The Gold Eaters

by Ronald Wright

  “The way of begetting, face to face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you sired bastards?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  What if he had? What if Tika had taken him and they’d had little ones—would their children have lived? So many miscarried or stillborn since the Christians brought sickness and hunger to this land. And of those that are born, so few who live beyond a year. He has heard some churchmen say these must be the last days, the coming of the Doom—for God is taking New Christians to heaven straightaway, to spare them his terrible wrath when he destroys the Earth.

  Maybe they’re right, Waman thinks. Maybe the new plagues are their god’s will. I shall not worship a god who kills us so.

  Outwardly contrite for the sins he has admitted, Waman is shriven. His penance is light: little more than service to the Vicar-General, whatever Morales may require. And on the following Sunday he must come to mass in the city church and take communion.

  The sky is unblemished, the violet blue of high altitude, yet a pall seems to shadow Waman on his way to Friar Pérez’s church, now called the Church of the Triumph. It is still in the Roundhouse, the Sunturwasi, taken by Valverde after Manku’s coronation. But the high spire with the Empire’s flag has been ousted by a wooden belfry and the gonfalon of Santiago. And the doorway, he sees, is overlaid with a Spanish architrave, carved by sculptors who did not quite grasp what their new masters had in mind. A mismatch. Straddling two worlds.

  Like me, he thinks. Like me.

  Waman walks sadly, memories welling at each step. Of the Cusco he and Tika used to know, only the bones remain, a colossal skeleton of stone. Bridges are fallen, paving torn up, streets blocked by rubble and charred beams. Palaces lie open to the sky, their thick walls running above him like causeways in the air. The imperial college is being diced into houses, done roughly with rubble and adobe, the newcomers making muddy nests like swallows in its mighty ruins. Here and there a dull tang of old fire under weeds and rubbish: the reek of war. And things which were never smelt in Cusco before: ripe hams, cheeses, a billy goat. Smells of Spain.

  It’s as if centuries have passed, not years.

  And there is the House of the Chosen: the first place he went when he came back to Cusco. It still wrenches him every time. He feels himself sway, stumbles on, turns behind the Roundhouse. Steadying himself with a hand against a wall, he sinks down onto a stone, part of a broken bench. The old cherry tree is gone, but it is here he waited for Tika that last day they were together. Waman remembers the sentries on the Akllawasi door, the illusion they gave of permanence and safety. He’s heard the Spaniards used the great building as a stronghold against Manku’s army. But he still doesn’t know what happened to the women there. Some say they were scattered or slaughtered. Others believe that the Inca had the House evacuated on the eve of his attack. It is this that Waman clings to.

  He makes himself get up and join the worshippers inside the church. Friar Pérez’s sermon dwells on the deliverance of the Christians in this tower when Manku burnt the city. How the Virgin herself came down from Heaven and smothered the flames with her skirts. How thousands saw her, on both sides. And Santiago too, riding a white horse in the sky. “A holy miracle,” the friar exults. “The Miracle of the Triumph!”

  A snort escapes Waman—the sort of sound his grandfather used to make. He hopes it hasn’t been noticed. Over the years he’s heard many tales of the war, some from people who fought in it. Nobody, neither Spaniard nor Peruvian, has mentioned this miracle before.

  He walks from the candled gloom into hard sunlight, the taste of communion acid in his mouth.

  —

  The Vicar-General summons Waman the next day, in late afternoon. The first item of business is another chess game. This time Waman decides it will be quicker not to let him win. “Check,” he warns mildly after a few minutes.

  “Oh,” Morales says, hand hovering as he lowers a knight and unwisely slays a pawn. Then, leaning back with satisfaction at his move: “As I mentioned in my letter, Don Felipe—”

  The knight falls to Waman’s bishop, a fate unforeseen by the churchman. Morales breaks off in mid-sentence, glumly scans the board. “Alas! I see it’s checkmate. Or soon will be.” He topples his king. “I resign.”

  Friar Pérez pads in like a tall black cat and lowers himself into a leather chair, its creak the only sound.

  Morales coughs. “This brings me to the task before us. The Inca Pawllu has indicated that certain prayers, catechisms, and model sermons rendered into the language of Peru in the late Bishop’s time might benefit from some corr—some revision. The wording, he suggested, might be made . . . more precise.

