Alfred Döblin’s AMAZONAS Trilogy Part 1

 VOLUME 1: JOURNEY TO THE LAND WITHOUT DEATH

Translation © C D Godwin 2018

Part One: On the Amazon

Departure of the Women People   ≈  Three weird strangers   ≈  Refugees from the western mountains   ≈ Southward   ≈ Caught   ≈ Inti Cussi the queen   ≈ In the hut   ≈ New moon   ≈ Hear, circling condors, this avowal of my guilt

 

Departure of the Women People

The old woman woke up to the udu’s call in the forest: tru tru, udu udu. She went from hut to hut. Women came out, thirty women and grown girls. The old woman stayed by the clan house. They went down from the mound into the forest in single file, one behind the other, leaving plenty of space between them. The forest began to lighten, an early mist was rising. From its tree the udu kept calling: tru tru, udu udu. The path made a bend, a rock was called ‘grass’. Then they came to the little watercourse. They had eaten nothing, drunk nothing, were unpainted, without ornament. They wore only hipstring and loincloth. It was damp underfoot, dew lay. But on their shoulders they wore no matting, so as not to burden their menfolk away on the warpath. They tried not to shiver, so that their men would not tremble. The vegetation along the trickling water separated them, nobody spoke. They had walked slowly, so as not to tire their men. They stood in dark water among the reeds.

Why did they not speak, why did they not call, why creep so furtively out of the village? Each held in her hand a strip of silvery bast. None looked at the others, they crouched low in the reeds. And each whispered into her little strip of bast, some closed their eyes, some smiled, each spoke a name, the name of a man she’d had something with apart from husband or favourite. She tied a knot around her infidelity, locked it up inside. She crumpled the bast in her hand, parted the reeds in front of her. From thirty hands the knots flew into the little river. Now it was done, they had made their men easier. Silently they walked back through the reeds, around the rock, one behind the other.

The village was called Toadhole. As the sun rose higher, women roasted manioc outside the huts and the clan house, others toiled in the gardens, some climbed down to the river with nets. When the old woman at the great fireplace in front of the maloca, the clan house, looked around for a young woman who had been grating meal into a pot with water, she was gone, and the children said she had run into the house. The old woman found her behind the house, where the forest began. She vomited there and ran away. The old woman caught her: “Why are you hiding?” Because the young woman was sick, a medicine man who had stayed behind in the village was summoned. She was taken to a little hut, somewhat secluded. They all talked about the sick woman: she was newly married. Next day she was hot. The sorcerer took his rattle and strutted around her. In the village they talked about the sick woman, dared not say what they thought. When another woman and a child fell ill before evening, there was great fear. Next morning the medicine man fetched an even older sorcerer from the nearest village. They told everyone to rub ochre on their bodies for protection, then they began to investigate who in the village had done something bad. They pointed to two old women, but no one in the village believed it. Still none dared say what they feared.

During the third night a loud wailing arose. Shrieks came from the clan house, they came running from the huts with blazing torches. A woman in the clan house had dreamed that her man had returned, there was a spear in his chest, the spear wasn’t in deep, he couldn’t pull it out, he asked for a drink. As the woman whimpered, another woke up in her hammock. They heard knocking on the wall. Now they knew their men were lying out there unburied and had come to fetch their things. They had been gone five time ten suns. Wailing spread through the village. Parrots flew up from roofs and squawked. In the grey dawn a boat with four women came from nearby, at once turned back in fear, their men too were away at war, five times ten suns, and had sent no sign. They drummed the news into the surrounding country.

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The river by the village was called Yari-yari. Its waters emptied into the Rio Negro, which carried them past hills, sandy plains, forests to the mighty Amazon. Mists swathed hill, forest and plain.

Women squatted beneath mat awnings. The seeds of the urucu bush were red and yellow, they grated them with palm oil, colour dissolved from the seeds, they scraped it from their hands into the bowl. They fetched cooking pots from the fireplace, scraped soot into the bowl. All the while they talked. A woman suckled her child, an older woman spurted milk from her breast into the mouth of a protesting baby monkey, another oiled her baby’s hair. The women said: “Why don’t the men come back. We’ve done nothing to drive them away. We must dance to bring them back.” The nursing mother let tears trickle down her little face. They slapped her: “Why are you crying? Didn’t we wail enough in the night? We’ll upset the men.” So the woman laughed.

Beside the water lay a boat that the men had left half finished. It rested on two wooden runners. They fetched palm leaves, in the afternoon burnt it away from the inside, fetched palm leaves, burnt it from the outside. They did this so that their men could travel. In the evening a thunderstorm broke. The old women kept the manioc mash until everyone was back from fishing, grilled the fish. Then there was loud laughter, children stayed by the fire in front of the clan house, young women and grown girls disappeared into the huts. They painted themselves a beautiful black with soot and red with urucu, they oiled their hair, the almond eyes of the young ones glinted with pleasure, they hung necklaces of black seeds around their necks, tied threads of red cotton on arm and calf.

Then one of them leapt from her hut, she was the first, she swung the dance-rattle and whooped, she wore a net shawl over her shoulders, a little red parrot sat on her head. The others ran out, they looked beautiful and happy. They formed a line one behind the other, arms crossed at the breast, swayed left, swayed right, they sang a dancing song, filed past the clan house. The children and old women stood up.

Two lines in the dirt – it was a river, the young women leapt along the bank, they wanted to cross, they were the men. One rowed on the river, his back covered in palm leaves – the river spirit. They bowed down to him, he let them cross. They greeted the old women and the others. Then they faced each other, two by two, heads lowered, hands covering their eyes, man and wife, and wept greetings.

The dance ended, darkness fell. They laughed and ate, radiant in the firelight.

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Gallinules honked in the forest, cicadas chirped, monkey-cries fell silent, toads set up their croaking. It was night, starlight hung over forest, plain, rivers.

In the dark an arrow flew close to the fire. It planted itself quivering in the dirt. Nothing moved in the village. Two longboats lay in the reeds, people crept crouching up the slope, they croaked like toads, waited for daybreak. Now the stars went out one by one. They ran, uttered warcries like the raging of howler monkeys. As women and children screamed and tried to flee, the raiders set fire to the clan house. By the light of the flames they separated old women from the younger and the children. They threw spears after the old women. The young women and children were herded together.

The village burned, drums sounded from the next village, the fire had been seen. The raiders, Maku, painted black with red stripes from ear to ear, armed with clubs, spears, bows and arrows, beat their prizes, drove them down to the boats. Into the boats climbed all the young women and girls, still in yesterday’s festive markings. The boat they had burned out for their men came with them. Up above the village smoked. They were carried away into the dripping forest.

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Among the Duck people, not far off on the Vaupes river, the headman’s wife was Toeza. It was a large village close by the water. In this village, women were strong. They did not yearn for their men. Some women could throw spears and shoot arrows. But women were excluded from counsel and were never taken on campaign. The men left them just one old boat for fishing. But the women knew how to make dugouts, they paddled across the water to islands and lakes. Toeza wore many threads at her throat, on arms and legs. Her husband had two other wives, she was dominant. She went hunting in the forest. By the fire she dismembered the deer she had killed, skewered pieces to grill, and said: “We catch what we can. We eat what we like. The work is hard, but easier than when the men are here. We can rest whenever we want. And the children thrive too.” An older woman came, took her child from the hip-sling and placed it near the fire, saying: “We bend our backs in the gardens. No man ever helps. When we’re young it’s easy. But us old ones.” The children at the fire giggled and pointed. Everyone ate. The old woman told a story:

“A young girl married a rich man. Everyone congratulated her and brought presents. Her parents pretended to weep. After the feast she followed him across the little lake. He set her to work in the fields, cutting and weeding. When she finished she had to prepare mash, bake flatbread. There was no firewood. He sent her into the forest. It was the rainy season, she didn’t find much, the river had carried it all away. The day was ending, she didn’t have enough. Back home her husband scolded her.

“Next morning she rose, had to go deep into the forest, the howlers pitied her, broke kindling. She went home, her husband was still not satisfied, she’d taken so long. Next day she went even earlier into the forest, the monkeys sat among cocoa-pods, threw some down to her, she refreshed herself, gathered firewood, the monkeys helped. Then she went home, her husband was still angry, she was out of breath, it displeased him. And when the firewood was used up and she had to go back into the forest she wept: ‘Oh why did I marry a rich man, when all he does is set me to work? When I rest I’m pretty, but then I must go into the forest. When I bring firewood I’m ugly, he doesn’t look at me.’

“She ran around the lake to her mother. ‘Why did you marry me to a rich man, when all he ever does is force me to work? Better you had given me to a howler monkey. They threw cocoa-pods down and broke twigs for me.’ The mother was afraid her daughter would go to the howler monkeys.

“The girl had a brother. The mother summoned him. He broke one of the Sun’s legs. So the Sun moved slower. The day lasted longer. The young woman managed to gather enough wood, her husband was satisfied.”

The women ate, glanced at the sun, looked at one another, said nothing. One told the old woman: “Eat now. What’s all this about your mother? You’re no longer young yourself.”

Where the rapids flow between rocky banks, there the black jaguar has his cave. Walyarina is his name. He, they say, is the source of the water’s dull roaring. Nearby was the women’s bathing place. Toeza cried out: “The men are away. Why did they leave with bow and arrow, shield and blowpipe and with the best canoes? They told nobody. They think our little sons are cleverer than us. What will they do? Catch men and women to slave for them. They attack men in the forest and steal their women and children. They will grow richer and we shall toil harder than ever. Better for us to take up spears and confront them when they come home.” The women splashed around in the water. Toeza uprooted a lily and threw it towards the waterfall: “The black jaguar, my bridegroom, lives there.”

With ten young women she made herself up, took weapons, went hunting again. She led them from the north to the waterfall where the forest growth was stunted. They stood before the jaguar’s cave above the rapids, the others ran into the trees when the black jaguar strolled out. He blew yellow foam. Toeza laid her weapons on the rock and crouched beside the beast; it slavered and stroked its whiskers and purred. Slowly she settled beside him. Then he stretched and looked straight ahead. Later Toeza returned with her weapons. The women swore to keep the secret. Toeza confided to them: “Walyarina, the black jaguar, is my lover. Walyarina is our watchword.” Every day they went to the waterfall, the women ate, hunted in the forest, and waited for Toeza to emerge from the jaguar’s cave.

The men returned from war, not all of them, they were unhappy. They brought no spoils. For three days they kept to the men’s lodge. They ordered the women to fish, tend the gardens and prepare meals for them. But Toeza continued to hunt, she had hidden spears, bows and arrows in the forest. When the chief appeared in his hut the other two wives said: “Toeza’s in the forest.” The chief said nothing. He sent a young man out. He reported: “They’re sitting by the waterfall, guzzling.” Next day the youth said: “They summon the black jaguar, Walyarina.”

The chief waited for dusk, when all the women were back in the village. He watched Toeza to see if she ate, and when she ate nothing asked her why not. She said she had eaten in the forest. “And cooked as well?” She said: “Yes.” And as he lay in his hammock in the gloom he called her, but she would not come, he dragged her by the hair and was stronger than her, she pressed her hands to her face and wept.

But very early, while everyone slept, the chief slipped into the forest with ten men, upriver to the falls. He had told Toeza he would go hunting, she was to gather cassava roots for bread. At the waterfall the men dropped to the ground, the youth called out “Walyarina” just as he had heard. The black jaguar was sleeping, it took many calls before he came out of the cave, looked around, and when the youth again called “Walyarina” he raised his head and exposed his chest. The chief’s spear caught him in the throat, the jaguar tumbled into the falls, they shot arrows after him and hauled him from the water. They loaded him onto branches and dragged him to the village, his head dangled and dripped blood and foam.

At noon the women filed back and saw him lying there. The chief said: “We’ll have a hunting feast, bake lots of bread and prepare strong beer.” Toeza ate with him, she could not speak for grief. The women followed her into the forest. “The men have dealt us a cruel injury. They have killed Walyarina. We must have revenge, today, before they can attack us in the night.” The men hunted all afternoon, brought back game and fowl, the women baked and roasted. Then the men demanded pavari beer to drink. Humbly each wife presented a gourd to her man. They had put cassava poison in the beer. The men drank. And with the poison in their bellies they grew pale and anxious, they looked at one another, looked at the mat, looked up at the sky, looked at the women. The women asked: “Do you need something?” They groaned: “What did you put in the beer?” They called for the medicine man. His head too was slumped on his chest. The women hastened to empty the gourds behind the house. The men turned over on their mats, twitched and died.

Toeza danced with her women before the clan house. “The men are gone. Don’t grieve. No one shall ever beat us again.” They ran into the huts and brought out weapons. They loaded up with mats, cooking gear, food and trekked into the forest, children alongside and at the hip. “Walyarina” was their war-cry. They called themselves the Women People. When they came to a village they fought the men and called the women to their side. They let them follow with their children.

When the neighbouring village drummed and received no reply from the village of the dead, boats came across. Vultures were feeding on corpses. After funeral ceremonies they set off in pursuit of the women. These concealed themselves in a dense thicket. The men outnumbered the women. They surrounded the thicket and threw spears. The women responded. Some women fell, some men fell. The men discussed firing the thicket.

But they had seen so many corpses in the village, their friends who had returned with them from the warpath. Now more men were lying here, and women over there. They said: “What good to us are women who kill their men? If they want to go into the forest, let them.”

