The Harp and the Shadow

by Alejo Carpentier

  B

  ut when I wrote to Their Highnesses I was lying yet again, withholding propositions that, though they had matured in my mind (which is why I sent as advance evidence a number of captives with their women, sons, and daughters), I had actually kept back, for my return—when I would have an opportunity to advance or retract them, according to the reaction of my audience. But events had developed in so unfortunate a fashion that I found that others had followed the same line of thought, making an accomplished fact—a bloody reality—of what I had coolly conceived, waiting for the royal consent to initiate an action that would erase the memory of the many failures of my enterprise. And with pen flying I made a desperate effort to stem the tempest that, having cast me onto this island, could just as well fly back across the ocean and demolish the statue that I had managed through my labors to erect—although as yet unfinished and still somewhat shaky on its pedestal—on the Great Stage of Barcelona. What happened was that on my return from a discovery of nearby islands I had found the Spaniards changed, mindless of all authority, given to cruel projects dictated by their greed. They were all obsessed with gold, possessed by Gold Fever. But if their fever was like mine—since in blindly, cruelly seeking gold they were merely following my example—the causes of their frenzy were different from mine. I didn’t want the gold for myself (at least, not yet . . .). I first needed to maintain my prestige with the court and to justify the legitimacy of the lofty titles that had been granted to me. I couldn’t allow them to go on saying that my extremely costly enterprise had not yielded to the crown “enough gold to fill a tooth.” My disease was that of a Grand Admiral. The sickness of those shit-assed Spaniards, by contrast, was that of scoundrels who wanted the mineral for themselves—to keep it, amass it, hide it, and leave these lands as soon as possible, their fortunes made, to indulge back there their particular vices, lusts, and appetites. In my absence, forgetting my instructions and ignoring my brother Bartholomew, whom, like me, they regarded as a foreigner, they had begun scouring all of Hispaniola for gold, beating the Indians, burning their villages, maiming, killing, torturing, in an effort to learn where, where, where, was the accursed invisible mine that I likewise sought—not to mention violating hundreds of women and girls in all their expeditions. Now the resistance of the natives was becoming organized to such a dangerous degree—though they could not match us in arms, they had a better command of the terrain—that I was forced to send troops into the interior. In a place that is still called La Vega Real the Spaniards took more than five hundred captives and imprisoned them nearby in a prison fortress with embrasures from which to fire at rebels—and I had no idea what to do with them. They could not be released, because they would carry the spirit of rebellion to other tribes. We didn’t have sufficient provisions to feed them. To execute them all—as some urged me to do—seemed to me an excessive step, which might perhaps earn the censure of those who had granted me my titles—and I knew full well Columba’s violent rages. But, faced with the accomplished fact, I had to rid myself—I had no alternative—of those five hundred prisoners who in an unlucky hour had been thrust upon me, so I decided—with my brother’s agreement—to exploit the now irreversible situation, smoothing over, embellishing, justifying something that was nothing other than the perpetration of slavery in these lands. I demonstrated the many benefits of this institution, and even found my justification in the Gospels. And with the Gospels before the wind—the slave trade not yet having been authorized by the king—I placed the Indians in two ships, lashed, kicked, and cudgeled, for want of any other solution to the conflict of authority in which I found myself Moreover—a new trick—those slaves were not actually slaves (like the ones we obtained from Africa) but rebels against the Royal Crown, prisoners, unhappy but inevitable victims of a new just and necessary war [sic]. Carried to Spain, they ceased to be dangerous. And each one became a soul—a soul that according to the mandate of I-know-not-which Gospel, is rescued from certain idolatry, which is devil worship, like all the idolatries I had begun to rail against more and more in my letters and journals, arguing that certain decorative masks on the headbands of the caciques represented the silhouette of Beelzebub. (So, since the first step is the one that counts the most, Bartholomew soon received instructions from me to fill three more ships with that human booty that, for the moment, would replace the gold that did not appear anywhere . . .)

