Our Lives Are the Rivers Read online

  “Señora de Thorne,” he continued, totally unaware of my thoughts, “my sources confirm what you’ve told me: the Spaniards are reorganizing their armies for an attack on Lima. General San Martín has sent emissaries to me, asking for my troops to come to the aid of the Peruvians. San Martín wants to rendezvous with me in Guayaquil, to discuss the future of Peru.” Bolívar paused. “Can I trust him?”

  “You can trust General San Martín,” I said without hesitation. “From the few occasions I have met with him, and from what Rosita has told me, he doesn’t appear to be a man blinded by ambition and glory. There’s a real decency and honesty about General San Martín. I don’t think he’s the kind of man who would ask you to meet with him and then betray you. If he gives you his word of honor that he means peace, then by all means go.”

  “Thank you, señora. You have been most helpful.”

  Was he looking at me now in a different light, as someone of value, as an asset? Behind us, in the ballroom, the band played the first bars of a waltz.

  “Señora,” Bolívar asked, “would you do me the honor of dancing with me?”

  I took his arm and we walked toward the center of the ballroom floor. We stopped under a chandelier ablaze with candles. Quickly, a wide circle formed around us. I could barely control my excitement. Bolívar took my hand in his and placed his arm around my waist. His hand on my back felt warm under my dress. He gently squeezed my hand. As I placed my hand on his shoulder, the aroma of his cologne aroused me. My face was burning; I looked away so he wouldn’t see. Instead, I saw all eyes riveted on us, and then little else, as we spun around the dance floor. The grip of his hand was firm, as if he were already claiming me. From the first steps we took, our bodies were perfectly attuned, as if we had been dancing partners for many years. I could tell he loved to dance as much as I did: his eyes were charged with light as the music crescendoed. When our waltz ended, the guests applauded. Bolívar bowed and kissed my hand. I curtseyed, thanked him for the dance, and began to walk away. He caught my hand before I could leave and said, “Señora de Thorne, it’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a waltz so much. Would you do me the honor of sharing the next dance with me, and then the one after that?”

  Many of the guests joined us on the dance floor. As we twirled among them, the general plied me with questions about them. I told him I had just returned to Quito and that some in the crowd were unknown to me, but my lacking information did not stop our conversation. We held the floor for hours, laughing, stopping only for more champagne.

  It was well past midnight when the Liberator invited me to join him in his room. I felt reckless from drinking, from his lavish attentions, the dancing, the pure intoxication of being close to so much power, to a man who was already a legend. I knew what the invitation meant for him. Another conquest. The general’s conquests were not limited to the armies of Spain on the battlefield but included countless women, in his bed. The names of many of his lovers—Josefina Núñez, Isabel Soublette, and Fanny de Villars, among others—were well known across the Andes. What would he do if I refused him—for this night? Would I ever get another chance to be alone with him? I would have to proceed with caution. I was, after all, a married woman. I was determined to leave my husband, yet could I afford to live solely by my romantic impulses? I had done it once, eloping with Fausto D’Elhuyar when I was a student in the nuns’ school, and the repercussions were grave. On the other hand, if I said yes to the general, a life I had long envisioned for myself might await me. I knew what to expect of my marriage with Thorne—with Bolívar the possibilities were infinite. And I would never find out the scope of those possibilities unless I acted on my desire. As for the people of Quito, I had already scandalized them once. To scandalize them once more, especially if it meant making happy the greatest man I had ever met, was an insignificant issue.

  2

  LIMA, PERU

  1875

  Natán

  I am a woman of average intelligence, unlearned, an ex-slave at that. But unlike most slaves, I lived at the center of extraordinary events and greatness in the form of the people who liberated the countries of the Andes from Spain. I believe I have the right to tell my version of what happened because I lived the events, in my own flesh, and I am still alive.

  It was always Jonotás did this, Jonotás did that. Without fail, my name is mentioned right after hers. Even now, fifty years later, when Manuela, Jonotás, Mr. Thorne, and General Bolívar are all dead, and those days have become part of the history taught to my children and grandchildren in the schools that teach the history of our march toward independence, my name still rates no more than a footnote.

