Tristeza agreed to meet Agapito the next morning at 4 to climb the two-thousand feet to the entrance. And he invited her mother, whom Tristeza assured had never been to the Incan citadel either. He would have invited her father too, but he was in the jungle picking coca for the season.
After wandering the streets of Aguas Calientes for a half an hour Agapito finally settled on “The House of the Inca’s Nephew” to bed down for the evening. Apparently the name, “The House of the Inca” was already taken, as were other permutations of the name involving the homes of The Inca’s more immediate family – his son, daughter, wife, mother, father, etc. So Agapito was resolved to sleep at the Ancient King’s nephew’s house.
Later that evening Agapito found the Dutch man with the burned forehead eating a bowl of potatoes with peanut sauce alone near the main plaza. He sat and joined him.
“My name is Leo,” he commented, “like the puma, no?” He laughed and tucked his chin as he did so while Agapito cracked a smile.
“I’m Apapito, a pleasure to meet you Leo.”
“No no, the pleasure eez mine young man, tell me, where do you come from?”
“Well, I have been on the road for a while, to be honest, but these days I feel that I come most from the wherever I am at any moment and more generally from the Americas, yes, definitely from the Americas. You?”
“Holland. Can you believe? I come from below zee zea, now to so far above zee zea in zee Andes. But really, no joke, no big deal either. I’ve been to zee Himalayas. And I’ve climbed Mount Kilamanjaro too, so I know high. Hehe, all of Holland knows “high”, even zo we’re so low. I’ve actually been to zee other six wonders of the world already, and when I heard this Incan Citadel, as they call it, was a new wonder, I just needed come.”
“How were the Himalayas?”
“Big, but full of marijuana, poverty, bombs and Israelis.”
"How was Mount Kilamanjaro?”
“Melting and full of people quoting zat American, Hemingway.”
“It’s melting?”
“Yes, fastly, which is maybe why people quote Hemingway so much, you know The Snows of Kilamanjaro? Zat short book where zee lion or some other cat is stuck in zee snow? Well, there is no more ice or snow for any cat to be stuck in anymore there. I mean, maybe a small house cat could be stuck in one of zee ice blocks on zee summit, but definitely no larger African cats, you know. They’d need their own freezer-size blocks, and those are melting or gone, little lagoons of water in zee crater summit. But zat’s why I travel, because zee world changes so much.”
“So you’re a real traveler, eh?”
“Yes, it is really what I live for, why I work, why I live.”
“And why do you travel so much?” inquired Agapito.
“Well it’s always more fun zan home, and definitely zee views are better. I mean, when I’m home working I just works my ass off, you know? I make money, selling jewelry on zee circuit of parties in Europe - Ibiza, zee Love Parade, you know, those things. And so when I have enough money it’s just so free and so much cheaper to travel. Mostly, you know, I can live for a year what it would cost me to live a month in Holland, especially since zee Euro. Why do you travel?”
The first llama spat twice but only managed to land the cud on the Aymara captives. The priest with the obsidian knife paid no mind and – with a helper holding the legs – he began to offer the first prayer of the evening and set three coca leaves in the llama’s mouth before tilting its head back on the altar block and slicing quickly and deeply through its throat, nearly decapitating the beast in one stroke. The llama’s legs kicked, but were tied and held. Her eyes pierced and wailed but found no sympathy in this crowd, none of them a stranger to death. Her hindquarters quivered and flexed before settling limp on the cold stone.
The priest tilted the llama’s head and torso to the side and lifted the hind section with the help of his assistant to drain the blood into a massive stone bowl. With her blood drained, the llama’s eyes became glazed like the moon, reflecting not their own internal warmth and light, but that of the outside. The space beneath the eyes was cold and in the process of transforming. The priest turned her on her back and offered another prayer before cutting aggressively into her chest plate to remove the heart as symbol of moving energy to the four Suyus extending from Cuzco, the heart being the source of a being’s life-energy.
Each remaining llama was sacrificed in turn as the afternoon began to grow late and the Aymara warriors stoic.
Agapito turned to Sand and Pachacútec and asked, “If given the chance would you risk losing your mind to find truth? Snakes shed their skin and lose themselves in the forest each time they grow. Do you ever try to crawl out of your skin?”
