The Light of Machu Picchu

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

  ‘Good. Come and take a hold of this strap. Stand still, don’t yank on it.’

  As the boy held the animal still, Gabriel pulled off the blankets. What he found horrified him. Bartholomew sat slumped over the saddle; he had either fallen asleep or was unconscious. His cowl was torn to shreds, and his face was barely visible through swathes of old bandages, brown with coagulated blood.

  ‘In the name of God,’ growled Gabriel, grabbing Bartholomew’s hand. ‘Brother Bartholomew! Brother Bartholomew, wake up!’

  But the monk’s eyes didn’t flicker. The hand that Gabriel held between his own was so thin that it seemed devoid of flesh. Gabriel considered for a moment. Then he let go of Bartholomew and turned to the boy.

  ‘Come here, Chillioc.’

  He took hold of the boy around the waist and lifted him up onto the horse’s rump, just behind the saddle.

  ‘Hold on to my friend and make sure he doesn’t fall,’ he explained, guiding Chillioc’s hands to the pommel. ‘There, hold onto that. And hold on tight. I’m going to lead you to the cancha.’

  Gabriel looked at the child: Chillioc was grimacing with disgust, his face pressed against the foul-smelling blankets. Gabriel smiled wanly.

  ‘Don’t worry, boy. He stinks – but then, all Strangers stink when they first arrive at Titicaca!’

  * * *

  It was only long after the women had carefully cleaned his main wound that Bartholomew came to. His eyes, set deep in their sockets, swiveled as they searched his surroundings. Eventually he emitted a hoarse sound from between his chapped lips.

  ‘Gabriel?’

  ‘I’m right here, my friend.’

  Gabriel waved the women away and held Bartholomew’s emaciated hand. They smiled thinly at one another, and Gabriel sensed his friend’s relief as the monk’s breathing grew more regular.

  He had never seen Bartholomew naked before, but what he had seen while helping the women cut away his rags had, quite simply, shocked him. The priest was so thin that the skin on his ribs and hips was stretched to splitting point. His legs and arms were covered with bruises and unhealed wounds.

  They had carefully unwrapped his old, begrimed bandages to reveal his face. They had found a long gash from his temple to his left cheek, cutting through his flesh and grey-speckled beard. The suppurating, infected wound had smelled awful, was poorly cicatrized, and had a few translucent worms wriggling beneath its crust. The servant girls had screamed at the sight of it.

  Now it had been thoroughly cleaned, treated with ash and the acidic sap of a jungle root, and covered with a green plaster, which gave the monk the appearance of having two faces.

  ‘I don’t know what happened, old friend,’ murmured Gabriel affectionately, ‘but they did their worst to you.’

  ‘I made it! Thanks be to God, I’m here with you; that’s all that matters.’

  Bartholomew smiled briefly and shut his exhausted eyes before adding:

  ‘I thought that I’d never make it. But God knows when to intervene…’

  ‘Perhaps next time he could intervene less violently,’ quipped Gabriel, picking up a bowl. ‘Here, a little quinua broth. You must eat. Your stomach is as thin as a feather in the wind.’

  But Bartholomew swallowed only four spoonfuls before pushing Gabriel’s hand away.

  ‘I’ve been traveling for eleven days to reach you. We were coming back from the south, where the Pizarros crushed the insurrection of Manco’s general, Tisoc. He was taken prisoner, and… oh, it’s unspeakable! Such horror, Gabriel, such horror day after day!’

  He spoke in a dry, halting voice. Gabriel knew that Bartholomew needed to talk. And he knew only too well what kind of images were haunting the monk. Had he not been haunted by the same ones for months and months?

  ‘Children, women, the old!’ said Bartholomew hoarsely. ‘Massacres and tortures, day after day. And when Tisoc was taken, his troops defeated, Gonzalo ordered an even more horrendous atrocity. He had deep ditches dug and lined with sharpened spikes, and he threw men into them, and women too, after raping them. He set houses full of people alight, burning them alive! Oh, Gabriel…’

  ‘I know, Bartholomew, I know. I saw all that when I went south with de Almagro a few years ago. I’ve never forgotten it. It cannot be forgotten.’

