Mr. Eternity (18 page)

I called him over. He looked at the photograph for a long time. There they were, with sailing ships behind them, and an enormous fish hung up at the edge of the frame. If it was staged, I thought it was poorly staged. The fish should have been emphasized.

“Uh oh,” said Azar.

“It complicates things, yeah.”

“What do we do? What is this photo? What’s happening here?”

We certainly couldn’t ask John Baxter. He came closer now, obviously trying to chase us out. He said, “You got a bomb in your underpants? You think I should pay your doctor bill? You wanna mare each other, you two?”

Azar had heard enough. “Gooseneck,” he said. “Indigo. Charge.”

We leave Santa Inés in three ships. It isn’t possible to travel up the Pirahao without one of Daniel de Fo’s sun-powered boats, so we must sail to Panama first. We will cross the isthmus at a place called Nombre de Dios and proceed down the western coast of America to Piru, where we’ll climb into the cordillera and enter the lowland basin from the west.

The sea is a river that smells like tears and garbage. Our ships are floating houses. For one day all is quiet and serene, but on our first morning at sea, with the low green coastline still visible, Castellana wakes in a evil passion. His eyes are like powder pans. His hair stands on end. When an unescorted Spanish galleon is sighted on the horizon, under the dome of dark clouds, he loses his reason. He cries out that the devil lurks behind the cross. He says that God’s malicious design will be realized whether we abet him or not. He orders the men to attack the galleon, their own countrymen, and they obey him. This is their loyalty, which is also a kind of fear. We are one day from Santa Inés and we have already committed an act of treason.

“This is the conquistador’s classic mistake,” says Daniel de Fo. “They involve themselves in petty crimes right away and they cut off their retreat into civilian life. Then the only solution is to raise the stakes. They have to win their innocence with great deeds and buy it with Indian gold. Is this Castellana’s idea? Does he want to bind us all in a fraternity of wrongdoing? I may be giving him too much credit. He is not Cortés.”

Sometimes I know that Castellana has no reality of his own. He is only the manifestation of God’s contempt for man, as Jesus is the manifestation of his love.

“It’s likely that he just needed to purge an excess of choler,” says
Daniel de Fo. “The best way to do this is by spilling the blood of one’s countrymen.”

It’s true that Castellana calms down after the battle, nor can he explain why he has done what he’s done. He is wild with anxiety about it. He retreats to his cabin with the royal notary, whom he persuades to take his side, and drafts petition after petition. Each one lays out the circumstances of the encounter in more florid language. The galleon attacked first, they were flying a Moorish banner, they were Indians, they were African slaves who’d mutinied and taken the ship. In Spanish the past is written as history, an invention of men, and remains bound to the present forever. In Pirahao it is not proper to speak of anything that does not exist in the memory of a living person.

Every few hours Castellana appears on deck in order to make arcane speeches. Meanwhile the notary comes around with the most recent petition and we all sign it, each according to his ability to do so. For my own signature I draw an obscene picture, but I am ordered to change it. The men spend the hours between these visitations plotting mutiny and darting suspicious glances at one another, but they lack the courage for decisive action. There are those among them who swear that Castellana was floating a hand’s breadth above the deck during the recent engagement, and no one will challenge a man like that.

By the time we reach Panama he has gone mad again. His beard is like a shout. His crushed velvet surtunic is soaked with the spittle of command. He is strutting around the deck in full armor, bellowing exhortations, pounding his breastplate, laughing and singing and praising God. He lifts the skirts of his chain-mail undershirt and asks us to kiss them. Kiss my habergeon, he says. One morning he takes off all his clothes and stands weeping in the rain and wind and salt spray. We miss Nombre de Dios and land instead at Cuervo, twenty miles up the beach. Castellana orders the men to sack the town.

“Men cannot prevail over what has been ordained by Heaven,” he says.

The men aren’t willing to challenge him. They can’t desert because
they can’t expect leniency from the Spanish authorities. It is just as Daniel de Fo says. They are bound by their shared guilt to this madman of a commander.

