Pacazo (61 page)
May all those who read this document see that I, D. Juan de Segovia, native of Cogolludo, a cluster of distant lights and a last goodbye: I took Mariángel to the cemetery, and we stood before Pilar. I leaned down, polished the cameo with my handkerchief. Mariángel clutched at it, not as if recognizing Pilar but as if wishing to take the pretty picture home. I made her stop and she cried. We cried. I slumped against the whitewashed wall, came to rest on the ground, Mariángel walking in circles, greater and ever greater. I watched her and abhorred myself and missed Pilar so very much. Then I brought out my knife. The cameo was easier to remove than I would have guessed. It is in my knapsack as well, and home, and the telephone, I call them, Pilar’s father answering, other voices in the background, Pilar’s mother and brothers, their voices rising, voices, the father calming them and I say that it is time if they so wish, that they can take Pilar, take her home to Chiclayo, and they weep, all of them, parents and brothers, weep and thank me one after another, beg me to write to them from California, to send pictures of Mariángel as she grows, to come and visit as often as the world permits and the densest darkness falls away, we ride as if across the top of the earth, stars full in the sky to all sides, we are nearing the pass and I wait, wait, now the scar burns and Karina sighs in her sleep, Mariángel turns, I wait, and yes Atahualpa dead and the Spaniards leaving Cajamarca, higher and higher into the mountains, footbridges hung across gorges unlike anything they have ever seen, the horses terrified, many of the soldiers as well, helped across by small tribes who believe that the Spaniards will free them from their Inca overlords. Chalcuchima rides enchained, but there is a rumor, his army still hundreds of thousands strong and on its way, and the Spaniards ride and ride, the air ever thinner and colder, along the high spine of the Andes, at last across. Pizarro leaves the slowest troops behind, pushes forward with seventy-five horsemen, through Tarma and night falls but the men do not remove their armor, do not unsaddle the horses, there is no food, no water, no firewood, no shelter and it rains, snows, onward, piles of corpses found at Yanamarca, on and on, and now the pass, this pass, the view down a long wide valley, the mountainsides thick with Huanca villages, farther on and in, then Jauja, a lake of golden light: the city is in flames. The Incas themselves have put it to the torch to slow the Spanish advance. Now the trumpets sound, the downhill charge, the slaughter, thousands, a short sharp ascent, a curve and before us the edge, we slide to it and across and before us the same long wide valley, and Jauja, a lake of golden light, but look, the glow is steady, not fire but cradled streetlights, we lower toward them, and a thousand miles away the pacazo wakes.
I AM DEEPLY GRATEFUL to the following people for their help in bringing this book into being:
Matt Bell, my editor
Maria Massie, my agent
Jim Ruland, my star reader
Dan Wickett and Steve Gillis, my publishers
Paule Constant, who gave me the gift of a new myth
Victor Velezmoro and Matt Vester, for their answers and patience
My thanks are also due a very large number of people who helped in a very large number of ways:
Eric Abrahamsen, Julia Alba, Carlos Arrizabalaga, Janalee P. Caldwell, Wendy Cotlear, Gastón Cruz, David Djian, Kevin Dolgin, Dave Eggers, Pavel Elías, Arantxa Freire, Hans-Peter Fuchs, Andrés Garay, Mary Gillis, Philip Graham, Jakob Halermann, Elizabeth Hernández, Renzo Honores, Eli Horowitz, Max Houck, Dominic Hudson, Omar Hurtado, John Leary, Pasha Malla, Mary McCluskey, Shauna McKenna, Mark Miller, Alejandro Neyra, Adam Pillsbury, Karla Poggi, Marion Preest, Lelis Rebolledo, Pablo Sebastián, Steven Seighman, Lichi Seminario, David Vann and Reynaldo Villar.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Author photograph by Ana Lucía Nieto.
Cover inset by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala.
Carlo Ginzburg’s essays (trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper) quoted with permission. All other in-text translations by Roy Kesey.
The author would like to thank the editors of the publications in which excerpts of this novel were first published:
McSweeney’s, Mississippi Review Online, Backwards City Review, PRISM International, Los Angeles Review, Mud Luscious, RE:AL, Stamp Stories
and
Ninth Letter
.
Copyright © 2011, Text by Roy Kesey
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ALSO BY ROY KESEY:
All Over
Nanjing
Nothing in the World
