Michener, James A. (6 page)

'He was marvelous,' Cabeza said. 'When we approached a new village, we allowed him to go first, dancing and leaping and singing Indian songs. Shaking his gourds, shouting incantations, his white teeth flashing, he cured old women and won the hearts of sick children with his radiant smile. Since women loved him, he accumulated a harem of first a dozen, then dozens, and finally, more than a hundred who trailed him from one camp to the next.'

Esteban affirmed everything and added: i liked the women, indeed I did, but I also knew we needed food. So I would not let them come with me unless they brought us real food, not oysters and blackberries. We four lived on my dancing.'

'Would you show me your dance?' Garcilaco asked, and he said: i can't do it without my gourds,' so the boy ran to fetch them, but when his master saw him quit his mules, he struck him sharply across the head. When Esteban saw this, he leaped in the air, then rushed at the master to restrain him: 'He is not your slave!' The master glared at the big black man: 'But you are a slave, you damn Moor,' he said, and spat.

As soon as Garcilaco produced the gourds, Esteban forgot his anger, and with a rattle in each hand he began taking short, mincing steps in the dust, at first shuffling rather than dancing, but quickly becoming more agitated. His eyes flashed. His grin widened. His arms flapped wildly, and soon he was leaping in the air, assuming wild and grotesque contortions. Laughing like a joyous spirit, he danced until all the carters in the cavalcade stopped to watch and then applaud. To see Esteban dance was to see the earth smile.

Always when Cabeza spoke of his adventures in the north, he referred in some manner to the look of the land in which an incident had occurred, and it was during such a narration that he happened to use a phrase which determined the character of Garcilaco's subsequent life.

'Senor Cabeza, you speak of the land, but when you do, you describe many different lands,' and the explorer laughed: 'You're an observant little fellow. I enjoy traveling with you.' He said that, yes, he did speak of many different lands; that was the glory of up there.

'Along the coast where I first stayed, there were beautiful sand

dunes and marshes filled with birds. Inland, a waving sea of grass with rarely a tree. Farther to the west where we gathered nuts, rolling crests and clusters of oak more beautiful than any I saw in Spain. Then hills, cut through with little rivers, and after them the vast empty plains, flat as tables and sometimes void even of cactus. Finally more hills, the mountains and the desert.'

He closed his eyes, as if he were praying. 'I can see it all, lad. The years were cruel, of that there can be no doubt, but they were also glorious, and if you ever find a chance to go up there,' and here came the words that fired the boy's imagination, 'you too will see the land of many lands.'

As soon as Garcilaco heard that happy phrase, 'the land of many lands,' he was captured by the lure of the north. The Pacific Ocean was forgotten; anyone could build himself a ship and sail on it, Garcilaco thought, but the challenge of those limitless plains, the ferocious winds, the grandeur of an earth that seemed infinite in its variations—these wonders he wanted to see. From this day on he entertained only one vision: to visit that land of many lands.

When Cabeza resumed his narrative about their travels far to the west (into New Mexico, but not as far north as Santa Fe), he said: "One night while we three white men talked idly with some of Esteban's women, one of them used a phrase which caught my attention: "Fifteen days to the north, the Seven Cities. My mother saw them when she was a girl." That night I could not sleep, because even as a child I had heard vague talk about holy men who had fled Spain and built the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola. I knew no more of the legend except that these cities held much gold. So very quietly, using signs and the few words we had, I began asking Indian men about the Seven Cities, and they confirmed what the woman had said: "Yes, yes! That one, he saw the Cities." The Indian thus indicated said he had not actually been to the Cities, but he knew a man who had, and this man had spoken of them with awe: "Very big. One, two, three, four, up, up to the sky."

i asked if he meant that one level of the house stood upon the other, as in Spain, and the man said eagerly: "Yes! My friend said so. Up to the sky!" whereupon I asked if there had been great wealth there, and this question the Indian did not comprehend, for I carried nothing with which to illustrate what I meant, but the Indian liked us so much that he wanted to please, so he talked with his friends, and even though he did not understand my words, he nodded vigorously: "Yes, just as you say."

' "And what is the name of these Seven Cities?" I asked, but the man did not know, nor did anyone, but I believed there was a chance that I had found those cities of sacred legend.' As Cabeza

uttered these provocative words he fell silent, and it was then that Garcilaco enlarged his dream to include the finding of those cities clothed in gold.

