The Moor's Account (33 page)

Cabeza de Vaca's voice grew hoarse and he averted his eyes for a moment. I have been traveling from tribe to tribe along the coast ever since.

What about Oviedo and Albaniz? Dorantes asked.

Oviedo is dead. Albaniz I could never convince to go anywhere with me.

Cabeza de Vaca asked us about our own journey through the coastal lands. So I told him the story of our travels, the fate of the comptroller's raft and the governor's raft, our stay with the Carancahuas, the murder of Diego, how Dorantes had fled, and how Castillo and I had come to live with the Yguaces. Cabeza de Vaca listened with great attention, neither interrupting nor hurrying me to reach the end of my tale. Here was a man, I felt, who knew how to tell stories and how to listen to them, who appreciated their purpose and their value. A kindred spirit, a fellow storyteller.

Come live with me, Dorantes said to Cabeza de Vaca.

At least this way, Cabeza de Vaca would once again have the companionship of another Castilian, and together they would provide some solace to one another. So it was that, when our stay at the River of Nuts ended, Cabeza de Vaca joined Dorantes with the Mariames, while Castillo and I left with the Yguaces.

T
HE NEXT STOP
in the peregrinations of the Yguaces was the River of Prickly Pears. I had never seen so much of the fruit in one place before—the valley was an ocean of green, dotted everywhere with red and orange.
All the Indians from the coast gathered here for the month, feeding on the fruit and little else. Here they traded feathers or beads or tools. Here they came to find a match for a son or to buy a new wife. Here they exchanged news about births or deaths. Here they heard about wars with hostile tribes, here they told about their dreams, here they repeated rumors of alien invasions—and here they came to get a closer look at the bearded men.

Harvesting prickly pears was not an easy task; spikes would inevitably lodge themselves on my fingertips, no matter how careful I was. After a long day of working in the bushes, I went with Castillo to soak in the river. I sat in the cool water, with my fingers raking against the current. It was so soothing I let out a long sigh of relief. The mosquitoes buzzed in the air around us, but mercifully the flies hovered around the mountain of fresh peels by the camp and left us alone.

Castillo asked: What is it like, being with a woman?

I was startled by his question. Why do you ask?

He fell silent, then looked away. I followed his gaze—it settled on a group of three maidens, who were sitting some distance away by the riverbank. They had lifted their tunics above their knees and dipped their feet in the water. That woman on the ship, I said, Doctor Galiano's daughter …

Before I could formulate a question, he replied: She was promised to one of the settlers, but she said she did not want to marry him. That she wanted me. Then Narváez decided to split the expedition, and she had to remain behind.

Is that why you did not want Narváez to leave the ships? I asked.

Castillo shrugged. It matters not why, he said. In the end, it was a mistake to leave them behind.

Do you still think about her?

From time to time. But she must be married; she might even have a child by now.

He lay back against the water and started floating, his long black hair pooling in a circle around him. I did the same and the river carried us both. We passed under a canopy of trees and the sky, a perfect summer blue, was momentarily hidden from view. Some among the Yguaces were looking for brides and it was difficult for me not to look at the maidens without dreaming of having one for a wife. What I felt was not lust, not
exactly. It was more than lust, it was a desire for love and companionship and the warmth of another body against mine.

That night, when we returned to the camp, we learned that Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca, who had just arrived with the Mariames at the River of Prickly Pears, had been reprimanded for witlessly interfering with Indian rituals. They wanted to leave the Mariames now, before their relationship with the tribe deteriorated any further. They suggested that the four of us reunite and travel together again.

But it so happened that one of the Mariames made an offer to marry a woman from another tribe. The bride price was agreed upon, the girl was made ready, and the feast was prepared, when her father asked for an additional set of bow-and-arrows. A great fight broke out, which was compounded when the cacique of the Mariames brought up old grudges against the other tribe. They came to blows over it, and the next day the Mariames struck their camp and moved farther along the banks of the river, taking Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca with them. If we wanted to leave together, we had to wait until the following season.