“No, but I try to crawl into other’s skin,” teased Sand, while Pachacútec ran his thumb and forefinger along the spine of a coca leaf.
“You know, Agapito, that is for you to ponder and for the plants of the Amazon to teach you. I am a leader and not a mystic. I do what my people ask and what my father demands. Please, tangle your mind around the vines of the Amazon and teach me all you gain. What have you learned in losing your mind?”
“Well, that Inca must accumulate, with food and with wealth, but with no mind accumulation seems irrelevant, for no mind is no future and no future leaves planning to be excessive and only the present to be impressive. Do you know that the future is behind you, brother? Can you see it? No. All you can see is what is in front of you, and what is in front of you is what is true. This is the world. Why worry about the future that is behind you? And so why accumulate?”
“When you came to visit me here at my home in Machu Picchu, ‘Pito, was your path
in front of you or behind you? And, if it is in front of you, where you walking into the past?”
“Of course I was, and if not, how did everything that was in that world of walking get there but in being from the past? The trail was built hundreds of years ago by your father’s grandfather, and every other thing that was touching my present moment was only embodying a past leading to that point. So, yes, I was walking into the past, even though time was moving me into the future, I was not walking into it.”
“Well,” Agapito took a few minutes to gather his thoughts and reply to Leo, during which time the energy at the table turned a bit awkward, because, the truth is, Agapito is not too articulate in casual conversation. He took a sip of his glass of Inca Kola, and another, and then he spread some picante on some bread and turned an ear to the music that was playing. Leo sipped his beer and grimaced, obviously feeling a bit uncomfortable with his companion. “I prefer trails to trials and horizons to borders. When my feet move, my mind moves, and when my mind moves, I optimistically believe that the world moves. Maybe a bit Narcissistic, but that’s how it feels, Leo. Agapito had been trying to get in the habit of saying new acquaintance’s names to help him remember. “And I know the world moves of its own accord, but you know, the more movement we each do as well, I feel that counts for something too. And like the Hindu pilgrim who claimed, ‘What is important is not the object worshiped but the depth and sincerity of the worship,’ as he stepped off the train at Benares. That makes sense to me as I move, even in visiting such popular sites of worship as Machu Picchu”.
“Are you ok?” asked Leo.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was just wondering why you travel and it seems to stress you. I mean, I just met you, but I wonder if you’re ok.”
“Yeah, I’m ok. I guess simply put, I travel because I’m looking for something and I know that something is not at any particular destination but permeating the air around us all the time. It’s just that when I move, the air around me seems to flutter and that makes me feel that something more acutely than without movement. Err, I mean, seems you’re not much for metaphysics tonight. Let’s just leave it as I travel because I’m looking for something and it’s not stressful. Say, have you ever read that Herman Hesse book Journey to the East? You remind me of the ‘Leo’ in that book. He was a good guy, Leo. You seem like a good guy too.”
“I know zat book I read it in German, his original language. Do you believe we read zee same book? I speak German too, as well as Spanish and French and a bit of Danish. With a few beers in me I can even speak Flemish, but it always makes me laugh. We Dutch are good for zat. Knowing language zat is, not laughing,” Leo grinned and chuckled to himself.
Leo and Agapito shared their thoughts on Journey to the East, and Agapito is taken by Leo’s ability to analyze precisely but matter-of-factly Hesse’s thoughts on pilgrimage. “And in zee book, ‘Leo’ just sort of flew beside the others, unaware of the intent of the journey but eager to make it and most committed to it for sure. Zee faithful lion. But such an ignorant bunch of travelers, those ones. I mean, if you don’t know where you’re going, why are you going? Get a map and ask some people and it’s easy to find the path in this day and age.”
“But that’s what I mean, Leo, that’s exactly how I feel! I feel like those journeyers to the East. And that’s why I travel.”
“So you have been to Machu Picchu before?”
“Yes”
“So, you know where you are going?”
“Well, geographically, my good inquirer and philosopher, but not spiritually and mentally. I mean, I think pilgrimages can be made so many times with both different paths and different destination while still being to the same place, you know what I mean? Would you say you are on a pilgrimage, Leo?”
“No.”
“And you know where you are going?”
