Mr. Eternity (27 page)

“And this is lignum vitae,” said the ancient mariner. “You can cure the clap with lignum vitae wood. Quaco taught me that, didn’t you, Quaco?”

We had given no thought to the possibility that we would find any treasure. We were drifting along, so to speak, taking things as they came. But we’d hardly started digging when the ancient mariner told us to hang on. He stepped forward and lifted a small figurine out of the sand. It was a woman with the head of a cat.

“This isn’t right,” he said. “This is the wrong treasure.” He slapped his thigh in frustration and sat down in the sand. “Forget it, boys. I’m sorry. It’s a bust.”

We were staring at this mysterious artifact, which was significantly weathered but still artful and stylish.

“It looks pretty authentic,” said Azar. “And it was right here where you said it would be.”

Quaco was digging around. He found a corroded metal box with a broken latch. Inside there was a worn amulet of some kind, a flattened grimacing face, and another figurine. An animal like an ostrich.

“What is this?” he said.

“I think it must be the stuff from El Dorado. That’s a karawa bird.”

“From El Dorado?” said Azar. He was peering through the viewfinder on the camera, trying to ask leading questions, but he was out of his depth.

“El Dorado,” said the ancient mariner. “Sure.”

“Where are the coins?” said Quaco.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. I never cared about the coins.”

“I’m sorry anyway. You trusted me with them.”

“I’m not clear on the main point,” said Azar.

No one was listening to him. Quaco was sifting through the sand. This was all more than I could assimilate. My mind shuddered to a halt.

Quaco said, “Don’t feel so bad. You can sell these things to a museum.”

“Oh sure,” said the ancient mariner. “I guess.”

Then he seemed to perk up again.

“Do you remember the kid who helped us steal the coins?”

“No.”

“I remember him a little. I want to say he was a Turk.”

“He wasn’t a Turk.”

They stood together, squinting into the past. Azar and I had nothing to contribute. We were speechless.

“But I didn’t steal these things, though,” he told us.

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Quaco.

“It matters to me. This particular treasure I didn’t steal. It was given to me by a goddess.”

When we arrive in Anaquitos, we do not find houses roofed in gold. We do not find bread made from crushed pearls. We do not find a king who covers himself in gold dust and takes a ceremonial bath each morning. We do not find white Indians. We do not find Indians with some intimation of Christian theology. We do not find the city I remember.

We abandon our brigantines on the beach upriver and walk down the white highway. We meet no resistance. There are no gates. We see the great earthen mounds, which were once as smooth as a bald man’s head, and they are dotted with trees. We see the canals and streams that watered the manioc fields, and others that carried away the sewage, and they are not flowing at all. The fish ponds are dry. In the dazzling white plazas the macha trees have died and the fig trees have gone wild and pulled up the paving stones. The air is thick with flies. There are filthy people drunk at midday but many of the streets are empty and many of the houses are falling down. The market women have nothing to sell. They regard us with revulsion but without fear.

I see all of this, a city in decay, but the Pirahao do not, because for the Pirahao it is not proper to compare what exists now to what existed at an earlier time. The Christians do not see it either because they are not here, because for them Anaquitos does not exist at all. The Christians see a beautiful white city instead. They see El Dorado. They see heaven on earth.

“It’s like a dream from the tale of Amadis,” says Miguel Oreja.

Here is the city where I was born. I do not think about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. The city will not be destroyed and it will be destroyed and it has already been destroyed, and I have no home in the world.

We march into the city and nothing happens. We stand in the white
plaza looking around and waiting. The air is the color of inaga fruit. There are iguanas here and I wonder if the people have forgotten how to eat them, or if there are now so few people that those who remain cannot eat the iguanas faster than they hatch. For a long time no one speaks to us, and then a madman comes. His speech is unintelligible and his hair is matted with monkey blood. The Christians think he is a priest. I tell them there are no priests in Anaquitos. There are no rituals. There are no gods. I try to make them understand how this world is different from their world, but I know that for them there is only one world.

