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

No one listens to lawyer Alonso Zuazo. His mouth smeared with blood, he kneels in the sand, raises his hands, and offers the turtles to the five wounds of Our Redeemer.

(166)

From the branch of an old ceiba tree, hung by the ankles, swings the body of the last king of the Aztecs.

Cortés has cut off his head.

He had arrived in the world in a cradle surrounded by shields and spears, and these were the first sounds he heard: “Your real home is elsewhere. You are promised to another land. Your proper place is the battlefield. Your task is to give the blood of your enemy to the sun to drink and the body of your enemy to the earth to eat.”

Twenty-nine years ago, the soothsayers poured water over his head and pronounced the ritual words: “Where are you hiding, misfortune? In which limb do you conceal yourself? Away from this child!”

They called him Cuauhtémoc, eagle that falls. His father had extended the empire from sea to sea. When the prince took over the throne, the invaders had already come and conquered. Cuauhtémoc rose up and resisted. Four years after the defeat of Tenochtitlán, the songs that call for the warrior’s return still resound from the depths of the forest.

Who now rocks his mutilated body? The wind, or the ceiba tree? Isn’t it the ceiba from its enormous crown? Does it not accept this broken branch as one more arm of the thousand that spring from its majestic trunk? Will red flowers sprout from it?

Life goes on. Life and death go on.

(212)

Around the Alcázar of Toledo the tamer parades the tiger that the king has received from the New World. The tamer, a Lombard with a broad smile and pointed mustachio, leads him by a leash like a little dog as the jaguar slips over the gravel with padded steps.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s blood freezes. From afar he yells to the keeper not to be so trusting, not to be chummy with this wild beast, that such animals are not for people.

The tamer laughs, turns the jaguar loose, and strokes its back. Oviedo hears its deep purr. He well knows that that clenchedteeth growl means prayer to the devil and threat. One day not far off, he is sure the tamer will fall into the trap. He will stretch out his hand to scratch the tiger and be gobbled up after one quick lash of a paw. Does this poor fellow believe God has given the jaguar claws and teeth so that a tamer may serve him his meals at regular hours? None of his lineage has ever sat down to dinner at the sound of a bell, nor known any manners but devouring. Oviedo looks at the smiling Lombard and sees a heap of minced meat between four candles.

“Cut his nails!” he advises, turning away. “Pull his nails out bv the roots, and all his teeth and fangs!”

(166)

The cold filters through the cracks and freezes the ink in the ink pots.

Charles V owes every saint a candle. With money from the Welsers, the Augsburg bankers, he has bought his imperial crown, paid for his wedding, and financed a good part of the wars that have enabled him to humiliate Rome, suppress the Flemish rebellion, and scatter half of France’s warrior nobles on the fields of Pavia.

The emperor’s teeth ache as he signs the decree conceding to the Welsers the exploration, exploitation, and government of Venezuela.

For many long years Venezuela will have German governors. The first, Ambrosio Alfinger, will leave no Indian not branded and sold in the markets of Santa Marta, Jamaica, and Santo Domingo and will die with his throat pierced by an arrow.

(41, 103, and 165)

The southern sea expedition finally comes upon a coast free of mangrove swamps and mosquitos. Francisco Pizarro, who has word of a village nearby, orders a soldier and an African slave to start walking.

The white and the black reach Tumbes across lands that are planted and well watered by irrigation ditches, sowings such as they had never seen in America; in Tumbes, people who neither go naked nor sleep outdoors surround the newcomers and welcome them with gifts. Alonso de Molina’s eyes are not big enough to measure the gold and silver covering the walls of the temple.

The people of Tumbes are dazzled by so many things from another world. They pull Alonso de Molina’s beard and touch his clothing and iron ax. They gesture to ask about this captured monster with the red crest that shrieks in a cage: What does it want? Alonso points to it, says “rooster,” and they learn their first word in the language of Castile.

The African accompanying the soldier is not doing so well. He defends himself by slapping the Indians, who want to rub his skin with dry corncobs. Water is boiling in a huge pot. They want to put him in it to soak out the color.

(166 and 185)

Of the ships that sailed for Florida from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, one was hurled by a storm onto the treetops of Cuba, and the sea devoured the others in successive shipwrecks. No better fate awaited the ships that Narváez’s and Cabeza de Vaca’s men improvised with shirts for sails and horses’ manes for rigging.

The shipwrecked men, naked specters, tremble with cold and weep among the rocks of Mal Hado Island. Some Indians turn up to bring them water and fish and roots and seeing them weep, weep with them. The Indians shed rivers of tears, and the longer the lamentations continue, the sorrier the Spaniards feel for themselves.

The Indians lead them to their village. So that the sailors won’t die from the cold, they keep lighting fires at rest stops along the way. Between bonfire and bonfire they carry them on litters, without letting their feet touch ground.

The Spaniards imagine that the Indians will cut them into pieces and throw them in the stewpot, but in the village they continue sharing with them the little food they have. As Àlvar Nùnez Cabeza de Vaca will tell it, the Indians are horrified and hot with anger when they learn that, while on the beach, five Christians ate one another until only one remained, who being alone had no one to eat him.

(39)

The wind remains recalcitrant, and launches tow the ship upstream. The sun flagellates the water.

The captain’s coat of arms features the cone of the volcano Popocatepetl, because he was the first Spaniard to tread the snow of its summit. On that day he was at such an altitude that through the whirlwinds of volcanic ash he saw the backs of eagles as well as the city of Tenochtitlán shimmering in the lake; but he had to make a fast getaway because the volcano thundered with fury and threatened him with a rain of fire and stones and black smoke.

Today Diego de Ordaz, drenched to the bone, wonders if this Orinoco River will lead him to where the gold waits. The Indians of the villages keep gesturing, farther on, farther on, while the captain chases mosquitos and eases the crudely patched hull of the ship creakily forward. The monkeys protest and invisible parrots scream getoutahere, getoutahere, and many nameless birds flutter between the shores singing youwontgetme, youwontgetme, youwontgetme .

(175)

The water of the river is bad.

The fish take shelter

high in the ravines

red with mud.

The man with the beard passes,