Mr. Eternity (4 page)

Azar helped himself to more plantains. The ancient mariner ate nothing, true to his word. I wanted very badly to have more po, but already I felt jittery and unsound.

“This stuff you’re telling us,” said Azar. “This is like smelling salts for a cynic like me.”

One morning a Christian comes floating down the river in an Indian canoe. This is Diego Paez de Sotelo. His torso is twice as long as his legs and his beard hangs all the way to the ground. He is all skin and bones. He is all torso and no heart. He is the only other survivor of the Lopez y Barra expedition to the land of cinnamon, and he has been wandering in the forest since he was abandoned there by Daniel de Fo.

For this abandonment he desires vengeance, so he comes to the alcalde’s residence and denounces Daniel de Fo for all manner of crimes against the Faith. He says that he saw Daniel de Fo eat unleavened bread during the recent expedition. He says that he not only amended a hymn of David but also insisted that the hymn was improved by his amendment. He says that he ate Indian roots for the purpose of divination, and that he had prophetic dreams, and that he did indeed make a certain conjuring in order to restore his missing left foot. He says that he made invocations of demons for the purpose of causing Pedro Avila to lose his wits and murder the captain general Lopez y Barra. He confirms the story that Daniel de Fo is one hundred years old and he says that his robust health is a result of a pact with the devil. He also says that he was observed reading a book that treated of profoundly deep spiritual things of the Faith, which, as an ignorant person and a soldier, he should have abstained from reading.

I cannot stop laughing during this recitation. The alcalde laughs too, haha, but only because I’m laughing. These are serious violations of canon law and now, because there is no apostolic inquisitor in Santa Inés, it is for him to decide whether Daniel de Fo should be sacrificed to the Christian God or sent away for trial. When Diego Paez de Sotelo is gone, he orders his men to remove Daniel de Fo from the brothel and lock
him in the guardhouse down the street. Then he explains to me that Daniel de Fo is not a true Christian after all, but a converso, a Jew who lives as a Christian. He tells me that the Jewish heresy, which is also called the Mosaic heresy, is one of the greatest heresies, and there are those among the Christians who believe that a Jew can no more repent and become a Christian than a fish can become a monkey. He tells me these things because he believes it is his duty to instruct me in the precepts of Christianity.

The alcalde wants peace more than anything, and all of this grieves him terribly. He puts his head in his hands. He sighs. He himself believes that anyone who loves God is a Christian, but in the eyes of the law this is not enough. He walks outside to the pigpen to pray and suffer and drink wine.

In Pirahao there are words for the colors of things, but no words for colors in themselves. In Pirahao there are no numbers. If I want to say ten cows, I say a bigness of cows, but there are no cows. In Pirahao there is nothing more than what there is, and nothing exists beyond the present, and it is not proper to say I will do this, I will do that, I will kill you next week, I will pay you tomorrow. But for the Christians time has a different shape. Life is lived now and it is lived in the future. This is one thing I have learned from them. I have learned to make plans.

And now I have a problem and I must make a plan to solve it. Without Daniel de Fo there can be no expedition to Anaquitos. He is the only one who knows the way. Diego Paez de Sotelo has not been there.

“You have heard what he says about El Dorado,” I say to the alcalde.

“I have heard the stories,” he says.

“But what he says is true. It is true that they have a medicine to restore lost limbs. The rich people harvest the arms and legs of the poor for their spicy stews, and then they make the arms and legs grow back again so as not to diminish the number of laborers. They need these laborers to construct their idolatrous temples.”

“This is the detail that condemns him. If his foot was restored by Indian magic, and the Indians don’t know God, then how can we
say this was God’s will? It must be a compact or fabrication of the devil.”

I cannot persuade him, and now I must prevent him from taking action until I can think of a new plan. I crush paóhaihao into his wine so that his mind will darken and his legs will turn to stone. I know he won’t taste it, as indeed he does not, because paóhaihao does not exist in Spanish.