So the Women People withdrew. They wandered through the forest, kept this side of the Yapura, came to the mighty river of the Amazons. They were subject to no man. And men feared them. From the men they stole even the black monkey pelt of the great spirit Yurupari and his voice, the trumpet.

They took men as consorts, tolerated their presence only as outsiders and slaves.

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Thus, in two places, ended that campaign conducted so stealthily along the trails, which had lasted five times ten suns.

And it was in truth a stealthy campaign, and the men who came together to pursue it had every reason to keep at a distance any they were unsure of. For it was the first attempt, later so often undertaken, to find the Land without Death.

In the forests, drums pounded endlessly.

There was a big drum called the Man, deep-toned, and a smaller called the Woman. They throbbed with beats short and long, deep- and high-toned, across lakes small and large, over swamps, rivers and streams, through forest and savannah. The drums lamented: “Take care! Great danger. None shall survive. Towards sunset the Great Spirit who holds up the earth made the mountains tremble. Wild beasts have attacked people. Whole tribes are perishing. Look at the sky: the Dog Star is approaching the moon. He will devour it.”

Thus the two drums lamented through the endless dark forest. And the dusky people ran out, paddled out onto lakes. There in the sky stood the evil star Yaouare, Jaguar, already close to the moon. And in the villages they gathered, waved sticks, yelled, beat on pots, drummed and cried to heaven: “O great father, o my great father, are you well? Are you well? O great father, o my great father, are you well? Are you well?”

Envoys came to chiefs, they were to assemble their warriors swiftly and in secret. And one day, without naming their goal, the men slipped away from the villages, men of the Tariana, Opaina, Carijona, Incuna, from the Vaupes river, Yapura and Caqueta. The call to arms ran thus: “Towards sunrise lies the Land without Death. There is a tree that provides all kinds of fruit, it is the father of all beasts and people. If you climb the tree it draws its branches together and lifts them up and anyone sitting there is borne higher and higher, above the mountain peaks, up into the sky. And there the ancestors dwell, the great spirits.” The men were away a long time on their quest for the Land without Death, five times ten suns.

Calm settled again over the people of the forests. The mound of Toadhole with its burned huts remained deserted. No one visited the mound where Toeza and the women had killed the men. Everyone avoided looking at the sky, so that the stars would not notice them. Sometimes in the forest, hunting for honey, a man would peer between branches to see if perhaps a strange bird would show itself, from that distant land they had sought in vain. And women sang to their children: “Far away towards the sunrise is a huge water. In it there’s a land where people live forever and never grow old. No one does bad things. In this land a tree grows that bears fruit of all kinds, the father of beasts and people. No one has to work.”

Three weird strangers

The sun burns hot on the mountains to the west. Their mass is riven by gorges. Rivers gouge their way through the gorges.

Such colossal mountains. Their peaks are skittles, spearpoints. They are ice-clad, some open up and from their craters fire spills from the Earth’s insides.

Waters tumble from the peaks down the mountain flanks. The waters know their way. They fall from the sky to the icy peaks down into gorges. They fill the gorges and gnaw them away. They invade side valleys. From springs and streams, rivers grow.

Lauricocha, Quiquiacocha are the names of source lakes. The Marañon plunges from its lake headlong into an abyss. Its water strikes like a chisel. The valley walls are bare, heights glow like a furnace. It follows the valley from south to north. Towards the east high passes lead out of this land, beyond the river’s reach. Furious winds howl from the east over the passes. They snatch birds that fly up from below, snipe, ibis, heron, the wind whirls them up, dashes them to the ground, drives them with hail and snow against cliffs down into the lakes. The river must break through the mountains. It finds the gate. Pongo de Mansariche is the gate, here it will go through, leave the mountains behind. It shoots narrowed through the gate and ahead lies open land. The land sinks from the craggy west where ice-crowns glow and volcanoes flaunt their plumes, eastward to the one immense plain. The river’s own plain.

And like a monster with flowing mane the Amazon leaps from the mountains down into its plain. From left and right, as if they had awaited its coming, waters are drawn to merge with its stream. Its coming affects vast tracts. The tributaries turn, follow entranced and sink themselves into its water, where they disappear.

The Amazon has broken through the mountains and carries them along. What once hemmed it in, what it seized and ground to fragments, now it hoards before it and below as spoil, mud and silt, spreads it over the plain as it surges on. Once the plain was a broad gulf, the sea filled it, the river drives back the sea and with the waters brought by a hundred streams from left and right becomes a flowing freshwater sea.

Those rivers are white and black. Amazon itself is white.

A hundred meters deep it flows; twice that at start and end.

When at last it leaves the plain behind it is strong enough to drive ships back, miles out to sea. It carries away tree trunks. It colours the sea white.

The hot sun hangs over this land. Primeval forest spreads across the plain, animals teem. Palms, bamboo, rubber trees, ferns, vines, eucalyptus shoot up. Swamps, forest canopies along the river, floating mangroves.

Bright hummingbirds flash across the water. Crocodiles drift lazily with the current. The sloth complains from the trees. The anaconda goes hunting for monkeys.

And in the pulsing waters a thousand kinds of fish are born and die.

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To the northwest, on clustered hills and mountain chains deep in the forest, and lower down around the Yapura and the Vaupes, lived the tribes of the Duck people, Jaguar people, higher towards the source there were the Armadillo people. They had fixed settlements. Their dwellings on the hills were of timber, stood on tall piles, were roofed with palm leaves, they had communal houses where several families lived, and smaller huts. The chief’s house was sheathed in bark and decorated with pictures. Outside the mask house stood the tribal spirit carved from wood, coloured black, yellow and red and covered with secret lines that kenned the good and evil spirits of swamp and forest. It was the rainy season.

The old net was torn, they had woven a new net, the family was at peace, they were at peace with their neighbours, it was a good net, it would see lots of fish, they would approach and not be afraid. The days were hot, nothing of note was happening in forest or village, they could try out the net. The man, his brother, a friend and his wife determined the day. Then the rains came earlier than usual, they waited with the new net. They went down to fish in the lake beyond the fence. As they reached the shore a swarm of wild bees came and settled on a tree on the wooded bank. Two took up paddles and beat the still water, the third stood tall on the seat and steered. Hills glided past, the banks rose high, they travelled a long way, turned into a narrow channel, then came to a lake, they could hear monkeys, these lived on an island in the lake, they had swum across on driftwood. The people glided into a little cove, the water was muddy from rain, they could see no fish. At the forest edge piles had been rammed into the lake and covered with bamboo leaves, they guided the boat through. Then they ran into the forest and bent down, timbo grew here, they broke off long stems, made a big heap and beat the stems with branches until they were soft. Thick dark juice oozed out, they waded into the lake and swirled the stems around. And as they swirled, one man stood in the boat and stirred the water with a paddle. The water grew blacker and blacker, the poisonous sap spread, the fish were paralysed.

No sound came from the forest. Then one of the men in the lake grabbed the other by the arm and held him fast. He stared into the trees. The man in the boat stared into the trees. A distant crackle, something was moving. In an instant the two men were hidden in the reeds, the man in the boat dipped his paddle twice and vanished with a single leap.

The crackling, rustling came nearer, stopped, silence reigned, the crackling and rustling came out of the forest towards the lake. A call, a human voice, another.

And as the three men in the dense reeds, feet in water, stood side by side unmoving, they saw, stepping from the forest into the clearing, figures that froze them to the spot. They had the appearance of men, but the bodies, legs and arms were draped in colourful cloth, the faces and hands were white as fishscales, and dark hair hung from the cheeks and chin of the biggest. Each wore a belt from which hung a slender stick, each had a club peeping over his shoulder. What the three ghastly figures who emerged from the forest were saying, the men in the reeds could not understand. These were unknown spirits. The strangers threw themselves down, laid their thin sticks aside, rasped, growled, snarled, acted like humans who were tired out. Then the one with the black beard stood up, another followed, they stepped down through scrub to the lakeside, the water drew them. They stood side by side, knelt, lay on their bellies and – the fishermen in the reeds still transfixed with fear – began to drink the lake water, slurping as if they were dying of thirst. They dare to drink poisoned water, they can drink poisoned water, maybe they’re looking out for the fish, want to render the sap harmless.

Now the two at the lakeside jumped back, spat in the water, stood up, groaned, retched, stumbled, tried to run away. But they were caught fast. Before they reached the nearest bushes they twisted around, writhed on the ground. There they lay, motionless in their bright clothing, the one with the beard face down, the other on his side. As the third stranger ran down, the fishermen rose as quietly as they could from the reeds. One after another they hurtled into the boat. The stranger on the bank saw phantoms: dark people paddling just offshore, through the palisade and away.

In the village there was alarm, the chief came, they described the place. Thirty warriors seized weapons and climbed into boats, the medicine man had to come along. At the lake, below the bushes, Alonzo sat on sand between the two lifeless bodies and cried so loud they could hear him from the channel. His knee breeches were split, he had loosened his breastplate, his arms were bleeding, his right cheek was a flaming sore, he cried and laughed, implored Our Lady of Guadalupe, drew his sword. Then he sobbed into the cavity of his breastplate and called to his mother in Biscay. Boats with armed natives were approaching. He stood, shook himself, buckled his armour, swore at them. Though unsteady on his feet he dragged himself to the edge of the dark water, waved his arms, brandished his sword, his eyes rolled. The boats halted at the palisade, the chief’s boat pushed through, on the black surface a mass of paralysed fish floated with red and white bellies, the boat ploughed through them, the men in the boat stood and readied spears for throwing. The creature on the shore was brightly clothed, white like a fish, the shape of a man, they were all much afraid, the medicine man was trembling.

Then Alonzo grew quiet, sat on the sand and rested his head. The men climbed ashore. The medicine man nudged the big bearded one, yes, he was flesh and bones, water dribbled from his mouth, poisonous sap. The chief and the medicine man conferred. They hauled them all into one boat, the young fellow offered no resistance.

Women and children thronged the village mound, they were forbidden to look at the strangers and were driven into the huts. They carried the three past the village to an old mask hut. There the medicine man treated them so that they yielded up the poison, and by next day were better. Then food was brought. They ate, drank, and slept a long time.

When they were restored to their senses they looked around for their weapons, found them on the floor and were puzzled. When they stepped from the hut, there among the trees was the village. Close by stood young painted warriors with shields, bows and arrows and spears. The Whites wore their rags and felt powerful. The bearded one nodded:

“Here’s the end of our song. We swore: to Hell with a green grave, a green grave! We’ll soon find out if a Carib’s belly makes a better grave.”

Alonzo stared straight ahead: “How they watch us. They won’t let us escape. First the brutes poison us, now they fatten us for a feast.”

“And what say you, Pedro?”

“We won’t be the first these animals have tried it on. They do it not out of hunger, but just because they are animals.”

Young Alonzo began to cry, he had a fever, he spoke of Odysseus of old who came to a witch, she turned his companions into swine. Pedro the bearded one stroked Alonzo’s swollen cheek: “You must chew grass and press it to your wound, then the fever will abate. Buck up, Alonzo. Better we’d never come down from Peru and were still in Spain. We’ll find no gold here. These brutes, look at them, how they paint themselves. For each of them we kill we earn a grace. Look at them. They knew we were coming from the west. What do they do? Poison the water.”

Alonzo: “Why did they save us?”

The bearded man glowered: “They want to eat us, you heard. By the Virgin’s grace we’ll escape their clutches. I’d like to return to our people and lead them back here. They’ll pay for that water. I command you: pray to St Michael and St James.”

They did so. Then they sang, the guards heard the words without understanding: “Armed with my virtue I find rest in battle, rocks are my bed, waking is my sleep.”

Neighbouring chiefs arrived. They inspected the strangers, their nature was unclear, they might be ghosts, perhaps departed ones since their skin was colourless, perhaps strange great sea fish. The warriors on guard must keep them away from the village. Unnoticed by the weird strangers, magical lines of raffia were laid outside their hut to prevent them from walking across to the village. To improve their mood and encourage them to leave, gifts were brought of bananas, manioc, dried fish, beer in gourds. The chief and the medicine man sought to explain through gestures that the dance was in honour of their departure, and that more presents would be brought.

The three bided their time for one night.

The villagers decided to hold the feast next day, no one knew what misfortune the three weird visitors might bring. They would take them to the water, put them in a boat and row them far away. Then they would see what direction they took, and who they were.

That evening when the fire was lit and the guards were drinking, the three Whites raised their fire-tubes and took aim from the darkness of the hut. They had already bundled up and shouldered the food. They shot to right and left of the camp fire, the noise was tremendous, two guards fell, the rest ran like the wind. A few breaths later a wild exodus began, away from the village downhill into the forest, with loud screams. Quite soon the village lay deadly quiet. The fire burned down.

The three Whites fired another round as a frightener. Then in the dark they climbed down to the river. The sky was clear, at first they had the light of the camp fire, then the moon, and always there were flies flickering above the path, gold-yellow and green, sunflies and moonflies. They marched through the night as far as they could. They even passed the lake where the fishermen had surprised them, by moonlight they overturned the rammed piles of the palisade, scattered the leaves. Big toads croaked. They kicked at them.

When the villagers sent scouts up the hill next morning they found it empty, the strangers were gone. The two guards lay in pools of blood by the cold fire beyond the houses. The villagers trudged back. No one dared move the two corpses. There was discussion of what to do. They were placed on branches, and as the families cowered indoors were carried down to the forest, buried side by side; stones were heaped on the graves as a warning. On the hill the medicine man struggled with ghosts for two hot midday hours. He leapt, whispered, swung his rattle.

