The Reincarnationist Papers

by D. Eric Maikranz

  “And you swept her off her feet with your art knowledge and charm? Something like that?” I asked, smiling.

  He laughed. “It was nothing like that, my friend. Her contemporary art knowledge was almost as complete as my own. She was as cool and collected as a judge at the end of the day. That’s when I knew I had to have her, whatever the cost in money, time, and emotion. I was already in love with her. In that sense, you could say she swept me off my feet.

  “I found a touring schedule for the London Philharmonic and took in two shows in Florence the next week. I went only to see her play, watching from the anonymity of the crowd. I could hear her notes above everyone else’s. It felt like she was playing for me alone, with all the others as mere accompaniment. I had gone to Florence to see if she still stirred me and I found myself saying yes to the same question in Trieste, in Belgrade, and in Athens.

  “I met her backstage for the second time after a performance in Cairo. We spoke for about an hour and agreed to establish a correspondence. Five years, two dozen meetings, and one hundred and one letters later, she was my wife. I had offered, as a grandiose measure, to marry her in the Grand Mosque of Cordova, and she held me to it. It cost me a fortune and about a dozen political favors to pull it off, but it was worth every peseta.”

  “You really didn’t tell her about yourself until after you were married?”

  “Well,” he hesitated, “not entirely. She knew about me, I told her I was different.” He leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling, and smiled as though remembering gave him great pleasure. “I used to tell her stories about myself; nations I’d visited that no longer exist, events hundreds of years ago that I was witness to, descriptions of people I’d known. She thought they were fantasy at first, that I made them up as I told them or thought them out elaborately days before a scheduled rendezvous. She figured it out in the end. What I didn’t tell her was that there was a society of us. She was angry at first, but when I explained the reason for the secrecy she understood, or at least accepted it.”

  I stood up to stretch my legs and examine more of the paintings. “Poppy mentioned something about what led to the secrecy. She said there was a member who got everyone killed.”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Brevicepts was her name, and that’s exactly what happened. She got herself and the other four killed and caused our collective treasury to be looted, but more importantly, she threatened to do it again after they all came back. Brevicepts wanted to sack the villages that had turned on them. She felt it was our divine right as Reincarnationists to rule over humanity, she thought we were endowed as we are with that purpose in mind. The Cognomina had lost everything because of her megalomaniacal fantasies. The others beseeched her to moderate and live in comfort and anonymity like before, but it was no use. The other four had attributed her conduct to madness. And that madness had attached itself to the part of us that transcends, and it returned to her as soon as she began to remember. In the end, the other four decided that excommunication was the only option. The decision, they agreed, had to be unanimous. The old man, who sits in the center of the panel during your Ascension, do you remember him?”

  “Yes?” I said, turning around to face him.

  “He had to cast the final vote against her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “What do you think happened to her? She left and died eventually, and was reborn like us and died again and again and again. She’s out there somewhere tonight, alone probably.” There was no mistaking the remorse in his voice.

  “Then you think the decision was unjust?”

  “I think it was either unjust, or there is more to the affair than the original four are telling. Think about it, Evan, could you think of anything more punitive than to be permanently spurned by the only family you can ever truly have? They doomed her to wander alone. Imagine a thousand years living as you lived before you were found, only she doesn’t have the bliss of ignorance that you had. She knows about us, what we are and where we are. I can’t even contemplate the torture and horror that an existence like that would mean, if the term existence can even be used. I don’t know. These days, the whole affair, as a rule, is not discussed.”

  I couldn’t imagine an estrangement like that either. I’ve often wondered how I survived on my own to make it this far. Every day for those three years, I felt like a man wandering lost in the wilderness that is his own identity. The idea of being forced back into that dreaded wilderness, not lost, knowing all the landmarks and having to wander anyway, was too horrid a thought to hold.

  “When do they expect us back in Zurich?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Two days.”

  “Two days off sounds good.”

  “That episode with Poppy rattled you, didn’t it?”

  It had rattled me, but pride wouldn’t allow me to admit it to him. “It was a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting what I saw.”

  “Well, it’s certainly to be expected with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that I know her.”

  “I noticed you called her Bando. Have you known her long?”

  “Since the beginning. I found her, much the same as she found you, by accident.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, pouring more wine.

  He took the glass and leaned back. “That’s a long story, but a good one,” he said proudly, followed by a dramatic pause, “Juan de Victoria was my name then.24 I was a young man looking to start my fortune as a conquistador. I had been in the Cognomina for two hundred and fifty years, but I still struggled to keep up with the others and the wealth they had accumulated with their additional lives, so looking for the gold rumored to be waiting in the New World seemed a good idea.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yes,” Samas stated with a touch of sadness in his voice. “But not without some loss. And that’s where Bando—Poppy—came in,” he said, correcting himself. “I remember the messenger was out of breath when he reached the steps that led up to the house of Victoria . . .”