  Bartholomew clenched his bony fingers around Gabriel’s tunic and clung to him as though frightened of surrendering to the horrors plaguing his memory.

  ‘I remembered your words, Gabriel: “I didn’t add to the suffering, but I didn’t prevent it either, which is the same thing.” I understood what you meant, and like you my inaction filled me with shame. Oh, Lord, I think I even insulted you when you tried to open my eyes to the horror…’

  ‘Bartholomew—’

  ‘No, let me finish. My throat is infected from the air that I breathed there, my nose is still full of the stench of children burned alive. If I sleep, I see them… Oh Christ! Christ! The flames that consumed them burn within me, they’re scorching me…’

  Gently, Gabriel and the servant girls wiped Bartholomew’s forehead and torso down with clean and fresh sponges. But nothing could stop the monk raving:

  ‘I found them chained together. All women, not one older than twenty. But I was caught. The beasts, the beasts! Being a servant of God saved me from nothing. No doubt the Lord wanted to infuse the suffering of all His children into my flesh. Jesus did it! Yes, He wanted to mark me, Gabriel! Because they are His children too. Everyone must realize that the Indians are also God’s children…’

  ‘Easy, Bartholomew, easy…’

  ‘…But at least the women got away before the sinners beat me and called for my head. I succeeded, Gabriel! A few, at least, managed to escape. Too few. Only twenty children. There are so many more, Gabriel, so many more!’

  Bartholomew was almost delirious, his voice by now a high-pitched screech. Gabriel placed his hand on his friend’s forehead to quieten him.

  ‘Be still, my friend. I’m here. You’re being taken care of.’

  ‘I fled. I traveled only by night, so that they wouldn’t follow me. Beasts. They are beasts from hell…’

  ‘We’re going to give you a potion, Bartholomew, you’re going to sleep.’

  ‘No, no, I have to tell you everything!’

  ‘We’ll have time for that tomorrow. You must rest now.’

  ‘I’ve come to ask something of you, Gabriel, something important. Only you can—’

  But Gabriel signaled to the women, who had in any case already understood what they had to do from the feverish pitch of Bartholomew’s voice. They lifted the priest by the shoulders and gently lifted him up. They passed a little brazier of burning herbs under his nose. Almost immediately, he slumped back, docile, and they poured a liquid down his throat. He was asleep within moments.

  * * *

  It was only two days later, in the evening, that Bartholomew at last recovered his spirits and was able to eat a proper meal.

  Gabriel had had his friend’s bed set up in one of the rooms giving onto the lake shore. Women had watched over him day and night through his coma, administering potions to him until his fever began to subside. And as soon as the monk opened his eyes, Gabriel had fruit and coca-leaf tea brought to him, making sure that his first meals were easy ones. Bartholomew was so hungry that his fingers trembled as he devoured everything that was given to him.

  ‘I owe you my life, Gabriel,’ he declared in a raspy voice, breaking a long, slightly awkward silence and wiping his mouth.

  ‘In that case, we’re even. I would have been roasted alive in that Cuzco prison long ago if it hadn’t been for you.’

  ‘I suppose I said a lot of cretinous things during my delirium?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. You spoke only the truth. But forget about all that: I am delighted that you’re here with me, and relieved to see you eating with such appetite.’

  ‘These fruits are one of God’s wonders,’ murmured Bartholomew, nodding, ‘as though th
ey were plucked from the Garden itself.’

  The women had carefully wrapped a bandage around the monk’s head, and now he yanked it aside unthinkingly so that he could get at the juicy mangoes and guavas better. The fruit seemed to bring life back to his emaciated face. As he ate, Bartholomew let his gaze wander over the deep blue of the lake.

  At that late hour of the day, the mountain peaks were linked together by an unbroken layer of thick clouds. The reflections of the vertiginous slopes had become indistinct in Titicaca’s surface, the color of which had grown darker and more opaque.

  ‘I’m beginning to understand why you came here,’ said Bartholomew, smiling thinly. ‘You were right when you told me that it was hard to imagine a more beautiful or peaceful place.’

  He fell silent for a moment, a pained and serious expression on his face, before continuing:

  ‘After having seen what I saw these past few months, it’s now as though God has at last granted me some rest. Perhaps He wants to show me that there is still peace and harmony somewhere at least in our troubled world.’