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The trio, led by unflagging Pedro, came upon their captain north of the Yapura in the company of thirty Whites and as many native warriors. Young Alonzo died. They tried to persuade the little band to undertake retribution against the savage tribes of the region. The captain mocked them: had they thought to find the Land of Gold all by themselves? They turned towards the mountains. They meant to skirt the cursed flood plain with its swamps and snakes and crocodiles, and march north through mountain defiles.

So the troop marched and paddled its way back. They waded through rivers, no crocodile could be seen, but suddenly a swimmer would shriek horribly, heartrendingly, and was already under, and when they rowed to his aid and pulled him out, instead of a man they had a skeleton in their hands, little fishes clung to it, thousands more roiling the water snapping at meat. Blood stained the water red. What they pulled out, with its gaping grin and hands clutching an excavated breast, was a corpse.

They saw giant beetles like cockroaches fly past, occasionally one had a fat spider riding on its back, the frightened beetle flew to a plant, sat there, the spider kept hold, swelled, and now the beetle was an empty shell. No covering protected from swarms of mosquitoes. When they could they climbed ashore, buried themselves to the neck in sand and mud leaving only the head free. Fifty strong men had come down from the mountains, now just twenty limped back from the green hell.

When they came to the first hills along the Putumayo they rested. Each had a pack of cards and a relic at his breast. They took out the holy relic and kissed it. Then they lay up in the ruins of a post station of the former Inca empire until their wounds healed. They wandered with many others north to the coast. There a great army was being assembled, and ships built for the conquering of new lands.

St Michael and St James! Weapons my ornament. In battle I find repose. The rocks my bed. I know not sleep, only wakefulness.

Refugees from the western mountains

Rivers shrank in the middle of the year and then rose again for a short while, there came a time of cold rain and south winds, later there were thunderstorms that swelled the rivers anew, at year’s end they were at their lowest and began slowly to rise again. Almost every day brought rain and thunder, and by the middle of the year the rivers were at their highest.

There were days too of scorching sunshine, nights cool and clear. Often the sky was veiled in haze all day long, distant thunder could be heard but no rain fell. Now and again a tempest roared in from the east, the sky darkened, it became night, and a terrible storm broke. It was as if enemies had taken up position on all four sides of the world and were throwing heavy balls of stone, they exploded with a crash, and every throw was preceded by a fiery flash bright enough to ignite the treetops. Everything cowered silent and afraid. The croaking from the swamps ceased. The mirror of the waters was lashed by rain. Then the heavens closed again, rain hissed in darkness, toads tried out their voices, children stopped trembling and went to sleep.

Next morning the forest was filled with the tremendous shrieking of monkeys. They sat high in dense foliage in families, the black guariba, tails wrapped around a branch. The father laid his bushy body atop a strong branch. He clung to it with all fours, his body hung down at an angle. In this position he sang out rhythmically, females and young males responded, he trumpeted mightily: “Oh oh, ow, ah.” Females and young males answered in chorus: “Oh oh, ah, ha, ah.”

≈≈≈

Across the hills the big and little drum spoke: “Men are on the move from the direction of the sunset, they look like us, come from the cold mountains and wear cloaks and shirts, they are needy, let them be welcomed, they’ll soon leave.”

Drums asked: “Are they many?” Drums answered: “Three, five, eight, they have no weapons, some have died.”

A boat came up the narrow river, women in the garden screamed, young men had already heard the splash of paddles and came running downhill with spears. In the boat sat men of a dark olive complexion. The boat halted across the river from the village, the villagers waited for the chief, then paddled across to them. With the strangers was a local man who understood their language. He said: These are refugees from the mountains, they bring a message. And so they brought the boat across and led the strangers to the chief’s house.

They squatted on mats, drank, spoke little. The strangers were stocky, seemed troubled, each wore a short sleeveless shirt, over it a colourful cotton cloak, their faces were unpainted. Mussel shells ornamented the cloak of one of the strangers, and golden discs hung in his ears.

The strangers were allowed to snooze in hammocks through the midday heat. Then there was a meal of roasted fish and bananas. In the evening the strangers spoke. Their leader made himself understood.

“Beyond the rivers and hills and forests come big hills and mountains, and then the great mountain range. We live on the other side of those mountains, where the sun sinks into the sea, and we gaze towards the mountains to see the sun rise.”

The chief: “Have you watched the sun sink into the sea? You are not burned!”

The leader of the strangers: “It sinks far away, the sea is immensely big.”

The chief wanted to be sure: “So over there in the west is the sea, and you come from the mountains between the great forest and the sea?”

“That is so. There is our home.”

He lowered his head, the others lowered their heads. “There was our home. We are Quechua, which in our language means: people of knowledge. Our land is Tahuanti-suya. We were driven out. Our people are vanquished.”

No one spoke. The chief whispered to the man beside him, who nodded, and the others who overheard also nodded. But they kept silent and their expressions were not friendly.

The chief asked: “Your people are vanquished. How is it you are alive?”

Cuzumarra said: “We seek revenge.”

The fierce expressions of the villagers relaxed, but they remained thoughtful.

When Cuzumarra said that their enemies were men from a distant kingdom across the sea and that they were white like fish, the villagers were seized with great excitement. They recalled the three strangers who had appeared in the area some months ago, who had drunk sap-water and killed two guards with thunderbolts. They told of this and looked anxiously at Cuzumarra.

“The very same, they came to our coast by ship in their hundreds, they have big animals with them, four-legged, they sit on them taller than a man, they run very fast, much faster than the fastest runner, and tireless. To protect their chests the whiteskins wear armour of iron, many also have shirts of chain mail that no spear can penetrate, and under their shirts they carry little bones and pictures of their spirits that protect them.”

The chief was beside himself: “And they can summon thunder!”

“No, they cannot. They have tubes that they fill with sand and a ball. They can make the sand burn, then the ball kills. But they cannot summon thunder from the clouds.”

“But they put some in their tubes.”

“That is our ruin.”

The villagers whispered in horror. The chief asked again: “And where are your people?”

“They are vanquished. We are enslaved. They have killed countless of us with their tubes.”

The chief: “And your ancestors tolerate them on your land?”

Cuzumarra: “They frighten even our ancestors.”

The chief was uncomprehending. “And you have fled, you forsake your ancestors and your people, how can you live?”

But they did not want to talk more that day.

≈≈≈

The moon rose. Older villagers recalled terrible tales of the world’s destruction, they dared not look up at the Dog Star. In the huts women laughed, parrots settled on rooftops, a cool breeze blew.

When the strangers met the oldest chief next morning, he regarded them apprehensively. “You wander about, alien spirits can attack you, you don’t know them and don’t know how to handle them.” He summoned the medicine man, who gave them red pigment, feathers and little nuts for protection.

They continued their conversation that afternoon in the chief’s hut. Cuzumarra told his story again. Then he spoke of his people whom the Whites had defeated and were now exterminating. As he spoke, his expression stern and fixed, the chief regarded him attentively, leaned forward and placed a hand on his knee: “Cuzumarra, you will die soon.”

He was unmoved. “That is happy news to me. It tells me that many of my enemies shall die too.”

The chief nodded gravely, almost shocked. “Do not delay, Cuzumarra. You do wrong to leave your kin to their fate.”

“I shall receive their forgiveness when they know why I have waited so long. For we cannot take revenge all by ourselves. We must make preparations to ensure that it happens.” Again the chief nodded gravely.

“I want to tell you about our land behind the great mountains from which the rivers flow. Our land, Tahuanti-suya, is large and fertile, it extends across mountains and high valleys and along the sea coast. So many people live there they cannot be counted. They live on their land and do not wander about. There are no large rivers to drive them from their homes. The heat is not so great.”

The chief was astonished and whispered to the others: “We have never heard of this! We have heard of a Land without Death where nothing evil happens. It is said to lie towards the sunrise.”

“We live on the plains, in the mountains, along the coast and in cities across the great mountains, towards the sunset. Our greatest city is called Cuzco. It has many streets. The streets are paved with small stones that we carried there and tamped smooth. The houses are low. Families live in them. Everyone wears the same costume, you see it on my companions, men a brown woollen cape over their white shirt, women a long underskirt that they cover with a green wrap crossed at the breast and fixed with a pin. Many tribes live in our land, they all wear the same, but those called Canari wear a coronet of wood on their head so that people know they are Canari. Those called Colla wear a linen cap, the Yunca come to town with flutes and clappers and drums. Some of our tribes live along the fish-teeming coasts, on Lake Titicaca, on the high plains where fiery mountains smoke. Their leaders wear some mark of distinction, a silver plate at the breast, discs in the ears, sandals on the feet. And there are guardians at the ancient places who carry a great condor on their back or the skin of a puma on their head. All have their prescribed place in our city of Cuzco, when they attend to bring news or receive instructions and take part in ceremonies of worship.”

Now at the chief’s request the leader’s companions had to stand up, he asked permission to inspect them. One by one they showed the chief their clothes; they had thick long hair, deep black, their eyes were small and black, their expression did not change during the inspection, their faces were smooth. They sat. There was a long expectant silence.

Cuzumarra of the big ear discs spoke: “Our great city is Cuzco, which means Navel of the World. We had a great chief, the last emperor, his name was Huayna Capac. He sat in Cuzco in the Temple of the Sun, in the great hall on his throne of pure gold. His body was clad in a broad cloak of vicuña wool, his feet were protected by sandals, two gold plates hung in his ears, a broad red band circled his head five times and hung over his brow, at his belt hung a leather bag filled with coca leaves. But none of us ever saw Huayna Capac, he was our last chief, he left us before our lives began.”

Here the leader of the strangers had to break off, for the chief was staring at them, he made uneasy gestures but said nothing. He wanted to ask what this meant. As the first chief kept silent, after a while another said: “You spoke the name of your first chief. He is dead.” Cuzumarra nodded.

“Aren’t you afraid to speak the name of your dead first chief?”

Cuzumarra: “We are not afraid. We did everything we could to placate him, at all times he feels content to be with us.” They looked at him with big eyes, he should continue. “You shall see who he is. In the hall where he sits, a stone wall faces him. On it hangs a golden shield, this is the urei from which humans came, as we have been taught. Below it to the left hangs the silver disc of the moon, to the right the sun. That one I have seen myself, the golden sun with its mouth, eyes, nose and the rays which it casts. Above the golden shield the stars of the sky stretch away up to the roof, beneath the shield the great constellation of the Cross gleams. The Llama Train is there too, with its two guardians. Seven round eyes in the wall designate the highest deity. And along the wall in front of the king stand golden chairs where his mummified ancestors sit swaddled, adorned with costly jewels. All this did our last great chief see and understand. He was an Inca.

“Now I have said who our Inca was. Tumbez is a city on the coast, would that it had never been built! From there the murderers of our kinfolk came into our land. Pachacamac is a holy city, and Nazca, Paramunca. Roads were built all across the land, the roadbed firm so that people could walk and run and no rain could loosen it. Bridges crossed streams and rivers. In our land no man or woman or child had to worry about food or clothing or shelter. Everyone had two sets of clothes: one for work and one for festivals, everyone ate twice a day, and we prescribed what the people should eat and it was always there. Working times and rest times were regulated, the same for all, and when anyone came of age he received a house, a pair of llamas, a strip of good land. When he grew old or sick, he would be cared for. In return everyone had to work on certain days for a certain time in the Inca’s fields. We ensured that all were married, and tolerated no single adults. We detailed people to work in the weaving sheds or in the mines, and at the proper times changed them about. To preserve good order and supervision we had leaders and overseers for ten families, five times ten families, ten times ten families. They distributed feed for livestock, manure for the soil, seeds for sowing, took charge of the harvest and distributed it. The greatest chief took bread baked by virgins who had never set eyes on a man, and offered it to the highest spirits.”

The chiefs received this report with the greatest attentiveness and pleasure, they cast friendly looks at their guests and wanted them to see their benevolence, but although the report was so pleasing the guests kept their heads lowered, even Cuzumarra, whose voice as he spoke had grown ever softer.

“Well,” said the chief, “if your land was really so well organised and ordered, you did well. Peace must surely have prevailed.”

Cuzumarra whispered: “You see us here.”

“Then you must have become divided, Cuzumarra.”

“It is true. After the great emperor there were no more. He had two sons.”

“Ah!” The chief raised his hands, the others shook their heads. “You should have killed one of them.”

“Then the whiteskins arrived in their great ships and came ashore at our city of Tumbez. They killed the two sons, who were fighting one another.”

“Ah!” repeated the chief, “you became divided, and so evil spirits were able to meddle. How would the beasts of the forest let themselves be caught if they knew we were divided? We would find no honey in the trees. We would die.” All the chiefs nodded gravely.

Cuzumarra let his arms droop slack on his knees. Back bent, he sank into himself. “We always kept good order. That was much. And when our great emperor left our land for his other home, we lost our balance. Evil spirits came. Beware of them! Never talk with them, never come close to them, never placate them, bring them no gifts. All that is in vain. They want to live in your land, they want to possess your huts, make you their slaves, they want everything that you gather and hunt and fish.”

The chief smiled in disbelief. “As long as we are peaceable and our ancestors help us, that will not happen.”

“Tomorrow, learn how it went with us.”

