Ines of My Soul (33 page)

I have just realized that I have filled many pages and have yet to explain why this far-off territory of Chile is the only kingdom in the Americas. Emperor Charles V wanted to wed his son Philip to Mary Tudor, queen of England. What year would that have been? It was about the time that Pedro died, I think. The emperor's young heir needed the title of king to effect that union, and since his father was not yet ready to yield the throne to him, they decided that Chile would be a kingdom and Philip its sovereign—which did not improve our fortune, but gave us stature.

I remember that on the same ship with Marina—who was then forty-two years old and a little short on brains, but beautiful, with that washed-out beauty of mature blondes—came Daniel Belalcázar and my niece Constanza, whom I had bid farewell in Cartagena in 1538. I had thought I would never again see my niece, who instead of becoming a nun, as we had planned, had at fifteen suddenly married the chronicler who had seduced her on the ship. Our surprise was mutual. I supposed that they had been swallowed up by the jungle, and it was the farthest thing from their minds that I had founded a kingdom. They stayed nearly two years in Chile, studying the history and customs of the Mapuche—from afar, of course, because there was no chance of moving freely among them; the war was at its apogee. Belalcázar said that the Mapuche resembled some Asians he had seen in his travels. He considered them to be great warriors and did not veil his admiration for them—like the poet who later wrote the epic about the Araucans. Have I already mentioned him? Perhaps not, but it is a little late to worry about him now. Ercilla, his name was. When Belalcázar and my niece learned that they would never be able to approach the Mapuche to sketch them and ask them direct questions, they resumed their pilgrimage across the world. They were perfect partners for scientific undertakings; they shared the same insatiable curiosity and the same Olympian scorn for the dangers of their preposterous ventures.

Daniel Belalcázar, however, planted in my head the idea of starting a school, for he thought it was a ridiculous irony that Chile pretended to be a civilized colony when you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of persons who knew how to read. I proposed the idea to González de Marmolejo, and we both fought for years to create schools, but no one was interested in the project. How backward they were! They were afraid that if people learned to read they would fall into the vice of thinking, and from there to rebelling against the Crown lay only a hair's difference.

But as I was saying, today has not been a good day for me. Instead of focusing on the story of my life, I have been wandering. Every day it is more difficult for me to concentrate on facts; I get distracted. There is a constant activity in this house, although you assure me it is the most tranquil in Santiago.

“That's all in your head,
mamita
. There is no activity here, just the opposite, it's quiet, only ghosts wander here,” you told me last night.

“Exactly, Isabel, that is just what I was saying.”

You are like your father, practical and reasonable, and that is why you cannot see all the people wandering through my rooms without permission. The veil that separates this world from the next grows thinner with age, and I am beginning to see through it. I suppose that when I die you will change everything; you will give away my old furniture and paint the walls with a new coat of whitewash; but remember that you have promised me to keep these pages I have written for you and your descendants. If you would rather, you can give them to the Mercedarians, or the Dominicans, for they owe me some favors. Remember, too, that I am leaving a fund to support Marina Ortiz de Gaete to the last day of her life, and to feed the poor who are used to being given food every day at the gate of this house. I believe I have told you all this; forgive me if I am repeating myself. I am sure you will carry out my requests, Isabel, because you are like your father in that too. You have a good heart, and your word is sacred.

The fortunes of our colony took a turn for the better once we established contact with Peru and provisions and people eager to settle in Chile began to arrive. Thanks to the ships plying back and forth, we were able to order the items indispensable to our prospering. Valdivia bought iron, tools, and cannons, and I ordered trees and seeds from Spain—which grow very well in this Chilean climate—sheep, goats, and cattle. By mistake they sent me eight cows and twelve bulls, when one would have done. Aguirre tried to use the misunderstanding to inaugurate the first plaza de toros, but the animals were stunned by the sea voyage and not up to goring anyone. They were not wasted, however, since ten were converted to oxen and used for field work and hauling. The remaining two gallantly serviced the cows, and now we have large herds from the pastures of Copiapó to the Mapocho valley. We built a mill and public ovens, we have a quarry and sawmills, we made tiles and adobe, and set up a tannery and workshops to turn out pottery, wicker, candles, harness, and furniture. There were two tailors, four scribes, a doctor—who unfortunately was not good for much—and a stupendous veterinarian. At the rate the city was growing, the valley soon would be denuded of trees—such was the fervor of our construction. I can't say that life was easy, but at last we had enough food, and even the Yanaconas grew fat and lazy. We had no serious problems other than the plague of rats the Indian machis, using their black arts, sent to torment the Christians. We could not keep them out of the sown fields, our houses, our clothing; they ate everything except metal. Cecilia offered a solution they used in Peru: tubs half filled with water. At night we would set several in each house, and by dawn there would be five hundred drowned rats, but the plague did not end until Cecilia found a Quechua wizard able to counter the spell of the Chilean machis.

