Pizarro Francisco - The Gold Eaters

THE

Gold Eaters

Books by Ronald Wright

FICTION

The Gold Eaters

Hendersons Spear

A Scientific Romance

NONFICTION

What Is America?

A Short History of Progress

Home and Away

Stolen Continents

Time Among the Maya

On Fiji Islands

Cut Stones and Crossroads

THE

Gold Eaters

RONALD WRIGHT

For Deborah

O Peru, land of metal and of melancholy!

FEDERICO GARCA LORCA

And my forebears there in Cusco called themselves lords of Tawantinsuyu, which is to say the Four Parts of the World, for they thought there could surely be no other world than this.

TITU KUSI YUPANKI

Not until a generation after they reached the Caribbean islands in 1492 did Spaniards begin to invade the thickly peopled mainland of the Americas, which many still believed to be a part of Asia.

They achieved no major conquest until smallpoxa mass killer new to the New Worldopened the way, enabling Hernn Corts to recover from his 1520 defeat by the Aztecs and return to take their capital, the city of Mexico, by siege in 1521.

Meanwhile, Vasco Nez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of Panama and waded knee-deep into an ocean new to Europeans. This he named the South Sea. In 1519 the Spaniards began building an outpost on its shore at Panama, a base from which to explore, subdue local Indians, and plunder seafaring traders who plied the Pacific coast.

From such traders came tales of a great empire where people lived in stone cities, kept animals resembling humpless camels, and ate from plates of gold.

Far to the south, beyond the jungle, where the trees gave way to dunes and snow-capped mountains, lay the realm of the Incas. Running more than three thousand miles from southern Colombia to central Chile and western Argentina, the Inca Empire was then the second largest on Earth (after China) and the last great civilization unknown to the outside world.

In 1526, Francisco Pizarro, a founder and mayor of Panama, formed a company to find and conquer this golden land.

ONE

Northern Peru

152627

H e is first on the beach, as he loves to be, alone in the foredawn light where the dunes fall down to the flump of the sea and the rippled foam gleams dimly at its edge. Only pelicans are there, dark shapes along the tideline gazing seaward, hunched against the morning chill, awaiting light enough to show the glint of fish. The breeze wafting listlessly ashore is salty on his lips. Later the sun will give it strength as the desert warms, drawing it onto the land.

The boy is happy with thoughts of an easy paddle to deep water, filled nets, a freshening wind to bring him home by noon. He walks to the boatsfifty slender shapes, sharp prows in the air, flat sterns on the dry sanda row of fangs against the sky. Today, for the first time ever, one of them is his.

A few weeks ago his grandfather told him to gather tall reeds from the irrigation canals. That boat of your fathers is sitting too low, he said. Rot at the heart. I can smell it. I doubt shell last till he gets back. Whenever that may be. The old man spat gloomily onto a pile of sweepings in the sunbaked yard. For now, youre the man of this house. Youre big enough to need a boat of your own. Bring me the makings and Ill build it. New britches, new boatthats what I say. He smiled and gave a little sniff, a sudden uptake of breath, his sign he was done speaking. The boy ran to a canal right away, coming back in a sweat with the first of many loads, spreading them in the sun. Every day he watched his grandfathers old hands stook and trim and bind the dry reeds into a sturdy, unsinkable craft.

It is there, waiting for him, its pale new body standing out from others in the gloom. As he grasps it by the waist and liftsso light!he breathes in sun and earth. Smells of the land not the sea. How long will it take, he wonders, to become a sea-thing of salt and fish.

The dawn begins to show behind the highland wall beyond the desert, silhouetting the dark rim of the lower range and blushing the snowfields far above. He turns his back to the light, takes off his clothesa plain cotton shirt and the new breechcloutgrown-up wear to go with his grown-up name. Waman. Like his grandfather. It still sounds too big for him, a name he must learn to make his own. He folds the breechclout carefully, smoothing the soft white fabric, admiring the even weave and elegant designbands of blue cormorants and red fishes along each borderdone by his mothers hands. Sometimes he saw his cousin Tika take a turn. A deft weaver too. He thinks of her slender fingers working the mysteries of the loom.

A less happy thought clouds his mind: Is Tika becoming so accomplished that her weaving might take her away? They are almost the same age, he older by six months. Since he now has his manly name, she will soon be grown enough to follow the womanly arts at a House of the Chosen in some distant city, to weave and sing and brew for the Empire, for its temples, its lords. Not long ago they spoke of this. Why not? she said. I dont want to stay in this village forever. I want to see the cities, the highlands, the jungle. Dont you? Andher voice faltered and the exuberance drained from her faceand I want to see where I lived before. Before I came here. That will be hard, I know, but one day I must.

Waman asked her how she could go there, go anywhere, if she became cloistered with the Chosen women. Oh, they let you out now and then, Tika said brightly, recovering her spirit, as if shed looked into it. And if I were to do well there, and tend my looksshe cocked her head, running a finger along the edge of her jawI might marry a great man.

An old man, more like, Waman answered tartly, burning with jealousy and a sense of his youth, his rustic simplicity.

He sighs, leaving the clothes under a stone. He carries boat, paddle, and net down to the ocean, wet sand spreading his toes.

Besides a gourd of drinking water and a small bag of toasted corn which Mother and Tika give him every morning, for this special day he has brought a small pot of his grandfathers beer. Filling his mouth with the yeasty drink (he is still too young to like it, though he wants to) he purses his lips, spraying boat, sea, and the first bulge of sun rousing from its sleep under the earth.