When Cabeza next talked with Garcilaco he was serious and almost mystical: 'When it happened, after those years of slavery and wandering and storms, it excited us almost to the point of frenzy. One morning Castillo saw, on the neck of an Indian, a little buckle from a swordbelt, and in it was sewed a horseshoe nail. We took it from the Indian and asked what it was. He said it had come from heaven, but when we asked who had brought it, he answered that some men, with beards like ours, had come from heaven to that river; that they rode on animals like very large deer; carried lances and swords; and that they had lanced two Indians.

'As cautiously as possible, we then inquired what had become of those men, and they replied that they had gone to the sea, putting their lances into the water and moving them, and that afterward they saw men on top of the waves heading toward the sunset. We gave God our Lord many thanks for what we had heard, for we had been despairing to ever hear of Christians again.'

During the last days of the journey, Cabeza took an extraordinary interest in Garcilaco, and one morning he cradled the boy's face in his weathered hands and looked deep into his eyes: 'Lad, you were not meant to be a muleteer. But to accomplish anything, you must learn to read and write.' And with an almost furious determination, he taught the lad, as they walked with the mules, the alphabet, and when they stopped to rest he would draw the letters in the ground with a stick.

Cabeza was also eager to share his specific knowledge of the land he had traversed, as if he were afraid that valuable learning might be lost. He described the many Indian tribes, taught Garcilaco some of the phrases they spoke, said that dog was good to eat, and warned of the many dangers the boy would encounter if he ever went 'up there.'

The night before the two parted company, Cabeza grasped Garcilaco's hands and said: 'Lad, if ever the chance arrives, goup there, because that's where fame and fortune will be found—in the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola.'

On the day after the arrival of the mule team in the capital, it was reloaded and back on the trail to Vera Cruz, so that Garcilaco saw Cabeza no more, but many years later, when he was hauling freight to Guadalajara, an army captain said: 'I knew Cabeza de Vaca in Paraguay. Yes, when he returned to Spain he sought the governorship of Florida, but learned to his great disappointment that this plum had already been awarded his fellow explorer Her-

nando de Soto, and he had to settle for a miserable post in Paraguay.'

'Did he succeed in that job?' Garcilaco asked, and the man said: 'Oh, no! They nibbled at him, brought infamous charges against him, and I think he left the country in chains. I know he was in jail for seven years in Spain. My sister-in-law's brother knew him.'

'What happened?' Garcilaco asked, and the captain said: 'I saw him in Africa when I served there. Banished, he was, a man who walked alone, talking with the stars. Years later the emperor came to his senses, brought this honorable man back to court, and paid him a yearly stipend which enabled him to live in relative comfort.'

At age sixty-five, Cabeza de Vaca, the first white man to have journeyed into Texas and across its vast plains, died. Texas, a state which would always honor the brave, had its first true hero.

The miracle of perfect wisdom and sage decision which Garcilaco had expected at age eleven did not materialize; nor at twelve, either. For some days after Cabeza de Vaca's departure the boy wept softly when he went to bed, and for many weeks he recited the alphabet while trudging along with his mules. But one day, when the master caught him looking at the few pages Cabeza had given him, he grabbed them in a rage and tore them up: 'You have no business with learning. Your life is with the mules.' But the master could not take away the boy's knowledge of the stars, and when Orion rose, Garcilaco could see the figure of Cabeza among those brilliant dots of light.

For two long and miserable years he led his mules past the volcanoes, whose charm had fled, and he was supported only by the memory of his brief friendship with Cabeza, foremost of the king's gentlemen, and the hope the latter imparted that day when he took the boy's face in his hands and said: 'Lad, you were not meant to be a muleteer.'

As the hot and sultry summer faded in 1538, Garcilaco, age thirteen, was once more journeying toward Vera Cruz, having accomplished nothing that would release him from his virtual slavery. When the mules reached the outskirts of that teeming seaport where the vessels from Spain waited to be unloaded, he felt sick at heart. All he had achieved was learning the alphabet, but he lacked any prospect of ever owning his own mules.