≈≈≈

The strangers, whose skin was a dark yellow-green, had wooden flutes, they blew on them when they sat in the village and people left them alone. One sang a sad song:

“My mother bore me in rain, in mist, so that I would cry like the rain and vanish like the clouds. You grow in a cradle of grief, said my mother as she fed me. The rain, the storm have let me grow. When I seek friends I wander through the world and find misery. Oh cursed the day of my birth. Oh cursed the night when my mother conceived me. Cursed, forever cursed.”

That afternoon Cuzumarra described the last days. The chiefs all blamed him and his people for the calamity. Cuzumarra said: “I know you place all the blame on us. Now hear me to the end. The white devils who burst upon our land at Tumbez are long since dead.”

“Ah!” cried the chiefs in satisfaction.

“The white leaders, whom we trusted, murdered our princes, but then they murdered each other.”

“Ah!”

“Others came after them, always more. The lands beyond the great sea towards the sunset must have an inexhaustible supply of wicked, violent men. Their ships are bigger than any we had ever seen. They carry not just blowpipes that make thunder, they sit on big beasts, fast as the wind, that allow themselves to be steered and have an iron bit placed in their mouth.”

“And this beast, what is it called?” asked the chief, deeply impressed.

“They call it ‘horse’.”

The chief: “Who knows what its real name is? They would not betray its real name to you. Is this animal fierce?”

“It is gentle and lets itself be led. It goes to its stall like a llama.”

The chief nodded doubtfully. “We would like to know its name.”

Cuzumarra: “From the ships they bring big carts with wheels, these are gigantic thunder tubes. When they shoot from these, the walls of our houses collapse. They come to us to take the gold that grows in our mountains, and silver, that also grows in the mountains. We don’t know what they do with the gold. At first we thought they give it to their horses to eat, because the horses are always chewing on the bit in their mouth. Then we learned that the horses don’t even eat meat. And they send the gold on their ships back to their own land, where their emperor gathers it all up. We gave them all we had. In their search for gold and silver they plundered and ruined our palaces, and the temples where we worshipped the highest spirits, and the buildings of our leaders. Whole villages fled from them, then they ransacked and burnt the whole village, but the people were starving, so they hunted them and drove them into the mines to fetch gold and silver from the rocks. Most died. For in the mines there is no light and the air is noxious. They allow them no rest and force them to toil until they drop. The people fall ill and have bad food. White leaders with warriors and horses and thunder tubes came from the ships. They went into the land, burned cities, killed people who resisted and carried the rest off into slavery. They lack a human soul, but they desire everything that glints and beautifies. So our people on the coast had to slave for them and fish for pearls. Oh, how long ago was it that our parents lamented thus? We stayed quiet. We obeyed. For our empire was destroyed, our cities and villages in ruins, the people scattered, the whiteskins took the daughters from our houses and made them their wives. This was already so in our parents’ day, we have never known otherwise. But the shame they heaped on us, the burdens they laid on us, became unbearable. Honourable chiefs, you judge that we are guilty, that if we had remained peaceable the whiteskins would never have come and placed us under their yoke. And even if we bear much guilt for what happened before – for what happened next and what we have lived through, none of us can be blamed, for it is an outrage, you cannot imagine.”

The chiefs grew restless at this speech, they whispered back and forth and objected: “Were you bewitched by a powerful enemy?” Only courtesy prevented them from leaving, but some were minded to distance themselves from these strangers who stood under such baleful influences. They exchanged troubled glances, they would have to part from these guests before long.

Cuzumarra: “They prayed to their terrible god. They wanted us to pray to him too.”

The chief, puzzled and solemn: “And you? He heard your prayers?”

“No. It was a lie. They meant to mock us. False creatures tempt us on all sides. Many of our people prayed to their terrible god, in the houses the whiteskins built for him. They prostrated themselves, he did not free them from their bondage. Their misery grew worse, now shame was added to it. No, we made no pact with the evil spirit who seeks to exterminate us. Our land was happy and well ordered. If we want to survive we must vanquish this powerful spirit.

“Hear what they do now. They send their recruiting agents through all the provinces, and every able-bodied person must assemble in that place and draw lots. And whoever is chosen must go to the mines under the earth. But most die there. So for us this event is treated as a funeral. The chosen one puts his house in order, his relatives come and follow him part of the way in mourning. And one of the Whites comes and holds up a cross. That is the sign of their spirit who is our enemy. The man splashes them with water and they must pledge faithful service to the king who lives beyond the sea. This they do.

“Listen, so that you do not say: when someone has been cast down and has let himself be cast down, of course he must suffer greatly. I speak that you may hear what befell us there over the mountains. You see me and my companions, already whiteskins have been here with you, you shall know what they are.

“When their leaders want to travel about our land, they sit on their horses. But they do not have many horses. So they have themselves carried by our wretched people. And because these grow weary on long journeys they have six or eight others following, to change around. All carry heavy loads. They are chained together. The load is often very heavy and it is very hot and the mountains are steep. So our people often collapse and die. And because they are fixed to the chain by a neck-iron they hang there and the line can’t move. But the white overseer does not want to open the chain. So they just cut the head off the corpse or the dying man and throw the torso and head onto the road. They come to our villages and find the people placid. They ask about gold, and if our people have none, they beat them. But sometimes the people have already fled, because they saw them coming. Then the Whites set fire to the houses, destroy provisions, lay waste to the fields, and our people die of hunger with their families. Our fields and trees yield good fruit, the sea provides fish, our soil and water are fertile. But the Whites have no desire to breath our air, eat our fruit and fish. They grow drunk and unruly and look for gold. Nothing else matters to them. They only ever pray to their great god that he enable them to find more gold. So, as ever more of them came to our land to extort gold, the Tumbo gathered together at the Nieve river, in the mountains, a cliff hangs over an abyss, and one day all the families of the Tumbo threw themselves into the abyss. There’s a place called Aconcaha, the people there had no more gold, and almost all the inhabitants were doing forced labour on the coast or in the mines. But the Whites sent an official and wanted more gold. So the women ran to a neighbouring place, the people gave them a few pieces, they heated it and seized the official and poured the molten gold down his throat and left him there. Then the people of Aconcaha fled into the mountains. We don’t know what happened to them after that.”

The chiefs fidgeted again, but did not speak. Cuzumarra was oblivious now to their unease. He thought only of his people and their cruel suffering.

“Our faces are smooth, and when hairs grow on our skin we pluck them out. Although our faces are smooth and we do not grow beards, they forced our men to take sharp knives and salves for shaving, they had to do labour service to pay for them. The Whites cover their feet and legs, they brought hose made of fine fabric, we had to take them, we protested and showed them our costumes that we inherited from our fathers, they would not relent, they made marks on their tablets and made us do labour service for hose we do not wear. The Whites travel in their great ships across the sea and know many lands and seas and rivers and mountains. And because they wander and seek and never find rest or peace, they have made big leaves on which they have painted all the lands and seas and rivers and mountains that they know about and have wandered through, and have certainly subjugated and destroyed. That is what they do, it suits their nature and makes them proud. They showed us these pictures and forced us to take them. We told them we have no need of the pictures, they would not relent, they made marks on their tablets and for the pictures we had to do labour service in their fields, build their houses, while our own houses fell into ruin and the sea broke through our dykes.

“I have spoken at length, esteemed chiefs, leaders of your tribes. You have been good enough to grant our request and guide our boat here, receive us, protect us and hear us. We are not strong. What is strong in us is only memory, which says: we must remain strong and everywhere tell of the Whites, who are starting to come down from the mountains.”

Cuzumarra lifted his gaze. The oldest chief stood, the others too. The strangers stood. The chiefs’ eyes flashed. They left the hut. Young people crowded around. The oldest chief called to one of the men, at which all the young men ran off, while the women and children stood about. They cried: There’ll be a dance! The chiefs left the strangers alone in the chief’s hut, with a message that they would be summoned soon. There was great excitement and much animated chatter.

The dancers wore ancestor masks. After the dance they drank together deep into the night. The warriors sang and laughed by the fire. Then they slept far into the day. In the morning the chief said: “We shall prepare a parting feast for you and make presents of anything you desire. But we ask you please to tell us how you escaped from the whiteskins, and what paths lead from there to here.”

≈≈≈

In the afternoon Cuzumarra spoke to the chiefs, his friends, in the chief’s hut, his seven companions sat to his right and left.

“We often doubted that the Whites are human. We begged to be allowed to feel their swords, they let us feel their arms and legs. They only objected if we tugged at their ugly beards, then they hit us. When they came into our land we were fairly sure they were human, and our leaders advised the Inca, our chief leader, the emperor, to lay by sufficient rope to bind men and beasts, for when they saw our greater numbers they would run away. But then we learned by their cruelty that they are possessed, and we made to defend ourselves.”

The strangers sat upright on the mat, and it was clear that they were warriors.

“Our lord of Tangasuku,” Cuzumarra continued in a low voice, “the cacique of Condorcanqui, did not wait for the envoy of the Whites to flog him in order to extort his gold. As the white man approached from Tinta with his entourage, our cacique waylaid him and by his own hand hanged him from a tree. He was of the Inca’s line, the one who was beheaded. He took the name of his ancestor and started to make war. The people called to him. He became strong. They all came to him. He had no thunder tubes, no horses, our people flocked to him. Our land wanted to be free of these evil spirits. He was victorious even though he lacked weapons. Like a fire that kills wild beasts even though it has no teeth, he surrounded and killed the Whites. Then someone close to him betrayed him.” The strangers uttered a cry of rage, and twice more, their faces grew tighter, their little eyes glinted. The chiefs likewise sat erect, the words seethed within them.

“They set upon our lord of Tangasuku in his sleep, carried him to the Whites, we know the name of their leader, Jose Antonio Areche. He condemned our lord of Tangasuku, fallen into his hands through treachery. The wife of our lord, his two sons and his brother in law were beheaded in front of him. Our lord himself was brought to stand before the whiteskin, who spat on him, then the executioner cut the tongue from his mouth, tied ropes to his limbs, attached the ropes to four strong horses, they were whipped and tore apart our still living lord. Then they burned his torso, the head and limbs they sent in baskets to all the places that had stood with our lord because they yielded up no gold and refused to take the beard salve and coloured pictures. Our lord’s house was torn down, his possessions given to the Whites, his brother was taken from his homeland, put on a ship and carried across the sea, we don’t know where.

“When the villages saw the arms, legs and head of our lord Tangasuku, they wailed, and then beat those who carried the baskets, seized the baskets and buried our lord’s limbs in a safe place. Anyone who had seen the limbs spread the news. No one remained calm. We were on the point of death. We suffered this. A man came from the house of our lord, Andres, and beside him was Catari, they showed themselves. We all wanted to die, but not by leaping into an abyss. Andres and Catari spoke words that warmed us: they demanded five hundred white heads for each of those murdered along with our lord. Then the Whites were seized with fear. They saw that they were found out. Sorora is a town in our mountains. Many Whites fled there and with them many of the wicked of our land who had let themselves become corrupted. They had thunder tubes in the town, big ones carried on carts pulled by horses and llamas. When the thunder flashed, the balls ripped through ten and ten. They relied on these and on the walls of Sorora. They had food. But it was our land, and our ancestors were there, and we had signs that they stood with us. We dug ditches above the town to collect water, and when the snowmelt came we guided the water and the mountain torrents against the walls of Sorora. The water tore a breach, we followed the water and were in the town. I was there, and these. We cannot tell you how many Whites and how many of the wicked of our land fell to our spears and swords. The whole town was surrounded and was already burning when we entered it. Not one of the countless wicked who hid there survived. Anyone who escaped the sword was burned in the fire or drowned in a mountain torrent.”

Again they uttered their cry. The chiefs raised their right arms as if to throw a spear, and yelled their war cry.

Cuzumarra concluded in a rasping voice: “Our chiefs Andres and Catari were captured at last. The Whites prevented us from gathering. They sent men after us into the mountains to catch everyone who fought against them. We escaped. We are going back. We shall tell you the paths that lead to and from the mountains.”

Following the strangers’ report, the chiefs consulted the elders and witch doctors who were present: “Once we received a message: ‘Take care! Great danger. None shall survive. Towards sunset the Great Spirit that holds up the earth made the mountains tremble. Wild beasts have attacked people. Whole tribes are perishing. Look at the sky: the Dog Star is approaching the moon. He will devour it.’ Then the chiefs of that time gathered their warriors and went with them across the rivers to defend themselves. They learned that the Land without Death lies towards the sunrise. They tried to find it. When they returned they said they had not found it. The cacique Cuzumarra, a stranger, has come to us across the mountains and we have taken him in and heard him. Whiteskinned men are in his land, they are destroying his people, they have fire tubes and big animals that we have never seen. Go to the mask hut and ask the ancestors and animals that protect us. Will the white men come to us? Will the great spirit who carries the mountains destroy us?”

The elders and witch doctors consulted Cuzumarra, who described for them the terrible power of the white men, their animals and firearms. Their priests pray to an evil power beyond the sun, who supports them. They are murderers, robbers, liars, drunkards, cheats. Then the old men and witch doctors fasted and danced.

The ancestors did not speak, dreams were unclear, birds they consulted gave differing answers. So the chiefs postponed their decision. Cuzumarra observed this with sorrow.

They departed. As they left the village in two canoes, drumming could be heard. They reported the journey of eight strangers from the mountains, they are unarmed and friendly, they have important news, listen to them. The chiefs who had come from other villages returned home and spread the message.

