The Harp and the Shadow

by Alejo Carpentier

  W

  hen I search through the labyrinth of my past, in this my final hour, I am astonished by my natural talents as an actor, as the life of the party, as a wielder of illusions, in the style of the mountebanks in Italy who, from fair to fair—and they came often to Savona—brought their comedies, pantomimes, and masquerades. I was an impresario of spectacles, taking my Pageant of Marvels from throne to throne. I was the promoter of a sacred representation, carrying out, for the Spaniards who came with me, the great act of the Taking Possession of Islands that did not even consent to be known. I was the magnificent organizer of the Great Landing in Barcelona—the first great spectacle of the West Indies, with authentic men and animals presented before the public of Europe. Later—it was during my third voyage—seeing that the Indians on one island appeared mistrustful, leery of approaching us, I improvised a scenario in the poop castle, making some Spaniards dance boisterously to the sound of the tambourine and the clapper, so that they would see that we were a merry people, pleasant in nature. (But it turned out badly for us on that occasion, to be honest, because the cannibals, not diverted by our Moorish dances and tapping heels, fired all the arrows they had in their canoes at us . . .) And, changing my colors, I was the Astrologer and Miracle Monger on that Jamaican beach where we found ourselves in the greatest misery, sick, without food, and surrounded by countless hostile inhabitants, ready to launch an attack. Opportunely, it occurred to me to consult the Efemerides of Abraham Zacuto, which I always carried with me, in which I found that there would be an eclipse of the moon that February night, and I at once announced to our enemies that if they would hold their peace for a while longer, they would witness a great and astonishing sign. And, when the moment arrived, extending my arms like a windmill, gesticulating like a necromancer, reciting false spells, I ordered the moon to hide itself. . . and the moon hid itself I returned at once to my cabin, and then waited for the hourglass to mark the time that the miracle would last—as was indicated in the text—and reappeared before the terrorized cannibals, ordering the moon to show itself again—which it did, without delay, obeying my command. (Perhaps it was through such artifices that I have survived until today . . .) And I was the Grand Inquisitor, menacing and terrible—I don’t want to recall that—that day when, on the shores of Cuba, I demanded of my mariners whether they had the least doubt that this great land was terra firma, the land of the continent, the outreaches of the vast Indies for which reward—some reward!—awaited me in Spain. And I had proclaimed, through the voice of the notary, that anyone who argued with the judgment that the land of Cuba was a continent would pay a fine of ten thousand maravedis, and, moreover, would have his tongue cut out. His tongue cut out. No less. But the I-the-Inquisitor obtained what I was after. All the Spaniards—and even the Galicians and Biscayans whom I always saw as a different people—swore and swore again, thinking in that way to preserve what, according to Aesop, is the best and the worst thing in the world. I required that Cuba be a continent and a hundred voices rose to say that Cuba was a continent . . . But the man who uses cheats, deceptions, threats, or violence to obtain a goal soon receives his punishment. And for me the punishment began here in this world, without waiting for the world beyond, since it was all misery, misfortune, and expiation of sins in my final voyage—a voyage in which I saw my ships surmounting waves like mountains and descending into roaring abysses, lifted, drenched, lashed, broken, before being carried again into the sea by a river of Veragua that was swollen with rain, suddenly, pushing us away, as if denying us asylum. And in those days of new calamities, after a last desperate search for gold on terra firma, we ended up in a misery of wrecked ships, itching sores, raging fevers, hunger, endless afflictions, when, almost passing out, I heard the voice of someone who said to me “Oh, foolish and slow in believing and serving your God, the God of all men!” wrenching me from the dark night of my desperation with words of courage, to which I responded with the promise of going to Rome, in a pilgrim’s habit, if I could escape from so many tribulations with my life. (But my vow remained unfulfilled, like so many others I made . . .) And I returned to my point of departure, turned away, as they say, from the discovered world, remembering as nightmare creatures the manikins of Cipango—whom I mentioned in my testament yesterday—who, in the final analysis, never had any sense of having progressed to a better condition, regarding my appearance on their sands as a horrible misfortune. For them, Christophoros—a Christophoros who did not quote even a single verse of the Gospels in writing his letters and journals—was, in reality, the Prince of Calamities, Prince of Blood, Prince of Tears, Prince of Plagues—one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. And as far as my conscience is concerned, to the image of me that arises now, as seen in a mirror at the foot of this bed, I was the Discoverer