Authors: Matilde Asensi
“For us to go with him,” she translated in a lowered voice.
The Yatiri began the gentle ascent up the ramp, and then I noticed, when I followed him and stepped onto it, that the wood inside that great tree was very hard, since it didn’t give way under our weight: there wasn’t even the slightest oscillation, not the smallest tremor. In the light of the oil lamps, it was a pleasant yellow color laced with long veins of iridescent browns, and it was polished and varnished with some kind of shiny resin, perfectly smooth. The ledge on which we walked stuck out of the wall itself in a wedge shape (thicker at the base) and ended in a wide and barely elevated little trim. There was no handrail, so if someone wanted to throw himself over the edge, he could do so without impediment.
I don’t know how much time we spent going up, but it was a lot. It took us a long time to get to the place where the gentle incline ended in a new door, which we went through after the friendly Yatiri. When we had gone through another short tunnel, we came out onto a wide
walkway that connected to another door in the neighboring tree, about fifty feet away. The most pleasant thing was that we were again near the light of the sun, and at that altitude it managed to slip in through the branches. Marc came up next to me, and behind him came Marta and Lola, followed by Efraín and Gertrude. It struck me to see that below us another path in the air led to the trunk of the tree to our right, and then, looking over, I noticed that, both below us and above our heads, a dense network of similar streets connected all the colossal trees in sight. And the most incredible of all: Those arteries were made of the gigantic branches that sprouted from the trunks, that had been molded and adjusted to go from one place to another naturally. Some went up, some went down, others twisted here or leveled out there, and all of them crossed at different heights; so that, if you fell—although it seemed very unlikely that such a thing could happen, since the paths were so wide—it would only be a couple of yards to the next level down. Those guys had built megalithic cities with a technique that neared perfection by shaping living nature with the genius to adapt it to their needs.
I pointed it out to Marc with gestures, and also to the others, who nodded to show they were as awed by it as I. When we entered the next tree, we found ourselves in a kind of enormous plaza, also lit with oil lamps. A small group of Yatiri argued in the distance, next to a staircase that seemed to lead to similar floors above and below. The first women we saw were there, and they, unlike the men, were dressed in short, loose shirts and skirts that fell to their feet. All the clothes those people wore were brightly colored, like those worn by the Aymara in the markets of La Paz, and all of them had the traditional gold discs inserted into their ears, the supposedly Incan
orejeras
, which, according to legend, distinguished the bearers of a special solar blood from everyone else. Efraín remarked to us that the masculine shirt was called
unku
and after the conquest its use had been prohibited by the Spanish, who legally imposed the use of pants. Men and women, without exception, wore leather sandals and covered themselves with shawls that fell to their knees. On average, they were very tall, with light skin and blue-black hair, dark curious eyes, and Aymaran features, although, and this was a fact that kept impressing us, all the men had dark shadows of short beards on their faces. None of them made the slightest gesture of greeting or welcome; quite the contrary, as if they were afraid of us, they retreated to the stairs and covered half their faces with their tunics.
There were benches carved in the walls of that giant plaza, and two men and a woman of very advanced age, who must have been chatting until our arrival, examined us from where they were perched on them with serious and impassive faces. The woman addressed our guide, raising her voice:
“
Makiy qhipt’arakisma!
”
Our Yatiri answered her and kept walking toward the exit, making a farewell gesture to her with his head.
“What did they say?” Marc wanted to know, turning toward Marta.
She nodded, like an applied student who had perfectly understood the lesson, and then looked at us with her eyes shining and said nervously:
“The older woman asked him to hurry, not to delay, and he replied that the Capacas were already waiting for us and that everything would be done very quickly.”
Efraín moved forward to cut into the conversation:
“They’re taking us to see the Capacas, my friends!” he exclaimed, excited. “I can’t believe it!”
“Let’s see if they’re going to carry out some ritual human sacrifice with us…!” Marc blurted, with a voice full of excitement.