“Yes. To Machu Picchu.” Leo seemed to become a bit irritated and wishing he had just stayed in his room and finished the last of his smokes while listening to music on his headphones. “Are you sure you’re ok? What do you want from me?”
“YES, I’m ok, thanks for checking in again. I can go from ‘ok’ to ‘not ok’ amazingly fast. But, to answer the second question, what I want is for us all to at least wake up and realize there are things we are doing that we don’t realize you are doing and also places that we are going that we do not realize we are going and finally that there are things that are seeing that we don’t realize are seeing. That, I think is the least we can hope for from a life with even a modicum of consciousness – which is, so says much of science, the one thing that makes us different from the rest of the breathing and pulsing world around us, even though I disagree with that as well. And I want you to realize you’re on a pilgrimage. Damn, sorry Leo, I forgot you’re not into metaphysics or, I guess, ethics tonight. Are you into drinking?” Agapito always alternated between excess and recess and he had a feeling that this was a night for the former. Especially since his watch started to tilt toward a new day and Tristeza would be passing by with her mother in a few short hours. Better to be awake than to be asleep for such an unsatisfactory length of time.
When he was younger Agapito would leave the house in the early morning to soak his feet in early-morning moon-lit pool in the high plains of Bolivia and see if he could ever find the reflection of the reflected moon yet again reflected in the sky. He would pass entire nights in this way, always convinced that there was something hidden in the mirrored recesses of the night moon glow, convinced that there was infinitely more magic in a night without lit detail than a day without shadows.
As he reached his adolescence he began to live as a shadow, never letting himself be exposed but finding great insight and curiosity in the those nooks that others passed unnoticed. To say he was happy in this place would be romantic, but at least we could say he was engaged. And being engaged he became a bit estranged from his unengaged peers who would spend their days doing practical things such as flirting with girls and playing futbol or studying.
The first Aymara warrior was serendipitously sacrificed as the sun rolled its tired wheel one more turn behind the summit of Huayna Picchu. Pachacútec took the knife and aligned it to the evening star shimmering in the evening blue, the first star to puncture the fabric of the night sky. Many hunting cultures saw the sun as the quintessential hunter, shooting down the stars one by one as it rose, with its piercing rays. And now, as the hunter moved back out of the picture the wild stars filled the landscape once again, now unafraid of the sun’s arrows. The Warrior closed his eyes and saw himself traveling the great Yawar Mayu, the blood river, back through the ground, feeling fortunate to die as the sun set so their two spirits could travel this river under the ground together. As the knife carved into his chest and he felt the air leaving him, he dreamed of a condor coming and picking his decaying body off the icy summit of a high mountain and carrying it over a river as large as the milky way. There the condor dropped him just as the sun god dove from above and started to swim back up river.
The second warrior tried to run and for that had his feet crushed at the ankles before being lain on the altar. As his ankles crunched and cracked he fainted and had no awareness of what happened after that, turning himself to a snake, armless and legless, now with no pain where his ankle joints used to be. As a snake he pictured himself writhe and wiggle his way through the layers of earth to the Yawar Mayu. There he found a doorway opening on to a beach of snakes that guarded the entrance to the river. To pass the snakes he turned himself again into a vine to hide as he fell into the river off a tree and began to float up river to return to the earth.
The third Aymara warrior cried in anger and died with bitterness in his heart for being forced to fight in a war that was not his. For this he was granted no visions in his death, only a feeling of cold and stagnation. This feeling would last the next 280 years until his soul were granted a chance to reconsider. As the shaman held his heart to the morning star in the early glow of the night he saw that the star reflected on a heart as still and frigid as the glaciers of the sacred Ausungate.
Koa, one of the women participating in the event was the most beautiful in the entire estate and had, it was said, been born of the moon and the morning glory flower. One evening 19 years before, the moon had drank to much from the forest and was saturated with water and so had cried to let some drain to be able to continue moving through the sky. When this drop fell to the earth it skipped off one of the morning glory flowers at the top of Huayna Picchu and as the petal recoiled, Koa was conceived in the roots of the plant. She had never left the city of Machu Picchu and slept on a bed of morning glories. As the seventh warrior was closing his eyes to open his heart to the obsidian, Koa was chewing on morning glory seeds and pouring chicha on Agapito’s palm saying, “From birth to earth, from worth to dirt.”