Southward

The eight emissaries from the Land of the Four World Regions travelled for many days on rivers and lakes towards the south and the sunrise. Their homeland receded farther and farther behind. They passed from tribe to tribe, and always they had company, people welcomed them, heard them, relayed their news, guided them onward. Those who died, had died in the first days of the great journey. The eight survivors were quiet, and grew quieter.

It was a time of low water. Rivers, channels and lakes they traversed were all black. They left the hill country behind. Sometimes a few fell sick with fever, but always they found a medicine man to scratch their skin and blow smoke over them.

To the east rose the blue Cupati range, the great Yapura river opened up before them, they felt a new wind. They skirted wild cataracts, sometimes they hauled the boat through. The boat they travelled in had an awning against the sun, always they were preceded by a boatful of young warriors who watched the forest and hunted and fished. There were clearings and grassy stretches, then tall trunks soared again, storey overtopping storey as if every species sought to clamber over all the others, trunk jostling trunk. The river was lined with grasses and tangled scrub, trees soared up from clinging vines, and when it let go the trunks were enmeshed in a new confusion of leaves, dark green and yellow and worm-eaten, then the trunks broke free and spread their fans and umbrellas. But even taller trees towered over them, and from the very tops ropes and lines dangled from plants with gaudy great flowers that had found no space below and so dropped roots from treetops down through the air.

Sometimes a scent of violets wafted from the forest. They glided over wide dark water, the riverbanks were bare, trees stood leafless, their branches crippled and dying. Long black-brown and green-brown shapes protruded from the shallows, little humps, the eye hardly notices, but then, look, a stir in the hazy river, above them flies swarm like fogbanks, they stand on thick short legs sticking out at the sides, a black bony tail sweeps the surface of the water, they are long creatures, caiman, mouths gape wide, they appear to be sleeping, one swims behind the boat, then the eddy vanishes.

When they crossed the Yapura they had already visited many tribes, all were hospitable, listened to them in horror and astonishment. Chiefs and elders conferred, the people showed fear and would not let them stay. Everywhere they described their country, their people, the old and new rulers, described the Whites, their malice, their weapons and animals, how they disregard all laws and customs and pour up from the coast into the mountains. Villages, towns and provinces where they appear all die. The strangers who spoke these things, and always spoke them anew, disturbed and agitated the tribes, they left unease in their wake but gained nothing. The companions asked Cuzumarra how much farther they would wander, ever farther from their homeland. He said, his voice barely obeying him: they should think of their kinfolk at home, and of what had happened to them.

But when once again the hour came to leave a village and climb back into the boats, the seven companions saw their leader seized by an attack of despair. Cuzumarra knelt at dawn by the hut where they had slept and called to the Sun, the all-powerful father god. He cried in the language of their country: “Father, show yourself to us! Father, do not forsake us! However great our sins, do not punish us too severely. Do not destroy us utterly. Or will you yield your dominion?” He raised himself from the ground, glared into the fiery clouds and trembled: “Oh to suffer this. Let us know what you intend. Do not keep it from us, mighty father.” His friends crouched sullen beside him.

People asked when they would turn around, and were afraid to guide them farther south. If you keep south you come to the mighty river, its forests are too thick to penetrate, along its banks there are mounds where wild warlike people dwell. And when the strangers asked who these tribes were, they learned what had already been whispered secretly in the north: a cold tempest blows across the great river, it buffets the water so that it becomes whirlpools and spray, destroys boats, so the river is called Boat Destroyer, Amazon, on it dwell the Women People who came from the north. The women clear strips in the forest and along small rivers. They call themselves after the river. They make war and steal men. Men of the Passa tribe said: the Women People have gone away to the south, they are turtles and armadillos, you must beware of them.

At the strangers’ request they were guided through the maze of waterways around the Iça river, which flows into the Amazon. They passed through swamp forests. After a hunt young warriors painted themselves, danced around the fire with their spears, worked themselves into a frenzy and threatened one another. They drummed and sang. They invoked their father, the Anaconda. Suddenly they threw themselves down. Two huge serpents emerged from the bush. They swept into the clearing, reared up and flicked their tongues. The warriors dropped their spears, averted their faces and covered their eyes. Suddenly one of them sprang to the fire, threw bloody lumps of venison, at once hid his eyes again. The two snakes emitted a hiss, lowered themselves to the ground and swallowed the meat. They stood stiffly side by side in the clearing away from the fire. Then with a crackling and rustling they vanished. The warriors danced again, chanted greetings and thanks to the snakes.

They were now far to the south, lakes were more numerous, the wilderness was behind them, the silence was immense. Bats swarmed through the forest like ghosts in the dusk, occasionally a butterfly came by, parrots screeched from trees, crickets chirruped. Cuzumarra grew ever more silent. The sweltering heat overcame him and his companions, their skin was always wet. They were tired even without moving, and yet alert and full of expectation. They walked for hours through the forest, their guides knew little paths to the next watercourse, wild pigs splashed in swamps, fat opossums darted by. Then Cuzumarra said to himself: “I no longer know what to say. I am losing my words, I can no longer think of Vilcas Huaman where I was born, I still know the name of the Empire of the Four Suns, but a sorcerer has stolen from me all that I knew of it.”

Thorns and jagged undergrowth had long since torn their clothing to shreds. Cuzumarra still wore the rags, golden discs still hung in his ears, but his companions spoke as little as he and had made themselves girdles of raffia. Otherwise they were as naked as the forest people. In fact, they had even painted their arms and legs and torsos black and red like the forest people.

During the first months of their journey they grieved and could not sleep, now they enjoyed long sleeps, laughed, and when the forest people wrestled with each other they were amused. The forest people would suddenly grab each other by the throat, squeeze until the faces swelled and they must surely choke, then let go. They would smile and say: that was good. Cuzumarra wanted to pose a question to his companions: did they wish to leave him and return north. But they looked so placid with their moist gleaming eyes. So he said nothing.

One day they came to a village mound. It was overgrown with crippled trees, there were trees with blue flowers and yellow flowers amid fallen trunks. When the forest people saw these trunks they were afraid and said: “We must go back.” The trees were charcoal. Even the grassy terrace they were walking over was charcoal. Hard by the steep slope of a new mound, without any warning the forest people suddenly ran away. When the strangers looked around for them, they had vanished into the bush under buriti palms.

All at once arrows flew down from the mound. There was nothing to see. At Cuzumarra’s command his shocked companions stood up from the grass and extended empty open hands.

He broke a branch from a bush and waved it towards the mound. Nothing happened. They heard nothing. After standing there a while they squatted uneasily in the grass, afraid to move.

Then voices came from the forest behind them, and they thought their friends were returning. But it was dark people running in file, garishly painted. They held up little round shields. At the same moment voices grew loud, and dark people with spears came running down the slope. Cuzumarra and the others stood. Only close up could they see that the dark people with the shields were women. The spear carriers too were women, with little pointed breasts. They ran crouching, feet turned inwards, they ran on tiptoe, leaning forward, you couldn’t see their sex as they ran.

The strangers could not understand their speech. Soon Cuzumarra noticed that their words were curiously drawled and similar to some languages in the north. The female warriors surrounded them, the women were smaller than the forest people who had been their guides. When a warrior woman came forward, decked out in bright feathers around her body and forehead, Cuzumarra pointed to the forest and gave to understand that they had been led here by people. The woman spoke to the others, who brandished their spears and shouted threats into the forest.

They started moving around the hill, the path was long and muddy, all about them was quiet, the women’s feet made no sound. And when at one point Cuzumarra closed his eyes and heard only parrots squawking overhead, he thought he was on one of the many forest paths he had trodden these past months. But he opened his eyes, here were the silent warriors of the Women People, their backs and stocky thighs painted with blue and yellow snaking lines, heads shaved all around leaving a black knot of hair on top, red ribbons on wrists and above the knee. Sometime later the path became treeless. They approached an even higher mound, planted to the rear with maize and manioc, great palms swayed overhead and blue smoke rose between them. They heard shouts and dogs barking. And having ascended a broad, stone-paved path up the side of the mound they came to a spacious village, bigger and more populous than any they had seen since coming down from the mountains.

They walked past sturdy wide houses of wood. There were dry-season houses with mighty gable roofs almost to the ground, the side walls were low, the roof thatched with layers of palm leaves. Throngs of warlike painted women and women with infants in hip-slings moved to and fro among the houses. They saw darkskinned males carrying baskets, who avoided the strangers’ gaze and went with downcast eyes. Farther on, facing a patch of grass, stood a scattering of low round huts walled with leaves, vultures tied to doorposts hopped about. They had built shade-roofs and walls on piles. The whole village, its houses stretching away in long rows, was filled with loud voices, but at their approach silence fell and the women drew back. No one looked at them.

When the strangers from the land beyond the mountains came down the northern rivers and stopped at villages, they were received as guests, welcomed and cared for, given presents when they left. The village of women was richer than any of those they had seen in the north since their escape over the passes, but here they were escorted like prisoners. Below lay a wide, smooth lake, they had a good view of it, boats carried people to and fro, tall grass and clumps of reeds loomed over its mirror, the water gleamed very pale. The view opened up even wider as they were led around a bend in the hill, the lake lay behind them, in front the hill fell away gently, covered to its foot and beyond into the plain with fields and meadows, dotted with little huts and toiling people. Farther on there was scrub, then thick black forest like a frontier wall. But here and there breaches had been cut in this wall, and pale water, endless water glimmered through. Their hearts leapt into their mouths, they forgot where they were, they thought it was the ocean. They conferred and traded questions.

And now one of the spearwomen grinned, pointed to the pale endless water and said proudly: “Amazon!” This was their river. The strangers stared at one another, incredulous.

Caught

Then, without a word, they were led one by one into a longhouse. It was a big empty structure, seemed to serve as a guesthouse. On the floor were sleeping mats with pretty patterns, several chairs lined the back wall, doubtless for chiefs, decorated with colourful strips of raffia. The chairs were shaped like animals, made of wood, you could see a black head with big ears, and eyes made of little mussel shells. Fat tufts of gaudy parrot feathers hung motionless from beams. Stout wooden rollers decorated with snaking lines lay in front of the chairs. These were neck rests.

By the time the strangers were all brought inside this big empty house, the last light of evening was shining through the door. They walked in, no women followed, they looked about them, observed everything, and waited. They knocked on walls, picked up chairs, beside the door they found empty arrow stands. Outside, a big fire had been started to combat the swarms of mosquitoes that invaded the dusk. Smoke drifted through the door, red flames lit up the room where the strangers stood and moved about. A few women warriors crouched around the fire, chattering and laughing.

Two men entered the house. They looked like men of the last tribe the strangers had come to. They brought gourds with a pale strong-smelling concoction. Then they brought flatbread, bananas and roasted ants. Cuzumarra asked what tribe they were from. They made no reply. When he held up a gourd and asked them what the brew was called, they glanced fearfully at the lighted doorway, gurgled and pointed to their mouths. The tongues were stumps. The shocked strangers squatted on the mats, tried to eat and drink. They feared poison, but they were dying of thirst. They slept only for the first part of the night, were then wakeful, fearing attack. A thunderstorm rolled briefly past. The fire outside burned low. When Cuzumarra strode angrily to the door a woman stood up, then others, twenty women. They barred the way with spears. Cuzumarra stood still, said not a word. It was quite chilly. They poked up the fire. He went back into the house. The men wrapped themselves in mats.

The companions spoke to Cuzumarra: “We have come far to the south. Who will listen to you here? These are Amazons, enemies of men. We are afraid.”

Another: “They cut out the men’s tongues. Why did you lead us here? Do you know what they will do to us? They won’t spare you.”

Cuzumarra could give no answer. Like them he complained: “We have come too far south. People did not listen to us. We should have turned back. Don’t scold me. We must gather our courage. Perhaps we can sleep again.”

“It’s too cold, Cuzumarra. We’d rather sit and talk. We’ve been meaning to talk with you.”

“Then talk.”

“We had no courage, because you are the leader and we the led. Cuzumarra, we beg you, let us go. We are bewitched and cannot follow you.”

He sighed: “What do you propose?” Now they would say what he did not trust himself to say.

“We fled from the Whites over the passes with our clothes and weapons. Our weapons we lost long ago. The forests stripped our clothing from us. Our skin is covered in sores. We have been too long away from our country, we have come too far south through this steaming forest, to this terrible river. It lies just over there, we feel it even in the night. It sends up a cold mist. We have no thoughts of home any more. We have lost everything, and everything has been taken from us by witchcraft. Sometimes we speak about the whiteskins and what they have done to us and our families, then we forget it again, laugh, and are different men. We follow you, Cuzumarra, but we no longer know why we follow. Help us.”

Another said quickly: “We are bewitched. We speak of the whiteskins but without anger, as if they were just agoutis that dogs hunt in hollow trees, or dolphins. The Whites don’t hurt us. Why do we no longer hate them, Cuzumarra? It was because of them we made this terrible journey, and now we laugh and drink and sleep.”

Cuzumarra hid his face in the mat so they would not see by the light of the fire how he rubbed his forehead. “We shall turn back. We shall go back.”

One said: “But I – I am not going back. Never.”

Another said loudly: “I – I am not going back. I shall never go back.”

A third: “I shall never, never go back. Never again shall we go back up into the mountains.”