Here is the city where I was born, and here are the people with whom I once belonged, but I have forgotten how to see them. I can see parts of them, but I can’t see them whole. An old woman is a strip of cotton cloth and a yellow incisor. A hungry boy is an eyebrow and a shoulder blade. I do not think of my childhood, although I think of it continuously. I do not think of the pet monkey in the basket and the tapir stew and the pieces of old pottery I dug up in the courtyard. I do not think of my father or of the days he spent teaching me to make black earth for the garden. I do not think of these things because it is not proper to think of the deep past. The deep past is not here anymore. The person to whom those things happened was called Xiako and she is not here anymore. I am Maria. I am not a Pirahao and I am not a Christian. I am nothing. I don’t think of this and I think of nothing else and I am stupid like the monkey when we made him drunk with rotting fruit.

There is no time for these things. There is no time to see the city or to wonder at its disintegration, because now we must undertake the business of politics. We must convert the Indians. We must read the Requerimiento. Miguel Oreja bounces on his toes and sings. His beard is a long bawdy sailor’s song.

I try to explain that there is no government to usurp, no king to negotiate with, no judges or mayors with whom we must come to terms. This city does not function in the way Christian cities function, and now it seems it does not function at all. But the Christians cannot understand this and because they cannot understand this I take them to see the Xipaohoani.
These are the oldest men in each family and they meet in the house of darkness at every change of the moon, but they have no power. They make suggestions and they are ignored. They are just old men. I take the Christians to see them because there is no one else for them to see.

Miguel Oreja is very pleased. He tells me that the Xipaohoani are the city’s governing body. He feels certain that once I explain the precepts of Christianity to them, we will immediately and spontaneously create a new Christian polity, the Kingdom of El Dorado, in which we will all live as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So I explain Christianity. I say, “In the upper sky there is a man. He makes the world. He has a wife but no man has eaten her. She is called Maria. He nails his son to a tree. This happens so long ago it is forgotten.”

“Maria,” says one of the old men. He tilts his head in my direction. I have already introduced myself as Maria. They think I am telling a story about myself.

“Yes,” I say.

To himself he says, “She is Maria. Her husband makes the world.”

All of this is meaningless. It is a joke. In Pirahao, a story is true only as long as someone in the story is still alive. Afterward, when there are no witnesses left, the story is never told again. A golden crucifix is an idol that represents the execution of a god in a time beyond memory. How can the Pirahao understand this? Even if they could understand it, it would be improper. Only the Christians make idols. To the Pirahao it is meaningless to revere an object.

But the Xipaohoani do not laugh, as I expect them to. They don’t laugh because they know the Christians are a people to be feared, strange and disgusting as they are. And this is when I learn what has happened to the city. The old men tell me that when the starving and wounded Christians came here for the first time, their presence coincided with the eruption of a plague. The Pirahao physicians, who can cure everything, could not cure it, and it was this plague that reduced the city to its present condition. Now the Pirahao have come to understand that the Christians are themselves the plague. I ask what they will do about it but they don’t
understand my question. There is nothing to do. I ask them if they think the plague will come again. The plague is already here, they say, pointing to the Christians.

For the Pirahao, the only truth is what happens. For the Christians, the truth is what doesn’t happen, the truth is everywhere, the truth is unknowable. I know that there can be no understanding between them, but there is no way to say this that is true in both languages.

I leave Miguel Oreja with the old men, to whom he tries to speak Spanish. I walk through the city looking for Daniel de Fo. I see the houses arranged neatly around each circular plaza, but their roofs are falling in. I tell myself I am Maria. I am not Xiako. Xiako is not here anymore and her anguish doesn’t exist.

Daniel de Fo is buying xaxa from a woman in the market. Rat meat and manioc. He takes a few bites and pronounces it the best thing he has ever eaten.

“If I live a thousand years, I’ll never have a meal so good,” he says.

He doesn’t finish it. He is in the sun but he isn’t sweating.

“There’s no treasure. I realize this now, but you must have known it all along. You tricked me!”

“Everything was different. I apologize.”

“I forgive you. But how will I get back to Spain now? How will I find Anna Gloria?”

“You have to find the world in which she exists. The language in which her name can be spoken. Otherwise you won’t know her even if you’re looking right at her.”

