Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

  When Humabon and Enrique fell to whispering, Pigafetta was filled with dread. And the next day, when masses of the Cebuans embraced Christianity, Pigafetta sensed that Magellan was being manipulated by a skilled adversary.

  Pigafetta wanted to be wrong, but the morning brought cold comfort and understanding. Lapu-Lapu, a rival chieftain of the neighboring island of Mactan—to Humabon’s horror—had refused to accept Christianity, and now Magellan had declared war upon him. Magellan’s sailors were now soldiers, involuntary crusaders, in his planned offensive. They would attack Mactan and all the heathens there, or at least subdue them, and Humabon and his allies would assert their power to keep Mactan good and Christian.

  When Pigafetta paddled out to the Trinidad early in the morning, he saw a disheartening bustle: cannons and flint being readied, armor being assembled—for how long had it lain neglected, a home for rats and rust? Pigafetta had insisted on seeing Magellan, even though Magellan had wanted solitude: a time for prayer. Piety supplied the words for Magellan, but what informed God’s response? And whatever the will of God, if it was not in the financial interests of Spain, it was not to be listened to.

  “Surely you see the folly in this,” said Pigafetta, but Magellan was kissing his cross and readying himself for armor. “How many are the Mactanese in number, and what do you know of their leader, Lapu-Lapu? The very fact that Humabon wants him dispensed with and has not done so himself—and the Cebuans number many—fills me with a grave and justified concern.”

  “This is duty.”

  “This is hubris.”

  “I knew you would say that. Why are you here to torture me? I need to pray.”

  “Then pray that God will give you humility.”

  “What is the great danger? We have guns and cannons and steel blades. It would take one hundred of their number to kill one of our soldiers.”

  “If we had soldiers. We are sailors and cabin boys and pilots. The only soldier is you, an old man with a heavy limp armed with faith, and sorry, but faith makes a dull blade.”

  Magellan looked serious but had to laugh. “Go back to the island, and tonight I will see you, and you will apologize for calling me an old man.”

  But Pigafetta had resolved to go with him. There were many who wanted Magellan dead, and stranding him in battle would be a very good way to accomplish this. The armor didn’t fit well and Pigafetta looked silly in it, but if Magellan was marching into battle so would he.

  8. Engagement

  These are the great generals: Julius Caesar with his flanking phalanxes; Alexander with his speed and daring; Miltiades with his plea for boldness; Hannibal, although he lost; that barbarian Chinese flying on the wind to the very gates of Christendom. Later, when careless history lifted her skirts and fled this bloody battle, she would find other commanders: Napoleon, Sherman, Rommel. And they would all have one thing in common: a plan.

  Magellan did not have a plan. He did not even have a battle, really: this was not Gaugamela, nor Marathon. He was bringing faith and civilization to Mactan, a tiny island that even savages—Cebuans with their bronze-bolted penises, their hog-toothed idols, their bare-arsed social mores—considered beyond the pale. Magellan, his ships bobbing harmlessly distant, prevented from approach by the low tide, was wading through the water in his armor. The men were following, slowly, while the cannonballs fell around them, the targets leaping and hooting onshore.

  Pigafetta was wading too. The armor was heavy and he couldn’t keep track of Magellan, whom he’d planned to protect. His terror was transformed into a kind of ferocity paired with cold reason, which, as he raised his musket and fired at a native, presented this: you had less to fear from the fearless than the truly terrified. The native was hopping around—Pigafetta having missed his mark—but after some awkward fumbling (he didn’t want to get the wadding wet) he managed another shot, and to the surprise of both, this projectile hit the native’s leg. Each took a second to process this. The native shrieked and fell to his knees in the shallows; Pigafetta, now with a moderate understanding of what battle was about, turned to find another target.

