Pilgrim in the Palace of Words Read online

  At the height of the Inca Empire, just before the Spanish arrived, the cities and towns held about fifteen million people. Today there are almost eight million people who are fully bilingual in both Spanish and Quechua. The latter isn’t generally taught in schools, though it’s quite often the language of the home and the street in places like Cuzco. In the high mountains there are still two million people who speak nothing but Quechua.

  It’s often pointed out that the Inca never developed a writing system, but that’s sort of missing the point. They paid almost constant attention to symbols and messages. Their world was a complex one, and symbols were necessary to capture some of that intricacy.

  The most famous symbol system of the Inca was the quipos, a series of knots tied onto thick wool strings. They’re little understood, even by modern Inca, but it’s clear they were some kind of system to keep records. There are only a few examples left, and anthropologists and historians fight over them with relish. One recent journal paper claims they might have stood in for syllables — something like hieroglyphics — but that’s probably a bit of a stretch. More likely they were an accounting system, though one that could hold a great deal of information. When I asked René about quipos, he told me that the colour of the yarn had something to do with their meaning. The knots in yellow yarn signified gold, and these quipos were employed to keep track of wealth. Red yarn, meanwhile, was utilized to count soldiers — and possibly workers — to figure out where they were situated across the vast kingdom.

  We also know that quipos followed a base-ten counting system, much like our own, but beyond that, not much is known about them. What’s clear is that they formed a system of representation not unlike a written language. They held information quite effectively, and certainly in an empire of this size, there would have been a lot of information to hold. This was no backwater empire, and if not for the strange quirk of history that had the Spanish conquistadors slam into their midst before the civilization really solidified, well, it’s hard to say what they might have accomplished and what they might have become.

  “Let me tell you now about the Inca world view,” René said. We huddled around him a little more closely. A wind had come down off the mountaintop, and our sweaters fluttered under the straps of our backpacks. We were near the top of the second high pass, and the full sweep of the Andes lay in front of us.

  “Do you know why Machu Picchu is represented by the condor?” René looked around at us. No one would meet his eyes. No one had a clue.

  “Because the condor, for us, represents the upper world.” René stopped for a moment, obviously considering how to explain all this to us. “There were three worlds. Did you see the steps in the last set of ruins — three steps going up? This is for the three worlds.”

  “Look,” he said, waving his hands out over the valleys below us. “The lower world was called Uju Pacha. It’s represented by the snake. When we get to Machu Picchu, you’ll see the river far below it. The Urubamba River winds like a snake so that the snake is both the symbol for the underworld and the symbol for water.”

  The wind whistled across the rocks. René glanced up. “This all around us, this is the middle world, Kay Pacha. It’s represented by the puma, symbol of the earth and also of war. Cuzco was the middle place of all things, and that’s why it was built in the shape of a puma.”

  René waved us closer. “But most important is the condor. Have you seen them?” A few members of the group nodded. In Colca Canyon to the south you can sometimes see them riding the thermals. Huge birds of prey, they’re in the same family as eagles or hawks, though they’re considerably larger and until recently nearly extinct.

  “The condors are the keepers of the upper world, Hanaq Pacha. The condor represents the air, the sky … also peace.” René paused dramatically. “We believe that if you’ve lived a good life, then you’ll have a pure spirit. This we call a chuya alma, or sometimes an ura almo, which means ‘white spirit.’ And when you die, if you have this pure spirit, then a condor will come and take it up to Hanaq Pacha.”

  “Like heaven,” one of the Poles offered.

  “A little bit, yes, but not quite the same.” René gazed at the rain-darkened sky. “It’s a little complicated to explain.”

  Just then the Swede appeared from below to break the spell. He’d found his second wind or his second bottle and breezed past us, hopping from rock to rock. “See you at Machu Picchu.” He laughed, and then he was gone.

  Our campsite that night was cold. We were still above four thousand metres, and the stars glittered like living things. The crescent moon hung oddly horizontal like a thin smile, and René tried to point out a few of the old Inca constellations. Up in the Pleiades was Colcas, the puma’s head, a seven-star grouping.

  “Do you see it?” René asked.

  Tomir was about to say something, but his girlfriend’s hand hooked into his arm and he only squealed softly. Another constellation formed the shape of a llama. These animal symbols were everywhere.

  René turned to the south. “Okay, what about up there?”

  I squinted, and something familiar formed in my imagination. We were thirteen degrees south of the equator, and there it was again. “That’s the Southern Cross,” I said, quite proud of myself.

  “Yes. In Quechua it’s Chacanu. It’s like a road map for us.” René gestured at the sky. “Cuzco is at the centre, always, and the four arms of the cross point to the different regions, the four provinces of the empire.”

  What amazes me is how these patterns of stars were given meanings by people around the world. That’s to be expected, I guess. The stars are pretty clear to everyone on Earth, and for the Spanish conquistadors the Southern Cross had one meaning, while to the Inca it signified something quite different.