discovered—discovered because uncovered, because my accounts and letters to my royal masters uncovered me; uncovered before God, on conceiving that foul commerce that, defying theology, I proposed to Their Highnesses; uncovered before my men whose respect I lost more every day, inflicting on me the supreme humiliation of a cook placing me in chains—me, Don, Admiral, and Viceroy!; uncovered because my route to the Indies or southern Vinland or Cipango or Cathay—whose province of Mangui could well be what I knew by the name of Cuba—the route I opened easily enough, knowing the sagas of the Normans, is a route used now by a hundred adventurers: even tailors, I said, having abandoned needle and thread for the oar; hidalgos without a penny, squires without a master, clerks without a position, coachmen without a team, soldiers without a commission, bald-faced picaros, swineherds from Cáceres, bullies in worn capes, slobs from Badajoz, intriguers blessed and patronized, awed by class, Christians whose names had been changed at the notary, baptized men who had only recently been to the baptismal font, rabble who did whatever they could to tear me down and wipe my name from the chronicles. Perhaps they no longer remember me, now that the fat is in the fire, now that they have gone beyond the boundaries of my expeditions, given name to cities—cities they call them!—of ten Indian huts covered with bird shit . . . I was the Discoverer-discovered, uncovered; and I am the Conqueror-conquered because I began to exist for me and for the others the day I reached over there, and since then, it is those lands that have formed me, sculpted my shape, defined me in the air that surrounds me, it is those lands that confer on me, in my own eyes, an epic stature that everyone denies me, especially now that Columba has died, bound to me in an exploit full of marvels worthy of a chivalric song—but a chivalric song erased, before being written, by the themes of the new romances that people want to hear now. Now they are saying that my enterprise was much less risky than the voyages of Vasco da Gama, who didn’t hesitate to retake the route where several armadas had disappeared without a trace; less risky than that of the great Venetian who was missing for twenty-five years and given up for dead . . . And that is what the Spaniards say, who always consider you a foreigner. And that is because you have never had a homeland, mariner: that is why you had to search over there—in the West—where you are never defined in terms of national values, in days that were day when here it was night, in nights that were night when here it was day, rocking, like Absalom hanging by his hair, between dream and life, without ever learning where the dream began and the life ended. And now that you are entering the great dream that never ends, where unimaginable trumpets blare, you think that your only possible homeland—what perhaps will make you enter into legend, if a legend of yours is to be born—is what as yet has no name, what has acquired neither image nor word. That which as yet has not become an Idea; it has not acquired a conception, a defined outline, neither content nor what is contained. Any manikin from over there is more aware of who he is, in a land known and delimited, than you, mariner, with centuries of science and theology on your shoulders. Pursuing a country never found that fades away like a castle of enchantments each time you sing your victory song, you were a follower of vapors, seeing things that never became intelligible, comparable, explicab
le, in the language of the Odyssey or in the language of Genesis. You went into a world that played tricks on you when you thought you had conquered it and which, in reality, threw you off your course, leaving you with neither here nor there. Swimmer between two waters, shipwrecked between two worlds, today you will die, or tonight, or tomorrow, like a protagonist of fictions. Jonah vomited from the whale, sleeper of Ephesus, wandering Jew, captain of a ghost ship . . . But, in the final accounting from which there is neither appeal nor repeal, there is one thing that should never be forgotten: against the people who might have opposed you, you bore arms that had the advantage of thirty centuries of development, you bore the gift of unknown diseases; when you arrived in your vessels, you bore greed and lust, hunger for riches, the sword and the torch, the chain, the stocks, and the whip you had to crack in the dark night of the mines; you were the bearer of those things when you arrived, dressed more in blue than in yellow, like a man fallen from the sky—as you said to the rulers—bearer, perhaps, of a successful mission. And remember, mariner, the Book of Isaiah, which for so many years you have quoted to validate your always excessive words, your always unfulfilled promises: Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! And now remember Ecclesiastes, which you have read over so often: He who loves gold is oppressed by the weight of his sin; he who pursued lucre will be the victim of lucre; inevitable was the ruin of he who was burdened with gold. And, from deep within the thunder that now falls upon the wet roofs of the city, Isaiah’s voice again calls to you, as you tremble with fright: even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood (I:15).

