Civilizations

by Laurent Binet

  Saturday 12 January

  Today, I spent a long time talking to the queen about Our Lord Jesus Christ, and she agreed to plant a cross in the square of the village where we are staying. Her brother invited me to share his cohiba – the name they give to those dried leaves that they burn in hollow sticks so that they might inhale the smoke.

  Martín Alonso is ill.

  Sunday 13 January

  As the queen is a woman, I described to her the jewellery and the robes that are worn at court in the kingdom of Castile and I saw an excited glimmer in her eyes, as in the eyes of a child.

  We are well fed and we sleep in hammocks, but Martín Alonso complains of pain all over his body. He says he refuses to die here and thinks only of returning to his ship.

  Monday 14 January

  Martín Alonso has a malignant fever and is in peril of his life. Based upon my observations, I think it highly probable that he contracted this disease through his dealings with Indian women. He despairs of ever standing upon Christian earth again.

  As her name means ‘Flower of Gold’ in her language, I suggested to Anacaona that she become Doña Margarita.

  Tuesday 15 January

  The devil has seized the captain’s body and mind.

  While the two of us were invited, as we are every day, to eat lunch with Béhéchio (who has, until now, given us no cause for complaint, other than obliging us to go naked as he does), Martín Alonso, consumed by his fever, grabbed hold of a knife and killed the old cacique by stabbing him in the throat. Then he forced the queen to free our companions by threatening her with his blade, made her give each of his men a horse, and escaped with all those who were strong enough to ride. The poor madman hopes to reach his ship this way. But in doing so I am certain he has doomed us all.

  Wednesday 16 January

  The Indians weep over their dead king. The queen, grieving for the loss of her brother, has given up all thoughts of baptism and now speaks only of vengeance. The cross she had had planted has been broken and burned.

  For my part, I swear to join the Order of Friars Minor if by some miracle I ever see Castile again, although, given this succession of misfortunes, it appears that the Lord God has other plans for me. Nevertheless, I humbly beg Your Highnesses, if it please God to bring me alive from this situation, to look kindly upon my request to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages. May the Holy Trinity guard and extend your lives and your power.

  Tuesday 4 March

  I can now say with certainty that Martín Alonso will not betray me again.

  Cahonaboa has returned carrying the traitor’s head and those of the other Christians who followed him in his senseless escape. Thus perish men of bad faith.

  On the king’s orders, the Pinta has been dragged on to land. I have decided to name the bay where she was anchored until yesterday the ‘Bay of the Lost Pilgrim’, in view of my present condition and in memory of my gruesome fate.

  There is now no question of my ever returning to Spain, and Your Highnesses should simply forget the poor madman who promised them the Indies.

  Undated

  After hours spent staring out to sea in the wild hope of seeing a sail on the horizon, my eyes give me terrible pain and I am losing my sight. And yet I know full well that my failure will dissuade Your Highnesses, believing me to be drowned, from sending anyone else across the Ocean Sea.

  Undated

  There is something else that tears at my heart. It is the thought of Don Diego, my son, whom I left in Spain, an orphan, dispossessed of my honours and goods, despite my certainty that just and grateful princes would have restored to him all of it and more, had I returned from my voyage with one-hundredth of the treasures to be found in this land of abundance.

  Undated

  The island of Juana or Cuba, which is approximately as long as the distance between Valladolid and Rome, is today almost entirely subject to Cahonaboa. Thanks be to the kindness of his wife, I am tolerated and I eat with their people. From them, I have learned that they call themselves Taínos, but that their king does not belong to this tribe, for he came from the Caribes, which no doubt explains his superior complexion, his natural authority, and his great ferocity in combat.

  Undated

  The few men remaining to me were very ill and suffering greatly. The last one died this morning and now I am alone among these savages. What other mortal, with the exception of Job, would not have died of despair already? I do not know why the Lord is prolonging my miserable existence like this.

