Authors: Matilde Asensi
“So…,” Lola murmured, lifting her hands to her head as if she needed to hold it in place or to compress what she had inside, “all that about an Ice Age lasting two and a half million years, nothing. Everything happened in very little time…That’s why the mammoths are found still frozen in the Siberian ice, so fresh that their meat has fed generations of Eskimos
19
.”
Her voice gave us back our capacity for speech.
“This is crazy,” Marc stammered, shaking his head, trying to get rid of some thought that didn’t seem to be to his liking.
“I think we all have too many things in our heads,” I said, standing with difficulty to stretch my body and mind. It caught me almost by surprise to discover that now I did know what I wanted to do with my life when I returned to Barcelona, to my home, to those places that
seemed remote and unreal in that situation, but that would doubtlessly turn back into reality in very little time.
Slowly, we were coming out of that state of deep concentration in which the chant had submerged us. My head began to slow down and the ideas stopped rushing through it.
“The visit of Your Mercies has ended,” said Arukutipa’s voice from the back of the room. “You must depart now from Qalamana and not return.”
Marta’s expression turned sour.
“We have accepted not speaking of your city or of you or of the power of words to keep you safe from…,” she hesitated, “from the other Spanish, but I don’t understand this prohibition against returning. I have already told you that we do not govern in these lands and that nothing remains of the pestilences, so, if we constitute no danger, why can’t we return? Some of us would like to learn more things about your culture and your history.”
“No, Doña Marta,” the kid replied, “Your Mercies must not be disobedient and proud. You leave and don’t come back again and return without quarrel with the Toromonas to the city of Qhispita, in the jungle, and when you are in Taipikala, return the stone you took to go from Qhispita to Qalamana.”
“Qhispita means ‘safe,’” Efraín kindly translated for us.
“Are you saying,” Marc asked, alarmed, almost ignoring the archaeologist, “that we have to go back into Lakaqullu, go through the whole pyramid again, and pass those tests again, to leave the stone doughnut in the place we found it, which was right at the end of the path?”
“Don’t worry,” Marta reassured him quietly. “We’ve agreed not to speak of Qalamana and its inhabitants, but we still have to decide on our own what we’ll do with the doughnut and with the Pyramid of the Traveler and its gold sheets. Anyway, I remember perfectly where we emerged onto the surface, so if we decide to return it, it will be enough to enter from the other direction.”
“It seems like they expect us to respect what they left there,” I murmured.
“Don’t forget, Marta,” Efraín said, giving me a dark look and holding out both hands in a gesture of supplication, “that I’m the director of the excavations they’re doing at this very moment in Tiwanaku and that you are a part of my team. We can’t throw away this unique opportunity, my friend. You yourself obtained, with your influence, a special authorization to excavate in Lakaqullu.”
“Your Mercy should withdraw from your error,” Arukutipa ordered Efraín at that moment, “and so deserve our honor and respect for ever. And also Doña Marta should withdraw.”
“Your old city,” she replied, getting to her feet so they could hear her clearly, even though, really, they could hear us perfectly, as we’d been talking in whispers and still they knew the content of our discussion, “your old city of Taipikala is being studied and brought to light, the earth that has accumulated on it for centuries, or for thousands of years, is being removed. If we don’t do it, others will, others who will not have so much consideration. You can’t stop it. For a long time the ruins of Taipikala, or Tiwanaku, the name you gave it when you were invaded by the Incap Rúnam, have attracted researchers from all over the world. We are your best option. Your only option,” she emphasized. “If Efraín and I keep working there like we have been doing until now, we can keep you from being found, and share the knowledge of what the Pyramid of the Traveler holds in a neutral and scientific perspective, and, why not, also hide the compromising information, so that no one ever knows of your existence. If it is others who, now or in a hundred years, reach Lakaqullu, you will be lost, because they will show up here, in Qalamana, days later.”
The boy, who had already translated Marta’s speech, moved back a step to let the elders think about their response. A moment later, he took a step forward and returned to his place. None of them had uttered a single word.
