The Moor's Account (37 page)

As it happened, it lasted a long while—almost a year.

T
HAT SUMMER
, we made our way across a range of mountains covered with iron slag and arrived at a river on whose banks grew thick pine and nut trees. On the other side of the water was something we had not seen in our years of wandering in this part of the continent: homes made of mud bricks, arranged in rows, and surrounded by large, cultivated fields. The sun gave the town walls a warm orange color, which contrasted against the wide green fields and the turquoise blue sky. It was as near a picture of my hometown as I could have drawn. My heart filled with longing, mixed with a simultaneous and contradictory feeling of belonging.

The town we had reached was that of a tribe who call themselves the Jumanos. They wore clothes made of dyed cotton and shoes fashioned out of animal hides. Their dwellings were large and sturdy, with mud-plastered walls and handsome doors. They cultivated corn, beans, and squash, and also hunted the horned cow, deer, and other game. Our stay with the Jumanos lasted only a few weeks, but it was among the happiest we had in this country. Sleeping in firm dwellings seemed to us an uncommon luxury. This, added to the Jumanos' treatment of us, made us, I believe, particularly conceited. Every request we made was granted immediately and uncomplainingly and, before long, we had gathered so many valuable things—skins, amulets, feathers, copper bells—that we needed porters to carry them for us when we set out again.

In early fall, we came to another large range of mountains. The guides who were with us now were well acquainted with the passes, however, and advised us that the best way to cross was to go in a southwestern
direction. The valley that stretched out on the other side was a sea of green. Square fields of corn and beans pushed up against one another and, in the hazy distance, mud houses dotted the horizon. These were permanent dwellings, built with bricks, and some even had two or three levels, connected from the outside by means of tall wooden ladders.

For several months, we traveled through this valley, stopping for a few days in each village to perform our treatments and cures. The gifts we received became increasingly extravagant. One cacique, I remember, gave us three bags of beads and corral, two of turquoises, and so many animal hides that we had to leave some behind. When I protested that this was too much, he said that I should be grateful for the gifts I received, and that he himself would receive something when he took us to the next village. I felt as though my three companions and I were building a beautiful yet fragile tower from which we might tumble down at any moment.

In one of the villages we passed, a young boy who had been watching for our arrival was run down by the stampeding crowd, and broke both his right arm and right leg. Broken bones were Dorantes's specialty—he had seen enough of them in the trenches of his king's wars—and he set to work right away. Afterward, the boy hobbled around on his good leg, shadowing Dorantes and running errands for him. When it was time to leave, the boy's father, a trader by profession, gifted Dorantes five hundred hearts of deer. They were all perfectly carved, so that the holes from which the deer's arteries would have sprung were clean and neatly cut. They had been dried in the sun and now they were reduced to small dark things that made great rattling sounds in the bags the porters carried. This was why, when he spoke of that village later, Dorantes called it Corazones. Only later did it occur to me that my Castilian companion had returned to the habit of giving new names to old places.

It was midday and, although the sky was clear, it was very cold. Cabeza de Vaca and I were with a group of half a dozen of our followers, gathering plants and tree bark for our cures. I was trailing behind the others when a glint caught my eye. I should have looked away the moment I saw it: a shard of glass, nearly hidden from view by a thicket of cactus. I still do not know what compelled me to speak of it. I imagine it was my surprise at seeing glass in the middle of the wilderness. But maybe it was only my insensibility, my fateful insensibility, which my beloved father had tried in vain to wring out of me all those years ago. The word came out before I could consider its consequences. Look, I said.

Cabeza de Vaca dropped to his knees and retrieved the shard from under the cactus. Sunlight filtered through it, breaking up into many vibrant colors, but when he turned it around in his fingers, the rainbow effect disappeared. This is Castilian glass, he said.

It could have been left behind by Indian traders, I said. We had come across signs of Castilian presence before, but they had always been barterable things—beads that were used to adorn garments of animal skin or belt buckles that served as necklace charms.