  The great cathedral in Cuzco is built directly over the palace of Wiracocha, the eighth Inca ruler. There are a lot of reasons for this. The first is that it was practical. The stout and expertly crafted Inca foundation walls held up well during earthquakes. The Inca walls are famous for their craftsmanship. They didn’t use mortar, but the stones were so perfectly fitted together that it’s impossible to slip a knife blade between any of the joints. In the early years of the conquest the Spanish experienced a number of minor earthquakes and watched as their own buildings collapsed, while the old Inca walls stood unscathed. It didn’t take them long to realize they could incorporate the Inca walls as foundations.

  Building the cathedral directly over the Inca ruler’s palace, however, was more than a structural decision. The Spanish, of course, were making a statement: “We are more powerful than you,” or more precisely, “Our God is mightier than yours.”

  There were actually many layers of subtle logic at play. The Inca rulers were thought to have descended from the Sun God. When they ascended to the throne, these rulers each took a new name (much as the Roman Catholic pope does today). The eighth Inca ruler — the most powerful ever — chose Wiracocha, which happens to be the name of one of the most ancient Inca gods, a deity that’s sometimes called the “Invisible One.”

  This god was a supreme divinity of pre-Inca origin. Because it’s a pre-Inca borrowing, the stories ascribed to this god aren’t completely clear. Some stories talk of him as a sort of combination Storm God and Sun God, while others claim he was responsible for creating the sun and the moon. A number of different myths are associated with Wiracocha, but most have him roaming the Earth disguised as a beggar to check on his creations. Most tales say he weeps copiously, and some stories relate that he used these oceans of tears to flood the creations he didn’t like. Sound familiar? A flood wiping out creation?

  The god Wiracocha eventually disappeared one day over the Pacific Ocean where he was seen walking on the water. One can imagine that some Spanish priests had a real “Aha!” moment when they heard that tale.

  These were just the sort of levers the Spanish were able to put to use in their conversion of the Inca to Catholicism. The most important po
int of all, though, was the one René had told us about: the chuya alma — the white soul — and the idea that when a person died his chuya alma was carried to another world above.

  On the fourth and last day of the hike we woke up at 4:00 a.m. when there was a rustling outside our tent. René appeared, urging us to hurry. The idea was that we had to get to the Sun Gate to see the sun rise over Machu Picchu. The Sun Gate was still two kilometres away from our campsite, but already the sky was growing lighter in the east as we pulled on our hiking boots, bleary-eyed and heavy with sleep.

  Below our campsite our group, as well as the Swedes, were joined by a troop of overenthusiastic Australians and Americans. Everyone jostled together, and the final push to the Sun Gate suddenly turned very competitive. We jogged along in single file, our heavy backpacks jumping up and down on our backs. If anyone slowed down even for a second, five or six others would push by him or her. It was crowded, and no one displayed much in the way of manners.

  After being pushed along for a while at this rate, I glanced down and realized that one of my bootlaces had come undone. I had no intention of stopping, though. Sweat was now trickling down my neck, and adrenaline was coursing through my system. I managed to get my water bottle out even as I charged along the path. I took a gulp, then realized that my other bootlace was loose. The laces were now flapping spastically, shamefully, and my boots were pulling away from my socks.

  The path was carved along a cliff face. We were going up and down long sets of uneven rock steps. The cliff plunged to my right, and gradually, through the morning fog, it occurred to me that I could easily trip over these flapping laces. I could fall headlong off the cliff, so at last cold, hard reason percolated to the surface and I halted to tie up my boots. I grunted menacingly at those who scrambled by me. The Swedish guy sprinted past. “See you at Machu Picchu,” he chirped.

  “Like hell you will,” I spat back. As I stood, though, I realized that the clouds were pretty much socked in, anyway. Half an hour later, when I stumbled into a set of rock ruins, it took me a moment to realize I was at the fabled Sun Gate. Only a few people had stopped there to take token photographs. There was really nothing to see. An immense cloud had settled around us. Somewhere below was Machu Picchu, but we could have been on London Bridge for all we knew.

  The pace slowed a lot, though as we descended further, wisps here and there opened in the clouds, and the knife-like peak behind the city — Huayna Picchu — began to appear. Then, to our left, a stone wall materialized out of the fog. Down the hills, the stepped terraces came into view, and at last the whole magical city appeared as if someone had suddenly wiped the condensation off a window in front of us.

  So how do you describe something as iconic as Machu Picchu? Who hasn’t, at one time or another, had a postcard of it magnetically affixed to the fridge? Who hasn’t pencilled in the name on their list of the must-see sights of the world? It’s like the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids of Egypt, and as the sun glinted down on it — the real thing — I couldn’t believe I was really there.

  We were significantly lower now. Machu Picchu sits at twenty-eight hundred metres above sea level, and finally we were getting a break from the punishing altitude. What balanced that was that by about 7:00 a.m. the sun was already slamming down on us with an intensity I hadn’t felt since I first arrived in South America. Basically, we were only a few hundred kilometres south of the equator, and the screaming sun wasn’t about to let us forget that.

