The Seven Serpents Trilogy (5 page)

On the day following our meeting with the cacique, Don Luis brought a sack of glass beads ashore and made a pact with him to trade it for a sack of pearls. The cacique called out all of his young men and set them to gathering oysters, which they brought by canoe to a central place at the head of the lagoon. There, they opened the shells, using knives that Guzmán furnished.

The young men took their time, however, talking and laughing, as was their wont. This displeased Don Luis, for he was eager to go in search of his island
encomienda
, which we had somehow missed and which Cap tain Roa, by his new calculations with the astrolabe, placed now anchored. some hundred leagues south and presumably east of where we were now anchored.

To hasten matters, Don Luis brought ashore a chest of more holland shirts and persuaded the cacique, whose name, Esteban told us, was Ayo, to call upon all the women of the tribe, even the old, to help with the harvest.

The harvest went on for more than a week and pro duced 215 pearls, some as big as olives and many, according to Baltasar Guzmán, perfect in shape and orient.

One morning during this time, with the help of Ayo, the cacique, I managed to get the tribe together before work began. There were more than three hundred of them and they came, I am certain, because Ayo ordered them to. They also came because they had never seen a young man with long blond hair who sang in a deep voice and played a strange-looking, strange-sounding instrument. On the second morning and for several mornings thereafter about half the tribe appeared.

To these, using Esteban to translate my words, I told the story of Christ. I held up the image of Mary and ex plained to them that she was the Mother of Christ. I taught them to kneel and to repeat after me a simple prayer. I sent them off to work with a lively tune. In every way I knew, I did my best to win their trust.

I did win it. They were quiet and attentive as I spoke and while I sang and played. Many of them lingered af ter the little services to trade Indian words for Spanish or to touch my hand or simply to stand and look at me and shyly smile.

Yet I was filled with doubt, doubt that I would ever do more than win their trust. I was not a priest and therefore could never hope to celebrate mass or conduct the rite of baptism or the rites for those who were dying.

Most of all, I doubted that I possessed the spirit or the patience to explain to these heathen people—who wore plugs in their noses and painted their bodies from head to foot, and worshiped hideous wooden images—to ex plain Christ's story and expect them to understand it.

And with these doubts the suspicion grew that Don Luis had brought me to New Spain not so much to spread the Christian faith as to use me. In his role of
encomendero
, owner of a vast and fertile island, whose riches he planned to harvest, with lordly power over its inhabitants, even of life and death, my presence could be of help. Whether I was successful in my mission to convert the Indians to the Christian faith was not as im portant to him as keeping them in good spirits. Friendly Indians, he reasoned, worked harder.

When the pearling showed signs of coming to an end, Don Luis and Guzmán decided to investigate the vil lage, which lay far back in the jungle. It was built in this secret place, the cacique told us, to protect it from the marauding Caribs. But the two men thought otherwise.

“They have a storehouse of gold,” Guzmán said. “Gold idols hidden away they don't want us to see.”

Don Luis agreed, but he was polite about his request to see the village. He spoke softly to Ayo, smiling all the while. Guzmán, who thought that the Indians under stood only strong words, said to the cacique, “See here, in friendship we come to your island in the name of our holy majesties and in the name of God on high, ruler of all. We are your guests and should be treated as guests and shown where you live.”

It was a bright morning, with the sun already hot, though it was not much after daybreak. The sun glanced on Guzmán's sword as he stood facing the cacique.

The cacique said, “If I was a guest in your country—wherever it is and however great—I would not expect to go anywhere it pleased me.”

Esteban had trouble translating these words, taking a long time at it. Guzmán paced up and down, with his hand on his sword, as if he were ready, indeed eager, to use it.

I was standing off by myself, in an effort not to seem a part of the argument but was listening. I had decided on the first day to keep a distance from Don Luis and Guzmán, whom it was apparent the cacique mistrusted.

A small boy was tugging at my robe, holding up a red and yellow parrot he wished to barter. Ayo turned and motioned for Esteban and me to follow him.

