The Compass of His Bones and Other Stories

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  Then the old man fell, the sword still in him, Tupac’s hand letting go of the hilt.

  Tupac stood above the dead man for a moment, breathing heavily. An emptiness filled his mind as if he were a fish swimming blind through the black lake that shimmered before them. The sound of a chipparah bird’s mating call startled him and he realized that the Conquistador had died silently, or that his own frantic heartbeat had drowned out any noise.

  The Conquistador’s eyes remained open and blood had begun to coat his tunic. Blood coated the sword’s blade, which had been pushed upward, halfway out of the Conquistador’s body when he fell to the ground. Tupac tasted salt in his mouth and brushed the tears from his eyes. He felt nothing as he rolled the Conquistador’s body over and into the water. The body sank slowly, first the torso bending in on itself, then the legs, and finally the arms, the palms of the pale hands turned upward as if releasing their grip on the world.

  When the hands faded from view, the emptiness spread through Tupac, from his arms to his chest and then to his legs, until it felt like a smooth, cold stone weighing down his soul. He would never forget that moment, even when he was old and bedridden. He would see the Conquistador falling, for a hundred years, and no matter how many places he visited, no matter how many adventures he had, no matter how many memories he filled his mind with, he could not stop seeing that slow fall, or stop feeling the sword, as if it had entered his body, as if he had fallen into the dark wet lapping of waves, into the unending dream of drowning . . . .

  THE EMPEROR’S REPLY

  I

  The last Incan Emperor, Tupac Amaru, had neither eaten nor drunk for three days in his tower above Vilcapampa, the Spaniards neglecting him as they tightened their control over the city. But now, over the ghostly moans of the dying, Tupac heard footsteps on the stairs outside his room.

  It was a large, drafty room, for the invaders had stripped it of everything except a chair and the burnished salt birch floor, which they could not carry away with them. They had bound Tupac Amaru to the chair with rough hemp, positioning him near the only window. Outside, the Sun God Inti, father of the divine messenger, the hummingbird, faded in the west. In the courtyard below, the Spaniards had begun to slaughter llamas and alpacas, their screams not unlike those of his nobles from the days and nights before.

  But he remained calm, even as he had remained calm when, on the second day of his imprisonment, he had seen the likeness of his son Hualpa — whom he had sent into southern exile five days before — in the clefts of rock and shadow.

  Despite, or perhaps because of, the numbness in his limbs, the burning thirst, his son’s image had become sharper, etched into the land with a permanence that mocked Tupac’s own failing strength.

  Ichnoti and Tuectolt formed his son’s eyes: turquoise lakes pooling on a hilly shelf outside the city’s walls. Tupac had taken Hualpa there in the summers to swim, for the lakes remained icy cold even during drought. The sight of his son diving deep, fearless, and then surfacing, pushing effortlessly up against the cold, hard weight of water had made the Emperor flush with pride.

  He heard the footsteps again, much closer, the sound coming to him through the rock and wood like a premonition of disaster.

  His son’s mouth was a smile formed by the union of two rivers, the Bilcapampa and the Nuexcan. At the conjoining where rapids raged they had fished for gar and trout. His nose was a slope of granite worn down by erosion. Hualpa had often smelled of sweet plums plucked without permission from his mother’s orchard, his poncho stained with their juice. How fleet of foot his son had been under the towers of Vilcapampa! How quick to learn!

  The footsteps paused outside his door. He closed his eyes and prayed to Inti for his son’s safety.

  As the door opened, twilight settled over the city.

  II

  Captain Gaspar de Sotelo entered the Emperor’s room with a priest at his elbow, a dour Dominican carrying a crucifix and a bottle of holy water. Behind them strode two swarthy soldiers. The gleam of gold had eclipsed the pupils of the soldiers’ eyes until their level gaze was the distillation and reflection of gold and everything that passed across their field of vision was sifted through a sieve of gold. They stood at attention to either side of the Emperor’s chair, their swords clanging against muddy armor.

