The Harp and the Shadow

by Alejo Carpentier

  It is late when I return to my room in the shop of Spinola and Di Negro, which contains so much wood piled in heaps, and so many casks brought here to hold a drink they call biorr, that it smells, in this remote land, of Spanish resin. But I cannot sleep. I think of those seafarers wandering through fogs and empty spaces, their fantastic ships crowned with heads of dragons, coming upon green mountains sketched over uncertain horizons, running against floating logs, smelling breezes bearing new scents, fishing from the water leaves of unknown form, wandering mandrake roots created in unknown bays; I see those men obscured in the mist, barely discernible, testing the flavor of the currents, judging the saltiness of the foam, reading the language of the waves, watching the flight of rare birds, the passage of a school offish amid a drift of seaweed. Everything I learned from my voyages, all my imago mundi, all my speculum mundi, came back to me . . . So then, sailing to the west, one finds an immense terra firma, populated by manikins, extending seemingly endlessly to the south? And I say that it is therefore possible that it stretches to the torrid zones, perhaps to the latitude of Malagueta, since those Normans found salmon and grapevines. And salmon—except in the Pyrenees, where they are a great rarity, the way everything is a rarity in that land—end where grapes begin. And the grape goes as far as Andalusia, to the Greek islands that I know well, to the Madeiras, and it seems that it even reaches to the land of the Moors, although they do not make wine from it because that is prohibited by the Koran. But, according to what I have learned, where the grape ends, dates begin. And perhaps dates are also found in that world, to the south, south of the grape . . . In that case . . . I rearrange, rotate, turn upside down, sketch and redraw all the known maps. Better to forget the maps, since they quickly make me irritated, annoyed by their arrogant pretension that they contain everything. It would be better to turn to the poets who sometimes made accurate prophesies in the best metered verse. I open the book of Seneca’s Tragedies that I brought with me on my voyage. I linger over the tragedy of Medea, which pleases me with its accounts of the Pontus and Scythia, of journeys, of suns and stars, of the constellations of Capricorn and even of the Bears that had bathed in forbidden waters, and I pause at the final strophe of the sublime chorus that sings of the adventures of Jason:

  . . . Venient annis

  saecula seris quibus Oceanus

  uincula rerum laxet et ingens

  patent tellus Tethysque nouos

  detegat orbes nee sit terris

  ultima Thule . . .

  I take a quill and translate as best I can, into Spanish, which still comes slowly to me, those verses that I would recite so often in the coming years: There will come in the late years of the world certain times in which the Ocean will wash over the land and a great land will be opened and a new mariner resembling Jason, named Typhis, will discover a new world, and then the island Thule will no longer be the farthest point on earth. That night the strings of the harp and the skalds’ stories of adventure vibrated in my mind, the way that the strings of the great harp that was the ship of the argonauts resonated in the wind.

