Ines of My Soul (15 page)

Valdivia did not leave my house for two days. During that time the shutters were never opened, no one made empanadas, my Indian servants tiptoed around silently, and Catalina saw that the beggars were fed corn soup. That loyal woman brought wine and food to our bed. She also prepared a tub with warm water so we could bathe, a Peruvian custom she had taught me. Like every Spaniard, Pedro thought it was dangerous to immerse the body in that way, that it caused weakening of the lungs and thinning of the blood, but I assured him that that Peruvians bathed every day and none had soft lungs or watery blood. Those two days went by in a sigh, as we told each other our pasts and made love in a blazing whirlwind, a giving that was never enough, a crazed desire to sink into each other, to die and die again. . . . Ay, Pedro! Ay, Inés! We would fall back together, our arms and legs still entangled, exhausted, bathed in the same sweat, talking in whispers. Then our desire would be reborn with greater intensity among damp sheets that bore a male scent—iron, wine, and horse—and a woman's—kitchen, smoke, and sea—
our
smell, unique and unforgettable, the breath of the jungle, our combined essence. We learned to rise to the heavens and moan together, lashed by the whip that drove us to the edge of death, and finally engulfed us in profound lethargy. Again and again, we awakened, ready to invent love all over again, until the third day dawned with its riot of roosters and the aroma of baked bread. Then Pedro, transformed, asked for his clothing and his sword.

Oh, how tenacious memory is! Mine never leaves me in peace; it fills my mind with images, words, pain, and love. I feel that I am living once more what I have already lived. The effort of writing this account lies not in the remembering but in the slow work of putting pen to paper. I have never had a good hand, despite the efforts of González de Marmolejo, but now my writing is nearly illegible. There is a certain urgency because the weeks are flying by and I have much left to tell. I am weary. My pen scratches the paper and I am spattered with ink. In sum, this labor is too much for me. Why do I insist on doing it? Those who truly knew me are dead. Only you, Isabel, have an idea of who I am, but that idea is colored by your affection and the debt you believe you owe me. You owe me nothing, I have told you that many times. I am the one who is indebted because you satisfied my deepest need: to be a mother. You are my friend and my confidante, the one person who knows my secrets, including some that, out of modesty, I did not share with your father. We get along well, you and I. You have a good sense of humor and we laugh together, that woman's laugh born of complicity. I am grateful that you and your children have moved here, when your own home is two blocks away. You tell me that you need company while your husband is away at war, as once mine was, but I do not believe you. The truth is that you are afraid that living as a widow I will die alone in this large old house, which very soon will be yours, as all my other earthly goods already are. I am comforted by the idea of seeing you become a wealthy woman. I can go to the other world in peace, since I have faithfully fulfilled the promise to protect you I made to your father when he brought you to my house. And though I was Pedro de Valdivia's lover at the time, that did not stop me from welcoming you with open arms.

By the time you came into my life, Isabel, the city of Santiago had begun to thrive, and we were giving ourselves certain airs, although Santiago was not truly a city, it was barely a village. Because of his merits and his spotless character, Rodrigo de Quiroga had become Pedro's favorite captain, and my best friend. I knew that he was in love with me—a woman always knows—but he did not betray his feelings by gesture or word. Rodrigo would not have been capable of admitting his love even in his secret heart, out of loyalty to Valdivia, his superior officer and his friend. I suppose that I loved Rodrigo too—it is possible to love two men at the same time—but I kept that sentiment to myself in order not to damage his honor or his life. But this is not the moment to go into all that; it will come later.

There are things I have been too busy to tell you, and if I do not write them down now I will carry them with me to the tomb. Despite my desire to tell you everything, I have left out a lot. I have had to select only what is essential, but I am confident that I have not betrayed the truth. This is my story, and that of a man, Don Pedro de Valdivia, whose heroic feats were recorded by chroniclers in rigorous detail; his exploits will endure in those pages till the end of time. However, I know Valdivia in a way history could never know him: what he feared and how he loved.