  I hear, on the stairs, the steps of the Bachelor de Mirueña and of Gaspar de la Misericordia, who are coming with the confessor. I hide my papers under the bed and lie back down after tightening the cord of my gown, my hands pressed together, my body stiff as if already lying in the royal sepulcher. I have reached the supreme hour of speaking. I will speak at length. I still have strength for that. I will tell all. I will tell it all, from beginning to end. All.

  A

  nd yet, placed in the inevitable position of having to speak, the moment of truth having arrived, I put on the mask of the one I wished to be but was not: the mask that will become my death mask—the last of the countless masks that I have worn through my existence since its uncertain beginning. Now that the mystery is upon me, I approach—after four journeys as an argonaut and one as a penitent—the terrible moment of delivery of arms, pomp, and rags. And they want me to talk. But now the words stick in my throat. To tell all, to relate everything, would be to weaken my position—”to give without return,” as they say in the language of barter—among the men of faith, of shared belief who have been magnanimous and consoling. And so it was that I took for my own—I who from ambition disregarded the laws of my people—those strictures dictated, on the eve of his death, to Moses, who like me was of uncertain birth, and, like me, was an announcer of Promised Lands: “You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worm shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off” And Yahweh also said to that visionary of distant lands: ‘You shall see the land before you; but you shall not go there.” . . . It is no longer a time to guard my words. Let my confession be reduced to what I want to reveal. Like Jason, who, in the tragedy of Medea, told what it suited him to tell in the language of a good dramatic poet, the language of passion and honor, full of cries for greater indulgence, and nothing more. Now I see myself extricated from the labyrinth in which I was lost. I wanted to gird the earth, but the earth was too large for me. It is for others to clear away the transcendental enigmas the earth still holds for us, starting from the port at one end of the coast of Cuba that I called the Alpha-Omega to signify that there, before me, one empire ended and another began; there an age ended, and another commenced.

  . . . And now the confessor searches for my face in the recesses of the pillows soaked with the sweat of my fever, looking into my eyes. He raises the curtain on the final scene. The moment of truth, the final reckoning. But there will be no reckoning. I will say only what could be inscribed in marble about myself From my mouth comes the voice of the other who has often inhabited me. He will know what to say: “May the heavens have mercy on me, and weep upon the land.”