  But in truth, I never resented my background role. My life as a shadow. Early on, when we were still girls, I realized my best hope of survival was to play sidekick to the two of them. Anyway, that was my nature, how God made me. Jonotás and Manuela were creatures of extremes, scorching flames. I was born to tread the middle. Jonotás used to say that the house could burn and fall around me and I would stand there, immobile as a rock. I wasn’t extravagant like the two of them, but I don’t think even they appreciated, or could explain, the natural ease with which I took in the drama of that tumultuous time.

  As I am the only survivor of their legend, now and then I am visited by young students of history who knock on my door in search of my version of those times. I’m an old woman, with few years left. Who’s to prevent me from telling my own version of what happened? I learned about politics and history by spying on the enemies of Manuela and the Liberator; serving Manuela and the general their meals (when they talked as if we weren’t there); cleaning their chamber pots; helping Manuela to bathe, dress, and undress; serving drinks and emptying ashtrays at the tertulias; stoking their fires and washing the bodies of their dead. This is how I came to know what I know.

  FOR OVER THIRTY years I followed Manuela as only a slave will follow her mistress. Jonotás and I were seven years old when we were taken to Catahuango to look after Manuela, who was then three. Manuela’s mother purchased Jonotás and me at a public auction in Quito. We had been brought to Ecuador along with our mothers and a group of slaves from our palenque, San Basilio, on the Pacific coast of Colombia, formerly known as Nueva Granada. San Basilio was founded by a band of runaway slaves in the Chocó jungle on a strip of land by the sea. These families—my family—had escaped from their owners in the provinces of Santa Marta and Cartagena.

  We were ordered to shadow Manuela’s every step in the house, in the garden, in the orchard, to make sure she did not harm herself in her restlessness. The hardest thing for Manuela to do was to keep still. Any chance she got she bolted into the fields like a wild filly. Even then we could tell her spirit was impatient with the daily routines of the hacienda. It was only a matter of time before she would outgrow us.

  I SAW A white person for the first time the day of the assault on San Basilio, which was the first day I knew as a slave. I knew white people existed beyond the jungle and on the other side of the sea because my family still lived in fear that their former owners would send bounty hunters to find them and take them back in chains. We knew the white people would not come from behind the mountains, because to get to the sea they had to wade through rivers and streams teeming with piranha, anacondas, and caimans, and forests infested with deadly vipers, bloodsucking bugs, and man-eating jaguars. Only Africans dared venture into the forest. So we lived in peace in San Basilio: the men fishing the sea, rivers, streams, and lagoons, hunting monkeys, birds, deer, and wild game; the women tending the fields of plantains, yucca, and yams; the children helping our mothers and bathing and drying our bodies under the afternoon sun. Sometimes we were visited by traders from nearby towns, Africans who had escaped to the Chocó, like us. They brought alarming news of slave ships that came ashore to raid the coastal palenques, of traders who made every effort to take our people back into slavery.

  Some people make a point of forgetting the bad things that happened
to them, and that’s how they survive. All my life I have made it a point never to forget how my people were taken back into slavery.

  When it happened, the men were taking their siestas in the hammocks hanging under the mango trees, the women and children were napping inside the houses on straw mattresses spread on the cool floor. I was dozing next to my mother and my little brother when I was awakened by a prum, prum, so loud, as if thunder had struck nearby. Then I heard people screaming: “Ay, Ogún! Protect us!”

  “Come, come, get up,” Ma said, pulling my hand. She lifted Juanito from the mattress and held him tightly to her breasts. I’d never seen such a look of fear in Mama’s eyes. “We have to hide. Run,” she said pushing me out of the house in the direction of the plantain groves behind our home. Outside, our people were running in all directions, screaming and crying. I saw white men wielding swords and machetes, some pointing their muskets at us; other men held back huge barking mastiffs with boiling red eyes. The powerful dogs on short leashes dragged the men behind them. The white men commanded, “Don’t move. Stay where you are or we’ll shoot.”

