This second set of themed excerpts explores the ways in which human beings have become estranged not just from the world but from their own physical being.
THEME 2: ALIENATED BODIES
1: The Bastard Mansfeld (from Wallenstein Part 3)
Ernst von Mansfeld, a warlord nominally loyal to the exiled Palatine Frederick (the Winter King), sets out from The Hague, hoping to bypass Wallenstein’s forces to attack Vienna. Defeated by Wallenstein (Duke of Friedland and Imperial Field-marshal) at the Elbe crossing of Dessau Bridge, he escapes through Saxony and Moravia into Hungary.
2: Time of True Humanity (from Mountains Oceans Giants Part 8)
The misbegotten Iceland-Greenland venture has unleashed a plague of monsters on Europe, forcing the Townzones to go underground. The Promethean elite double down on their ambition to bend Nature to their will.
3: Ambrosius Alfinger (from The Land without Death Part 2)
The role of German interests in the early stages of the Conquest is not well known. This tale of a German conquistador takes to extremes the disregard of the European adventurers for their physical bodies.
4: The Extra (from A New Jungle)
Volume 3 of Amazonas brings us from colonial America to 20th century Europe. The Polish Faust-figure Twardowski conjures Copernicus, Galilieo and Giordano Bruno from their graves to see what their ideas have wrought – including this vignette of a drab alienated urban existence.
The Bastard Mansfeld (from Wallenstein Part 3)
Ernst von Mansfeld, a warlord nominally loyal to the exiled Palatine Frederick (the Winter King), sets out from The Hague, hoping to bypass Wallenstein’s forces to attack Vienna. Defeated by Wallenstein (Duke of Friedland and Imperial Field-marshal) at the Elbe crossing of Dessau Bridge, he escapes through Saxony and Moravia into Hungary.
MANSFELD disappeared into the Brandenburg marchlands. One night a short asthmatic man was trundled in a two-wheeled peasant barrow down to a moonlit farmyard, whose inhabitants cleared the room for him and his companions, gathered outside as the heartsick man wrestled with death. They wanted to fetch a barber to bleed him, or a doctor from Tangermünde. He brushed them aside in his steel helmet and breastplate, blue eyes swelling, breath wheezing, standing behind the table with a candle burning, holding himself upright. He remained standing the whole night. When anyone pushed a chair towards him, he kicked it back with his heel. He let them dribble little sips of white wine into his mouth. Kept peering out of the little square window through which white moonlight poured. When cocks started crowing, his back slumped, for the first time he sighed, lay across the peasant’s bed. After wheezing a curse he emptied half a jug of wine, his hands shaking, from eyes lowered to his breastplate tried to read his officers’ faces: what are you thinking. Without waiting for their answer he gasped: “Once means nothing. We’ll play the same game again, the same game.”
An hour later they hoisted him back into the barrow; the priest-ridden Emperor should not think him tame and friendly like the Palatine gentleman; he’ll soon have Friedland by the collar, the charlatan, buys half the world and thinks everything settled. Sharp-eared riders on ahead, lanterns doused.
The remnants of the shattered army made their way to him; many came over from the Danes, squads of Scots who had followed him up from Hamburg only to arrive too late at Dessau Bridge. Quietly they assembled in the Brandenburg marchlands. Peasants and nobles gave them money and supplies, horses tack and carts when they heard that the Catholics had won the battle. The Bastard sent his drums out into the land, people came to him. To the west the Imperial forces felt about for ways to deny him access to the Elbe.
So Mansfeld was alive, had not relinquished his evil plans, had foreseen what they would do, all of a sudden a general mobilisation was ordered, Imperial edicts with considerate warnings appeared one after the other: “The outlaw Mansfeld has broken into the Duchy of Crossen with his rapacious followers, and is likely to turn his whole forces onto Silesia.”
On they marched through Frankfurt on the Oder, now it was high summer. Boldly bypassing Wallenstein, through Crossen, towards Liegnitz and on to Breslau. Burning, robbing, laying waste to the Emperor’s ancestral lands. On tiptoe, standing in the stirrups, trumpeting, neighing, scornful laughter on every side: “Emperor! The Pope’s Emperor.”
Clinking regiments, full coffers, fresh horses, oats, hay, finery and gold chains from the houses. On we go, on to Moravia. Forty thousand Hungarians, Turks, Tatars waiting there.
GALES of laughter in Munich. That bowlegged gipsy, the mangy outlaw Mansfeld, had jumped like a monkey over Friedland’s head, gathered his courage, slipped away, the Duke let him through into the ancestral lands to link up with Hungarians, Turks, Tatars. Munich’s laughter was heard in Vienna. That the Imperial forces should suffer this from a have-not, a chicken thief, stable-boy of the King of England. Italians mocked in the Imperial antechamber: give Friedland another fifty thousand men and he’ll defend himself against – two thousand, this successor to Alexander of Macedon! All we see is a usurer, a hoarder, a mediocre colonel in command of the army; a fool fallen prey to his craving for status. The counsellors were only mildly minded to defend him. But when wailings reached them from Silesia, Mansfield on the move again, fear and anger seized them all. Ruin, ruin! All Europe laughing. An outrageous speculator turned field commander. There was much noise at court.