  There was now a hut ablaze onshore and the smoke poured out, its thatched roof seizing with flames; the smoke from the weaponry, the dry skunk smell of the gunpowder, the pearl-blue water now turned pink with blood, all of this presented itself and all at once, but where was Magellan? Pigafetta reminded himself that he had injured and probably, although death might wait for morning, killed a native—that he was capable of this, that he should find the battle rather than lingering at its fringes. He felt as if he were a marionette, and that God’s large hand—that hand pointing the way out of Eden frescoed on the family chapel wall—was now dangling him here and there, as he splashed about pantomiming assault. His eyes scanned the thick of fighting and found their mark—not the enemy, but his beloved captain, who was battling on with a blow-and-blow efficiency, as if he were cutting a trail in the jungle, a small path for a little light to filter in.

  And then Magellan fell. What had felled him?

  And then the Mactanese were on him like rain or ants or some other force of nature.

  And then Pigafetta felt a sharp pain in his leg, and looked, and saw the bamboo spike pushed through his flesh.

  He looked up and Magellan was no longer there, only the glossy brown backs and smooth black hair and a hundred limbs pounding and the water turning a dark red, a fragment of armor floating on its surface like a paper boat.

  9. Domus

  Pigafetta awoke to the sound of sails. He could hear them flapping in the wind—a steady breeze bringing him back to Europe—awakening him to the familiar. But when he opened his eyes he saw the corners of his bedroom, the draping of the bedclothes, the cold stone of the walls, and a small sparrow whose desperate flutter had entered, translated, into his dream.

  Pigafetta woke up in the same state of disorientation every day, the stillness of the room unnatural, the size, solidity, and quiet a departure from the normal. He sat up in bed and placed his feet upon the floorboards. The sparrow swooped and flapped, looping in small and ineffective paths of escape. Pigafetta ducked out of its way and reached for his robe; he would trap the bird and set it free.

  He had managed to confine the sparrow to the space between the wardrobe and the wall when a servant knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” said Pigafetta.

  The servant stepped inside.

  “And for God’s sake, close the door behind you. Can’t you see what I’m doing?”

  But the servant could only see Pigafetta’s back, the unenlightening nightshirt, his bandy legs and bare feet, and the raised robe that made him look as if he were bullfighting with the wardrobe. Was this the madness that all the servants had been waiting for since his return from the east? The servant shut the door with a grudging obedience.

  “Keep away from the window,” Pigafetta said, and the servant stepped to one side.

  Pigafetta, having netted the sparrow in his robe, quickly ran to the window to set it free, but the bird was frightened, aquiver in all directions; it seemed highly likely that upon release, the sparrow would once more be inside. Seeing no other option, Pigafetta threw the robe, unfurling it, out the window. The servant remained by the door, respectfully still.

  “Why are you here?” asked Pigafetta.

  “Sir,” said the servant, bowing his head, “Lady Carlotta is here to see you.”

  “Carlotta?” Carlotta was Pigafetta’s favorite cousin. “She was not expected, was she?”

  “No, sir. And I feel obliged to add that she is in quite a state.”

  “And what state is that?”

  “She is very upset and weeping.”

  “Weeping?”

  Pigafetta had made plans to dine with Carlotta at the end of the week. There was much to talk about, and in the year since his return from the east she had been the only person he confided in. She had nursed him back to health when he returned from Spain, and when his nightmares awoke him in
his convalescence, it was she whose cooling cloth and soothing voice calmed him and stilled the demons.

  He had returned from Spain, having delivered his deposition to the king, in a condition of extreme fatigue. Shortly after having reestablished a household, in Venice itself—he could not bear the landlocked towers of his native Vicenza—he had collapsed into a state of delirium, and Carlotta—boozy, sweet, honest Carlotta, with her current fashion and fading looks, her progressively younger lovers and fatally aging husbands—had shown tender fortitude and helped him through it. He remembered her gravelly, hypnotic voice as the one thing that had guided him through the shadows of that time: her hoarse promise of the present his only compass.

  “There is no more Mactan,” she had said. “I have erased it. There is no dissembling king of the Moluccas, no more ships sinking beneath the weight of cloves. There are no more Portuguese to imprison you, to pursue you to the Cape of Good Hope, because that is no more: no fierce winds, no jagged rocks, no endless waiting while you starve for the winds to favor you, and the Victoria. The Portuguese are not waiting in Santiago to hang you, but are in Portugal, where they can do you no harm. We have all the food you can eat and sweet water and wine. The Land of Verzin lies only in your imagination. We know no cannibals, nor giants. There are no fish with razor teeth that prey on men, no poison darts to poison dreams. You are home, Antonio, home.”