My relationship with Pedro de Valdivia turned my life upside down. I could not live without him. One day without seeing him and I was feverish. A night without being in his arms was torment. At first, more than love, I felt a blind, reckless passion for him, which fortunately he returned. If not, I would have lost my mind. Later, when we were overcoming obstacles placed in our path by destiny, passion gave way to love. I admired him as much as I desired him; I succumbed totally before his energy; I was seduced by his courage and his idealism.

Valdivia exercised his authority matter-of-factly; his mere presence demanded obedience. He had an imposing, irresistible personality, but intimacy transformed him. In my bed he was mine; he gave himself to me with his whole heart, like a youth in his first love. He was accustomed to the rough life of war, and he was impatient and restless, yet we could spend days at a time in idleness, devoted to learning about each other, recounting the paths of our destinies with true urgency, as if our lives would end before the week was out. I kept count of the days and hours we spent together. They were my treasure. Pedro counted our embraces and kisses. It amazes me that neither of us was frightened by the passion that today, objectively, without love and seen from the distance of age, seems oppressive.

Pedro spent his nights in my house, unless he had to travel to Ciudad de los Reyes or visit his properties in Porco and La Canela. When that happened, he took me with him. I loved to see him on his horse—he looked so much the soldier—and to watch him issue orders to his subalterns and his comrades in arms. He knew many things I had no way of knowing. He would tell me about things he had read, and share his ideas and his plans. He was magnanimous with his gifts: sumptuous dresses, rich cloths, jewels, and gold coins. At first his generosity bothered me—it seemed an attempt to buy my affection—but I became accustomed to it. I began to put money away with the thought of securing my future. “You never know what can happen,” my mother always said. She is the one who taught me to hide money. I had also come to know that Pedro was not a good administrator, and was not overly interested in his holdings. Like every Spanish hidalgo, he believed that he was above hard labor and vile cash, and that he could spend like a duke though he knew nothing about earning money. The land and mine given to him by Pizarro were a stroke of good fortune that he accepted with the same indifference with which he was disposed to lose them. Once, having had to earn my living from the time I was a girl and horrified by the way he squandered money, I dared say that to him, but he silenced me with a kiss. “Gold is for spending, and thanks be to God, I have more than enough,” he replied. That did not calm me, just the opposite.

Valdivia treated his Indians better than other Spaniards did, but he was always strict. He had established work schedules, he fed his people well, and he obliged his overseers to use restraint in punishments, while in other mines and haciendas the encomenderos made women and children work with the men.

“That isn't my way, Inés. I respect Spanish law wherever possible,” he replied haughtily when I commented on it.

“What determines up to what point it is ‘possible'?”

“Christian morality and good judgment. Just as it is not good practice to work horses till they drop, one should not abuse the Indians. Without them, the mines and the land have no value. I would like to live in harmony with them, but you cannot subdue them without using force.”

“I doubt that subduing them helps them in any way, Pedro.”

“Do you doubt the benefits of Christianity and civilization?” he argued in turn.

“I know that sometimes mothers let their newborns die of hunger so they will not grow fond of them, knowing they will be taken from them to be slaves. Weren't they better off before we came?”

“No, Inés. They suffered more under the Inca than they do now. We must look to the future. We are here, and here we will stay. One day there will be a new race in this land, a mixture of our blood and that of the Indians, all of us Christians, united by Spanish law and tongue. When that day comes, there will be peace and prosperity.”

Pedro believed that, but he died without seeing it, and I, too, will die before that dream is fulfilled; we have come to the end of 1580 and the Indians still despise us.

Soon the people of Cuzco grew used to thinking of us as a couple, although I imagine that malicious comments circulated behind our backs. In Spain I would have been treated like a kept woman, but in Peru no one denied me respect—at least to my face—which would have been to deny respect to Pedro de Valdivia. Everyone knew that he had a wife in Extremadura, but that was no novelty; half the Spaniards were in a similar situation, their legitimate wives a hazy memory. In the New World men needed immediate love, or a substitute for it. Besides, men have mistresses in Spain. The Spanish empire is strewn with bastards, and many of the conquistadors are bastards themselves.

