by Robert Nye
24
27 April
At midnight - can that only be an hour ago? - the first faint stirrings of a gentle wind. Now it fills our sails. The fog is dispersed. My Destiny runs on east beneath a black sky packed with stars. The complete absence of haze produces a phenomenon I have never seen before: Where sky meets sea the line is as clear and definite as the edge of a knife, so that when a star rides down low on the horizon it loses none of its brilliance and eventually the waterline seems simply to cut the star in two, the upper half of the star throwing a long shaft of fire along the sea to light us on our way.
In this last sixty minutes I have learned much. I spent that time together with the Indian, locked in earnest conversation on the quarterdeck. No one disturbed our colloquy. The night air was cold. We walked up and down as we talked.
What was said is of the uttermost importance. It is the key, I feel, to many locks. I must resist, for the moment, the temptation to apply that key to everything. Even - on second thoughts -I would do well to reject such facile images as ‘keys’ and ‘locks’. They are alien to the spirit of what I have learned, what I am still learning, what I must go on learning if I am ever to bring this ship and my life safe home to any harbour of sense.
It will serve the truth best to set down our talk unadorned. Listen closely. I have every word of it by heart.
*
The Indian began: ‘The first time that we met you asked me what I was. I told you I had been the servant of the Spanish Governor. That is true. Later, I told you that I killed him. That also is true. But I did not tell you everything. It was not time. I told you what I knew - but there are other things. I did not tell you what I do not know.’
He stopped. I did not interrupt his silence. It was plain that he spoke from the heart, choosing each word with care. I was prepared to let him have his say in his own way. There was that unmistakable air about him which a man has when he has wrestled long with some difficult truth, come to its conclusion, and elected to share what he has learned with another man. Silence is part of such speech. Only shallow rivers chatter all the while.
‘I don’t know what I am,’ the Indian said. ‘I know my name and the place where I was born. Christoval Guayacunda. A native of Sogamoso. Of the Chibcha tribe. So much I know, and so much have I told you. But what it means to be those things, I don’t know.’
He paused briefly, flicking at the pendant which dangles from his nose, for all the world as though dismissing it as an emblem of mere savagery. When he went on his sentences came in a flood. The deliberate prologue spoken, I was now to be given his story in one headlong rush. He poured out the contents of his mind like a penitent self-lashed to confession.
‘Guattaral, the truth is I am nothing. My people were conquered by the Incas a hundred years before the white men came. Our homes were burned, our lands were taken from us. I said we were proud. Our pride is the pride of the dead. We are ghosts, we are shades, we are what all our enemies have made of us. Why, even our very name - Chibcha - is not our real name. Some say that real name was Muisca, but none knows for certain. Chibcha was what others called us, since our god of all gods we called Chibchachum. Think of it! To be wiped out as men, to be known only by someone else’s mockery of your god! We were persons no more. We were shadows. Then Cortes came, with his white men on white horses. He destroyed our own destroyers. We were dust of the dust his conquistadores trampled on. Shades of shades, ghosts of ghosts, a forgotten nation, phantoms in other people’s dreams! You may say that a man can arise from such ashes? I say that a man has his own flame in the fire that is his family.
I boasted to you once of my Golden Fathers. That was the boast of one who calls his ancestors “golden” because he cannot know them as flesh and blood. Oh, and more flows from this! From this endless empty talk of gold and golden — But I shall come to that before I’ve done. So much I owe you. And some sense about this matter of the gold perhaps most of all’
He turned to face me, spreading wide his hands in a gesture of supplication. ‘Do you understand? That what I am is this nothing? Even my name! Christoval Guayacunda. The Spaniards gave me that name. Their priests threw water over me. Water leaves no mark. When I look into the looking-glass what do I see? Only what they call “Christoval” and you call “the Indian”. (I have heard you say it often, when you shout at your boy with the cock’s feather in his cap.) This “Christoval”, this “Indian” I don’t know him Who is he? He is some made-up man, some shadow cast by his masters!’