The alcalde remains in the pigpen while I begin to prepare his meal. I watch from the shadow of the kitchen shed. The air is the color of a papaya. The sea is the color of jacaranda flowers. Soon he begins to stagger and rave. His hair is matted, his tongue rolls in his mouth like an eel, his hair curls with a fine sizzling sound and grows lighter and lighter until it is the color of a ripe canistel. He wets himself. Then he sinks to his knees and slumps forward into a kind of sleep, but it is a black sleep in which nothing happens.

Now I walk to the guardhouse, where I find a soldier eating wild pineapples from a cloth bag and spitting the seeds into the dust. He is the only man on duty. I tell him I must speak to Daniel de Fo and I do not tell him the reason and he does not ask. We stand facing one another, I in my cotton dress and he in his belted tunic and leggings, and we can hear the moon wheeling in its heaven. My beauty shines like a torch. My beauty is like paóhaihao. He unlocks the door.

Inside I find Daniel de Fo sitting on the floor of his cell. He raises a hand in greeting. He is not surprised to see me.

“You have been to Anaquitos,” I say.

He responds in Pirahao.

“Tell me in Spanish.”

“I have been there,” he says, laughing. “I was there with Amadis of Gaul.”

I tell him that I want to bring the Christians to Anaquitos, but he does not need to be convinced. He wants nothing more than to return to the city and carry off its treasures. He tells me there is a woman waiting for him in Spain, but he can never return because he is a converso, so he must make himself very rich instead. Then he will buy an island in the
Caribbean and he will send for her. Her name is Anna Gloria and he has only seen her once in the light of the world, though he sees her sometimes when he sleeps.

“But Diego Paez de Sotelo has denounced you,” I say. “He accuses you of the Mosaic heresy and of other heresies as well.”

He considers this solemnly for a moment. The forest shrieks. In Pirahao it means it is the time for a dance, the time for sweet potatoes, the time to lie down. In Spanish it means nothing.

“Interesting,” he says. “I am not surprised. I left him to die in the forest, but only because I thought he would die anyway.”

“The alcalde has heard the story of your foot.”

“Aha!” he says. He cannot escape the story of his foot. He begins telling it once again. “It had become putrescent from the bite of a big blue jungle ant. Lope de Guzman had to cut it off. A true friend is one who will cut your foot off.” He starts laughing as he tells the story. “I was trying to make him cut the other foot off too. I was so excited! Cut it all off, I kept saying, the hands too, cut them both off, they’ll only cause problems later. Then Lope de Guzman and some of the others had to beat me until I was silent. It was okay because the Indians had a special medicine for lost feet, as I keep telling everyone.”

But he says the medicine also turned the water orange and the sky purple. It made the tree trunks boil with faces. It made time flow in the wrong direction. It made time flow in any number of directions, not just backwards but side to side also, so that he couldn’t tell what had happened in the past and what had only happened in the future.

“The Christians believe your story,” I say. “That is the problem. They believe this medicine is the work of the devil.”

I tell him that he must tell the alcalde about Anaquitos instead. He must describe it not as it is in Pirahao but as it is in Spanish, which is what I do when I tell my own stories. In Spanish it is El Dorado. He must say that the houses are roofed in gold, that people crush pearls and bake them into bread, that there is a king who covers himself in gold dust before his bath every morning. He must say that he is
the only one who knows how to find the city. This is how he will free himself from the accusations against him. The gold of El Dorado is more important than any crime against the faith. Sin can be paid for with gold.

“I understand,” he says. “There are two cities. There is the city of our most glorious aspirations and at the same time there is the city where the whores paint their teeth black.”

“Yes. In Anaquitos the whores paint their teeth. In El Dorado they have white teeth and all of them are virgins. Try to remember. Christians love virgins.”

He leans back and looks at the ceiling. He is at ease. He has no fear. He looks into the future, as a Christian does. What is it that makes him a Jew?

“I will tell the alcalde that Diego Paez de Sotelo was planning to keep all of this a secret,” he says. “Or else that he wanted to condemn me so that the treasure would be his alone. I’ll say that first I wanted to protect him, since he is my friend and companion, but now I feel moved by my love of God to reveal his deception.”

“Very good,” I say.

“But what is the food they have in Anaquitos? Remind me. It is a kind of rat meat in dough.”

