Following the Sun (30 page)

“Were you not afraid there?” Magda asked. “It sounds dangerous.”

“I was,” said Billy. “I was terrified all the time, but excited. We met a man named Valencio in the upper reaches of the Orinoco, I think it was, in Venezuela anyway. Valencio knew some Indians who promised to give Charlie a sacred powder that would cause the world to fall apart, disintegrate totally. Charlie of course, being Charlie, had to have some, and so we spent a week motoring up to some village in a narrow canoe, and all the people, naked people, came rushing out when we got there and they rubbed my skin and felt my body, and the old women squeezed my breasts and said approving words.” And here she grabbed her breasts like fruits (to the approval of Peter, I noticed). “But Charlie, all he could do was make Valencio translate and ask for some of this powder that takes the world apart. And do you know what the translation was for the name of this stuff, do you know what it's called?”

She looked over at me, smiling wickedly.

“What's it called?”

“Semen of the sun.”

“By God,” said Peter. “That's what the Egyptians used to say about some column they maintained somewhere, it was the solidified semen of Atum, the sun, left over from the time when he created the world, I believe. That's an interesting image.”

“I say, did this Charlie fellow eat some of this semen?” Patricia asked, sufficiently horrified.

“He did.”

“What happened?”

“Who knows,” Billy said. “He sat in a dark hut for three days, looking terrified. Then he got sick and the Indians gave him some black stuff, a drink, and he recovered in a few hours, and then he and the shaman and Valencio had a long talk. I was getting bored. The women took me to the stream to wash. They liked me. A white queen. They thought I was the queen of the north. When I asked Charlie what had happened he said he knew what it was like to be dead.”

Magda shook her head, as if to perish the thought. “This is most unpleasant. Tell us about your sun pilgrimage to lighten us up,” she said to me.

There was nothing to tell to this eclectic group. What could I say except that every day I would pedal along the rural roads of Europe, eating local dishes and drinking wine and contemplating the sun.

“I shall walk on air and contemplate the sun,” Robert repeated drunkenly.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“Don't know.”

“One of your Cynics, I daresay,” said Peter. “Who was it who told Alcibiades to step aside so as not to stand between him and the light of the sun?”

“That would be Diogenes,” Magda said. “And it was Alexander he told to step aside, I think. But how about some music, Peter? Let's listen to some music. We're getting too glum here.”

“Let's listen to Bach and get lost in the fugue,” Patricia said.

“And travel into space …,” Billy said airily, throwing out her arms.

Peter and Magda glanced over at her quickly, unsure of her drift, and then Peter rose from the table and went over to the stereo, and began rummaging through records.

“Put on the Goldberg Variations,” Magda said.

Billy rolled her eyes at me and I winked. We were used to younger music.

Peter agreed and rummaged some more.

“Ready?” he asked. He carefully placed the needle on the record.

What sounded out was not Bach but the chanting of pygmies from the Ituri Forest, accompanied by the drumming of their bark hammers. Everyone feigned outrage, and Robert began laughing approvingly. Then his laughter grew, and soon he was coughing and sputtering and pounding his chest.

“He's had enough, I think,” said Patricia. “We must put him to bed.”

“My Charlie knows of a plant concoction that will sober up a drunk man in ten minutes,” Billy said.

“Get some for Robert,” said Patricia.

“Don't need,” said Robert. “… can walk on air.” He began laughing apoplectically again.

All this talk about Peru left me wondering about the last of the great solar kingdoms.

In 1513, when the Spanish arrived in Peru, the Inca had established a vast solar kingdom stretching from Ecuador south to northern Chile. Ruling over this kingdom was the Son of the Sun, the supreme ruler, Intip Cori. According to their legends, the father sun sent the first Inca out with his sister and wife to establish a city wherever a golden wand that the Inca carried should sink into the earth. This place happened to be Cuzco, a strategically located city at the head of a gently sloping valley, 11,000 feet above the sea. Here the sun king, the Sapa Inca, built a vast stone complex of palaces and temples, shrines, and museums of power, all interspersed with wide plazas and buildings devoted to learning and science. The whole was dominated by a great fortress, but the main building was the Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun. It was the chief temple of the Sapa Inca and the royal seat of the Son of the Sun. Surrounding it, as in the heavens, were lesser structures dedicated to the moon, to Venus, to stars and rainbows and lightning. The doors of the main temple were sheathed in gold, and on the western wall there was a rayed sun disk with a jewel-studded plaque arranged so that the rays of the sunrise would strike it and flood the interior of the temple with a bright reflected light.

