“What ability are you talking about, captain? Of the ability to work in a mine? Of the ability to push a plough? Of the ability to be a servant in the home of a white?” Anatolio, without meaning to, had ended up screaming the last few words.
The captain kept smiling. Anatolio sighed. In the past, when Anatolio had asked the same questions of other whites, there had been different reactions. Some left silently, others insulted him. Anatolio preferred the insults because they at least expressed what they felt. The captain belonged to the worst: those who believed there was already a harmonic conviviality between whites and natives as a result of centuries of history that had erased past wounds. In books and official speeches there was no more talk of invasion or conquest; now it was all about the meeting of two worlds or two cultures. He thought it incredible that the whites also believed their lies.
“There are—whites, as you call them—who also do jobs like those you described. Anyway, work dignifies us all.”
“But we always get those jobs! Do you let us be presidents, ministers or ambassadors?”
“Everything in its own time, Pomahuanca. I am sorry that things were different in our common past, and that we now have to carry that burden…”
“What burden do the whites carry? Is being entrepreneurs, big landowners or generals a burden? To drive luxurious vehicles is a burden? To appear in the media? There are no changes, captain; we are still the conquered and you the conquerors.”
“Then how do you explain your presence here, Pomahuanca? How do you explain your education, completely free, with the highest quality standards and in the best universities? Your healthcare? According to your logic, only the whites, as you call us, should be on this mission.”
Anatolio Pomahuanca shook with anger and hatred. He closed his fists while, out of his mouth came the thoughts that had been growing in his mind ever since the mission had begun. They could do what they wanted afterwards, they could sanction him, degrade him; at least he’d had the pleasure of telling this captain what he really thought of the mission.
“Because I am an ornament! A symbol! Because you needed me in order to say you sent a Peruvian into space! So that everybody could believe that “harmonic conviviality” thing!”
The smile on the captain’s face disappeared. His eyes became small decoloured slits, parallel to the lipless long hole that was his mouth. He furled his hearing appendages as he stepped to the command dashboard. Except for the blue crest his species displayed on the head, his scaled skin lacked any pigmentation. The few earthlings who had survived the wars of conquest of the invaders from space had been right in calling them whites.
“You can leave, Pomahuanca, Be ready for your second shift,” said the captain, waving him off with his membranous hands.
Eyes in the Vastness of Forever
Gustavo Bondoni
Every few moments, one of the lights would blink. It was for only an instant and almost unnoticeable because of their sheer number, but Joao De Menes was watching intently, defying the devil-eyes to come closer. If they did, he would show them the power of a Portuguese right arm.
Magalhaes had laughed at him, simply saying, “If you fear the Indians’ camp-fires on the coast so much, perhaps you should take all the watches tonight,” and had then ordered the anchor dropped.
The captain might be an arrogant fool, but Joao knew the truth: those eyes were watching and weighing, the eyes of hundreds upon hundreds of hungry demons, waiting for the foolish Europeans to sail their ship beyond the edge of the world.
He didn’t know what lay beyond the end of the world. Some men told of a magic mist that you wandered around in forever, with no exit and no heaven, while demons feasted on your spirit. Others simply said you dropped off the edge of the planet, straight into the fires of hell. Still others spoke of eternal blackness, impossible torment.
Whichever was true, there were demons, and those demons possessed eyes that stared down at the ship malevolently from the cliffs that marked the edge of the world.
And every once in a while, one of them would blink.
Dawn broke lightless and drizzling, but Magalhaes was adamant: a boat was lowered and a fearful crew selected. It was impossible to fault the captain’s courage—he was the first to nominate himself—but easy enough to resent his cruelty. Of the ten men selected, five were the strongest on the Trinidad, while the other five were the most superstitious. Magalhaes was convinced that they could be cured of their foolishness by force, and exposure to the fact that what they believed to be demons were, in fact, just natural phenomena.
Predictably, De Menes was amongst them. He hadn’t even bothered to go to sleep following his watch because it was obvious that he would be on the boat. He boarded sullenly, ignoring the wind-driven spray. That wasn’t what was bothering him; his concern lay in the fact that he had no inkling as to what devils might await them on the barren patch of rocky land ahead.
The place looked innocuous enough: an empty brown and grey shore with low cliffs broken by periodic inlets. But De Menes knew that daytime often found malignant forces dormant, waiting. They were still there, of course, but they wouldn’t show themselves, just feel out the sailors and take them in the night when their power went unchallenged.
They landed without incident and Magalhaes led them a short distance inland and halted in front of a fire pit surrounded by the bones of a small animal. He pointed at it, looked straight into De Menes’ eyes, and laughed. “Here are your demons Joao. Hungry savages, from the look of it.” Turning to the rest of the men, he said, “Be wary, they can’t have gone far. This fire was burning an hour before dawn—I marked it especially.”
The men shifted uncomfortably. All were well aware that being harpooned by seal-hunters who’d never seen a European before would only destroy the body, as opposed to the eternal ravages that falling into the clutches of a demon supposed, but it made no difference to them. Death was what they feared, and they would worry about their immortal eternities at a later time. They stood straighter, attentive to the approach of any savages.
The natives they’d encountered along the interminable coast they’d sailed down to get that far hadn’t been particularly aggressive, but it was never advisable to let down the guard. Everyone who’d ever boarded a ship bound for spice or glory had heard the tales of fearsome ceremonies, strange rituals in pitch-coloured jungles and unholy banquets in which Europeans had been served as the main course.
They need not have worried, however. An hour after sunrise, a small group of natives approached them from behind an outcropping of rock. They walked slowly, their skin just slightly darker than the pale brown grass that their passage seemingly did nothing to disturb.
As they came nearer, the sailors could discern that every member of the group, composed of three women and two men, was as bare as the day they’d been born, their skin covered with some kind of thick grease or paste, a bright red colour. Presumably, this must have kept out the winds that, this far south, were cruel even in the spring—and would be deadly in winter.
The three women walked boldly to the group of Spanish and Portuguese mariners and spoke in their own language, a tongue that sounded harsh and hollow to De Menes, as desolate as the moaning of the ever-present wind. There was no threat in their gestures. The men were unarmed, and the spokeswomen seemed unsurprised to see them.