It was a full year before our travels brought us back to the River of Prickly Pears, where we were reunited with Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca. Their disagreements with the Mariames had worsened, so that we had to leave under the cover of night, following the river as it curved out of the green valley. In the morning, we came across a band of Anegados, who warned us that the entire area to the south was peopled with Indians who hated Castilians so much that they would kill them without hesitation. For the last few years, Castilian soldiers had been traveling all the way from México and forcibly removing Indians to enslave them. They had done this to such an extent that all the southern tribes had learned to always flee or fight them, and to never trust them. Hoping to circumvent the area where the hostile tribes lived, my three companions and I went west.

Hunger began to torment us almost as soon as we left the valley. Along the trail, there were many prickly pear bushes, but their fruit had already been picked by the Indian tribes who migrated through the area. All that remained were the peels, rotting in small heaps under the bushes, their smell an irresistible call to flies and gnats. It was true that we had learned how to hunt deer and hare, where to find roots, grasses, and fruits, which of these were edible and which were poisonous, but we had no spears or bows and arrows of our own and, if we continued marching farther west, we might go for days without coming across a river or a spring. To survive, we had to find a tribe—and soon.

But God, who is the best planner of all, willed that on the afternoon of the fourth day we came across a little boy who was playing by himself in the wilderness. He ran away in great fright when he saw us. Our thick beards and unusual colors must have scared him, or perhaps he had heard the stories that had been spreading for a while now, stories that grew more terrifying with each telling, of sharp-toothed and bloodthirsty aliens who snatched away children that strayed too far from their homes.

I ran after the boy. Wait, I cried. Wait.

He turned around to size me up. He had almond-shaped eyes and two new front teeth that poked out of his pink gums—he must have been seven or eight, though he was quite short for his age. From the tattoo on his chin, blue dots in the shape of a triangle, I guessed that he was an Avavare. This was a relief; I was somewhat familiar with the Avavares, having met them before at the River of Prickly Pears, where they traded animal skins and parrot feathers with the Yguaces. We are but poor travelers in the land, I said. Can you take us with you?

The boy glanced past me at my white companions, who were now catching up to us. To protect himself from the sun, Cabeza de Vaca had tied a strip of painted deerskin around his head and parts of it fell down to his cheeks, flapping as he ran toward us. Dorantes was carrying his walking staff so he could move faster, and its end dragged on the ground behind him. Having caught up to us, my companions stopped to take their breath. Castillo pressed his thumb on the sore that had been growing under his heel; clear pus drained from it. So pitiful was our condition that the Avavare boy made up his mind quickly. Come along, he said.

T
HE CACIQUE OF THE
A
VAVARES
, an older man by the name of Tahacha, came out to greet us in person. He had a kindly face and a weak chin that disappeared into the folds of his neck. Behind him, in the open hut, his wife was nursing a baby, singing and cooing to it, but all the while she gazed curiously in our direction. A little boy sat beside her, too absorbed by his game of marbles to bother looking up. Before we had even asked, Tahacha offered us shelter for the night and some water to quench our thirst. Later, when we joined him for a meal of roasted fowl, he asked us about the land whence we came. I pointed behind me, in the direction of the sunrise. We come from lands far away, I said.

How far?

On the other side of the ocean.

Tahacha exchanged a surprised glance with his shaman, a lanky old man with an impressive array of tattoos. I had the feeling that this conversation was the first entertainment they had had in a long while, for they listened eagerly to everything I said, leaning in whenever the crackling of the fire or an animal's cry in the distance interrupted the sound of my voice. All of you come from that far? Tahacha asked.

My three companions are from one tribe, I replied. And I from another.

Tahacha considered this for a moment. Is that why you look different?

Yes.

But how did you get here?

On boats, I said. And then, skipping forward in my story, I added: But a storm destroyed our boats and our people with them. The four of us are the only survivors. We have been living with different tribes ever since.

And what brought you here?