In the tightly controlled Inca hierarchy, the solar king was a direct descendant of the sun itself. In order to maintain his pure blood line he took his full sister as his chief wife, Qoya. He also maintained a vast harem of Chosen Women, selected at intervals by officials who were sent throughout the kingdom to find the most beautiful girl children. These were sent to live in an enclosed, luxurious harem where they were favored and pampered, but doomed. A few of them would be sacrificed to the sun god on special occasions, such as a victory, or a coronation of a new Sapa Inca. In exchange, they were assured a blissful afterlife. And, indeed, archeologists excavating the cemeteries near the city of Pachacamac found the mummies of several girls who had been richly attired before burial but had been ritually strangled.

The other women lived either as concubines to the Sapa Inca or were given as prizes and awards to favorite nobles or successful soldiers. A few were selected to serve as the equivalent of Vestal Virgins, or Virgins of the Sun as they were known. These, like the Vestal Virgins, tended a sacred fire, the sun's holy fire, attended to religious ceremonies, and wove the splendid vicuña robes for his majesty. Others in the harem provided the great lord with many children. These “Children of the Sun” wore distinctive headdresses and large ear lobe plugs.

Every morning in Cuzco, carved aromatic woods were set on fire by priests, and everyday, as Inti, the sun, began his descent into the underworld, a chestnut-colored llama was sacrificed to him. Just before the summer solstice the people fasted for three days and no fires were lit, then, on the longest day, crowds gathered in the central plaza dressed in finery made of feathers and gold and silver. The Sapa Inca appeared before them and poured a libation to the sun from a golden vase and led a procession of the Children of the Sun to the Coricancha temple, where they made public sacrifices of flowers, grains, and llamas, and occasionally a Virgin of the Sun. At the height of the festival, a burnished concave mirror of bronze was held in such a way as to catch the god's rays, and the light was sent to kindle a ball of bunched cotton. This fire was turned over to the Virgins of the Sun and was used throughout the year to make burnt offerings.

If, on one of the solstice festivals, clouds covered the god's face, the sacred fire had to be ignited by friction, and there would be much anxiety and concern among the priests and nobles for the coming year. The same held true if the Virgins of the Sun allowed the fire to go out at any time during the year.

The weather on the day of the summer solstice in Cuzco, in the Julian calendar year of 1531, is not recorded. Nor is it known if the sacred fire of the sun, so carefully tended by the Virgins, was accidentally extinguished in that year. But if the Sapa Inca and his priests and nobles and their deep, legendary history has any merit, the day of the solstice in 1531 was cloudy.

In that same year, on the coast north of Cuzco, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro landed with his contingent of horses and men and began moving towards Cuzco.

On November 16th, hearing that the current Sapa Inca, Atahualpa, was decamped near the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca, Pizarro moved a force of 168 soldiers, cannons, and horses toward the city. As they approached, the Spanish could see the encampment of the Indians, and one wonders if they did not think at this time that they had undertaken a deadly folly. There, spread over the surrounding hills, was a vast tent city of some 80,000 Indian warriors and nobles. Undaunted, Pizarro ordered the men into the main square of Cajamarca and prepared for battle. He split the cavalry and sent the horses to either side of the plaza and then hid his men around the walls.

That night they could see the campfires of the Indian soldiers shining like a clustered galaxy across the hills. The next morning a messenger came from Atahualpa and Pizarro sent him back, inviting Atahualpa to come into the city. He would be received as a friend, Pizarro indicated, and no insult or harm would come to him.

