Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  “The Indians massacre everyone. You are better off in a debtors’ prison,” they said.

  Balboa became a member of the crew. When the boat shipwrecked off the coast of San Sebastian (they were rescued by Francisco Pizarro), Enciso had been at a loss as to where to go, and Balboa convinced him to try Darién to the north. Once established there, Enciso had shown himself to be a weak man. How could Balboa not act? Enciso did not understand the Indians as Balboa did. He could see that the Indians were battle-hardened warriors. The Spaniards had not been there long enough to call these armies into existence. Balboa’s strength had been to recognize this discord. He divided the great tribes, supported one against the other. His reputation spread. His muskets blasted away the faces of the greatest warriors. Balboa’s soldiers spread smallpox and syphilis. His Spanish war dogs, great mastiffs and wolfhounds, tore children limb from limb. The blood from his great war machine made the rivers flow red and his name, Balboa, moved quickly, apace with these rivers of blood.

  Balboa is loved by no one and feared by all. He has invented an unequaled terror. The Indians think of him as a god. They make no distinction between good and evil. They have seen his soldiers tear babies from their mothers, toss them still screaming to feed the dogs. They have seen the great dogs pursue the escaping Indians, who must hear nothing but a great panting, the jangle of the dogs’ armor, and then, who knows? Do they feel the hot breath on their cheek? Are they still awake when the beasts unravel their stomachs and spill them onto the hot earth? Balboa’s dogs have been his most effective weapon because for them, one does not need to carry ammunition, as for the muskets; one does not need to carry food, as for the soldiers. For the dogs, there is fresh meat everywhere. He knows his cruelty will be recorded along with whatever he discovers. This does not bother him, even though one monk, Dominican—strange fish—cursed him back in Darién. He was a young monk, tormented by epileptic fits. He approached Balboa in the town square in his bare feet, unarmed, waving his shrunken fist.

  “Your dogs,” screamed the monk, “are demons.”

  As if understanding, Leoncico had lunged at the monk. Leoncico is not a demon. He is the half of Balboa with teeth, the half that eats. Balboa has the mind and appetite. Together, they make one. It is as if the great beast can hear his thoughts, as if their hearts and lungs circulate the same blood and air. What did the monk understand of that? What did he understand of anything? He said that he was in the New World to bring the Indians to God. So the monk converts the Indians, and Balboa sends them on to God. They work together, which is what Balboa told the monk. But the monk did not find it funny.

  How dare he find fault with Balboa? Is not Spain as full of torments as the New World? The Spaniards are brought down by smallpox at alarming rates in Seville, in Madrid. Every summer the rich take to the mountains to escape the plague, and in the fall, when they return, aren’t their own countrymen lying in the streets feeding the packs of mongrels? Half of all the Spanish babies die. It is not uncommon to see a peasant woman leave her screaming infant on the side of the road, so why come here and beg relief for these savages? Why not go to France, where, one soldier tells Balboa, they butcher the Huguenots and sell their limbs for food in the street? Why rant over the impaling of the Indians when Spaniards—noblemen among them—have suffered the same fate in the name of God? In fact, the Inquisition has been the great educator when it comes to subduing the Indian population.

  Why take him to task when the world is a violent place?

  “May your most evil act be visited on you,” said the monk. “I curse you.”

  The monk died shortly after that. His threats and bravery were more the result of a deadly fever than the words of a divine message. Did the curse worry Balboa? Perhaps a little. He occasionally revisits a particularly spectacular feat of bloodshed—the time Leoncico tore a chieftain’s head from his shoulders—with a pang of concern. But Balboa is a busy man with little time for reflection. When the monk delivered his curse, Balboa was already preparing his troops for the great march to the west. His name had reached Spain, and the king felt his authority threatened.

  He is the great Balboa.

  But here, on the slope of the mountain, his name does not seem worth that much. He has to relieve himself and is terrified that some creature—jaguar, snake, spider—will take advantage of his great heaving bareness.

  “Leoncico,” he calls. “At attention.”