  The invaders herded us in the direction of the town’s plaza, as we did with our own burros and pigs at sunset, so the jaguars would not eat them. The older women, who remembered their years as slaves, wailed inconsolably; and their children cried even louder, the terror in their mothers’ eyes a sure sign their lives were changing forever. The men were quiet, a stunned fright in their eyes, like the glaze over the eyes of the unfortunates who glimpsed the evil spirits in the forest. I marched with Mama and Juanito, my father ahead of us.

  We were corralled in the square. Moncho Corso and Ramón Eparsa, two of our men who had been wounded in the raid, were dragged to the middle of the circle. The mastiffs, with their big jaws, thick foamy tongues, pointed teeth and mad eyes, were let loose upon them. While Ramón and Moncho screamed in pain, the hounds tore the flesh off their bones. When the mauling had ended, the mastiffs fought each other, the earth beneath them black with blood, over the wriggling and squirming arms and legs that, although lifeless, still moved—like the severed tails of lizards, snakes, and iguanas, or like cut pieces of the giant earthworms that came out after the rains. I hid my head between my legs. Ma tapped on my shoulder and said, “Don’t close your eyes, Natán. Look and remember. Remember always what white people will do to slaves.”

  The hungry mastiffs gorged themselves until they were so full they began to vomit chunks of flesh. Every time someone in the crowd moaned or started praying for mercy, one of the white men would scream, “Shut up, or the dogs will rip open your throat.”

  While the beasts devoured Moncho and Ramón, we were chained and ordered to remain seated on the ground. We sat there for hours, under the burning sun, thirsty, watching the long lines of red ants carry back to their mounds small pieces of bleeding flesh, and the vultures circling, a dark cloud overhead, waiting for the chance to reap their share of the scraps. We watched as the white men went into our homes and took our tools, the fabrics we made, the gold nuggets we found in the streams near our village.

  At twilight, flocks of alcaravanes in the trees at the edge of the forest sang a mournful and angry song, as if they were saying good-bye to us. Night fell and with it came swarms of mosquitoes that bled us until the sun rose. My consolation was that I’d been chained next to Mama and Juanito, though Papa had been separated and chained with a group of men.

  An overcast sky hid the moon. The mosquitoes, the hooting of the owls high in the trees, the cries of night birds, and the flapping wings of the bloodsucking bats that flew over our heads kept me awake. Close to morning, I fell asleep, my head against Ma’s shoulder. The first rays of the sun and the renewed crying of the women and children opened my eyes. The air was filled with the smell of decomposing flesh. With every breath, we took in the airborne remains of the people we loved.

  Later that day we were transported to the ship waiting for the haul offshore. Only the old and the sick were left behind in San Basilio. Strung in chains, each of us like a dark-colored bead in a necklace, we were thrown belowdecks. There we remained, rocked by the waves of the ocean, cold, wet, and sea-sick, covered in our own vomit and excrement. People who died on the voyage were thrown in the sea only when their maggots threatened to invade the ship’s provisions and the smell was so bad it made the men who fed us sick. In the darkness, day and night became one. We all wondered if we’d ever see land again. An elder said he thought we were sailing toward Panama City, on our way to the provinces of Santa Marta and Cartagena. The people who had been slaves said they wished they had died in the raid rather than go back to the life they were once lucky enough to have escaped from.

  Now and then we received a cup of water and a soggy biscuit, which kept us from starving. When the ship finally docked, we emerged into the sunlight looking like human sores. My little brother, Juanito, collapsed into a sack of skin and bones, all the blood sucked from his body. We were not in Panama but in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The men who’d captured us were not bounty hunters taking us back to Nueva Granada, my father said, they were slave traders who planned to sell us in Ecuador. “We’re cimarrones,” Pa said. “Nobody wants to buy cimarrones because we always try to run away the first chance we get. But here people won’t know that, so they won’t have trouble getting a good price for us.”