So they sack Cuervo. They leave it smoking and blackened in the drenching rain. Then we all hurry across the isthmus on stolen mules, in a forest where fish swim through the trees and the lianas sprout blinking watery eyes. We hurry because we need to outrun the news of our crimes. And meanwhile, whenever the weather permits, Castellana drafts and signs documents. This is the great pastime of Christians abroad.

Even in our extremity, especially in our extremity, the vicar general says mass. The men attend to this ritual with greater energy than before because now they believe themselves to be in mortal sin. There is a different mass for each day of the week. On Sundays a mass for Christian kings and princes and for the people. On Mondays a mass for the conversion of the heathen. On Tuesdays a mass for all those who give alms. On Wednesdays a mass for the souls in purgatory. No one knows what day it is.

“What about a mass for Jews cursed with immortality?” says Daniel de Fo, but he only says it to me.

At the South Sea we commandeer some fishing boats and sail down the coast to Piru. Then we debark and begin the long climb up the escarpment of the Andes to the city of Quito. It is an Inka city, and I have heard of these Inka from the Christians. Their stonework is so monumental and precise that the Christians believe it must be the work of the devil. But we soon discover that there is nothing to fear from these people. Quito itself is a city for which there are few words, because the people who built it are now discouraged from speaking their own language. It has begun to fade away. Soon it will exist only in the histories the Christians tell themselves, and it will become a Christian city, and its past will cease to be a true past and will become only the time before Christianity. This obliteration is what I have wanted for Anaquitos, but now I have forgotten how to want anything.

The strain of the climb quiets Castellana’s nerves. His only additional crimes are the murder of a mule-driver on the coast and the execution of
some fishermen in Piru. He undertakes these crimes while under the influence of an Inka medicine called hanapulpac and he feels he cannot be called to account for them.

We are met in Quito by the Christian governor, Don Hernando Rosa y Blanco, who feigns an intimate knowledge of our expedition and gives us a tremendous feast. It is the first time any of us have had Inkan potatoes, which the Christians call earth truffles. Castellana falls into a dark trance during the meal. He froths at the mouth. Nobody says anything. We are fugitives from justice even if nobody in Quito knows it yet, and we can’t delay even for a short time. The next day we depart in a rush, in the rain and cold, and climb once again into the mountains.

In Quito we have enlisted a group of five Muro Indians to help us survive in the forest. The Muro are not known to me and I cannot speak their language. They do not live in cities. They do not build houses. Instead they inhale when the earth itself inhales. They exhale when it exhales. They are interested in time and they have adopted the Christian calendar. For them everything has its season. Now it is May. It is the month to conceive a child. Soon it will be June, the month for drying ants.

For three days we climb. For the first time I see ice. The mountains have lost all their hair. I feel a kind of cold for which Pirahao has no words, and yet I feel it anyway. Daniel de Fo tells stories to keep our spirits up.

“I shipped out one summer with an Irishman called Saint Brendan,” he says. “His Christian name was Saint even before he became a saint. Isn’t that interesting? In those days the Americas did not exist, but in just this spot there was a drowsy sea monster so large it was like a mountainous island. Its skin was soft and blue and when it sighed, fire erupted from its blowhole. We built cities on its back. I told everyone it was madness to build such ornate palaces and churches when at any moment the creature might wake up and dive beneath the waves, but they told me this is how it is at all times, in all places, and it is a vanity to believe otherwise. We live only at the pleasure of God, who made the world and
who will unmake it one day, and our existence on this earth is only provisional. Then the creature did dive and everyone drowned, except for me. I held on to a floating wooden statue of the Virgin. Eventually I was picked up by some Norsemen. They were on their way to the fleshpots of Vinland. You should have seen Vinland! A land of meat and honey. A land of taverns and intricate puppet shows. But it doesn’t exist anymore.”

He talks and talks, but at the same time he is listening. Then one morning he is quiet and thoughtful. He tells me that he has discovered an interesting thing. Both Miguel Oreja and Domingos Alvarado have been named
maestro del campo
. Neither knows of the other’s appointment. This is a profound mistake on the part of the captain general.

“We can use this to destroy him,” he says. He laughs, haha. “We’ve got him now.”

