The Moor's Account (41 page)

What do you mean?

I will need a letter from you so that I can travel home unhindered.

Estebanico, Dorantes said, putting his arm around my shoulders, I do not even have the bill of sale any longer. It was on the ship. You are one of us, you know that. It is a long way to México, but once we make it there, I will find a notary to draft a document declaring you a free man.

W
ITH THIS PROMISE
I left Compostela for México. Our first stop on the long march south was Guadalajara, a small town that was established by Nuño de Guzmán and that, like Compostela, he had named after a city in Spain. I could not understand this habit of naming settlements after Spanish cities even when, as in the case of Guadalajara, that city had received its name from those who had conquered it. In Arabic, the name Guadalajara evoked a valley of stones, a valley my ancestors had settled more than eight hundred years earlier. They had carried the disease of empire to Spain, the Spaniards had brought it to the new continent, and someday the people of the new continent would plant it elsewhere. That was the way of the world. Perhaps it was foolish to wish that it were different. But as for me, I could not continue to be involved with conquest. I would go to México and there I would get a contract that made legal the freedom that God had bestowed on me at birth.

Tenochtitlán was a new beginning. This was the city where I could at last secure passage on a ship bound for the old world. In a few weeks, I would travel across the Ocean of Fog and Darkness, return to Azemmur, and begin to repair the thread of my life where it had been broken. Thoughts of this future filled me with delight, which became intertwined for me with the pleasures of the magnificent city of the Aztecs. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can recall the heat of the sun that first day in Tenochtitlán, the blue of Lake Tezcuco, the rise of the pyramids, and the promise of home.

On the morning after our arrival, my companions and I were brought to the back door of the cathedral, where a thin priest was waiting for us. He had stiff blond hair that was parted down the middle, and wet eyes that seemed to take great offense at everything they beheld. He led us into a small office, where he ordered us to take off the Spanish clothes we had received in Compostela and to put on the loincloths and deerskins he had brought for us. But why, we asked. Bishop's orders, he replied. He leaned against a bookshelf and did not avert his eyes while we changed. Then he handed us necklaces, earrings, and amulets. Where he had procured them, I did not know. They were not from any of the tribes with whom we had lived.

Once he was satisfied with our costumes, the priest marched us down the long hallway of the cathedral. Cabeza de Vaca was to enter the great hall first, he said, followed by Dorantes and Castillo; this servant of God, Mustafa ibn Muhammad, was to enter last. From behind the doors at the end of the hallway, I could hear the low murmur of a large audience, occasionally
interrupted by the sudden burst of a laugh, the wail of a child, or the tentative notes of an organ. The priest gave us a final, appraising look, readjusting a crooked feather on Dorantes and tightening the snakeskin belt on Castillo. At last, there came the sound of a ceremonial tune on the organ. This is our signal, the priest said. When the music stopped, he opened the doors for us and stepped aside.

We entered the cathedral under the curious eyes of four hundred men and women, some of them standing on their toes to catch a glimpse of the survivors they had heard so much about. But since reality can never compete with imagination, their murmurs were soon replaced by a surprised silence. Here and there, I noticed, a brown or black visage disrupted the firmament of white faces, though everyone, regardless of color, was dressed in formal Castilian clothes. The light in the hall came from high windows, only a few of which had been fitted with stained glass; the others were still covered with drapes. And the murals of the church were not completed yet, so that a few of the figures looked like the half-formed shapes of a dream.

The bishop stood at the end of the aisle, watching us with all the benevolence his title of Protector of the Indians required. Juan de Zumárraga had arrived in New Spain ten years earlier, a simple friar who had not even received consecration as bishop, but he had managed to outwit all his rivals and formally receive his title from the king. With his left hand, he pointed to where we should be seated: in the front row, next to the viceroy himself.

