Caribbean (16 page)

But as she rose to leave Ocampo’s office she stopped, sat down again, and began speaking as if her interview had just begun: “The worrisome thing about Colón and his endless relatives, all of them absorbing money that should have come to us, was that he was an Italian. Not Spanish at all. And to think of him as lording it over good Spaniards like my husband and me, who come from the great families of Spain, was intolerable. It was simply intolerable!”

It was a woman of much different character who provided Ocampo with his most valuable information about Colón. As Ocampo had been about to sail from Sevilla to take up his duties in Española, a grandee from a noble family had come secretly to deliver a bottle of perfume distilled by Arab experts working in Venice. And it was so valuable that the nobleman begged: “Protect it with your life, Don Hernán, and when you reach Española deliver it privately to Señora Pimentel. Her going desolated me.”

For this subtle reason, Ocampo had been more than casually interested
to meet the Pimentels on his evening walks. He had spent many hours when alone wondering what kind of woman the young señora was, and from the meager information he had and having observed her quiet dignity, her obvious reserve, he suspected that she might be the kind of intense woman who would tell her husband nothing about the presence of an admirer in Sevilla. He decided to follow the nobleman’s advice and deliver the perfume in strictest secrecy.

He therefore dispatched one of his scribes to the Pimentel house to inform Señora Pimentel that he would like to question her about the Great Admiral, and in due course she appeared, attended as always by her remorseless watchdog. Displaying no irritation, Ocampo started to question his visitor about Colón, engineering it so that he could block out the
dueña’s
view, whereupon he slipped the señora the vial of perfume. Then he returned to his desk and looked at her meaningfully for a moment. “In Sevilla,” he said casually, “I met many who remember you and your husband with pleasure,” and he made arrangements then to interrogate her further at another time.

On the next visit, with the hawklike servant still in evidence, Ocampo noted that Señora Pimentel had deposited somewhere about her face or neck a drop or two of the rare perfume, for its soft aroma permeated his office in a most alluring way. It was then that she started talking about the Great Admiral, and her shrewd conclusions made more sense than those of any of the other testifiers: “Cristóbal Colón has fascinated me from the first day that I arrived here, when he was hanging men by the dozens. I saw him then as a monster, and when I learned how he had mismanaged his first two settlements, La Navidad and Isabela, a forlorn, doomed town on the north shore, far away from the first one, I could not understand how their majesties tolerated him. My husband and I visited there in its last days, a miserable boat trip, smooth as glass here in our sea, turbulent beyond words when we reached the ocean. It was a heartbreaking place to have been named after our great queen. No decent port for ships. Not a stone house in the place. Fields had been chopped from the woods but had not been tended, and I’m told the last settlers there nearly starved, because the Indians would not bring them food. That was Colón at his worst, incapable of launching any village and sustaining it.

“I knew him only briefly in that period, his worst you could say, and I viewed him principally as a boorish Italian adventurer. But
then he began to take his meals with us. Even though my husband was a personal representative of the king, like all the others, we lived in those early days in nothing more than a shack, but Colón filled it with his extraordinary vitality, his imagination, his quest always for something new and challenging, and I came to admire him as a genius, difficult but standing at the edge of the known world. To hear him explain his dreams in his accented Spanish was to witness greatness in action, and I was awed by his volcanic power.

“But my husband and I also saw his flaws, and they were monstrous, almost disqualifying. He rarely followed through on what he started. He could not govern for the simple reason that he could not keep his eyes on the task at hand … always looking to the future. He was a brutal man at times, arbitrary to the point of hanging anyone who disagreed with him, and he was certainly avaricious, mean, untruthful and petty, even when dealing with his own men. And his greatest fault was his almost insane nepotism and favoritism.

“However, when the grand balance is struck, Colón was the man who gave us this New World, and I doubt I shall ever see his like again.”

She had permitted no interruptions, and when she finished she indicated to her companion that they must go, but as Señora Pimental left the room, the aroma of her presence hanging in the air like a memory of flowers, she told Ocampo: “I was interested to hear that you were once in Sevilla.” And then she was gone.

Ocampo had supposed that this was the last he would see of Señora Pimentel, so he was surprised when only a few days later one of his scribes came into the interrogation room to announce an unexpected visitor. “A woman to see you. I think she’s the one that comes with Señora Pimentel.” Into the room came the
dueña
, with bows and apologies: “Excellency, Lieutenant Governor Pimentel and his lady seek the honor of your presence at the evening meal tomorrow night, and he apologizes for the lateness of this invitation.”

Ocampo showed unseemly haste in accepting, but next evening when he was ready to set out for the stone house of the Pimentels, he stopped at the door of his quarters and reflected on what he was about to do, and the caution he displayed was an indication of how colonial Spain was governed: It could be most imprudent for me to go to that house alone. Pimentel might have discovered the perfume
and supposed it came from me and concluded that I was in love with his wife, or he could be suspicious about my motives in coming to Española. In either case, he might want to dispose of me, so it would be better if I didn’t go alone. Calling for his scribes, he asked them to form the customary parade group and thus they marched to the Pimentel home, where he said casually: “I brought my men, of course,” to which the Pimentels replied: “They can dine with the rest of the family,” and the scribes were seen no more.

The house which the señora had modestly described as being “nothing more than a shack” was now a colonial mansion as fine as a visitor might have found in a rural town in Spain. The stone masonry was strong and well joined; the floor of the main room was of some hard tropical wood, neatly polished, those of the lesser rooms of tile brought from Sevilla. The entire home bespoke the quiet dignity of a Spanish gentleman’s residence. The Pimentels had obviously imported many things from home, including first-rate carpenters and stoneworkers, but there was no garish display of rich fabric or precious metal. If anything, the rooms were underfurnished, though Ocampo was pleased to note that the best of Spain had reached this capital of the New World.