  I

  seem to have been bewitched by the sound of Master Jacob’s voice. Again and again I go over the smallest details of the marvelous discovery made by those men of the north, whose story has reached us through their sagas—as they call their romances, which, like those of Infantes de Lara or The Romance of the Cid, preserve great, unfailing truths behind the pleasing artifice of the studied language and florid rhetoric added by their clerical scribes. And I ponder, especially, the question of distances. The voyage out must have seemed long to the sailors—the way unknown routes always seem to us, when we don’t know how long we’re going to be traveling—but, really, it must not be far from the Land of Ice (Ice-landia, as they call it in their language, which is the Thile or Thule of the ancients), to that land of salmon and grapes, from which the explorers were driven—and I am amazed that they showed so little courage—by a handful of manikins with neither swords nor spears. After all, the romances of this island also relate how Leif the Lucky went from Nidaros to Vinland without stopping; and again, how he sailed a single, straight course from Vinland to Ice-landia on his return. And their ships are certainly superbly built, light, tall, of good length, very seaworthy. But it’s also true that they are rather narrow, not as broad-waisted as they ought to be. If they had to make a long voyage, they would soon run short of necessary provisions. So Vinland must be near, quite near, and the miraculous thing is that no one else has sailed there, following the men of the north. And if what I have learned is not generally known, it may be for this reason: of the few mariners from Genoa, Lisbon, or Seville who came to Ice-land, which they thought was the end of the world, none knew the language of sneezes—with all its grunting and rasping—as well as Master Jacob does, and since (to put it plainly) Master Jacob is not one to drink in port with the common seamen, crude and ill-mannered, who man our ships, none of them had the good fortune to hear his tales, except for me, because,*to tell the truth, our brief but cordial friendship results from a brotherhood which is—we might say—below the belt . . . The fact is that now the years rushed confusedly past my eyes. I was certain that there was a great, populous, and rich land to the west; I believed that by sailing west I would be sure to reach it. But even though I was convinced, as a result of the stories I had heard in the Land of Ice, that sailing west would be safe, if I said as much, the merit of my enterprise would be diminished. Worse yet: a sovereign could easily choose some familiar, favored, confident, brilliant captain to command the ships in my place and snatch away the glory I would achieve as Discoverer, which I hold higher than any other honor. My ambition forced me to keep my knowledge secret. So I could not reveal the truth. And since I had to keep it quiet, I got caught in such a web of fabulous stories that only in my full confession can I finally disentangle them and reveal to the astonished Franciscan who hears it that—with my mind always inflamed with the same thoughts; pursued night and day by the same idea; unable to open a book without trying to find, in the background, a verse, a portent of my mission; seeking presages, applying oneiromancy to the interpretation of my dreams, which led me to consult the texts of the Pseudo-Joseph and the Alphabetic Keys of the Pseudo-Daniel, and, therefore, the tract of Artemidorus of Ephesus; living such a feverish, disturbed life, designing more or less fantastic plans—I became a tremendous and unabashed fake: that is the word, I must admit; yes, I must admit, looking at myself in my final hours, that others, less fraudulent, much less fraudulent than I, were made to blush for their pallid fictions on the great stage of the Holy Office. Because they seem insignificant, the impostures of those who trick a lovesick youth by selling him love potions or advance dishonorable designs by using popular witchcraft, prescribing unguents of bear, or snake, or hedgehog, cemetery dust, or concoctions of tree bark, or bladders, or golden beaks and deep-colored leaves, or charms from Clivicula de Salomon: they seem insignificant, the intrigues of pimps and madams, those who invoke the Prince of Darkness, who is too busy with bigger jobs to bother with such trifles—I repeat, they all seem quite insignificant compared to the deceptions and intrigues I practiced for years and years, trying to gain the favor of the princes of the earth, hiding the real truth behind feigned truths, citing authority for my claims with allusions expertly selected from the Writings, never revealing in my conclusions Seneca’s prophetic lines:

  . . . Venient annis

  saecula seris quibus Oceanus

  uincula rerum laxet. . . .

  And so I went from court to court. I didn’t care who would sponsor my journey. I needed ships to sail, and I would take them wherever I could get them. Solid ships, broad-waisted, with experienced pilots and men with hair on their chests—it didn’t matter to me if they came from the galleys. I didn’t need chaplains. I just wanted to get over there—that would be an achievement in itself!—I didn’t want to be tied down with doctrinal or theological obligations, since I didn’t know if those m
anikins subscribed to some barbarous religion that would be difficult to eradicate, requiring the offices of learned men with experience in preaching to the gentiles and converting idolaters. The first thing was to cross the ocean: the Gospels could follow afterward - we would go alone. As for the glory to be achieved by my enterprise, whichever king received the worldly honor, my glory would be the same, and I would reap the full harvest of personal honors and benefits achieved. So I contrived a workshop of marvels, like those the goliards make in Italian fairs. I launched into my theatrics before dukes and monarchs, financiers and friars, rich men, clerics and bankers, the great men from here and there; I erected a curtain of words, from behind which appeared, in a dazzling procession, the grand illusions of Gold, Diamonds, Pearls, and, especially, Spices. Doña Cinnamon, Doña Nutmeg, Doña Pepper, and Doña Cardamom entered on the arm of Don Ginger and Don Clove, to the beat of a tune whose musical harmonies resonated with the color of saffron and the smell of malabar and the names of Cipango, Cathay, the Golden Colchis, and all the Indies—which, as everyone knows, are many—the numerous, proliferous, epicene, and beautiful Indies, indistinct but moving toward us, wanting to reach out to us, to annex themselves to our laws, close—closer than we thought, though they still seemed distant—the Indies that we now can reach straightaway, sailing to the left-hand side of the maps, scorning the ill-fated route of the right hand, which was plagued in those days by Moslem pirates and buccaneers sailing Chinese junks, while on the land route they imposed outrageous tolls, transit fees, impositions of weights and measures, in the territories ruled by the Great Turk . . . Left hand. Right hand. Open them, show them, move them with the dexterity of a juggler, with the delicacy of spun gold, or instead, be dramatic and raise them in prophesy, quoting Isaiah, invoking the Psalms, lighting Roman candles, exposing the forearm as the sleeve falls back, suggesting the invisible, signaling the unknown, scattering riches, holding up treasures as numerous as the imaginary pearls that still appeared to slip through my fingers, falling to the ground and bouncing in an oriental play of light from the amaranth of the rugs. The nobles and counselors applauded, praised my original notions, momentarily considered my promises of visionary goldsmithery, of alchemy without retorts, but in the end they showed me the door—the doors—with neither ships nor expectations . . . And so I went on for years and years, shouldering my bag of tricks, without the word of Seneca becoming flesh in the flesh of the one who lies here now, sweaty and ailing, defeated in body, waiting for the Franciscan confessor, to tell him everything, everything . . .