Valdivia urged his soldiers to send for their wives in Spain, as the king had ordered, and some did, but most preferred cohabiting with young Indian girls to living with an aging wife. In our colony there were more and more mestizo children who did not know who their fathers were. The Spanish women who came to rejoin their husbands looked the other way and accepted the situation, which, after all, was not very different from that in Spain, and even today in Chile the custom endures of the
casa grande
, where the wife and legitimate children live, and the
casas chicas
for the concubines and bastard children. I must be the only one who never tolerated that from her husband, although things might have happened behind my back that I don't know about.

Santiago was declared capital of the kingdom. It was the largest city in population, and the safest, now that Michimalonko's Indians kept their distance. That allowed us, among other advantages, to organize paseos, outdoor luncheons, and hunting parties on the banks of the Mapocho, which had once been forbidden territory. We designated feast days to honor the saints and others to entertain ourselves with music, in which Spaniards, Indians, blacks, and mestizos participated equally. There were cockfights, dog races, games of bocce and squash. Pedro de Valdivia, an enthusiastic player, continued the custom of organizing card games in our home, except that now they bet hopes and dreams. No one had a peso, but records were kept with a moneylender's meticulous care, even knowing the debts would never be collected.

Once mail service was established between Peru and Spain, we were able to send and receive letters, which took only one or two years to reach their destination. Pedro began to write long missives to the emperor Charles V, telling him about Chile, about the privations we were suffering, about his own expenditures and debts, about his way of dispensing justice, about how, as much as he regretted it, many Indians had died and strong arms were needed to work the mines and the land. In passing he would ask for the privileges and funding sovereigns may grant, but his just demands were unanswered. Pedro wanted soldiers, people, ships, the confirmation of his authority, and recognition for his accomplishments. He would read me the letters in a booming voice of command, pacing back and forth, his chest puffed out with vanity, and I would say nothing. How could I offer an opinion on his correspondence with the most powerful monarch in the world, the most sacred and most triumphant Caesar, as Valdivia called him? But I began to realize that my lover had changed; power was going to his head, he had become very arrogant. In his letters he referred to fabulous gold mines, more fantasy than reality. They were the lure to tempt Spaniards to come and settle in Santiago, because only he and Rodrigo de Quiroga understood that the true wealth of Chile was not gold and silver but its benign climate and fertile soil, which invite one to stay. The other colonists were still beguiled by the idea of getting rich as quickly as they could and returning to Spain.

To assure a more secure route to Peru, Valdivia ordered a city to be founded in the north, La Serena, and a port near Santiago, Valparaíso, and then turned toward the Bío-Bío river, with an eye to conquering the Mapuche. Felipe explained that that river is sacred because it regulates all watercourses; its coolness calms the wrath of the volcanoes; and everything from the strongest trees to the most secret, invisible, transparent mushroom grows within its purview. According to the documents Pizarro had given Valdivia, the area of his rule stretched as far as the Strait of Magellan, but no one knew with any certainty how far away the famous channel was that united the eastern ocean with that of the west. It was about the same time that a ship arrived from Peru under the command of a young Italian captain named Pastene, to whom Valdivia awarded the flamboyant title of admiral, and then sent on to explore the south. Sailing along the coast, Pastene caught glimpses of magnificent landscapes of dense forests, archipelagos, and glaciers, but he did not find the strait, which apparently lay much farther south than had been supposed.