I found myself deeply moved by what he said. I admit I was also astonished. Not so much by the intelligence evident in his self-insight -I never supposed him anything but intelligent, his primitive appearance to the contrary - but by the force and fluency with which he expressed himself. We always speak (please remember) in Spanish. Somewhere, sometime, this man has acquired a quite extraordinary command of that language. It occurs to me, now, that this fact only underlines the pathos of what he declared. He speaks Spanish like a Spaniard; but then not even his language is his own. I note also that his reference to Robin my page (‘your boy with the cock’s feather in his cap’) betrays that he has mastered a little English since coming on board. In short, there’s no denying that this Indian has a brain.
I addressed myself, however, to his heart. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I understand you well. A man needs roots. It gives him strength if he knows what he has sprung from. But men are not trees. We can make ourselves. Do you think I was born just as you see me now? A leader of others? A great commander? I am no prince! My father and my mother—’
‘I thought you were a god,’ the Indian said.
A paroxysm of coughing shook me. It was as if my ague-ridden all-too-mortal body cried out in protest at this rank absurdity.
A god?’ I croaked. ‘Look, man, here’s blood in my hand! Blood that I cough up from lungs rotten with years of imprisonment for a crime that I never committed!’ Another thought struck me. ‘You speak of yourself as a ghost? Why, I’m less than a ghost! I was sentenced to death by my King. All those years in the Tower - I could have been dragged out to my death any morning when it pleased that King to be rid of me. A god? My friend, I am a dead man!’
I chopped at my neck with my hand. The Indian reached out swiftly, catching my wrist.
‘He will cut off your head?’
‘Probably.’
‘Because you bring no gold?’ ‘That is one reason.’
‘The other being the killing of Palomeque?’
I shrugged. ‘I gave my word no Spanish blood would be spilt. It was an impossible condition. I accepted it. I shall accept the consequences.’
The Indian still had hold of my wrist. His grip tightened. His eyes blazed in the moonlight like a madman’s. ‘But I killed Palomeque. I shall tell your King!’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘No doubt his Majesty would be graciously pleased to hang and disembowel you. A dead man and a ghost going hand-in-hand to enter their rightful estate. Very neat, very pretty. But, I fear, just a trifle unnecessary. You recall, I am sure, that other Spaniards besides your former master were killed by my soldiers at San Thomé? Oh, I know that you will now say again that it was that golden shout of yours which inspired my son to spring to the assault — And, having heard you shout, I could well believe it. But for a man who says he is nothing, you lay claim to too much power, sir! Dust of the dust? Since when has dust been able to assume such absolute responsibility over life and death?’
This speech, as you see, had grown more bitter and sarcastic the longer it went on. By the time that I had finished, I regretted having started. Yet now, on reflection, I am glad that I allowed myself the sudden sharp upflare of anger. For it drew forth a second outburst from the Indian.
Relinquishing his hold on my wrist, he turned aside to fix his attention on the sea. I knew that he did this to avoid my eyes. I knew also that there was no evasiveness in such action. He spoke with an intensity which eye-to-eye confrontation must have marred. Once
more, the image which comes to me by way of comparison is that of a passionate penitent. There are some things which a soul must address to the crucifix, not to itself, and certainly not to the priest. The sea served the Indian for crucifix. God’s sea, now anointed with moonlight, and crucified with stars.
‘Guattaral, listen well. I am dust. I am nothing. But the dust that I come from is gold dust. And my nothing is your everything. When my people were extinguished by the Incas, we left them with a dream. Our lands were poor and bleak, cold, high in the mountains. Our houses were simple - walls of wood, roofs of twisted ichu-grass. I told you the Chibcha were proud. That is true. But their pride was the pride of men who made dirt their daily bread. We used fire-hardened sticks and stone axes to hack out a bad living from our land. A little maize, a few potatoes, some quinoa. Not enough. One yearly harvest. More wind than rain. So why did we remain there in the mountains? How did we survive before the Incas came? To answer that is to tell you why they came. After all, if our lands were so poor, why should anyone want them?
