The Reincarnationist Papers

by D. Eric Maikranz

  “What do you remember about dying?” Juan asked.

  “I remember I slipped twice. I knew how high I was and I was scared. I felt the wind blowing. It was a cold wind.” Bando’s eyes glazed over. “After I fell, I forgot my family for many seasons.”

  They both sat in silence. Juan knew then that Bando was like him. It’s always in the detail of the memories. Nobody remembers the wind blowing when they died unless it was. It was enough to convince him and would convince the others as well, he thought. Juan turned to Bando as the flames from their campfire licked at the roasting rabbits. “Bando, you spoke to me before of your first family. Did you ever speak to anyone else about this?”

  “Yes, I told the elders at my village in Africa. I told sailors on the first ship to Spain. And I told you,” said Bando.

  “How did they react when you told them?”

  “The elders made me leave. The sailors laughed at me. And you listened to me.”

  Juan smiled. “You and I are special, Bando. Those other people are not like us. They don’t remember their other families. They can only remember the families they have now, and because of that, they don’t believe us and they make us leave or they laugh at us.” Bando sat bathed in firelight and stared at Juan as he continued to speak. “From now on, you should not speak of this to anyone else, for your own safety and mine. Do you understand?” Bando nodded solemnly. “When you die you will be born into a new family and you will remember this life as you remember your other life now.” Juan leaned forward as if to make a point. “And in that next life, you and I can meet again in different bodies. We can be friends again and remember everything we did in this life, even eating two rabbits in one night.”

  Bando smiled. “I want to be friends over and over again.”

  “We will be, Bando.”

  every day, bando pressed juan to ride a little farther in search of some landmark he could recognize. They rode on arduous ridgelines in order to gain the greatest vista of the country beyond, and it was atop one of these ridgelines that they heard a salvo from the muskets of the main force. Five shots total signaled for all scouts to return.

  One of the captains, Hernando de Alvarado, had found a city over the horizon.26 He described it as a city on top of a city. It was without temples or battlements and was the first major settlement they had encountered in weeks. Coronado gave the order: in the morning they would ride on the city. A fever of anticipation ran through the ranks that night as each man speculated on his prospects for the next day. Talk of gold and jewels broke up the drone of stone on sword.

  By midmorning, they were within view of the Zuni city of Hawikuh. The multistoried city of mud walls and crude ladders looked to offer little resistance and little gold. Undaunted, they rode forward. Figures were visible frantically running about the compound. Two men ran out from a ground-floor room and began to lay down a narrow strip of ground corn flour in a circle around the complex in what appeared to be the city’s only defensive fortification.

  Coronado rode up to the edge of the corn flour strip and stopped. He dismounted along with four officers, and together they breached the circle of flour and approached the earthen walls. They were met halfway by a group of five half-clothed native men. The inside of the city bustled with activity as the two groups of emissaries gestured and shouted at one another. Then without warning, a single defender atop one of the walls let fly an egg-size stone at the intruders. It tumbled haphazardly and hung in the air for what seemed an eternity before it found its mark against the white-plumed helmet of Coronado, who was knocked to the ground by the surprise impact.27 The officers dragged their dazed commander back across the corn flour defensive line and ordered the men to charge the walls.

  The Zuni defenders shot arrows at the horses and rained stones into the main body of the force. The Spaniards returned fire with crossbows and muskets. It was over quickly and the remaining defenders, along with the women and children, ran off for the surrounding hills.

  The victors entered the city to find meager stores of grain and a handful of carved stones. Bando rode around the corn flour perimeter, scanning the horizon. Juan wiped at his running nose, grabbed his notebook, and sat down to begin sketching the fallen city. He was putting on the finishing touches when Bando came riding in so fast that he nearly trampled the seated Juan.

  “What are you doing?” shouted Juan.

  “Follow me, I know this place,” said Bando, as he spurred his white horse and took off like a shot for the northwest. Juan leapt up and hastily put his pad away. They rode at full gallop down a dusty foot trail that ended at a small lake. Juan sat up in his saddle and reined in his horse, but Bando kept going at full speed right up to the edge of the lake where his horse veered abruptly to the right, sending Bando flying high out of the saddle and headlong into the water. Juan, suppressing a laugh, dismounted, and walked to the water’s edge.

  The lake had a white circle of salt around the edge. Dark footprints lay scattered in the white crust along the bank.

  Bando emerged from under the brackish water and began to shout and laugh incoherently as he splashed around. Juan’s amusement had turned to confusion. “What is this place? What are you babbling about?”

  Bando turned around and shouted enthusiastically, “Juan, I came here for salt with my father. Everybody comes here for salt. Juan, I have been here before. We are close!”

  “Do you remember where to go from here?” asked Juan, loud enough to be heard over Bando’s splashing.

  “Yes!” shouted Bando, continuing to frolic.

  “Well, which way?” asked Juan, who fought back a sneeze while he was envisioning the riches Bando said awaited him.

  “That way!” screamed Bando in between laughs, “That way, that way!” He pointed to the northwestern mountains.