  Pigafetta turned to the servant. “Go outside and get my robe,” he said. “I need it.”

  Carlotta was in the living room fanning herself with an anxious vigor. Her hair was up, but had been arranged carelessly, and the overall effect was dishevelment and haste. She was no longer weeping, having moved on to anger. Pigafetta noted all.

  “Carlotta,” he said, “you cannot always believe what you hear.”

  “That confirms it,” she responded. She flared her nostrils and stomped across the room, flinging herself into a chair.

  “Why?”

  “For my religion.”

  “Religion? You have no religion other than wine and boys, like me.”

  “It is never too late to reunite with God, to reaffirm one’s faith.”

  “You think the Turks need to be killed?”

  “For my faith—”

  “And even if you believe that, which you don’t, you think you’re the one to do it?”

  “To create the kingdom of God on earth.”

  “Listen to yourself, Antonio: one aphorism after another. How can I trust this? Observe clearly your embracing of the cross, this march east and east—backward into the past, because the time for knights and infidels was four hundred years ago. Call it what it is—suicide.”

  Pigafetta took a chair a safe distance from Carlotta and slumped into it. The servant appeared at the door with goblets and a carafe of wine, and Carlotta watched him pour out the wine, biting her lip. Then the servant was gone, and she drained half her glass, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I know you are brokenhearted for your captain, who, as I understand it, never loved you. Only as his friend. You will get past this—”

  “You only say that because he was a man.”

  “No,” said Carlotta. “I say this because you are a man. Grief is a young man’s privilege. At your age, it is only loss and acceptance. This crusade—who are you killing? Turks? Arabs? You care enough about these people to kill them? And you are not a soldier. You told me you shot one Indian and then were pierced in the leg by a poison arrow. Turks and Arabs are not so strangely armed, and worse, they know you, their enemy, whereas those naked heathens know nothing at all.”

  Pigafetta looked out the window at the hazy blue sky. How could he argue for the importance of his decision when nothing had value, nothing was worth fighting for, so why not fight? How could this convince anyone? How had he convinced himself?

  “You cannot stay in the wake of this Magellan, who, even in death, moves you by simply having passed.”

  “Many die having never been so moved.”

  “So you wish to die because of it? They will kill you. Infidels are superior to barbarians. It is an irrefutable fact.”

  “How simple the world is for you, Carlotta.”

  “You mean to insult me and scare me off.” Carlotta laughed. “Simple? You, like young men, desire complication a virtue.” She folded her hands in her lap; she was now serious. “Venice is your home. The doge is your friend and admirer, and they are publishing your book everywhere,” she said. “Even the pope takes it to bed with him each night, to read about the giants and the native girls girdled about with nothing but their hair. You are not a man who needs a profession, but there it is: writer.” She smiled. “There is only one problem with the account, and that is everything is somehow Magellan. Even after he dies, you’re singing his praises, as if he is the wind pushing the sails and his cunning helps you outrun the Portuguese boats. Write another work, and this time—” Carlotta leaned forward and raised her eyebrows significantly. “You are the star! Antonio Pigafetta, native of Vicenza, nobleman, adventurer. Honestly, your Magellan never even made it around the world . . .”

  And so she continued for some time, and as the moon waxed and waned, rose and sank, and the tides marched up and up, then back and back, Carlotta could still have been prattling on, sitting in her chair, demanding the servant bring more wine. It made little difference to Pigafetta. It made none at all.

  10. Paradise

  I will leave Pigafetta, nobleman of Vicenza, first writer of the modern world, standing on the battlefield. It might be Turkey; it might be the moon. He has just been thrown from his horse and is inordinately pleased to have survived this with no broken bones. The horse, smart thing, is returning to camp and is nothing but a distant drumming of hooves curtained by a poof of dust. Pigafetta’s armor is heavy, and he dislikes how it chafes at the knees and shoulders. His sword is also heavy and he can barely lift it. It seems unlikely that he could use the sword to inflict harm on anyone other than himself; in swinging it about, he might dislocate his shoulder.