Cuzumarra listened in horror from under the mat, not showing his face, they were speaking his thoughts. “And you would betray your kinfolk?”

They did not respond, it grew chillier, one smiled, one yawned, they stretched out. They snuggled into the mats. They slept.

Next morning two elderly women came behind the two captive men, stood outside the door and called to them: They would soon be brought before the queen.

They entered a big finely decorated house. On the mats many women sat with legs tucked under them, fists anchored at their hips. Some were young, some older. Along the wall three sturdy older women sat on the wide animal chairs and gazed sternly back at them. Nobody spoke. No one indicated that they should sit.

The woman in the middle had yellow circles on her cheeks. She asked Cuzumarra who they were. He replied. She asked want they wanted. He replied. When he spoke of the Whites she whispered to her neighbours. She bade Cuzumarra approach, stared at his ragged clothing, stroked the skin of his face, touched his golden ear discs. Then she turned to the companions. One by one they stood before her. She whispered about the strangers’ hairstyle and skin colour. Cuzumarra was invited to speak to her in his own language. After he had done so the women engaged in rapid conversation. Finally the queen invited the men to take their place on the mats. Then everyone ate hot mash.

Following this interview they were allowed to wander as they liked through the village, alone or together. They were assigned an escort so they would know where they were welcome and where not. They saw the extensive village and its gardens, and not far off on a neighbouring mound was one even larger, and across the river there were supposedly many more villages of women. They were allowed to talk to men, only a few had been rendered dumb, most were crippled by the wounding of a leg, an arm or an eye. There were many children and nursing mothers. The men who were these women’s lovers were nowhere to be seen. The women demanded of Cuzumarra and his companions more stories of their homeland and the Whites than had any of the northern tribes. And after Cuzumarra’s first comprehensive account of the cruelty of the Whites, and the women, like the men of the north, had danced their spear dance and the women of the next village had answered their war cries, Cuzumarra beamed at his companions:

“Are you content? Are you still afraid? They will lead us back. We have done what we had to do. The Whites will come down into this land and die in a trap.”

They were not content. He realised with a shock that they really had no desire to go back. In the guesthouse where they lodged they turned on Cuzumarra: “What did you say to the queen? Again and again about the Tumbo and how they leaped into the abyss and about the defeat of our lord Tangasuku. We beg you, stop telling these stories. We believed them once. Now we don’t believe them.”

Cuzumarra thought them mad: “All right, so we tell the queens and the women that the Tumbo are still alive and we live in peace with the Whites and we deserved what happened.”

Cuzumarra grasped their hands and regarded them one by one. “It won’t do any good,” they said, “to gaze at us one by one and hold our hands. We told you we no longer want to go back. We’ll never wear the white shirt and coloured cloak again. You go to Cuzco, if you yearn for the Son of the Sun on his golden chair. We thank you for leading us over the passes. Otherwise we would have stayed the same as our parents.”

“You are bewitched, my dear companions, can you not sense it?”

“Thank you. Once we were bewitched and now we are no longer. Cuzumarra, recall what they told us in the north and along the dark river? They said we must have been divided for the Whites to cast us down like that. They saw things more clearly than we did. For there is more to the story than what you tell, Cuzumarra: that the last great lord with his fivefold red headband had two sons and they allowed the country to fall into the hands of the Whites. Division was among us long before that, during the time when our parents and grandparents toiled and order reigned and leaders of five families and ten families were set over us.”

Cuzumarra could not bear to listen, and wept. But when they tried to leave he held them back and asked: how had he injured them? For they were his good companions at home and in war and they had faced so many deadly perils together and who knew what more lay ahead, he had always understood them and did not want to misunderstand now and leave them abandoned to the wilderness.

So they continued, and said words that broke his heart: “We do not blame you, Cuzumarra. If we are to speak, please let us speak without causing you pain. We have all toiled in the saltpans, as long as we had gold we made golden vessels, fetched red cinnabar from the earth for pigment, tended coca bushes and brought home the harvest three times a year. We never disobeyed. You say we were happy. We were neither happy nor unhappy. We hate the Whites, those wild jaguars, just as much as you, but they only destroyed what we too did not wish to keep.”

Cuzumarra groaned in horror: “You summoned them! Your spirits invited them to our country!”

“Understand, Cuzumarra, we do not mean to wound you, don’t hurt us, we don’t hate you.”

“You hate your country.”

That roused them, they surrounded Cuzumarra and shouted: “Not true! We blame the princes, and if you number yourself among them, then you too. It is your fault that the Whites have conquered our land and murder us and burn our villages. What you did with the land was not good. No, Cuzumarra, all those roads and granaries, welfare for the old and sick and the apportioning of seed and harvest, all those things you speak of, none of it was good. Were we ever allowed to say a word that was not already approved by the Inca and the princes and the leaders he set over us? We never donned a garment that you had not accounted for. You tallied every mouthful that we ate. Are we bewitched when we say: that was not good? We suspected it already back in our homeland. You curse us as traitors. But Cuzumarra, you princes knew how to raise traitors among us so that we could never prevail. For there was nothing that bound the traitors to you. They could find nothing to honour. So they became wretches, criminals and traitors. You led them along this path, because you trained them to be parrots and monkeys.”

“Were you not happy, were your parents not happy, was the empire not happy?” Tears were coursing down Cuzumarra’s face, and he sobbed aloud: “Why did you not say this earlier? Why did you come with me over the mountains? Why did you let me wander this way and that through the forest, and most of those who came with me perished in the swamps, why, for what? Oh, if only you had taken pity on me at the right time. Now I am here, alone, and curse my life.”

So they all sat around him on the mats and tried to console him. They said: he’d asked them to speak out, they’d stay with him and bring him as far as he wanted to go. He lay on the ground and would not be comforted. They feared that the women would become suspicious and accuse them. So they sat for long hours with Cuzumarra in the house. Then Cuzumarra roused himself again and for the first time heard and saw his companions speak and act with him as friends. They combed him. They made him cast aside his filthy rags and put on a skirt of raffia and a belt like them. They took him down to the lake to bathe. They danced around him in the water. He allowed himself to be led back up, where they painted him yellow and red. They drew snake lines over his arms, they said the women liked it.

That evening as they sat drinking with the warrior women around the big fire, there was peace among them. Cuzumarra desired to sleep. And as he slept he dreamed that he was ill again, and was being lifted from a healing spring in the old country. Men manipulated and massaged his limbs. But when they stopped the limbs grew stiff again, finally the attendants walked one by one out of the room with their cloths and salves. But as soon as they left the room, he felt himself lifted off the ground, he flew and bowed down to the sun that rose over the mountain peaks. And because he was still bound around with bandages like a corpse, he flew on ever higher. The sun began to burn terribly. The heat was beyond measure. In fear he tried to stop. But the impetus of his flight did not abate. Smoke poured from his body, the bandages loosened and smouldered. Now he knew he was an offering and would be sacrificed. He was enveloped in hideous pain, suffocating.

He awoke. He stood up. It was dark. Ah yes, they were with the Women People. Oh woe, what did the companions say to me. He lay down again, pulled the mat over him and fell asleep at once.

Dreaming, he landed on a big jagged leaf, next to it grew a huge flower, he flew into the flower, he was a hummingbird, he stuck his long beak in, the flower wouldn’t let him, he stabbed and stabbed and then it held him fast, and he sucked honey, sweet cool honey, sweet honey flowed without cease into his beak, the beak was glued to the flower, he sucked and sucked, it was heavenly.

When he awoke the fires were out, dawn was breaking. He lay there. His companions slept on.

Inti Cussi the queen

Cuzumarra had spoken with Inti Cussi, the queen of this place. Through two of his companions he informed her that he wished to travel on. She requested that he and his party stay. He consulted his men, they were afraid to refuse, but the sight of the men in this place discomfited them. Two of these men, toiling in a field of maize, had explained they were prisoners of war, and had to serve as slaves, each had had a foot broken to hinder escape. Women often stole secretly to some of the companions in their hut and lay with them in their hammocks, afterwards the women gave them some gift, but otherwise everyone kept away from them. They led a sad life.

The captives asked the strangers where they came from, whether their tribes still lived in the old places. And when the olive-skinned strangers said they would soon travel back, the slaves were astonished. They did not say it in so many words, but they emphasised their doubts: whoever comes here, stays here.

Cuzumarra grew insistent. He sent word to Inti Cussi that he would leave soon: would she tell him along which paths and how far towards sunset she could supply guides for him and his companions. Two days later, instead of a reply from the queen he received an invitation to come to her. He went with two men. They found her in the chief’s house with a few women, seated like her on mats. Inti Cussi was a stocky woman of mature years, with round cheeks and full breasts, the women around her were young warriors. When they finished eating mash and roasted fish, they talked.

The queen wanted to know more about the lay of their land. Cuzumarra spoke of the high wide plateaus with their fiery mountains that shake the earth, there are many towns, llama herds graze in the meadows, maize needs long periods of cold in order to ripen. He thought he should talk about the Whites as he had done before. He said: “On these high plateaus no mountain and no valley is without its sad memories. Once the towns of Pancerolla and Chuquita bloomed here, now the strangers have emptied them. Whoever follows in the war train of the Whites finds mountains and valleys full of the corpses of our people. They froze to death there.”

But the queen was not interested in this. She asked attentively about weapons and the spirits that the Whites invoked to their aid when they set off to war.

Cuzumarra remarked: their strongest god was a man who was tied to a cross, they bewail his fate and demand that everyone join with them to weep for this god. They can bewitch you with just some wood from this cross, and everyone makes sure to have his picture always on their person.

Queen: Could you not have stolen such a picture?

Guest: They happily give them out, they force them on you.

The queen was ecstatic: “And you? You have one?”

“And they sprinkle us with magic water when they hand out the pictures, and we must repeat magic words. Many of my own relatives tried this. But the god does not help us out of our servitude. Men who followed the Whites into war accepted the pictures and allowed themselves to be splashed with the water. They thought they could return to their fields and their families. And those who rose against the Whites took the pictures and let themselves be splashed with magic water. It did no good. The former froze and starved on the high plateaus, the latter enjoyed no support from the god in battle, even though they were brave and went into the fight with favourable auguries. None of our priests or medicine men has enough experience or power to win the god to our side.”

“Then you will all be defeated for sure. So, Cuzumarra, how do you plan to resist the Whites?”

“We must try to win over one of their magic priests, and draw him to our side. We must take away their thunder tubes and horses.”

She interrupted: In his country, did women fight?

Cuzumarra praised the women of his country: they were brave helpers and always shared the fate of the men.

“You have spoken of your prince in former times, the Inca. Did he have a wife?”

“He had several. From only one did he have true heirs.”

The women’s faces darkened. For a long while they said nothing, so that Cuzumarra had the impression the conversation was over. But the queen stood up from her mat while the others stayed as they were, and seated herself on her chair. From there she bade the men, without looking at them, to tell more about the women of their country.

Again Cuzumarra praised them. If they guarded their purity well they were considered holy. Maidens who wished to consecrate themselves to the Sun God were placed in convents. Only they might prepare the bread that the Inca offered to the Sun God in his Temple of the Sun.

A long silence ensued.

“Did the Inca’s wives also bring gifts for the god?”

“They did not enter the temple. The Inca with his fivefold purple headband sat there alone.”

The queen inhaled with a hiss, breathed it out. She railed loudly: “I know your Inca! I know what he looks like. I asked about your women. The Inca’s wife is not allowed in the temple. The maidens are in the convent and bake bread for the Inca when he makes an offering. And what do they do in the convent, these maidens? What do they do?”

Cuzumarra had not attended the queen in order to be assailed with questions about the women of his country. He could not rise. He said angrily: “Our convents are destroyed. I do not know what the consecrated maidens did in the convents. I am a warrior. I know they were closely guarded and were never allowed to look on a man. If, when coming to a place, you wanted to find the convent it was easy: on the walls hung the bones of young girls who had broken the commandments.”

“For example, who had seen a man?”

“Certainly.”

Cuzumarra caught a fearsome look from the queen. The women rose from the mats. The audience was really over. Anger twisted the queen’s face. She spoke no parting words. And Cuzumarra was so agitated he forgot to repeat that they were going to leave and how far would they be escorted.

It was only in the guesthouse, where he sat with the companions and conveyed to them what had been said, that the danger in which they lay became clear.

They were still in discussion when a shout from the doorway ordered him to return to Inti Cussi’s presence. In the chief’s house he found the queen on her chair and the women on the mats, just as he had left them. In her fury the queen had ordered that the eight men be taken before nightfall into the forest and killed. The women had calmed her. Then Inti Cussi wanted to speak with the men right away. Like an uncanny serpent that feigns sleep, her face showed anger and friendliness intermingled. Again they drank in silence. The queen thanked him for the report of his homeland, as if nothing had happened. She wanted to tell him about her people, of whom they had so far learned little.

