Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  They were now in the straits, the Straits. THE STRAITS! These shifting, amorphous tributaries and the sparking: fire in suppurating bursts on the bristling grass.

  Tierra: land if land this was.

  Fuego: fire, an arse-waggling assertion from the natives.

  And good enough, this naming: dramatic, enticing, and bold. Here at the end of the earth, fire mixed with ice, ice with sky, land with, well, fire. There was an elemental purity to it.

  “Prosaic. Obvious. And corny,” said Pigafetta. “You did better with Patagonia.”

  “You think so?” said Magellan, and laughed. Patagonia, a neologism, came from patacones: dogs with large paws, a reference to Pigafetta’s giants, who—along with their enormous legs—had sprung enormous feet, consequently enormous shoes to put them in; his image of padding dogs, this whole mess of invention and whimsy (an incontinent word) christening the lower wedge of the continent.

  “You need to name the straits.”

  Magellan shrugged and Pigafetta felt a pang of affection, because of course he wished the straits to be named for him. “Everyone calls it what they want. San Martin says it’s the Strait of All Saints, because he believes we need every last one to get through. And there’s the Victoria Strait, since the Victoria entered first. And your favorite: the Patagonian Strait.”

  “Why hesitate to name it?” asked Pigafetta.

  “Who cares? Do I care? Ask the priest.”

  Father Valderrama did care. After Big-Footed Dog Place and a land that called to mind visions of the inferno (weren’t we looking for heaven on earth?), it was time for something religious. He had a few suggestions, and Magellan chose “Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins,” because it sounded—and was—funny.

  “How do we know there were eleven thousand?” asked Pigafetta.

  Then Magellan: Ha, ha, ha. “How do we know they were virgins?”

  Great plates of ice rose up from the arctic waters, and chasms of incalculable depth sheltered every undiscovered beast and fear. Pigafetta marveled at the enormous glacial mirrors, the refracted images of the ship moving past. The air had been thick with moisture, one low-slung cloud after the other, confounding and chilling. The pilot was near fits as he attempted to orient himself. He ran this way and that, peering over, and up, and away from, and in this hysteria of compensation made everyone nervous. Where were the stars?

  But sometimes the sky would reveal itself, and in its blinding nudity mock them all, because what use were the stars if they were the wrong stars? Or in the wrong place? What was that blazing stripe supposed to implicate when blazing there? And the scales, now tilted, quite provocative, gave forth the following information: you’re lost. And what comfort was it that one was supposed to be lost, beyond the point of bearings? The constellation hanging, awkward from this angle, underscored disorientation: it was a nose protruding from a cheek, or teeth massing in an ear. Pigafetta remembered the second of these possibilities from his childhood: an infant covered with hair and spitting tiny bones from its skin, like stones from the earth at first frost; the baby, to the relief of all, had perished within a year.

  Magellan, after a well-disguised moment of doubt, was once again all bluster and purpose and trajectory: the cross had appeared in the sky, proving that Magellan was not only blessed, but heading in the right direction.

  “Your reasoning is off,” said Pigafetta. “If we were headed in the opposite direction, those stars would still be shining.”

  “I say that it’s a blessing, that God approves of what we are endeavoring to do.”

  “And somewhere over there,” said Pigafetta, gesturing into the jungle and, to his understanding, the Stone Age, “a pair of Indians are fornicating under the trees, ready to birth more pagans, their activities presided over by that same constellation. And who’s not to say that Orion blesses us, because there’s his belt, and over there’s some other thing—the twins, or the centaur, or whatever—and that we sail because they wish it and guide us.”

  “’Tonio, I know you’re a sodomite. Must you be a heretic?”

  “I’m not a heretic. You interpret blindly and justify this through faith. Faith does not exist to prove your actions, but quite the reverse. Of course I believe in God!”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” But for the first time Pigafetta felt a small and difficult-to-ignore refluent stirring amid the usual pounding surf of his faith, asserting itself, somehow strengthened by the effort to bury it. He steered his reason elsewhere. “Ferdinand,” said Pigafetta, “I don’t think that God wields his celestial power like that: like an innkeeper waving a lantern to light the way for drunks.”