  In Castilian Spanish, the Captain said, “We have established control over Vilcapampa. We have routed the armies of your allies.” He paused for emphasis, his gaze darting toward the window, then continued: “I am sorry, Emperor, but we must find your son. For the safety of my men and their descendents who will settle these lands. You must tell us where he is.” Gaspar de Sotelo had an ordinary face, pocked with disease, and his regret, the way his mouth pursed as his teeth worried his lower lip, was ordinary too.

  Tupac Amaru said nothing.

  “Can you understand me?” Gaspar cocked his head. “I was told you would understand me. I had expected a man of reason, of restraint and shrewdness. Not a savage.”

  The Emperor stared out the window.

  “I am mistaken. I can see that now.”

  The priest mumbled a few words in Latin. He nodded to the Captain.

  “Forgive me, Emperor,” Gaspar de Sotelo said as he motioned to the soldiers.

  They removed Tupac Amaru’s bonds. They forced him, hobbling, to his feet. They stripped off his mantle and doublet of crimson velvet, the shoes made of wool, his crown with the mascapachu royal insignia woven into it, then lowered him to the floor.

  They beat him with the flats of their swords until he screamed. They gouged his toenails and fingernails. They carved patterns in his skin, stroking him with the blades.

  Blood misted the room. Blood pooled in the corners. Blood rose in the torturers’ nostrils like an aphrodisiac.

  Night fell with no moon.

  The priest lit candles.

  The soldiers removed their armor, revealing pale skin whorled with scars.

  They sliced the flesh between his fingers. They chopped off his thumbs. They stabbed his testicles. They twisted his shoulders until bones popped from sockets.

  Night fell.

  The Emperor made noises like the weeping of a child’s ghost.

  Night fell.

  The soldiers did not blink. Their eyes formed a surface so smooth blood and tears could not cling to it.

  As Tupac Amaru trembled and groaned, spasmed and gasped, Gaspar de Sotelo said, more times than sane or necessary, “Because of who I am and who you are at this time, in this place, I must punish your silence. I do not enjoy this. I am not a savage. I would not wish this upon you if it were not forced upon me.”

  III

  Gaspar de Sotelo, like the soldiers, filtered the world through eyes of gold, but behind the gold lay the moldering image of the rainforest. Those eyes had recorded the madness of treks into the interior: the moist rot that seeped into brain and bone and soul, trapped in armor that roasted him day after day, rooted him in place and made him an easy target for poison arrows from enemies as formless and oppressive as the ever-present humidity. Gaspar feared the rot would never leave him, that it would infect the marrow of his bones, eat him up, and then eat of itself, until even the fear left him and only the gold lust remained; afraid that he would not even feel his own death until coins, cold and slick, were placed over his eyes.

  Sometimes he hoped God would show himself in the patterns left on the flayed skin of his victims, for in no act of decency or betrayal had he seen God’s will at work in this strange hemisphere. Even the stars betrayed his knowledge and he whirled beneath them, ripe to fall if not propped up by his fading religion and the discipline of his military experience.

  IV

  After a span of time measured by the swift and slow rhythms of his torturers, the Emperor could hear only the febrile rattle of his own breathing. He lay on his stomach, splinters from the wooden floor biting into his wounds.

  Above him, Gaspar de Sotelo said, his voice dry and taut, “Tell me wh
ere your son is or my men will cut out your tongue. I do not wish this. I do not enjoy this. But I will do it.”

  Tupac Amaru struggled to rise, coughing blood, drenched in blood. Blood clouded his eyes so that his torturers were gray, distant shapes. He lifted his face toward the window, wanting to tell Hualpa that he had not betrayed him, but his hands slipped in his own blood. He fell back against the salt birch floor —

  — and immediately convulsed, cried out against a new pain. The wood against his wounds felt as if a hundred stars the size of arrowheads had exploded inside his heart. The pain seared his flesh, then dulled, replaced by a tingle, an itch. The itch gave way to a stretching sensation, his flesh expanding and contracting in the same instant. The Spaniards’ voices rose in consternation, drowned out by the pumping rhythm of blood in his ears: the rainforest’s pulse, the opened veins of fire beetle and freshwater porpoise, the rushing capillaries of anaconda and jacaranda; the pulse, too, of rivers and trees, valleys and slow-sighing mountains. The Empire’s pulse, beating beneath his bones, leaching upward through the birch floor. His mutilated fingers began to throb and he awkwardly turned over on his back and raised his hands. Blood bubbled from the severed joints, but upward, as though seeking to replace missing flesh. His entire body began to throb and he moaned, disoriented and afraid.