Don Luis gave me a sign to go. Disappointed, Guzmán was silent.

The way was tortuous, crossing a rushing stream six times, skirting a deep chasm, snaking for a quarter of a league through a tunnel of underbrush where it was necessary to stoop as you moved along. I had the un worthy fear that I might not return.

The village was not impressive. It sat on a bank of the stream, a single row of brush and wattle huts thatched with palm leaves and hemmed in by towering trees. It looked as if the sun never shone upon them except at noontime. There were only a few Indians about, mostly old men and children. It was an unlikely place to store gold.

Sensing my disappointment, the cacique explained that his people spent the day in the forest or fishing in the sea or digging clams in the lagoon. The village itself they moved about, burning down the old huts when someone died, and building new ones in a different place. They were always on the alert for their enemies, the Caribs.

Near the far end of the row of huts, standing in a small clearing, I noticed what seemed to be a tall figure leaning against the trunk of a tree. As we drew nearer, however, I saw that it was a stone idol in the shape of a three-headed figure, with bright blue hair hanging to its shoulders. Its three mouths, which were agape, showed uneven rows of blood red teeth.

As we approached, the cacique knelt and touched the earth with his forehead and spoke a word thrice over, which I took to be the idol's name. The name sounded like Motalapawn. Flowers and fruit lay at its feet.

I stopped in horror. My impulse was to seize a rock that lay close by and smash the idol's grinning faces, to strike the hands that were cupped together and held a small turtle with three heads. Instead, I stood stone still.

The cacique was watching, waiting for me to speak.

To this moment I had no clear idea of what Don Luis meant when he said that the Indians we would find in New Spain were savages who worshiped strange idols.

The idols I had pictured in my mind would have, if not human forms, at least human characteristics. But this monstrous figure with its blood red teeth belonged to a world I had never glimpsed.

Waiting for some word from me and not hearing it, Ayo bowed again to the ghastly idol and led me away.

I studied him as he went down the trail that led to the lagoon. He walked as if he had reverence for the earth he trod upon, for the trees he passed and the running water. He stopped to pick a wildflower and place it in his hair. His people, as I had observed them in the few days I had been on the island, were much like him—gentle, courteous to each other, given to laughter when ever there was the least thing to laugh about.

How, then, did these happy people ever conceive this horrible god and fall down in worship before it? What would they ask of it? What could they ever receive?

As I went down the trail I swore to myself that I would destroy their hideous idol. Yet not by force. I would destroy it by revealing Christ's loving message to them. They would no longer live in bloody idolatry. Don Luis had talked of saving hundreds, thousands, of souls, so many that fame would lift me into a bishop's chair.

The thought had tempted me; indeed, it had set my feet upon this journey. The thought seemed selfish now. All I could see at this moment was the blue-haired, bloody-fanged figure standing silently in the jungle.

I did not intend to tell Don Luis about the idol, for he would go at once and destroy it, which certainly would lead to strife.

Don Luis was waiting at the lagoon. Beside him stood Guzmán, with a fistful of pearls harvested during the day. They both looked hopefully at me.

Don Luis said, “Tell us what you saw.”

“It's a small village,” I said. “A row of huts along a stream.”

“Gold?” Guzmán asked, turning the pearls over in his hand. “What of the gold?”

“I saw none.”

“It could be hidden.”

“I think that what they have, they wear.”

“It comes from some place nearby,” Don Luis said. “Five days' journey westward, the cacique said.”

“We will find gold here on the island.”

Don Luis took the pearls from Guzmán and began to examine them one by one. He said nothing about idols and, as I had planned, I said nothing.

As I walked away, Guzmán came up behind me and put a heavy arm on my shoulder.

“See here, Julián. Are you telling the truth about the village? It being only a row of
jacales
, huts, and so forth?”

“As I've said, señor, it is a poor village.”

Guzmán stepped back and fixed me with a searching gaze. His eyes were set so deep in his head that I could not tell their color. But I saw among the folds of flesh that partly hid them a darkish glint.