  Juan walked along the crusty bank, leaving Bando to his moment. It was a moment that Juan knew. He knew that Bando must be feeling vindicated, finally realizing he was not crazy. Juan remembered the way it felt to have the tally of all that others told him wiped clean; how great it felt to step back in time and meet yourself, realizing who you are by remembering who you’ve been. He hoped Bando was experiencing the unique kind of peace that could only be found by those like him, probably for the first time in his life. Juan could not help but feel a connection to Bando as he watched him float easily on his back in the salt water and look up at an empty blue sky.

  coronado set up his headquarters in the vacated city of Hawikuh. His plan was to send out reconnaissance parties to determine if any of the neighboring tribes harbored anything of value. There were two traveled footpaths leaving Hawikuh, one to the east and one to the northwest, Bando’s route home. Juan and Bando volunteered to scout for the northwest path and received orders to leave four days ahead of Captain Tovar and the main body of the second reconnaissance group.28 Coronado came to send off Juan and Bando. If Bando was right, Juan thought, he would never see Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado or this group again. Juan realized if he wanted it all, they would have to return alone.

  “How far is it to your village?” asked Juan as they headed out.

  “Five days’ walk. Two with horses, I think,” said Bando over his shoulder.

  “Is it on this trail?”

  “No, tomorrow we go north off the trail and into the mountains. We are close,” said Bando.

  bando rode harder into the afternoon of the second day, and Juan felt they were getting closer, close enough that he had to do one last thing for his friend, should the worst happen. Juan spurred his horse to catch up to Bando and then veered his horse in front to break the young man’s concentration from the narrow footpath. “Bando, if anything should happen to us, if we are separated or killed, I want you to know how to find me again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  They rode two abreast. “Do you see this?” asked Juan, pointing to the
tattoo on the back of his right hand between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “It is the symbol that all members of our new family use to mark ourselves. It is called the Embe. If we are killed, you will remember what I’m about to tell you, just like you remember this place and your first family. There is a city called Zurich next to a lake in the mountains of central Europe. All the members of this family always gather in this city on the longest day of summer. To the north of the lake and west of the river, there is a redbrick church. The back door of this church has this symbol on it,” Juan said as he pointed to his tattoo. “This is where we meet, and if we are killed, it is where I will meet you when we both remember again. Do you understand?” Juan asked.

  Bando nodded.

  “We will meet in the summer when the days are the longest.”

  Bando nodded again.

  “Good,” Juan said, contented with his directions. “Good.”

  “What does this place look like, what are we looking for?” asked Juan.

  “It is a city in the rocks,” Bando said, pointing to the top of a bluff in the distance, “that rock.”

  The village came into full view past the next bend in the trail. At the base of the sandstone bluff lay a vertical community of some thirty buildings of different sizes built one upon another to make a three-story tall collage of stone walls and ladders perched beneath a great stone cliff stretching upward for one hundred feet.

  Bando stopped his horse and dismounted. “This is the village of Latsei. This is my home.” Bando’s voice cracked as he spoke the words.

  Juan tightened the leather straps on his armored breastplate and secured the chinstrap of his helmet. “Are you ready?” asked Juan nervously.

  Bando nodded, not looking away from the village, “Leave the horses, we will walk from here.”

  the village started to buzz with activity as they approached. They had been spotted. Juan turned toward the village again, and Bando was already fifty paces ahead and walking briskly toward the gathering crowd of villagers, his head held high and his shoulders back. Fifty to sixty villagers gathered at the edge of the compound. Men, women, and children dressed in animal hides and adorned with silver and gold retreated into a semicircle around Bando as he approached them. The young African appeared as a black beacon in the growing crowd. The children fearlessly walked up and touched his ebony skin, then drew back and giggled. The taller children and some women reached out to touch his strange woolly hair. Bando turned around and Juan could see small rivulets of tears glistening on his face. Bando was too emotional to speak but he didn’t have to. His eyes relayed the message to Juan as the crowd continued to close on him. When Bando spoke in their native tongue, the crowd took two steps back in unison as an older man with a wide golden neck collar shouted a sharp reply as he strode through the parting crowd.

  Juan couldn’t understand the words, but the tone was unmistakable. He placed his hand on his sword and started to slowly step forward when a clear female voice called out from the crowd. Bando spoke with this older woman in his remembered tongue as Juan carefully watched at a distance from the open part of the semicircle that surrounded his friend. Bando spoke with her for several long minutes until she wiped the tears from his face and embraced him. They continued talking and hugging one another until the older man who looked like their leader stepped between them. He spoke directly to Bando, who listened respectfully before uttering a few simple-sounding words and touching the large gold collar the chief wore around his sinewy neck.

  Juan watched from the edge of the village as the chief nodded and the woman led Bando out of sight into the maze of the rooms in the pueblo.

  The chief locked eyes with Juan and began to walk toward him with the remaining villagers two steps behind him. Juan stayed calm but kept his hand on the grip of his sword as they approached. They slowly encircled him and marveled at his black beard. They approached in the same manner as they had with Bando, only with less apprehension, and reached out to touch the cold metal of his polished breastplate and helmet.

