Tears of the Sun

We are Devils

The heat grew so fierce our cheeks burnt like dry papers and my nose split like rotten fruit. To escape from the sun I buried myself in the sand, which, just an inch down, was cool. My friend de Candia helped me and afterwards did the same for himself, until just the four guards were left standing. It is no small thing to disable yourself thus, to pin arms and legs helpless, at your enemy's doorstep; or to feel the skin of your lips crack, peel, bleed, and curl off and fall in the sand. These things we endured, my friend, but I cannot tell you how.

When, at last, night came I knew but some of the stars, but there were many dazzling gems that God does not trouble to shine down upon the cities of Castile, or even tropical Panama. We dug ourselves out like turtles. A man should not prematurely tempt his maker by digging and lying in his grave. I prayed to have more courage the next day, and not to solicit death in this way. But next day the heat and the sand flies came on us again, both biting fiercely. I prayed God to forgive my blasphemy and we delved into the sand to escape. We lay there like the damned of the Abyss, like the low creatures God made to live in the darkness of the earth, the serpents and the worms.

A loathsome malady afflicted many of us at this time. Excrescences broke out all over our bodies but chiefly on our faces. They began as warts, but they began to fatten and ripen like figs, and, foul demonic fruit, hung from stems, and began to leak fluids and blood. They were most sensitive to touch. We looked at each other in disgust: fruit hung from our foreheads, eyebrows, nostrils. Some died; in others it disappeared as quickly as it came. None could tell which death would choose to take and which God in his mercy would spare.

When I was driven half mad with the pain, an Indian we were interrogating asked us they always did, 'Who are you, what country do you come from?' I shook my warty face in his and said 'Our country is Hell, and we are the very Devils that govern it.' It is nevertheless hard for me to look back and know whether I was happy or sad to leave the coast. We were away late, fallen out of the habit of breaking camp and marching, no man eager to hurry. We had the sun straight in our faces, and the sea breezes at our backs. We would soon know which dealt the greater smart. We had suffered much there, seen glimpses of gold, but only homely quantities of it, such as any savage might have about his person: trinkets and baubles. Some green stones we had examined, broken, and afterwards sold to Friar Reginaldo who said they were not emeralds for they broke under the blow of a hammer, yet he kept the pieces all the same. I afterwards learned this was no test for emeralds, but rightly for diamonds, which will not break: we broke a good many fine gems in our ignorance. (Said Garcilaso the half-breed of this 'they destroyed more than four thousand ducats' worth of precious stones, and, later on, Almagro and his men did the same; indeed I should be unable to estimate the priceless treasures that were destroyed as soon as they were discovered by the Spanish.')

There was much talk of a great prince, or Inca who claimed to rule all these lands: but there always is. And talk of his cruelty, but what tender-hearted prince ever kept a crown on his skull for long, or his head on his shoulders? We climbed the rivers and they took us away from the heat and the pestilence of the coast, and I was sick to the heart of that.

The first miles were nothing but the sands of the coast borne inland to increase the desert. In places it formed crescent-shaped dunes like a five-day moon which the drifting sands blew over, neither building it up nor erasing it, but maintaining a natural balance, so it crept slowly across the floor of the desert, like a crab following its claws. Every piece of metal soon burned to the touch. I took the skin off my finger touching the hilt of my sword.

That first day, so long ago! Despite all the marvels I was to see after, when I think of the Kingdom of Peru I am often not among the palaces, the golden temples or the jewelled gardens, but in the saddle again, at a slow walk, the heat coming at me from all sides. Spirals of dust came across the desert whirling like Moors, flinging dust in our narrowed eyes, caking the lashes and the beard, scouring where the sun had already burnt. There was too much light to see any one thing clearly, each object losing its boundaries. Nothing was fixed. Hard rocks began to dance and sway, the sand skittered along so we moved on an ever-sliding carpet; earth and air, traitors alike. A hawk stood on a pinnacle above, its feathers puffed out in a ball, opening its beak in a silent cry to the heat. The rider in front sat beneath a pillar of shimmering air heated by his armour, his body had no edge, it was a pulse in this dream world we walked in. His horse became tall and slender, the legs frail spindles beneath, crossing and recrossing. The hills ahead grew tricksy in the air. We laboured but there was no progress, the rocks each like the other, perhaps waiting until we were past and running on ahead to mock us again. Everything was shifting, treacherous, and our own bodies dissolving into it. We would remain to haunt the next travellers. At evening the sun went down behind us and soon it was full night. Even now the desert continued to prey on our minds. There were booms like muffled cannon that went on and on, and so loud that we had to shout to be heard by a companion at our side. We afterwards saw this was the steep face of the dunes collapsing but this we did not know, and much fear it caused us at the time.