  Gabriel glanced at him, astonished. The thick bandage distorting the left side of the monk’s face and wrapped around his skull only accentuated his weariness. Gabriel smiled wanly and nodded.

  ‘I was in no better condition than you are now when I discovered this earthly paradise, Bartholomew. And I thought much the same thing myself, although without any consideration of God. And indeed, it seems to me that Titicaca is in fact meant to be our refuge from a world turned too inhuman—’

  ‘Inhuman!’ spat Bartholomew bitterly. ‘Inhuman is the right word! I’m saddened to admit, Gabriel, that you were far wiser than I. How right you were to leave us and stay away from the Pizarros after that horrific battle that destroyed Cuzco. May the Lord forgive me: you tried to warn me, but I didn’t want to hear. It’s only now that I understand what you said to me when I came to you in your cell and the Incas were about to destroy us: “For the peoples of this country, there are no longer any good Strangers or bad Strangers. In their eyes, we all deserve to be annihilated. This is what Hernando’s diplomacy has brought upon us; this is what giving free rein to de Almagro and hell-hounds like Gonzalo has caused.” You were so right, so right. And now three years have passed, and all that has happened is that things have become – and are still becoming – far worse.’

  Bartholomew’s chest shuddered with emotion. He fell silent for a moment and closed his eyes. Then he asked in a barely audible murmur:

  ‘Gabriel, how can God allow such a thing? When will He end His chastisement? Dear friend… sometimes I wish that I was the one through whom He will administer His punishment to those monsters!’

  Gabriel saw the tears welling up in his friend’s eyes, and his sense of propriety urged him to look away. They were united in a brief silence, contemplating the lake. Outside on the shore, children’s cries and adult voices accompanied the departure of a vessel leaving for the islands.

  Gabriel took up a sliced mango and stared at its flesh as though its sweet flavor concealed some obscure, unidentifiable poison.

  ‘This country is like this fruit. It only wants to present us with its richest flavors. Here, on Titicaca’s shore, I sometimes feel that I am at the threshold of a wondrous, open world, one that is expecting us, even offering itself to us, but one that we obstinately refuse to see. I feel that peace would enrich each Spaniard more than cartloads of stolen gold.’

  ‘Oh, peace!’ exclaimed Bartholomew sarcastically. ‘For my part, I don’t ask so much. I would be satisfied if Don Francisco and his brothers conducted themselves with a little restraint instead of endlessly exacerbating the suffering. As though the war with the Incas wasn’t enough, there’s now a civil war raging among the Spaniards!’

  ‘I knew that one-eyed de Almagro had been condemned by Hernando.’

  ‘The truth is that Don Diego de Almagro was murdered. He made a fatal mistake. After the siege was lifted, when the Governor’s brothers were greatly weakened, he took the city under his control and imprisoned Hernando and Gonzalo. I can assure you that I tried to dissuade him, not because I wanted to help Hernando but because I knew that de Almagro’s coup would be a disaster. But alas, what is the word of a man of the cloth worth to an obstinate old man convinced that he has been the Pizarros’ dupe for years? Not a night passed when de Almagro didn’t have nightmares about Atahualpa’s ransom, about all that gold portioned out at Cajamarca, gold that the Governor had not allowed him to share in. His hatred and lust for vengeance blinded him to reason. To take Cuzco for himself was one thing, but to throw the Pizarro brothers into jail – well, that’s just like picking up a scorpion by the tail. They got rid of him as soon as they could, and when they did so they showed about as much emotion as if they were slaughtering a chicken.’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘I’ve too many bad memories of de Almagro to grieve for him. And I see that Hernando and Gonzalo haven’t changed their ways at all.’

  ‘They’re mad! All of them are utterly mad! Their side immediately took the lust for vengeance that had been de Almagro’s as their own, as though it had been a ball stolen from the other team! And, indeed, two sides were formed: those supporting the Pizarros and those thinking only of making their own fortunes. And all anyone thinks about is annihilating the other side.’

  Gabriel couldn’t help but laugh sardonically. Bartholomew looked at him reproachfully and prodded at his bandage as though beneath it was all the suffering of Peru.