Wallenstein, in a farmhouse near Halberstadt, enraged by the news from Vienna returned to the city. His mouth ran away with him as he scolded the counsellors; he called them disloyal, rogues. The army was lost, everything lost, he himself lost, all for the stupidity and malice of the counsellors in Vienna. All lost, for they compel – here the Duke’s agitation caused his voice for some minutes to fail – compel him to send the army after that bandit – all the Emperor’s men to Hungary! Hungary, where defeat is assured. “I’ll go to Hungary,” he screamed hysterically, “they insist on it, those counsellors disloyal to the Emperor. But they are not my masters, they’ll feel it when they seek me out later, when they need me and I’ll be as easy to find as a pious soul in the fires of Hell.”
Hot August days upon the advancing army. Away from rich feeding grounds into questionable territory. There were no contributions to be had, Wallenstein had no ready coin, gangs and squads broke out left and right to find what was owed them. Again the trees were heavy with corpses, punishments grew from severe to atrocious.
The enemy was always fifty miles ahead. The Duke called to Vienna for money; no response. He organised supply squads; these spread out systematically from place to place, accompanied by arquebusiers and pikemen. Anyone resisting the tax demand lost his property, and often his life. Behind Bunzlau, plague broke out in the army; Merode’s Walloons, abandoned, half-dead, plundered the town.
On into the blind hot air, into the wretchedness of Hungary. Plague felled more companies, the year’s harvest burned; behind them, as they melted away on their ruinous path, their enemies rejoiced.
Down, on into the hot hell of Hungary. Wheels came off wagons, they killed horses, scoffed meat. The Imperials encamped on a broad line along the Waag river. The Duke had brought through into Hungary barely eight thousand men, fully a third of the army had sunk into the earth without a battle fought.
There they stood on the grey dusty puszta, the Hungarian steppe – breathless after the chase, hardly moving. Both felt a terrible weakness in their limbs. Mansfeld was the first to stir, slipped rearwards with a beady eye. The Waag river lay brown and deep between them; Wallenstein sluggish, his back hurting, made his way across. Mansfeld’s campsites smoked ahead of him. They slipped around each other. In the heat, sweat dried on the skin as soon as it appeared. They slurped water, and shrivelled. Each could smell the other. They flung themselves from place to place, forced their bodies over the ground, engulfed farmyards villages habitations, and when they pulled out they left behind dirt ordure blood, rubble, ashes glowing, yellowed corpses with twisted limbs, gaping mouths.
Brown swampy grassland into which they stumbled singing, lethargic, driven by instinct; sank down. Blue flecked man-high quake-grass; the little seedheads had a metallic glint; feather-grass, butterfly flowers. Black ibis stepping through.
When flying sand almost obliterated his camp, Wallenstein and the colonels undertook a headcount. Then he required a tenfold increase in the number of provosts and hangmen; these were given four days to bring the exhausted recalcitrant mutinous ailing men to order. At the parade, which he inspected from a carriage because of his swollen liver, he declared through the window to his officers that they had not been recruited by himself and the Emperor for fun, oh no, it could be a matter of life and death. You trusted officers have authority, in the battles now commencing, to cut down without charge or trial anyone, officer or man, who does not conduct himself with the maximum permissible ferocity against the renegades. Make this known to the provosts and hangmen.
Again the hunt for the enemy began. They trekked deeper into the turfy bog, chewed raw beets and leaves, sharp stalks. The Hungarian flux broke out among the riders, the armies endured everything in silence. Lay for weeks on opposing sandhills; showers of rain, storms, hail; fever shook the mercenaries. Wasteland for miles around. Pools glinting, heath scrub reeds, white dunes. There they lie, those who have so long sought each other. Growling and roaring in giant wading boots, iron helmets, Wallenstein’s assault troops felt for a way across to the shifting Mansfeld figures, made no progress. The sky clubbed them pitilessly, ignored their faltering hearts. They rotted in their armour; had no idea what to do on such a battlefield. They lay day and night in wagons, water-rats swam through muddy sloughs and puddles, climbed up the canvas walls, fed on wood leather corpses, teeming through the camps.
When the rain let up, the steppe released the last of Mansfeld’s men; they ran away timorous and horrified to people in the towns north and west, to villages farmsteads, crawled into houses, cuddled up to children, animals, tried to think with furrowed brows.
The Bastard was found one morning roaring foaming on the floor of his wagon; no one went to him, they knew what it was. Twelve men of his lifeguard were with him; he had sold his last two companies to Bethlen Gabor for a thousand ducats. They thought he would succumb to a seizure. At noon two went into him in the roofed baggage wagon; he was sitting on the floor in his armour, small swollen goggle-eyed man, each hand filled with gold, he cried out in a failing voice: “Onward! Onward!” Threw a handful of ducats at them; the last horses were hitched, they made their escape. “I must go to Venice, to England. Onward! We’ll smash the deceiver, the yellow Bohemian. That false soldier, that debaucher of the coinage.”
“Women, women!” From villages, forests, wells, they brought him women they had waylaid, girls. Sleeved blouses of fine white linen, pale blue, crimson, folded at the neck, some with a little necklace of coral, plunging neckline, they walked barefoot, swished short cherry-red skirts; they cried out like calves at the slaughter when they were hoisted onto horseback. Mansfeld barked out a laugh when they were set down in the wagon weeping, imploring. “Away with the painted monkeys! Such stupid faces. Go find yourselves a cornet, little bitches.” Heaped insults on them, and was not even amused when his companions stripped the girls of their clothes on open ground and paraded them naked at pike-point. They fetched whole wagonloads of women for him, blackhaired greyhaired, crawling with lice, in mouldy evil-smelling rags. He fell with a passion on the withered grimy riffraff, raped the stupid hags, the crows all ruffled their wings and untidy feathers in ecstasy. His hare-lip became inflamed from all the kissing and sucking, swelled horribly under his little snub nose; the scars that crisscrossed his face lay in fissures edged by blue bloated skin. He fondled the dreadful jades, called them Mummy, he the infant; halberds and daggers lay nearby.
