. . . Now small bells are ringing, lingering in the thin drizzle that dampens the roofs of the city where my shadow has taken shelter, the protagonist of my own extinguishing light. A bleating flock passes through the street. And still the confessor has not come. And even though it is May, there is an autumnal light that tears me from the resplendent islands where—perhaps because I had not taken a chaplain aboard the ships, perhaps because I had never thought of converting or indoctrinating anyone—the devil waited to catch me in his traps. And the evidence of those traps is here, in the draft of my account of my voyages that I keep under my pillow, and that I pull out now with trembling hand—terrified by myself—to reread what, in my final moments, seems an entire repertoire of illusions—as I will tell my confessor who is so slow in arriving. A repertoire of illusions that began on October thirteenth with the word GOLD. Because that Saturday I returned to the newly discovered island in the hope of seeing what I could obtain from it besides cotton balls and parrots—already we didn’t know what to do with all the parrots that were covering the wooden decks with layer upon layer of white birdshit—when I saw, with a thrill of surprise, that some of the Indians (we began to call them Indians, since we were probably in the outer reaches of the West Indies) wore small bits of gold in their noses. I said: GOLD. Seeing this marvel, I felt a sort of internal shock. A lust the likes of which I had never known rumbled in my gut. My hands trembled. Shaken, sweating, determined, crazed, peppering these men with sign-language questions, I tried to find out about the source of the gold, how they had obtained it, where it was found, how it was mined, how it was worked, since it seemed that they had no iron tools or crucibles. And I felt the metal, appraised its weight, bit it, tested it, burnished it with a handkerchief to look at it in the sun, examining it in the sunlight, making it shine in that light, taking the gold and putting it in my palm, verifying that it was gold, pure gold, true gold—the gold standard. And the ones who wore it, astonished, seized and shaken by their rings like oxen by their noses, separated from the others by virtue of that prize, made me to understand that there lay to the south another island with a great king who had pots of gold. And not only was there gold in that kingdom but precious stones as well. Now, from their description, that sounded more like Cipango than Vinland. And so, impelled by the evil spirit who suddenly lodged in my soul, I turned to violence, ordering seven of those men taken prisoner, and we bound and placed them in the hold, paying no mind to their cries and laments or to the protests of the others, whom I held back with my sword—and they knew, having felt one of our blades, that our swords cut deep and caused their blood to gush . . . We returned to the sea on Sunday, the day of our Lord, with no pity for the tears of the captives whom we had berthed in the prow so that they could guide us. And from that day on, GOLD was the word most often repeated in my diaries, reports, and letters. But there was little gold in the islands we had discovered so far, all full of naked men and women who wore only—as I wrote Their Highnesses—”little scraps of cotton that barely covered their sex”—where my eyes strayed at times, I must admit, like the eyes of my Spaniards—so much, so much, that I had to threaten them with punishment i£ with their flies so swollen, they gave way to their lust. If I could contain myself they could do the same! We didn’t come here to fuck but to find gold, the gold that was beginning to appear, that was showing up on every island; the gold that led us on, that was our guiding light, the great compass that directed our travels. And to be sure we were on the right path to the gold, we kept on giving out red caps, hawks’ bells, and other trifles—and I was proud to boast of the inequity of those exchanges to our Rulers!—that weren’t worth so much as a maravedi, although we obtained many bits of the coveted bright metal for them. But I was not satisfied with gold torn from noses and ears, because now they were telling me about the great land of Cobla or Cuba, where it seemed there were both gold and pearls, as well as spices: so we traveled there, arriving on Sunday, the day of our Lord.
