Excerpt
“Sure they are, Father. Don’t fret.Wetreat them well, don’t we?”
He extended his sword and poked an Indian girl in the ribs. She
flinched and hurried on.
“Who is going to bury him?”
“Bury him?”
“Yes, bury him. You don’t intend to leave him at the mercy of the
beasts, do you?”
“No, no, Father. You go ahead and I will see he gets a proper
burial.”
Pánfilo dismissed me with a wave of his hand. My horse ambled
along, unfazed.
A valley of deep green and ochre made me sit taller in the saddle, as
though I had seen the passage to Resurrection. Mountains to the
west towered over it. All living beings were silent in the midday sun,
only the occasional lizard rattling through the bushes or an insect
droning or a bird screeching on being awakened from a nap. A
bright blue butterfly, as big as my hand, landed on my thigh and
flew away, ethereal like a moment of grace.
“Is that where we are going?” I was on Babieca, riding alongside
Benjamin.
“Yes, padrecito. That’s the city of El Tocuyo,” he said, “the capital
of the province.”
Benjamin stretched in the saddle, squirmed and let out a
prolonged and stinking fart. Babieca snorted. I waved a hand under
my nose but stayed close, trusting the breeze to save me. The sun
was at its zenith. We dismounted and tied the horses under a tree.
“Will you live here?” I asked.
“No. I’ll go to the valley of the Caracas Indians with you. They say
there is gold.” He winked. “If you go with the founding expedition,
you get the best land and the best Indians.”
He took a wineskin out of his saddlebag. “If shit had some value,
padrecito, the poor would be born without an asshole.
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