Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “Excellent,” repeats the seminarian quietly. Is this one of Father O’Donnell’s days of senility or lucidity? He weighs the options and admits to himself that it could be either. Our seminarian has no idea whether he is sinking into a maudlin ignorance or achieving enlightenment. He looks at his translation—a solid, acceptable endeavor, that, turning words into other words. Or maybe it’s not, but the last thing he needs is another great abstracting truth to wrestle with.

  His eye dawdles over the page, resting at the final passage: “. . . an island like the former, having a lake, and in this lake another island . . .”

  “Islands within islands,” he repeats to himself. And then an insight. He will not argue with Pliny, he will embrace him. He will write about Pliny, and who’s the other guy who has so much to say on Hanno? Arrian. There’s his paper.

  THE PERIPLUS OF HANNO

  ACCORDING TO PLINY AND ARRIAN

  Not according to me, he thinks. He’s carting boulders, not making mountains. He’s creating another lake in which to put all the other islands and lakes and islands.

  VI. Extant

  Pliny seems to have a handle on Hanno, although he hasn’t checked his facts. He seems to think that Hanno sailed from Cades to Arabia—Pliny’s convinced that Hanno circumnavigated Africa—a fact that is contradicted in the Periplus itself, which states that the party was forced to return. Hanno concludes: “We did not sail farther on, our provisions failing us.” The seminarian makes a note to address this discrepancy, which suggests either that Pliny did not have an account of the Periplus as he wrote, that it had been a while since Pliny had read the account, or that Pliny found it a much better story should Hanno have actually have traveled from Cerne (somewhere just past the Pillars of Hercules) all the way back to Arabia.

  Was Pliny making his life impossible or giving him something to write about?

  Our seminarian knows that Pliny’s great contribution is his Historia Naturalis, and that although he cannot always count on Pliny to be right, neither can he count on him to be wrong. Pliny is right maybe half the time factually, and all the time culturally. He’s more interesting when he’s wrong, when he writes of owl-eyed Albanians with flaming-red night vision, or King Pyrrhus who, with his swollen big toe, has the ability to heal all manner of ills. And accuracy had a different meaning then. Preserving knowledge in print was what excited Pliny—putting everything down—and had he not, we would have lost our gold-mining griffins of the far north. All that would remain is our goats and horses and sheep that present themselves now much as they did then: in a field rather than in the imagination. It’s still a tremendous accomplishment, even if he relied on others to supply the information, and had a judgment-impairing affection for the weird animal and odd cultural practice.

  Ironically, the one event that Pliny is famous for actually having witnessed, he never had a chance to write about. This was the cataclysmic eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, which cautioned the outlying communities first with a cloud that appeared like “a pine tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a very tall trunk, which spread itself out into a sort [sic] of branches.” Pliny, hearing of the cloud, decided it merited a closer view. He launched his galleys from where he was staying in Misenum and headed across the Bay of Naples. This short journey, initially envisioned as one of scholarship and perhaps journalism, developed poignancy as the danger of the erupting volcano became impossible to ignore. Pliny was attempting to rescue people from Stabiae when he was overwhelmed with poisonous gases. Pliny suffocated. Two days after the eruption, his body was found, still, yet seemingly unharmed: the effect of toxic fumes.

  What account we have of that fateful event in Pliny (the Elder)’s life is provided by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, who witnessed his uncle’s fatal embarkation but had the good luck to stay ashore. And this is what remains of Pliny’s journalistic urge—his death, and a rather good account of what went down, furnished in a letter from his nephew to Tacitus.

  There, in the book, by the account of Pliny’s death, our seminarian sees a drawing of a plaster cast of three citizens of Pompeii, captured in their last moment, upon a set of stairs. He finds something artful about the composition rendered in quick frenetic lines, something aesthetic in how the geometric shadow of the steps offsets the rough human forms upon it. The three bodies form an L-shape, with the top-most figure seated, almost

  lying on his back. The second figure forms the angle of the L, knees pulled up, his head sheltering beneath the thigh of his friend. And the third figure—the base of the L—is passed out facedown, a hand resting on the step above, as if he has never given up hope of reaching his destination: Sleeping Beauty forms, frozen in AD 79. They carry that moment with them, tacking it directly to our own—a pleat dissolving the years that separate the instant of their death from this of his viewing.