  Above him, Tupac heard the priest gasp as the blood swayed at his fingertips and scintillated, forming sinuous shapes. The blood danced on his chest and legs as well, tapping out a staccato beat. Pain swept across his body in waves that left numbness behind, his heartbeat swallowed by the pulse of the Amazon.

  “The Devil!” the priest cried. “The Devil!”

  “Do something!” Gaspar ordered, but the soldiers did nothing.

  Tupac looked at his hands. Where the blood ran thickest, it separated from the host finger and floated in the air, where feathers sprouted, then wings, and from above each finger appeared a hummingbird, Inti’s messenger in the world of men. Wherever the torturers’ blades had touched him, feathers sprouted as scarlet as a woman’s menses, followed by the birds, glistening with afterbirth, wing bones clenching and unclenching, the emerald eyes blinking once, twice, three times, as they hovered over the Emperor. Where they rose, the blood soaked into their breasts, his wounds closing puckered lips that left no scar.

  Then a river of hummingbirds poured from his eyes, leaving him blind and cold. Everywhere, he heard their rustling speech, the weight of their departure lifting from him until he felt lighter than a single feather. But cold. In the whispering of the hummingbird wings, he heard the echo of his own voice, praying for his son. He smelled the wild plums his son had plucked from the orchard. He saw his son breaking the lake’s surface, mouth wide with laughter.

  His hands uncurled, bloodless but whole. His pulse beat weakly in his ears. He thought he heard footsteps on the stairs. He thought he heard his son’s voice. How quick to learn, how fleet of foot.

  “The Devil!” the priest screamed. “The Devil! The Devil! The Devil!” until he could scream no more.

  V

  Gaspar de Sotelo stood at the window, the Emperor curled up at his feet, and watched the sun rise in the sky. Against its corona, hummingbirds flew in long, dark lines. Gaspar’s face was impassive as he watched them, his lips quivering only slightly. He thought — he knew — that for a moment, a flicker at the edge of his awareness, he might have — had — seen Him in the birds flying from the Emperor’s wounds. His knuckles whitened as his fingernails bit into his palm.

  He stared through eyes so pure a gold that even the rainforest’s green had been stripped from them. The tears that lined the contours of his face dripped to the floor, mingled with the blood to form a patina of red and gold.

  VI

  In the Gorge of Cusac, many miles east, Hualpa struggled through the snows, clad in a cloak of white alpaca fur. The air in the Gorge was so thin that Hualpa’s heartbeat slowed in his chest and his every movement was sluggish.

  Lost, supplies frozen, he was treading ever closer to despair when the first hummingbird, a splash of red against the whiteness, fluttered before his eyes — and then another and another, until a flock hovered above his head. Their wings were edged with frost and their breath blew in flumes of white from their beaks. They flew up against Hualpa and in their silken touch he could feel his father dying. He knew this as surely as he could see the outline of his father’s face in the mountain cliffs.

  But even as he wept for his father, his legs became warmer, his breath quicker. He could sense the old Emperor’s spirit all around him: in the birds’ hot wing strokes against the cold; the eyes that reflected intelligence beyond the animal; the honey with which they sustained him; the iridescent arrow they formed in the sky, leading him through the Gorge of Cusac and into southern exile.

  VII

  It is said that Tupac Amaru survived the torture at Gaspar de Sotelo’s hands long enough to return to Cuzco and be burnt at the stake.

  At no time did Tupac Amaru seem aware of the jeering crowds or of the priest who begged him to embrace the European God. He did not blink as his wife was torn apart by four white horses.

  His eyes, like glass, reflected nothing, and there was nothing behind them. The flames hovered over his body, those same eyes cracking, then melting. Soon after, the hollow frame tottered, fell, the spirit having long since left it.

