Civilizations

by Laurent Binet

  A silence fell. The king spoke a few words to his wife, which Higuénamota half-understood: he asked her where he could find a translator who could speak turc. The queen replied graciously that he would have to wait for her brother to return victorious from his future ‘crusade’ against a king named Suleiman, and Higuénamota realised that she could understand the queen. So it was that, deep from the well of memory, burst forth words that she had thought forgotten: ‘Hablas castellano?’

  The king and queen stared at each other, dumbstruck.

  A lively conversation began between the two women.

  The queen asked if they came from the Indies, Africa or Turkey.

  The princess told her that she was from an island situated beyond the setting sun.

  The queen said they knew a distant island named Vera Cruz where her husband’s people went to fetch wood, but which they had never explored.

  The princess said that she had seen foreigners who looked a bit like the Portuguese land on her island a long time ago, but that they had been looking for gold, not wood.

  The queen remembered a Genoese sailor who had wished to prove that the world was round, and that her grandparents Isabella and Ferdinand had sent him west to seek out a path to the Indies. He had never returned, and since then nobody had risked trying to cross the Ocean Sea.

  The princess told her that she had known that sailor when she was a little girl, and that he had died in her arms.

  The queen asked if they came from Cipango and if they’d been sent by the Great Khan.

  The princess told her that Atahualpa was the emperor of the Four Quarters, without mentioning the civil war that he had fought and lost to his brother.

  Atahualpa knew that they were talking about him but didn’t understand a word of what they were saying.

  Joao seemed to understand but said nothing.

  The queen said that her name was Catalina and that she came from a country called Castile.

  Little Cusi Rimay touched Joao’s beard and he let her.

  The princess asked how big this country was, where they were.

  The queen said that her husband reigned over kingdoms beyond the seas, but that her brother reigned over vast lands.

  The princess knew that Spain included Castile and Aragon.

  The queen told her about Italy and Rome, where a great priest lived, about Germany and its princes, and about distant Jerusalem, the city of a certain Jesus, which had fallen into the hands of enemies.

  The princess asked what cataclysm had struck this city.

  The queen told her that when the earth had trembled, the great river had opened in two and had thrown boats into the sky.

  A mournful cry echoed outside, although nobody could tell if it was a man or an animal.

  Again, Joao spoke to the shaved man with the ring. He looked anxious and spoke in a harsh voice.

  Higuénamota asked the queen what the two men were talking about. She knew that they were in a temple and that the shaved men were priests. The queen explained that some of them were predicting another cataclysm and that Joao wanted to put an end to these rumours. The people here believed it was the wrath of God that had been visited on their country, and the presence of the foreigners from across the seas had only increased their fears and superstitions.

  The princess asked what god they were talking about.

  The queen moved her hand quickly over her face and chest, a gesture that the Cuban princess had often seen among the Spanish when she’d known them, long ago.

  Then the king and the queen took their leave. They were living on the other side of the river, for fear of a disease that they called the plague.

  10. The Incades, Book I, Verse 1

  O brave men, who from distant western shores,

  Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,

  Beyond where Cuba lifts her spicy breast,

  And waves her palms above the wat’ry waste,

  With prowess more than human forc’d your way

  To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:

  What wars you wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,

  What glorious empire crown’d your toils at last!

  11. The Tagus

  In the days that followed, Atahualpa did not leave his room and had a large amount of the black drink brought to him. This interview had plunged him into a state of irritation. He had imagined conquering the New World as his ancestors had conquered the north, but now he realised the naivety of such a plan: one could not take possession of a country with fewer than two hundred men. Only a madman could imagine that. Moreover, King Joao’s retinue had allowed him a glimpse of the military capacities of the men here: disciplined, well equipped, and undoubtedly good fighters if need be.

  But he had to keep up his troops’ morale, however few of them there were, and that meant offering them a future, something to cling to; at least the illusion of hope. Atahualpa was all too aware of the fatal effects of inaction; he knew that they must set off again … but to where? Now they had reached this New World, where should they go? What should they do? He couldn’t steel himself to leave this stone haven so richly endowed with the black drink.

  As happens to almost all of us (if we are honest enough to recognise this truth, rather than imagining that we are masters of our own destiny), circumstances made the decision for him.

  They started to hear a menacing murmur, rising from a crowd of Levantines massed outside the doors of the temple. Every day, when they went out on a reconnaissance trip, Quizquiz and his men found more people in this crowd, and the noise they made grew ever louder. A few of the bolder men even went so far as to throw stones at them. Most, however, trembled as they passed and didn’t dare attempt to hurt them. All the same, it was impossible to guess how long this invisible dyke of fear would hold them back, before the river of anger burst through. Higuénamota asked the shaved men what it was all about. The chief priest, who spoke Castilian, explained that the people of this country were very superstitious. They viewed the earthquake not as a natural phenomenon, as he himself believed, but as a form of divine vengeance, and they couldn’t help associating this with the presence of Atahualpa’s people. In Lisbon, some believed the visitors were Turks. For others, they were Indians. A small minority saw them as envoys from heaven. But the majority considered them to be demons. Even within the community of shaved men, opinion was divided.