  “Here, for example.” The Vicar-General leafs through a breviary, wetting the pad of his thumb with a pink tongue. Many of the pages, Waman sees, are in the ancient form of Spanish known as Latin, which is beyond him. “Here,” says Morales again. “This is the addendum in the Peruvian language for priests and catechists. Here you see our difficulty. How is a New Christian to grasp the meaning of confession, for example, when it’s rendered no better than confesakuy?”

  Waman studies the page. It is riddled with such terms.

  “Since his baptism,” the Vicar-General goes on, with a nod to Friar Pérez, “the Inca Pawllu earnestly desires to smooth the way of the True Faith into every Indian soul. Having little Spanish as yet, he cannot work on the texts himself. However he has graciously offered to oversee our efforts, to ensure the results are given a final polish in the best Cusco style. It was he who remembered you, Don Felipe—he heard you’d recently returned to the outskirts of this city. I gather he made use of your services during Almagro’s campaign in Chile.” Morales lifts a questioning brow.

  “Yes, my lord. That’s why Commander Pizarro sent me there. At that time the Commander and Almagro were still friends. As were Pawllu and Manku.”

  “Indeed!” Friar Pérez breaks his silence. “Neither the Vicar-General”—bowing to his superior—“nor I myself was here in those days. But we know how our enemy Satan, the Father of Lies, smarting from the defeats we inflicted on him in this land, took revenge by sowing strife amongst us Christians.”

  Ah, thinks Waman, so the fight between One-Eye and the Pizarros was all Satan’s fault. That Devil has his uses.

  Ignoring Friar Pérez’s observation, the Vicar-General gives a welcome bit of news. Pawllu is away in Qollasuyu, visiting his lands by Lake Titicaca. They will have to make a start without that Inca’s guidance. Waman is much relieved. The Inca Pawllu has grown up to be crafty and devious, the undoing of many better men, beginning with his brother Manku. Had Pawllu thrown his troops against Almagro in some Chilean pass, the Empire might be rid of the invaders now.

  The interpreter brightens as the evening meal arrives. Broiled guinea pig on a steaming heap of quinoa. Roast llama, potatoes, cornbread. Passion fruit and pineapple.

  The Vicar-General lifts the book from the table and sets it aside. “Would you say the blessing for us, Friar Pérez? In Peruvian.”

  Yayayku, Hanaq Pachapi kaq,

  Willkasqa kachun sutiyki . . .

  Sapa p’unchaw

  t’antaykuta kunan qowayku . . .

  Our Father who art in Heaven,

  Hallowed be thy name . . .

  Give us this day

  our daily bread . . .

  The friar sets to, stripping meat from a skewer with his teeth. Waman, nervous in this company, knocks a spoon off the table but is quick enough to catch it on the wing.

  “Don Felipe,” the Vicar-General says, when the edge has gone from their appetites, “the Inca Pawllu has expressed some reservations about that rendering of the Paternoster, the prayer Friar Pérez recited so beautifully just now at this our board. In particular the title of Our Father, Yayayku. We would value your opinion.”

  Waman purses his lips as
if pondering the matter. What is Pawllu up to? How did he find him in his refuge? Why did he tell Morales to send for him—just to rewrite a few prayers?

  “May I ask, my lord, when the translation was made. And by whom.”

  “No one seems to know. It was done not long after the Christians retook this city. The translator must have been an Indian. No Spaniard had enough of the language at that time. All I know is that the late Bishop Valverde approved this version for use throughout the land.”

  Yayayku! Waman thinks. An elementary blunder. Spaniards are always mixing up Quechua’s two forms of we. (Just as Peruvians confuse the two styles of you in Castilian. That still baffles him. Why call the Lord God tú, like a child, but not the lord Bishop?)

  “I shall study the prayer carefully and report to you. But it seems . . . possible . . . that the first word might be better as Yayanchik rather than Yayayku. Both indeed mean Our Father. But the Peruvian tongue has two forms of our and we. One means everyone in general. The other means the speaker and those in the speaker’s group, but not the listener. Yayanchik would say Our Father, Father of all. But Yayayku says Our Father, not yours.” Composing a naive, almost gormless, expression Waman turns to Friar Pérez. “Am I right in thinking that Our Lord is everyone’s lord, always?”