Advancing southward through Hungary, Bosnia drawing near, every day, though tormented by a worsening shortness of breath, he praised the King of England, that richest most noble of men, the only true king, and also the abandoned deceived Count Palatine, Frederick. In the wild Bosnian mountains his people had to drum up a Catholic priest, to whom he declared that now finally he would revert to his old faith, confessed, and in a solemn ceremony received absolution. Then he knocked the priest down with a stool, called to his people who lay listening in concealment: he’s given it to me, absolution, I have it, he can’t take it back. Haha, I obtained it fair and square.” One night between Sarajevo and Spalato in a little village called Rakovica, he was brought to a house; he chased away everyone not of his company. The dying man had them dress him in his cuirassier armour; as once in Brandenburg he stood the whole night, fighting for every breath, supported by a rotating crew of three men in the middle of the room, they held him by the knees, the waist. He rattled and rasped into the grey morning; at every attempt to sit him down he snarled, kicked an armoured leg out behind him. With both fists he gripped the long sword; its point he had stuck into a gap in the floorboards. When it clattered from his hands in the morning they grabbed him, laid the shuddering man on the bed. As he drew his last breaths they took off his helmet, he grasped it tight, managed to rasp out: “Venice, to Venice,” before his eyes glazed over.
Time of True Humanity (from Mountains Oceans Giants Part 8)
The misbegotten Iceland-Greenland venture has unleashed a plague of monsters on Europe, forcing the Townzones to go underground. The Promethean elite double down on their ambition to bend Nature to their will.
IN THE DISTRICT of Tel el-Habs, the Hill of the Prison, sat several senatorial personages who could only with difficulty be termed human. These were men and women who had taken part in the construction of the tower-humans and, like animals who had once licked blood, could not free their thoughts from what they had seen and experimented with. They returned reluctantly from the hulks and the Scottish peaks to the sober paltry realm of humans – those two-legged whinging bare-skinned obsolete creatures.
Atkinson had become a eunuch out of misogyny, out of misanthropy too. The men and women of Tel el-Habs, having seen the tower-people no longer wanted to be embodied in human organs. Experiments on slaves in their prison they tried on themselves as well. Tribord, returning from the summit of Glas Maol, gave up his old name, called himself Mentusi. He stopped eating, spread animals and plants over himself. Mentusi said to the shemale Kuraggara, who had once been Mrs Macfarlane: “Meki and his generation did well to abandon fields and forests to the wild. What we can make of ourselves we shall make. They built great factories, facilities. We’ve dragged these facilities around with us for centuries. They require space, and supervision. How proud we are of these facilities. Now they are superfluous. We must reset the point of attack. I am all for ploughed fields and herds of cattle again. A dog can eat for me, as much as it wants, as long as it remains my dog. Did you not see the stones and oaks and herds of cattle thrown onto the towers. They had to eat for the towers. I’ll be a dog myself, if I stuff myself much longer with what the factories brew up.”
Polyps hung on the man of Tel el-Habs. His abdomen was bored through. He sent his colleagues out into abandoned forests; they brought back foxes otters African zebras, turtles. The age-old difficulty of marrying two species was overcome: Mentusi had worked it out while observing the construction of the towers. The radiant webs mixed all species together. Just as he had scorned Meki, he scorned Marduk who had made trees grow: “Kuraggara, they were yogis and fakirs. Jokers! Let them admit it. Until the Greenland expedition we were nothing. The man who plucked fire and rays from volcanoes is my man.”
Kuraggara: “I’ll try to have a turtle baby.”
“Why not. Who can stop you.”
They did terrible things there on Tel el-Habs, the Hill of the Prison.
These Giants, lords of the western townzones, saw primal monsters wash over them and were not shattered. They were not besotted with the magic webs of Greenland, unlike those sailors who abandoned their vessels under the rosy light, stepped into boats, rocked naked – bliss upon bliss – on the water. The lords and ladies of the megazones sat cold and hateful behind their power. Like robbers concealed in a royal park, watching through a fence as elegant beauties stroll in the meadow, loose hair under bright shawls, buxom playgirls – they make their calculations, await their chance and pounce to seize and carry them off – just so did the untameable people of Tel el-Habs spy on the secret of the volcano, seize it and impose themselves on it.
The people of Tel el-Habs worked with people from Basalt Town, which looked like a collapsed cone. Here they busied themselves with the entity called “rock”. They took red rubies, violet apatite, blocks of glassy gypsum, infused them with the rays that had burst asunder Iceland’s volcanoes. They directed ruby-inducing ruby-forming energies not onto ruby, but onto the related corundum. Normally it stayed inert under the impact of this energy, which for it was no energy at all; each thing was set in motion by its own particular stimulus. But the Basalt people had control of volcanic heat itself. They directed the heavy artillery of this energy onto some substance. Like cake dough when yeast is added, the mineral mass began to swell. The Basalt people placed glass tubes around the scraps of webbing; used gases to release and dampen the primordial energies. Now little by little over long long hours the ruby began to stir, like a linen sheet bleaching under the sun. And always the rays burned into it, with no effect on the mass, which merely fermented.