  What would Michelangelo have had to say about it? Would he have been moved by this confrontation with the ancients? Would this interaction with capricious and uncaring gods—a grouping of three figures—without the skill of Polydoros, Athanadoros, and Agesandros to intervene—have moved him? Would Michelangelo have been as moved by people as by art? Is The People on the Stairs any less art than the Laocoön? What is the role of intention in art?

  He thinks of one story: eruption, stairs, asphyxiation. And the other: Laocoön of the venom-filled fillets. Laocoön and his sons: extant in Virgil. The people on the stairs: extant in plaster. But in the end it’s only impression: the gorgeous grouping of the people on the stairs achieves what it does, like the Laocoön, through artificial appeal.

  The seminarian looks up at the clock. He has only another hour to work today and after that it’s dinner and litanies and meditation. He looks at his paper—Pliny and Arrian on Hanno—and wonders if it’s possible to get some sort of digression on the nature of art in there, which he decides is impossible. But it does amuse him, and he needs to amuse himself: all this time alone intended to make one dialogue with God often has the added effect of making one dialogue with oneself, as if there were another of him seated beside, cracking jokes and laughing in turn.

  “Enough,” says the seminarian, and he forces himself back to the Periplus. “Start at the beginning,” he wills himself, and reads Hanno’s opening line yet again.

  “It was decreed by the Carthaginians, that Hanno should undertake a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules . . .”

  VII. The Pillars of Hercules

  Always the Pillars of Hercules! How tidy to have lived in the ancient world, where these pillars stood as literal markers between known and unknown, where so little was understood and recorded that one, standing upon the Rock of Gibraltar, could say, “Here is known!”—then point off into the North Atlantic and say, “There is unknown!” The Pillars of Hercules were the edge of the world, the ancients being a little more complicated than men in the Age of Exploration. One sailed through the edge of the world and into the unknown, rather than off the edge of the world and into oblivion. He remembers studying something about the Pillars of Hercules somewhere, a picture exists in his mind: two pillars and a galleon sailing through it. Of course, this looks nothing like the actual pillars—Hercules would never have created anything so baldly architectural and smooth. Instead, there is the Rock of Gibraltar and its corresponding Moroccan mountain—either the Monte Hacho in Ceuta or Morocco’s Jebel Musa.

  Our seminarian wonders, despondently, whether such pillars still exist. Or has everything worthwhile been observed and catalogued, illustrated and recorded? Is scholarship a desperate attempt to fling up more pillars—more barriers between known and unknown—only to sail immediately through? Is it necessary to create the unknown? Our seminarian closes his eyes and imagines himself sailing through these pillars, from a world of cool green and blue into one of heated red and orange.

  And then he imagines looking back and seeing his youthful self, the moment suspended as if viewed within a crystal ball: his cheek lying on an open page, his finger
s loosely holding the pencil, his life unspooling ahead of him as he blinks against the dust of books and wonders what could possibly be important or unimportant. He is that young. The thought that he himself is a history, that the passage of time will be recorded in his face, his limbs, his slower heart pushing blood through the tributaries of his body, it all seems impossibly distant. Impossible.

  VIII. The Golden Triangle

  And here, in northern Thailand, the heat is formidable, but as a man who has worked and studied much of his life in Asia—near forty years—he is accustomed to it. He is taking a vanload of philosophy students from the University of Southern Maine wandering around Thailand on a voyage of discovery, mostly concerned with Buddhism. The students find the heat intense, the Thais (who are not intense) intense, even the food. He amuses himself by thinking of what it must be for them to live minute to minute in such a state of stimulation. He sees one young man snapping pictures of children, some girls looking at woven goods—bags and blankets—for which they will pay too much.

  “Doctor Murray,” says one girl. “Why is it called the Golden Triangle?”

  “Well, famously, because of the opium trade. But we will say that we are here because it is the place where Thailand, Burma, and Laos all meet. And for that it is worth looking at.”