  Not that this command means anything to the dog. Leoncico knows “attack,” and that is all he needs to know. Leoncico looks up, wags his tail, and lies down, his face smiling into the heat. Balboa climbs onto a boulder. Here, he is exposed to every thing, but if that jaguar is still tracking him, he can at least see it coming. He sets his musket down and listens. Nothing. He loosens his belt and is about to lower his pants when he sees it—the flattened glimmer, a shield, the horizon. He fixes his belt and straightens himself. He stares out at the startling bare intrusion, this beautiful nothing beyond the green tangle of trees, the Mar del Sur, the glory of Balboa, his gift to Spain.

  Balboa, having accomplished his goal, luxuriates in this moment of peaceful ignorance. He does not know that his days are numbered, that even after he returns to Darién with his knowledge of the South Sea, even after he has ceded the governorship to Pedro Arias Dávila, even after he is promised Dávila’s daughter, he has not bought his safety. Dávila will see that as long as Balboa lives he must sleep with one eye open. With the blessing of Spain, Dávila will bring Balboa to trial for treason, and on January 21, 1519, Balboa’s head will be severed from his shoulders. His eyes will stay open, his mouth will be slack, and his great head will roll in the dust for everyone—Indians, Spaniards, and dogs—to see.

  Last Days

  It seems most credible that our Lord God has purposefully allowed these lands [Mexico] to be discovered . . . so that Your Majesties may be fruitful and deserving in His sight by causing these barbaric tribes to be enlightened and brought to faith by Your hand.

  —Hernán Cortés, 1519

  During the last days of the Aztec Empire, Nezahualpilli, ruler of Texcoco, went to meet with the king of the Aztecs.

  Nezahualpilli had a bad feeling about his meeting with Motecuhzoma the second. He had reason for concern despite and, perhaps, because of his ability to see the future. Motecuhzoma had called on him because of Nezahualpilli’s skill as a seer, but Nezahualpilli saw nothing good in the future, and it took no trance, no rare herbs, for him to see that things were not getting better. For years he had managed a modicum of autonomy for his small island state, his kingdom within a kingdom. Tenochtitlan dominated without challenge as it had done since the days of his father, but this great kingdom of the Aztecs was in danger of crumbling, disappearing as the revered Toltecs had before them, and in Motecuhzoma’s desperation he had begun casting about his own kingdom for an explanation. Motecuhzoma worshipped the hummingbird god, Huitzilopochtli, and Motecuhzoma’s palliative efforts were mostly comprised of human tribute. Casting about for explanation was a violent process.

  Nezahualpilli, his head bowed in thought, realized that he was not alone. He raised his head and saw his favorite attendant standing calmly, still, as though stillness was a pleasure afforded him much as stillness must have pleased trees and rocks. “How long have you been there?”

  “A time,” said the attendant. “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “Have you news for me?”

  “You will be pleased that I have none,” the attendant smiled, “but your bath is ready.”

  “Is it hot enough?”

  “For you, my lord, yes. The servants have an inferno raging on the outer wall and when I threw my dipper upon that of your bath, a great sizzle issued forth producing a billowing cloud of steam upon which floated aromas of great and pleasing variety—”

  “All that, really?” said Nezahualpilli.

  “Yes, all that, today as yesterday, as the day before, as all the days reaching back as long as I know,
since I, a mere orphaned boy, came to this house and found myself the gatherer of firewood for this same bath of which now I am the steward.”

  “A nice history,” said Nezahualpilli. “And now you will do me the favor of scrubbing my back.”

  As promised, the bath was hot and Nezahualpilli spent longer than usual seated in its embracing mist, inhaling its soothing vapors. The water trickled down the stone walls of the enclosure. He felt his water god near and everywhere. In Texcoco, the cult of Quetzalcoatl was flourishing, although in secret. The feathered serpent had been favored by the ancient and wise Toltecs. More of consequence, Quetzalcoatl did not demand human sacrifice, as did Huitzilopochtli. And years of rivers running with blood, corpses rolling down the canted steps of the Great Temple, and feasting on elaborate stews made with the flesh of one’s own countrymen had resulted in widespread and justified despair. The Texcocons and other vassal states were not hardened by years of tribute to the humming bird, they were worn down. Quetzalcoatl was a god concerned with regeneration, more appealing, especially when Huitzilopochtli demanded beating human hearts to perform such basic functions as sending the sun across the sky.