I will tell you. There were two reasons. The first reason is real. You have eaten of it! Yes, the leaf, the food of the gods For some reason, known only perhaps to those gods, that was the one thing we had in abundance. It grows wild round our five holy lakes. Especially all about Lake Guatavita. Some say the Sun God blessed us with it. Others that the first seeds were planted by Bochica. You know of Bochica? He is the one the Aztecs and the Toltecs called Quetzalcoatl. A very great god. His face is as white as your own!’
The Indian glanced at me sidelong, entreaty in his eyes, as if what he said had explained something. A grim smile shaped his lips when he realised I still had no notion of his meaning. He looked back at the sea. His discourse grew even more urgent.
‘You know some of the power of the leaf. You do not know all. Men may live by that leaf, become more than men. It can make us like gods, so they say. I have told you it grants strength and endurance. That is true. It made the Chibcha strong, that god-food made a mighty nation of a poor mountain tribe. But, Guattaral, you have merely nibbled at it! There are visions in its root. Empires of sense. Whole kingdoms of the spirit. Deathless worlds.’
He shook his head suddenly, almost to deny the note of ecstasy which had transfigured his tone. ‘But I speak like an Inca!’ he shouted. ‘You see how my voice is not my own? That’s what they believed, that’s why they came with their armies to destroy us. The Chibcha didn’t “believe”. The Chibcha knew. Our enemies wanted that knowledge. But they never got it. They slaughtered our men, raped our women, burned our dwellings. They stuffed their bellies with the leaf until their wits turned to dung and ran out of their arse-holes in rivers. Then their cHicftains put our priests to the torture, believing there was some secret we withheld. The priests had no secret. There is none.’
‘I do not understand this,’ I admitted. ‘Do you mean that the mystical properties you ascribe to your khoka leaf can only be appreciated by the Chibcha?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’
‘But why should that be? Because your people were eating it for many years? Generation after generation? Because it was like life’s blood to them?’
‘Possibly. But some of the priests said that it was because we had been given it in the first place. That we were the chosen nation of the Sun God.’
‘Does the plant grow nowhere else?’
The Indian hesitated. Then he murmured: ‘Yes. It does grow elsewhere. In fact, the Incas already had it, though not in such abundance. And certainly the power of our leaf was considered superior to any other.’
I shook my head, for I still could not grasp the significance of what he told me. ‘Are you saying that your enemies did not appreciate the value of something they already had? That they came to conquer your tribe simply because you had a stronger species of this herb? Why, man, what you’re saying is absurd!’
‘Yes.’
‘You think it is absurd?’
‘It happened long ago,’ the Indian said. ‘All that I am now telling you does not come from my own experience. I have had to listen to lies and legends, stories spun by old men to explain what their grandfathers reckoned of all this when those very grandfathers were young. Who can say what the truth is? I thought I knew it once. Now I say only this: Men live by dreams. The Incas imagined that we were gods. We were their dream. They found we were only men.’
I said: ‘And what was the dream of the Chibcha?’
The Indian sighed. ‘A worse dream perhaps. That we were gods. A mountain people high above all others. Yes, I must-face that too. Perhaps the gods let our enemies destroy us because of this great vanity.’
He fell silent.
I considered the perfect brilliance of the stars. They were clustered so thickly together that in places there seemed to be almost more dazzling points of light set in the blackness than background of sky itself.
I said quietly: ‘The second reason.’
He said nothing.
‘You spoke of two reasons why the Incas destroyed your people. The first reason you said was real—’ ‘The leaf exists.’
‘I don’t dispute it. Fve eaten the damned thing!’
‘Guattaral should not speak like that. The leaf is not accursed. The leaf is holy.’
‘So you say. I won’t dispute that either - though it seems to me you are in two minds about it.’
The Indian frowned. ‘Two minds? How is that possible?’
A figure of speech. Did you never encounter it from your Spanish masters? It means that you have doubts, that you are confused. You certainly appear so. In one breath, you speak of the food of the gods; in the next, you declare that the Incas—’
‘The Incas wanted more than the leaf. They wanted what they thought the leaf gave us.’
‘Divine power? Wisdom? But then you said that was illusion! Some crazy dream!’