  The girl, smart enough but too practical for scholarship, looks first to the left with frank suspicion, then back over her shoulder. What can he teach this person, who has never had a question that she did not want answered?

  “So the borders are right around here?”

  He nods patiently.

  “What’s the river?”

  “That’s the Mekong. The confluence of the Ruak and Mekong is not far from here.”

  “Oh,” she says, not impressed. “And what’s over there?”

  She points toward Burma, and that is probably the answer that would satisfy her. She points to the west. She points to the West from the East. He knows the response cold, but then he doesn’t. He remembers being a sailor on a ship and the earth bowling up beneath him. He remembers living west, the sound of books slammed shut, the approach and loss of car radio music, popular music, coming over the seminary wall as he walked between buildings. He remembers being young. And then suddenly he remembers all, as if his entire memory has become suspended before him—this moment the portal to everything that has gone before. The world spins back and back, unleashing a pool of wrinkled event.

  “Doctor Murray,” she says, “Doctor Murray.” And she looks concerned.

  The sky is more white than blue and he wonders if it is always like that, and, if it is, why he has never noticed it before.

  “Doctor Murray,” she says again.

  “Over there?” he says.

  She nods, but she’s forgotten her question.

  He gestures with conviction. “Over there? Over there is everything.”

  Balboa

  Vasco Núñez de Balboa ascends the mountain alone. His one thousand Indians and two hundred Spaniards wait at the foot of the mountain, as if they are the Israelites and Balboa alone is off to speak with God. Balboa knows that from this peak he will be able to see the western water, what he has already decided to name the South Sea. He takes a musket with him. The Spaniards have been warned that if they follow, he will use it, because discovery is a tricky matter and he wants no competition. The day is September 25, 1513.

  Balboa ascends slowly. His musket is heavy and he would have gladly left it down below, but he doesn’t trust his countrymen any more than he trusts the sullen Indians. So he bears the weight. But the musket is nothing. He is dragging the mantle of civilization up the pristine slopes, over the mud, over the leaves that cast as much shade as a parasol but with none of the charm.

  Balboa is that divining line between the modern and the primitive. As he moves, the shadow of Spain moves with him.

  Balboa steps cautiously into a muddy stream and watches with fascination as his boot sinks and sinks. He will have to find another way. Upstream he sees an outcropping of rock. Maybe he can cross there. He tells himself that there is no hurry, but years of staying just ahead of trouble have left him anxiety-ridden. He would like to think of himself as a lion. Balboa the Lion! But no, he is more of a rat, and all of his accomplishments have been made with speed and stealth. Balboa places his hand on a branch and pulls himself up. He sees the tail of a snake disappearing just past his reach. The subtle crush of greenery confirms his discovery and he shrinks back, crouching. In this moment of stillness, he looks around. He sees no other serpents, but that does not mean they are not there. Only in this momentary quiet does he hear his breath, rasping with effort. He hears his heart beating in the arced fingers of his ribs as if it is an Indian’s drum. He does not remember what it is to be civilized, or if he ever was. If ever a man was alone, it is he. But even in this painful solitude, he cannot help but laugh. Along with Cristóbal Colón, backed by Isabel I herself, along with Vespucci the scholar, along with the noble Pizarro brothers on their way to claim Inca gold, his name will live—Balboa. Balboa! Balboa the Valiant. Balboa the Fearsome. Balboa the Brave.

  Balboa the gambling pig farmer, who, in an effort to escape his debt, has found himself at the very edge of the world.

  Balboa stops to drink from the stream. The water is cold, fresh, and tastes like dirt, which is a relief after what he has been drinking—water so green that the very act of ingesting it seems unnatural, as though it is as alive as he, and sure enough, given a few hours, it will get you back, eager to find its way out. He has been climbing since early morning and it is now noon. The sun shines in the sky unblinking, white-hot. Balboa wonders if it’s the same sun that shines in Spain. The sun seemed so much smaller there. Even in Hispaniola, the sun was Spanish. Even as he prodded his pigs in the heat, there was Spain all around, men with dice, men training roosters, pitting their dogs against each other. But here . . . then he hears a twig snap and the sound of something brushing up against the bushes. Balboa stands.