In the meantime, very bad news was arriving from Peru, where the political situation had become disastrous; they were emerging from one civil war only to fall into another. Gonzalo Pizarro, one of the brothers of the deceased marqués, had grabbed power in open rebellion against our king, and there was so much corruption, betrayal, and deterioration in the viceroyalty that finally the emperor ordered an obstinate priest named La Gasca to restore order. I shall not waste ink trying to explain the complexities of the situation in Ciudad de los Reyes during those days because not even I understand them, but I mention La Gasca because that priest with the pockmarked face would make a decision that would change my destiny.

Pedro was seething with impatience, not just to conquer more Chilean territory, which the Mapuche were defending to the death, but to play a part in what was happening in Peru, and reestablish contact with civilization. He had been eight years away from the centers of power, and secretly he wanted to travel north in order to meet other military men, conduct business, be praised for the conquest of Chile, and offer his sword in the service of the king against the insubordinate Gonzalo Pizarro. Was he tired of me? Perhaps, but I did not suspect that then. I felt sure of his love, which for me was as natural as the falling rain. If I found him restless, I supposed that he was a bit bored with the sedentary life, now that the excitement of the first years in Santiago, when we had kept a sword in hand day and night, had given way to a more restful and comfortable existence.

“We need soldiers for the war in the south, and families to populate the rest of the territory, but Peru ignores my emissaries,” Pedro told me one night, disguising his real reasons for wanting to go to Peru.

“Do you intend to go yourself? I warn you that if you leave for a single day, you will be inviting a calamity here. You know how your friend de la Hoz is,” I said—pointlessly, since without my knowing, he had already made his decision.

“I will leave Villagra in my place; he has a strong hand.”

“How do you intend to entice people in Peru to come to Chile? They are not all idealists like you, Pedro. Men go where there is wealth, not glory alone.”

“I will find a way to do it.”

It was his idea; I had no part in it. Pedro announced with great fanfare that he was planning to send Pastene's ship to Peru, and that any who wanted to leave and take their gold with them could do so. The response was delirious enthusiasm, for that was all anyone had been talking about in Santiago for weeks. Leave! Go back to Spain with money! That was the dream of every man who had left the old continent for the Indies: to return wealthy. Nevertheless, when the moment came to draw up the manifest, only sixteen colonists decided to take advantage of the opportunity. They sold their property for nothing, wrapped up their belongings, weighed their gold, and prepared to leave. Among the party traveling in the caravan to the port was my mentor, González de Marmolejo, who was now more than sixty years old and somehow had managed to get rich in the service of God. Señora Díaz was also going, a Spanish “lady” who had arrived in Chile a couple of years before on one of the boats. There was little
lady
about her; we all knew that she was a man dressed as a woman. “Balls and
piripicho
the doña is having between his legs, then,” Catalina told me. “Where do you get such ideas! Why would a man dress as a woman?” I asked her. “Well, why would it be,
señorayy
? To be getting money from other men, then,” she explained. But enough of gossip.

On the appointed day, the travelers boarded the ship, where they arranged their trunks, with their gold inside and nailed shut for good measure, in the cabins assigned to them. At that moment Valdivia and other captains appeared on the beach, accompanied by numerous servants, to send them off with a farewell meal: delicious fish and seafood fresh from the sea, all liberally washed down with wine from the governor's personal cellar. They set up canvas canopies on the sand, lunched like princes, and wept a little over the emotional speeches, especially the lady with the
piripicho
, who was very sensitive and sentimental. Valdivia insisted that to prevent any problems in the future, the colonists declare the amount of gold they were carrying, a wise measure that met with general approval. While a secretary was carefully noting in his ledger the numbers the travelers gave him, Valdivia climbed into the one available longboat, and five vigorous sailors rowed him to the ship where several of his most loyal captains were waiting, all of whom planned to join him in placing themselves at the service of the king's cause in Peru. When the unwary would-be travelers realized they had been tricked, they stood howling with frustration, and several jumped in to swim after the longboat, but the only one who caught up to it received a thump from an oar that nearly broke his neck. I can imagine the desolation of the fleeced passengers as they watched the sails fill and the ship head off to the north, carrying with it all their earthly possessions.