  The chief stood in front of Juan and uttered one long, unintelligible sentence.

  Juan stared at him without blinking and in that moment decided that he would say nothing. This had always worked before whenever he had ventured into lands that had never seen races other than their own. It always lends an air of superiority and piousness, he thought, which was better than looking like a scared stranger.

  The chief spoke again, the syllables sounded the same as the ones before. Juan stiffened and threw his chest out underneath his polished armor. The chief looked puzzled and stepped halfway around Juan, looking at him as one might admire a sculpture. Juan followed him with his eyes only and stood completely still. The chief straightened in front of Juan and smiled. His teeth were yellow and irregular and looked as if they belonged to a man in his sixties, not the forty-year-old standing before him. The chief smiled broadly as he continued to speak at Juan.

  Juan looked around and noticed the expressions of the faces in the crowd had changed from inquisitive to cordial. They began to talk among themselves and point at him as the leader continued speaking. Juan felt the corners of his mouth begin to curl upward, his hand still on his sword. He smiled out of self-preservation, still expecting an unseen arrow or stone to come at any moment. He forced a pensive grin back at the chief who grew brighter and showed even more of his yellow teeth. The chief stepped back toward the village and motioned for Juan to follow. Juan took a step and the crowd shadowed him all the way to the center of the village.

  The chief stopped in front of a rug-covered doorway and then went inside. He returned with a woven blanket, which he laid on the ground in front of the portal to his house. He sat cross-legged on the blanket and motioned for Juan to do the same. When Juan sat, the bottom of the breastplate hit the tops of his thighs and pushed up uncomfortably against his chin. He forced the same stiff smile.

  Two women appeared from the crowd with painted earthen cups and a large, hollowed-out yellow gourd. The younger of the two women sat the cups down on the blanket in front of them and began to pour a thin, milky-colored liquid from the gourd into the cups in equal amounts.

  The chief raised a cup to his lips and drank deeply, finishing it in one long swallow. Juan mimicked the chief’s movements, but when the cup was at his mouth, he inhaled deeply through his nostrils and immediately gagged in revulsion. It smelled like spoiled grain. Juan felt the crowd watching him. He exhaled sharply through his nose and forced down the concoction. The chief laughed as Juan fought to keep his drink down. The young woman filled the cups again before Juan could stop her. Juan turned green and blinked his eyes erratically. He knew he would never get another one down. But the chief covetously raised his cup again, beckoning the Spaniard to do the same. Juan watched as the chief finished his second cup and then placed his empty cup in front of Juan’s full one. Juan took his cup and filled the chief’s. Juan turned his cup upside down on the blanket and another man picked it up and presented it to the young woman who filled it. The chief and the second man drank again as the crowd stirred at Bando’s reappearance with the older woman.

  “Is everything all right, Bando?” Juan shouted in Spanish above the noise of the crowd. Everyone in the crowd gasped when Juan spoke for the first time.

  “Yes, we are safe now,” answered Bando as he appeared through the onlookers. “This woman,” Bando said, reaching back for her hand. “This woman is Teszin. She is the one that I loved before. She remembers the things I did and said to her when I was called Nez-Lah. She is a good person and she wants me to stay. The chief does not like me. He thinks I am an evil spirit. But he does like you,” Bando said, looking at Juan. “He thinks you are a good spirit because you wear the shiny metal like he does.”

  “What should I do?” Juan asked, looking at his squire for help.

  “Keep wearing your a
rmor and helmet. Do you see the gold collar he wears?”

  “Yes,” Juan replied.

  “I made it for my chief when I lived before with these people. The chief says that if I can make another one in the same amount of time, then I must be telling the truth about who I am.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Bando smiled broadly, showing his large teeth, “Yes, I can do it. They are letting me use my old workshop and supplies and they are letting me sleep there. You should camp at the edge of the village,” Bando said, pointing to a clear spot under the edge of the overhanging cliff face. “I need to start on my work now.”

  juan set up camp on a small, barren rise outside of the village, facing the overhanging cliff. He awoke the next morning to find the village already alive with activity. Women came close to his camp for water. Children played and shouted in small groups. He left to check on Bando at midmorning. A crude bench and stool sat in the corner of the workshop. Juan walked in without speaking and watched Bando work. His squire had exchanged his tattered shirt and pants for the deer-hide coverings the villagers wore. He sat hunched over his bench and worked very quickly, his hands reaching for stone tools blindly. The sound of stone on soft metal rang in the room and out the open door.

  “Good morning,” Juan said, startling his focused friend.

  “Look, Juan, I am making it,” Bando said with excitement as he showed off his progress on a wide band of gold. “I can still do it!”

  Juan reached out a hand and touched the smooth surface. “It’s wonderful.”

  “When I finish this collar, it is yours. That chief does not deserve two of them,” he said with a smile. “I will shape others too, as I told you before,” said Bando with a laugh as he reached for his tools again.