  . . . And in the dawn of our second homecoming, amid the boisterous bustle of the sailors’ disembarking, with its guaranteed delights of wild dances, strong wine, and whores for all, I was bedecked with my best Grand Admiral’s court dress, when my joy was redoubled by the sight of Master Jacob, who, after embracing me, told me that he was passing through here to pick up a big load of Andalusian wine for the Irish of Saint Patrick—they were growing greater drunkards every day. “I hear you’ve been to Vinland,” he said, reaching for the wineskin that, to fortify myself I had half emptied. “Vinland is good,” I said, without confirming or denying his statement, “but farther south there are lands that are better still.” And once more I embraced him, because I was delighted to see him again, after so many tribulations, believing his unexpected presence to be an augur of good fortune—I was, I repeat, delighted, when my delight was choked as if by a sponge soaked in vinegar on learning that, after having made in Seville an advantageous sale of a number of my Indians captured in Hispaniola, there had arrived, harsh and fulminating, a royal order prohibiting the flourishing trade that I had advised and set up. It seemed that Their Highnesses, attacked by scruples, had convened a commission of theologians and canons to determine if such commerce was licit, and those who had always been my enemies had pronounced, as always, against my interests. Thus the sales of more than two hundred slaves were nullified and two days’ profits had to be returned. Those who had already taken their Indians with the promise of quick payment had to return the human merchandise, remaining free of debt. And henceforth I was severely prohibited from shipping new captives to Spain, which meant that I would have to close my internment camps on the islands, suspending the capture of men and women—the task so magnificently begun. I began to cry, from sheer outrage, on Master Jacob’s shoulder. They have shut down the one fruitful trade that, in compensation for the lack of gold and spices, I had discovered! On this second return, which I had pictured as full of glory, I saw myself ruined, discredited, disempowered, disapproved by Their Highnesses and even called a fraud [sic] by the same people who had acclaimed me the day before! And the sailors were still waiting for me to descend from the ships for their wonderful, triumphal landing! . . . How miserable, lamentable, ridiculous my brilliant suit seemed to me then, my breeches, cap of golden cloth, the insignia of a Grand Admiral! . . . And then there appeared in me, as often before, the goliard who hid under my skin, when, for want of better recourse, I put on a grim, doleful mask, like the mask of a martyr in a sacred picture. I changed quickly. I quickly assumed the habit of the lower Franciscan order, with cord belt, bare feet, and shaved head. And with my eyes clouded with a great show of sadness, contrite and almost in tears, back bent, shoulders slumped, I signaled, with all the show of submission of a penitent in Holy Week, to the first of my incredulous sailors to disembark. Kyrie eleison . . . But, in the first line of those who pressed forward to join me in my return to shore I saw the face, wry, ironic, and condemning, of that Rodrigo de Triana whose ten thousand reales of royal reward I had taken to give to Beatriz, my spurned lover. I detected in his look a note of accusation, and I also observed that the sailor still carried, as a sign of his contempt, the silk doublet that I had given him that day—now worn and mended all over, but still with its ostentatious red color, the color of the devil. And, alarmed, I asked myself whether the presence of Rodrigo, here, today, was not the presence of the one lying in wait to try to drag me to the Kingdom of Shadows, whether at that moment he was beginning his effort to call me to account. I had made no pact with him. But there are pacts not made on paper, not signed i
n blood. They remain written, in indelible ink, when with lies and deceits, inspired by the Malignant One, we enjoy wonders denied to other mortals. In spite of the Franciscan habit in which I now enveloped mysel£ my flesh was like that of the Pseudo-Cyprian, the Cartagenian heretic who pledged his soul to regain his lost youth and shamefully take advantage of the innocence of a maiden—a virgin as pure and innocent of the Evil of Gold as were the lands that I had opened to the greed and lust of men from here: Kyrie eleison.

