October 26th – Martín Espada – ‘The Right Foot of Juan de Oñate’ (2015) – Read it here.
The poem relates to this incident, an act of revenge and defiance for what the conquistador did to the Acoma Pueblo.
There was a sense of grim satisfaction for me in this poem, the idea of someone trapped in his statue and forced to watch the growth of a people he tried to destroy, and having his own statue mutilated in ways he had others mutilated.
There is a big gap in my knowledge around the histories of much of Central and South America, and also in the media from the different countries in this region. I can see a lot of the anxieties and tensions in drama and horror films from Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico, and in the magical realism of Borges and other authors, for example, and I always feel like I need to know a lot more about the backgrounds of these books and films to properly appreciate their nuances and what went into making them.
I really liked the image of the statue itself being an act of unwitting revenge, trapping the spirit of the man in bronze, so that he is trapped inside and unable to escape it.
I thought about the imagery of someone being trapped somewhere after death, and thought that this might be another part to the necromancy idea. I started this in Day 11, and continued it in Day 21.
My creative piece for today is on that theme.
Bone Puppetry
“This isn’t the same thing as real necromancy,” Isabeau told them patiently, as if she were teaching the basics of the alphabet to dull-witted children. “Necromacy is to bone-puppetry what puppet shows are to live theatre.”
The corpses wore expressions of agonised horror. They saw themselves in the gilded mirror of the Blue Salon, and their mouths gaped wider in silent screams.
“Do they know?” Gaudin whispered, as an enemy captain bayonetted his terror-stricken own men only for them each to rise as if on strings, and fall upon their still-living comrades. “Do they know what has become of them?”
Isabeau cast him an amused glance. “Of course.”
Throughout this whole episode, the breaching of the chateau, the rather one-sided battle raging in the outer ward, and the falling bodies of the small platoon that had been allowed to get this far inside, Lady Isabeau had remained calmly seated in her favourite spot in the bay window, a poetry book lying open on her lap. She had not allowed Gaudin to move from his chair and join the fray, and Faubert had not done anything but eat grapes from the fruit bowl and pass Lady Isabeau whatever she asked him for; the book of poems, an apple, her mirror and ivory comb. Outside, and now inside the very room, corpses performed their macabre dance of death.
There were now only three soldiers left alive in the Blue Salon, fighting for every breath in the furthest corner of the room. Gaudin could not begin to guess how many were left outside these walls; from beyond the open window, the sounds of battle had died, and there was nothing now but an eerie, deathly silence.
Gaudin, as strong and well-built as he was, felt that he could not rose to his feet now if his life depended upon it. His knees were dissolved, his marrow stiffened like cold granite, and his mind had forgotten even the notion of movement.
Lady Isabeau hummed a soft tune to herself and examined the curled ends of her hair in the hand mirror. “They will all be released when I have no more use for them,” she said, as if this was of no consequence.
The cries of the living men were dwindling, as one by one, they were overcome by their dead friends. Gaudin’s horror matched theirs. He could not imagine what he would do if Faubert was ripped from his company only to rise and come for him as a common enemy, a stranger, no matter how resistant his soul was to the irresistible manoeuvres of his corpse.
Faubert’s eyes were unhealthily pink and glassy. His full cheeks flared pink and feverish. Gaudin caught his own distorted reflection in the silverware set before him at the little inlaid table, where Lady Isabeau had insisted they dine. He, too, looked ill, but his cheeks had the greenish palor of sickness, in contrast to Faubert’s heightened flush.
“They deserve it,” Faubert said, in a voice that Gaudin barely recognised as belonging to his friend.
Lady Isabeau said nothing, as charming and mild as a painter’s subject, and it didn’t matter to her whether the screaming dead deserved their fate or not.
“They make such sad music,” she said wistfully, then met Gaudin’s eyes with her calm stare, all the power of the forest and the earth in the depths of the mosaic shades drawing him away from all horror around him and into her sanctuary. “Don’t you think?”
Something ice cold clutched Gaudin’s heart, as he realised he loved her more than life, more than Faubert, more than anything.
“Yes, my lady,” he heard himself say, in a voice he barely recognised as his own. “Deeply sad.”
Lady Isabeau smiled. “It will end soon,” she said. “As all things must.”
Gaudin nodded, greener than ever, and Faubert sat back in his seat facing their lady, ruddier than ever, and Lady Isabeau hummed a few lines of an old tune as the screaming faded away, and all that was left was the muted thudding of bone puppets hitting the ground, out of time.
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