Around noon the Indians began moving toward the city. All afternoon they marched forward and finally the Spanish could see Atahualpa himself. Thousands of Indians in multicolored robes came ahead of him sweeping the ground clean of every stick and leaf. Behind them came squadrons of dancers and singers, and behind them, warriors armed with shining metal plates that caught the afternoon sun. Then, finally, in their midst appeared the Sapa Inca himself. He was borne on a high litter of many colored parrot feathers, held aloft by ornate timbers sheathed with silver, and carried by eighty lords in blue livery. He wore a golden crown and a huge necklace of emeralds and sat upon a saddle cushion fixed on the litter. Behind him was the company of warriors, an immense horde filing into the square.

So great were the numbers of warriors, and so vast the approach, that some of the brave conquistadors wetted themselves in fear. Pizarro held firm, and when Atahualpa was set down in the center of the plaza he sent out a priest to deliver the word of God and demand that the Sapa Inca subject himself to the law of Jesus Christ. The priest proclaimed that his power rose from a book, the Bible, and Atahualpa asked to hold it, but he did not know how to open it. So the priest stretched his hand to show him and the Sapa Inca struck his arm. Then he opened the book, looked at it, and threw it down in disgust. This enraged the Christian man of God, who called for revenge.

At that moment the signal trumpets of the Spanish sounded. Horses fitted out with noisy rattles rushed into the square, cannons began firing on the Indians, and Spanish soldiers emerged from hiding and began slashing their way toward the litter of Atahualpa, killing the unarmed Indians as they approached. For an hour they attempted to get near the great leader, but whenever the litter bearers were killed, others would rush in to take their place. Finally, horsemen charged through the crowd, tipped up the litter, and dumped Atahualpa on the ground. Pizarro took him prisoner and held him for eight months, demanding what amounted to the largest ransom in history. The ransom was delivered—a cube of gold twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet wide, and eight feet high. Once he had the gold, Pizarro reneged on his promise and ordered Atahualpa killed.

So ended the kingdom of the sun.

The next day was Sunday and Billy and I went down to Hyde Park to hear the atheists and neo-Nazis give their speeches. She had the bad habit of heckling people and misbehaving in public, but in Hyde Park on Sunday, almost anything is permissible and, as in New York, hardly anyone noticed her eccentricities. We walked around arm in arm, listening to people's speeches and remembering Sunday afternoons in Central Park and the spring sun and the little crowds of celebrants who would collect there to show themselves off and walk their children and dogs. It was a sunny day (or at least a rare sunny afternoon) in Hyde Park and the speakers and the crowds were all out and about. The sun and a spate of fine weather have a universal and seemingly timeless effect on the human psyche, especially in northern climates. In fact it appears to have an effect on all species. Turtles and snakes and alligators must bask to stay alive, lemurs gather at dawn to warm themselves, and my two cats have an uncanny ability to find the best spot in the sun anywhere on the property at any time of year.

On one corner at Hyde Park we came upon an old man playing a violin, which he held between his knees and to which he had attached a sort of megaphone to amplify the sound. Then we passed a man explaining that Hitler wasn't so bad, and then another preaching anarchism, and another preaching baptism, and a fourth communism, and then we saw a little Irishman doing acrobatic tricks for no one in particular, and then finally we came to an angular, apparently rational gentleman wearing a green sport coat, who was a member of the Flat Earth Society.

“Where does the sun go at night?” Billy wanted to know.

“Into the sea, of course.”

“But how does it get over to the other side?” Billy asked.

“It's sea under the earth. The earth is an island.”

“The sun can swim?” Billy asked. “Like a fish?”

“You might say that. But it floats over in point of fact.”

“Fishy story,” she said.

Then he launched into it.

“I can see you're one of those ones who's been duped by the great lie of 1613. You no doubt buy the myth that the planet must be orbiting its own sun and therefore must be moving at least with a critical orbital velocity, but as I will explain, if you would be so polite as to refrain from your decidedly insulting fish comments, the earth, you see, is flat. This, we know, is the minority opinion, the followers of lies of Galileo being the majority, and we gladly accept our burden if, in the end, that acceptance means ridding the world of the foul half-truths spread by Galileo.…”