  A

  nd I will tell him how, while I waited for the chance to fulfill my desire, to begin the most fabulous undertaking ever known—and the waiting was the worst of the business for me, in the final analysis—I was in Lisbon, and I believed, like the poet, that “the world strives for two things”: first “to be fed,” and second “to find a good woman.” I saw Felipa and courted her like the worldly gentleman that I am. Although she was young-looking and had a lovely body, she was a widow with few resources and a daughter to support. But since I knew she was from a good family, that did not matter too much to me, and I led her to the altar of the church where we had met one day as she arose from her devotions, since she was more than just a good-looking woman—she was, after all, related by marriage to the Braganzas and that would open the door (actually, more than one thing would open up for me in this marriage) through which I would enter the Portuguese court, where I could display my bag of tricks. But then began the hard years of waiting: at first on the island of Puerto Santo, where I went to live with my Felipa, and even her satisfying presence—and again I cite the poet—which was “in love, ardent; in bed, comforting, playful, and laughing,” was not enough to keep me from feeling restless when I saw a growing number of signs of what was hidden beyond the horizon that I gazed upon every day. On the beaches of that island enormous trunks of trees unknown in the terra firma of Europe wash ashore, and strangely shaped plants with three-lobed leaves, which seem to have fallen from a star. Someone told me about an extraordinary piece of wood carried in by the waves, which seemed to have been carved by people who were ignorant of our iron tools and used fire to work it as we would use a saw and a plane; and people also told me about a great event, the discovery several years before of the bodies of two men “with very broad faces” and unusual physiques—this last story seemed unlikely to me, though, because it was hard to believe that those bodies could have traveled so far without being reduced to bones by the many voracious fish in the ocean, where, if the known ones are unimaginably numerous, the unknown ones are countless and monstrous—there are those with the heads of unicorns, those with mouths spouting torrents of water—every bit as monstrous as that sea serpent, the daughter of Leviathan and Onoco, who traveled by sea to the Asian Galatia on the banks of the Rhone, wrapping herself around whatever ship she saw with such fury that she reduced the ship’s timbers to splinters and sank its crew and cargo . . . I won’t go into detail about the petty business and voyages I undertook in the days after the little son I named Diego was born. But when I was left a widower—free of a union that had to some degree tempered my impatience—the fire of my ambition began to burn once again and I resolved to seek aid wherever I could find it—and it was a good time for me to act, since Portuguese sailors were growing bolder and bolder in their explorations and less and less fearful about looking to the east and the south, so that soon they would surely begin to look to the west, which was, legitimately, my territory, ever since Master Jacob had first inspired my spirit of adventure. Whenever I received any news of Portuguese voyages I was filled with anxiety. Every day, every night I shook with the fear that they would steal the sea—my sea—the way that the misers in Latin satires tremble before imagined thieves. This ocean that I look out on from the pine-covered shores of Puerto Santo belonged to me, and with each passing week the danger grew that it would be taken from me. And I was seized again by the thoughts and desires that had been passionately aroused in me on board the ships of Centurione and Di Negro - recently merged-whose sugar business I handled, making regular short runs from Madeira to the Gold Coast, from Flores to Genoa, and back to the Azores and back to Genoa, buying, selling, carrying, conducting business, when I knew I was capable of greater things, of giving the world a new image of what was, in reality, the World. Imago mundi! Speculum mundi! Only I, an obscure sailor, who grew up between the cheeses and wines in a tavern, knew the true meaning of those words. But now it was time for action. Maps, texts, there was nothing left for me to learn. And since I needed the help of a king to underwrite my enterprise, I resolved to look long and hard, far and wide, for that help. It didn’t really matter to me, when all was said and done, which nation I would help to gain infinite glory and limitless riches. I wasn’t Portuguese or Spanish or English or French. I was Genoan, and Genoans are citizens of the world. I had to visit every court I could, without worrying too much about who would benefit from my success, whether the crown that sponsored me was the enemy of this, that, or the other. So I dusted off my bag of tricks and took it on a new tour of the continent. First I exhibited it in Portugal, where I encountered a king who was stuffed full of cosmographies, teleologies, maritime geographies, and so trusting of his navigators that they were starting to swell up as if they were pregnant, and who, when I finished my stories referred me to the authority of several doctors, geographers, canons, and to the idiotic bishop of Ceuta—not that Ceuta was Antioquía!—and to masters Rodríguez and Joseph, who were cruder and more ignorant than the whorish mothers who bore them, all of whom reached the conclusion that my arguments were simply variations and new versions, like in the art of bel canto, of themes already sung by Marco Polo—the great Venetian whose book I had read with admiration but in whose footsteps I had no desire to follow since what I most wanted to do was to arrive, by sailing with the sun, at those countries that he had traveled to by sailing against the sun. If his travels had described a semicircle around the Earth,
