The Light of Machu Picchu

by [Incas 03] The Light of Machu Picchu (retail) (epub)

  When they reached the rock, Anamaya stopped. She took Gabriel by the hand and made him lie down on the low wall that ran alongside the river. They closed their eyes together and emptied themselves of violence, letting their souls and bodies join with the water’s eternal flow.

  Then she stood up and led him down to the water’s edge. She undressed him tenderly. His unku, still drenched with sweat, slipped to the ground. The water was so cold that Gabriel almost cried out from the shock. Anamaya led him toward a flat, black rock whose top showed through the river’s surface in the middle of the current. He stretched out on it, the cold water flowing around him, and Anamaya rinsed him carefully with her hands, washing away his exhaustion. Gabriel surrendered until he was no longer able to distinguish between her hands and the water. He felt his weariness slip away from him and sink into the river. The images haunting him slowly disappeared, and slowly he emerged from the hand-to-hand combat that he had never fought. A delicious sense of well-being overcame him, and even the first stirrings of desire. Then Anamaya made him sit up and led him back to the river bank.

  She had brought him a soft wool unku in her manta.

  They climbed back over the little wall and returned to the path. They passed beneath the silhouette of the condor huaca.

  ‘I didn’t want to leave,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘I know.’

  They spoke in low voices, not for fear of being overheard but to create a sanctuary for themselves in the night. They spoke of everything except their coming separation – a separation that they knew would be upon them all too soon, despite the night’s illusion of timelessness.

  ‘I thought that I had to be close to them. I didn’t want to fight your people, I wanted to be like the grass beneath their horses’ hooves, within a hand’s reach of the wounded, within their sight. I felt as though I was meant to see that crimson feather in that bastard Hernando’s helmet. I even felt fondness for him, and though I was ashamed of it, I couldn’t help it. I knew that they were going to lose the battle, but if I had come down from the mountain, I would have looked like a traitor.’

  ‘A voice said that you weren’t meant to die, but another said that you would be trampled and torn to pieces. One voice told me that we would find one another again, and another said that I’d lost you.’

  ‘You were there with me. When I saw Sebastian and de Candia approaching at a gallop. I turned towards you. I wanted to tell…’

  Anamaya laughed. Then, in a serious voice, she asked:

  ‘Are they still alive?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so. I saw them disappear beneath a hail of stones and arrows, and I remember willing myself toward them and wishing with all my heart that the force that had protected me during the battle of Sacsayhuaman should now protect them. I prayed to a variety of gods – my own, all of yours – and I said, “Whoever you are, ignore my disbelief and save my two friends. Don’t let them die now.”’

  ‘Then they’re still alive.’

  ‘You mean, I have that power?’

  ‘I mean that power exists. Come.’

  They climbed through the rocks into the huaca. Newly sensitive to the Incas’ beliefs, Gabriel felt an energy vibrating through the place. He said nothing, letting Anamaya lead him from stone to stone.

  She stopped in front of a rock about as tall as she was, its slender form telling that it had been worked by man, although no chisel marks were visible. It was the same shape as a mountain that rose in the distance but was now hidden in the night.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Anamaya.

  Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat.

  Anamaya stopped herself, surprised by her own words. She had spoken without thinking – the words had just come out. The lingering remnants of her fear disappeared: those secrets that she was meant to keep from Gabriel were now right in front of him. He had to know.

  ‘It’s a place,’ she said, ‘that is close and yet very far, and its name must remain secret. Of all those in Ollantaytambo, only Katari and I have traveled there. He carved this stone in the shape of a mountain that no one here has seen, and which rises up over there, above our secret sanctuary. On that mountain’s side…’

  Gabriel let Anamaya’s words flow through him without trying to understand them. They penetrated through every pore in his skin, and marked him.

  ‘…A face is being carved. It’s the Puma’s face.’

  Anamaya paused. A moment passed before Gabriel realized that she was talking about him. Still unsure, he squinted through the darkness, trying to make out anything at all carved into the rock. But he saw nothing.