‘They suffered that illusion,’ the Indian said. ‘I know it was their dream. Our dream I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to explain. I have come to the point where I can speak with some knowledge of these other dreams. It is other men’s dreams that have made me the nothing I am. As to the dream of the Chibcha -I don’t know it! It is gone, it is lost, it is less than the wind across the Andes. I don’t have two minds. I have none! Sleep and waking are as one to me. Both mean oblivion. Do you understand now? I do not dream. I am dreamt. The Spaniards dreamt my father’s father’s father. The Incas dreamt my fathers before those. And who dreams me? Guattaral, do I have to tell you?’
I snatched at the ship’s rail, but its cold was no comfort. Those blazing stars seemed to whirl in a wheel in the sky. I thought they’d come crashing down, and that one would annihilate me. Never before had the stars seemed so fatally near. The world — The very universe of sense I fancied it could crack, burst apart at the straining seams, fall in meaningless pieces. And my fancy was correct. The world was about to break. My world.
I swear before God that some part of me knew this, intuited the worst, was darkly aware that the Indian now threatened to tell me some truth which would make madness of my life. I could have turned away, stopped up my ears, refused to listen. I didn’t. I did none of those things. Why not, in Christ’s name? Moral courage? No, no, my son. Quite the opposite. My spirit was broken. I knew what he was going to tell me. Not the substance, of course. But the essence. He told me what I knew I had to know.
‘You dream me, Guattaral,’ the Indian said. ‘The Incas had your dream - the dream of gold. That was the second reason. Gold, gold, gold! They dreamt we were made of gold, that our rivers ran with it. Like you, they dreamt the dream of the Golden Man!’
I confess that just for a moment I thought him a devil. How else could he know of my dream? Of that terrible vision? My knucklebones cracked where my hands clutched the ship’s icy rail. Bless all such small tokens of mortality! That cracking sound sobered me. When he went on, I was soon undeceived. He had spoken in metaphor.
‘The Golden Man, El
Dorado, the gilded one. It was a title we gave to our King, the King of the Chibcha, the Zipa. King? Casique? Ah, the dream now becomes magnificent? To the Incas, no doubt, an obsession. Like the Aztecs, like the Spaniards - nothing stirred their imaginations as much as the fever of gold. I have told you of Lake Guatavita, our most sacred place. When the Zipa was crowned he was carried there, borne high on a wooden litter. Our people walked backwards before him, sweeping the way where he would pass. It is dawn. It is high in the mountains. The lake holds the first light of the sun. The priests strip our King of his garments. They anoint him with el varniz de Pasto, sap tapped from a tree, simple resin. Then more priests step forward. They have hollow canes. In their left hands they bear bowls with gold dust. The priests blow this gold dust through their pipes. It sticks to the resin. They blow and they blow until the whole naked figure of the King is covered with the gold dust. Transfiguration ! He is now the living image of the Sun God. The litter is borne out into the lake, with our gilded King riding high on the priests’ shoulders. El Dorado! The Chibcha, rimming the lake, are hailing their Zipa. Each one holds a golden offering in his fist. The priests kneel. The litter floats out on the water. As the sun makes gold fire of Lake Guatavita, the Golden Man rises, he spreads wide his gold-encrusted arms, then he dives Down, down, down into the lake. He must swim beneath its surface for many minutes. Until every golden particle is gone. Those depths are icy cold, but the King will stay there. He knows that if there is a single flake of gold left on his body when he emerges, then the priests will say the Sun God has rejected him. The penalty for that, of course, is death. No Golden Man, so they say, ever paid that penalty. We were a mountain people, our chests deep and our lungs large to cope with the thin air of the cordillera. At last, the King steps forth from the lake. Not a spot of gold on him. The priests bow their heads to the ground. The people run forward. Golden trinkets are hurled in the lake. It rains gold. Guatavita’s a glory. Its waters flicker and glitter. A fit mirror for the Sun God. A lake of pure gold. Long live the Zipa! May the Zipa live for ever! A great shout goes up from the mountain tops. From the crowds round the rim of the lake. The Sun God’s chosen one, King of the Chibcha, is carried aloft in triumph to his palace. He is the golden one! The Golden Man!’