“This house will stand forever,” he predicted, to which Pimentel replied: “It must. Spain must seek deep roots here, because soon envious others will appear in this golden sea to wrest the islands from us. Or try to.”

The dinner was impeccable, with at least four different servants appearing at intervals to serve it. “My wife’s cousins,” Pimentel said offhandedly, but Ocampo observed that at least one was an Indian and the others were from peasant stock.

Since Señora Pimentel took no part in the conversation, Ocampo was bewildered as to the purpose of his being there, but when the rich wine of Cádiz passed at the end of the meal, the lieutenant governor said: “We delayed so long to invite you to our modest home because, frankly, we could not guess why you had really been sent to our island. Now we have cause to believe that what you said from the start was true. You came here to investigate the dead Colón, not us.”

Ocampo, struggling for some pleasantry with which to acknowledge this gracious concession, happened to be facing the room’s only major piece of decoration, a rather large ironbound chest which must have been imported from Toledo, considering its careful metalwork and two large, intricate locks: “Spain is as securely founded in this
special sea as that chest is secured against theft,” and, without looking at the chest, the Pimentels nodded.

Thus the remarkable dinner with the distinguished family ended, with no word having been spoken regarding either Colón or Bobadilla, for which Ocampo was grateful: “I’ve been hearing so much about those two adversaries that tonight was a pleasant respite. Thank you.”

On the walk back to quarters, he told his scribes: “It’s time we restrict our summons to those older men of good judgment who can tell us truthfully about Colón as a business administrator, for we must remember that he had for quite a few years been the all-powerful viceroy of our holdings in this part of the world.”

The first witness Ocampo summoned was Gonsalvo Pérez, an older man who had held high office under Viceroy Colón and who had that sagacious approach to problems that sometimes comes with increasing years. He was a handsome man, the deep lines in his face attesting to a maturing character and a detached, amused attitude toward life, for on the frequent occasions when he smiled at some injudicious act of his own about which he was forced to confess, his entire face lit up, the lines becoming frames for flashing eyes which had seen so much of the world’s nonsense and had understood it all.

“It seems to me,” he said, nodding to the scribes as he tried to relax in the witness chair, “that one should judge a viceroy on how successfully he performed those certain tasks which form the very base of any viceroy’s job, whoever he might be. Did he settle the new lands placed under his control? Did he protect the king’s money? Was he just in dealing with men under him? When he left were things better or worse than when he came?”

“The very questions I’ve been trying to find answers to.”

“Let’s first clean up the crucial points. Was he honest in dealing with the king’s funds? Scrupulously, and I was in a position to know. He never diverted the smallest coin to his own use, not one maravedi, and would allow none of us to do so, either. So on that basic point, you can halt your investigation right now.”

“Second fundamental, did he leave things better or worse than when he took command?”

“Neither. Our island had not deteriorated, but neither had it progressed the way it might have. But the fault was not Colón’s. It was Spain’s.”

“You mean … the king’s?”

“No, I mean Spain’s. The Spanish nature. The inborn arrogance of Spanish men, especially those of good family.”

“I cannot follow you.”

“We should have brought to this island, twelve years ago, carpenters and weavers and shipbuilders and sixteen or seventeen men of middle age who knew how to run things like shops and bakeries and ironmongeries, men who could
do
things.” He accented this word heavily, then added with a touch of regret: “Instead, we brought out the sons of rich families, young fellows who’d never in their lives done a day’s work at anything constructive and whom Colón was simply unable to discipline. He set them a good example. He worked, believe me. I worked on his accounts because I knew my numbers and how to write. His brother Bartolomé worked because he had a position to defend. But the vast majority of the dandies worked at nothing. They had come across the Atlantic to fight, collect gold in buckets from the streams, and go home rich.

“And that leads us to the first of Colón’s great failures as viceroy. He was unable, with the kinds of men he had at his disposal, to build settlements. All failed. When he found La Navidad had been destroyed in his absence, he started a second settlement—Isabela he called it out of his love for the queen who had done so much to spur his career. It was a disaster, a place of infinite sadness, and I think you should enclose in your report some account of what happened there, for I heard it firsthand from my cousin to whom it happened.” And he interrupted his comments to recount this true adventure:

“Very interesting,” Ocampo said, “but if Colón failed in his first two attempts at settlement, he certainly succeeded here in Santo Domingo.”

“False. He did get the place started on the right track, the south side of any island is always better, but real progress came only when Bobadilla took over with those plenary powers the king had given him.”

“You say he wrested control from Colón?”

“And not a moment too soon. Now the growth of the city is ensured. Bobadilla also saw to its protection, and when I concede that, it means something, because I was always a Colón man. I never really liked Bobadilla, especially not after I watched how he treated Colón.”

Ocampo interrupted: “You just said something most interesting—‘I was a Colón man.’ Were you one of those who represented the admiral’s weakness for nepotism?”

Pérez smiled most engagingly, held his two hands palms up as if crying “
Mea culpa
,” and confessed: “I was the perfect example. You see, my wife’s brother, a real ne’er-do-well, married a sister …” He broke into self-deprecating laughter and concluded: “It’s too long a story and not a happy one, but you’re right. Colón knew we Spaniards resented him for being an Italian upstart, so he felt he had to surround himself with men who were completely loyal, and how better than to give the crucial jobs to his relatives … and in my case, to relatives of his relatives?” He shrugged: “So in the case of the Pérez relatives, he got one total failure, my wife’s brother, and one very hardworking expert who helped hold things together, my wife’s husband.”