  I go about naked, like a stray dog, almost blind, and nobody pays me any attention any more. Only Anacaona’s daughter shows me the kind of interest that children sometimes show to old people who tell them stories. Every day, she comes to see me so I can tell her about the great Castile and its glorious, enlightened monarchs.

  Undated

  It is wondrous how quickly little Higuénamota learns Castilian. She already understands it very well and can repeat expressions, to the great amusement of her mother.

  In the queen’s eyes, I am nothing more than a jester, fit only to entertain her daughter.

  Undated

  Since Your Highnesses will not be able to, as the Master of all things did not wish it, I humbly beg Our Father to save all my writings so that my tragic destiny may one day be known: how from so far away I came to serve these princes, leaving behind my wife and children, whom consequently I have never seen again, and how, now, at the end of my life, I am stripped of all my honour and goods, without cause, without trial and without mercy. I say ‘mercy’, but I do not mean that in relation to Their Highnesses, because it is not their fault, nor is it the Lord’s. I mean those malicious people with whom I had the misfortune to surround myself, and who led me to my loss after theirs, in these godforsaken lands.

  Undated

  The hour approaches when my soul will be summoned by God, and while I have without doubt already been forgotten on the other side of the Ocean Sea, I know that there is at least one person who still worries about the fallen admiral, and that little Higuénamota, who will be queen one day, my final consolation here below, will be with me to close my eyes. Please God, for her salvation, let her embrace our faith in memory of Your humble servant.

  Undated

  I am as miserable as I say I am. Until today, I wept for the others: may heaven now receive me in mercy and may the earth weep for me. In temporal terms, I do not even have a sou for the offering. In spiritual terms, I came here, to the Indies, in the way that I have described. Isolated in my suffering, ill, waiting each day for death to take me, surrounded by a million cruel savages who are our enemies, I am so far from the holy sacraments of the one true Church that my soul will be forgotten if it has to separate here from my body. May all those filled with charity, truth and justice weep for me. I did not make this voyage to win honour and fortune; that is the truth, for in that respect, all hope was dead in me already. I came to Your Highnesses with pure and zealous intentions, and I am not lying.

  Part Three

  The Chronicles of Atahualpa

  1. The Fall of the Condor

  For we who contemplate them long after the history of the world has reached its verdict, the augurs still seem unsparingly clear. But the truth of the present moment, albeit hotter, louder and – in all honesty – more alive, often comes to us in a more confused form than that of the past, or sometimes even that of the future.

  It was the solemn ceremony of the Sun, and Huayna Capac, the eleventh Sapa Inca of the Empire of the Four Quarters, had good reason to be satisfied. From the wild lands of Araucania to the heights of Quito, where he had built his favourite residence (except for his capital, for the heart of the empire was and had to remain in Cuzco), he had extended his reign as far as it was possible (or so he believed), halted only by the thick cords of the forest and by the cotton in the sky. The organs of the disembowelled llamas were still quivering and the torn-out lungs swelled with air when the priests blew into the windpipes. The carc
asses of the sacrificed animals were grilling on skewers for the banquet and the guests were preparing for the toast, as protocol dictates, when a condor suddenly appeared in the sky, pursued by a squadron of small birds of prey – harriers, falcons, harpy eagles – that were beleaguering it relentlessly. And the condor, weakening, exhausted, buckling under the beaks and claws of its pursuers, let itself fall to the great square in the very centre of the ceremony, making a profound impression on all those watching. Huayna Capac stood up from his throne and ordered the bird to be examined. Immediately it was seen that the condor was ill, dying not only because of the wounds inflicted on it by its pursuers, but mangy, its body bare of feathers and covered with pustules.

  The Inca and his entourage considered this event a good omen: the seers, summoned for the occasion, saw the dead condor as an augur of the conquest of a great empire situated in distant lands. And so, as soon as the nine-hour ceremony of the Sun was over, Huayna Capac led his army further north in search of new territories to conquer.

  He passed beyond Tumipampa, he passed beyond Quito, and he subjugated a few new tribes in Tawantinsuyu, the Empire of the Four Quarters.