“The principal Capacas are very worried for Taipikala and for the body of Dose Capaca, the Traveler,” he declared, “and as well for what Doña Marta has said of the researchers of the world and for the many lessons, doctrines, and testimonies that were left on the gold, but they think that Don Efraín and Doña Marta can do the work such as Doña Marta has said and so favor the Yatiri of Qalamana. The Capacas will now give the relief for the punishment of the sick man of the hospital, and then Your Mercies must leave Qalamana for ever.”
“How single-minded!” Marc snorted.
But I was thinking about how trusting the Yatiri were: Some weird contagious guys, among whom were some dangerous Spanish, showed up unexpectedly at their door and told them that all the reasons they were hiding didn’t exist anymore, and the really smart Yatiri, instead of questioning it, went and believed it without argument, and furthermore, the weird guys made them believe that for their own good they should hand over the keys to their old house. It didn’t seem right to me that such a special people could be so innocent and silly. Although, of course, I told myself, surprised, they could have subjected us without our knowledge to some kind of test with the power of words; and as had happened to Marta with the curse that had made Daniel ill, we had passed, because we’d really told them the truth.
“And so, Doña Marta, pay attention and we will provide you with the relief for the sick man.”
The old woman on the left stood before saying:
“
Jupaxusutaw ak munta jinchu chhiqhacha jichhat uksarux waliptaña
.”
I looked at Marta and saw that she had her eyebrows raised in an expression of indescribable surprise.
“That’s it?” she stammered. “Just that?”
“Just that, Doña Marta,” the young Arukutipa replied. “But have it in your head well guarded because you will have to repeat it as such.”
“I think that I’ve memorized it, but just in case, I would like to say it once. The idea of making a mistake once we’re there scares me.”
“Not necessary, but if you like….”
“
Jupaxusutaw ak munta jinchu chhiqhacha jichhat uksarux waliptaña
” she pronounced, very slowly.
“What does it mean?” I asked Efraín with my voice lowered.
“It’s silly, my friend: ‘He is ill and I want this: for the wind that penetrates his ears to cure him starting now.’”
“That’s it?” I asked, surprised.
“It’s what Marta said,” he replied, turning his attention back to the conversation with Arukutipa and the Capacas.
But the conversation had reached its end. The translator, inclining his head, was taking his leave of us, and the Capacas stood up solemnly, bringing the encounter to a close. A little disconcerted, we copied them. Our guide, the friendly Luk’ana, appeared from behind the large tapestry on the left, with the same disdainful expression and the same strange eyebrows he had when he left. Maybe he already knew we had saved his life, and maybe not, but in any case, his face didn’t show the smallest gratitude or the least relief from not having to die that night.
“Leave in peace from this city of Qalamana,” Arukutipa bid us farewell. The Capacas
didn’t even bother with that; they simply left in the same direction they’d come in from, with the same great indifference with which they had entered that room two or three hours before.
Luk’ana gestured to us to follow him, and, walking behind him, we returned to the immense reception hall of that grandiose trunk. I had almost forgotten the strange world we were in and its reality surprised me again when we set foot in the vestibule, which was now empty of guards. The guide picked up one of the oil lamps resting lit on the tables and gave it to Lola, then he gave another to Gertrude, and so on, until we each had one of those luminous stone gravy boats in our hands. Then, with a slight effort, he opened the two heavy doors by himself, and we noticed that outside everything was dark and the air coming in was cold, almost icy. Night had fallen while we spoke with the Capacas.
We went in reverse through the same aerial labyrinth we’d followed to get there, only now we walked more slowly, curiously observing the lights that shone from the windows of the residences built inside the trees. It was a supernatural image, almost aggressive, belonging more to an Escher painting than to a tropical rainforest, so, lacking a camera to steal that instant from time, I tried to keep all the details in my memory, down to the smallest, because I would probably never return to that place, and no one besides us would know of its existence, so it would be a unique memory which, very certainly, I would return to on many occasions throughout my life.