  ‘You don’t see it,’ she continued, ‘and yet it’s there. Katari told you that your destiny is written in stone. Here it is, directly in front of you.’

  Gabriel suddenly felt an intense heat invade his body, a feeling unlike either the blood-colored, ash-flavored fury of battle or the honeyed taste of carnal love. His entire body shuddered, and he felt at one with the world. He felt amazingly grateful.

  ‘I see it,’ he murmured. ‘I see it!’

  He saw the Puma’s fangs emerge from the rock, ready to bite, ready to tear to pieces. But Gabriel wasn’t frightened. He was intoxicated with inexplicable and magnificent joy, beyond laughter, beyond tears.

  At last, he thought, I have arrived.

  CHAPTER 18

  Ollantaytambo, November 1536

  Anamaya and Gabriel lay naked against one another, entwined around one another, wrapped up together as though they had been sculpted from a single block of stone. They had plunged into one another deeply, almost without moving. Their light, fleeting caresses brought them intense, exquisite pleasure. They shared their breath with the breeze.

  Their happiness was complete. It made all the strange twists and turns that their fates had dealt them seem obvious, even necessary. They were united in the certainty that all was well without having to explain it. Their emotions floated as though on a gentle lake by the light of the half-moon.

  Occasionally they lay so perfectly still together that they almost stopped breathing, and they could well have been carved from stone. At other times, they flowed together as though they were part of the river that they could hear rushing past outside, and within them as well.

  They spoke without moving their lips; their words were their hands, their grammar their heartbeats. They were like light and shadow, their two bodies dancing in the middle of the universe.

  Anamaya broke away first.

  Gabriel felt no pain.

  He watched her slip on her añaco gracefully before passing him his unku.

  She sat down beside him. She gazed into the darkness at a spot on the mountain where Gabriel thought he could make out a few niches carved into the rock.

  ‘I’m going to tell you about a journey,’ she murmured.

  * * *

  Anamaya told Gabriel about her expedition through the stone and her flight as a condor over the Secret City.

  He listened as she told him about the rock that spoke to her, and about seeing the old face of the great Inca Huayna Capac. He remembered that she had served the Inca a long time ago.

  Anamaya told Gabriel what the Inca had told her, and although not all of it gave him any insight, he kept it in his heart. It didn’t unravel all the mysteries surrounding him, but as he listened to Anamaya’s soft voice, he felt a peace enfold him, a sense of release that he had never known before. He was overjoyed to realize that he had not only laid down his weapons but that he had been freed from the grip of the very spirit of war.

  He realized that it was war that had forced him to remain on the move his whole life. He knew now that he had been displaced by war ever since that sad day when the man he hadn’t been able to call ‘father’ in public had freed him from jail, only to scorn him.

  Gabriel felt as though he was watching his life replay itself and that Anamaya was watching it with him. He wondered whether that was how she had felt when she had flown over the mysterious valley wi
th Katari. He saw his battles, his conflicts both physical and spiritual, and his struggles with himself as well as with others. He saw them not as a Stranger, but with new-found acceptance, with a sense of peace that made him want to whisper, ‘Oh yes, I remember that trifling thing – is that all it was…?’ Of course, this didn’t diminish his affection for his few friends, or lessen the love for Anamaya burning in his soul.

  He tested the extent of his love and was dazzled by its brilliance, by its almost infinite power. He explored his own fears.

  And then that landscape disappeared, and he heard Manco’s severe voice echoing like a bell from its tower: ‘Before dawn, before dawn.’

  Gabriel thought he could make out a slight glow atop the Ancestor Mountain.

  Anamaya clasped him to her.

  ‘You know what I know,’ she said. ‘Nothing remains hidden from you. Now you must live the life you’re meant to, before coming back to me. We have to wait for the signs to be revealed…’

  ‘How will we know that they have?’

  Anamaya remembered asking Katari the same question when he had given her his bronze key.

  ‘We’ll know. You’ll know it as soon as I do.’