I was sincere when I wrote that this land seemed to me the most beautiful that human eyes had ever seen. It was fertile, hilly, varied, substantial, thickly forested, rich in vegetation—more extensive vegetation, with taller palm trees, fuller rivers, higher uplands and deeper valleys than we had seen before on islands that seemed to me, I confess, like crazy islands, floating, sleepwalking, having little to do with the maps and texts that had nourished me. I had to describe that new land. But when I tried to do so, I was halted by the perplexity of one who tries to name things totally different from what is known—things that must have names, since things that have no names cannot be imagined, but whose names I did not know, and I was not another Adam, chosen by Christ to name the things of the world. I could make up words, certainly; but the words would not reveal the thing, if the thing were not already known. To designate a table, when someone says table, it is necessary that there be, in the mind of the one who hears, a table-concept, with the appropriate qualities of table-ness. But here, before this admirable landscape that I gazed upon, only the word palm had a referential value, since there are palms in Africa, palms—though different from the ones here—are found in many places, and, consequently, the word palm is accompanied by a clear image—and especially for those who know the religious significance of Palm Sunday. On Sunday we reached this place, and the memorializing quill remained motionless after recording the four letters of the word palm. A rhetorician, perhaps, who handles the Castilian language better than I, a poet, perhaps, using similes and metaphors, might have accomplished more, and succeeded in describing what I could not: those trees, all tangled together, their forms new to me: that one, whose leaves are gray in back and green in front, which, when they fall and dry, curl up on themselves like hands around a rope; that other, reddish, whose trunk grows by shedding transparent skins like moulting snakes; that one farther on, solitary and monumental, in the middle of a small clearing, with its boughs extending horizontally like a necklace around a thick, bristly trunk, looking like a rostrate column . . . And the fruits: that one, with a drab brown rind and a red flesh, with a seed like carved mahogany; that other, with violet flesh, its seeds inside a gelatin paste; that other, larger, smaller, never the same as the one next to it, with a fragrant, white, bittersweet center, always fresh and juicy even in the midday heat . . . All new, unique, pleasing despite their difference, but so far nothing very useful. Neither Doña Nutmeg nor Doña Pepper nor Doña Cinnamon nor Doña Cardamom had appeared anywhere. As for gold, they said that it was found in abundance. And I thought that it was time for that divine metal to show up, since now that its existence on these islands had been demonstrated, a new problem possessed me: the three caravels represented a debt of two million. I wasn’t particularly concerned about Santángel’s million, because monarchs settle their debts when and how they please, and as for Columba’s jewels, they were jewels from the back of the jewel box and, tough-minded though she could be when she chose, she was not yet ready to call for them back, so soon after the expulsion of the Jews. But there remained the other million: the million from the Genoans of Seville, who would make my life impossible if I returned empty-handed . . . For the moment, I bided my time: This country is the most beautiful that human eyes have ever seen . . . and so we continued, refining our panegyric. As for the landscape, I didn’t have to rack my brain: I say that the blue mountains I can see in the distance are like those of Sicily, though they are nothing like those of Sicily. I say that the grass is as tall as that of Andalusia in April and May, though there is nothing here that is anything like Andalusia. I say nightingales are singing when I hear twittering little gray birds with long, black beaks that are more like sparrows. I allude to the fields of Castile, here where not a single thing recalls the fields of Castile. I have seen no spice trees, and I suggest that there may be spices here. I speak of gold mines where I know of none. I speak of pearls, many pearls, merely because I see some mussels that “signal their presence.” I say only one thing that is true: that the do
gs here seem not to bark. But with dogs that don’t even know how to bark I am not going to pay back the million that I owe to the accursed Genoans of Seville, who are capable of sending your mother to the galleys for a debt of fifty maravedis. And the worst of all is that I don’t have the slightest idea where I am; this land of Colba or Cuba could just as well be the southern extreme of Vinland as an eastern shore of Cipango—keeping in mind that there are three Indies. I have said that this is a continent, terra firma, of infinite size. Juan de la Cosa, who is always around, and who no matter what I say says the opposite, insists that it is an island. I don’t know what to think. But I say it’s a continent, and that should suffice—after all, I’m the admiral, and I know what I’m talking about. He talks about sailing around the island, and I say that since it is not an island we will not sail around it. The bastard . . . That’s enough! I pick up my quill again and resume my repertoire of good news, my catalog of brilliant prognostications. And I assure my readers—I assure myself—that soon I will be looking into the face of the Grand Khan. (The name of the Grand Khan resonates of gold, gold dust, gold bars, gold treasure chests, gold casks: the sweet music of gold coins clattering, spilling onto the banker’s table: celestial music . . .)
