Genesis Read online

  (123 and 164)

  1561: Nueva Valencia del Rey

  From Lope de Aguirre’s letter to King Philip II

  Over here we have got the measure of how cruel you are and how you break your faith and word, so that in this country we give less credit to your promises than to the books of Martin Luther, for your viceroy the Marquis of Cañete hanged Martín de Robles, a man outstandingly dedicated to your service, and the brave conquistador of Piru Tomás Vazquez, and poor Alonso Díaz, who worked harder in the discovery of this land than Moses’s scouts in the desert …

  Listen, listen, Spanish king, stop being cruel and ungrateful to your vassals, because with your father and you comfortably back in Spain away from all worries, your vassals have given you at the cost of their blood and treasure all the many lands and dominions that you have in these parts, and listen, king and sir, you can’t call yourself a just king and take any part of these lands for which you ventured nothing without first rewarding those who toiled and sweated …

  Alas, what a terrible pity that the Imperial Caesar your father should have conquered proud Germany with the forces of Spain, spending so much money brought from these Indies discovered by us, that our old age and exhaustion doesn’t pain you enough for you to relieve our hunger even for a day! …

  (123)

  1561: Barquisimeto

  Order Restored

  Abandoned by his men, who preferred the king’s pardon or indulgences, Lope de Aguirre stabs to death his daughter Elvira, to save her from becoming a mattress for blackguards, and confronts his executioners. He corrects their aim, not this way, not that way, lousy shot, and falls without commending himself to God.

  When Philip reads the letter, seated on his throne a long way from here, Aguirre’s head is fixed on a pike as a warning to all the pawns of European development.

  (123 and 164)

  1562: Maní

  The Fire Blunders

  Fray Diego de Landa throws into the flames, one after the other, the books of the Mayas.

  The inquisitor curses Satan, and the fire crackles and devours. Around the incinerator, heretics howl with their heads down. Hung by the feet, flayed with whips, Indians are doused with boiling wax as the fire flares up and the books snap, as if complaining.

  Tonight, eight centuries of Mayan literature turn to ashes. On these long sheets of bark paper, signs and images spoke: They told of work done and days spent, of the dreams and the wars of a people born before Christ. With hog-bristle brushes, the knowers of things had painted these illuminated, illuminating books so that the grandchildren’s grandchildren should not be blind, should know how to see themselves and see the history of their folk, so they should know the movements of the stars, the frequency of eclipses and the prophecies of the gods and so they could call for rains and good corn harvests.

  In the center, the inquisitor burns the books. Around the huge bonfire, he chastises the readers. Meanwhile, the authors, artist-priests dead years or centuries ago, drink chocolate in the fresh shade of the first tree of the world. They are at peace, because they died knowing that memory cannot be burned. Will not what they painted be sung and danced through the times of the times?

  When its little paper houses are burned, memory finds refuge in mouths that sing the glories of men and of gods, songs that stay on from people to people and in bodies that dance to the sound of hollow trunks, tortoise shells, and reed flutes.

  (205 and 219)

  1563: Arauco Fortress

  The History That Will Be

  The noose tightens and strangles. In this frontier redoubt, twice burned down and rebuilt, water is almost exhausted. Soon they will have to drink their small urinations. So many arrows have fallen inside that the Spaniards use them as firewood for cooking.

  The Araucanian chief approaches the foot of the rampart on horseback: “Captain! Do you hear me?”

  Lorenzo Bernal leans his head over.

  The native chief announces that they will surround the fort with straw and set fire to it. He says that they have not left anyone alive in Conceptión.

  “Nothing doing!” shouts Bernal.

  “Surrender, Captain! You’ve no way out!”

  “Not a chance! Never!”

  The horse rears up on two legs.

  “Then you’ll die!”

  “So we die,” says Bernal, and yells: “But in the long run we’ll win the war! There’ll be more and more of us!”

  The Indian replies with a chuckle.

  “How? With what women?” he asks.

  “If there are no Spanish ones, we’ll have yours,” says the captain slowly, savoring the words, and adds: “And we’ll make children on them who’ll be your masters!”

  (130)

  1564: Plymouth

  Hawkins

  The four ships, under command of Captain John Hawkins, await the morning tide. As soon as the water rises they will sail for Africa, to hunt people on the coasts of Guinea. From there they will head for the Antilles to trade slaves for sugar, hides, and pearls.

  A couple of years ago, Hawkins made this voyage on his own. In a ship named Jesus, he sold three hundred slaves as contraband in Santo Domingo. Queen Elizabeth exploded with fury when she learned of it, but her anger vanished as soon as she saw the balance sheet of the voyage. In no time at all she made herself a business partner of the audacious Devonshire “seadog,” and the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester and London’s lord mayor bought first shares in the new enterprise.

