Tales of the New World: Stories

by Sabina Murray

“It means it did not rain.”

  “And the earth shakes and quivers. Our temples wobble as if they are made of reeds.”

  “The earth shakes because we live on a lake.”

  “And what of the fire in the Temple of Huitzilopochtli?”

  “Where there are torches, there is often fire, my lord.”

  “Not good enough, old man. You know things that you do not tell me.”

  “And you defy my reasoning,” said Nezahualpilli wearily. “You place your trust in me, but just this year you ordered me to march my army against the Tlaxcalans in retribution for your loss, then ordered the Aztec warriors to pull back. My armies were destroyed and two of my favorite sons are dead, which is what you desired for me. In the months since my first visit to warn you of the dangers faced by our great city, you have reduced me from a leader of the Triple Alliance to the lowest of vassals. You have snuffed whatever autonomy I had. Even my desire to worship the god Quetzalcoatl is denied—”

  “But this is why I’ve called you here. Repeat that prophecy,” said Motecuhzoma. He half-covered his face with the feathered fan and watched.

  “This is not my prophecy,” said Nezahualpilli. “I heard this from the priests in Cholula.”

  “Tell me,” said Motecuhzoma. “Tell me what they foretell.”

  Nezahualpilli sighed. “Quetzalcoatl will return. The Toltecs will be with him. They come to reclaim this land. As the reign of the Toltecs once ended, now it is time for the reign of the Aztecs to end. We will recognize Quetzalcoatl from his lordly attire, the marvelous beasts that will be at his command. He will accept our gifts of food and treasure, for are they not truly his? Is not everything the land brings forth the property of Quetzalcoatl?”

  “Go on,” said Motecuhzoma, “why stop there?”

  “Because that is all there is.”

  “What about your other prophecy?”

  “We’ve been over that before, and recently.”

  “Are you refusing to repeat it?”

  “No, my lord,” said Nezahualpilli. He took a deep breath. “Be forewarned that in a very few years, our cities will be laid to waste, that we and our children and our vassals will be annihilated. Do not lose faith or become anxious about what will happen because it is impossible to evade. I am comforted only by the knowledge that I will not see these calamities and afflictions, as my own days are counted. And because of this, before I die, I wish only to warn you as if you were my own dear son.”

  “Is that it?” asked Motecuhzoma.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “It’s shorter this time.” Motecuhzoma lowered his fan. “Yes. I’m positive that it’s shorter.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, my lord, the rest of the prophecy has already come to pass.”

  “But why not say it?”

  “Because, my lord, a prophecy only deals with the future. You can’t have a prophecy that deals with things that have already happened. This goes against the very definition of ‘prophecy.’”

  “I see,” said Motecuhzoma. “I see very clearly. What is left of the prophecy is inescapable doom, but you are wrong. Yes. I have no doubt about it. You are wrong, and do you know why?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Because I am no longer merely the leader of the Aztecs. I am a god, supreme ruler of the universe and heavens.”

  Nezahualpilli was momentarily stunned. He had witnessed this claim before, and had seen the commoners prostrated along the street—forbidden to gaze at Motecuhzoma—when the monarch chose to leave his palace, but Nezahualpilli had always thought this to be some variety of political maneuvering, just as he’d always thought the bloodthirsty cult of Huitzilopochtli was a good way of frightening the whole valley into submission and keeping the warrior population down in the vassal states. But looking at Motecuhzoma now, Nezahualpilli saw that the king had succumbed to a powerful dementia. Truly, there was no hope for the empire now. He heard the death knell, the drums of defeat, but realized it was only his own heart pounding in his ears with the unhealthy force typical of men his age.

  “Well, my lord,” he said, “I’m sure Quetzalcoatl will see you as a great adversary.”

  Unfortunately, the prophecy would prove to be true. The only trope the great emperor, or god, was capable of tossing in Quetzalcoatl’s way would be the bloody clinging to a lost empire, a network of fissures and plumbing choked with bodies, a brilliant, fecund breeding ground for the conqueror’s seeds of progress, seeds that burst in suppurating ulcers, seeds that filled one’s lungs with the oil of their own organs and left them struggling for breath. The citizens of the great city burst apart with gunfire, burst like the dry puffer mushrooms that appeared after the rain, fell to the ground riddled and pitted with bitter blacking and dirty blood.