  ‘Will we have to wait long?’

  Gabriel said this anxiously, suddenly. She hadn’t expected it. It was as though the child in him had re-emerged and was demanding his happiness right away, threatening to throw a tantrum if he didn’t get it.

  Dawn was upon them.

  A pale yellow light grazed the mountain peaks. Night was withdrawing. Each moment was another grain of sand that slipped between Gabriel’s fingers. Anamaya answered his question by kissing his lips lingeringly.

  They stood up together, still holding one another, kissing each other almost violently, then tenderly, alternating between the extremes of their passion. And then, with an effort that wrenched the breath from his lungs, Gabriel tore himself away from her.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  He looked at her. All the memories that he had of her face, all her smiles and all her tears, melted into one. He looked into the serene lake in her blue eyes. He thought he saw a mountain peak reflected in it.

  She put her finger on his lips.

  ‘I love you,’ Anamaya said again, louder now.

  She looked at the Ancestor Mountain before turning away. ‘Remain in my breath, and trust the puma.’ The words gave her the courage that she needed.

  Gabriel turned around and began making his way down toward the riverside path, all the while sensing Anamaya standing still behind him.

  He didn’t turn around for fear of losing his determination and not being able to do what had to be done. He knew what that was now. He understood it and accepted it in his innermost heart.

  He began walking more quickly toward the canchas.

  As Gabriel crossed the bridge, he blinked as the sun’s first rays touched his face.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 19

  Lake Titicaca, March 1539

  Early dawn, and a thin fog slipped slowly over the Island of the Moon. The lake was still hidden, and only the very slight sound of waves lapping on the pebble beach betrayed its existence.

  Gabriel was sitting on a low wall that ran along the rim of the highest terrace, his back to Quilla’s temple. The air was cold, and his skin was covered in goose bumps despite the large blue wool cape he had wrapped around himself. He was, as always, deeply moved by the prevailing serenity of the sacred place, a place that he now knew well.

  He liked that time of day when the sky and the lake were of the same milky, fluid hue, the light gradually brightening from its centre. And although he felt profoundly alone, he also felt as though he was being borne up by a sense of the power of the new life now unfolding with the dawning day.

  Soon the morning breeze blew stronger, ruffling his blond hair and rippling through his long beard. It came from the south, scattering the fog into long, thin strips and pushing it north so that it resembled a pack of white horses galloping through the blue of the sky. The little island’s grass- and shrub-covered slopes appeared; and the ceremonial terraces, neatly divided by brown and ocher stone walls, now lay unveiled. They descended in orderly stepped rows right down to the somber waters of the lake, its shore streaked with the foam of small waves.

  Soon, Titicaca, in all its vast magnificence, was visible. Gabriel could make out the vertiginous Apus to the north and east – the Ancestor-Mountains, the haughty guardians of the Lake of Origin. Night’s shadows gradually withdrew from the mountains’ folds and ravines as the last streaks of fog dissolved in the blue sky. The sun tinted with gold the cotton clouds caught on the eternally frozen peaks of Ancohuma and Illampu, those same clouds that skimmed over the mountains’ harsh screes, cliffs, and seracs.

  The other mountains were, in their turn, very quickly crowned with solar gold too. The blue of the lake’s water grew deeper and denser, and the banks seemed to rise straight up from it. Like a peacock showing its resplendent feathers, the thousands of geometrically arranged terraces on the western shore unfurled their whole range of greens. For a short moment, Gabriel felt as though he was witnessing the birth of the world.

  The last strands of fog in the north, directly ahead of him, scattered abruptly to reveal the lunar orb, the Moon-Mother. She was enormous, perfectly round, and hung suspended directly over the mountains reflected in the lake. She stayed there for a long moment, long enough for Gabriel to become absorbed in her faraway contours and shadows, and to watch her nocturnal brilliance slowly fading in the growing light of day.

  And then the sun rose swiftly over the big Apus and threw its blinding illumination across the world. The lake’s surface, so somber a moment before, now shimmered so brightly that it was impossible to look at it directly.