  Nobody had to tell me the happy days of my life were over. Guayaquil was a large port town, its bay clogged with sea vessels of all sizes. Whites, Indians, people who looked like both, slaves, and people with hair the color of gold, who spoke in languages I did not understand, rushed about. I had seen only our homes in San Basilio, but there were many big buildings in Guayaquil. My pa, who had been a slave in Cartagena, explained to me the different kinds of people and what each big building was for. When I heard the bells of a church toll for the first time, I screamed—it felt like my head had been filled with dry coconuts knocking against each other.

  Our people were confined in a corral in the outskirts of town. The sick were tended to, and we were given plenty of water to wash ourselves and abundant food. They wanted us to look like our former healthy selves. People came to gawk at us, inspecting our legs and arms, as if we were valuable animals. Outside the corral, vendors congregated to peddle their wares. My father was taken from that fattening pen and sold to someone who, I would find out, put him to work in the Amazon.

  Soon after, many of the women and their children were put in wagons and each one given a potato sack. We were told to hold on to them because we would need them to protect us from the cold. The wagons started in the direction of the sierra, and we soon entered a cold, misty world, a land of ice-capped mountains and smoking volcanoes where instead of monkeys, jaguars, and alcaravanes, I saw for the first time llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and huge condors. It was a land of Indians, chestnut-colored people of small stature who spoke in their own language. These Indians were not like the easily scared ones who lived in the forest beyond San Basilio and who avoided us. The Andean Indians were everywhere. Underneath their taciturn ways I could see that they, like the slaves, were full of hatred for white people. Their eyes said it all. They were also suspicious of us.

  At the end of the long journey, we were sold in the main plaza of Quito. Jonotás and I were separated from our mothers, and fate blessed us by allowing us to be sold together. For many years I cried, remembering the day. I stopped crying when I finally understood that tears would not change anything; that I had to conserve my energy if I wanted to survive.

  At first, Manuela treated us with the affection she showed her lap dog—something lovable that wasn’t quite human. As her slaves, we were supposed to bathe, groom, feed, and play with her. Her favorite game was to dress us up in costumes, as if we were her living dolls. The other slaves and Indian servants in Catahuango often reminded Jonotás and me that we were lucky, because house slaves did not have to toil in the fields doing backbreaking work, and we did not have to live with the other slaves in flea-rid
den and rat-infested huts on Negro Row, sleeping one on top of the other like dogs do to keep warm on cold nights. We got to eat the scraps of meat that were left from the family’s table, not the boiled potatoes and roasted corn that the other slaves lived on. At night we rolled out straw mats on the cold wooden floor by Manuela’s bed, in case she woke up crying, thirsty, or needing to use the chamber pot.

  Manuela’s mother, Doña Joaquina, was the saddest woman I’d ever seen—like a lost soul in purgatory. From her bed, she tried to run the affairs of Catahuango, and made sure Manuela was well cared for. She was so ill with consumption that Manuela was seldom brought to her bedroom to see her. Doña Joaquina was known among her slaves and Indian servants on the hacienda as a kind mistress. Fortunately for Jonatás and me, Manuela was her mother’s daughter in that respect.

  Just months after we arrived in Catahuango, Doña Joaquina’s illness got worse, a doctor arrived from Quito, and two days later she was dead. The day Doña Joaquina died, her mother and sister and brother arrived in Catahuango to take the body back to Quito, where they buried her. Manuela’s aunt, Doña Ignacia, and grandmother, Doña Gregoria, settled in Catahuango to raise Manuela and run the hacienda. After they moved in, it was as if the icy top of a volcano had formed over the hacienda.

  When Manuela asked about her mother, she was told Doña Joaquina had gone to Quito to see the doctor and that she would return soon. Manuela cried and cried, but neither her grandmother nor her aunt knew how to comfort her. At first they tried to quiet her down by giving her toys, then a puppy, but as the days came and went, and Manuela continued crying for her mother, they were happy to let Jonotás and me comfort her. As long as we kept the crying child out of sight, we were allowed many small freedoms.