  As the sailors hoist the sails, Captain Hawkins harangues them from the bridge. The British navy will make his orders its own in centuries to come: “Serve God every day!” Hawkins orders at the top of his lungs. “Love one another! Save your provisions! Watch out for fire! Keep good company!”

  (127, 187, and 198)

  1564: Bogotà

  Vicissitudes of Married Life

  “Tell me, do I seem different?”

  “Well, a bit.”

  “A bit what?”

  “A bit fat, ma’am, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “See if you can guess. Fat from eating or from laughing?”

  “Fat from loving, I’d say, meaning no offense.”

  “No offense, woman, that’s what I called you about …”

  The lady is very worried. Her body has had little patience, unable to wait for the absent husband; and someone has told her that he’s due back in Cartagena. When he sees her tummy, what won’t he do, that dour man who cures headaches by cutting off heads?

  “That’s why I called you, Juana. Help me, you who can fly and can drink wine from an empty cup. Tell me. Is my husband coming in the Cartagena fleet?”

  In a silver washbasin the black woman Juana Garcia mixes waters, soils, bloods, weeds. She dips a little green book into the basin and lets it float. Then she buries her nose in it. “No,” she says, “he’s not coming. And if you want to see your husband, come and take a peek.”

  The lady bends over the basin. By the light of the candles she sees him. He is seated beside a pretty woman in a place of many silks, while someone cuts a dress of fancy cloth. “Oh, you faker! Tell me, Juana, what place is this?”

  “The house of a tailor on the island of Santo Domingo.”

  In the dense water appears the image of the tailor cutting out a sleeve.

  “Shall I stop it?” says the black woman.

  “Yes, stop it!”

  The hand emerges from the basin with a sleeve of fine cloth dripping between the fingers.

  The lady trembles, but with fury.

  “He deserves more fat bellies, the lousy pig!”

  From a corner, a puppy snores with half-open eyes.

  (194)

  1565: Road to Lima

  The Spy

  On Don Antonio Solar’s hacienda by the Lurín River, the melons have grown as big as suns. It is the first time that this fruit, brought from Spain, has been planted around here, and the foreman sends the master ten samples for his pleasure and pride. Th
e size of these melons is comparable with that of the Cuzapa Valley radishes, of which they say five horses can be tied to their tops.

  Two Indians take the foreman’s offering to Lima in two sacks. He has given them a letter to deliver with the melons to Don Antonio Solar. “If you eat any of the melons,” he warns them, “this letter will tell him about it.”

  When they are a couple of leagues from the city of the kings, the Indians sit down to rest in a ravine.

  “How would this peculiar fruit taste?”

  “Must be marvelous.”

  “How about trying it? One melon, just one.”

  “The letter will sing,” one of the Indians recalls.

  They look at the letter and hate it. They look around for a prison for it. They hide it behind a rock where it can’t see anything, and devour a melon in quick bites, sweet juicy pulp, delicious beyond imagining. Then they eat another to even up the sacks. Then they pick up the letter, tuck it in their clothing, throw the sacks over their shoulders, and continue on their way.

  (76)

  1565: Yauyoa

  That Stone Is Me

  The king’s official is awaiting the witch, skilled in deviltries, who has been summoned to come to explain herself. Face down at his feet lies the stone idol. The witch was caught communing secretly with the idol and will soon pay for her heresy. But before the punishment, the official wants to hear from her own lips her confession of talks with the Devil. While he waits for her to be brought, he amuses himself stomping on the idol and meditating on the fate of these Indians, whom God must be sorry to have made.

  The soldiers throw down the witch and leave her trembling on the threshold.

  Then the ugly old stone idol greets the ugly old witch in the Quechua language: “Welcome, princess,” says the hoarse voice from under the official’s foot.

  The official is flabbergasted and falls sprawling on the floor.

  As she fans him with a hat, the old woman clutches the fainting man’s coat and cries: “Don’t punish me, sir, don’t break it!”

  The old woman wants to explain to him that divinities live in the stone and if it were not for the idol, she would not know her name, or who she is, or where she comes from and would be wandering the earth naked and lost.

  (221)

  Prayer of the Incas, Seeking God

  Hear me,

  from the sea up there where Thou livest,

  from the sea down here where Thou art.

  Creator of the world,

  potter of man,

  Lord of Lords,

  to Thee,

  with my eyes that despair to see Thee

  or just for yearning to know Thee

  if I see Thee,

  know Thee,

  ponder Thee,

  understand Thee,

  Thou wilt see me and know me.

  The sun, the moon,

  the day,

  the night,

  the summer,

  the winter,

  they don’t walk idly,

  but in good order,

  to the appointed place

  and to a good end.

  Everywhere Thou carriest with Thee

  Thy royal scepter.

  Hear me,

  listen to me.

  Let me not tire out,

  let me not die.

