Mr. Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B

he says. “I am not surprised. I left him to die in the forest, but only because I thought he would die anyway.”
    “The alcalde has heard the story of your foot.”
    “Aha!” he says. He cannot escape the story of his foot. He begins telling it once again. “It had become putrescent from the bite of a big blue jungle ant. Lope de Guzman had to cut it off. A true friend is one who will cut your foot off.” He starts laughing as he tells the story. “I was trying to make him cut the other foot off too. I was so excited! Cut it all off, I kept saying, the hands too, cut them both off, they’ll only cause problems later. Then Lope de Guzman and some of the others had to beat me until I was silent. It was okay because the Indians had a special medicine for lost feet, as I keep telling everyone.”
    But he says the medicine also turned the water orange and the sky purple. It made the tree trunks boil with faces. It made time flow in the wrong direction. It made time flow in any number of directions, not just backwards but side to side also, so that he couldn’t tell what had happened in the past and what had only happened in the future.
    “The Christians believe your story,” I say. “That is the problem. They believe this medicine is the work of the devil.”
    I tell him that he must tell the alcalde about Anaquitos instead. He must describe it not as it is in Pirahao but as it is in Spanish, which is what I do when I tell my own stories. In Spanish it is El Dorado. He must say that the houses are roofed in gold, that people crush pearls and bake them into bread, that there is a king who covers himself in gold dust before his bath every morning. He must say that he isthe only one who knows how to find the city. This is how he will free himself from the accusations against him. The gold of El Dorado is more important than any crime against the faith. Sin can be paid for with gold.
    “I understand,” he says. “There are two cities. There is the city of our most glorious aspirations and at the same time there is the city where the whores paint their teeth black.”
    “Yes. In Anaquitos the whores paint their teeth. In El Dorado they have white teeth and all of them are virgins. Try to remember. Christians love virgins.”
    He leans back and looks at the ceiling. He is at ease. He has no fear. He looks into the future, as a Christian does. What is it that makes him a Jew?
    “I will tell the alcalde that Diego Paez de Sotelo was planning to keep all of this a secret,” he says. “Or else that he wanted to condemn me so that the treasure would be his alone. I’ll say that first I wanted to protect him, since he is my friend and companion, but now I feel moved by my love of God to reveal his deception.”
    “Very good,” I say.
    “But what is the food they have in Anaquitos? Remind me. It is a kind of rat meat in dough.”
    “Xaxa.”
    “It’s delicious.”
    “In Spanish it is food for a starving person. Don’t tell the alcalde about it or he’ll think the city is poor. Tell him there are no city walls. Tell him to forgive Diego Paez de Sotelo, who is only as flawed and sinful a person as the rest of us. Tell him that. The alcalde loves compassion.”
    Now we are agreed. He will tell the alcalde his story and we will go to Anaquitos. We will put it to the sword. I will have my vengeance and he will have his fortune, his island, his woman. I will go as an interpreter, and just as Cortés had Malintzin to speak for him, so will I speak. I will be the tongue of the expedition. It is what I desire most. It is what I least desire. The devil speaks to me and I try not to laugh.
    “I am the blue bird of devastation,” I tell him. In Spanish, the phrase means nothing.
    He stands up and stretches. There is no window in the cell, but we can hear the birds. They tell us that the sun has set.
    “What will you say about your foot?” I ask him. “What will you tell them?”
    “For that I have a plan.”
    “A