This was a question that had been asked of one or another of us many
times since we had lived with the Indians, but we had learned that it was impossible to answer it completely truthfully. I glanced at my companions, hoping they could help me give Tahacha a suitable response, but Dorantes and Cabeza de Vaca stared glumly at the campfire. It was Castillo who answered: Our cacique was looking for something.

Did he find it?

No. On the contrary, we lost everything.

You blame this cacique?

Yes, Castillo said. Yes.

It is easy to blame the cacique, Tahacha said. But he is only a man; he derives his power from other men, who will follow him for only as long as they believe in him.

It seemed to me that Tahacha spoke from experience. His words struck me with the force of a revelation. Everyone in the expedition had believed Narváez's story about the kingdom of gold and had eagerly followed him there. Of course, there had been doubts about his decision to leave the ships behind and about his handling of the march, but never about the story he had told us, the lie that had started everything. Why had so many of us believed it?

So what did your cacique promise you? Tahacha asked.

He had directed the question to me, since I was the more fluent speaker. It was, of course, a difficult question. If I told him the truth, he would know that these Castilians sitting by my side had come to these lands as conquerors; that they had wanted to make him a vassal of their king, to whom he would have to pay a tribute; and that they had planned to destroy his idols and turn him into a Christian. The truth, in this case, would have been a death warrant for my companions and me. So I had to improvise. He told us there was much gold in this land, I said.

Gold? Tahacha's chin retreated farther into the folds of his neck. In this country, gold was not held in much esteem; macaw feathers, turquoises, and some animal skins held greater value and were much preferred in trade. Where is he now, your cacique?

Dead, I said. And dead, too, I thought, was his dream of conquest—for the Castilians were the ones who had been vanquished; they were the ones who lived as servants in this land; and they were the ones who dared not practice their faith openly out of fear that they would incur the Indians' wrath. As for me, an interloper among the Castilians, I had shared
their fate. Now, years later, I was no longer a slave, but my freedom had come at the price of being an interloper among the Indians. Give glory to God, who can alter all fates.

Tell me about the tribes you have lived with, Tahacha said. He was already familiar with the customs of his neighbors the Yguaces and the Mariames, but he was curious about the tribes that lived farther away, so I related for him our life with the Capoques and later with the Carancahuas. Whenever I told stories around the campfire, I sensed that Cabeza de Vaca was anxious to rival them with his own, for he was a gifted storyteller. This time was no different; he spoke at length about his life with the Han and later with the Charrucos and the Quevenes. He described the game they hunted, the foods they ate, the tattoos they bore, and the crimson red pigment they made by grinding an insect that lived on cactus plants. The tales of our travels delighted Tahacha, and he offered us some furs to protect ourselves from the night chill. For the first time, the story of our adventures, supplemented by neither labor nor begging, had earned us not just a meal, but gifts of blankets.

I
WAS WOKEN EARLY
the next morning by moans of pain. Beside me, Dorantes was writhing about, his arms tightly folded over his belly. Our experience on the Island of Misfortune had bred in him the habit of eating gluttonously whenever meat was plentiful, so I suspected that the large amounts of fowl he had eaten for dinner were the cause of his discomfort. I left Castillo to attend to the cookfire and went into the fields behind the camp to look for some zaatar, which I used to make an infusion. Drink this, I said, kneeling beside Dorantes.

He took a sip, then spat it out. It is too bitter, he said.

Castillo chuckled and shook his head slowly. You never learn, do you?

I am fine, Dorantes said. He ran his hand on his forehead, wiping away his sweat, and stood up. See, I am fine, he said, just before a bout of nausea seized him and he bent down again.

Come now, I said. Drink.

Although he fought me about it, he eventually drank the zaatar—he had tried it before and knew it would work. When I looked up, I noticed that the Avavares' shaman was observing us. His name was Behewibri. He was a morose-looking man, with a narrow face and suspicious eyes. The night before, at dinner, he had sat beside the cacique and listened
attentively to all our stories without offering comments or questions. But now he asked me: What did you give your brother?