  “More steam,” Nezahualpilli instructed, and his servant flung the dipper of water again and again against the heated wall.

  There was something suspicious about Huitzilopochtli—an insecurity (like Motecuhzoma’s own) that made him want victims and then more victims. After all, was there anything as ridiculous as an aggressive, bloodthirsty, carnivorous hummingbird? Nezahualpilli watched hummingbirds daily in his garden—tiny suspended jewels hovering about the plumeria, sipping nectar. How could one reconcile this with the god of Tlacaelel and the Aztecs, who demanded life after life and threatened total darkness?

  Nezahualpilli had been there at the consecration of the Great Temple in 1487. He had witnessed the columns of slaves and citizens, children and warriors, snaking through the streets. One after another they were sacrificed at the hands of the nobles. Ahuizotl himself (who had ruled before the unfortunate collapse of the northern dam) had sacrificed for close to an hour until his arms grew tired. It was not easy work to plunge an obsidian blade into a struggling man’s chest, to pull his heart out from the tangle of vessels and dense muscles.

  During the entire ordeal, Nezahualpilli had sat on his chair behind a curtain of flowers wishing himself to a peaceful place, where water trickled endlessly down the stone walls of his temple and men sat in quiet dialogue with the ruler of the One World, his god, Quetzalcoatl, god of Venus, who disappeared with the morning light and then, each evening, was triumphantly brought back to life. His god was the god of resurrection, not hopeless blood-letting and infinite death.

  Nezahualpilli drank more than his share of coca juice that day and in the days that followed, but he could not numb his senses. Even bitter mushrooms could not disguise the reek of decomposing bodies and jellied mounds of clotted blood filling the streets of the capital. Even back in Texcoco, the stench was vivid and inescapable. When Nezahualpilli asked Tlacaelel how many had been sacrificed, the great general and true ruler of Tenochtitlan had no exact figure. He estimated somewhere near eighty thousand.

  “Enough,” he said, and then louder, over the hushing steam, “Enough!”

  This was to be the second time Nezahualpilli had met with Motecuhzoma, and he feared he would be held responsible for this dire second installment of prophecy.

  Nezahualpilli felt the weight of his cloak descend on his shoulders. He nodded at his two attendants and they continued with his wardrobe, setting a heavy, feathered headdress in place. The weight of his cloak, the weight of this headdress, the weight of his years, and the knowledge that the kingdom was doomed . . . that he could sink back into the great lake from which all this had been born! The boat was ready for him to make the trip to Tenochtitlan. Maybe he would sink like a stone. Maybe that would be better for all of them.

  Was it his fault that he could divine the future? He saw what he saw, he did not make it up, and when his prophecies were fulfilled, he felt no joy in his accuracy. He would have loved to be wrong, wrong about the Aztecs’ defeat at the hands of the Tlaxcalans, wrong about ominous fireballs falling from the skies. Most worrisome, his final prophecy—that the great city of Tenochtitlan would fall, and all its inhabitants and their children and vassals would be annihilated—had yet to pass. Maybe he was wrong about that. All this was to occur in Motecuhzoma’s lifetime, not his. In fact, the only comfort Nezahualpilli had was his age. He would be dead when it all happened. Maybe Motecuhzoma would kill him, although he doubted this because he was already close to death. The other seers and necromancers had been stripped naked and set in cages to starve when their prophesies failed to please, but Nezahualpilli, in addition to being old, was a blood relative of Motecuhzoma’s, so he did not fear that.