Perhaps, he said. But just then, he spotted some bootprints and started walking, as if pulled away by some invisible string. The footprints disappeared for a while, and then reappeared again around a little green hill. I went with Cabeza de Vaca, though I was unconvinced about his search, and our companions followed behind, curious about this diversion.

It was already the afternoon when a column of five horsemen appeared before us, outlined against the darkening horizon. I watched their inexorable
approach, their features growing clearer while my own feelings about them became more muddled. I was excited and nervous, curious and afraid, relieved and worried all at once, as if my heart could not settle on what it wanted to feel. At the head of the column was a man in a helmet, breastplate, and boots; the other four wore long-sleeved shirts, dirty breeches, and leather sandals. They sat their horses a short distance away but did not greet us. Mouths agape, they stared.

And why not, for we were quite a sight. Cabeza de Vaca and I wore thick furs on our shoulders and knee-length tunics made of deerskins. My braids hung down to my chest, my ears were adorned with turquoise earrings, and my walking staff was painted red and decorated with scarlet macaw feathers. As for Cabeza de Vaca, his hair fell in a yellow mass all around him, his beard reached his navel, and he carried, slung across his chest, a satchel filled with the herbs we had been collecting. Around us were six of our guides, clad in similar ways.

It was Cabeza de Vaca who broke the silence. What is your name? he asked of the horseman who seemed to be the leader.

Patricio Torres, the man said. From his accent, I could not tell what city in Castile he called home, though it seemed from his tone that he was a man accustomed to taking orders.

And what day is it? Cabeza de Vaca asked.

The fifth of January.

I mean, what year is it?

Fifteen thirty-six.

That makes it eight years, Cabeza de Vaca said to me.

After our shipwreck on the Island of Misfortune, we had kept track of time by counting the full moons, but many of the tribes with whom we had lived told the time by noticing the changes that seasons brought to their livelihoods—the ripening of roots, say, or the appearance of fruits and the migration of river fish—and we had fallen into a similar pattern. So we could never be entirely certain how much time had passed since our landing in La Florida.

Eight years, I said. Can it be that we have been here that long?

But this man Torres had confirmed it. I felt like one of the People of the Cave, awakening after many years of slumber into another world, a world they no longer knew. Where were we now? Had we finally reached the province of Pánuco or were we somewhere else? What had happened
in the world during our absence? What news was there of all those we had left behind? So many questions pressed themselves against my lips that I did not know where to begin.

But who are you? Torres asked us.

Cabeza de Vaca turned back to him. My name, he replied, is Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. I was the treasurer of the Narváez expedition, which landed in Florida in 1528.

Torres opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

Are you here with others? Cabeza de Vaca asked.

We are camped half a league this way, Torres said. He pointed south.

Take me there.

Sí, Señor. Torres held out his arm to Cabeza de Vaca and lifted him onto his horse, while I followed on foot with the rest of our party. The Indian guides asked me where we were going and I told them what I knew—we were going to meet some Castilians. My own emotions were too muddled now to make me of much use to them as anything but a translator. The smell of horses, to which I was no longer accustomed, was overpowering me. It brought back memories of the long march through the wilderness of La Florida, times and places I had thought were firmly in the past, behind me. As we walked, our shadows, six mounted and seven on foot, grew long and melted into each other.

It was almost dusk when we reached a river, on whose banks a dozen Castilians were gathered. They all stood up to get a look at our strange procession. After a moment, one of them detached himself from the others and came forward. What happened? he asked Torres. And then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to the fur-covered white man sitting on the horse and asked: Who are you?

Cabeza de Vaca replied: I am the royal treasurer of the Narváez expedition, appointed to this office by His Holy Imperial Majesty.

The mention of the king had the effect that Cabeza de Vaca seemed to have intended for it. The man briefly cast his eyes down, as if the monarch had traveled the depth of the ocean and the length of the continent to extract a proper acknowledgment. The Castilian officer had thick hair, thick eyebrows, and a thick blond beard, which he began stroking, in a gesture that looked more like a recent affectation than a nervous tic. And what is your name? Cabeza de Vaca asked him.