I
realized very quickly that the country they called Cuba would not be the place where I would finally see the magnificent, impassive face of the Grand Khan. I dispatched two able messengers to see if there was an important city or fortress here (Luis de Torres, who, as I have said, spoke Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, and Rodrigo de Jerez, who knew most of an African dialect . . .), and they both came back with the news that they had encountered only little villages with huts and Indians just like those we had already seen. There wasn’t any sign of gold here. They showed the Indians the little samples of cinnamon and cloves that I had given them, but no one seemed to recognize those spices. So I still seemed far from the brilliant kingdom of Cipango. But not so far that I would give up my plan of going on blindly sailing over unknown routes, fortifying myself with the knowledge that I left behind me islands that I had christened, that I had inscribed in the geography of the world, that I had lifted from the obscurity of the barbarous idioms with which their peoples designated them, to give one the august name of Santa María de la Concepcion and another the pleasing, very pleasing to me, name of Isabella. And perhaps with the thought that the account of my trip might be read some day by my Mistress, I took great pains to describe—as I never did again with any other place—the beauty of the groves of trees, the lushness of the plants, which reminds me (. . . my intended reader in mind) of the delights of an April in Andalusia, with its delicious perfumes, its fragrance of fruit; and (. . . my intended reader, once again) of the song of the little birds, which is so seductive that a man never wants to leave the place . . . But now I have to push forward, explore the coast of this Cuba, and continue my search for gold. Of the seven Indians we captured on the first island, two have escaped. And we are lying to the ones who are left (another ruse), denying our intention of taking them to Spain for display at the court and assuring them that we will return them to their country with many wonderful gifts as soon as we find a sufficient quantity of gold. They find our food repugnant and refuse to taste dried beet or cheese, or biscuits—they will accept only fish pulled from the ocean right in front of their eyes, and even then they don’t want them fried in our oil (which has gone a bit rancid), just lightly grilled over hot coals—but they have developed a taste for the wine that we carry in such quantity that people were amazed and thought I was stocking a tavern when I laid in all the casks. At first they were wary and seemed to think it was blood, but once they experienced its effects our prisoners grew quite fond of red wine, so that now they are constantly hoisting the wine pitcher I gave them and asking for more and more. The truth is that I have turned them into drunkards, night and day, because that way they stop their moaning and complaining, and when the wine has loosened their tongues they assure me that we are getting close to the gold, that we’ll get to the gold any minute—and not just to gold plates and face masks and crowns and statues: to the mine, the big mine, the huge mine, where there is so much gold that my three ships won’t even be able to carry it all. Juan de la Cosa has gone to his gang of Biscayans—whose language I can’t understand—and Galicians—who are a bunch of foul-mouthed back-biters—and he swears to them in their nightly gatherings (I always have a spy in their midst) that the Indians have me fooled, that they are making up the stories of gold to lull my suspicions so that I will get careless, and then they’ll take the first opportunity to escape, like the other two did. But we keep sailing onward, ever onward, and we are now going windward to the magnificent land of Haiti, which I call Hispaniola because of its beauty-I know what I’m doing-and if I found a city here, I will call it Isabella. But here, for the second time, I was sadly disappointed, because nothing about this newly discovered land indicated that we were getting any closer to Cipango or to a province ruled by a prince who paid taxes to the Grand Khan. And now we met some kings—who were called caciques here. But they were kings who didn’t wear any clothes (if you can imagine such a thing!) and queens with naked breasts, and to cover their most private parts they wore nothing but a piece of cloth the size of the lace handkerchief that might be used by one of the dwarfs they have in the castles and palaces in Castile as nurses and entertainers for the infants and children of the nobility. (Courts with completely naked monarchs! Inconceivable to someone for whom the word court brings an immediate vision of castles, heralds, miters, and velvet robes whose purple evokes the Romans: Regard Nero of Tarpeya / and Rome ablaze . . .) And in front of these kings, if you can call someone a king who walks around with his private parts hanging out, I performed all the usual ceremonies: raising the flag of the Christian monarchs, cutting some boughs and leaves with my sword, three times proclaiming that I was taking possession of the land in the name of Their Highnesses, being ready—I added—to answer with my sword if anyone challenged that, and professing the Faith and saying a few prayers for Rodrigo de Escobedo, who was writing it all down; but what was exasperating, at bottom, after all my genuflections, proclamations, and arrogant challenges to combatants who never materialized, was that everything was exactly the same as before. To take possession of some part of the world, one should have to defeat an enemy, humiliate a sovereign, subjugate a people, receive the keys to a city, witness an oath of obedience. But none of those things happened here. Nothing changed. Nobody fought. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to our ceremonies and acts and proclamations. They seemed to be saying to each other—and sometimes with a maddeningly derisive smile: ‘‘Okay, okay, no problem. For us . . . life goes on!” They gave us parrots—and we already had so many little green parrots, with sly little eyes, that had never learned how to say a single word in our language! and so many balls of cotton that already we didn’t know where to store them, and some crude pots, and then they put on our red caps, took our cat-bells and dog-bells, and, looking quite funny, they burst out laughing, patting themselves on the belly And I had taken possession of their lands without their being aware of a thing, and what was worse, without my I claim thee in the name of the etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (as always! . . .) procuring me any great benefit. (And so I returned to my ship, to the boat that sailed slowly past coral reefs that in the ever-changing light of this place became an undersea mirage, where everything became something else, and I could believe, seeing such a play of colors, that under that water I was seeing the magical glimmering of emeralds and diamonds, of astraean and chrysoprase from the Indies, of selenite from Persia, and even of lyncurion, which, as everyone knows, is formed by the urine of a lynx, and of draconite, which is extracted from the brain of a dragon . . . But I could only just believe it, because if I put my hand in the water and pulled until my fingers were bloody, I would acquire no greater benefit, if I managed to acquire anything at all, than to pull out a chunk of rotting seaweed . . . And, to my great di
sappointment, what I had taken for magnificent chrysocolla, which is found in the Asiatic countries where ants obtain gold from the ground unaided, was really only chrysopolla—and that seemed a bad joke to me.)
The Harp and the Shadow Page 9