  ‘The truth, Gabriel,’ he sighed, ‘is that soon we, the Spaniards, are going to destroy ourselves. And we’re going to do it far more effectively than the Incas ever could. May God Almighty forgive us. Unless He has decided that it’s time to punish every man who has contributed to the horror here in the New World.’

  Bartholomew spat out these last words vehemently. Gabriel said nothing for the moment, simply staring at the blue of the lake. Then he asked:

  ‘Does that mean that the war against Manco is winding down?’

  ‘Manco is losing the war. During his brief dominance, de Almagro confused the Incas by naming Paullu, Manco’s brother, as Sapa Inca. Many Indians rallied to Paullu. Now Manco is alone, and his position is weak. He lost a series of battles, and he retreated further and further into the forest, as though its trees were his only defence. Furthermore, he suffered two terrible blows…’

  Bartholomew hesitated for a moment, even though Gabriel was giving him his full attention.

  ‘…His son was captured: A young boy named Titu Cusi…’

  ‘Titu Cusi!’ murmured Gabriel. He remembered the look on the face of the child playing in Ollantaytambo. He remembered the boy asking him, ‘Are all Strangers like you?’

  ‘Also, Inca Paullu took all the mummies of Manco’s clan with him to Cuzco. No doubt you know better than I do what effect that had on Manco.’

  ‘For the Incas, whether lords or peasants, if the mummies are with one Noble Lord rather than another, it means that the one who has them has the Ancestors’ support,’ grumbled Gabriel, frowning. It was a very important factor.

  Bartholomew closed his eyes and squeezed the juice of a blackish-brown prune between his cracked lips. Immediately, his expression became almost one of relaxed well-being.

  ‘Paullu is an odd character. I’m not sure whether we should admire the wisdom of his pragmatism or be heartbroken at his cowardice. But in any case, he always seems to be on the side of the strong: first de Almagro, now the Pizarros. And no matter who he’s allied himself to, he never hesitates to make war against his brother Manco. He never reveals what he’s thinking. He was with us during that horrific expedition to the south. He didn’t once try to stop the massacre of his own people, nor did he take issue with the capture of Tisoc, Manco’s general leading the rebellion.’

  ‘So,’ murmured Gabriel, ‘Manco’s alone.’

  Bartholomew stared at him intently, an unvoiced question apparent in his look. But he decided not to
ask it and said merely:

  ‘I heard it said that he’s founded a new Inca city, very far to the north of Cuzco. Apparently it’s in the jungle rather than in the mountains, and is utterly inaccessible to us. But, to tell you the truth, after what I’ve seen these last few months I think that his reign and his rebellion will soon be nothing more than a memory.’

  A heavy silence fell between them. Bartholomew broke it first, asking hesitantly:

  ‘Is my impression that you’ve had no news of Anamaya correct?’

  Gabriel shook his head and attempted a thin smile.

  ‘It’s been almost thirty months since I last saw her. I don’t even know if she’s still alive, if she’s still in this world.’

  Another silence; then Gabriel continued, with feigned lack of:

  ‘But it’s not surprising: we had agreed upon it. I accepted it for a long time. I told myself that our separation wouldn’t last for ever, that the war would soon be over, or that Anamaya would come to me because she wanted to. And then the truth became clear to me. Much time has passed, and I’m beginning to forget what her face looks like. It’s unbearable, and yet I have to accept it. If I try to find her, I’d be endangering her. She still can’t leave her people, not the way things are. Even less can she come to me.’

  ‘The way things are?’ asked Bartholomew in a low voice. ‘Are you referring to that gold statue that she calls her husband?’

  ‘Certainly – the Sacred Double,’ said Gabriel, smiling. ‘You know, Bartholomew, despite all your efforts to respect the Incas, I doubt that you understand what it means to them.’

  ‘What does it matter whether I understand?’ answered Bartholomew, somewhat ill-temperedly. ‘What matters is that Gonzalo and Hernando still covet that… that object. The mere idea of all that gold drives them mad.’

  ‘Their madness to the Devil! They’ll never have it.’

  Gabriel spoke with such serene confidence that Bartholomew looked at him closely once again, as though he was hearing a new, unfamiliar voice speaking from his old friend’s mouth.