Diego de Alcaraz, at your service.

Cabeza de Vaca climbed down from the horse and came to stand next to me. It is getting late, I said. We have to set up camp here.

And who is el negro? Alcaraz asked.

This is Estebanico, one of the survivors of the expedition. The others are Capitán Andrés Dorantes and Capitán Alonso del Castillo.

Just then, one of the Indian guides asked me what the white men were saying to one another. When I replied in his language, the Castilian soldiers regarded me with the same look of wonder I had seen on their countrymen's faces eight years earlier, whenever they encountered the strange creatures of the new world. Nothing in their gaze suggested that I was a man like them rather than some exotic beast or other. It was only decorum that prevented them from reaching out to touch me, to see if I was real.

That night, Alcaraz offered us hardtack for dinner. With each bite of it, I tasted a little more of the past, its bitterness and sweetness both, startling flavors that transported me thousands of leagues away, first to Seville and then to Azemmur. Oh, Azemmur. I had dreamed of making contact with the old world, had waited years for this moment, had prayed for it many times, and just as I had given up and begun to make a life for myself in the new world, the Castilian soldiers had appeared, like jinns springing up from a lamp.

Now Cabeza de Vaca began telling the story of our arrival in La Florida and everything else that had happened to us on the continent since. We had all of us told this story dozens of times to our Indian hosts, but that day Cabeza de Vaca gave it another guise. In this account, he was no longer a conqueror who had fallen for lies about a kingdom of gold; instead he was the second-in-command of a fierce but unlucky expedition to La Florida. He had played no part in the decision to split the armada into two; now the villain was Narváez only. He had not taken on an Indian wife; now he had simply chosen to trade among the Quevenes and Charrucos for three years. He had not depended on his companions for his survival; now he cast himself as our leader, the man who had followed the footprints that led from the shard of clear glass to the Castilians' camp.

Although it was difficult, I tried my best not to resent Cabeza de Vaca's account of our adventure. I told myself that he had altered some of its details because he was the one who told the story—he wanted to be its hero—and also because he was mindful that his audience was made up of soldiers. These men knew well what it was like to receive orders you
found foolish and yet had to obey, even at the cost of your life. They worried about how their faith might be tested in the new world, and loved to hear that a man could remain steadfast in the face of temptation. They saw themselves in the brave treasurer who had survived where others had died and now had led his men to salvation. So they offered the storyteller praise and prayers, and they refilled his cup with wine.

Then Cabeza de Vaca asked Alcaraz: Do you know what might have happened to the ships we left behind in La Florida?

No, Alcaraz replied. This is the first I have heard of your expedition. He himself had sailed to New Spain only three years earlier, he said, and was not familiar with people who might have journeyed to this continent before him, much less those who had been shipwrecked and lost so long ago. Now he asked: And your companions—the other hidalgos you mentioned—are they safe where they are?

Perfectly safe, Cabeza de Vaca replied. They are with a group of Indians very much like those you see here.

Alcaraz sipped from his metal cup. I must tell you, we have not seen any Indians at all in these parts for at least three weeks. In fact, we were preparing to return to Culiacán in the morning.

There are thousands of Indians here, Cabeza de Vaca said. But they have run away or hidden in the mountains.

Because they heard terrible stories about the soldiers, I added.

Alcaraz gave me a strange look. I know not what you may have heard from them, he said, but I would wager that it is nothing more than a string of lies and fabrications. He turned back to Cabeza de Vaca. Your friends, the two señores, you say they are safe with the Indians, but we will send for them.

Cabeza de Vaca and I glanced at each other; the stories we had heard about the Indians' enslavement were numerous, but they were too consistent to have been untrue. Still, he did not seem to think it wise or worthwhile to argue with his host just then, for he remained quiet.