  But that version is already known.

  What if Nezahualpilli is actually a capable soothsayer, what if he sees the dwarves sitting anxiously (or drowsing unaware) about the throne of Motecuhzoma and he says, “Slaughter them all and make a stew.” And by eating this stew, Motecuhzoma is, in fact, transformed into a god. And when Quetzalcoatl does appear, what if Motecuhzoma, ruler of Tenochtitlan, now newly incarnated as a god, rather than showing up with tasty food and a treasury’s worth of gold, instead makes no such mistake of hospitality.

  Let us arm him with the sun in a small pill, something he can throw down at the foot of the conqueror, and then let it bloom in all its power at the feet of these two men, annihilating them, spilling its brilliance into the city, burning up the slopes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl and to limits the ocean, then into the ocean, where all the fish begin to fall, as if enchanted, to the bottom of the water, to lie upon the sand until the sand itself is consumed by this brilliant power, until the very histories stretching forward and backward, all that mankind was and hoped to be, are eradicated, snuffed, burned quickly, until the only scent is that of the scorched numbers, 2006 and 1968, AD 33 and all those BCs, and everything is burned until. Until.

  And now all is white, and we can start again.

  On Sakhalin

  You ask yourself for whom do these waves roar, who hears them during the night, what are they calling for, and for whom they will roar when you have gone away.

  —The Island of Sakhalin, Anton Chekhov

  Outside, the wind is running up and down the street, setting every shutter to a questioning rattle. There is grit and dust suspended in the air. In the distance, the watchman calls out mournfully and, with a sudden drop in wind, a not-too-distant drunkard—deeply sincere and off-key—sings the response. There is oakum stuffed between the rough-hewn walls of the governor’s house to prevent drafts, and the walls look as though they are sprouting hair.

  He and the governor are talking of the indigenous peoples. He realizes that he is not—not indigenous—and considers briefly this unnatural state of being.

  “They’re very primitive,” says the governor. “Not much to them.”

  “Perhaps,” he agrees. “But all my life I’ve been surrounded by Russians, although there were Greeks in Taganrog.”

  “Taganrog?” says the governor. “On the Sea of Azov?”

  He nods. “That’s where I’m from”—a past so distant as to be implausible. “They say these aborigines don’t look like the Japanese, or the Mongolians. They say these natives are altogether different.”

  “Well,” says the governor, “the Gilyak have faces round like the moon, and their fingers are long—tapering, not quite human.” The governor toys with a loose button on his vest. “And this interests you?”

  “I am a doctor.”

  “But you are here to take a census?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the job of a doctor?”

  “I will record medical statistics,” he says. A census of the penal colony might be useful—he’ll count the lot of them: convicts, settled exiles, peasants-in-exile, freemen. Then turn his attention to each individual and their
catalogue of ills: malignant protrusions mean a chemical influence; that jerking walk, the presence of syphilis. And then he’ll count the dogs. And the fleas on the dogs.

  “But you have not yet seen our natives?” asks the governor.

  “Not up close, just from the side of the boat,” he says, “shouting up. Three men holding geese that they had shot.”

  “Not shot. Killed somehow, crawled up to the goose and strangled it. They don’t have guns—unless we’ve hired them as guards. Did you buy the geese?”

  “I think the captain did, for a matter of kopecks.”

  “Well, good for him, supporting the local economy. No doubt the savages have spent it, and in the magical way of Sakhalin, geese have been transformed into vodka.”

  Conversation drifts back to the census, and the governor agrees that such a thing might be useful. He says a man has been found to take him around, to give him his bearings. Ivan Petrovich Sobolev.

  “He’s pleasant enough,” says the governor. “He’ll keep you from losing your way, although how lost could you get? We are on an island.”