  A

  nother trip and then another, remembered here, on the verge of leaving on the journey from which there will be no return, on this sad Valladolid dusk when I am faintly illuminated by two candles brought by a servant of velvet step who passes by me without asking any questions, seeing me deep in the anguished reading of old papers, turned over on the sheet—already practically a shroud—of this bed where my enfeebled elbows stretch the serge of the minor habit of my order, with which, perhaps without deserving it, I have chosen to wrap my wasted body . . . Another trip and another trip, and still I had not found the one good deposit of gold—such money-changer’s language, the language of a Lombard banker!—sacrilegiously beseeching the Lord before whom I had taken a vow of poverty in token obeisance to a rule already widely abused in this century, to be honest—a pan of a ceremony to which I had submitted myself in deference to the wishes of my Mistress. Not a good mass of gold, nor a good mass of pearls, nor a good mass of spices, nor a good mass obtained, otherwise, in the slave trade in Seville. And so, having tried to substitute the flesh of the Indies for the gold of the Indies, seeing that I could obtain neither gold nor flesh to sell, I began—apprentice of a prodigious magician—to substitute, for gold and flesh, words. Great, beautiful, weighty, juicy, rich words, raised in the brilliant court of wise men, doctors, prophets, and philosophers. Not having found the mine that Their Highnesses considered so important and longed for so intensely, I used magic to make them see that not all that shines is gold. The Crown of Portugal had amassed immense sums in prestigious navigations-without further material benefit-that spread its fame throughout the world. I knew that my voyage cost much and yielded little. But I invoked the millions—possibly millions—of souls that would be saved if they would send good preachers over there, like those who accompanied Juan de Monte Corvino in his diocese in Cambaluc. If I have not “brought supplies of gold,” much has been accomplished (and this is not the least) for the spiritual and the temporal. And kings and monarchs must inspire such enterprises, remembering that Solomon financed his ships in a three-year journey with the sole object of seeing Mount Sopora; that Alexander dispatched emissaries to the island of Trapobana, in the other Indies, to obtain a better knowledge of them; and that Nero Caesar (why did it occur to me to cite that abominable persecutor of Christians?) went to great pains to try to locate the source of the Nile. These are the things it has been given to princes to undertake. And now . . . all right! I have not found the Indies of the spices but the Indies of the cannibals, but . . . shit! I had found nothing less than the Earthly Paradise! Yes! Let the New Burnisher be known, be heard, the name be spread in all the realms of Christianity! . . . The Earthly Paradise faces the island I have named Trinidad, at the mouth of the Drago, where the fresh waters of the heavens contend with the salt marshes—bitter with the many sediments of the land. I saw it, precisely as it is, far from where the deceived and deceiving cartographers had placed it, here, there, its Adams and Eves moved—relocated—the tree between them, the serpent tempter, the dwelling without fortifications, domestic zoology, loving and chaste beasts, and all the rest, according to the whim of each. I saw it. I saw what no one had seen: the mountain in the shape of a woman’s tit, or, more precisely, of a nipple on a pear—oh, you, about whom are you thinking?—establishing that the Garden of Genesis is there and nowhere else, since many have spoken about it without managing to tell us where it is, because never have I found . . . a scripture in Greek or Latin that unequivocally locales the Earthly Paradise in this world, nor is it situated on any map of the world, except by the authority of argument. Some placed it at the source of the Nile in Ethiopia; others searched those lands and found no confirmation of it. . . Saint Isadoro and Bede and Strabo and the scholastic master of history and Saint Ambrose and Scott and all the worthy theologians agree that the Earthly Paradise is in the Orient, etcetera—is in the Orient, I repeat, not omitting the etcetera, because etcetera is something. So it must be placed in the Orient then, in an Orient which had to be an Orient because it was thought there existed only one possible Orient. But since I have reached the Orient by sailing west, I maintain that those who claimed this were mistaken, drawing fantastic maps, deceived by fables and fictions, because my eyes have seen the proof of what they could only imagine, that I have reached the one, true, authentic Earthly Paradise just as one would picture it based on the Holy Scriptures: a place where infinite varieties of trees grow, beautiful to look upon, whose fruits are delicious to the taste, where a great river flows whose waters mark the boundaries of a region rich in gold—and gold, I repeat and insist, lies there in enormous abundance, even though I have not been favored with the longed-for strike—the striver stricken for want of a strike . . . And, after invoking Isadoro, Ambrose, and Scott, true theologians, to screw the mediocre Spanish theologians of today who always oppose me, I resort to the science of Pliny, Aristotle, and, again, the vision of Seneca, to nestle in the incontrovertible authority of the ancients, endorsed—like Virgil, announcer of a New Age—by the Church itself. . . And, describing my fourth voyage, coasting alongside a land that shows no signs of being an island but rather terra firma—and very stable, with high mountains that hide unsuspected mysteries, possible cities, invaluable riches—I was possessed again by the spirit of greed, I found new energies, and immediately, facing the present reality, I realized that until then I had been rather hasty—not to say untruthful—in giving triumphant accounts: When I discovered the Indies I said they were the greatest, richest dominion in the world. I spoke of gold, pearls, precious stones, stores, commerce, and fairs, and when it did not all appear immediately I was put to shame. This reproach makes me say now no more than . . . that I have seen in this land of Veragua more signs of gold in the two first days than in Hispaniola in four years, and that the lands of this territory could not be more beautiful nor more bountiful nor the people more faint-hearted . . . Your Highnesses are as much the lords of this land as of Jerez or Toledo; your ships that go there are going to your own home . . . And what to do, now, with such riches? To fulfill, simply, the great aspiration of Christianity—what eight crusades had not achieved. What neither Peter the Hermit, nor Godefroy de Bouillon, nor Saint Bernard, nor Saint Louis of France had achieved would have to be obtained through the tenacity in the face of constant opposition of this son of a Savona tavern keeper. And, further, it is written: Jerusalem and Mount Zion must be rebuilt by Christian hands, and The Abbot Joachim Calabrés said that this person would have to sally forth from Spain. This person would have to sally forth from Spain—listen to that. He didn’t say that he would have to be a Spaniard. And, speaking of myself I could say like Moses in the land of Midian: “I am a stranger in a strange land.” But these foreigners are the ones who find the Promised Lands. And therefore the one marked by a sign, the Chosen One, was I. Yet my path was long and difficult: Seven years have I been in your Royal Court and everyone who heard of my enterprise said it was a mockery. Now even tailors apply for discovery. And one day, the seventh of July, 1503, weak and miserable in the country of Jamaica, I thought that my constant boasting had raised me up too much in my own estimation, incurring the sin of pride; humble, finally, in a missive sent to my Kings, I said, I did not undertake this voyage to earn honor or wealth; this is true, for all hope of that was already dead. I came to Your Highnesses with sincere intention and an honest zeal, and I did not lie . . . I did not lie. I said that I did not lie. But when I look back at myself through the yellowed pages that lie upside down on the shee
t drawn halfway up my chest . . .