  Higuénamota asked the priest how he viewed her. The man could not help glancing at the Cuban princess’s chest, hips and groin. In a muffled, confused voice, he replied: ‘As a creature of God.’

  Higuénamota reported this conversation to Atahualpa, who made his decision: they would leave here before the new moon.

  They managed to get some food, horses, carts and vinho (as the Levantines called their black drink). The city’s inhabitants, eager to see them leave, supplied them with everything they desired.

  They left their three ships anchored near the tower in the water. The vessels were so worn out that it would have been a risk to continue sailing them, particularly as they had no idea how far this river – which the shaved men called Tejo – was navigable.

  Not knowing where to go and having no reason to favour one direction over any other, they walked along the riverbank, as Catalina had told them it led to Castile. What would they do there? Atahualpa did not have the faintest idea. But Castile was a word, and even if it was still empty, at least it had the power of words. It could serve as their aim just as well as any other word.

  On the way, they found corpses crushed by the earth, devastated villages, stricken Levantines. Reactions to them differed widely. The inhabitants of a village called Alverca regarded them as supernatural beings. In Alhandra, people begged them for alms. In Villa Franca de Xira, they were welcomed with hospitality, despite the extreme poverty of the town’s inhabitants. On the other hand, they had to fight the population of Santarem, who greeted them with pitchforks and seemed possessed by an uncontrollable homicid
al rage.

  As the days went by, Higuénamota noticed that she found it increasingly easy to understand the speech of the Levantines they encountered.

  Atahualpa knew what that meant: they had arrived in Castile. But he asked his Cuban companion not to divulge this information. They continued along the riverbank. After all, this endless wandering was preferable to being caught by Huascar or dying at sea, and since fleeing Quito his people had grown used to it.

  And so they walked on, ever deeper inland, following paths and passing through villages, until they reached a town named Toledo.

  12. Toledo

  They found this town perched on a rocky hillock and immediately fell in love with it.

  There was a stone bridge over the Tagus gorge, crenellated walls encircling the town, that temple spiking up towards the sky, and those massive palaces that looked as if they’d been placed on the mountainside by Viracocha’s giant hand.

  To the travellers, Toledo appeared an impregnable fortress, but seeing the Inca procession arrive, the guards on the bridge parted to let them pass without a single question.

  Atahualpa’s troop spread through the narrow alleys. There were numerous shops, but the town seemed deserted. They heard the distant sound of voices, however, and they followed it to a large square where all the inhabitants were gathered. Clearly, this was a special occasion.

  The Quitonians were intrigued by this spectacle. Atahualpa himself, though renowned and admired for his unwavering imperial calm, even in the most surprising situations, could not hide his curiosity.

  In the centre of the square, locked in a cage, stood men and women dressed in robes and pointed hats, some of them yellow, some black, with red crosses and flames painted on them. On the yellow robes, the flames blazed downward. Some of the people had ropes knotted around their necks. Each held a long unlit candle in one hand. Next to them were some black chests and life-sized dolls.

  In front of them, lined around a large white cross that had obviously been put up for the occasion, were shaved men, a bit like the ones in Lisbon, listening to another shaved man give a long speech while pointing accusingly at the caged hat people.

  Along one side, Higuénamota spotted the caciques: their elegant clothes and bearing marked them out. One young blonde woman resembled Catalina: she had the same mannerisms, the same look in her eyes. Sitting next to her, a bald man in a red robe had a face so lean and bony that he looked like a mummy. Armed soldiers stood behind them, apparently to protect them.

  The rest of the square was completely occupied by a dense and animated crowd, listening attentively to the words spoken on the stage, and at regular intervals emitting chants, almost dancing.

  Higuénamota found it hard to follow this strange speech: certain passages were in a language she didn’t know, and all of it seemed rather unclear. The hat people were being asked to retract something, but she couldn’t grasp what the dispute was about. Each prisoner in turn stepped forward and repeated ‘si, yo creo’ to the questions they were asked, except for a few of them who were gagged.

  The Cuban princess knew that this was a solemn ritual of some kind, but she had no idea what it all meant, and nor did her companions.

  One young man, quite elegant in spite of the coarseness of his clothing, approached her shyly and kept stealing glances at her nudity beneath the bat-fur coat. While chants rose into the air, she questioned him about the significance of the ceremony. The shy young man took a step back, but – unlike the priests – he dared to look at her.

  He told her that they were judging some conversos who were suspected of remaining faithful to their former religion and of Judaising. They could also be Mohammedans or fanatics or Lutherans, although they were less common in this region. Some of those on the stage were being judged for improper remarks, blasphemy, superstition, bigamy, sodomy or witchcraft (and sometimes more than one of these), but those crimes carried lighter punishments: a fine, the lash, prison or galley. The young man explained that the flames blazing downward were for those who would not be burned. He indicated one of the hat people who was accused of cooking with olive oil instead of lard. Or at least that was how she translated it to Atahualpa, although she wasn’t entirely sure she’d understood the nature of that particular crime. The chants continued.