I ask what is to be gained by destroying Castellana, hateful person though he is. He says that we’ll never survive in the jungle with a commander like that. He says we’ll never be able to do what we want to do. I ask what it is we want to do.

“The point is that whatever it is, we can’t do it as long as he’s in charge. We can’t do nothing either, if that’s what we want.”

I feel myself growing emptier. My thoughts are scattered behind me on mountain paths. I worry that in becoming both Christian and Pirahao, I have become nothing. But it doesn’t matter. A person may do anything and think nothing.

So I do what Daniel de Fo tells me to do. I approach Miguel Oreja, who feels a fascination for me, as all men do. To amuse myself I allow him to gratify his fascination, although this is not part of the plan. This enrages some of the other men. I am the only woman and many of them want to rape me, but I am the translator, a military asset, and I am protected. Now I tell Miguel Oreja that El Dorado is not far below the cordillera and I want to discuss some strategy with him. This is my purpose on the expedition. I know the city and I know how it might be taken. But then I ask him if he is the right man to talk to. Is he not the
maestro del campo
? I tell him I have heard that Domingos Alvarado is the
maestro del campo
.

In the morning Miguel Oreja seeks out Castellana and demands clarification. Castellana will not discuss the matter with him. Then someone brings word of this discussion to Domingos Alvarado, who is furious. An argument begins. Titles are important. Titles determine the share of gold that each man will receive. Thus the expedition begins to unravel, just as Daniel de Fo said it would.

Now Daniel de Fo raises other questions among the men. He has an instinct for mischief and he is not afraid of anything. He has no fear because he can never die.

“Who’s the paymaster here?” he says. “I’ve got a few things I need to buy. I’m going to want my money when we get to El Dorado.”

But Castellana has named no paymaster, and before long all the men are arguing and protesting. Who is the paymaster? Who’s the captain of horse? Who are the admirals? Castellana cares nothing for any title except the one he holds himself. He grows confused and angry. He begins to hand out titles like they’re coconut candy, one to you and one to you. He decides to retain Miguel Oreja as
maestro del campo
and demote Domingos Alvarado, but later he reverses his decision. He shows himself to be fickle and indecisive. He loses his aura of terror. He becomes an administrator. He becomes a mortal man.

Now Daniel de Fo tells me that I must persuade the vicar general to condemn Castellana. He cannot do this himself because he is a converso and the vicar general doesn’t trust him. For me it’s different. I am an Indian. I am a soul to be saved.

So I seek out the priest and tell him I want to be baptized. I tell him that my soul is in danger as a result of my participation in this enterprise. It is not untrue, although it is what Daniel de Fo tells me to say. It is not untrue and as I listen to myself speaking, I slip in and out of focus. I am a figure in the corner of God’s eye, barely seen, barely regarded, and I begin to hope that the vicar general can help me after all.

He is only too happy to baptize me. He doesn’t know that I was
baptized in Santa Inés. He takes me to a quiet mountain stream, away from the fighting and shouting, and asks me obscure questions. But when he performs the rite, I feel nothing. I am disappointed. I am embarrassed for God. Nevertheless I must play my part, so I recite the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the Anima Christi. I pretend that my recitation is spontaneous, the voice of Heaven speaking through me, even though I’ve heard these prayers thousands of times. The vicar general chooses to think of this as a miracle. He begins to weep. He tells me of other miracles.

“There’s a church,” he says, “called Nostra Señora de Gademarche, where there’s a painting of Our Lady that runs with olive oil. You can use the oil to cure any sickness, but if you let it run for a year without disturbing it, it turns to flesh and blood. Is this not wonderful?”

I think of an urn full of thumbs and bloody hair. I am not Christian enough to understand why this is not an abomination of the devil.

The vicar general is filthy. His beard has grown long and tangled. His eyes are the color of raw meat. I think of him as he was in Santa Inés, a withdrawn and tidy man, conservative in his outlook, who was scandalized by Miguel Oreja’s wild dissertation on the perfection of man. Now I think of Santa Inés itself. I think of the alcalde and I promise myself I will send gold down the river so that the poor man can have his suicide if he still wants it. There is no gold, but I will send it anyway. The idea of suicide is very funny in Pirahao. In Spanish it is one of the most horrible things.