Guano (8 page)

Very good.

But you should know that he is in Tarapoto, the City of Palms.

And?

The mayor explained that a dispatch would take time, as would reading it, the trip, his arrival … time.

We'll wait here, Pinzón answered, his eyebrows doing the pileof-coal thing again.

The mayor acquiesced but suggested it might not be necessary to sleep here, on the sofas. It would be better to return to the ships. No matter, no matter, Pinzón repeated.

Then he asked if the palm trees in Tarapoto were really that pretty. They must be since the city was nicknamed for them. That's something. What exactly is it about them? The mayor said that they were truly magnificent, tall and strong. The wind rustled their leaves, mimicking the sound of the sea, a rough sea, a storm. Oh, said Pinzón. Yes, said the mayor, a real squall. When you close your eyes, there are more storms in Tarapoto than in any port city in the Americas. Oh, Pinzón said again, you haven't seen Salamanca. I was referring to the Americas, the mayor said, the Americas. You're talking about Europe. But you haven't seen Salamanca, Pinzón said.

They were quiet. They waited.

The captains, who had lost their way, joined the threesome. They didn't know how they got lost, but they did know how they got found. A trumpet player had guided them, a good Samaritan. He played the
Marcha Real
rather well. They had listened to be polite.

Hours passed; the mayor excused himself at the end of one of them.

Gentlemen, my family.

The sun was setting when they decided to head back to the ships. They were hungry and tired. Their eyes, which periodically counted the ceiling tiles, spent longer and longer hidden behind eyelids; pins and needles invaded their hands, which tapped sword hilts to keep them at bay. They grew pensive. The smile of a woman left behind came to them, or fantasies of the woman they had never met, the One, who would surely come along, otherwise there was the fear of dying alone. It must have been the place that conjured
such mythical creatures. So empty and calm it summoned wild thoughts. The silence, combined with the effects of the journey, the things they had seen, too much space. It mustn't be easy living in the Americas all the time, and it being the only place you could roam. Did they resign themselves to never seeing it all? Did they ever get used to their own insignificance, to the incredible vastness that reduces men to nothing?

No.

Let's go, Pinzón said. He was feeling suffocated; this would take some time. Pezet wanted to say goodbye to his palm trees and his turkey first.

On the way back, the admiral asked Simón not to mention this retreat. You should say that we waited, not sleeping; that's more realistic, more determined, more Spanish. And our resolve is worthy of the fabrication. There is no point in exhausting ourselves right away. We will exhaust ourselves when fatigue is no longer an option.

Pezet never came. His tour was bringing him glory, and Juanita was weakening. He also loved the palm trees of Tarapoto. So he sent an envoy, Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco, the general. The stylish one.

The meeting took place a few days after the fleet's arrival, in the office of the mayor, who, for the cause, had graciously agreed to slip out. Pinzón asked the captains to wait in the entrance hall. He preferred the nobility of the duel, a steely face-to-face confrontation; it was a question of honour. So they went back to the ceiling tiles they had started counting the other day, counting the floor tiles when those ran out, and contemplating their lives.

But not you, Pinzón said.

Not me? Simón asked.

Well, yes, you.

The admiral wanted him in the meeting; Simón would dispassionately record what each one said and would give each a copy of the interview. A witness, it was customary; well, customary for a certain era, and this subcontinent was stuck in another century, so one had to adapt.

Vivanco smoothed his moustache, rolled one of its points between his fingers – pause – understood nothing, but didn't let it show, and then, saying to himself, These damn Spaniards, accepted.

You will take notes, Pinzón said.

I will take notes, Simón said.

Everything in the office was either beige or brown: a brown globe, a beige love seat, brown books, and at one end of the room, there was a large window striped with brown Venetian blinds, which filtered the beige light. The mayor's family portrait filled an entire section of the wall. The wife looked chubby, the child too, as did everything else in the portrait: the ottoman, the cushion, the canary. They blended in with the blandness of the mayor's chair, made of brown padded leather, a plumpish piece of furniture as wide as it was high, which unfortunately had survived the closing of a club, much to the chagrin of the aesthetes, and had run aground here after an auction. Vivanco sat in it, wondering whether he should lie down in it – pause – finally seeking comfort in an in-between position sometimes seen among opium addicts – further pause – and ending up sitting stiffly at right angles at the edge of the chair, so as not to surrender the propriety of discomfort, which was inevitable at any rate.

This made him look tall and skinny, as if deformed by the portrait or the armchair, a distorting effect that made Simón worry that he appeared just as absurd. Vivanco invited Pinzón to sit across from him. Pinzón declined, fearing he too would be the victim of visual distortion, concerned that the ottoman would narrow his jawbone
and foil the effect of his sideburns, but above all he was angry enough to grant no further civilities. The past few days, spent ruminating and brooding, had made him impatient, and he wanted them to get to the point.