  The governor has been letting him stay at his house, which is good, for there is no hotel. He stands on the street, his eyes lighting from one space to another, his gaze shifting and shifting, since there is little to hold one’s attention for more than a second here in Sakhalin. Before his departure from mainland Russia, he made the requisite appearances in drawing rooms, drawing out the requisite letters of introduction, but it seems that none preceded him, his arrival a surprise—how curious that the popular story writer should show up in this unpopular corner—followed by an effort to conceal that reaction. Perhaps the mail was lost, which would not surprise him. He has forded rivers to get here and seen the sacks of hopeful letters born upon the backs of those lost on the Kozulka, those no longer welcome in the real Russia. And what is in those letters? Of the prisoners, news of ill-timed births and predictable deaths, maybe portraits of home life. He thinks of his sister Masha sitting on the overstuffed couch, her legs splayed out, since there’s no one to see, boot heels on the carpet, a half-finished letter to him resting on a book, her unfinished thoughts hovering about, as she picks dog hairs off her skirt while composing in her head. Will this letter bring him hope? Of course not. There will be news of some new financial catastrophe or some woman who wants some thing that he will not want to give. Suddenly the howling wind, singing at the cable, seems like good company. He takes a cigarette from his case and wonders how one lights something in this wind. As if on cue, a criminal bumbles up to him (criminals wander here, tolerated and aimless, as, he’s heard, do the sacred cows of India) and says,

  “Sir, this takes my skill.”

  Which makes him think his neck might soon be efficiently snapped or his wallet stolen, but soon a light flares forth from a match rendered invisible by the flame, as if this convict’s skill is the ability to conjure little balls of fire from his cupped hands.

  The sun is rising in Sakhalin. The sun is rising here, in the east, unremarkably, and setting elsewhere, unremarkably. The sun is rising over the broad road where nothing is happening, and for one moment he imagines that he is rolling under the sun, as if, here in Sakhalin, one can feel the spherical nature of the earth, this diurnal winching connected to the distant subterranean creak, which he knows is actually mine-related, but on this morning—somehow disconnected from unspooling time—could be ascribed to the ratcheting of ropes and pulleys angling Sakhalin to better feel the effects of that distant source of heat. He cannot remember waking to the company of his thoughts. Usually, there is some pacing outside the bedroom door—his mother with a fresh catastrophe, his father brandishing an icon, his brother Kolia begging for work that he will not complete although the commission will be his, and the advance on the commission will be his, and the money—soon spent on morphine and vodka and perfume to combat the reek of his aging mistress—will disappear without the required illustrations or paintings completed. And then he will wake to the pacing of the footsteps of Kolia’s creditors, although they will not be outside his door, rather down the street. But he will still hear them.

  Stop. To think of Kolia this way has become a fantasy, something he can still conjure in the early morning with his thoughts rising isolated and of their own accord. Kolia is dead. He feels it now. He follows a bird making horizontal progress across the sky and holds a deep, deep stillness.

  The man sees him struggling to remember the name, and offers, “Ivan Petrovich Sobolev,” with an outstretched hand. “I am to take you to see some of our remarkable prisoners,” he says. His collar is frayed, his jacket shiny with wear, elsewhere shiny with dirt. The man has a direct demeanor and is prickly and resigned in equal parts, and simultaneously: as if one is seeing two sides of a coin at the same time.

  “Thank you for escorting me.”

  “Nice to be thanked,” the man says, “but I don’t really have a choice. I’m one of them.”

  “You are a prisoner?” he asks.

  The man shrugs. He might have asked if the man were a count and received the same response. There’s a moment of silence between them. The man says, “Don’t you want to know what has landed me here?”

  “Not everyone here seems to know. Besides, you might be wrongly convicted.”

  The man raises his eyebrows and his eyes grow merry. “If that is the case, then I am wrongly convicted of forging banknotes. I thought you might like to know. If I were wrongly convicted of murder, you might be concerned that, at a future date, I might be convicted, wrongfully, of killing you.”

  The humor is welcome and he smiles. This is a large man with a large shadow. One of his hands could easily span the good doctor’s neck, such bear paws incongruous with the nimble, inking work of forging banknotes. He takes his cigarettes from his pocket and thrusts one into Sobolev’s right hand. Sobolev turns to him, smiles, looks around at the mist burning up in the sunshine.

  “Looks like it might not be such a bad day after all,” says the forger. “Although it’s hard to tell one day from another.” He draws thoughtfully on his cigarette and, puffing his cheeks, expels the smoke with force.

  “What do people smoke here?” he asks.