  THE COMPASS OF HIS BONES

  In the summer of 1615, Captain Gaspar de Sotelo, arm of the Viceroyalty in Peru, watches as the last Incan Emperor, Tupac Amaru, burns to death after first accepting Christ and renouncing all land claims. The Emperor burns slowly and his blood turns black as it catches fire and seeps out beneath the branches heaped around him. The Emperor does not scream as once he screamed while being tortured in a tower high above Vilcapampa. Instead, silent, the Emperor stares at Gaspar with a hollow gaze. Gaspar cannot look away. The Emperor takes a long time to die. Gaspar burns as if he were back in the rainforests waiting for the insects to devour him.

  Later, after the body has faded to ash and smoke, gray plumes rising into the Cuzco sky, Gaspar finds himself in the courtyard where the execution took place. At his side stands a shadow wrapped in a cloak: Manuel de las Vegas, the Dominican priest who has, since the storming of Vilcapampa, become his companion in all things. Beyond them both stand squat stone houses, mantles covered in honeysuckle, the thick sweet of it as disturbing as the smell of corpses. Through the archway to the street, Quichua Indians pass, bearing fruit and vegetables on their backs, leading llamas to market. Ladies of the Viceroyalty pass less often, looking exotic on scented divans borne by native youths. Beneath their feet, the alleys suffer under layers of dirt, garbage, and excrement.

  Manuel hands Gaspar the still-warm skull of his enemy. The skull — the freedom of its eye sockets, gaping mouth, hollow nasal cavity — gives Gaspar no answers. As he stares at the skull, he imagines it talks to him. It says, “Nothing is left that can betray my will. Not eyes. Not hands. Not arms. Not legs. Nothing.” Gaspar gives a little laugh. It is hard to concentrate through the layer of sweat that always coats him; never a cool breeze in Cuzco now.

  “We’re a long way from Madrid,” Gaspar says as he stares at the skull. “I wonder if the Church knows how far?”

  “The Church is not your enemy,” Manuel says. For the Dominican, the laconic has become both law and religion.

  “It is not my friend.”

  Manuel’s shadow falls upon him. It is a long shadow and sometimes it seems to rustle, as if the darkness of it were composed of a thousand black moths.

  “What,” says Manuel, “is your desire?”

  A sly smile plays across Gaspar’s lips. What is his desire? To tell the present from the past. To slake his thirst. To distinguish night from day.

  “Simply this,” he replies. “Take this skull and have it smoothed and cured and oils applied to it. Fashion it into a compass and candle both, so that it may guide and light our way through this miserable land. P
lace the skull atop a standard, as you would our beloved flag, and then fasten this standard through a stirrup on my horse, that I may always carry the head of my enemy upon a pole.”

  Gaspar stares up at Manuel, slight and effete beneath his robes, hands more weathered than his face. Startling white hands against the black.

  “As you wish,” Manuel says.

  Gaspar sees nothing in Manuel’s countenance to mock him.

  Gaspar and Manuel have never discussed what occurred in the high tower above Vilcapampa, during the Emperor’s torture. From the wounds on Tupac Amaru’s body, wherever he bled, black-and-crimson hummingbirds had burst forth and flown into the greater wound of the sky. Until the blood had dried and the Emperor had stopped his moaning. Gaspar and Manuel had stood there, unable to believe.

  Gaspar has blocked it from memory. He knows it happened, but at best it remains a fluttering at the edge of his vision, an event from a fever dream. The shock of it still frightens him during his sleep. He wakes now with a sharp, upward lunging motion that, as he will not or cannot admit, mimics the hummingbirds rising from the Emperor’s body. Where had they gone? What had they meant? Their crimson bodies had been like flakes of blood against the mountains outside the window.

  “I dreamt of nightmares within nightmares last night,” he tells Manuel sometimes. To which Manuel replies, “Nothing in dream is real.” Or in waking life, Gaspar thinks. Or in that place between sleep and wakefulness, the twilight he inhabits more and more. He is always sweating, the coolness of Cuzco given way to heat. And the plains below the plateau of the city have faded away into a heat-inflicting haze. And the insects are ever-present around him, reminding him of the hummingbirds.