  I

  nvisible—without weight, without dimension, casting no shadow, an errant transparency who had lost all sense of the vulgar notions of hot and cold, day and night, good and evil—he had spent several hours wandering within Bernini’s quadruple colonnade before the massive doors of Saint Peter’s were opened. The man who had so often navigated without maps gave only a scornful glance at the many tourists who, every day, consult their guides and Baedekers before getting lost in the basilica, and then he headed directly toward the most famous marvels within that palace of marvels, which, for him, today, would be a palace of justice. Tried in absentia, a man on paper, his image evoked, his voice issuing from other mouths that will attack or defend him: now, almost four centuries after his death, they were examining every minor passage of his life, deciding whether he should be considered a supreme hero—as his panegyrists believed—or an ordinary human being, subject to all the weaknesses of his condition, which is how he was portrayed by certain rationalist historians, who were, perhaps, incapable of perceiving the poetry of his actions from behind their walls of papers, files, and chronicles. The moment of decision had arrived, when they would determine whether, in the future, he would merit statues with laudatory epigraphs or something more transcendent and universal than a bronze, stone, or marble image set in a public plaza. Not looking for a final judgment—that of the Sistine Chapel—which was not yet considering his case, he headed, with perfect aim, toward some rooms that were closed to the visiting public, in the Lipsonotec, whose curator, a learned Bollandist and, therefore, something of an osteologist, odontologist, and anatomist, was absorbed, as usual, in the examination, study, and classification of the innumerable bones, teeth, fingernails, hair, and other saintly relics that were stored in the drawers of desks and chests. Although the dead, in general, are not interested in the fate of their own bones, the Invisible Presence wanted to know if they had reserved some space in this place for the few bones that were left, just in case . . . “It seems we are going to have a rather splendid hearing,” the curator said to a young seminarian, his disciple, who was being trained in the classification methods of the Lipsonotec. “That’s because today’s case is not a current one,” the seminarian answered. “No decision on beatification is ever a current case,” observed the curator, in the irritable tone that he always used, although it didn’t seem to affect the other man. “True. But in the case being considered, the person is world famous. And the petition was introduced by two popes: first, Pius IX; now, His Holiness Leo XIII.” “Pius IX died before the ten years had passed that are required for the Holy Congregation of Rites to begin the examination of the documents and justifying arguments.” “Even though the case of Christopher Columbus was introduced at the same time, Count Roselly de Lorgues applied for two other halos: one for Joan of Arc; the other, for Louis XVI.” “Look: the beatification of Joan of Arc seems quite likely, but that of Louis XVI is about as likely as your whore of an aunt’s.” “Thank you.” “Not only that, we have to put a lid on these petitions. We are more than just a factory churning out holy pictures.” There was a silence during which some flies entered, on an exploratory flight, as if looking for something they never found. “What do you think of Columbus’s chances?” the seminarian asked. “Poor. In the pool the Swiss halberdiers have in their guardroom, the odds against Columbus this morning were five to one.” “I think they’re going to go down,” said the younger man. “Why, did you bet on him?” “No. Because we don’t have a single mariner saint. I’ve looked in The Golden Legend, the Acta Sanctorum
by John Bolland, and even in The Crowns of Martyrdom by Prudentius, and I haven’t found a single one. Seafarers don’t have a patron saint who was one of them. Plenty of fishermen—starting with the ones on the Sea of Galilee. But a real saltwater sailor, not a single one.” “True,” said the curator, going over the lists in his head, the calendars, catalogs, and registers—”true, because Saint Christopher never had anything to do with sails. Boatman on a river, that’s what Christo-phoros was, as we know, and because he carried on his shoulders, from one shore to the other, One who did not fear drowning in the turbulent waters, a date palm grew and flourished at the spot where Christopher planted his staff in solid ground.” “Patron saint of all travelers, whether they travel by boat, burro, balloon, or railroad train . . .” They both started to thumb through cards and papers. And the Invisible Presence, looking over their shoulders, saw names and more names—some of which were completely unknown to him—of saints invoked by seafarers in time of storms, wrecks, and ill winds: Saint Vincent, deacon and martyr, because his body was once seen miraculously floating on a violent ocean, even though it was weighed down by an enormous stone (“But it wasn’t his job,” observed the seminarian); Saints Cosmas and Damian, Moorish saints—“our fatherland is Arabia,” they said—because the proconsul of Lycia threw them in the ocean, tied together; Saint Clement, also thrown into the sea, whose body was found on an island near Chersonese, with an anchor attached to it (“They weren’t sailors either,” protested the youth); Saint Castreuse, for having defied a typhoon aboard a rolling ship (“He was on board in spite of himself”); Saint Leo, for his torment at the hands of some pirates (“That doesn’t make him a sailor”); Saint Peter González, better known as Saint Elmo (“He converted many sailors and lit Saint Elmo’s