  “Here?” Sobolev shrugs. “Whatever can be smoked. I think it is most often Japanese, but there is little choice.” The forger considers. “The choices I’ve made have left me with few choices.”

  He thinks of a few maudlin responses. He could address the pleasant weather, the man’s good health. These would be things to say.

  Sobolev watches as though reading his thoughts. “Should I just take you around?”

  He nods.

  “You will ask these people questions?” asks Sobolev.

  In response, the doctor produces the form that he has had printed here on the island. The information is basic but has provided him a sort of passport into the houses and fetter blocks and souls of Sakhalin.

  Sobolev holds the paper. The form asks for age, place of birth, when the individual arrived in Sakhalin, religion, if one can read, who taught them to read, and other simple facts.

  “I’m interested in literacy,” he says.

  “Here?” says Sobolev.

  “Yes.” Perhaps it is remarkable.

  “And they fill this out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who will read this?” asks Sobolev.

  He shrugs.

  For one second, understanding flickers in the eyes of his companion. Sobolev nods at the form and hands it back to him.

  “The house of Pishchikov is over there. Perhaps he is home. He does not talk that much, but he will fill out your form.” Sobolev considers him thoughtfully. “You are not as I expected.”

  And what was that?

  “Rumor is that you’re not so much a doctor as a scribbler of stories in the papers. Is that true?”

  “Friend, it depends on what is called for. If a man is ill, I’m more of a doctor. If a man is bored, I’m more of a writer.”

&nbs
p; “Good enough,” says Sobolev. “This is a love story, our Pishchikov. Come!”

  Sobolev takes long strides. He follows. On the verandah of a government building, a small group of Gilyak men have gathered. Moon faces, long fingers, and direct gazes. A sleeping dog that lounges by them begins to wag its tail, thumping a drumbeat on the wood, although what has caused this response—some thought of pleasure—is hidden in the dog’s dream. He thinks of the forms in his satchel. Could he approach these men, with their long, tapering fingers and broad, flat cheeks, with this need for answers? Would they respond?

  Sobolev stands some fifty yards down the road.

  “Pishchikov! Pishchikov!” shouts Sobolev, as though he is asserting Pishchikov’s importance over this gathering of Gilyaks. But now he sees that Sobolev is merely shouting into Pishchikov’s house. He walks quickly to join him.

  Sobolev pushes open Pishchikov’s door into a poor cabin with a dirt floor, rough table, timid bed. “He’s not here,” says Sobolev. “Too bad. He has a clerical job with the police. Can you believe that? Pishchikov working for the police, and he’s a murderer. It’s a wonder anyone knows who to arrest around here. And I’m a tour guide!” Here, Sobolev smiles.

  Sobolev has an appealing smile with big teeth. He thinks this Sobolev must be much liked by women, and wonders how this Ivan Petrovich Sobolev manages here in Sakhalin, where all the women are selling themselves, where even the freemen’s wives are prostitutes for lack of other industry, and any girl over the age of thirteen can be guaranteed to have a price ready for you. This poor room has nothing sinister about it. There is a cloud of the pathetic here—now he is inventing—and perhaps regret. A woman’s photograph, worried by mold, is nailed to a wall above the table. “What is this Pishchikov’s crime?”

  “It involves,” says Sobolev, “a Turk, a wife, and a whip. And it ends badly.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, this woman falls in love with a captured Turk, and Pishchikov—who has access to the Turk—helps her to see this Turk, brings this Turk her love letters, is so kind and generous and solicitous—” and Sobolev pauses. “I can’t remember what happens to the Turk, but he leaves the story, and the woman falls in love with Pishchikov because he was so kind and generous when the Turk was around. This is an educated woman, with a college degree. I say that because around here all the women are prostitutes, even the ones who aren’t. This educated woman bears for Pishchikov four children. And is close to nine months with the fifth when Pishchikov, and God only knows why, thinks of that Turk who all those years ago so inflamed her with passion.” Here Sobolev thinks of his last statement. “Maybe she just—” and Sobolev makes an obscene gesture, because “inflamed with passion” seems ludicrous here, or maybe anywhere. “He whips her for six hours. They say the woman was flayed, skinless, when he was done. Is there something beyond dead? If so, she was that.” There’s a moment of silence. “And now he’s a clerk for the police.”