  According to the young man, the judges were poisonous snakes and their mothers sold their bodies to strangers. But he respected one of them, because that man had studied in a town called Salamanca, which was completely devoted to learning and – according to the young man – contained all the knowledge in the world.

  On the stage, a black cloth was removed, revealing a green cross. Then the chief judge addressed the caciques.

  The young blonde woman was the queen of this country and the mummified man in the red robe was her minister.

  The ceremony had gone on so long that they were distributing snacks to the participants, judges, defendants and noblemen.

  Then the armed men led away the condemned people in their black robes, along with the black chests and the life-sized dolls. Intrigued, Atahualpa followed this procession. Since he had not deigned to inform his generals of his intentions, Ruminahui ordered the others to wait where they were while he went with the emperor. Higuénamota, who did not consider this order as applying to her, also followed, accompanied by the shy young Levantine.

  They came out on to another square, where stakes had been set up, with rings, and faggots of wood arranged around them. The soldiers lit the first pyres, and they tossed the black chests and life-sized dolls into the flames.

  Then they tied the people in black robes to the stakes.

  Following a mysterious logic that escaped the Quitonians, some were strangled before being set on fire – and the shy young man explained that this was an act of mercy – but others, whose crimes were more serious, were burned alive. All of them made the same sign that they’d seen Catalina make, a hand moving quickly over the face and chest.

  The Incas were no strangers to human sacrifice. Nevertheless, we could tell that Atahualpa, although he didn’t want to let it show, was shocked by the sight of those bodies twisting as they were consumed by the flames, and by the sound of the dying people’s screams.

  The crowd stayed to watch until late that night.

  The presence of the Quitonians could no longer be ignored. They were sought out and introduced to the queen.

  Her name was Isabella and she was the sister of Joao, the king of Portugal. Like Catalina, though, she spoke Castilian, enabling Higuénamota to understand what she said. In truth, she was more beautiful than her sister-in-law, and more richly dressed. Her husband reigned over Spain and a distant territory that she called ‘the Germanic Holy Roman Empire’, which had to be ruled from the country where he was born, further to the north, and defended against a rival empire, to the east.

  Her brother had written to her, warning that Indians from the west would be arriving. She wanted to offer a warm welcome to what she took to be an embassy from Cipango or Cathay, which forced her – she said, laughing – to admit that the world was round.

  Atahualpa thought he could detect a certain impatience, or at least a degree of reserve, in the expressions of some of the shaved men listening to the queen’s speech, and particularly in that of the mummy in the red robe. One, who introduced himself as obispo and inquisidor and responded to the name of Valverde, asked the Quitonians if they recognised the Holy Trinity. Atahualpa said he wasn’t aware of it. A long silence ensued.

  The Quitonians were lodged in a palace, and their animals were looked after.

  The next day, they strolled through the streets, provoking only mild curiosity among the inhabitants, who were perhaps still sated and slightly drunk from the previous night’s ceremony.

  Amid Atahualpa’s troop was a red-headed blacksmith named Puka Amaru. He noticed that the weapons made by the artisans of Toledo were almost equal in quality to those of Lambayeque. He reported his observations to Ruminahui, who put him i
n charge of maintaining their weaponry. Puka Amaru collected all the axes, swords, lances and star-headed clubs and took them to the local blacksmiths, who went into ecstasies over the delicacy of the ironwork. Together, they oiled, sharpened, traded. Puka Amaru very much appreciated the availability of good tools – the files, chisels and bellows were all well made – and he and his men were able to work their iron on excellent anvils. The Toledans were intrigued by the star-headed clubs. They also liked the long axes, which were similar to their own alabardas. In return, they offered straight swords with cross-shaped hilts and curved sabres that were like long machetes. Apart from the discovery of the black drink that turned red when it was poured, this was the first cultural exchange between the Quitonians and the inhabitants of the New World. Moreover, the black drink in Toledo was no less delicious than the one in Lisbon. The shaved men in Portugal had looked horrified when some of Atahualpa’s young women had wanted to drink vinho, but in Toledo men and women were free to mingle.

  But this harmony did not last.

  One question about the Santa Trinidad seemed especially problematic for the local priests, who had formed a sort of council that they called Suprema. They showed a stubborn insistence on knowing whether or not Atahualpa believed a certain Jesus was the son of God. Atahualpa replied that Viracocha had created the world a long time ago but, for his part, he had stopped believing in Pachacama, the son of the Sun and the Moon. This response, which he had thought would satisfy them, appeared to plunge them into embarrassment, because they fell silent then and looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes.

  It was agreed that the Quitonians should await the return of King Charles, Isabella’s husband, who was to be informed without delay about the presence of Atahualpa and his delegation. However, the mummified priest, whose name was Cardinal Tavera, was not in favour of summoning the king for this because he had, according to the cardinal, more important business to take care of in a northern region called the Netherlands.