  “I give you this one chance to turn back,” he says, raising his musket as he turns. And then he freezes. It is not one of the Spaniards hoping to share the glory. Instead, he finds himself face-to-face with a great spotted cat. On this mountain, he’d thought he might find his god, the god of Moses, sitting in the cloud cover near the peaks, running his fingers through his beard. But no. Instead he finds himself face-to-face with a jaguar, the god of the Indians. He knows why these primitives have chosen it for their deity. It is hard to fear one’s maker when he looks like one’s grandfather, but this great cat can make a people fear god. He hears the growling of the cat and the grating, high-pitched thunder sounds like nothing he has ever heard. The cat twitches its nose and two great incisors show at the corners of its mouth. Balboa raises his musket, ignites the flint, and nothing happens. He tries again and the weapon explodes, shattering the silence, sending up a big puff of stinking smoke. The cat is gone for now, but Balboa knows he hasn’t even injured it.

  And now it will be tailing him silently.

  There is nothing he can do about it. He should have brought an Indian with him. The Indians have all seen the South Sea before, so why did he leave them at the foot of the mountain? They have no more interest in claiming the South Sea than they do rowing off to Europe in their dug-out canoes and claiming Spain. But Balboa’s hindsight is always good, and no amount of swearing—which he does freely, spilling Spanish profanity into the virgin mountain air—is going to set things straight.

  He is already in trouble. His kingdom in Darién on the east coast of the New World is under threat, and not from the Indians, whom he manages well, but from Spain. Balboa had organized the rebellion, supplanted the governor—all of this done with great efficiency and intelligence. What stupidity made him send the governor, Martín Fernández de Enciso, back to Spain? Enciso swore that he would have Balboa’s head on a platter. He was yelling from the deck of the ship as it set sail. Why didn’t he kill Enciso? Better yet, why didn’t h
e turn Enciso over to some Indian tribe that would be glad to have the Spaniard, glad to have his blood on their hands? How could Balboa be so stupid? Soon the caravels would arrive and his days as governor (king, he tells the Indians) of Darién will be over. Unless, Balboa thinks, unless he brings glory by being the first to claim this great ocean for Spain. Then the king will see him as the greatest of his subjects, not a troublemaking peasant, a keeper of pigs.

  Unless that jaguar gets him first.

  Balboa looks nervously around. The only sound is the trickle and splash of the stream that he is following, which the Indians tell him leads to a large outcropping of rock from which he will see the new ocean. Insects swoop malevolently around his head. A yellow and red parrot watches him cautiously from a branch, first looking from one side of its jeweled head, then the other. Where is the jaguar? Balboa imagines his body being dragged into a tree, his boots swinging from the limbs as the great cat tears his heart from his ribs. He hears a crushing of vegetation and ducks low. He readies his musket again. “Please God, let the damned thing fire.” He breathes harshly, genuflecting, musket steady.

  The leaves quiver, then part. There is no jaguar.

  “Leoncico!” he cries out. Leoncico is his dog, who has tracked him up the slope. Leoncico patters over, wagging his tail, his great wrinkled head bearded with drool. Leoncico is a monster of a dog. His head is the size of a man’s, and his body has the look of a lion—shoulders and hipbones protruding and muscle pulling and shifting beneath the glossy skin—which is where he gets his name. “Leoncico” means little lion.

  “Good dog,” says Balboa. “Good dog. Good dog.”

  He has never been so grateful for the company, not even when he was hidden on board Enciso’s ship bound for San Sebastian, escaping his creditors, wrapped in a sail. No one wondered why the dog had come on board. Maybe the dog had been attracted by the smell of provisions, the great barrels of salted meat. The soldiers fed him, gave him water. Balboa worried that Leoncico would give him away, but the dog had somehow known to be quiet. He had slept beside Balboa, and even in Balboa’s thirst and hunger, the great beast’s panting and panting, warm through the sailcloth, had given him comfort. When Enciso’s crew finally discovered Balboa—one of the sails was torn and needed to be replaced—they did not punish him. They laughed.