She squeezed shut her eyes, which had been painted in the interval with black circles, there were circles on her cheeks and black lines led towards the corners of her mouth. She looked fearsome and alien, the women on the mats had black circles on their backs. The queen said:

“In the trees lives a big lizard, she has a round head and a strong tail. You would not think the tail is strong, but the lizard kills snakes with it. A woman planted maize, manioc and sugarcane, worms came and ate it all up. She planted again. Ants discovered it, an army of ants came, went all over the field and cut the stalks. She had a pig. It died. A fox lived in the forest. She had a hen. The fox jumped out and killed the hen. So she sought help. Tayu Assu, the great lizard with the round head, came down from the trees to the woman’s hut. She said: Tayu Good-for-nothing. Tayu walked with her in the fields, the worms dared not come out. Tayu waited at night outside the henhouse, the fox ran away. Tayu ran around the field and frightened the king of the ants. The woman saw her and thought Tayu Assu was the devil who brought her all this bad luck. She ran up and threw a big pot over the lizard. Tayu cast off the pot and hit the woman between the eyes so that she fell down. The worms and ants came and left nothing standing.”

When she had finished her story the queen opened her eyes wide and stared hard at the strangers. Cuzumarra scorned the farmer woman as a fool. He was alarmed to see how ill-disposed Inti Cussi was towards him. She strutted before her people:

“We are descendants of queen Toeza. Men treated us like slaves, stole us from our parents, our parents sold us. Thus it was before the time of queen Toeza. Men took spears and bows and went to war. We women and children were left alone. We had to plant and cook and bear children. If a man grew rich he bought another wife, and the old wife was put aside. Toeza took a spear and her husband could not restrain her. She chose the black jaguar, Walyarina, who was stronger than a man. He became her lover. But the men played a cunning trick and killed him. So Toeza killed them with cassava poison. We came from the north. You know, Cuzumarra, since you came through the north, how the tribes fear us.”

Cleverly he said: “They fear you greatly, and warned us about you, and dared not escort us here.”

The women laughed with pride, and whispered. Gourds were filled and drained.

Serene and proud, Inti Cussi spoke of her people and the Women People along the river. “We live along the whole Amazon river, on mounds, and to the south we are pushing into the forest. Men retreat before us. We make war on them, they always fall back. Look around, you can see Women People, settled and peaceable. Our villages are richer and bigger than the villages of men, where they lord it over women and children. We have houses, huts, weapons, farms, fields, gardens. From morning till night we toil in the fields and gardens, at fishing, hunting, looking after children. The heavy time of carrying and giving birth we suffer alone. We must care for the children, clean them, see that they learn. We build houses for them. So much work we must do because of them, and the houses and fields. So we have no desire to let wild animals destroy our work. When the men go off for months on their warpath they can’t expect us to sit calmly here, waiting to see who will be the victors and fearful all the while that we’ll be stolen away and our children made into slaves. We are not as weak and stupid as our men think. We don’t have to sit waiting for the men to win a war for us. We never sent them off to their stupid war. But since they are such forest creatures, skulking around and biting, we showed them that we too can defend what we have made. We are not hostile to men. We just don’t let them live among us. Otherwise they would again conspire against us and tell the women fables about how strong they are and how they must protect us and how we must sit quietly in our huts and care for the children. We give them no opportunity to come out with such fables. That happened in a few villages. We had to rescue the women. The moon, animals, plants are kind to us. They delight in us.”

The queen said this with great pride. She asked about the fabric Cuzumarra was wearing when he arrived, how it was woven and dyed. The women were astonished. In his mountains they dyed with cochineal.

“Thorny plants grow in our mountains, and little beetles live on them, the male beetle can fly, the females pierce the leaves and lay eggs. Our people set fires around the plants so that the smoke blows over them. The female beetles die after laying their eggs, they exude wax and cover the brood with their bodies.”

Inti Cussi, deeply moved, made him repeat this. The women whispered together, seemed oblivious to Cuzumarra’s presence. The queen gazed sadly before her. Cuzumarra had to repeat the name of the little creature and the plant. In a friendly tone, absently, she thanked her guest. He left. Later they brought him a painted gourd as a gift from the queen.

That evening was painful for the guests, for five of them were missing, and the queen would give no information when they enquired.

And when Cuzumarra lay that night with his two remaining companions, who feigned sleep, he learned that the five had not been taken prisoner or killed, but were sleeping in the slave huts. Women had come to them and whispered with them.

Cuzumarra could not control his anger. He denounced the traitors, hurled imprecations at the two for not restraining their friends. The shame! Shame in front of the women! How they would laugh! And then: it is a crime, they have transgressed the law of this place. They will never let the five go, they will remain here as slaves.

One of the companions said: “That’s what they want. And why should they not stay here, since they no longer have a homeland? In their own country they would be killed.”

To this Cuzumarra could make no reply. Despair overwhelmed him. All night long he wished for death. He thought about the Whites, he was filled with disgust, they occupied his country, his people wandered about helpless and died, the whiteskins sat in their houses, where was the Sun God, why had he forsaken them?

In the hut

As the queen did not send for him next morning, he went to her. She was away hunting. He had stayed long enough. The old women he found in the chief’s hut advised patience. The queen would let him go soon. That day several young warrior women came to them in the guest hut, led them without a word to little huts standing in the fields behind the great rows of village houses. They said the queen was away hunting, visitors had come from other villages of women, the men would be treated hospitably even in the huts. Cuzumarra and the two companions saw preparations for a feast and the brewing of beer from the sugarcane juice, like the sora of their homeland. But the huts were slave huts.

The strong tireless warrior, who for many months had carried no weapons, stepped from his hut into the rippling field of maize, knelt down with his face towards the veiled sun, reproached himself and uttered the ancient prayer: “Mountains and plains all around, circling condors, owls and nightbirds, hear this avowal of my guilt.”

He went down to the pond where his companions had bathed him when they removed the last of his clothes from home, and uttered the prayer again. He pressed his forehead to the ground, and washed himself. He cursed himself for giving in and allowing the companions to throw away his rags. When he saw himself naked but for skirt and belt he wept, dizzy with anger. This was a long dying. He asked after the companions. Answers were evasive.

Helpless he squatted by the slave hut on a mat. To the sun, now sinking low amid enormous yellow and red clouds, he sang words from home: “Cunac Nusta, lovely young daughter, here is thy brother who shatters thy vessel and hurls thunder and lightning. Queen, thou makest bright water to fall as rain. Water borne up to thee by Pachacamac, who set thee in thy place and gave thy soul to sing.”

≈≈≈

Before evening two young warrior women came to the hut, sat with him and said they came from the queen. It was beyond their skill to weave fabrics as fine as those he had worn from his homeland. But they wanted to untangle and oil his hair and, as far as they could, to decorate his body.

He became hoarse with fury, swore: they were deceivers, they had already deceived his companions, they would attack the guests for breaking the laws of this tribe. They left, and returned with older women. They assured him no laws had been broken, and the young warrior women only wanted to make him up as best they could in their own style, since the queen had no means to provide fine fabrics. He mulled this over for a long time. All at once he felt limp and defenceless. He succumbed, glowering. They set to at once.

And again the old feeling overcame him from that long trek through the forest, where the sweltering heat never let up and dampness fell constantly on their skin, as they trudged for hours each day along narrow forest paths and fat opossums darted by, the homeland falling ever farther behind: I no longer know what I should say, I am losing my words, where is my home, we are bewitched, a sorcerer has stolen everything from me. The companions had said the same; they had foundered sooner than him.

The young warrior women plucked hairs from his body, even removed his eyelashes. They had sharpened sticks of bamboo and wanted to trim his hair. He was reluctant. They scolded, called him monkey, forest-man. He yielded enough for them to start cutting. And as they proceeded, one on the left and one on the right, they followed their fancy. They shaved his head in front and at the sides, and left a long tail to dangle down his back. They had no pigments with them, it was already dark. They shook the mat. Each gathered some clippings and tucked them into her belt. When they left they said they would return in the morning.

He lay alone in the hut. A fire burned not far away. Even here he was watched. In disbelief he fingered his scalp. He was no longer Cuzumarra. They did with him as they wanted. Flocks of little bats flew like dry leaves, he could see them in the firelight. His hand touched constantly at his bare skull. “Circling condors, owls and nightbirds, hear this avowal of my guilt.”

It was deathly quiet. Voices from the village above. Piping frogs.

He slept. No dreams brought relief.

≈≈≈

Next morning as he trudged across fields towards the village, he was witness to a dreadful scene. Four women were dragging a corpse on branches. And as they slowly passed, unaware that he was concealed among the stalks of maize, he recognised through the foliage the body of one of his companions. The face was smooth and peaceful, torso and arms likewise, one leg lay awkwardly and was swollen. They had broken his bones, he had died. The women screamed when Cuzumarra blocked the path. Soon warrior women came running, they seized him and dragged him aside. He demanded to follow the corpse. He wanted to sink into the earth with it. They grasped his arms and held him fast. When he struck out they flung him to the ground, trussed him and left him in the field.

Before noon women came and freed his legs and led him up to the village, arms tied behind his back, a rope around his shoulders. Inti Cussi came out of the chief’s house and laughed when she saw him coming. Many women had gathered, they wanted to kill him. The queen burst out laughing when she saw his shaved head and the long dangling pigtail. On the side where they had thrown him down, his face was clotted with wet mud. His body and limbs too were smeared with dirt. She had him untied. He stood quietly, listening to the hostile screams of the women. She waited to see what he would ask. But he would not look at her. When she asked him if he would disturb the peace of the village again, he cast a cold glance and shrugged. So she had him brought into the hut and repeated the question. He said: “You killed my companion. Is that what you call peace? I came as a stranger, to warn you about the Whites.”

She looked sympathetic: “Your hair has been nicely done. The mountains are far away. You’ll never see them again.”

“I!” he cried.

“Cuzumarra, your empire is gone. Your companions told us more. Your empire no longer exists. Don’t be angry. No one ordered your friend’s death. They only meant to deter him from escaping and harming us. He died. We shall throw spears at the woman. You can watch, and see what is our justice, so that you’ll do nothing bad to us.”

“Where have you taken him?”

“To the foot of the mound. He has been buried. We’ll dance for his spirit. Do nothing bad to us.”

New moon

They climbed trees a little way from the mound, hacked branches, took honey from wild bees, brought some to him in the hut. He ate and was happy. It was honey to make you laugh out loud. The queen had said: “Your friends like it here. Our spirits are powerful and friendly.” He wanted to know these spirits. As soon as the wish formed, there they were with him. He had stood before her pleading: “Kill me, Inti Cussi.” She gave him some drink, then had him taken back to his hut. He did not go into the village for the trial by spears and the dance for his friend. Inti Cussi sent a message: “Your friend’s spirit is appeased. Do you hate us?” He sighed: “No.” It was the truth.

The two warrior women who had cut his hair in the doorway of the hut tried to steal his soul. They had taken clippings, they glued them together with wax, spoke words over the figure, wrapped it in raffia, buried it in a maize field as they made their way once more to his hut at evening. He sat there happily and greeted them with a laugh. They painted him, admired his strength and waited to see what the next days would bring.

Ten days before new moon there was a stirring in the village. From neighbouring villages drums pounded constantly. Violent crashing from the great river rent the night. Birds and turtles were on the move, the first flood surges were lifting the waters.

Sukuruya, great Mother of Waters, entered the river. The river swelled and spread itself in happy pride.

And this was the time when young Amazons went raiding. The queen kept in seclusion, warriors fasted and danced for the ancestors. The noise of the river’s rushing filled the valley. Preparations were completed. The warrior women were swallowed by the forest. The village grew quiet.

They returned three days before new moon. The first day was spent lamenting the dead and appeasing the spirits of the fallen. The warrior women purified themselves. Meanwhile, slaves and older women had erected huts in the fields and forest edge for the warrior brides. The captured men were accommodated in the guesthouse and nearby huts. In the afternoon of the feast day the strongest and most noble of these were fetched, bathed, oiled and painted, they were given cachembo, a cordial made of honey, and led to the festival ground behind the chief’s house. The whole village was waiting there in a circle. There was the dance of the recent ancestors, Toeza’s exodus from the village of men. Sorceresses strutted in masks. The hobbled prisoners, those selected as strongest and most noble, were led out to the dance circle as an offering to the great spirits. They were felled one after the other by a thrown spear. The witchdoctors crouched and smeared themselves with sacred blood, sprinkled blood on the jubilant crowd that thronged forward, crouched, rubbed the precious life-sap over their own hearts and throats.

Now came the day of the new moon. For half the day a thunderstorm rumbled, horrendous torrents of rain fell. Tumult and excitement still gripped the village. The young captives, having been bathed and oiled and painted and made to fast all day, were led by old women out of the guesthouses down the hill and across fields to the huts where their brides waited. During the procession and for the whole evening deep drumbeats sounded without cease. They besought blessings from the ancestors and the spirits of soil and field.

The couples in the huts lived in isolation, kept from contact with others. Food was brought by older women with covered faces, who never spoke. When three weeks were up, the warrior brides fasted for a day and bathed. Then old women came to them with pigments and feathers, made up the young woman and the captive both. Now they could show themselves. On the day of the new moon the young women were welcomed joyfully back in the village. The celebrations were high spirited and noisy, with feasting and dances of thanksgiving.

But there was one group that refrained from rejoicing and dancing this day: the young couples decked out with feathers on their heads and around their bodies, sitting near the great fire. The young women knew what was coming, but the captives were deceived. Although every tribe of men knew how the Amazons behaved, the young men still believed what they had been told by the old women and by the young ones they had embraced: they were chosen, they’d be released. But at evening the young women, forbidden to cry or scream, were led amid loud cheering to the clan house. The men were killed before sunrise behind the chief’s house.

Painted with their blood, queen and sorceresses and old women danced in terrifying masks under the new moon, danced through the whole village, went singing to the clan house and any house where a young woman sat, and smeared blood on the doorposts.