“Xaxa.”

“It’s delicious.”

“In Spanish it is food for a starving person. Don’t tell the alcalde about it or he’ll think the city is poor. Tell him there are no city walls. Tell him to forgive Diego Paez de Sotelo, who is only as flawed and sinful a person as the rest of us. Tell him that. The alcalde loves compassion.”

Now we are agreed. He will tell the alcalde his story and we will go to Anaquitos. We will put it to the sword. I will have my vengeance and he will have his fortune, his island, his woman. I will go as an interpreter, and just as Cortés had Malintzin to speak for him, so will I speak. I will be the tongue of the expedition. It is what I desire most. It is what I least desire. The devil speaks to me and I try not to laugh.

“I am the blue bird of devastation,” I tell him. In Spanish, the phrase means nothing.

He stands up and stretches. There is no window in the cell, but we can hear the birds. They tell us that the sun has set.

“What will you say about your foot?” I ask him. “What will you tell them?”

“For that I have a plan.”

“A plan.”

“I have a plan, yes.”

“But you must promise me. Promise me we will go there.”

He laughs, haha, and he says, “My friend, I’m a hundred years old, and if I’ve learned anything in that time I’ve learned that when a pretty girl tells you to jump, you had better jump. I promise you we will go there.”

Old Dan was kind to me he looked after me and one day he had a proposition for a mutual endeavor. What proposition I said what is it. You could come with me he said if you don’t have nothing else to do you could help me with some things. We are on the same ship I said we are coming with each other anyway. Yes he said but I mean we could be official partners not just shipmates. Okay I said. You could help me find Anna Gloria he said and on the way we could dig up the treasure of Anakitos which I have been meaning to dig up for some time. The treasure of Anakitos I said. Yes he said we will dig it up and you will be a rich man it will solve your problems. Oh I said okay good yes great. You would like that he said. Yes I said I would like that very much this sounds like a good plan. Okay he said it is a deal. Deal I said. That were how we struck our bargain easy no problem. It were obvious I would not be any help to him for I didn’t know what Anna Gloria looked like. However he did not care about this he were just doing me a favor he were making me feel welcome.

Next I saw the skyscrapers of New York bigger than Boston enormous. I were a city boy myself but this were a different city. It were huge buildings trash filth commerce a harbor packed with sailing ships. It have a sea wall in New York just like it have in Boston but even behind the wall some of the buildings was standing to their ankles in water and others had fallen apart. It were a city spread out over miles very glorious but it were also a place much come down in the world. I did not dare go ashore for it is said the people of New York are terrible vicious thieves. I stayed aboard playing bawbles with Old Dan he kept winning but he wouldn’t take my money.

I were very worried looking over my shoulder at the buildings all gone to smash it made me crazy. What had happened to us I wondered
how had we lost the secret of building cities. I asked Old Dan tell me stories of the old days before everything were so fucked up. Tell me of New York I said it were a great city once that were plain. He said yes okay well there was Hurricane Devaun and then later the sea come up also there was drought everywhere too many people too many factors everyone in New York starved it were beyond belief. I said he did not understand me I did not mean stories like that but stories of the very good days when every man were a king with air condition Ferrari electronic lights ice cream toothpaste footballs streamy media. Okay he said sure for instance the subways they was sucked underground through vacuum tubes they was trains beneath the earth it were a marvel. Interesting I said was they air condition. Yes they were he said. Amazing I said. Yes he said it were thousands of people on those trains all the time speeding toward their doom. Don’t speak of doom I said. Okay he said yes alright New York were a very grand place before its doom it were no green thing growing anywhere the complete triumph of man over nature I do not see how New York averted its doom so long. Please do not speak of doom I said but anyway never mind enough of New York tell me of a beautiful place. He smiled very sly he said I will tell you of a island with meadows fish blackberries blueberries great green trees it were one of the great natural harbors in the world so beautiful. Yes I said okay but I knew it were a trick. Aha he said it were New York he laughed it were no city then just Indians and that is how I remember it for in truth I never saw the subway I admit it. Tell me of Indians I said. He grew serious he said I must not speak of Indians they are the original doomed people sad to say.