it was up to me to draw the second half But I knew—and knew well—that the missing section to complete the circumference corresponded to the Nation of the Manikins. So, disenchanted with Portugal, I packed my bag of tricks and went to exhibit it in Cordoba, where Their Catholic Majesties regarded it with suspicion. I found the Aragonese king to be silly, weak, and without character, dominated by his condescending wife who, during the audience I had been granted, barely paid attention to my words, as if her mind were on other matters. And I left there with the meager promise that their counselors—it was the same story all over again!—would think about my proposal, because, just then, the many pressing concerns of government, and the high costs of the war, and blah blah blah: empty evasions of a sovereign who was full of herself who wanted to show off how well read she was, who said she felt “so foolish,” poor thing, “when she had to match wits with the theologians of Toledo”—the false humility of someone who pretends to apologize for her limited knowledge, when in fact she thinks she knows it all. I was furious when I left the interview, and it wasn’t simply anger—I had never liked doing business with women, except in bed, and it was clear that at this court it was the woman who was in charge and gave the orders . . . But since you can’t live without women—though for other reasons—I began living with a handsome Biscayan woman, who gave me another son. We never talked about marriage, and I didn’t want to, because this time I wasn’t sleeping with someone who was related to the Braganzas or the Medinacelis, and I must admit, besides, that as soon as I got astride her I could tell she had been down this road as often as I had. Which didn’t stop me, of course, from following where other men had been before, on that pearl-white filly, without bridle or stirrups, while my brother Bartholomew went to show off my bag of tricks in England, at the throne of the first Tudor king. But he quickly realized that he would never get a warm reception there, because those dirty Englishmen didn’t know a thing about seafaring—incapable as they had proven to be of getting even a bundle of cinnamon sticks or a small bag of pepper except from a spice shop. Then he thought he would try the king of France, who was richer than his mother now that he had made a good marriage and become the Duke of Brittany But for the Bretons of Duchess Anne, the whale and the herring, sperm and brine, were surer bets than the gold of the Indies, and there too he failed to win a favorable audience. Yet despite the failures and setbacks I continued to press my case. When I realized that you can obtain a fair hearing only if you carry some weight, intimidate the ushers, look impatient in the waiting rooms, and string titles and honors after your name, I made up an imaginary past designed to take the place of the Savona tavern—honor thy father and thy mother!—with its dealer in wool and cheese behind his barrels and taps joining in daily riots with penniless drunkards. I quickly pulled out of my sleeve an uncle who was an admiral; and I made myself a graduate of the University of Pavía in whose cloisters I had never set foot in my whole damned life; I made myself the friend—without ever having seen his face—of King Renato of Anjou, and the distinguished captain of the illustrious Coulon el Mozo. I made myself a gentleman, and as a gentleman, I managed my intrigues more successfully than before: through stories that I invented, rumors I started myself reports that had never been made to me, whisperings, feigned discretions, things revealed that I had promised and swore I would never tell another soul, letters half read, imaginary projects that called me away to other courts, I made the Aragonese and the Castilian think that there was another player in the game—with the help of a doctor and astrologer who was more of a troublemaker than Beelzebub, whom I had the good luck to win to my cause—a player who threatened to win away from this kingdom, thanks to the foolish incredulity of some and the foolish blindness of others, a fabulous undertaking whose immense profits other, better-advised sovereigns, had already recognized . . . And that was how I unexpectedly found myself by royal command, seated on a well-harnessed black-and-white mule trotting down the road, trot, trot, trot, trying not to get too much dust on my only decent suit, going toward the enormous encampment at Santa Fe, the huge military caravansary that the Royal Presences were using as a capital, where, amid sumptuous cloth pavilions and patched quilt tents, bivouac fires, plates of grilled fish in wagons hung with silk awnings, bags of red wine carried by burros, guitar flourishes and the staccato heel-beats of dancing whores, trumpet calls and percussive volleys, the troops would depart to break the blockade of a long siege, dealing the death blow to the last bastion of Mohammed in this country, where—to repeat a widely known fact—there is no shortage of renegades of every stripe, Moslem mothers and daughters who had taken up with Christians, having been picked up who knows where, the way King Alphonse VI, before fornicating with his sister Doña Urraca—such families, my Lord!—picked up the notorious Zaida, whom he kept for a long time as his concubine, that broad-hipped, high-breasted Moor from Toledo whose skin smelled of marzipan, the candy sold in the shape of the serpent in the Garden, with green sugar eyes and a tongue of colored taffy, coiled up in a round box all embroidered in gold.