When we left that tree, we heard voices and laughter coming from some place above us, but we didn’t see anyone. We also heard barks, and we looked at each other with very wide eyes: there were dogs up here! Incredible. But not that incredible if we looked in the windows and doors visible in the nearby trunks, which looked like residences, houses inhabited by people we couldn’t see. The network of branches cleverly converted into streets continued on the other side of the tree, and also beyond the next one, and the next, and the next…. Although it was impossible to see more than a couple of giant trunks on each side, there was no doubt that it was a large vegetable city from which the vines and creepers had been removed, and in which nature had been deeply respected, since not a single artificial floor or platform, or any planks or framework of any kind, could be seen.
Our guide seemed to be taking us along a very well-studied route so we wouldn’t meet anyone. Incidentally, he succeeded: We didn’t run into a single other human being until we arrived in front of a huge stump, accessed by a multitude of aerial walkways from the neighboring trees which were separated from it by a certain distance. It was by far the largest trunk we’d seen so far, but it lacked branches and leaves. It gave the impression of having been struck by a lighting bolt that had split it, beginning at the spot where it forked into its crown. It was impressive to see it like that, mutilated and grandiose, and I didn’t doubt that was the place we were headed, since it had the appearance of being an important center of power or administration. We descended down one of those streets that sloped slightly, curving, toward the great wooden doorway of the stump, and the door heavily opened a crack as if by magic when we stood in front of it. Two Yatiri dressed in the usual way came from the dark inside and waited for our guide—who ordered us to stay where we were—to take a few steps toward them. Then they allowed us to enter the mutilated tree, and we were suddenly frozen, not because it was cold (it wasn’t), but because of the ostentation and richness of that place: Immense
tocapu
tapestries divided the space like partitions, hanging from the roof, and gold sheets embossed with scenes that seemed to be taken from the distant life in Taipikala covered the floor. Hundreds of oil lamps lit the interior, and furniture such as chests, chairs, and tables made in an unknown style that used gold and wood as materials stood everywhere.
The guide made us go forward a little and again motioned for us to wait.
“
Mä rat past’arapï
,” he said very haughtily, before disappearing. If he thought we didn’t understand him, why did he bother to talk to us, and in that tone, besides?
Efraín translated:
“He said he was going I don’t know where for a moment.”
“He didn’t say where,” Marta clarified.
“I didn’t think so.”
“What do the
tocapus
say?” Lola asked, walking over to the closest one. It was an impressive tapestry, about twenty feet long.
“Well this one, in essence,” the professor began to explain, examining it attentively, “is a kind of invocation to a goddess…. But it doesn’t say the name. It must be Pachamama, Mother Earth, because it mentions the creation of humanity.”
“And this one,” Efraín pointed out from the other side of the room, “tells how the giants disappeared with the flood.”
“These guys have a sick fixation on these subjects, don’t you think?” Marc remarked, perplexed.
We were walking around there, killing time, looking at the things around us, but my mind was far away. I could only think that after so much time and so many things like those that had
happened to us, the moment had arrived at last when I’d have to make those guys explain, however I could, how to pull Daniel from lethargy.
“Are you worried?” Marta asked me suddenly. She had come up next to me without me noticing.
“No, not worried. Maybe nervous.”
“Look at all of this,” she told me, talking like a professor. “It’s a unique opportunity to recover a lost part of history.”
“I know,” I replied, looking at her with a smile. I had ended up liking the dryness that characterized her and I found myself comfortable with her tones, sometimes too superior. Really, she didn’t notice; for her they didn’t have the same import as for her listeners. “I’m aware of the importance of the situation.”
“It’s much more important than you realize. It could be unique.”
“I want a magical anti-curse,” I announced. “What do you want?”
“I want to be able to study their culture, for them to let me return with a team from the university to carry out a research project complementary to the publication of the discovery of the written language of the Tiwanakan culture, which would be the first part of….”
“Okay, okay!” I interrupted, dying with laughter. “I think they’re going to give me what I ask for because of the humility of my request. You want everything!”
Marta got suddenly serious, looking behind me: Our Yatiri guide had reappeared among the hangings in the back, and gestured for us to go with him.