“You see,” Agapito offered “It is time to end the sacrificing, my good friend.”
After wandering the streets of Aguas Calientes for a half an hour Agapito finally settled on “The House of the Inca’s Nephew” to bed down for the evening. Apparently the name, “The House of the Inca” was already taken, as were other permutations of the name involving the homes of The Inca’s more immediate family – his son, daughter, wife, mother, father, etc. So Agapito was resolved to sleep at the Ancient King’s nephew’s house.
Later that evening Agapito found the Dutch man with the burned forehead eating a bowl of potatoes with peanut sauce alone near the main plaza. He sat and joined him.
“My name is Leo,” he commented, “like the puma, no?” He laughed and tucked his chin as he did so while Agapito cracked a smile.
“I’m Apapito, a pleasure to meet you Leo.”
“No no, the pleasure eez mine young man, tell me, where do you come from?”
“Well, I have been on the road for a while, to be honest, but these days I feel that I come most from the wherever I am at any moment and more generally from the Americas, yes, definitely from the Americas. You?”
“Holland. Can you believe? I come from below zee zea, now to so far above zee zea in zee Andes. But really, no joke, no big deal either. I’ve been to zee Himalayas. And I’ve climbed Mount Kilamanjaro too, so I know high. Hehe, all of Holland knows “high”, even zo we’re so low. I’ve actually been to zee other six wonders of the world already, and when I heard this Incan Citadel, as they call it, was a new wonder, I just needed come.”
“How were the Himalayas?”
“Big, but full of marijuana, poverty, bombs and Israelis.”
"How was Mount Kilamanjaro?”
“Melting and full of people quoting zat American, Hemingway.”
“It’s melting?”
“Yes, fastly, which is maybe why people quote Hemingway so much, you know The Snows of Kilamanjaro? Zat short book where zee lion or some other cat is stuck in zee snow? Well, there is no more ice or snow for any cat to be stuck in anymore there. I mean, maybe a small house cat could be stuck in one of zee ice blocks on zee summit, but definitely no larger African cats, you know. They’d need their own freezer-size blocks, and those are melting or gone, little lagoons of water in zee crater summit. But zat’s why I travel, because zee world changes so much.”
“So you’re a real traveler, eh?”
“Yes, it is really what I live for, why I work, why I live.”
“And why do you travel so much?” inquired Agapito.
“Well it’s always more fun zan home, and definitely zee views are better. I mean, when I’m home working I just works my ass off, you know? I make money, selling jewelry on zee circuit of parties in Europe - Ibiza, zee Love Parade, you know, those things. And so when I have enough money it’s just so free and so much cheaper to travel. Mostly, you know, I can live for a year what it would cost me to live a month in Holland, especially since zee Euro. Why do you travel?”
The first llama spat twice but only managed to land the cud on the Aymara captives. The priest with the obsidian knife paid no mind and – with a helper holding the legs – he began to offer the first prayer of the evening and set three coca leaves in the llama’s mouth before tilting its head back on the altar block and slicing quickly and deeply through its throat, nearly decapitating the beast in one stroke. The llama’s legs kicked, but were tied and held. Her eyes pierced and wailed but found no sympathy in this crowd, none of them a stranger to death. Her hindquarters quivered and flexed before settling limp on the cold stone.
The priest tilted the llama’s head and torso to the side and lifted the hind section with the help of his assistant to drain the blood into a massive stone bowl. With her blood drained, the llama’s eyes became glazed like the moon, reflecting not their own internal warmth and light, but that of the outside. The space beneath the eyes was cold and in the process of transforming. The priest turned her on her back and offered another prayer before cutting aggressively into her chest plate to remove the heart as symbol of moving energy to the four Suyus extending from Cuzco, the heart being the source of a being’s life-energy.
Each remaining llama was sacrificed in turn as the afternoon began to grow late and the Aymara warriors stoic.
Agapito turned to Sand and Pachacútec and asked, “If given the chance would you risk losing your mind to find truth? Snakes shed their skin and lose themselves in the forest each time they grow. Do you ever try to crawl out of your skin?”
“No, but I try to crawl into other’s skin,” teased Sand, while Pachacútec ran his thumb and forefinger along the spine of a coca leaf.