There existed a point, gradually ascertained by the Basalt people after strenuous investigations with the help of attenuators dampers retardants: the point of indifference and change. This was the moment that meant everything in the life of the rock-being. It was the moment when its strongest and most resistant material ties were burst apart, the rock itself, although not glowing, was about to turn to dust, ready to be devoured and annexed by any nearby solid substance. The rays burned into the rock; the change was coming. The nearby substance must be held down. As a small crystal seed thrown into a supersaturated solution causes the whole mass to solidify, so the softened body stiffened, allowed itself to be directed to the entity designated by the rays. It was painstaking work. They learned to turn a granite block, formed of hard sprinkles of quartz, dark hornblende, mica, reddish feldspar, into a single homogenous block of white quartz.
While the people of Basalt Town toiled at transforming primal substances – at every turn they saw themselves transformed – the lords of the Hill of the Prison took everything they needed. Animals formerly never found together, unless for example as predator and prey, were flung at each other; everything must be reduced to the mother substance, broken down to the elemental. Sequestered in their subterranean fortress they tried in angry fury to transform themselves into hares mice panthers beetles. For this they took endless people from the underworld and surface world, made use of the slave market, played havoc with humanity.
Mentusi and Kuraggara lived in a fever of expectation. How they laughed. Mentusi boasted: “When there were religions, sensible people never believed in the Devil Satan Heaven God angels everlasting life. What did these sensible people do? For their whole life they did not believe. Not believing was their business. And there were some who gave their lives to fight against the existence of Satan Heaven or God. Drip, drip. Whoever has a crazy idea should be allowed his fun. Primeval monsters, stupid lizards don’t bother me. They can’t reach us down here. What do you say, Kuraggara? All they can do is die, and there’s room enough for that up there. But – now! What do you say?”
“I too have no time for the reptiles.”
“We should build them an aquarium, so they don’t die too soon and we can feed them nicely. They should like it better here with us than in Greenland. I’ll go to Greenland and see what’s happened there. Maybe I’ll take a dragon a lizard with wings and snout to be my steed and make it carry me there. Hallelujah, sweet land. Off to Jerusalem!”
“Aren’t you being childish, like those who fought against Heaven or Satan? Mentusi, why should I care about Greenland? Maybe I’ll go there. Maybe Iceland would be better, the volcanoes. But if I go, I’ll manage without any ship or dragon or plane. Be a bird, if I want. Be steam, if I want. Yes, I want this too. And be a fish! And fire. Not like that wretched tower-human I visited recently in Scotland. I flew up to its eyes, close to and then farther away until it recognised me. It did recognise me. It was an old friend. But what’s that to me – it was grieving! Grieving a dark dreadful grief. As it blinked its eyes I had a feeling I should leave at once, it must forget me, I’m just a bad dream. It was a dull sleeping man who can’t wake up. If I’d hovered around any longer it would have grabbed me like a Greenland creature and gobbled me down. Like a stupid child: grab fumble, into the mouth. But to be a fox from top to toe, live like a fox as long as you want, feel all foxy. Yes, Mentusi.”
“We’ve been too long in our skin. We’ll end up like those bleating sheep in London who give themselves to our experiments. He roared laughter: “Do you know what I’ll do with them?”
“I can guess.”
“Yes, I’ll turn them into sheep. We’ll herd them into a meadow, chuck chuck chuck. We’ll hide behind a tree chuck chuck. They come along, we put them in a sack, ask them: ‘Do you really want to eat mutton?’ ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘mutton’s lovely.’ ‘Fine,’ I say, and tie up the sack. Chuck chuck chuck. Light here, some steam there. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘Are you nervous?’ ‘A little.’ ‘Don’t be afraid, my little chickens. I’ll soon give you mutton to eat. The sheep are just coming out of their stall.’ I nearly said: the sack. More light here, two steamers. Patience, patience. ‘And how are you now, my little chickens?’ ‘Baa baa.’ ‘What’s that noise! You must already be eating mutton.’ ‘Baa baa.’ Don’t laugh, Kuraggara. Isn’t that the way to do it?”
“That’s the way, Mentusi! Baa baa!”
“My little chickens. Soon I’ll open the stall. There’ll be such a surprise. You’ll have mutton soon enough. But what’s this scrabbling in the sack? ‘Baa baa.’ What’s this, I’ve made a mistake, Kuraggara. Sheep already in the sack! How is it possible!”
“I can’t laugh any more, I’ll choke if you don’t stop, Mentusi.”
“There! No, Kuraggara. Sheep! Bodies and legs and tails, large as life! Woolly sheep. Four of them, that’s how many people I put in there. And where are my people – gone. The sheep must have eaten them. I must have put sheep in by mistake, they’ve eaten the people. I was distracted. Man-eating sheep. What should I do now.”
“Stop joking, Mentusi. If only we were that far on.”
How the Giants despised the people of their townzones. They let machines factories devices hum away only so they could feel powerful. They needed the masses as something to vent their spleen on. How measured were the words uttered on Tel el-Habs, the thought once spoken by Ten Keir in London – the little Belgian’s square ruddy face expressionless; he suppressed his horror at what he was witnessing in the research towns; his retinue had not betrayed how he vomited and wept at the sight of a dumb tower-human on a raft as they crossed the Channel. The cruel corrupt arrogant beings, men and shemales of the research towns, had spoken to him without reservation; said: The time of true humanity is coming at last; at least, we sense it.