This Fodder is Better

At the same time an Inca Lord appeared in the camp, they come and go like mist. Behind him was a long train of the tall sheep they call llamas. They are nervous but intelligent beasts, with a liveliness of eye that is closer to a horse's than a sheep's dull orb. The Lord asked to speak to out general, and Francisco Pizarro came and greeted him with all dignity. Felipe came running to translate the Inca language into his own rough Spanish. Too much of it has been learned from rough soldiers for him to ever sound like a gentleman to us, but maybe when he speaks in Quechua, which he has known longer (though it is not his native tongue) it comes with greater courtesy. For the moment, we can do no better.

Hernando de Soto stood at Francisco's side, and just behind him, his brothers and Diego de Almagro took their place. Almagro is a fine soldier but no diplomat, which is not often a problem, for he knows it, and leaves to his partner in the enterprise, the sallies of fine words by which such encounters progress. He often stands by Sebastián de Benalcázar, which makes anyone look like a gentleman.
On both sides, all tried to look noble, as the squall hit us and icy rain ran down our necks.
'I brung maize and meat,' piped Felipe, repeating the ambassador's 'I', making the wretched Spanish doubly foolish. [backwrite] 'There is llamas and women servants to serve you. I know you do not eat the maize, but give it to your friends, the tall llamas.' (This was true enough. They venerate a fruit that would crack a pig's jaw.) 'But we brung them better food.' The Inca Lord nodded to his captain, who beckoned to the women standing, with eyes downcast, at the side of each pack llama. They unfastened the leather and woollen satchels, and took them to where the horses were tethered, turning to shield their faces from the rain. The women took no notice of its stinging, as they opened their burdens before our steeds.
'We see they eats iron,' said Felipe, shrugging insolently at the general, 'that's what he said.'
The lord began again, addressing the horses, Felipe listened to what appeared a gracious address, 'Take this big lords; is much better fodder.'
The women strewed gold and silver vessels of great delicate workmanship, and , placing them in front of the horses, gestured: 'Eat!' Benalcázar sniggered; Pizarro hushed him with a hand and said, 'Let the lord horses eat their fill.' Then quietly, for his own men's ears only: 'Do not let them see us looking covetously at the gold and silver. Felipe, tell the lord the horses thank him greatly. They were hungry for their proper food, and now they are content.'
He summoned his brother Gonzalo, and spoke softly to him. Gonzalo returned with presents, some baubles of little consequence to us, but maybe novel to the Indians, and a small mirror in a wooden frame. The Inca took it with the back uppermost, but he soon turned it over and started with such a great surprise at seeing himself, that even the general could not conceal hide a smile. The lord considered his own savage face for some moments, then held it up to Pizarro's who suffered this curiosity with his customary patience. Then the Indian took Benalcázar by surprise, holding it square in front of his face, so the Spaniard saw himself. Benalcázar, a man who fears no one, flinched, looked away, and took steps backwards to lose the tiny apparition of himself. The lord returned the mirror to his own face, more thoughtful. I wondered what deeds Sebastián de Benalcázar has performed since he last had leisure to examine himself in a mirror, to look into his own eyes, there is a sea of hungers in that man. The rumours about him are not pretty. He fled Spain, he fled the Caribbean Islands, then Nicaragua vomited him south. He washes up in Peru, a land without mirrors. Is he like Jonah, fleeing God's wrath only to find it follows him? - his conscience a squat black shadow, shrinking in the high midday sun, but never leaving, waiting for the long afternoons to lengthen it and, in the swift sunsets, join it with all the dark, heathen shadows of this land, thickening into night.