“You know, Agapito, that is for you to ponder and for the plants of the Amazon to teach you. I am a leader and not a mystic. I do what my people ask and what my father demands. Please, tangle your mind around the vines of the Amazon and teach me all you gain. What have you learned in losing your mind?”
“Well, that Inca must accumulate, with food and with wealth, but with no mind accumulation seems irrelevant, for no mind is no future and no future leaves planning to be excessive and only the present to be impressive. Do you know that the future is behind you, brother? Can you see it? No. All you can see is what is in front of you, and what is in front of you is what is true. This is the world. Why worry about the future that is behind you? And so why accumulate?”
“When you came to visit me here at my home in Machu Picchu, ‘Pito, was your path
in front of you or behind you? And, if it is in front of you, where you walking into the past?”“Of course I was, and if not, how did everything that was in that world of walking get there but in being from the past? The trail was built hundreds of years ago by your father’s grandfather, and every other thing that was touching my present moment was only embodying a past leading to that point. So, yes, I was walking into the past, even though time was moving me into the future, I was not walking into it.”
“Well,” Agapito took a few minutes to gather his thoughts and reply to Leo, during which time the energy at the table turned a bit awkward, because, the truth is, Agapito is not too articulate in casual conversation. He took a sip of his glass of Inca Kola, and another, and then he spread some picante on some bread and turned an ear to the music that was playing. Leo sipped his beer and grimaced, obviously feeling a bit uncomfortable with his companion. “I prefer trails to trials and horizons to borders. When my feet move, my mind moves, and when my mind moves, I optimistically believe that the world moves. Maybe a bit Narcissistic, but that’s how it feels, Leo. Agapito had been trying to get in the habit of saying new acquaintance’s names to help him remember. “And I know the world moves of its own accord, but you know, the more movement we each do as well, I feel that counts for something too. And like the Hindu pilgrim who claimed, ‘What is important is not the object worshiped but the depth and sincerity of the worship,’ as he stepped off the train at Benares. That makes sense to me as I move, even in visiting such popular sites of worship as Machu Picchu”.
“Are you ok?” asked Leo.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was just wondering why you travel and it seems to stress you. I mean, I just met you, but I wonder if you’re ok.”
“Yeah, I’m ok. I guess simply put, I travel because I’m looking for something and I know that something is not at any particular destination but permeating the air around us all the time. It’s just that when I move, the air around me seems to flutter and that makes me feel that something more acutely than without movement. Err, I mean, seems you’re not much for metaphysics tonight. Let’s just leave it as I travel because I’m looking for something and it’s not stressful. Say, have you ever read that Herman Hesse book Journey to the East? You remind me of the ‘Leo’ in that book. He was a good guy, Leo. You seem like a good guy too.”
“I know zat book I read it in German, his original language. Do you believe we read zee same book? I speak German too, as well as Spanish and French and a bit of Danish. With a few beers in me I can even speak Flemish, but it always makes me laugh. We Dutch are good for zat. Knowing language zat is, not laughing,” Leo grinned and chuckled to himself.
Leo and Agapito shared their thoughts on Journey to the East, and Agapito is taken by Leo’s ability to analyze precisely but matter-of-factly Hesse’s thoughts on pilgrimage. “And in zee book, ‘Leo’ just sort of flew beside the others, unaware of the intent of the journey but eager to make it and most committed to it for sure. Zee faithful lion. But such an ignorant bunch of travelers, those ones. I mean, if you don’t know where you’re going, why are you going? Get a map and ask some people and it’s easy to find the path in this day and age.”
“But that’s what I mean, Leo, that’s exactly how I feel! I feel like those journeyers to the East. And that’s why I travel.”
“So you have been to Machu Picchu before?”
“Yes”
“So, you know where you are going?”
“Well, geographically, my good inquirer and philosopher, but not spiritually and mentally. I mean, I think pilgrimages can be made so many times with both different paths and different destination while still being to the same place, you know what I mean? Would you say you are on a pilgrimage, Leo?”
“No.”
“And you know where you are going?”
“Yes. To Machu Picchu.” Leo seemed to become a bit irritated and wishing he had just stayed in his room and finished the last of his smokes while listening to music on his headphones. “Are you sure you’re ok? What do you want from me?”