  Nezahualpilli paused by the side of the water. All around him, the islands of the city constructed by the Aztecs stood as monuments to their power to overcome nature. Crops were harvested on the chinampas, fields dragged up from the lake that were barely above water level. Fresh water flowed in from Chapultepec in two stone aqueducts. Great dams held the salty flows from the mountains at bay, but soon it would all be just a part of the great chronicles of Aztec history. “Take my elbow,” Nezahualpilli said to a young attendant. He stepped onto the flat platform of the boat and sank into the chair that was set upon it. “Go, go quickly,” he instructed the rowers. He found it difficult to leave his palace anymore, to see the columns of children being led to the temple, to hear their mothers weeping. He closed his eyes, not wanting to witness the nobility leading their slaves, Aztec citizens, back from the market, eager to butcher and eat them. Was it no wonder that this kingdom was doomed? In his mind he called on his god, Quetzalcoatl, who was his only comfort.

  Quetzalcoatl, return before we are all dead. Return and save us.

  Nezahualpilli was not demanding the impossible in his prayers. Quetzalcoatl, revered by the Toltecs, had lain in the shadow of Huitzilopochtli long enough, and there was a prophecy that he would come again. The ancient Toltecs, with whom the Aztecs tenuously linked their lineage, had disappeared without explanation. One day these great beings would return with their god, coming from the east to the One World, and when that happened, there would be little that the Aztecs could do. Quetzalcoatl and his retinue of Toltecs would be recognized because they would accept the gifts of their land to which they had a righteous claim. They would eat the food offered to them and accept the rich gifts, and this would let the Aztecs know that their days of supremacy had ended.

  Nezahualpilli covered his face with a feathered fan and fell to sleeping. He was old, and this practice for death, sleep, was comfort.

  Finally, Nezahualpilli reached Motecuhzoma’s palace. As he walked through the stone archways that led to the throne room, the torches flaring and sputtering, the metallic stench of blood rising off the stone in the heat of day, he was struck by the silence in the palace. The hiss of flame and soft step of the barefooted steward were the only things that intruded on the ominous quiet, on his dark thoughts.

  The monarch was sitting on his throne surrounded by his dwarves. Usually, his dwarves and acrobats amused Motecuhzoma, but lately their purpose had been to listen to his increasingly insane ranting. Nezahualpilli had heard that the dwarves were Motecuhzoma’s closest confidants. They crouched around him like evil, wisened children. It was said the king wanted to escape to the hills, that he wanted to die. What kind of ruler was this? Motecuhzoma was unaware of Nezahualpilli’s approach. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be napping.

  “Lord,” said Nezahualpilli, his eyes respectfully lowered, “you summoned me.”

  Motecuhzoma’s eyes snapped open. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I need to ask you some things.”

  “You have your own seers . . . ”

  “Fools, all of them.”

  “But you surround yourself with jesters,” said Nezahualpilli.

  “Because they are n
ot hypocrites,” said Motecuhzoma. “There are fools. And there are fools who are fools.”

  The dwarves—Nezahualpilli counted eleven—looked up at him, offended. “I did not know we had so many stunted men in our realm,” he said.

  “A sign,” said Motecuhzoma. “Things are not right. The women bring forth dwarves, and just yesterday a two-headed pup was born in Tlatelolco. They brought it to me. I saw it.”

  “Two-headed dogs have always been born, my lord.”

  “And has it ever come to any good? Did the birth of a two-headed dog ever mean victory in the provinces, or an end to this drought, or,” and here the monarch sobbed, “a long reign?”

  “You are upsetting yourself needlessly. I have heard you sent your seers to all corners of Tenochtitlan to find these perversions of nature—”

  “I did. And here they are.” Motecuhzoma spread his hand over the heads of his dwarves. “And you said to look in the sky, and I did, and a great ball of fire fell. And you said to not wage another Flower War, and I went against the Tlaxcalans and saw my warriors flayed and strung from trees for target practice.”

  “That is true,” said Nezahualpilli. “But today I have nothing for you. No dog. No dwarf. No whirlpool sucking at the lake.”

  “Because all that has happened. But what does it mean? Last week, lightning struck the temple of Tlaloc, but there was no rain, and he is the rain god. What does that mean?”