We traversed the immense illuminated plaza, now deserted, and crossed the last vegetable bridge to the trunk of the tree that led to the exit. We descended the ramp in silence and arrived at the lowest tubular room, where Luk’ana, stopping us, gestured to us imperiously to leave the lamps on the ground and go into the dark tunnel that would return us to the jungle. Then Marta turned and told our guide:
“
Yuspagara
.”
He remained impassive.
“
Yuspagara
,” she insisted, but Luk’ana maintained his poker face. “Can you believe I’m thanking him?”
“Forget it, come on,” I told her, taking her elbow and gently pushing her toward the tunnel. “It’s not worth the effort.”
“Bye, damn it!” I heard Efraín say at almost the same time.
And the six of us went into the blackness of the tunnel without, that time, seeing any light at the end. That exit in darkness was our goodbye to the world of the Yatiri.
When we got outside, using our hands to part the giant ferns that hid the entrance, we moved forward like blind people to the path that we’d left at the beginning of the afternoon, walking in a straight line so as not to get lost. But when we separated the last feathery leaves, the tenuous light of some camp fires dazzled us, making us blink. Seconds later, we could make out the Toromonas in the distance sitting around several fires, chatting animatedly and waiting for us.
They received us with sober expressions and big smiles. They seemed to be showing us that we had received a great honor by being accepted into that arboreal world, and that, because of it, we were now more worthy of respect. The Toromona leader called us over with gestures and invited us to sit with his favored group and the old shaman, and he himself offered us the most succulent parts of the large howler monkey that was slowly roasting over the fire.
We slept there that night, which was terribly cold. Luckily, the Indians had used a special wood to make the fires, and it gave off a lot of heat as it burned and kept the flames miraculously going until dawn of the next day, when we set off on the long return journey to the city in ruins
that we now knew was called Qhispita, and which had probably been a Yatiri settlement that had served as a bridgehead to Qalamana when they decided to flee the Altiplano. We had no idea how we would get from Qhispita to the exit of Madidi National Park, but we were sure the solutions would come to us as we got closer to the problem. The new way we had of facing things was surprising; we were losing what remained of our old urbanite ways at the speed of light.
That morning was Tuesday, the 16
th
of July, and exactly thirty days had passed since we’d left La Paz. We still had another month ahead of us to make the return journey to civilization, but it was a time that passed quickly, especially the three weeks it took us to get to Qhispita, because during the day we kept learning a multitude of useful things from the Toromonas, and at night we had long conversations next to the fire, remembering and analyzing the afternoon we had spent with the Capacas of the Yatiri. For the first days, we found it impossible to talk about it. The six of us suffered a kind of block that didn’t allow us to accept what had happened. We resisted publicly recognizing the shameful idea that we had lived an experience that was inexplicable from a rational viewpoint. It was not easy to admit something like that. Nevertheless, like good children of Scientific Positivism, we ended up confronting it from the least disgraceful perspective.
Each of us had retained different fragments of the story that had been transmitted to us through the strange chant, and so the first disagreement we had was about the way in which those of us who did not speak Aymara had understood the message. Only two possible explanations fit: one was telepathy, and the other was Marta’s voice, which had translated without pause everything the elders had revealed to us. We knew that telepathy was not nonsense, that, throughout the twentieth century, and especially during the Cold War between the USA and the USSR, the subject had been studied very seriously, and its practice was more than proven, but still, it sounded too bad, too carnival, belonging more to fortune tellers than to laboratory work, so we finally decided to stick with the politically correct version: it was Marta’s voice, superimposed over the chant, that really transmitted the content of the story to us. At no point did we mention the lack of verbal communication between Arukutipa and the Capacas, setting the matter aside as if we hadn’t noticed it. Unconsciously, we were doing the same thing as the researchers we had so criticized for not bravely confronting the enigmas of Taipikala.
As the days passed, however, we began to analyze the message. Lola, as always, was the first to mention it:
“I don’t mean to be annoying,” she apologized in advance one night, as we sat next to the fire, “but I can’t get the idea out of my head that, according to the Capacas, the last Ice Age didn’t last two and a half million years, but was the result of a more or less short catastrophe that happened because giant meteorites crashed into the surface of the Earth.”