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

At that moment Captain Rodrigo turned up and with amorous words covered Floriana with his cape and raised her up. Seeing this, Don Julio, aflame with jealousy, got to his feet and taking out a dagger plunged it into the captain, calling him a scurvy traitor. With a mortal wound in his chest, the captain fell to the ground imploring for confession, hearing which Floriana cursed her fate and the ordeals of her honor and departed at full speed.

Floriana put on Indian clothing to escape from this town of Potosí, but when she was about to get on a mule somebody tipped off the magistrate, who came to the spot to put her in prison. When the magistrate saw Floriana, the blind child known as Cupid pierced his heart through with a terrible arrow. Panting, he took her by the hands and carried her off to the palace.

At ten o’clock that night, the hour when she had to go to the magistrate’s bedroom, Floriana tied a rope to the balcony and let herself down into the hands of Don Julio, who awaited her below. The damsel told Don Julio that before moving a single step he must swear the security of her person and purity.

Seeing the danger they ran, for the flight had already been discovered, Don Julio took Floriana on his shoulders and ran, carrying her to the far-off Plaza del Gato. He flew over stones and mud, in a bath of sweat, and when he could finally sit down to rest and lowered Floriana from his back, he suddenly collapsed.

Thinking that he had just fainted, she put Don Julio’s head in her lap. But noticing that he was dead, she sprang up with a start and fled to the barrios of San Lorenzo, in the month of March of that year 1598.

There she remained in concealment, resolved to maintain perpetual chastity and to continue till the end of her days being an obedient servant of the Lord.

(21)

I have seen a man survive

with a hundred wounds from a lance

and later saw him die

from just a single glance.

Down in the sea a whale

sighed and sighed again

and his sighings told this tale :

“He who has love, has pain.”

Today I want to sing

now that I have no sorrow ,

in case the fates should bring

tears to my eyes tomorrow.

(196)

Simón de Torres, apothecary of Panama, would like to sleep but cannot take his eyes off the hole in the roof. Each time his lids close, his eyes open by themselves and fasten on the hole. Simon lights and puts out his pipe and lights it again, trying to discourage the mosquitos with the smoke and with his hand. He twists and turns, soaking and boiling in the bed that was left crooked by the shock it received the other day. The stars wink at him through the hole and he would like to stop thinking. So the hours pass until the rooster crows, either announcing the day or calling the hens.

A week ago a woman tumbled through the roof and fell on Simon.

“Who, who, who are you?” the apothecary stammered.

“We don’t have much time,” said she as she tore off her clothes.

In the morning she got up, shining, delicious, and dressed herself in no time flat.

“Where are you going?”

“To Nombre de Dios. I left the bread in the oven there.”

“But that’s twenty leagues away!” cried the apothecary.

“Only eighteen,” she corrected him. And as she disappeared, she said: “Take care of yourself. Whoever enters me loses his memory.”

(157)

They keep on the alert. They don’t bat an eyelash. They are full of suspicion. That brush that robs them of their image, won’t it rob them of their souls? The brush is magic like the mirror. Like the mirror, it takes possession of people.

From time to time, the horrible cold of Quito makes them sneeze, and the artist growls at them. Uncomfortable, half strangled by the ruffs, they resume the poses, rigid until the next sneeze. They have been in this city a few days and they still can’t grasp why such powerful people have come to live in such a cold place, nor why the houses have doors, nor why the doors have locks, bolts, and padlocks.

Half a century ago a storm dashed a slave ship against the coastal reefs, near the mouth of the Esmeraldas River. The ship contained slaves from Guinea to be sold in Lima. The blacks took off and lost themselves in the woods. They founded villages and had children with native women, and those children multiplied, too. Of the three whose portrait Andrés Sánchez Gallque is now painting, two were born of that mixture of Africans and Ecuadorean women. The other, Francisco de Arobe, came from Guinea. He was ten at the time of the shipwreck.

They have been rigged out as distinguished gentlemen, tunics and cloaks, lace cuffs, hats, so as not to make a bad impression on the king when he receives, in Madrid, this portrait of his new subjects, these barbarians who have been invincible up to now. They also have lances in their hands, necklaces of teeth, and sea-shells over their Spanish dress; and on their faces are gold ornaments that pierce their ears, their nostrils, and their lips.

(176)

This is the shiniest road on earth. From sea to sea winds the long, silver trail. Countless strings of mules cross the jungle, weighed down by the metals of Potosí, en route to the galleons waiting in Portobello.

Little monkeys accompany the silver across Panama. Screaming without letup, they jeer at the muleteers and pelt them with guavas.

On the banks of the Chagres River, Fray Diego de Ocaña watches them admiringly. To cross the river, the monkeys form a chain from the crown of a tree, clutching each other by the tails: the chain swings and gathers speed until a strong shove hurls it to the highest branches on the other bank.

The Peruvian Indian carrying Ocaña’s baggage comes up to him and says: “Father, these are people. They don’t talk so that the Spaniards won’t notice it. If they see that they’re people, they’ll send them to work in the mines.”

(157)

Rebellion breaks out on the Pacific coasts, and the repercussions shake the Andes cordillera.

Martin García Óñez de Loyola, nephew of St. Ignatius, came here from Peru with the fame of a tireless hunter and crack killer. There he captured Túpac Amaru, last of the Incas. Then they sent him as governor to Chile to tame the Araucanians. Here he killed Indians, stole sheep, and burned crops without leaving a grain. Now the Araucanians are parading his head on the point of a lance.

The Indians use Christians’ bones as trumpets to sound the call to battle. War masks, armor of leather: The Araucanian cavalry devastates the South. Seven towns fall, one after the other, under a rain of fiery arrows. The hunted become the hunters. The Araucanians lay siege to La Imperial. To deny it water, they alter the course of the river.

Half of the realm of Chile, everything south of the Bío-Bío, becomes Araucanian again.

The Indians say, pointing at the lance: This is my master. This won’t be ordering me to dig gold, nor to bring herbs or firewood, nor to mind the cattle, nor to sow or reap. I want to stay with this master.

(66 and 94)

Rebellion breaks out on the Caribbean coasts, and its repercussions shake the Sierra Nevada. The Indians are rising for the freedom to love.