  The moon’s disk began to fade slowly.

  Voices began intoning behind Gabriel, startling him:

  O Mama Quilla, how cold was the night!

  O Mama Quilla, hold us tight,

  O Moon-Mother, embrace us!

  The Sun has suckled the milk of day at Your breast,

  The Sun has spilt the milk of life in Your womb,

  O Mama Quilla!

  May You rest in Titicaca’s depths,

  May You cross through night’s shadow,

  May You return to us in the unborn tomorrow,

  May You swell our wombs and breasts.

  0 Moon-Mother,

  In the World Above,

  In the Under World,

  Embrace us,

  For we are Your daughters,

  O Mama Quilla!

  He turned and saw a dozen old women chanting.

  With their arms raised, they focused their pale eyes on the moon’s increasingly diaphanous sphere. They sang farewell to it once again, their cracked lips moving together, vocalizing from toothless mouths. They marked the end of each line with a sway of their hips, their long capes lined with silver plaques undulating in time with their movement. Gabriel saw that although their faces were wizened and old they moved their bodies with youthful grace.

  The women were standing in front of the Temple of the Moon, which consisted of a number of buildings set around three sides of a perfectly proportioned courtyard. Thirteen doors, with lintels and frames lined with ocher stone as delicately worked as mantas, opened onto thirteen small rooms, cubicles set next to the upper terraces. A young girl in a white tunic stood in front of each door, her bosom covered by a silver plate.

  Gabriel shivered. He straightened himself and waited for the end of the prayer, feeling the stiffness in his muscles.

  When the priestesses finished their chant, three adolescent girls emerged from the temple. Two of them had vicuña wool cumbis draped over their arms, the material so finely woven that it seemed to be weightless. The third came up to Gabriel and handed him a tunic decorated with a simple red-and-gold motif.

  Wordlessly, he took off his coat. Beneath it he wore only boots, a shirt and velvet breeches. Th
e young girl helped him slip his head through the tunic’s narrow neck-hole. From the neck down it covered him almost entirely, so that of his boots only the toes were visible.

  Gabriel could smell the animal odor of the wool and door hangings. He took one last glance at the mountains, now iridescent in the morning light, before bowing to the oldest priestess.

  ‘I am ready, daughter of Quilla,’ he murmured respectfully.

  * * *

  The old women surrounded Gabriel and led him into a dark room, lit only by a few burning candle-ends. Each woman threw a handful of coca leaves into a glowing brazier.

  Fussing noisily, they urged him toward a long, dull-colored door hanging. One priestess pulled it aside and disappeared into an unlit, narrow passage that bent at an odd angle. Five more old women disappeared behind her. Gabriel felt hands pushing him into the pitch-black passage.

  As soon as the door hanging had fallen back down behind him, he could see nothing. He held his hands out in front of him, feeling his way along the cold wall. Its originally roughcast surface was surprisingly smooth, as polished as leather by the thousands of hands that had felt their way along it.

  The passage forked off to the left and narrowed considerably. Gabriel stopped, but an old woman behind him, so close that he could feel her breath on the back of his neck, impatiently ordered him to continue. Gabriel had to shuffle sideways to pass through. His chest brushed along the wall. He advanced cautiously, still feeling his way with his out-thrust arm, before negotiating a gap only just large enough to let him through into another room, much larger than the first and filled with smoke.

  On one of this room’s walls were four arched niches that were pierced with small square holes through which thin beams of daylight passed. A huge, slightly bulging silver disk, twice as large as a man, gleamed on the opposite wall. Its convex surface distorted the mirrored images of the women moving around the room. Thick smoke billowed from two large baked-clay braziers, painted in rich colors, that stood below the disk. Dried llama-dung was being used as fuel, and its acrid stench was mixed with that of burned flesh and guts, the heady odor of smoldering coca leaves, and the sour reek of sacred beer. The smoke was so thick and the smell so ancient and ingrained that the walls themselves seemed to give off the fetor.