  (105)

  1565: Mexico City

  Ceremony

  The gilded tunic glints. Forty-five years after his death, Moctezuma heads the procession. The horsemen move at walking pace into the central square of Mexico City. Dancers step out to the thunder of drums and the lament of chirimía pipes. Many Indians, clad in white, hold up flowered branches; others, enormous clay cooking pots. The smoke of incense mingles with the aromas of spicy sauces.

  Before Cortés’s palace, Moctezuma dismounts.

  The door opens. Among his pages, armed with tall, sharpened halberds, appears Cortes.

  Moctezuma bows his head, crowned with feathers and gold and precious stones. Kneeling, he offers garlands of flowers. Cortés touches his shoulder. Moctezuma rises. With a slow gesture he tears off his mask and reveals the curly hair and high-pointed mustachio of Alonso de Avila.

  Alonso de Avila, lord of gallows and knife, owner of Indians, lands, and mines, enters the palace of Martín Cortés, marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca. The son of a conquistador opens his house to the nephew of another conquistador.

  Today the conspiracy against the king of Spain officially commences. In the life of the colony, all is not soirees and tournaments, card and hunting parties.

  (28)

  1566: Madrid

  The Fanatic of Human Dignity

  Fray Bartolomé de las Casas is going over the heads of the king and of the Council of the Indies. Will he be punished for his disobedience? At ninety-two, it matters little to him. He has been fighting for half a century. Are not his exploits the key to his tragedy? They have let him win many battles, but the outcome of the war was decided in advance. He has known it for a long time.

  His fingers won’t obey him anymore. He dictates the letter. Without anybody’s permission, he addresses himself directly to the Holy See. He asks Pius V to order the wars against the Indians stopped and to halt the plunder that uses the cross as an excuse. As he dictates he becomes indignant, the blood rises to his head, and the hoarse and feeble voice that remains to him trembles.

  Suddenly he falls to the floor.

  (70 and 90)

  1566: Madrid

  Even if You Lose, It’s Still Worthwhile

  The lips move, speak soundless words. “Forgivest Thou me, Lord?”

  Fray Bartolomé pleads for mercy at the Last Judgment for having believed that black and Moorish slaves would alleviate the fate of the Indians.

  He lies stretched out, damp forehead, pallid, and the lips do not stop moving. From far off, a slow thunderclap. Fray Bartolomé, the giver of birth, the doer, closes his eyes. Although always hard of hearing, he hears rain beating on the roof of the Atocha monastery. The rain moistens his face. He smiles.

  One of the priests who accompanies him murmurs something about the strange light that has illumined his face. Through the rain, free of doubt and torment, Fray Bartolomé is traveling for the last time to the green worlds where he knew happiness.

  “I thank Thee,” say his lips in silence while he reads the prayers by the light of fireflies, splashed by the rain that strikes the palm-frond roof.

  “I thank Thee,” he says as he celebrates Mass in sheds without walls and baptizes naked children in rivers.

  The priests cross themselves. The clock’s last grains of sand have fallen. Someone turns over the hourglass so that time will not be interrupted.

  (27, 70, and 90)

  1568: Los Teques

  Guaicaipuro

  Never again will the river reflect his face, his panache of lofty plumes.

  This time the gods did not listen to his wife, Urquía, who pleaded that neither bullets nor disease should touch him and that sleep, the brother of death, should never forget to return him to the world at the end of each night.

  The invaders felled Guaicaipuro with bullets.

  Since the Indians elected him chief, there was no truce in this valley nor in the Avila Mountains. In the newly born city of Caracas people crossed themselves when in a low voice they spoke his name.

  Confronting death and its officials, the last of the free men has fallen shouting, Kill me, kill me, free yourselves from fear.

  (158)

  1568: Mexico City

  The Sons of Cortés

  Martín was the name of Hernán Cortés’s oldest son, his blood son born of the Indian woman Malinche. His father died leaving him a meager annual pension.

  Martin is also the name of Hernán Cortés’s legitimate son, born of a Spanish woman, a count’s daughter and niece of a duke. This Martín has inherited the coat of arms and the fortune: He is marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, owner of thousands of Indians and leagues of t
his land that his father had humiliated and loved and chosen to lie in forever.

  On a saddle of crimson velvet embroidered with gold, Martín the marquis used to wander the streets of Mexico. Behind him went his red-liveried guards armed with swords. Whoever crossed his path doffed his hat, paid homage, and joined his entourage. The other Martin, the bastard, was one of the retinue.

  Martín the marquis wanted to break with Spain and proclaim himself king of Mexico. When the plot failed, he babbled regrets and named names. His life was spared.

  Martín the bastard, who has served his brother in the conspiracy and everything else, is now writhing on the rack. At his side, the scribe records: He was stripped and put in the cincha. On being admonished, he said he owed nothing. The torturer gives a turn to the wheel. The cords break the flesh and stretch the bones.