“No. They are five sterile and luckless days. But misfortune is still worth more than death. That will be your only argument against death.”
As the ancient said these strange things he made many gestures and motions of his hand that helped me penetrate his meaning, although my mind was at times distracted, trying to make order from this chaos of information, and from time to time I fell into pragmatic considerations, as if to compensate for the delirious magic of the ancient. He spoke much of circles, re-creating them with weak movements of his hand. As I listened to him I realized I had never seen a wheel in these lands, unless it had to do with the sun. Nor horses. Nor donkeys. Nor oxen nor cows. I found myself bedazzled by the extraordinary; I felt sudden anguish; I longed for ordinary things. And submerged in the echoes of these fabulous tales, nothing seemed more ordinary than I myself.
“Who am I, my lord?”
For the first time, the ancient smiled. “Who are we, brother? We are two of the three brothers. Our black brother died in the blaze of creation. His dark ugliness was compensated for by his sacrifice. He was reincarnated as a glowing white light. You and I, we who lacked the courage to throw ourselves into the fire, survived. We have paid for our cowardice with the tremendous obligation of maintaining life and memory. You and I. I, the red. You, the white.”
“I…” I murmured. “I…”
“You lived upon the shoulders and nose and flowing hair of the goddess, teaching about life. You planted, you harvested, you wove, you painted, you carved, and you taught. You said that work and love were enough to give in payment for the life the gods gave us. The gods laughed at you and they made fire and water rain down upon the earth. And every time the sun died you fled weeping toward the sea. And every time the sun was reborn, you returned to preach life. I thank you, brother. You have returned from the East where all life is born. The return voyage of our black brother will be more difficult, for although he shines magnificently by day, by night he descends into the depths of the West, he travels the black river of the lower regions, he is besieged by the demons of drunkenness and oblivion, for hell is the kingdom of the animal that swallows up the memory of all things. It will take him longer than it did you to be reunited with me, for by day he gives life and pleads for death, and by night he fears death and pleads for life. You are my white brother, the other founding god. You reject death and praise life.”
“And you, my lord?”
“I am he who remembers. That is my mission. I guard the book of destiny. Between life and death there is no destiny except memory. Memory weaves the destiny of the world. Men perish. Suns succeed suns. Cities fall. Power passes from hand to hand. Princes collapse along with the crumbling stone of their palaces abandoned to the fury of fire, tempest, and invading jungle. One time ends and another begins. Only memory keeps death alive, and those who must die know it. The end of memory is truly the end of the world. Black death, our brother; white life, you; and I … red memory.”
“And if what you are waiting for comes to pass, and the three of us are together?”
“Life, death, and memory: one single being. Masters of the cruel goddess who has until now governed us, given us nourishment and hunger in turn. You, I, and he: the first male princes since the reign of the female mother goddess — to whom we owe everything, but who also would take everything from us: life, death, and memory.”
For a long time he looked at me with his sad eyes as black and decayed as the jungle, as etched and hard as the temple, as brilliant and precious as the gold. He raised the scissors and worked the blades. He said he thanked me for them. I had given him the scissors. They had given me gold. I had given of my labor. He had given me memory. When he asked, finally, the light in his eyes was as implacable and as cruel as the eyes of the mother goddess must have been: “What will you give us now?”
Oh, Sire, as you hear me today, tell me, after listening to all I have recounted and without knowing what is still to tell, you who understand as I the truest truth of that world into which my misfortunes had cast me: tell me — for what I have still to tell will only serve as corroboration — how here all things were an exchange: exchange of life for death and death for life, endless exchanges of looks, objects, existences, memories, with the proposition of placating a predicted fury, of temporizing against the subsequent threat, of sacrificing one thing in order to save another, of feeling indebted to every existing thing, of dedicating both life and death to a perpetual renovating devotion. Everything the ancient had spoken until now seemed pure fantasy and legend until these words made me a participant in that fantasy and a prisoner of that legend: “What will you give us now?”
The old man was asking that I renew our alliance — for him so clear, for me so obscure — with a new offering, something of greater value than his words, as his words had held more value than my life — which I owed to him. What could I offer, wretched being that I was? The ancient spoke of heavens and its gods: my protection lay in common things. There were no wheels here or beasts of burden. Nor had I seen the one thing I still possessed. I put my hand to my breast.
There in the parchment-thin pocket of my wide sailor’s doublet I felt the small mirror Pedro and I had used, joking happily, to serve each other as barber on the ship. I took out the mirror. The ancient watched inquisitively. With a gesture of humility and respect I held the mirror to his eyes.
This was my offering; the ancient looked at himself.
I have never seen, and I hope never to see again, a more terrible expression on a human face. His black eyes bulged, the yellow eyeballs seeming to leap from their deep, wasted sockets; all the deaths of all the suns, all the burning bodies, all the destroyed palaces, all the affliction of hunger and tempests of the jungle were instantly distilled in their twin terror. And all the bitterness of recognition. The wrinkles on the ancient’s face turned into pulsing worms that devoured his face, leaving only an infernal grimace; the white tufts on his mottled skull stood up in horror; his jaw dropped open as if he were drowning, choking, in loosened strings of phlegm, and thick slobber trickled down the dark wrinkled network of his chin to stain the sparse white stubble. His lips drew back to reveal broken teeth and bleeding gums: he tried to cry out, his knotted hands clutched his hide-like neck: he tried to rise; with the movement, the basket overturned, spilling pearls and cotton balls and scissors; finally the ancient screamed and his voice drowned out the jungle accompaniment of cicadas and parrots; that shriek pierced my heart, and his head struck the dusty floor of this ornate temple chamber.
Over our heads I heard the flapping of the frightened vultures and then the voices and rapid footsteps of the young warriors.
They entered the temple chamber. They looked at me. Then they looked at the fallen ancient who stared at us with open, but lifeless, eyes.
I crouched beside him, my fatal mirror in my hand.
One of the warriors knelt beside the ancient, tenderly caressed his head, and said: “Young chieftain … youthful founder … first man…”
THE TRIBUTES
My mind was a turtle as torpid and sluggish as the one I had killed when first I stepped onto the beach of the new world. In contrast, the thoughts of the warriors raced swift as quicksilver hares; after an instant of sorrow that gave way to extreme astonishment they turned to look at me kneeling there beside the dead ancient, my mirror in my hand. In the brief instant between sorrow and amazement, my lethargic emotions could not completely absorb the meaning of those mysterious words: “Young chieftain … youthful founder … first man…”
I would need time, I told myself, to decipher that enigma: like a gust of wind blowing through my fragmentary memory arose the recollection of other pilgrimages in search of the meaning of the oracle: I tasted sea foam, I breathed the perfume of olive trees — another time, another space, not these environs where enigma was suffocated beneath fearful certainty: the warriors saw in me the murderer of their ancient father, their king of memory, perhaps their god. And in just retribution, they were preparing to kill me.