“That isn’t very helpful,” he says. Then he laughs and shakes his head. “What if she’s left Spain by now? She could be in Zanzibar, or Achem, or Goa. Every night I dream of camels and dust. What does it mean? It is the city of Aden?”

When the sun sets, there is a dance in the central plaza. I wonder if the Pirahao will murder the Christians as a way of controlling the spread of the disease, but they do nothing. They dance. They are a bare leg, a necklace of palm nuts, a wrinkled breast, a strong jaw. There are prostitutes
and they are nothing but their painted black teeth. At first the Christians will not dance because they say the music is idolatrous, but then they make themselves drunk with cashew wine. The Pirahao value drunkenness but I have trouble understanding why.

Soon everyone is drunk and laughing. There is a feast. There are electric eels, brazil nuts, piranha, otter, caiman, paási fruit. I eat baahóísi, the wild pig of the forest, and think of the alcalde of Santa Inés. There is nothing funny in the world but I’m the only one who isn’t laughing. I am the only one who can find no truth in any of this. The Christians are laughing and singing and Miguel Oreja is praising God and shoveling xaxa into his mouth. He is living in the kingdom of heaven and it is as good as he thought it would be. Even Daniel de Fo is happy, already thinking of Zanzibar, already looking forward to his reunion in the East Indies.

And this is how it is for weeks, laughter and cashew wine, xaxa and dancing. Miguel Oreja grows too fat to wear his armor. The vicar general is given a medicine that makes his arm grow back. This is the conquest, which succeeds and fails at the same time, and leaves everyone babbling absurdities, their lips greasy, their cheeks stuffed with rat meat.

All I see is a doomed people, black teeth, a strip of cotton, the forest picking apart the houses at the edge of the city. The truth is what happens. The world is only what it is. The world is filling up with numbers and gods, and soon the Pirahao won’t be able to live in it anymore. That is the truth. That is what happens.

We was just walking now mile after mile. I were tired but the shoreline were interesting the air the smells the cries of birds. Also I had my helper Christopher the kitten who sat on my head. I were surprised to realize one day how I were not longing for corn whiskey. It is because corn whiskey made a hole in me could only be filled with more corn whiskey but if I didn’t drink it then it didn’t make no holes in me. It seems the cure for this problem of corn whiskey is to be shipwrecked. Amazing. I were not gloomy no more it were like magic. I said to myself I am a adventurer I am the happy helper of Dan Keyshote Knight of the Feverish Courtingplace.

We was on our way to Saint Augustine which Old Dan called Saint Brendan. We was going to dig up the treasure of Anakitos which were buried just outside the city. However I had now got a superstition about the treasure I were not sure about it. I had a great belief in treasure you see I believed it could change everything yet now everything were already changed. I were feeling pretty good at least for now and I did not want everything to change again. Nothing will change said Old Dan. It will I said. No he said you must trust me I have gained and lost many treasures nothing has changed. It has I said for example the world ended. Oh he said yes that’s true. Well I said. I still think you are going to want that treasure he said.

The captain were quiet as we walked for he were exerting himself he were very tired. Peaches however had great powers of stamina he never stopped even when we rested he just kept circling us stumbling his eyes rattling in his face like peas in a can. He were not himself yet even after hours of walking. Oh said Old Dan oh no haha it will be days yet for poor Peaches he should of thought of that before he went crazy.

Meanwhile Old Dan told us stories about Florida. Long ago he said this
were such a wonderful place everyone came from everywhere to escape the cold and snow. I did not doubt him for I had seen snow once myself. I were a boy very young but I remembered how it were so cold you knew you could die of it. It killed many trees many plants three hours it snowed but the next day were hot. Old Dan said just imagine that times a hundred for in the deep winter all Boston was covered in snow up to the tops of the greatest buildings. The people traveled from place to place in tunnels beneath the snow he said and they ate seal walrus orca but they was so strong so fat that the cold never hurt them they was like walrus themselves. They was rich I said that is why they was fat. Yes said Old Dan and also from eating chemicals for they loved their chemicals as you would too. Chemicals I said. They was delicious he said. I believe it I said. Also one other thing he said which was that they had so much electronic light they had lost the faculty of seeing in the dark.