  Samas’s account of his life as Juan de Victoria is interesting, as there was a man on Coronado’s expedition by that name and the man was from Borgos, Spain. (Fundadores de Nueva Galicia Guadalajara Tomo I by Guillermo Garmendia Leal, 1996.)

  16

  Gripping the royal letter in his hand, the messenger was out of breath when he reached the steps that led up to the house of Victoria. The lean Moorish teenager had run all the way from the palace of the alcalde because the letter in his hand carried the seal of Don Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain.25

  “Señor Juan de Victoria?” asked the messenger at the door to the house.

  Juan looked at the lean teenager who smiled with the whitest teeth he had ever seen. He took the letter and studied it carefully, noticing the quality of the paper, the smudges from handling, and the seal.

  It had been almost a year since he had written to Don Antonio in search of a commission in New Spain. A year of anticipation, stagnation, and sloth. A year wasted. He broke the seal and read aloud in front of the messenger and his housekeeper.

  Nineteenth of August, the year of our Lord 1539

  By the Authority of Antonio de Mendoza, Viceroy of New Spain, the services of Juan de Victoria are requested in Compostela, New Spain. You are to be commissioned as a lieutenant in the expeditionary force of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. This letter allows you to gain passage on any of the King’s ships to the New Spanish port of Veracruz.

  Don Antonio de Mendoza,

  Viceroy of New Spain for His Majesty King Ferdinand

  “Ready my possessions,” Juan shouted to his servant. “I am leaving at midday.”

  “Yes, maestro,” the servant answered with a slight tremor in his voice. “Will you come back?”

  A smile op
ened in Juan’s thick, black goatee. “I always come back.”

  the maria de la luz wasn’t much of a ship but it was the only one leaving for New Spain in the next month, and Juan was leaving with her. He had reluctantly been granted passage from the ship’s captain, Miguel de la Garza.

  De la Garza looked to be in his midtwenties like Juan. He had a full black beard, cropped neatly, as was the fashion of His Majesty’s naval officers. The wrinkled skin around the corners of his eyes reported to his years aboard ship, squinting against unfiltered sunrise and sunset. He had granted Juan passage because of the letter but had done so nonchalantly as though he saw them every day. Juan may have been under the commission of a viceroy, but it was understood from the beginning that they were going there on the captain’s boat.

  the weather worsened on their fourth day at sea, and it was on that day that Juan saw the lad for the first time. Juan first noticed him behind a pickle barrel at the front of the hold. The belly of the ship held the crew’s quarters along with leftover barrels and crates that wouldn’t fit in the forecastle and main hold. Juan’s bunk was at the rear of the crew’s quarters and across the stairwell from the first mate’s. The hold had a single oil lamp suspended from a crossbeam, and that lamp swayed wildly and sent light chasing shadow around table, chair, bunk, and barrel as the ship groaned through twenty-foot swells.

  Juan placed a folded pillow under his head, allowing him to see over the foot of the bunk. “I can see you quite clearly,” he said. They were alone.

  There was no response.

  Juan knew every member of the crew was on deck wrestling with the wind-whipped rigging. “Do you know what the punishment is for stowing away under the Spanish flag?”

  Still no response.

  Juan stood up and walked slowly toward him until he could see that the shivering youth was the same Moorish messenger who had hand-delivered the invitation to come to the New World.

  Juan sat down cross-legged on the floor of the hold in front of him, where the stowaway was shaking visibly. They sat silent, studying one another for several minutes before Juan spoke to the cowering figure. “Juan,” he said, placing his hand on his chest.

  The young African looked at him for some time and replied simply, “Bando.”

  two hours later, Juan had discerned that Bando spoke a bit of Spanish and had eaten nothing but pickles for the past three days. When Juan offered him bread, he devoured it immediately. Juan watched the boy eat with delight, but he couldn’t help but wonder why this haggard boy had ventured so far at such great peril.

  “Bando, why did you leave your village and your family?” asked Juan in Spanish.

  “I left to find my first family,” answered the young African, nodding his head as if to coax the Spanish words out of his mouth.

  “Your first family?” asked Juan as he leaned forward.

  “Yes, I left my second family to find my first family again.”

  Juan heard a footfall on the top step of the stairwell leading down into the hold. He turned toward the stairwell and saw Captain de la Garza’s freshly polished boot. Juan’s blood ran cold, and Bando was already scrambling for the cover of the barrels.

  Bando began to panic. Juan began speaking loudly, “Goddamnit, boy, I told you to stay home. Do you realize what you’ve done? You could be killed for being here.”

  “He will be killed,” came a voice from the stairs. “He will be killed now,” said Miguel calmly as he stepped off of the bottom step and onto the floor of the hold.

  “Captain, please spare the life of this boy. He is my squire. I left him in Cadiz, but he followed me aboard. I am obliged by his family to look after his safety.”

  “Then it appears as though you are errant in your duties, Señor Victoria,” said the captain menacingly, as he stepped toward them, drawing his sword.

  “Need I remind you of my travel letter, Captain?”

  “Need I remind you of the punishment for harboring a stowaway on the king’s ship?” shouted the captain. They stood nose-to-nose.