  Pigafetta starts walking to the heart of the conflict, aware that where he now stands is somewhat peripheral. There is dust all around, and heat. He can hear the shrieking of the injured horses rise above the grumble of men at war and the tromp of their boots. Pigafetta feels irrelevant to this battle—to himself—and would gladly fritter away what could very well be his final moments in this state of carelessness, but he does not have that option, because Pigafetta needs to relieve himself. He knows the knightly thing to do would be to just let loose, let the urine trickle down his leg, pool into his shoe, and march on. That would save him from having to set down his sword and unburden himself, plate by plate, of this ridiculous carapace, and what if he is ambushed? He pictures himself turning—all gleaming metal above, all hairy pinkness below—and the surprise on the Mussulman’s face. It would certainly be funny. Pigafetta finds himself laughing, laughing, and laughing louder. He walks in circles, deeply amused, dragging his sword behind him as if it is a toy, as if he is a drunk: the sword records his passage in the dust in erratic zigzags. How sad to be laughing alone!

  And then, playing in his ear like a song lodged there against his will, he hears his friend laugh with him. Magellan is laughing too, ha, ha, ha, in his bawdy, flat way:

  “’Tonio, what have you done to yourself, and all for me?”

  He’s laughing with Pigafetta, and although, so close that you can smell them, men are fighting—not just fighting, but dying too, and for God! For their faith! For the cross!—it is somehow still funny. These men have left their families behind, and little boys, their mouths turned down in sad little bows, will never know their fathers. Silken, perfume-choked hankies will be blooming with leaked blood and limbs will be left here and there, tossed around as the young discard their clothes.

  People are dying and in pain—blood is spilled upon the plain.

  But in this world, what could be so terribly serious?

  Pigafetta, fumbl
ing with his pants, looks up and surprises the infidel, who—his nose covered with some sort of veil—has crept up behind him. Oh, the hilarity of it all. Now the tears pour out the sides of Pigafetta’s eyes, and Magellan laughs ha, ha, ha, and the infidel—who knows to fear madness in dogs but is not sure if the same holds in men—stands with his scimitar, gripped loosely as skilled soldiers hold their weaponry. Pigafetta sees him, and fans inward with his hands, in a gesture of welcome, an invitation: Avvicinarsi! And laughing all the while. The infidel does not laugh, but sees the easy kill. And Magellan and Pigafetta see no harm in a little more blood spilled. They see no reason to become morbid in this morbid situation. Soon it will all be over and there will still be love. Why shouldn’t they laugh?

  Paradise

  I. Tragedy

  Tragedy is waste. Tragedy is the reminder of human helplessness. Tragedy invents God everywhere it chooses to appear. Tragedy destroys God everywhere it chooses to appear. Tragedy has its superstars. Tragedy has its victims. Tragedy forces people to take stock of their lives [as if lives were pantries or mutual funds] and find meaning in it. Tragedy is what forces people to take stock of their lives [as if lives were pantries or mutual funds] and find all essentially meaningless. Others’ tragedy makes one feel lucky—safe. Others’ tragedy is what makes one feel lucky—but for how long? Tragedy affects children because they are not yet jaded and know how to fear. Tragedy does not affect children because they have yet to learn fear. Tragedy takes no hostages. Tragedy takes hostages. Jonestown is a tragedy that took no hostages and holds me hostage. I was a child at the time of the Jonestown Massacre and I feared Jim Jones. I am held hostage by the Jonestown Massacre and I fear Jim Jones. Parents comfort children by saying, Hitler is dead, Pol Pot is dead. I comfort my children by saying, Idi Amin is dead, Jim Jones is dead. Children find little comfort in these deaths, adults even less. There is always another monster waiting in the wings. This is what children teach adults, although no one needs to teach this to me. I have never forgotten.