Mr. Eternity Read Online Free PDF

is not enough. He walks outside to the pigpen to pray and suffer and drink wine.
    In Pirahao there are words for the colors of things, but no words for colors in themselves. In Pirahao there are no numbers. If I want to say ten cows, I say a bigness of cows, but there are no cows. In Pirahao there is nothing more than what there is, and nothing exists beyond the present, and it is not proper to say I will do this, I will do that, I will kill you next week, I will pay you tomorrow. But for the Christians time has a different shape. Life is lived now and it is lived in the future. This is one thing I have learned from them. I have learned to make plans.
    And now I have a problem and I must make a plan to solve it. Without Daniel de Fo there can be no expedition to Anaquitos. He is the only one who knows the way. Diego Paez de Sotelo has not been there.
    “You have heard what he says about El Dorado,” I say to the alcalde.
    “I have heard the stories,” he says.
    “But what he says is true. It is true that they have a medicine to restore lost limbs. The rich people harvest the arms and legs of the poor for their spicy stews, and then they make the arms and legs grow back again so as not to diminish the number of laborers. They need these laborers to construct their idolatrous temples.”
    “This is the detail that condemns him. If his foot was restored by Indian magic, and the Indians don’t know God, then how can wesay this was God’s will? It must be a compact or fabrication of the devil.”
    I cannot persuade him, and now I must prevent him from taking action until I can think of a new plan. I crush paóhaihao into his wine so that his mind will darken and his legs will turn to stone. I know he won’t taste it, as indeed he does not, because paóhaihao does not exist in Spanish.
    The alcalde remains in the pigpen while I begin to prepare his meal. I watch from the shadow of the kitchen shed. The air is the color of a papaya. The sea is the color of jacaranda flowers. Soon he begins to stagger and rave. His hair is matted, his tongue rolls in his mouth like an eel, his hair curls with a fine sizzling sound and grows lighter and lighter until it is the color of a ripe canistel. He wets himself. Then he sinks to his knees and slumps forward into a kind of sleep, but it is a black sleep in which nothing happens.
    Now I walk to the guardhouse, where I find a soldier eating wild pineapples from a cloth bag and spitting the seeds into the dust. He is the only man on duty. I tell him I must speak to Daniel de Fo and I do not tell him the reason and he does not ask. We stand facing one another, I in my cotton dress and he in his belted tunic and leggings, and we can hear the moon wheeling in its heaven. My beauty shines like a torch. My beauty is like paóhaihao. He unlocks the door.
    Inside I find Daniel de Fo sitting on the floor of his cell. He raises a hand in greeting. He is not surprised to see me.
    “You have been to Anaquitos,” I say.
    He responds in Pirahao.
    “Tell me in Spanish.”
    “I have been there,” he says, laughing. “I was there with Amadis of Gaul.”
    I tell him that I want to bring the Christians to Anaquitos, but he does not need to be convinced. He wants nothing more than to return to the city and carry off its treasures. He tells me there is a woman waiting for him in Spain, but he can never return because he is a converso, so he must make himself very rich instead. Then he will buy an island in theCaribbean and he will send for her. Her name is Anna Gloria and he has only seen her once in the light of the world, though he sees her sometimes when he sleeps.
    “But Diego Paez de Sotelo has denounced you,” I say. “He accuses you of the Mosaic heresy and of other heresies as well.”
    He considers this solemnly for a moment. The forest shrieks. In Pirahao it means it is the time for a dance, the time for sweet potatoes, the time to lie down. In Spanish it means nothing.
    “Interesting,”