  Like a termination for all this water and unknowing: the Moluccas.

  Like a purpose for all this mad zeal and bravery: Magellan’s faith.

  What conjured what into being?

  Later that night, Pigafetta was disturbed from his sleep. There was always activity, twenty-four hours a day: changing watches, pricking positions, mending ropes, raising sails, rotating hourglasses. Pigafetta had grown accustomed to all of these vital functions; they were the lungs and spleen and stomach of the ship—but Magellan was up, and he should have been sleeping. Pigafetta recognized the thump and drag, thump and drag of the explorer’s progress across the deck. Concerned, he roused himself and went to see.

  “Although it may hurt you to admit it, the ship moves even while you sleep,” said Pigafetta.

  “If sleep would come, I would take it and hold it as long as it would have me,” Magellan replied.

  Pigafetta would have asked Magellan what was bothering him, but it would have been a stupid question. There were many things that Magellan would have to answer for upon reaching Spain. First among these was his stranding of Cartagena, the Spaniard and nobleman, back in Patagonia; he’d replaced him with another relative, Mesquita, whose fittedness—beyond blood—was that he hadn’t the skill to sail, thus no will to rebel. Magellan was hated for being Portuguese, but once he drew near to the Moluccas, it would be the Portuguese—protecting their stake in the Spice Islands—who would give him the most to fear. And there was the San Antonio, presumed back in Spain and slandering. Once again he would be forced to defend himself, and why? Because he was the greatest explorer! He, Ferdinand Magellan, had the whole world: his seas and lands rolled out before him; his march into creation; this track always slouching off to the west and west; the eternal conquering of diminishing distance and unreachable point. The king had only his red carpet and slippered foot upon it. Yes, greatness was something to be feared—his greatness! But to be feared by a king was also something to be feared.

  And that was if he managed to bring the ships back: who knew what lay hidden by the wall of horizon, crouching in the shade of the unknown?

  The explorer raked through his beard with his fingers, his head tilted, about to say something—even opening his mouth!—but then, thinking better, resorted to a vague nodding and frowning.

  “I have something that will cheer you,” said Pigafetta.

  “You talk with such confidence, Antonio, as if I am looking for cheer, or peace, or happiness—all these things that men want. I am not a man like other men are men. But not like you either.”

  “Not peace then. Not cheer.” Pigafetta went to stand by the explorer and steered him into the night sky. There were two shreds of cloud—star cloud—as if they had torn off the Milky Way and caught upon some distant, galactic bramble. “Do you see the clouds?”

  “Yes,” said Magellan. “Is that something new?”

  “New or old, it does not matter. We are the first to see it,” said Pigafetta. “I would have shown you last night, but the mist was all about, and thick.” Pigafetta placed his hand on the explorer’s shoulder. “They are the Magellanic Clouds.”

  “The Magellanic Clouds.” Magellan looked at his clouds. “Will they stay?”

  “Oh yes,” said Pigafetta. “We will go everywhere, but they will stay to laugh at us.”

  �
�But there are two. Why not take one for yourself?” Magellan smiled now. “The smaller one,” he added.

  “No, no,” said Pigafetta. “They’re both yours, but maybe if we’re here again together, you might let me have use of one—of course, the smaller.”

  6. Peace

  The land had vanished, slipped into the horizon like a gold coin into a cardinal’s coffer, and now there was naught but a reflective and uncommunicative surface. Magellan had joked that if there were a monster, they’d find it here, and although a great fanged and bristled serpent had not risen out of the water, hovered upon its spiked tail, roared and shrieked before staving in the ship’s hull and consigning them all to a quick, efficient burial, they had found their monster: scurvy.

  Magellan and Pigafetta had remained scurvy-free—even in this unhealthy air—but Pigafetta wondered if it were not so much their noble lungs and the ability to purify the bad humors, but rather the jars of quince, a staple of officers’ dinners. Of course, Pigafetta kept this to himself. There was not enough for everyone, and Magellan had an altruistic nature: he would share whatever remained of the quince if he deemed it curative rather than an indulgence, and although Pigafetta was, on occasion, generous, he could not be quite so cavalier with his beloved captain’s life.