  But one day, while he was following a path with his retinue, it is said that he came upon a solitary traveller with red hair and arrogantly demanded that the man move aside. It is said that his tone displeased the traveller, who refused, unaware as he was of Huayna Capac’s identity. Their discussion grew heated, the red-headed man struck the emperor’s head with his stick, and Huayna Capac collapsed, mortally wounded. His eldest son, Ninan Cuyochi, attempted to help him and was killed in the same manner. It is claimed that the red-headed traveller was a son of the Inca, fathered long before with a priestess of Pachacamac, but he was never heard of again.

  So the empire fell to another of his sons, named Huascar. Nevertheless, before dying, Huayna Capac had expressed this wish: that Huascar would succeed him on the throne in Cuzco, but that he would let his half-brother Atahualpa govern the northern provinces. Atahualpa was the emperor’s son by a princess from Quito, and his father had always shown him the greatest affection.

  For several harvests, Huascar and Atahualpa shared Tawantinsuyu in this manner. But Huascar had a stubborn, jealous, irascible temperament. Moreover, certain lords in Cuzco were plotting against him because he wanted to ban the cult of mummies, which he considered too costly. On a false pretext – claiming that Atahualpa had shown him a lack of respect by refusing to come to Cuzco to pay tribute to him – Huascar declared war on his half-brother. To humiliate him, he sent him women’s clothes and make-up. So Atahualpa, who was loved by his father’s generals, raised an army and marched on Cuzco.

  Huascar’s army was the greater in number, but Atahualpa’s was led by experienced generals and their soldiers were well trained. General Quizquiz, General Chalco Chimac and General Ruminahui won a series of bloody battles that led them to the very gates of Cuzco. Cavalries had made war faster and fiercer. On the opposing side, Huascar had been obliged to command his army himself in an attempt to stem the tide of this irresistible advance. But he did manage to stop his brother’s army on the banks of the Apurimac river, where a great massacre took place. Atahualpa’s army took refuge in the province of Cotabambas, where a large number of soldiers were encircled, trapped in the savannah, and burned alive. The survivors retreated.

  And so began the long pursuit to the north.

  2. The Retreat

  Huascar hesitated. But not for long. At first, when the outcome of the war had seemed less favourable, he had thought of awaiting his brother on the plains of Quipaipan for the final conflict. He too had suffered heavy losses, and his men, although victorious, were tired. He wanted time to put them back in battle order. Probably, too, he was comforted by the proximity of Cuzco. The capital of the Empire, the navel of the world, cast its benevolent shadow over the legitimist party. But Cuzco was also the golden dream of Atahualpa’s men, its fragrant murmur exciting their lust, and Huascar feared that this dangerous temptation, only a few arrow shots away, would resuscitate the hearts of those routed soldiers. He did not want to give the opposing army the chance to recover its strength. He still had a functioning cavalry, led by another of his five hundred half-brothers, Tupac Hualpa, so he gathered his troops and sent them after the rebels, determined to annihilate them. He even summoned the Sacsayhuaman guard from his fortress, a move that showed the true measure of his resolve: he was prepared to divert these men from their sacred mission in order to add the strength of that elite regiment to the ranks of the imperial army.

  Atahualpa did not need to consult his generals – Ruminahui the stone-eyed, Quizquiz the barber, Chalco Chimac – in order to know that they could not withstand another attack. One after the other, like a pair of limping pumas, the two armies set off.

  They had to cross rope bridges over rivers: the horses whinnying with fear, the oxen, the llamas, the cages of cuys and parrots, the soldiers’ mess wagons, the endless retinue of the Inca (but which one?) – his slaves, his concubines, his gold and silver plates, the alpagas destined to provide him with his daily clothes – and then the wounded, who were carried on litters, like their master.