“YES, I’m ok, thanks for checking in again. I can go from ‘ok’ to ‘not ok’ amazingly fast. But, to answer the second question, what I want is for us all to at least wake up and realize there are things we are doing that we don’t realize you are doing and also places that we are going that we do not realize we are going and finally that there are things that are seeing that we don’t realize are seeing. That, I think is the least we can hope for from a life with even a modicum of consciousness – which is, so says much of science, the one thing that makes us different from the rest of the breathing and pulsing world around us, even though I disagree with that as well. And I want you to realize you’re on a pilgrimage. Damn, sorry Leo, I forgot you’re not into metaphysics or, I guess, ethics tonight. Are you into drinking?” Agapito always alternated between excess and recess and he had a feeling that this was a night for the former. Especially since his watch started to tilt toward a new day and Tristeza would be passing by with her mother in a few short hours. Better to be awake than to be asleep for such an unsatisfactory length of time.
When he was younger Agapito would leave the house in the early morning to soak his feet in early-morning moon-lit pool in the high plains of Bolivia and see if he could ever find the reflection of the reflected moon yet again reflected in the sky. He would pass entire nights in this way, always convinced that there was something hidden in the mirrored recesses of the night moon glow, convinced that there was infinitely more magic in a night without lit detail than a day without shadows.
As he reached his adolescence he began to live as a shadow, never letting himself be exposed but finding great insight and curiosity in the those nooks that others passed unnoticed. To say he was happy in this place would be romantic, but at least we could say he was engaged. And being engaged he became a bit estranged from his unengaged peers who would spend their days doing practical things such as flirting with girls and playing futbol or studying.
The first Aymara warrior was serendipitously sacrificed as the sun rolled its tired wheel one more turn behind the summit of Huayna Picchu. Pachacútec took the knife and aligned it to the evening star shimmering in the evening blue, the first star to puncture the fabric of the night sky. Many hunting cultures saw the sun as the quintessential hunter, shooting down the stars one by one as it rose, with its piercing rays. And now, as the hunter moved back out of the picture the wild stars filled the landscape once again, now unafraid of the sun’s arrows. The Warrior closed his eyes and saw himself traveling the great Yawar Mayu, the blood river, back through the ground, feeling fortunate to die as the sun set so their two spirits could travel this river under the ground together. As the knife carved into his chest and he felt the air leaving him, he dreamed of a condor coming and picking his decaying body off the icy summit of a high mountain and carrying it over a river as large as the milky way. There the condor dropped him just as the sun god dove from above and started to swim back up river.
The second warrior tried to run and for that had his feet crushed at the ankles before being lain on the altar. As his ankles crunched and cracked he fainted and had no awareness of what happened after that, turning himself to a snake, armless and legless, now with no pain where his ankle joints used to be. As a snake he pictured himself writhe and wiggle his way through the layers of earth to the Yawar Mayu. There he found a doorway opening on to a beach of snakes that guarded the entrance to the river. To pass the snakes he turned himself again into a vine to hide as he fell into the river off a tree and began to float up river to return to the earth.
The third Aymara warrior cried in anger and died with bitterness in his heart for being forced to fight in a war that was not his. For this he was granted no visions in his death, only a feeling of cold and stagnation. This feeling would last the next 280 years until his soul were granted a chance to reconsider. As the shaman held his heart to the morning star in the early glow of the night he saw that the star reflected on a heart as still and frigid as the glaciers of the sacred Ausungate.
Koa, one of the women participating in the event was the most beautiful in the entire estate and had, it was said, been born of the moon and the morning glory flower. One evening 19 years before, the moon had drank to much from the forest and was saturated with water and so had cried to let some drain to be able to continue moving through the sky. When this drop fell to the earth it skipped off one of the morning glory flowers at the top of Huayna Picchu and as the petal recoiled, Koa was conceived in the roots of the plant. She had never left the city of Machu Picchu and slept on a bed of morning glories. As the seventh warrior was closing his eyes to open his heart to the obsidian, Koa was chewing on morning glory seeds and pouring chicha on Agapito’s palm saying, “From birth to earth, from worth to dirt.”
“You see,” Agapito offered “It is time to end the sacrificing, my good friend.”