  If scurvy were the only threat, Magellan would have been a successful steward, but they were starving. Even the leather casings on the mast had been soaked and boiled, served and devoured. There was now a price on the rats, one half ducado, and that was money well spent; rat meat fended off both hunger and scurvy. Twenty men had died. Pigafetta struggled with a debilitating compulsion to stare at the horizon with a hopeful resolve that left him cross-eyed and ill, cringing. He closed his eyes, a spike-like pressure asserting itself on the left side of his head. The real issue was time: they could last another couple of weeks at most.

  Although maps made clear that only a few days’ travel separated Chile from the Moluccas, the ships had been at sea for over three months—propelled by a brisk and unrelenting wind, without a single storm—and still nothing.

  Pigafetta was sitting collapsed against the side of the ship in a sliver of shade, his eyes shut, a wash of purple dancing outside, when a shadow crossed this shadow.

  “Is this sleep?”

  He opened his eyes and sure enough Magellan stood there.

  “No,” said Pigafetta.

  “Why close your eyes?”

  “There is nothing to see.”

  Magellan looked out at the horizon, where Pigafetta’s point was amply proven. “If it is not too much trouble, leave the eyes open.”

  Pigafetta arched an eyebrow. “You were concerned?”

  “About what?”

  “About me. You thought I was dead.”

  “How can this matter to you? My concern!”

  Pigafetta stood up and went to stand by his friend at the railing. “I saw a bird yesterday. It lays its eggs upon the back of its mate. They have no need for land.” Magellan said nothing, his eyes continuing to roam the offing. “Are you listening?”

  But Magellan was not. “Mar Pacifico.”

  “Mar Pacifico?” Pigafetta scoffed. “Peace? A not-too-distant peace. Call this salted, sparkling hell for what it is: a grave to us all.”

  “What do you know of death and its gifts? Let peace be one of them, but I am not so sure.”

  “Who’s the heretic now?”

  “I am a true believer. I don’t only believe the good things. With salvation, there’s the possibility of damnation, which makes the salvation all the sweeter.”

  “And the salvation is there—that possibility—which makes the damnation all the worse, and worse still since we choose it. Tempt me back to God, Ferdinand.” Pigafetta smiled handsomely. “Bring me into your fold. Remind me of salvation, the saved, how it’s savored—its taste. And what does salvation look like anyway?”

  “Sails.”

  “It looks like sails?”

  “No,” said Magellan, a fierce delight clear on his face. “Sails!”

  There was the cry from the lookout, who no doubt had questioned his first sighting, but now committed the figures flying across the water to recognition: sails, manned by people who needed to eat, or could be eaten. He was that hungry.

  7. Conversion

  A deeper sloth could not be imagined for people still alive. And the indulgence—meat and fish and fruit and liquor—after all that time spent floating in the Mar Pacifico (nothing could be worse than such quiet torture), even the air, fragrant and sweet, made one feel a drunkard: a passionate drunkard. Passion. Maybe they weren’t so slothful after all. The men had gone from near death to such fervent fucking that Pigafetta had actually thought to pen it in his book, a naturalist’s observation, of how prolonged proximity to death left one with the urge to procreate. Then he thought better of it: his urge to take the basic things in man and endow them with explanation—the need to translate licentiousness into the more noble desire to survive.

  The Cebuan women were beauties—Pigafetta noticed, although with the same aesthetic astuteness with which he admired horses and weapons—and more akin to Europeans than Patagonians. A subversive and forking thought entered Pigafetta’s mind: was it possible that one’s European identity was as tainted by the warmer climes as the Cebuans’ was refined by contact with the porcelain, silk, and writing, brought to these islands with Arabs and Chinese? And were Arabs and Chinese a civilizing force? Were they capable of such a thing?