Once or twice Pedro spoke to me of his regrets, not for having ceased to love Marina, but because that marriage was an impediment to marrying
me
. Once I could have wed any of the men who had courted me, he said, and now they didn't dare look my way. However, I never lost any sleep over that. I realized from the start that Pedro and I could never marry unless Marina died, something neither of us wanted, and so I had torn that hope from my heart and instead rejoiced in the love and complicity we shared, never thinking about the future, or gossip or shame or sin.

We were lovers and friends. We often argued at the top of our lungs, because neither of us was calm by nature, but that did not drive us apart. “From this moment on, I have your back covered, Pedro, so you can concentrate on the battles you have before you,” I told him on that second night of lovemaking, and he took me at my word and never forgot it. As for me, I learned to overcome the stubborn silence that determined my behavior when I got very angry. The first time I decided to punish Pedro with silence, he took my face in his hands, pierced me with his blue eyes, and forced me to confess what was bothering me. “I cannot read your mind, Inés. We can make this short if you will tell me what it is you want of me.” Similarly, I did not hesitate to confront him when he became impatient and arrogant, or when a decision he'd made seemed questionable. We were alike: both of us strong, domineering, and ambitious. He wanted to found a kingdom, and I wanted to be part of that with him. What he felt, I felt; we shared the same illusions.

At first I simply listened in silence when he mentioned Chile. I did not know what he was talking about, but I hid my ignorance. I listened to the soldiers who brought me their clothing to wash, or came to buy empanadas, and in that way learned about Diego de Almagro's failed attempt. The men who survived that adventure and the battle of Las Salinas had ended up without a single maravedí in their purses. Their clothes were in tatters and often they crept up to the patio door to ask for charity, for food. That was why they were called the
rotos
of Chile, the down and out. They would not stand in the line of indigenous beggars, but they were just as poor. Chile, according to those men's descriptions, was an accursed land, but I had no doubt that Pedro de Valdivia had good reason to be going there. As I listened, I developed a keen interest in his plan.

“If it costs me my life, I will attempt the conquest of Chile,” he told me.

“And I will go with you.”

“This is not an undertaking for women. I cannot expose you to the dangers of that adventure, Inés, but it is also true that I can't be without you.”

“Don't even think it! We go together or you go nowhere,” was my reply.

We traveled to Ciudad de los Reyes, which had been founded on top of an Inca cemetery, for Pedro to obtain Francisco Pizarro's authorization to go to Chile. Though we spent every night together, we could not stay in the same house; we did not want to encourage gossip and provoke the priests, who stuck their fingers in every pie though they themselves were no paragons of virtue. I rarely saw the sun in Ciudad de los Reyes; the sky was always overcast. It didn't rain, but mist glistened in my hair and coated everything with a greenish patina. According to Catalina, who went with us, the mummies of the Incas buried beneath the houses wandered through the streets at night, but I never saw them.

While I was inquiring about what would be needed for an enterprise as complicated as marching a thousand leagues, founding cities, and pacifying Indians, Pedro was spending day after day at the palace of the marqués gobernador in social and political gatherings, both of which he found boring. The effusive show of respect and friendship that Pizarro lavished on Valdivia nurtured poisonous envy in the less favored military men and encomenderos. The city, still in its infancy, was already snarled in the gossip and machinations that characterize it today. The court was seething with intrigue, and everything had a price, including honor. Ambitious and fawning men outdid themselves to gain the favor of the marqués gobernador, the only person with the power to assign grants. There were incalculable treasures in Peru, but not enough to satisfy the greed of so many petitioners. Pizarro could not understand why, when everyone else had their hands out, grabbing everything they could, Valdivia was willing to give back his rich land and mine in order to repeat the error that had cost Diego de Almagro so dearly.