That day was the feast of Yaaqub ben-Zebdi, whom the Spaniards call Santiago de Apóstol, so the service was particularly long and elaborate. My thoughts wandered back to that old cathedral in Seville, where I had received the name the Castilians called me. Back then, the priest had made the sign of the cross upon me and swiftly dispatched me into a life of bondage. What did Obispo Zumárraga intend to do? Much to my surprise, he began his sermon by telling the story of our journey across the continent.

My brothers and sisters, he said, the four men you see here today are the only survivors of the Narváez expedition. For eight years, they were deprived of all worldly comforts and material wealth. They were poor, hungry, and alone, but selflessly they served the Indians and tended to their ailments. I cannot help but think of Saint Francis. Consider: just
as Saint Francis was taken away from his companions in Perugia, so, too, were these four Christians separated from their people in Florida. Just as he nursed the lepers in Assisi, so, too, did they attend to the Indians and pray for their souls. Like him, they walked barefoot in the wilderness, wearing only the animal skins you see on them today, preaching the word of God where it had never been heard before.

Zumárraga was a stout man with sparse brown hair, and close-set eyes that darted around the hall as he spoke to the congregation. He had the tone, half-weary and half-indignant, of a man who had long been in possession of a great truth, even if others were too blind to recognize it. There was no room, in his weariness, for four heroes who were guilty of thefts and, through their silence, accomplices to pillaging, beatings, and rapes. Nor was there room, in his indignation, for Indians who did not wish to be ruled by outsiders. Listening to him, I began to understand why he had dressed us in loincloths and why he was making us sound so pure. He, too, wanted to tell the story of our adventure in his own way.

Praise God, Zumárraga said. His voice grew louder now, reaching high above the altar and bouncing back down from it into the great hall. Praise God, for there is a lesson here for those who heed it. A few people in New Spain, though their hearts are devoted to the Lord, treat the Indians in ways too horrible to recount. This is painfully true of those at the outer reaches of the empire, who live so far away from the counsel of the Church. But these four Christians you see here today have been sent to remind us of the right path. We should preach the gospel of peace to the Indians. We should treat them with kindness. We should teach them the values of hard work and forbearance. And they will flock to us, just as the multitudes in Italy flocked to Saint Francis.

So the bishop wanted us to be instruments of a greater mission: converting the Indians to Christianity without the threat of soldiers' muskets. But I was struck by the irony of his using me as a model for such a mission. What would he think of what I had really done? I had taken the Indians' medicine and made it my own. I had adopted their ways of dress, spoken their languages, and married one of their women. I was as far removed from the bishop's idea of a proper Christian as any Indian was. Standing in that half-finished church, surrounded by statues of prophets and saints, I wondered why God created so many varieties of faiths in the world if He intended all of us to worship Him in the same fashion. This
thought had never occurred to me when I was a young boy memorizing the Holy Qur'an, but as I spent time with the Indians I came to see how limiting the notion of one true faith really was. Was the diversity in our beliefs, not their unity, the lesson God wanted to impart? Surely it would have been in His power to make us of one faith if that had been His wish. Now the idea that there was only one set of stories for all of mankind seemed strange to me.

Let us pray, Zumárraga ordered. For a moment, the cathedral was plunged into silence. The air had steadily grown hotter and now the smell of burning candles made it stifling. I tried to resist the temptation, but I could not: I sneezed. Again. And again. Three times. My eyes filled with tears from the force of the emissions. Cabeza de Vaca leaned forward in his seat and frowned in my direction, but I was powerless to stop myself. My head fell back of its own volition and the sneeze came out with even greater force. A few people around me coughed. In different parts of the hall, pews and kneelers creaked, but the sneezing continued. I felt as if the entire congregation's eyes were on me.

Finally, the Amen came and the doors were opened. People filed outside, although many of them huddled at the entrance, waiting to get a closer look at the four survivors of the Narváez expedition. I was desperate for fresh air. I tried to make my way to an opening on the right, but my foot hit something—no, it was someone: an old Indian man with a branded face and a missing arm, who was shaking coins in a bowl, waiting for alms. I almost fell over him, but was pulled back just in time by Castillo.