Ambrosius Alfinger (from The Land without Death Part 2)
The role of German interests in the early stages of the Conquest is not well known. This tale of a German conquistador takes to extremes the disregard of the European adventurers for their physical bodies.
Where the range through which the Amazon breaks veers away from the west coast and sets its last peaks down around the lagoon of Maracaibo, there sits the town of Coro, by the sea.
Ambrosius Alfinger, a battle-hardened captain, was sought out by the Welsers and appointed governor of Maracaibo. He was to gather gold, and procure darkskins for sale in Coro’s markets.
Accompanied by two hundred Whites, halberds, muskets, arquebuses and a number of horses and bloodhounds, Ambrosius Alfinger struck out from Coro. The men had flocked together for war and adventure, rapine and murder. In the lands of the Whites, in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany they had nothing to lose. They were not bad men, they were what they were and could not be otherwise.
Alfinger came to the Perijá range. He had to cross it. His band began to go hungry.
As they climbed higher, the sun burned terribly. They had no time to make themselves understood to the darkskins. When they found the first village they stormed into huts, shoved the occupants aside. Once sated, they looked for gold. They chained the people and loaded them up. On they went.
Ambrosius Alfinger was a wiry man, already over fifty. He wanted gold and slaves. But he saw only desolate mountains. He descended into the valley of Upar. He sent envoys to the dark men and women in the villages, he wanted to trade. He was afraid they would run away. And so it was that unsuspecting chieftains welcomed him, led him into their houses, he squatted there with some of his companions. Meanwhile others of his men looted the place. Screams penetrated to the chieftain’s lodge, they stood up to investigate. Then Alfinger rejoined the others and together they cut down the chieftains and the rest.
Entering the valley of Upar was easy, leaving was hard. The Sierra de Tairona was their next goal. The path into the mountains seethed with refugees. A poisoned arrow from an ambush in the rocks above hit grey Alfinger, who always had a friendly smile and organised everything without fuss.
The poison was known as twenty-four hour poison, for it killed within twenty-four hours.
Alfinger had himself lifted from his horse, all men are mortal, they ate of the Tree of Knowledge and so are cursed. They waited for him to name his successor. But they had to lay him beneath a tree, erect a shade, then the dark man who was his interpreter sucked at the wound below the knee. Blood flowed, the knee swelled, turned blue. The leg grew heavy. Three hours later the lieutenant came to Alfinger and said: “If you don’t name a successor, General, there’ll be fighting among us and we’ll all die tonight.” The governor demanded hot water, threw in some herbs and drank a large jugful. He had them remove the shade, covered his head with cloths, lay in the sun. The band’s chaplain appeared, admonished him, pointed to the swollen leg. Alfinger received the last rites. Twelve hours to go.
Then he sent three envoys out to find among the darkskins a witchdoctor skilled in healing. One of the three returned to report that the country for miles around was empty of people, the other two had gone higher into the mountains – they were pursued for a while by Alfinger’s men, and killed. So for an hour he waited in vain. In these long hours Ambrosius Alfinger suffered agonies. He grew despondent, did not speak. When the two envoys failed to return and his lieutenant told him they must have deserted or been seized by the natives, he regained his smile. He understood. Now he could sit up, drink another jug of hot bitter tea. His head was still unaffected.
Alfinger stroked his long beard: “We were ill prepared. I had no idea they use poison in these parts. Otherwise I’d have brought along a proper witchdoctor, he’d have cut off my head and set it on a horse.”
The lieutenant, brave man, joked along: “But would they obey you, with horse-legs?”
“What about horse-legs? It’s not my legs you obey. It’s not my boots you watch.” He summoned the dark-haired interpreter and asked if he had ever heard, among his people or elsewhere, that someone could be cured of the poison by cutting off their head and quickly placing it on a horse’s neck. The interpreter stared uncomprehending at the lieutenant, but Alfinger spoke in earnest.
Then he asked the interpreter if he would hack off the leg with a sharp sword and an axe. When the interpreter gave no answer, Alfinger asked the lieutenant if he would perform this service. The lieutenant summoned the chaplain, and the chaplain admonished Alfinger not to cling to this life. Whoever dies here is surer of Heaven than someone dying back home, for he dies as a warrior for the Holy Church. Alfinger breathed easier: this is his view too, but he owes the Spanish Crown large debts, and a warrior shouldn’t be allowed to die without a struggle; and once again he desired the lieutenant to hack off his leg. The lieutenant was flanked by two soldiers with arquebuses, Alfinger knew they would shoot him unless he died soon. The lieutenant waved dismissively at the poisoned leg that lay exposed and swollen green-blue all the way to the hip, and said: it’s too late anyway. The chaplain agreed, set up a loud rapid praying. Now Alfinger named the lieutenant his successor, in order to be rid of him. So the lieutenant, content, withdrew with his arquebusiers. Alfinger smiled his old smile, told the interpreter to lay an arquebus by his side, and whispered with him.
