Eduardo Galeano - The Memory of Fire Trilogy - Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

At last the morning star appeared in the sky.

The Quichés hugged each other and danced; and afterward, says the sacred book, the sun rose like a man.

Since then the Quichés gather at the end of each night to greet the morning star and watch the birth of the sun. When the sun is first about to peep out, they say:

“That’s where we come from.”

(188)

Sleepless, naked, and battered, they journeyed night and day for more than two centuries. They went in search of the place where the land extends between canes and sedges.

Several times they got lost, scattered, and joined up again. They were buffeted by the winds and dragged themselves ahead lashed together, bumping and pushing each other. They fell from hunger and got up and fell again and got up again. In the volcanic region where no grass grows, they ate snake meat.

They carried the banner and the cloak of the god who had spoken to the priests in sleep and promised a kingdom of gold and quetzal feathers. You shall subject all the peoples and cities from sea to sea, the god had announced, and not by witchcraft but by valor of the heart and strength of the arm.

When they approached the luminous lake under the noonday sun, for the first time the Aztecs wept. There was the little island of clay: on the nopal cactus, higher than the rushes and wild grasses, the eagle spread his wings.

Seeing them come, the eagle lowered his head. These outcasts, massed on the edge of the lake, filthy, trembling, were the chosen, those who in remote times had been born out of the mouths of the gods.

Huitzilopochtli welcomed them. “This is the place of our rest and our greatness,” his voice resounded. “ I order that the city which will be queen of all others be called Tenochtitlán. This is Mexico!”

(60 and 210)

He who made the sun and the moon warned the Taínos to watch out for the dead.

In the daytime the dead hid themselves and ate guavas, but at night they went out for a stroll and challenged the living. Dead men offered duels and dead women, love. In the duels they vanished at will; and at the climax of love the lover found himself with nothing in his arms. Before accepting a duel with a man or lying down with a woman, one should feel the belly with one’s hand, because the dead have no navels.

The lord of the sky also warned the Taínos to watch out even more for people with clothes on.

Chief Cáicihu fasted for a week and was worthy of his words. Brief shall be the enjoyment of life, announced the invisible one, he who has a mother but no beginning. Men wearing clothes shall come, dominate, and kill.

(168)

Waterdrinker, priest of the Sioux, dreamed that outlandish creatures were weaving a huge spider web around his people. He awoke knowing that was how it was going to be and said to his people, When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve.

(152)

Stretched out on his mat, the priest-jaguar of Yucatan listened to the gods’ message. They spoke to him through the roof, sitting astride of his house, in a language that no one else knew.

Chilam Balam, he who was the mouth of the gods, remembered what had not yet happened:

“Scattered through the world shall be the women who sing and the men who sing and all who sing … No one will escape, no one will be saved … There will be much misery in the years of the rule of greed. Men will turn into slaves. Sad will be the face of the sun … The world will be depopulated, it will become small and humiliated …”

(25)

The breezes are sweet and soft, as in spring in Seville, and the sea is like a Guadalquivir river, but the swell no sooner rises than they get seasick and vomit, jammed into their fo’c’sles, the men who in three patched-up little ships cleave the unknown sea, the sea without a frame. Men, little drops in the wind. And if the sea doesn’t love them? Night falls on the caravels. Whither will the wind toss them? A dorado, chasing a flying fish, jumps on board and the panic grows. The crew don’t appreciate the savory aroma of the slightly choppy sea, nor do they listen to the din of the sea gulls and gannets that come from the west. That horizon: does the abyss begin there? Does the sea end?

Feverish eyes of mariners weatherbeaten in a thousand voyages, burning eyes of jailbirds yanked from Andalusian prisons and embarked by force: these eyes see no prophetic reflections of gold and silver in the foam of the waves, nor in the country and river birds that keep flying over the ships, nor in the green rushes and branches thick with shells that drift in the sargassos. The bottom of the abyss — is that where hell starts to burn? Into what kind of jaws will the trade winds hurl these little men? They gaze at the stars, seeking God, but the sky is as inscrutable as this never-navigated sea. They hear its roar, mother sea, the hoarse voice answering the wind with phrases of eternal condemnation, mysterious drums resounding in the depths. They cross themselves and want to pray and stammer: “Tonight we’ll fall off the world, tonight we’ll fall off the world.”

(52)

He falls on his knees, weeps, kisses the earth. He steps forward, staggering because for more than a month he has hardly slept, and beheads some shrubs with his sword.

Then he raises the flag. On one knee, eyes lifted to heaven, he pronounces three times the names of Isabella and Ferdinand. Beside him the scribe Rodrigo de Escobedo, a man slow of pen, draws up the document.

From today, everything belongs to those remote monarchs: the coral sea, the beaches, the rocks all green with moss, the woods, the parrots, and these laurel-skinned people who don’t yet know about clothes, sin, or money and gaze dazedly at the scene.

Luis de Torres translates Christopher Columbus’s questions into Hebrew: “Do you know the kingdom of the Great Khan? Where does the gold you have in your noses and ears come from?”

The naked men stare at him with open mouths, and the interpreter tries out his small stock of Chaldean: “Gold? Temples? Palaces? King of kings? Gold?”

Then he tries his Arabic, the little he knows of it: “Japan? China? Gold?”

The interpreter apologizes to Columbus in the language of Castile. Columbus curses in Genovese and throws to the ground his credentials, written in Latin and addressed to the Great Khan. The naked men watch the anger of the intruder with red hair and coarse skin, who wears a velvet cape and very shiny clothes.

Soon the word will run through the islands:

“Come and see the men who arrived from the sky! Bring them food and drink!”

(52)

The heralds announce him with their trumpets. The bells peal and the drums beat out festive rhythms. The admiral, newly returned from the Indies, mounts the stone steps and advances on the crimson carpet amid the silken dazzle of the applauding royal court. The man who has made the saints’ and sages’ prophecies come true reaches the platform, kneels, and kisses the hands of the queen and the king.