Then a trumpet was sounded and the entrance slowly cleared of all the devout and the curious. My companions and I advanced toward the front steps. No city square I had ever seen was quite as large as the one in Tenochtitlán, no streets leading to it were so wide and so perfectly aligned, no buildings surrounding it so majestic. That day, it was filled with crowds of people waiting for the festival of Santiago de Apóstol to start. Stages had been set at the four corners, each presenting a different play, and in the center of the square two teams of men, some dressed as Moors and others as Christians, held on to their lances as they prepared to joust. The viceroy raised his arm to signal the start of the festivities, and the city erupted with joyful noise.

Beyond the square lay the famous pyramids, their brown peaks grazing
against the blue sky. I thought of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, of all those who had built empires and left behind an imposing trace of their passage in the world. To be present in a place where one empire was ending and another was rising made of me a privileged witness. Yet I did not try to keep a record of the moment. All I wanted was to return to the city I called home.

B
EHIND HIS PALACE
, the viceroy had built a guesthouse, a small edifice hidden from the street by a row of leafy trees. It was in that little house that Oyomasot and I stayed while we were in the capital of México. Our bedroom had whitewashed walls, blue-curtained windows, and a four-post bed that remained untouched because neither of us felt comfortable sleeping so high above the floor. That morning, our third in the capital, Oyomasot tried on the Spanish dress that had been left for her inside the walnut chest at the foot of the bed. The dress was made of green cotton, with puffed upper sleeves and a tasseled girdle. Smoothing the skirt down with her hands, she asked: How does it look?

You have to close the back, I said. I had been watching her from the armchair; now I stood up to tie the girdle around her small waist and button up the dress. I had never seen her wear green, but the color suited her well. Still, when I drew her close to me, she resisted. I glanced over her shoulder at her reflection in the windowpane and was met by a look of sheer panic.

I cannot breathe, she said.

I loosened the tassel over the girdle. Better? I asked.

No, it hurts, she said. It hurts.

That is how the dress is worn.

But how do their women breathe?

It was not a question I had ever asked myself. I was a thirty-eight-year-old man, so I had had plenty of time to consider the world through the eyes of someone else; yet that someone had rarely been a woman. What was it like to wear a girdle for the first time? To feel your chest crushed under metal boning? To walk with your feet tangled in the hems of your dress? I felt keenly aware of the sacrifices my wife was making for my sake, and keenly grateful. I checked the girdle, but I could not loosen it any further. It is only for a short time, I said by way of apology. You will not have to wear these clothes for very long.

There was a knock on the door, and an Aztec servant came in to inform us that Señor Dorantes and the friar had arrived. Oyomasot took small, careful steps toward the door, as if she were not sure she could trust herself, and together we walked down the corridor. The living room was large, with a peaked ceiling and tall windows, but the spaciousness they conveyed was counteracted by dark brown walls and damask-covered armchairs.

Dorantes and the friar were standing together in the middle of the room, admiring the oil portrait that hung above the fireplace. The painting was a likeness of King Carlos, the son of Felipe el Hermoso and Juana la Loca, a long-faced man with small eyes and a receding hairline. He was the emperor of parts of the old world and most of the new, and a defender of the Catholic faith besides. His subjects, one charged with conquering and the other with converting, looked on him with appropriate awe. I cleared my throat. Ah, Estebanico, Dorantes said. There you are. The viceroy invited us to dinner.

Today?

No, next week. A formal celebration of our return.

Where are the others?

Cabeza de Vaca is still in his quarters at the palace, writing letters. Castillo was coming with me, but one of his neighbors from Salamanca called in on him—here, at the other end of the world! Can you believe it?

The door opened again, and Dorantes's and Castillo's wives walked in, both of them wearing ill-fitting gray dresses. Their glossy hair was pinned low on their necks and covered with black lace. Kewaan had a surly look about her, but Tekotsen smiled brightly at her husband. Good morning, she said in the Avavare tongue.