The interpreter soon reappeared at the place where the general lay and the chaplain prayed, accompanied by a mercenary skilled in ironworking. This man brought a crucible, a long stout iron bar, and tongs. He heated the bar in the crucible until it glowed red. Then he handed Alfinger the tongs. The chaplain followed all this nervously, peering over his book. Now he held the book close to his eyes, stopped praying, and his breath hissed. Smith and interpreter clenched their fists, eyes started from their sockets. Scorched flesh sizzled and smoked. Alfinger sat up straight and burned the flesh away from hip to knee. When he was done and threw down the tongs and iron bar, his face was rigid, both thought him dead. But he pressed his back against the tree, remained upright, and his eyes blinked. An hour later he had tea brought and looked for the sun. It was about to set. His hand felt for the arquebus.
As dusk fell the lieutenant came with torches and a litter made of branches. But Alfinger was sitting upright and staring straight ahead. The chaplain was crouched at one side and the interpreter at the other. Alfinger ordered that two mercenaries should make a fire near him and keep armed guard all night. The lieutenant obeyed. In the night Alfinger, set like a stone under the tree, had hot oil poured onto the wounds. The chaplain slept by the fire, it was morning before he took up his book again and stared in horror at Alfinger sitting there rigid, then made haste to resume his prayers.
Early that morning the twenty-four hours were up. The governor had himself carried on a litter into a closed tent, chewed coca leaves that the interpreter had slipped to him in the night. They helped him sleep. At noon the lieutenant stepped warily into the tent. The chaplain was sleeping by the bed. In the gloom, Alfinger beckoned the lieutenant to him and in his old mild voice asked for a report.
Two weeks later they broke out of the eastern valley of the Sierra de Tairona. They led the general’s horse behind his litter. His leg was stiff and withered, he shuffled awkwardly on two crutches. They had to help him onto the horse. Though they took men, young women and children with them and butchered the old, although they left behind nothing but deserted and burnt-out villages, news of their coming spread into the mountains and down into the western valley. But they made abrupt detours and came upon plenty of unsuspecting places. On the western slopes of the Sierra de Tairona they had several hundred captives. These they drove before them, roped together. Alfinger ordered his second lieutenant to take them to Coro. He detailed twenty arquebusiers to go along. One third of the captives reached the Catotumbo river, which flows down to the lagoon of Maracaibo. Ships from Coro met them there. Hundreds lay where they fell in the mountains.
Alfinger camped in the hot wide valley of the Magdalena river. He calculated according to his experience: for every consignment of captives you have to catch five or ten times as many. Better to search for gold. He sent captains with small detachments across the river. They came to hilly districts along the Porce. They were told of people who lived in swamps and in trees, there were the Nutubes and Tuhames, they were rich, tilled fields, wove cloth and had a bit of gold too. But little came back with them. So Alfinger had himself set upon his horse, chewed coca leaves and ordered a march eastward, up the valley of the Lebrija.
They came to a populated place. Alfinger had all the inhabitants seized and detained in a stockade that he ordered built. He explained to the people that anyone who wanted to be released should pay gold for himself, his wife and his children. To encourage them to prompt action he withheld food until they brought the ransom. Some of the people sent to their houses to fetch gold, and were freed. But once they were back in their houses, Alfinger sent Spanish and Italian mercenaries to seize them again, and again they had to buy their freedom. A few suffered this three times. Those who had nothing to bring were left in the stockade, where they starved.
He imposed method on the hunting of refugees. Any captured in the mountains were thrown from a cliff. Those cornered in scrub were driven by the dozen into a straw house, where he had them burned. He unleashed bloodhounds that knocked dark people to the ground, mauled and gnawed them.
Dogs chased a sick woman who was carrying an infant. They caught up with her in a village, she could not flee. She hid in an open-walled hut and hanged herself from a beam. She hanged the infant from her feet. Dogs pulled it down. Men of the cloth accompanying the band happened upon them. They found the dogs with the child, prised it from their jaws and baptised it before it died.
Alfinger’s reputation as the cruellest of the cruel preceded him. His soldiers saw no need to provide food for their dogs. They drove along, like calves or pigs, a number of game animals that they traded among themselves to throw to the dogs. Once Alfinger came to a place that seemed prosperous. Without further ado he seized seventy people, had both hands amputated, and strung the seventy pairs of hands on a pole in the marketplace so that all could see what to expect if they kept gold from him.
With fire and sword they swept onward. He crossed the mountains of Velez. At last a more copious stream of gold came flowing to him. A massive slave transport set off for Coro, over a thousand strong, the people were of different skin colours, on the heights and in the valleys the tribes were like varieties of parrot. His band worked at full capacity.
Who was Ambrosius Alfinger? A White, a man, a hunter, no worse than others. Belligerence was his backbone, whenever he managed to defeat someone he felt good. Fame, power and gold were his heart and blood. The dark people were sand beneath his feet.
On the way down from the cold Velez mountains he said to the chaplain: “We must return to Maracaibo. Every day they pour oil on my wounds. But the leg grows worse.”
And as they marched in the mountains between Pamplona and Cucuta – Alfinger dry as a stick, armed men before and behind, bearers laden with looted gold as far as the eye could see – he had to be lifted from the horse. The bone had been scorched. He was carried at night into a cave. He ordered the looted gold to be piled at the entrance to the cave. His captains cursed one another, swords drawn. One captain, feeling disadvantaged, wanted to attack the treasurer and take the king’s fifth for himself. When they heard Alfinger call for the loot to be brought nearer, they closed ranks and explained that the entrance was too narrow. The general demanded to be brought outside.