  As Pigafetta strode down the beach to find his friend, he searched for the right words. He had resolved for the fifth time in as many days to speak frankly to Magellan, to clarify what had caused the grumbling among the men, and why it wasn’t the will of God they were opposing, but rather Magellan’s. Pigafetta paused among the bananas, a personal favorite, and pulled one, slightly green, but irresistible in its exotic presentation and convenience, to eat. He had only risen from his sleeping mat a half hour ago and the sun was already reaching its zenith. Magellan must have been up for hours. Where would he be? And then Pigafetta saw it: the cross.

  There was a rope and pulley struggle unfolding in a clearing a short distance over the lagoon, and a massing of dark and obedient muscle—native and, to Pigafetta, not to be trusted—and then, like the hand of a clock moving to the twelve, the cross was raised. Pigafetta chewed on his banana and heard Magellan’s barking as the cross was secured—a large cross that cast a large shadow, larger still in Pigafetta’s mind. He took a few moments to compose himself, but his thoughts were scattered; he’d begun to wonder about his future back in Vicenza, a future of print and privilege, and frankly, as he stood in the steamy heat, a future too known. Magellan would go home to his wife, spawn, and return to the sea, like all those flightless birds he’d seen in Patagonia.

  But hadn’t the known itself been rendered obsolete? Hadn’t Magellan done that?

  By the time Pigafetta reached what would have been the town square, had there been a town, Magellan had accomplished his erection. The cross was standing quite well, looking—despite its shiny newness and inferior material—quite permanent.

  “Are you done with baptizing people?” asked Pigafetta. “Are you on to crucifying?”

  Magellan waved his finger in Pigafetta’s face. “Only you talk to me like this.”

  “Only I care enough to speak my mind.”

  Magellan looked frankly at Pigafetta and shook his head. “This is my duty.” He began to walk away.

  “Ferdinand, I will not be misunderstood. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve baptized everyone, and the men are, no doubt, grateful to be sleeping again with good Christian girls rather than heathens.”

  “You make fun of me,” said Magellan.

  “It is not mocking. It is honesty tempered with affection. You are not here to baptize everyone—”

  “There is no greater purpose!”

  “Perhaps. But it’s not your purpose. I must remind you that you have sailed this far to take h
old of the Moluccas for our King Charles, to deprive the Portuguese of this prize, to sail back with the miracle of having sailed west and only west, and to return with our holds filled with cloves. This trip has nothing to do with Christian Indians. Christian Indians. The very term is a mockery of itself.”

  “And what about that man I healed? He was dying—almost dead, and I said to the Cebuans to burn all their idols and that I would make him walk. And I walked into his hut, and—”

  “And he walked. And there was no one more surprised than you, excepting him. I commend you for having all their idols burned, ours being much more handsome, but Ferdinand, I would less fear disaster than all of this success.”

  “Antonio,” said Magellan, and he seemed concerned, “have you lost your faith in me?”

  “In you, no, and that is what I fear because I—throwing to the wind reason and intellect and every God-given gift—would follow you anywhere. That is faith, that I would still do that. But please don’t ask me if I think you lead me well.”

  Later, with the sun dropping ferociously behind the mountains and the insects swarming like a chorus of the damned, Pigafetta, a mug of distilled coconut juice dwindling in his grasp, felt a foreboding chill. He recalled their arrival on the island of Cebu, the boom of cannons and King Humabon falling to his knees in fear, while Magellan laughed. Magellan had later informed King Humabon that the Spaniards always greeted powerful sovereigns with cannon fire, and perhaps, unintentionally, had told the truth. After the cannons, he’d dressed one of the larger sailors in a suit of armor and had another attack him all about, much to the astonishment of the Cebuans, who did not even wear shirts, so how could they comprehend this? Then Magellan had boasted that one of his men was equal to one hundred Indians, and at that, King Humabon, although feigning an ignorant deference, had fallen into hushed discussion with Magellan’s slave, Enrique. Enrique, to the surprise of all, including himself, was fluent in this dialect, even though Magellan had acquired him in Africa. This was Enrique’s forgotten home.