≈≈≈

Floodwaters had reached the mighty river. It roiled swollen and yellow-white. Water stormed over the confining banks. It overwhelmed long winding lagoons, nearby watercourses, leaving devastation in its wake. It ripped off chunks of bank and bore them bobbing away. Great green tangles of grass rode the muddy surface. The river drove its waters on, spread them out to each side, drowned swamps and filled the broad flat valley with its silty mass until it came up against the hard-tamped flanks of the village mounds.

Cuzumarra was a guest at the feast. He looked around for his former companions, could see none in the village or at the feast. Cuzumarra importuned for his release. Unknown to him, following the return of the warrior women the queen had planned to have him killed before the feast: she blamed her guest for all the substantial losses they had suffered in battle. This intention receded amid the general mourning.

Inti Cussi entertained a neighbouring queen in the chief’s house.

After the feast she had Cuzumarra brought in and said: “You told me about a little creature in your country that lives on a flower. It lays eggs, then covers them with its body and dies. Your report made us sad. Now you have seen something different.”

He lowered his gaze. She was mocking him. He shook himself: “If you hate men so, why not just release them?”

“All life comes from the female. For that reason we must kill as well. You live by our great river. She is mother of the earth. She is hungry. Every year she comes seeking prey and must eat her fill. The forest too is hungry. The earth and the spirits need blood, or else they will not provide maize, manioc and sugarcane.”

“Will you let me go, Inti Cussi?”

“Cuzumarra, where can you go, all alone. We are not cruel.”

“I don’t want to stay with you.”

The queen’s laugh rang out: “That’s how women used to beg. I don’t want, I don’t want, leave me alone.”

“Men have never treated women the way you treat us.”

She shouted: “Never, you wretch? Never? And do you not still do so today? Buy them, sell them, force them, beat them? Never? Listen to you, coming here to make us cry with tales of your Inca, you, who made slaves even of your friends?”

Cuzumarra was happy that they conversed so frankly, and he gave a frank reply: “I have seen many things here with you women, and you have told me many things. I see how good it was that we met.”

Hear, circling condors, this avowal of my guilt

When Cuzumarra awoke from the blow inflicted by a spear to his head, he was lying in a boat. It was gliding very fast. He saw trees but no riverbank. Women were sitting in front and behind him. They were paddling. One stood tall at the stern, gazing across the water. He felt his forehead, touched blood, groaned. Then he slept again.

He recognised the strong young woman crouching beside him on the mat, watching him. It was the queen of the neighbouring village who had visited Inti Cussi. She nodded at him. He saw her lips moving but could hear nothing. He sat up, his head lolled, he was in a small house. She grabbed his head, pulled pith from his ears, now he could hear: “Where did your spirit go for so long, Cuzumarra? You were dead.” An old woman holding a little basket knelt by Cuzumarra, felt his head. He noticed that his head was wrapped in a soggy mass. “Inti Cussi gave you to me,” the queen explained. “She thought you were dead and was about to order you buried.”

“You should have left me.”

“I don’t want you as a prisoner, I shall let you go wherever you want.”

These were a different, a flourishing Women People that he now lived among. He no longer desired to strum his old tune of Incas and Whites. Not any more. Not ever.

On these mounds, a day’s journey from Inti Cussi, they kept men as slaves and lovers. They ruled over the men, went on the warpath with other tribes, but were not hard and grim like those others. They made their men look nice, groomed them, left them in the huts to care for the children.

The village children were all girls, well loved, they chased cormorants across cold fireplaces, they toddled and probed, mothers and older women carried infants, the infants carried kittens, bigger children ran down the hill to sit by a watercourse. There the big arcanhas, fish otters, whistled and slurped, they were fearless, otters and children looked at each other with little black eyes and whispered secrets, the otters had lovely shiny pelts and a long moustache. The big girls told about a dolphin:

“In the dry season, women moved their huts down to the fields so as to be closer to their boats. A shadow stole by night to a woman. Several saw it. It came out of the reeds and vanished. It had its eye on the drying rack with its maize and manioc, it was scared off. They couldn’t see what it was because it kept close to the ground. The other women gave the woman a club, because she was afraid. Nothing happened, and this woman went farther into the fields, gathered firewood in the forest, dug roots and went out on the river to fish. Now and then she was visited by a man, she couldn’t see his face clearly in the dusk. The woman kept these visits secret. The man sat with her behind the hut, she gave him mash, he asked her not to mention he’d been there, and she too was afraid to talk. She accepted presents from him. Later at night he came and loved her. She was nervous when he loved her, he smelled funny, and the overseer women when they came down to the fields asked what that smell was in the hut, had she caught fish. But she denied going on the river. Once when he came she didn’t recognise him and shrank back into a corner, asked if he was the ghost of a dead person or a sacrifice, or from the forest. He smiled and said no. Then she said they were going to hold the first harvest festival, and if she put all his presents around her neck and on her arms he should come too and protect her, otherwise they’d beat her. The stranger became sad, said he was not strong, he couldn’t protect her, he would ask his friends back home to come with him. And when it grew dark and he went away down the hill, she was frightened. His feet faced backwards. He was a dolphin. She didn’t say anything to the others. She waited for him to return. He didn’t. She wept, down by the river.”

≈≈≈

These were rich villages, with their fields and houses.

The queen kept several men. Some built the fire. One knew how to cut her hair, and comb and oil it. One knew how to paint her. One had found out what songs she liked best. One played the flute.

She let Cuzumarra recuperate. When he was well again he left the hut and became her husband.

Cuzumarra no longer wanted to think of his homeland. But thoughts of the whiteskins and their cruelties tore constantly at his vitals. The queen asked many questions, he had to tell stories, these were followed by endless female chatter.

In these rich villages they knew how to weave, though not as finely as in Cuzumarra’s country. He was given a handsome piece of cloth, and sat with the other men on mats when the queen received visitors and wanted to display her wealth, and they marvelled at his golden ear discs.

As the great river became sated and began to shrink and islands appeared, Cuzumarra grew fat and idle. Every morning like a cockerel he woke the queen with a favourite song she had heard as a child. He was given little to do. He avoided looking towards the setting sun, anyway he could descry no mountains or snowy peaks, no smoke from volcanoes. The land lay peaceful, green, endless green, a sea of green, and over there the great milky-white river still flowed, devouring field and forest; and sky, steaming air, heat of the day, cool nights. He stood as people ran around him and children laughed, women and slaves ground meal, wove raffia, carved spears, stood under buriti palms. His mouth, which every morning had to crow, now breathed: “Mountains and plains all around, circling condors, owls and nightbirds, hear this avowal of my guilt.”

On each shoulder sat a red parrot, the queen’s favourites. They squawked in his ears, he rubbed his bare neck on their plumage. He smelled the queen’s pungent oil with which he massaged her. His companions had mouldered away in the damp earth.

And when the first Whites came downstream in heavily manned boats, and alarm drums pounded and people remembered his stories and his companions, he too had already mouldered away.

He lived long enough to see the next slaving raid. In the three weeks before the next new moon all laws were cast aside. The warrior women and their captives took every liberty, no one kept them apart. Since the captives were unhobbled and only loosely guarded, some managed to escape, but most stayed, these were days of delight for young men and women. They were fed with everything there was to be had. Guards were few because the older women who had no children to tend were busy fishing, hunting, working in the fields. Day after festive day they had to roast, serve, prepare beer. The young men and women decorated themselves anew every day, played, slept, ran around in the forest.

Queen and overseers had heavy duties during these weeks. They were not allowed to be strict because, according to custom, the young warrior women ruled. There were legends that long ago the queen and overseers had to quit the village entirely for these weeks, to live in huts in the forest, and only at the new moon, just before the great feast of the warrior brides, were they welcomed back with much pomp and restored to their normal status. But the quarrels both major and minor that broke out among the young people in these weeks demanded the presence of the older women. For the young did not form fixed couples, the warrior women were allowed every freedom, and this was the cause of many quarrels. And because passions were already high the quarrel was sometimes bloody, and sometimes whole mobs of warrior women clashed. So now queen and overseers stayed in the village.

During the last days before the new moon, the one who once was Cuzumarra saw terrible deeds among these women. The time of parting for most grew near. Women danced themselves into a frenzy of rage and cruelty. They were like ships in a storm, rushing headlong with full sail onto rocks. They went down to the river to bathe, and as if they had flushed out a swamp creature and let it climb onto them and into them they cleansed themselves and were transformed into birds, turtles, bats, leapt shrieking at each other and attacked men, who were no less frenzied.

On the day of the new moon they built themselves huts in the fields. Their cries rang out all night long, it was tumult, lust, savagery, pain, rage, it was considered holy, no one came near the huts that night, the children had to be calmed, many children were taken for safety well away from the village.

At daybreak masked priestesses led couples from the huts. Several of the young women had not cut their hair during these three weeks, they wore their animal stripes and pelts. Now they had stiff raffia woven into their hair. And as big drums pounded, young warrior women stepped out, each leading a man who had allowed himself to be tied up in play. Other women dragged a man, already throttled by winding his hair about his neck, laboriously across the fields and up the hill behind them.

That evening they performed the great armadillo dance. There before the great fire the armadillo leapt. The hero was called Rairu, he danced close to the powerful beast, it grabbed him, he had to throw away his spear, the beast struck his shoulder, he had to throw away his bow and quiver of arrows, the beast butted him in the chest, he had to throw away his shield, he fled from the strong armadillo and crawled around in the dirt, circling and again circling, the armadillo danced around Rairu, first on one leg and whooped, then on the other leg and whooped. It drove him towards the pit trap, he tried to escape, it grabbed his head and pulled him into the pit, and the pit collapsed on both of them, the big armadillo and Rairu.

The armadillo has disappeared!

The great armadillo has defeated Rairu!

The great armadillo has pulled Rairu into the pit!

And people clambered out of the pit, greeted forest, river, sky, greeted the moon. The great armadillo had vanished into the moon.

The young warrior women and their captives danced when the people sprang out of the pit. The women held spears, the men held shields, but they had to die.

Cuzumarra the fat warrior squatted with the queen on a mat. It happened that, unremarked by others, the spirit of the great armadillo came down from the new moon to him who was once Cuzumarra and spoke to him: “And you, Cuzumarra? Stand up! Or is even that beyond you now? Stand up. Dance with them.”

The great armadillo in the new moon, unseen and unheard by others, encouraged Cuzumarra to stand up and dance. The queen squealed when he rose from the mat and pushed into the circle of dancers.

The spirit told him not to heed what they shouted at him, and to take a shield from a dead man. He did so, and stood with the men.

A monstrous howling greeted the new moon that showed itself in the blue between palm leaves. One by one, men fell, Cuzumarra among them.

Women thronged drunkenly towards the blood that sorceresses sprayed, the older women to regain their strength, the young women for their lives and children.

Frogs boomed from the swamps, a thunderstorm rumbled. The river flowed silent under pale moonlight. Through the nightdark fields, masked dancers paraded with clappers, feeding the ground with blood from gourds.

≈≈≈

Not long after Cuzumarra’s spirit had joined the armadillo in the moon, the Whites he heralded came via the Napo river down the mighty Amazon. They were Francisco Orellana and a handful of armed men. With axe and knife they hacked their way through primeval jungle on the eastern flanks of the mountains. His band were starving, they came to the Coca river, they had no boats. They attacked villages, took boats. They captured young men, forced them into the boats, they had to row, weave rope from lianas and haul the boats over cataracts.

Orellana could not return up the Napo river, the current was too strong, so he pushed on, came to the Amazon. On the forested banks they saw women. Arrows showered down on them. The women took fright when the men in boats drew near to the bank. What monsters were these men, faces and hands yellow-white, their eyes flashed, they were hung about with a tremendous number of puzzling artefacts. The women hid in dense reeds and threw spears. They heard the giants yell, saw them fall down. Then thunder and lightning erupted from their tubes, the warrior women fell back and fled horror-struck into the bush. After the Whites disappeared and the warrior women hastened back they found wounded trees, shiny stones lodged deep down in the wounds. Some trunks had been torn apart. They were sorely afraid of the thunder from the tubes.

As Orellana proceeded along the river the current took him, and he did not want to stop until they came to the end. He gazed up at villages in amazement, the wide houses, carefully tended fields. No women came near his boats. The river was wide, the boats sped along. The Whites feared the night, when they had to make fires on a sandy bar or on a forested bank to keep away cold and mosquitoes.

The Mother of Rivers, Sukuruya, withdrew again. It was low water. Spirits that the Whites had disturbed stormed away from the valley. Witchdoctors had their work cut out to calm things down, the spirits removed themselves from the river, from the forests, game animals fled, they were defenceless, lost, had to invoke every spirit, bring them gifts, implore them to remain.

All trace of Orellana was lost somewhere along the river. He travelled through wilderness, always hemmed in by the huge walls of forest. At last no more land, no more trees. He floated between hummocks of grass and driftwood. An infinite horizon. Huge waves. The boats on the milk-white waters were driven backwards. The current released them. This was the eastern ocean.

And just as savannah grass closes behind fleeing game, so the forests and plains closed behind the Whites.

A sea wind from the east blew across the watery expanse and swept away all trace of the boats, blew, foamed: It was nothing! The wind eradicated their very breath.

The mighty river rolled eastward and called out to the ocean: you strangers were never here!

 

END OF VOLUME 1 PART 1