He could no longer stand, he had the loaded arquebus under his arm. As they carried his litter out of the cave by torchlight, the bearers stumbled. The arquebus under his arm fired, the ball buried itself in rock. A chunk of stone came loose, crushed him and the two bearers.
Next morning they pushed on in a forced march. Monks and chaplain positioned themselves around the king’s fifth and Alfinger’s share, carried by darkskins under the eye of the treasurer. The captains foamed like jaguars, and hoped for a defile where they could tip the transport over the edge after first looting it.
But the mountains fell away. The land became flatter and flatter, they sat on their horses and played guard over the transport.
The place where the tyrant Alfinger died was given the name: Miser Ambrosio.
The Extra (from A New Jungle)
Volume 3 of Amazonas brings us from colonial America to 20th century Europe. The Polish Faust-figure Twardowski conjures Copernicus, Galilieo and Giordano Bruno from their graves to see what their ideas have wrought – including this vignette of a drab alienated urban existence.
A young thing stood at the mirror and considered itself.
It was naked to the waist and absorbed in its reflection. I’m not pretty, it thought, my body’s giving up, my legs, I’m too thin. But the neck, the mouth.
The longer she looked, the sadder she became. She wanted to console the reflection, came up against glass. We can’t make contact, let’s be good friends still.
She had no money. She wanted something from life. There was no money to be had on the streets. People kept their purses closed. There were shops, you were supposed to buy things. I must sell something, she thought. She joined a theatre as an Extra. She could pretend, nothing much came of it, hardly enough for stockings and shoes.
Behind the theatre, at the stage entrance, an unattractive old man was smoking a cigar. He eyed the actors and actresses. The girl thought, he’s choosing one. No one paid attention to him. He wore a bowler, had a bristly brown moustache and sagging trousers. When she saw him at the door again, holding up his brolly though the rain had stopped, she allowed herself to be drawn under the brolly.
In a tavern he let her eat what she wanted, he tucked in vigorously. It seemed to her he must have lots of money. He’s an old man, no girl fancies him, a perfect mark. Then they sat for a while on their stools with their beers, hand in hand. She went home pleased with herself.
Later he picked her up a few streets farther off, she didn’t want anyone to see her with the shabby old man, and no one was going to take him from her.
By Easter he wanted more than just supper together, he invited her on a short holiday, three days. As always she had no money. He would bring a little suitcase, they chose her spring hat together. That was all. She calculated the trip, needed new dresses, shoes and underwear if she was to move among more elegant people. She jollied her two-legged enterprise along to the station and stowed him carefully in an empty compartment and showered him with affection.
On the journey the dull boring fellow began to reciprocate her affections, he sighed, pawed her the whole time. Why did she have to choose an empty compartment. Then, just as they were leaving the train, she was vexed when a nice man climbing aboard caught her eye. And as they sauntered slowly arm in arm through the little town, people looked at her. Loving couples attract glances, everyone wants to know what they’re up to, even fine gentlemen look at you.
The weather was lovely, they strolled through a wood, surrounded by families. He didn’t throw his money around, only for food, drink and transport.
That evening on the boat he kept sighing, and she grew nervous and tearful, was he the right one. Leaning over the rail she cast one lie after another into the water about things she had done, bad things. Her great enterprise, the repulsive fellow, grew tender, she was ashamed when he put his arm around her on the boat. Then as they were standing there embracing shortly before their arrival and she looked past his shoulder, she saw a young lady under a big feathered hat, head and throat over her man’s shoulder. The girl in the feathered hat peeped smiling, untroubled, mischievous, cheeky, devil may care, their eyes met. The feather girl rubbed her cheek tenderly, vigorously against her man’s cheek and nuzzled it, she twinkled at the glitzy Extra who felt she was looking into a mirror, she took her hands from her man’s back, the girl in the feathered hat stretched past her lover’s arms, they brushed fingertips and interlocked their little fingers. The theatre girl pressed hard against her man so he wouldn’t notice, but the other rested her chin on her man’s shoulder as if it was a windowsill, tolerated his embrace below while keeping an eye out above.
Harsh lights glared from the landing stage, they unlocked hands. You stand separated and have to disembark. They bumped into each other again on the little gangway, how quickly they had lost contact. But at the hotel the theatre girl was pleased they had taken the boat.
Next morning they drank coffee monosyllabically on the verandah. The man sat there and kept his money out of sight. When the waiter came with the bill she wanted to see his wallet, he let her take a look, there was one big note and several smaller. He said gravely: “We’ll make do with it.” Then it occurred to her that she had to be home this evening because she had an audition tomorrow at noon. And she strolled moodily with him in the lovely sunshine and tormented him, he was meek as a lamb, he told her how beer drinking suited him now. Ever since he had forced himself to enjoy it by drinking a few pints regularly every day, he had become a sociable chap and never annoyed anyone; she should try it.
And in the park he lay on the chilly grass and uttered intimacies that usually, he explained, he could achieve only after a few beers. She wanted to talk about his wallet, but he was lying on it, she was sitting upright beside him. He expounded to her on the beauties of nature, maybugs would soon be about, you shouldn’t torment them and keep them in cigar boxes, birds would return, that was his biggest joy in summer, lie on his back in the woods, snooze.
“I imagine that must be rather uncomfortable for your back,” she said, she was formal with him again.