  “No, Captain de la Garza, you do not,” said Juan, stepping aside.

  Miguel stood with his sword pointed at Bando’s chest. “Stand up!” he commanded. Bando got up, knees shaking. Juan had untied his coin purse from his belt while Miguel had focused on Bando, and he deftly dropped the leather bag at Miguel’s feet. It was the larger of the two purses he had brought with him. The captain stepped on it then stared directly into Juan’s eyes. Juan returned the stare but said nothing.

  “How can I be certain he is yours, Señor Victoria?”

  “Respectfully, sir, you will simply have to accept my word as a Spanish gentleman.”

  “And no doubt, a rich Spanish gentleman at that,” said Miguel, as he rolled his boot over the purse, trying to gauge its contents.

  “I used to be,” said Juan, looking at Miguel’s feet.

  The captain stopped moving his boot, looked at Bando, then at Juan. “He eats from your rations and sleeps in your berth.”

  “As you wish, Captain.”

  “I’ll tell the crew,” Miguel said, picking up the purse.

  it was a full day after the incident with the captain before Juan spoke to Bando. He found him belowdecks, behind the same pickle barrel. “Come out from behind there,” said Juan without emotion. “Sit here,” he said, pointing to his bunk. Juan sat beside him.

  “Why did you save me?” asked Bando.

  Juan leaned back, his shoulders hunched to fit the concave of the hull. “That is what you are going to tell me. I want you to tell me about your first family. What was your name?”

  “In that place, I am called Nez-Lah. I am the gold shaper.”

  “Where does this family live?”

  Bando shrugged his shoulders. “The place is called Latsei. I’ve tried to find it. I’ve looked for one season already.”

  Juan shook his head. “Do they look like you look now?”

  “No, their skin is tan, like that of the captain, and their hair is black and straight like yours.”

  “Do you remember their language?”

  “Yes.”

  “Speak to me in that tongue.”

  Bando looked up at the crossbeams of the hold for a moment and then began chattering unintelligibly. Juan noticed that when he spoke in this strange language, Bando took on a new cast. He seemed brighter, he smiled, and his eyes shined. He was remembering, Juan thought.

  Juan did not recognize the language. He spoke thirteen languages and had heard over fifty more in as many lands. He knew the peoples of the silk routes to China and India. He knew the caravans of Africa and had heard their tongues as well. What Bando spoke was completely different.

  Juan stood up and began to pace the length of the hold. Thoughts of the letters of Cabeza de Vaca and Pizzaro came into his head. It was copies of these letters that had provoked him to seek this commission. They told of strange and majestically painted heathens, all-powerful kings, magic, and gold. Perhaps these people Bando searched for lived at the edge of New Spain. “You said you were the gold shaper?” asked Juan, still pacing.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “I make jewelry and plates for our people to use and trade. I made them from silver and gold from the mountains,” said Bando.

  “Gold?” interjected Juan, stopping midstride, his back to Bando.

  “Yes, much gold,” said Bando.

  Juan turned around with his head down, looking at the tops of his boots. “Do you know where this ship goes, Bando? It sails to a place rumored to be full of gold. It could be your home.”

  “Will you help me look for my family?” asked Bando.

  Juan turned and paced slowly toward the pickle barrel. “If we find them, will they let you shape the gold for me?”

  “Oh, yes, I can shape as much as you like.”
r />   Juan stopped again midstride. A smile parted his perfectly shaped black goatee. “I will help you.”

  compostela was a small, sleepy town at the very edge of the map, and one of the few that did not have a native heritage. Juan and Bando arrived to find a force of two hundred fifty cavalrymen and foot soldiers already there.

  The formal send-off proceedings began with a sunrise mass at the eastern edge of town. The viceroy stood in front of his amassed force after the sacrament was finished and read a short speech extolling allegiance to God, king, and Commander Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. Each soldier then was required to place their hand on a cross and take an oath to uphold the name of God and King Ferdinand. Juan was fifty-third in line. When the last of the men had taken the oath, they formed ranks, unfurled pennons atop their lances, and rode off the map past a beaming Mendoza.

  the first weeks stretched into months as the expedition snaked north through river valleys and mountain passes. Juan and Bando and the other sets of scouts rode days in front of the armada, like so many probing, bony fingers. Bando began to recognize plants and cacti the farther north they traveled, and each afternoon the young squire would venture a little farther out in front of Juan before returning with game for their dinner.

  Juan took the two rabbits from his friend and asked the young man a direct question. “Bando, do you remember how you died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, please,” said Juan as he began preparing the meal.

  “I fell from the cliff above my village. I climbed up the face to meet Teszin, my love, in our secret place. She was very beautiful and she loved me, but she was to marry the son of another leader. It was arranged by her father. We met in the narrow rocks in the cliffs above the village many times to be together. I climbed up early that day to wait for her in our regular meeting place. I fell asleep and when I awoke it was night, and I was alone. I tried to climb down the rocks in the dark and I fell.”