them by law. So Coronado gave orders to build new barracks closer to the estates, awarded more lands to the settlers, told them they needed to treat the Indians better, and said he would return in a few weeks to ensure that his orders had been carried out.
THE FIRST THING I noticed when we arrived in Culiacán was that Melchor Díaz’s mustache had become even more elaborate. It reached all the way to his earlobes, its ends maintained in place by means of some mysterious grease. He was standing in the middle of the dusty road, flanked by two of his men, their muskets pointing in opposite directions. To the left, the horse run was empty. To the right, the Indian settlement looked deserted. It was as if all the Indians that had been in Culiacán—both its natives and the captives my companions and I had brought with us—had disappeared. But the garrison looked immutable; it was squat, well guarded, and teeming with Díaz’s men. Before he had even dismounted, Coronado asked Díaz why he had not yet captured the rebel Ayapín.
Because someone else will replace him, Díaz said. Someone who might be even worse than him, which I know sounds hardly possible. But believe me, Don Francisco, this rebellion will continue as long as the conditions of the Indians remain the same. Nuño de Guzmán told me …
The era of Guzmán is over.
Yes, Díaz said. I was not his most fervent supporter, I assure you.
Peaceful conquest is the new way.
Yes, yes. I myself have been saying this for some time, as I hope Cabeza de Vaca has reported to the viceroy. But I will find Ayapín for you.
I hope so, Coronado said. Otherwise I might have to make some changes.
The blunt threat made Díaz frown. He seemed offended that a man of his age and long experience in the frontier should be spoken to in this way. But he dared not say anything in return and only watched while Coronado handed his reins to a servant and walked into the barracks.