In this cast of mind he came down the narrow, dirty streets to where the cargo waited, and he was dreaming of Cabeza's clear, open lands 'up there' when he heard a deep-throated cry and felt across his back a blow from a walking stick.

'Watch where your mules go, fellow!' a man called out, and

when Garcilaco recovered his senses he saw that the speaker was a friar of more than medium height and well past forty. He spoke with an accent the boy had not heard before, but he was more smiling than angry. When he realized that he had struck a mere lad, he apologized, and for some minutes the two talked in the narrow street.

'I am sorry, boy. Did it hurt?'

'My master gives me worse each day.'

'He must be a cruel man,' and when Garcilaco said that he surely was, the friar became solicitous and asked: 'Are you his son?' Garcilaco replied: 'I never knew my father,' and this became the foundation of their friendship.

He was Fray Marcos, who had recently come to Mexico after service in two lands about which Garcilaco had vaguely heard: Peru, which the friar loved, and Guatemala, which he held in contempt. In Peru he had composed, he claimed, a diatribe against the cruelty with which Spanish conquistadores treated their Indians, and he did not propose to allow such wrong in Mexico. He had arrived only recently and now asked Garcilaco's master if he could accompany the mule train to the capital, from where he would find his way to the great monastery being built at Queretaro, to which he had been assigned. Surly as ever, Garcilaco's master agreed.

As they climbed through the jungles leading to the volcanoes, Garcilaco was impressed by the vigor of the friar's stride; it seemed the mules would tire before Marcos did. His conversation was pleasing, too, for in all he said he displayed enthusiasm: 'Some day a poet will write of our adventures in Peru! Gold everywhere! Majestic mountains! Spanish heroism never before excelled!' He spoke in exclamations, and Garcilaco noticed the way he ended each statement in rising voice, as if eager to get on to the next wonder. When Marcos saw the great volcanoes he fell silent, captured by awe, and it was some moments before he could speak. When he did, a torrent of words leaped from his lips, and Garcilaco could imagine him back in Peru, reporting on what he had seen in Mexico: 'Such towering volcanoes! So perfect in design!'

It took twenty-nine days to drag the cargo from Vera Cruz to the capital, and during that time Garcilaco told Fray Marcos about his friendship with Cabeza, and when the friar learned that the boy knew his letters, he said: 'You must continue. Learn to read well and you can become a friar, like me, and know a life of adventure.'

When Garcilaco asked him where his home had been, he answered: 'My real name is Marcos de Niza, for I was born in that

city which some call Nice. It pertained to Savoy, so I was like you, a nothing, perhaps Savoyard, perhaps French, perhaps Italian. But I fell in with the Spaniards and was saved.'

During the concluding days of the journey he showed Garcilaco his Latin Bible, to see if the boy really could pick out his letters, and tire speed with which Garcilaco resumed his mastery of the alphabet, even though he could not understand the words, delighted the friar so much that one evening he went to the master and said: 'I should like to buy the boy.' The ugly man said: 'He's not for sale,' but since he was always eager to swing a good bargain, he added: 'How much would you offer?' So for two pieces of gold brought from Peru, Garcilaco became the responsibility of Fray Marcos, who said as he led him away: 'You shall call me Father, both for my religious position and because I love you and will educate you.'

They had been in Mexico City only two days when a detachment of soldiers came to the monaster}' where they slept: 'You're both to come with us. Bishop Zumarraga wants to interrogate you.' Garcilaco, remembering the austere figure sitting in his palanquin, started to tremble and then to sweat, for in a swift series of images he could see himself being questioned, condemned, and led to the pyre during some tremendous auto-da-fe. Quaking with fear, he asked the friar: 'What have we done?'

To his surprise, Fray Marcos was completely at ease, even smiling: in Peru and in Guatemala, I received many such imperative orders. They usually mean some good thing's about to happen. Let's see what it is this time.'

But when they were marched like prisoners through the streets, Garcilaco kept looking at the passers-by and at the patches of sky as if this were the last time he would see either. However, when they were delivered to Bishop Zumarraga they found a kindly man, dressed in the informal working robes of the Franciscan order, who said, as if he were their uncle: 'Sit down. Take refreshment if you wish. We've important matters to discuss.' With that he rang a small silver bell, whereupon Indian servants appeared, bringing with them a man Garcilaco remembered well and loved. It was Esteban, the Moor.