He nonetheless accepted the cigar that was offered to him, a Cuban.

Well, said Pinzón, we would like an apology and restitution.

He was standing near the portrait; it made him look taller. He was smoking, which made him look taller still, as if his head were sticking out of a cloud. Like a giant.

No apology is required, Vivanco replied. This is a domestic matter. Peru will deal with Peru.

Pinzón was fumigating the mayor's family and the canary.

We're talking about Spanish citizens, he said.

They had been living here for over twenty years, Vivanco reminded him.

Blood is blood, Pinzón said. Spain doesn't forget her sons and daughters.

She forgets other things, Vivanco said. Her defeats, for instance.

But not what she is owed, Pinzon said. Money and interests were stolen from her.

And he pulled a few dates from the drawers of History. Misunderstandings forty-two years old. He stressed that it was nothing personal; he smoked. Vivanco explained that Peru would not give in to blackmail any more than she would to asphyxia. It was nothing personal, he stressed further. Then there was a silence that the smoke seemed to be sketching in the air: nervous scrolls, uncertain arabesques that surrounded Pinzón and Vivanco, containing nothing recognizable, no answer or clue, no moustache or eyebrows, no dragon or cauldron that could have been the source of these thick clouds …

I will report this to Madrid, Pinzón finally said.

And I will report this to Lima, Vivanco said.

Yes, Pinzón said, losing his temper, report this to Lima, go ahead. Or rather to Tarapoto; you will have a better chance of being heard. If the palm trees will pipe down, of course.

And he pointed out that Juanita did not have to be briefed about all this.

That was it.

Vivanco was indignant, got up from the armchair, and then turned his back on Pinzón. He peered through the smoke and the jealousy, absorbed. He would have liked to see a carnival going on outside, to show the Spaniards that life here was doing very well without them. Death too. But the square was empty. Aside from two dogs and a wounded bird that they were tearing limb from limb: a wing was folding and unfolding like a fan as it was shaken, a foot left on the ground would soon become a good-luck charm. Head, beak, eye were of no particular use now – the quartering went on, blood staining feathers and muzzles. The dogs were wearing collars. They must belong to someone. They should be better trained.

Stratus clouds, Vivanco finally said. You should take an umbrella when you go. A gift. It will be big enough for the both of you.

Simón still wanted to make a copy of the talks to give to Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco.

That won't be necessary, Pinzón said.

That's fine, Vivanco acquiesced. We won't forget any of this.

Finally something they could agree on. It could have been the cornerstone for a compromise, but no. Instead they left, slamming the door behind them. In the lobby, they collected the captains, who were starting to worry about their fate and the tiles, and they headed back to the ships, taking neither French leave nor English leave but Spanish leave, which is a great deal noisier. Pinzón was angry that he hadn't taken an umbrella, because the rain was cold, and that he had left Spain, because Peru was ridiculous.

They alerted Madrid again.

Madrid took the news hard. Isabelle neglected her little dog, quintupled her meringue intake, blamed her deputy ministers between mouthfuls. They thought Pinzón, the poor beggar, in spite of his prestigious lineage, was failing to command respect. They concluded just as logically that, since Peru wasn't yielding, they would have to ask for more. For example, the repayment of debts from the war of independence, a war they suddenly remembered.

But poor Pinzón, Pinzón whose bloodline wasn't sufficient to make himself heard. Columbus had managed to make the natives understand immediately that he was the best person to safeguard their interests. It just went to show that, sometimes, to communicate with those people, you have to stop talking. You have to do something else. And Pinzón seemed to be sorely lacking in something else. The poor beggar.

So they sent Eusebio de Salazar y Mazarredo to explain all this to the Peruvians. It was an impressive name, further enhanced by the title of royal commissioner. He was not an ambassador, it should be noted, but a commissioner; and not a commissioner of nothing at all, but a royal one, therefore not of a country but of a colony.

The war of independence was already fading from memory.

Eusebio de Salazar y Mazarredo arrived in Peru in March 1864 aboard a ship sent to reinforce Pinzón's fleet. The crossing was made in record time – oh, the madness of modernity – and the news of escalating tensions made the rounds of the world's papers: Paris, London, Moscow, Madrid.

Salazar boarded the
Resolución
.

He was very much of his time: the beard, the pomade, the uniform dripping with decorations and festoons forming spirals on his shoulders. He looked like a theatre. He looked as though his chest and armpits were going to open up on to a performance.

As the ranking officer on deck, who had come that day to get the ship's news at the request of the captain of the
Triunfo
, Simón introduced himself and explained Pinzón's absence. He was fuming in his cabin, planning, fuming some more, finally throwing a sextant out the porthole, then tracing an umpteenth red circle on his yellow chart. Very well, Salazar said, let's go join him; let's see what's going on.