He presses his temples as he follows the words that advance and retreat: Do not consider my lowly estate and roughness of expression, he entreats, but the goodwill that moves me to say it.
Fray Bartolomé de las Casas is writing to the Council of the Indies. It would have been better for the Indians, he maintains, to go to hell with their heresies, their procrastination and their isolation, than to be saved by the Christians. The cries of so much spilled human blood reach all the way to heaven: those burned alive, roasted on grills, thrown to wild dogs …
He gets up, walks. His white habit flaps amid clouds of dust.
Later he sits on the edge of the studded chair. He scratches his nose with the quill pen. The bony hand writes. For the Indians in America to be saved and for God’s law to be fulfilled, Fray Bartolomé proposes that the cross should rule over the sword. The garrisons should submit to the bishops; and colonists should be sent to cultivate the soil under protection of strong fortresses. The colonists, he says, could bring black or Moorish or some kind of slaves to serve them, or live by their own labor or in some other way not prejudicial to the Indians …
(27)
1531: Serrana Island The Castaway and the Other
A wind of salt and sun mortifies Pedro Serrano, who wanders naked along the clifftop. Sea gulls flutter in pursuit of him. Shaded by an upraised hand, his eyes are fixed on enemy territory.
He descends into the cove and walks on the sand. Reaching the frontier line, he pees. He does not cross the line but knows that if the other is watching from some hideaway, he will appear at one bound to settle accounts for such a provocation.
He pees and waits. The birds scream and fly off. Where has the man stuck himself? The sky is a dazzling white, a light of lime, and the island is a burning stone; white rocks, white shadows, foam over the white sand: a small world of sand and lime. Where can that bastard be hiding?
Much time has passed since Pedro’s ship broke up on that stormy night, and his hair and beard already reached his chest when the other appeared, riding a board that the furious tide threw onto the shore. Pedro wrung the water from his lungs, gave him food and drink, and taught him how not to die on this desert island, where only rocks grow. He taught him to turn over turtles and finish them off with one slash, to cut the meat in strips to dry in the sun, and to collect rainwater in their shells. He taught him to pray for rain and to dig for clams under the sand, showed him the crabs’ and shrimps’ hideouts and offered him turtle eggs and oysters that the sea brought in attached to mangrove branches. The other knew from Pedro that it was necessary to collect everything that the sea delivered to the reefs so that the bonfire would burn night and day, fed by dry algae, seaweed, stray branches, starfish, and fish bones. Pedro helped him put up a roof of turtle shells, a bit of shade against the sun, for lack of trees.
The first war was the water war. Pedro suspected that the other was stealing while he slept, and the other accused him of drinking like a beast. When the water gave out and the last drops disputed with fists were spilt, they had no alternative but to drink their own urine and the blood they got from the only turtle that was to be seen. Then they stretched out to die in the shade and had only enough saliva left for muted insults.
Finally rain saved them. The other thought that Pedro could well reduce by half the roof of his house now that turtle shells were so scarce: “Your house is a turtle-shell palace,” he said, “and in mine I spend the day all twisted up.”
“I shit on God,” said Pedro, “and on the mother that calved you. If you don’t like my island, get lost!” And he pointed a finger at the vast sea.
They decided to divide the water. From then on, there was a rain deposit on each end of the island.
The fire war came second. They took turns tending the bonfire, in case some ship passed in the distance. One night, when the other was on guard, the fire went out. Pedro cursed and shook him awake.
“If the island is yours, you do it, you swine,” said the other and showed his teeth.
They rolled in the sand. When they tired of hitting each other, they resolved that each would light his own fire. Pedro’s knife lashed a stone until it produced a few sparks; and since then there is a bonfire at each end of the island.
The knife war came third. The other had nothing to cut with, and Pedro demanded payment in fresh shrimp each time he lent the knife.
Then the food war and the shell-necklace war broke out.
When the latter war ended in an exchange of stones, they signed an armistice and a border treaty. There was no document, since in this desolation not even a cupay leaf can be found on which to scribble anything, and furthermore neither can sign his name; but they marked off a frontier and swore by God and king to respect it. They tossed a fish into the air. Pedro drew the half of the island that faces Cartagena; the other, the half facing Santiago de Cuba.
Now, standing at the frontier, Pedro bites his nails, looks upward as if seeking rain, and thinks: “He must be hiding in some cranny. I can smell him. Mangy. In midocean and he never bathes. He’d rather fry in his own grease. There he goes, yes, on the dodge as ever.”
“Hey, asshole!” he yells.
For answer, the thunder of surf, the racket of gulls, the voices of the wind.
“Ingrate!” he shouts, “Son-of-a-bitch!” and shouts until his throat bursts, and runs from one end of the island to the other, backward and forward, alone and naked on the sand without anybody.
(76)
1532: Cajamarca Pizarro
A thousand men sweep the path of the Inca into the great square where the Spaniards wait in hiding. The multitude trembles at the passage of the Beloved Father, the One, the Only, lord of labors and fiestas; the singers fall silent, and the dancers freeze up. In the half light, last light of the day, the crowns and vestments of Atahualpa and his cortege of nobles of the realm gleam with gold and silver.
Where are the gods brought by the wind? The Inca reaches the center of the square and gives the order to wait. A few days ago, a spy penetrated the camp of the invaders, tugged at their beards, and returned to report that they were no more than a handful of crooks from the sea. That blasphemy cost his life. Where are the sons of Wirachocha, who wear stars on their heels and send forth thunders that provoke stupor, stampede, and death?
The priest Vicente de Valverde emerges from the shadows and goes to meet Atahualpa. He raises the Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other, as if exorcising a storm on the high seas, and cries that here is God, the true one, and that all the rest is nonsense. The interpreter translates and Atahualpa, at the head of the throng, asks: “Who told you that?”
“The Bible says it, the sacred book.”
“Give it here so it can tell me.”
A few paces away, Pizarro unsheathes his sword.
Atahualpa looks at the Bible, turns it over in his hand, shakes it to make it talk, and presses it against his ear: “It says nothing. It’s empty.”
And he drops it to the ground.
Pizarro has been awaiting this moment ever since the day he knelt before Emperor Charles V, described the empire as big as Europe that he had discovered and proposed to conquer, and promised him the most splendid treasure in human history. And even earlier: since the day when his sword drew a line in the sand and a few soldiers dying of hunger, bent with disease, swore to follow him to the end. And earlier yet, much earlier: Pizarro has awaited this moment since he was dumped at the door of an Estremadura church fifty-four years ago and drank sow’s milk for lack of anyone to suckle him.