  “Of course that’s right! His power and love are universal. Only a fool—or a pagan knave—would doubt it.”

  “Very good!” Morales cuts in nimbly with a smile. “Excellent! This is exactly what we’re looking for—isn’t it, Friar Pérez? Don Felipe here’s our man. The very man. Just as the Inca Pawllu said he would be.”

  The friar refills his own glass without comment, accustomed to drinking alone. Waman allows himself an inner chuckle. Maybe the unknown translator made no mistake at all. Maybe he was mocking the Spaniards, letting everyone know the new god was their father. Not ours.

  July gives way to August. It is the height of the sunny Cusco winter. The hills are brown except where green lines of aqueducts link the few terraces not destroyed. Faltering lines, as if drawn on the land by a pen short of ink, trace channels broken in war.

  Morales seems in no hurry with the work, spending as much time on chess as anything else. His game improves. Sometimes he passes on news he receives by letter—from Lima, Mexico, Spain. All these places seem far away to Waman, only of faint interest. The Vicar-General also talks of his youth, his days as a scholar at Salamanca. These reminiscences become repetitive; Waman begins to wonder if Morales is waiting for something—for instructions from Lima, perhaps, or the return of Pawllu from Lake Titicaca.

  One evening late in August, the interpreter comes down to the main hall to find the Vicar-General unusually distracted, drumming his fingers on the table, fidgeting in his chair, as if bursting with a secret. Neither food nor chess is on the table.

  “Do be seated, Don Felipe,” he says fulsomely. “Some wine will be along shortly. So will Friar Pérez.” He gets up and peers into the courtyard, turns on his heel, drops back into the chair.

  “I have a proposal to put before you, one I alluded to in the letter I sent you in . . . that place you were living. Never fear, by the way, that I blame you for choosing to retire incognito as it were. Your steadfastness in searching for your family is commendable.”

  He summons the city beyond the palace with a pirouette of his hand. “I can imagine how hurtful it must be, to a man of your race and sensibilities, to see this land, once thriving and orderly, in this fallen state. Like a great lady violated and disfigured. Before I left home I’d heard wonderful things. Especially of Cusco. Finer than any city in the Indies, everyone said, and some said even in Spain. Twenty thousand houses! And when I got here . . . Well, it was a wonder to see a roof.”

  Waman looks up expectantly, readying paper and pen to make notes. He is not reassured when Friar Pérez glides into the room. Where is this going?

  Wine arrives, brought in by a young black man. Waman thinks of his old friend Tomás. What became of him? Did he get home to Africa, as he longed? And he thinks of poor Qoyllur in Spain. Treated like a chattel, taken by smallpox.

  Morales resumes talking of the wars. Of burnt towns and farms, abandoned way stations, rifled warehouses, rotting suspension bridges. How the conquistadors are becoming tyrants, extorting unbearable tribute from the Indians; even branding them on the face as slaves, against all royal and Church law. How jumped-up cobblers and ostlers are keeping harems like infidel sultans.

  “But now we have our Viceroy. A man of integrity. A close friend of King Charles. I had the honour of meeting him some years ago in Burgos—his brother is Archbishop there. Consider, Don Felipe, what a difference this will make! It’s like having our own King in Lima. We can speak to him. He can hand down royal justice. With the New Laws, the Viceroy will bring order. He’ll tame the rogue conquistadors. Mend roads, rebuild bridges, restore the posts, restock the warehouses. In short, Peru will soon be safe and prosperous.”

  He fills their glasses, then: “Men such as yourself, Don Felipe, respected by all—by both Indian and Spaniard—are few. This is a time of great change, great opportunity. You are needed. I don’t mean just to interpret. You can achieve great things.”

  Waman is stroking his ear nervously with his quill. He catches himself, sees he should make some reply. Not everyone is so pleased to have a Viceroy, least of all the conquerors who came in the first wave, who ride about in palanquins like Inca lords. He has heard rumours that Gonzalo—the only Pizarro brother left—is raising an army of such men. That he means to send the Viceroy packing, marry an Inca princess, and make himself King of Peru.