  René tucked his baseball cap even farther down his forehead and led us through the green eastern terraces. Some three thousand people had once lived here, but clearly the agricultural output of the place was for a population much greater than that.

  “Every guide will tell you something different,” René told us. “There are a lot of theories about this place, but the truth is that we really don’t know much about Machu Picchu. Up until recently it was thought that this might have been a secret refuge for the Inca rulers. The Spanish never knew about Machu Picchu, so everyone imagined that the noble classes of Cuzco came here and lived for many more generations, untouched by the conquest. But that’s simply not true. Scientists now say this place was already abandoned by the time the Spanish showed up. We don’t know why. Our best guess is that things tightened up during the civil wars, and everyone who lived here fled back to Cuzco. What we do know is that this place was a religious centre. Come, I’ll show you why that’s so.”

  He led us down a set of precipitous steps. The city now climbed above us, a tumble of terraces and rock walls. We came to a ledge with a cave opening. It looked, though, as if it had been artificially widened and enlarged over the years. In the middle was a series of three steps. They didn’t lead anywhere — just up into the air.

  René stopped in front of them. “What do you think these are?”

  It was clear by now: the three steps, the three levels.

  “Here,” René said, “you can see the three worlds of the Inca — the Uju Pacha, the Kay Pacha, and the Hanaq Pacha. Now come, I want to show you something more.”

  He took us up another stairway, and we entered an amphitheatre in the rock. Most of it was left in its natural state, but two great swirls of rock, the result of some cataclysmic geological event, spread out like frozen drapery.

  “Do you see?” René asked. “These are its wings.”

  “Wings?” I said.

  In the middle of the swirling rock a small carving was set into the floor. It was hard to make out. “This is its head,” René said. “Do you see?”

  I squinted, then stepped back for a fuller picture. It took some imagination, but there it was.

  “This is the condor.” René spoke with pride now. “This whole place is a temple to Hanaq Pacha, the upper world. The Inca trail we’ve just walked was most likely a spiritual pilgrimage, a holy journey for the people of Cuzco. Maybe a way of purifying their spirits, a way of strengthening their chuya alma so that when they died the condor would come for them and raise them into the sky.”

  René took us to the upper terraces of Machu Picchu after that, to the Temple of the Sun where the rays at the summer solstice angle in through one of its windows. He led us to two small stone circles. What at first were thought to be places for grinding grain are actually tiny reflecting pools. They were filled with water, though the liquid was not for drinking, nor was it strictly decorative. The theory is now that in these pools of water Inca priests observed the stars. They used them as unmoving mirrors to track the movements of the constellations and planets.

  “We can’t know for sure what these stone circles were for,” René told us. “Most of this knowledge is lost. Machu Picchu was rediscovered only in 1911 by an American named Hiram Bingham. The Quechua who lived around here always knew of the ruins on the mountain. The city had long been covered in vegetation, but the farmers who worked the land along the river knew there were ruins here. It didn’t take much for them to point Bingham and his expedition up the trails across the ridge.”

  René glanced at his watch. Our trip was coming to an end. “I want to tell you before we part that I’m Quechua. The truth, today, is that this is a very mixed-up thing. We say sometimes we’re Quechañol — a mixture of Quechua and Español, or Spanish. But I’m proud of our Inca past. Every time I see this city I’m proud of what my ancestors did. I’ll leave you with the three obligations of the Inca way. These are the things you must do if you’re to have a pure soul. You must work hard, and this we call yankay. You must love, and this we call munay. Lastly, you must always keep learning. The word for this is yachay.” René studied us intently. “You must always keep learning.”

  Cuzco is now a bustling tourist hub. Its central square, Plaza des Armes, holds the great Spanish cathedral. A colonnade wraps around the rest of the square, and many of the buildings feature restaurants and cafés with balconies that look onto the small central park.

  It struck me that the whole thing was like a layer cake of archaeology. Beneath the
cobblestones, at the foundation, were the Inca walls. Above that were the Spanish colonial buildings, many almost five hundred years old. On their rooftops, on their balconies, was the new reality, the third wave, the invasion of tourists.

  We sat at a place with the improbable name of Baghdad Café. A series of pisco sours had been set in front of us. These tasted vaguely like tequila, though they were mixed with a froth of steamed milk. They’re quite good, dangerously so, and more than a couple of them will soon have a drinker howling down the cobblestone streets with the roving packs of stray dogs.

  As we drank, we watched the crowds below us. It was a surprising mix of people. Out on the square a Quechua woman shuffled past with a baby wrapped in a blanket and slung across her back. Her skirts were woven from llama wool and dyed bright orange and red. A woollen cap sat atop her head, and her face was ravaged by the weather and altitude. Behind her was a group of backpackers, draped with day packs and water bottles, each with a Lonely Planet guide opened to the map of Cuzco.

  Are we tourists the new conquistadors — sweeping in with our strange clothes and demanding habits, changing the social landscape with our very presence? Were we taking over the place now? Certainly, we were driving the economy. American dollars are accepted everywhere in Peru, and the dubious local currency, the sol, is less and less in demand.