Fire, which often dances so prettily at night on the tops of the masts. But he was a man from the interior of his country, he came from Astorga, whose delicious sugar-bread is famous all over Spain, because . . .” “Let’s not get off the subject,” said the curator, “let’s not get off the subject”). And he went on with the list: Saint Cuthbert, patron of Saxon mariners (“This smells to me like a Nordic saga . . . A sailor from Cádiz or Marseilles isn’t going to pray to a Viking”); the Archangel Raphael (“How could an archangel wear a sailor cap, tell me that!”); Nicholas, bishop of Mira, who, invisible, repaired the mast on a pilgrim ship and steered it to safe port (“But he’s better known today for steering a sleigh and delivering toys than for traveling on water”). “Well, then, we’re screwed,” said the Curator of the Vatican Lipsonotec. “Because of Saint Dominic of Lores, and Saint Valerius, and Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Restitutus, and Saint Raymond, and Saint Budoc (I’ve never even heard of him!), all of them invoked by sailors, though none of them was ever a sailor.” “Conclusion: Pius IX was right. We need a Saint Christopher Columbus.” “I would have to prepare a box to store his relics.” “The bad thing is that these roving men don’t leave many relics.” “So there isn’t as much as a femur, a metacarpal, a kneecap, or a finger or toe of his left?” “That’s another debate. And one that will never be settled, since those bones have been disturbed, disarranged, disjointed, discussed, dislocated, and disputed, like no other bones.” And summarizing the results of recent research, motivated by today’s petition, the learned Bollandist explained to his disciple that Columbus, having died in Valladolid, had been buried in the Franciscan convent in that city. But in 1513, his remains were moved to the monastery of Las Cuevas in Seville, only to be disinterred thirty-three years later and transported to Santo Domingo, where they remained until 1795. But wouldn’t you know, the blacks of the French group on the island suddenly had a change of heart and started huge fires, burning the haciendas and slitting the throats of their masters. The Spanish authorities, fearful that the flames of rebellion might spread, dispatched the mortal remains of the Grand Admiral to Havana, in whose cathedral they stayed until they could be returned to Santo Domingo, where there were plans to erect a splendid mausoleum, with sculptures, allegories, and everything: something fit for the renowned remains . . . But, in the meantime, he said, the plot took a twist that was almost Rochambeaulian, if I can mention Rochambeau in the halls of the Vatican. “You forget, sir, that here everyone, from the high to the low, has read the adventures of Rochambeau.” “Christopher Columbus was not alone in the cathedral on Santo Domingo: his funeral urn was near the urns of his firstborn son, Diego; Diego’s son, Don Louis Columbus, the first Duke of Veragua; and Diego’s brother, Don Christopher Columbus II. And they say what happened was that on the tenth of September in 1877, an architect who was making some repairs on the cathedral discovered a metal box on which there was an abbreviated inscription: D of A. Fst. Ad. C.C.A.—which he interpreted as: Discoverer of America. First Admiral Christopher Columbus Admiral. Then the remains moved to Havana are not those of the man we are going to beatify . . .” “If that happens,” murmured the seminarian. “But—and here is the tragedy—inside the metal box is written, in German gothic characters: The Illustrious and Esteemed Gentleman Don Christopher Columbus, with nothing about ‘Admiral.’ And the fuckers started to say that those weren’t the remains of Columbus I, but of Columbus II, and that those of Columbus I were in Cuba, and then a Venezuelan published a notorious pamphlet that stirred up the dispute, and that set the stage for a worse battle than the one over the Filioque . . . The result: no one knows whether these are the bones of Columbus I and not of Columbus II, or if they’re those of Columbus II and not of Columbus I, and no one is asking me; it will be resolved in the Holy Congregation of Rites, which was established for that, because not so much as a single clavicle, a radiale, an ulna that has not been duly authenticated as from Columbus will enter here. This is a serious Lipsonotec, and it can’t accept vertebrae, parietals, occipitals, or metatarsals from just anyone, because there are categories for everything. And as for me, I’m not going to play the game of eeeny-meeny-miny-mo.” “You can’t buy your way in here with gold after you’re dead,” agreed the seminarian. “Even though, according to Marx, Columbus said that gold is a marvelous thing. He who has gold can have anything he desires. Using gold, souls can even open the gates of paradise.” “Columbus certainly said that; but don’t quote Columbus by way of Marx. You shouldn’t even say that name where walls have ears. You know that since the publication of the Syllabus certain books are frowned upon here.” “But still it seems that you know Marx just as well as you know Rochambeau.” “Son, I have to: I’m on the Index Commission.” “I see that you don’t get terribly bored concocting the Index.” said the seminarian, with a sly smile. “That explains why Mademoiselle Maupin and Nana are on the Index.” “Instead of all this bullshitting, let’s go see how the beatification of the Grand Admiral is going,” said the furious Bollandist, just missing the seminarian with a kick of his buckled shoe. “That’s right!” thought the Invisible One, “right!” And, suddenly anxious, he hurried of£ down corridors and up stairways, to the room where, at a call from the ushers, a solemn Morality Play would be presented, with him as its absent/present protagonist.