“You're telling the truth?” he asked, speaking, as he seldom did, in a quiet voice.

“The truth,” I replied quietly, though he greatly an noyed me, and moved away from him.

 

G
UZMÁN WAS NOT SATISFIED WITH MY ANSWER NOR WITH WHAT HE
had learned from the cacique. Certain that there was gold somewhere on the island, he went among the natives, asking questions, threatening them if they dared to lie.

He learned nothing at first, though most of the In dians wore gold necklaces and ear plugs. But on the day the pearling stopped and one of the cacique's sons came aboard the
Santa Margarita
to receive the tribe's share of the harvest, Guzmán confronted him below deck. What took place between them there in the dark hold no one knew, except that a scream was heard and shortly afterward the cacique's son came on deck, one of his hands cut and bloodied.

The next morning Guzmán disappeared up the stream that flowed into the lagoon. He came back that night with the news that he had discovered a gold pebble lying in a pool half a league up the stream.

Guzmán had worked in a quicksilver mine in Spain and had made, so Captain Roa said, a fortune in gold near Hispaniola, a fortune soon lost at tarok. Being ex perienced in mining, he knew that the gold pebbles came from nearby, since they were rough edged and not smooth, which they would have been had they traveled any distance.

With two soldiers he set out to find the source of the gold shaped like pebbles. After two days of searching along the banks, he discovered a vein of pure metal, nearly the width of a hand, that ran back from the stream for more than thirty paces and at last lost itself in a rocky hill.

Guzmán reported the discovery to Don Luis, who spoke to Ayo and asked his permission to mine it. The cacique stood for a while, looking down at his toes and thinking. Then he said he wanted something in return. It happened at this moment that Bravo, the black stal lion, who was tethered nearby, gave forth a powerful neigh.

The cacique looked up. “The horse,” he said to Esteban, “the big horse I want for the gold.”

Don Luis said to Esteban, “Tell the chieftain that the big horse he cannot have, since it was a birthday gift from my grandfather, who is now dead. Blessed be his sainted memory. But the chieftain can have any one of the other fine horses he wishes. And a saddle with silver on it.”

“Besides the horse and the silver seat,” the cacique said, “I wish one half of the gold.”

“One half,” Don Luis agreed.

The suddenness with which he agreed and the tone of his voice made me think he had no intention of giving the cacique so much as one
onza
of the gold.

“Who digs the gold?” the cacique asked.

Don Luis said, “You have many men who are young and strong and have little to do. They dig. Señor Guzmán here will tell them how to dig and where. He has had much experience with digging.”

A gray gelding that had not survived the voyage well was given over to the cacique, and a saddle trimmed with silver, and a halter hung with hawk's bells.

Our horses had been a wild curiosity from the very beginning. At first the Indians stood off and looked at them from a distance, from behind a tree if one was handy. Gradually, a step at a time over days, they approached the horses and at last began to feed them. So the gift of the gelding was a big event, which they celebrated with drums and songs.

Guzmán got together a band of a dozen Indians that same afternoon and went upstream to start work on the gold reef. They carried iron mattocks, long-handled tools, each with a blade set at right angles to the shaft, and a keg of gunpowder.

They mined the vein of pure gold and blasted the rock that lay around it. This ore they carried in baskets down to the lagoon, where they piled it up, awaiting the completion of a rock crusher, a two-stone
arrastre.
By evening of the second day, when a mound of ore rose shoulder-high, Don Luis called all the workers together and gave them glass trinkets. He was greatly excited by the gold. The harvest of pearls was valuable, but the shining metal embedded in the yellow rock that lay piled up in front of him made his eyes dance.

When we had all gathered around him, he raised his sword and said, his voice quavering with emotion, his pale cheeks flushed with color, “Henceforth and forever more, I wish this island to be known as Isla del Oro.” He turned to Captain Roa: “Rub out the old name and put the new name down on your chart just as I've spo ken it.”