“Work is my life,” she said harshly, starting to walk.
We entered into an enormous room formed by walls made of tapestries with
tocapu
designs which rippled as if a light breeze blew through the place. The flames of the oil lamps wavered, and so did the dark gray hair of the four old Yatiri, two women and two men—both with mustaches—who were waiting for us, comfortably sitting in impressive gold chairs. At a considerable distance, they had placed six very humble wooden stools for us. Our guide motioned for us to sit, and, bowing his head to the elders, disappeared.
They were the Capacas, the governors of the Yatiri, heirs of the priest-astronomers who had ruled Tiwanaku, and they were looking at us with such indifference that it almost seemed as if we weren’t there. Didn’t it impress them to see six strangely dressed white people who had suddenly appeared in their city? And, incidentally, what was that city called? Taipikala-Two? And why didn’t they have cone-shaped heads like their ancestors? Didn’t they practice occipital frontal deformation anymore? What a disappointment!
I saw Marta and Efraín exchange looks, coming to an agreement as to who was going to begin the conversation, but before they could decide, a fifth Yatiri figure made an appearance in the scene, stepping suddenly from behind the hangings behind the Capacas. He was a young man, barely twenty years old, who came in at a run and tried, without much success, to stop cold and to not fall flat on his face at the feet of the elders; with much effort, he managed to keep his balance, after wobbling for a minute. We saw him murmur a few words with his head bowed—he was dressed in a red
unku
with a white sash, and he wore a red band on his forehead—and then remain still in that pose while the Capacas deliberated. At last they seemed to consent to whatever the young man was asking them, and he stood; then, positioning himself to one side, he addressed us loudly to make himself heard despite the distance:
“My name is Arukutipa and I am a ladino Indian, and I’m at your service so that you may understand with our principal Capacas.”
I froze. What was that kid doing speaking an old Spanish, with a closed and imperfect
intonation? And besides, why was he calling himself names? But Marta, quick as lightning, leaned forward, calling us to counsel, and launched into a quick explanation:
“This boy’s name, Arukutipa, means ‘the translator,’ or ‘he who has a way with words,’ in Aymara, and he claims to be a
ladino
Indian, which, in sixteenth century colonial America, is what they called the indigenous people who knew Latin or ‘Romance,’ meaning those who spoke Spanish. So the Yatiri are providing us with an interpreter so they can communicate with us. They still have the Spanish they learned before fleeing to the jungle!”
“But, then,” Efraín pointed out, surprised, “they don’t imagine that we could know their language.”
“Wait, I’m going to surprise them,” Marta said, with an intelligent smile, and turned to the Capacas and exclaimed: “
Nayax Aymara parlt’awa
.”
The elders didn’t move a muscle on their faces, they remained expressionless; only the young Aruku-whatever turned to look at the Capacas with a surprised expression. There was no exchange of words, they didn’t dialogue, yet Aruku-whatever turned back to us and spoke again in the name of the elders:
“The principal Capacas say that Your Mercies are lucid, wise, and very lettered persons, but that, as you must obtain taking a clean path and without great disputes, it is good that the words be Spanish of Castile and that evil and hurt not grow from the said words.”
“But, but… What the hell did he say?” Marc, who had turned redder than normal and who looked like a pot about to let out a burst of steam, asked indignantly. “What damned language is he speaking?”
“He’s speaking Spanish, I reassured him. “The Spanish that the Indians of Peru spoke in the sixteenth century.”
“They don’t want us to use Aymara,” Efraín said, hurt. “Why?”
“You heard him,” consoled Gertrude, who, despite being quieter than normal, had a gleam in her eyes that betrayed the intensity of the emotions that rushed inside her. “They don’t want a mess. They don’t want problems with the language. They prefer for us to understand each other in Spanish.”
“Of course, since their language doesn’t change, they think others don’t either!” Marc exclaimed indignantly. “Well, I don’t understand what that kid says! To me, he might as well be speaking Chinese.”