  The Empire filed past, slowly. Mountain ranges extended as far as the horizon, furrowed with fields of corn and papas, but the exhausted soldiers barely looked up and those terrace farms, the pride of the Empire, disappeared into indifference. The caged parrots cawed sinister predictions and the little rodents that kept them company gave pathetic cheeping noises. Only the war dogs, with their white crests of fur, cheered up the long procession with their barking as they roamed up and down the ranks of soldiers, as if guarding them.

  The shops that punctuated the Inca’s route provided food for the bastard’s troops. And then the state-appointed managers of these granaries saw with astonishment the arrival of a second army, which they also supplied with food, recognising the banners of Cuzco’s sovereign, while, in the distance, a cloud of dust concealed the retreat of Atahualpa’s rearguard.

  Huascar dispatched messengers to his half-brother. The chasquis were such fast runners, and the relay postal system so well organised, that it took only a few days for the Inca to find out the news from even the most distant parts of the Empire. The soldiers took no notice of those slender couriers, and in less than the time it took for Pachamama to make the earth quake, one of them would whisper something into Atahualpa’s ear and he would whisper something in return and the young man would immediately set off again and would shout out the message as soon as his colleague, ready to sprint off in turn, was within earshot, and in the space of a few relays, the response would reach Huascar. In this way, the two emperors could converse almost normally, while the Cuzco army pursued the Quito army.

  ‘Surrender, brother.’

  ‘Never, brother.’

  ‘In the name of Huayna Capac, your father, cease this madness.’

  ‘In the name of Huayna Capac, your father, renounce your vengeance.’

  And the two armies were so close that the peasants cultivating corn in their terraced fields, seeing them pass, could almost believe that they were a single army.

  3. The North

  However, the army of the north increased the pace of their marching until they reached Cajamarca, where Atahualpa knew he could count on the garrison that he had left behind in the recently occupied city. The green valley offered the wearied men the ambiguous spectacle of columns of steam rising from the hot water springs that were the region’s pride. Atahualpa, like his ancestors, used to love coming here to bathe with his father in more peaceful times. He had imagined that his men would relax in those warm pools, resting their bodies and recovering their strength, before tackling the formidable cordillera that separated them from Quito, his capital and his home. But that would only have worked if he’d managed to create a wider gap from his pursuers. As it was, he could feel the breath of Cuzco on the back of his neck. His brother’s army was camped on a hillside outside the city, his white te
nts packed so tightly together that they seemed to cover the mountain like a sheet. The clouds of steam exhaled by the earth only added to this lunar vision.

  Atahualpa descended from his litter and trod upon the main square of Cajamarca in his sandals. Around him, the men watered their horses, unloaded their llamas, set up their tents. Suddenly he felt a rush of anxiety in his throat and he decided to set off again before dawn.

  In the morning, Huascar’s scouts found Cajamarca deserted. The men and animals of the northern army had already begun the interminable ascent. The path was narrow, the chasm seemed bottomless, the air grew icy. The condors glided. The impassive Andes barred the way, but it was a route that the soldiers of the north knew well, having often taken it, so at last they were able to steal a march on their enemies. They passed goldmines, gorges, crevasses and pine forests. They passed fortresses constructed with Inca ingenuity atop rocky spurs. Having crested the summit, they felt the pull of Quito. Once they were home, they would be safe, they thought.

  But that was to underestimate the impact of the massacres they had perpetrated among the people of the north – the Chimus, the Caranguis and especially the Canaris, for whom Atahualpa was the cruel tyrant who had given the order to exterminate them. Had he not razed the great Tumipampa, founded by his own father, because it had taken his brother’s side? The survivors saw the return of their executioners as a gift from the Sun. This was their opportunity for vengeance. A war of harassment began. The weakened Quito army suffered so many losses that the Cajamarca reinforcements were effectively wiped out. Furthermore, the energy they spent repelling the Canaris’ attacks slowed them down, and the Cuzco army was able to catch up. The rearguard, led by Quizquiz, was almost entirely destroyed by the cavalry of Tupac Hualpa (brother of Huascar, and therefore also of Atahualpa, but owing allegiance to his birthplace of Cuzco).