“No,” he said, “but it creases my jacket and I have to press it again afterwards.”
She plucked grass and stuffed it in his ears. He indulged her. When she stuck some up his nose he asked her to leave one nostril free. “Young ladies always have such fancies,” he opined. “Last Whitsun one ran off with one of my boots and I had to hop along the street in my sock.”
“Do you come on trips like this often?”
“Since my wife died. If I could find a nice girl I’d marry her. But they’re all just out for fun.”
The theatre girl: “But it’s a good deal, right? You have variety, and it doesn’t cost much.”
“Don’t say that, child. When you add it all up, hat, suitcase, fares, everything for two people, hotel, food, drink, it’s a pretty penny. When you’re married it’s not half so much, you take everything with you and the wife pays her own share.”
“The girls never do that?”
“No. But they are welcome to those few days.”
This was her big enterprise. Suddenly she threw herself onto him and rubbed the grass she was holding into his face. He pushed her off roughly: “Now you’re just like all the others.” And he tidied himself, sat up and pulled her gently to him. “At your age girls only like to fool around. You are not suited to be a regular housewife.”
“But I have no intention of marrying you.” – “I know, child.”
That evening, on the way to the train, they met the couple from the boat again. The feather woman did not at once recognise the theatre girl. When the Extra made a little motion of her head towards her cavalier, the girl with the feathers gave a mocking smile and extended clawlike fingers. They walked hand in hand to the station.
“You look so cross,” whispered feather-hat.
“Headache,” whispered the Extra.
“I understand,” feather-hat nodded. The two men looked gravely ahead, preparing for the journey. On the train they separated.
The young lady rose in the esteem of her female colleagues, partly because of the little trip and partly from the new hat and handbag he had given her. Men kept a respectful distance, believing she was about to marry. She continued for a while to drink beer with the man, so as not to dispel this impression.
But after Whitsun he dropped her. She spied on him and saw him at the back door of another theatre in his stiff black bowler, sagging trousers. I wonder, she thought angrily, if anyone will bite. And it was not long before a girl turned towards him and he moved off. She followed for a few streets, she knew the way, they were going to his local. Maybe he’ll take her on a long holiday, he never spends anything on a girl. So she tells the theatre people she has broken off with the man, he wanted to marry her, a Christmas wedding, he’s too old.
Soon she found something else, because she was clever and would not give up. She was always afraid of contracting an infection or becoming pregnant. It was the same with the other girls, they spoke about it and gave each other advice, some never overcame their anxiety, some showed bravado but all were afraid. The men were no different, they wanted rid of a girl as quickly as possible before they became hooked and had to support a child.
And so it happened that an elegant man, a foreigner, was drawn to the girl, and for two short weeks of eternity never let her out of his sight. More transpired than she expected. He had money, he wasn’t stingy, during those weeks she couldn’t be at the theatre, and so lost her position. With this Polish man she had love, joy, bliss.
Then he vanished, leaving her a handful of money. And then the baby. Her youth was over.
She became an usherette in a cinema, married a waiter. He had other girls. And like the man from the tavern he stood at the back door of theatres, lurking.
When she followed him one day, there was the old man with the sagging trousers smoking a cigar. No one gave him a glance. When her husband had gone off she approached the old man. He didn’t recognise her, he looked the same as before. They went through the gate, he led her down the street she knew so well, to the same tavern. She wasn’t sure if she should go in with him. But why upset him. Inside he said the same old things. Alcohol sustained him. Only now he was more free with his money. He pushed a banknote across to her after the first beer and said: “Best give it away while you still have it, when you get old there’s no point saving. They don’t bury it with you in the grave. Anyway, inflation’s taking its toll.”
She looked at the banknote and tucked it away. If he’d given me money back then I would have a fine cavalier. Her thoughts reached this point, then she remembered her great love, the Pole, the joy, the bliss, she had found him in just the same way, then the baby came, and her husband. She sat on her stool for an hour, then the old man had had enough, he would wait at the same place tomorrow, she pretended to agree. Then she went home.
Her husband was not back yet. The baby was asleep. She rummaged in the wardrobe for the little box where she kept mementos of the Pole, no letters, no handwriting, but his gold watch wrapped along with its chain in one of his fine handkerchiefs, one of his armbands, two ties he had worn and left behind at her place, and a coat button that had come loose on the last day and she had meant to sew back on. She wrapped the banknote in a sheet of paper, repacked the box and put it away in the wardrobe under her smalls.
Then she sat by the lamp, knitting. She didn’t feel sleepy, for some reason. She imagined she was at the cinema, endless scenes scrolled past. But she couldn’t make any of them out.
When the waiter crept into the flat in his socks he was surprised to find her still up. She hemmed and hawed, said this and that, put away her things. He pushed in behind her under the blanket.
She lay there for hours. Always pictures, memories churning, fireworks, she didn’t know what was happening to her. In the middle of the night, all at once it stopped. It burned itself out. She slept.
When she washed her face in the morning and saw herself in the mirror – the waiter was still asleep – she did not recognise herself. She looked tense and pale. A stranger in the mirror. The face moved with hers. On the boat she had looked at a young woman in a feathered hat, stretched hands out to her. The face in the mirror was still tense. She shivered, turned away.
The man in the tavern was right, people grow old.
She threw on some clothes, picked the baby out of the cot, carried it around the flat. It cried. Her husband wanted quiet. A long time passed before she was herself again.