  “My lord, I may still be young in years, but I am old in heart. I’ve had my fill of great things. Allow me to continue with smaller ones, such as the work you have assigned me here. When that is done I must turn to other matters, to finding my kin. As you know, my mother and sister have been lost many years. I must search for them. And if my greatest fear is true and they no longer live, I must find out what befell them and do honour to their memory.”

  “Commendable indeed, as I’ve said, Don Felipe. But this new business I ask will not take long. Only three or four weeks. Then you’ll be able to apply yourself to the worthy task you speak of. And I give you my word I shall help you in that. When prudent to do so, of course. No kingdom can be safe until it is at peace. By God’s grace the fires of war no longer touch this city. But they still smoulder and flare elsewhere throughout the land. First, help us make peace. This is what I ask. Then we shall be able to help you.” The Vicar-General refills Waman’s glass. “Indeed, the very thing I’m about to propose may well bear fruit in your personal matter. Have you searched yet beyond Christendom’s frontier?”

  Waman admits that his travels have sometimes taken him into disputed territory, but he has shied away from Manku’s stronghold in the Empire’s eastern quarter. To go there, he fears, would bring death, revenge for his years with the Spaniards.

  “Ah, but things are changing, Don Felipe. The chance for you to go there is now. With our blessing and protection.”

  Morales explains that by suppressing abuses against the native population, the New Laws will remove just cause for Manku’s resistance. The Viceroy believes the time is ripe to approach Manku, to sue for peace.

  A loud sniff from the dark figure in the room. “Peace,” Friar Pérez declares, “must be both spiritual and temporal. Peace under God and King. Neither can be achieved while the Inca Manku clings to the falsehoods of his fathers. Anyone who doubts this land was Satan’s realm has only to see that fortress up there.” He shakes an angry finger in the citadel’s direction. “There the Devil’s hand is plain, for men alone could not have built it!

  “Manku’s kingdom,” he goes on, “may be only the rump of Peru, but it bristles with idols and he lives in those mountains like a god. The Indians everywhere—here in Cusco, even in Lima—still worship him, as the Romans did th
eir Caesars. They won’t convert until he does. Peru won’t rest until Manku lets Christ into his soul and friars into his lair!”

  The Vicar-General seems annoyed by this outburst. “Quite so,” is all he says.

  Waman says nothing. He knows Manku is the key—and in more ways than one. Not only have the Spaniards, despite many attempts, failed to crush him, but Manku is the fiercest foe of Gonzalo Pizarro—the man who stole his first Queen. If Gonzalo attacks the Viceroy, Manku is again a potential ally for the Crown.

  “So, what we ask,” Morales goes on, “is that you go there, to Manku’s city of Vitcos in the province of Willkapampa, with gifts for the Inca and a letter from myself. An exploratory gesture of goodwill. Nothing more. You’ll be back here in no time.”

  The request—the command, rather—appals Waman. True, it may allow him to search for his family in the forbidden kingdom. But it could easily end in disaster. For himself and for the Inca.

  “I’m not the one to send, my lord. Manku will remember me as the Commander’s mouthpiece. He will also see me as one of Pawllu’s party. I’ll be killed as soon as I set foot across the border.”

  The Vicar-General strokes the soft continuum of his chin and throat, as if pondering these objections. “We have reason to think otherwise.” He reminds Waman that the alliance between Manku and Pizarro was still in effect when the interpreter left Cusco for Chile. “As for your connection with Pawllu during Almagro’s campaign in the south, didn’t you leave those two before they conspired and marched on Cusco?” He gives Waman a searching look. “There’s also a report, Don Felipe—doubtless a slur against you spread by ill-wishers of Almagro’s party—that you took up arms against them yourself. That you went over to the Chilean natives and helped them hold a fort.”

  Waman feels the ground opening beneath him. How could they know that?

  “Then you must also have heard that I died there. Obviously I didn’t.”

  “Mere lies, of course, as I’ve said, Don Felipe. Do not allow them to upset you. Even if it were true that you fought against Almagro . . . well, he was a traitor. To betray a traitor is no crime.”