The guards – Mexicans armed with lances, their heads covered with feathered helmets – refused to answer their questions.
After a long time, they were ushered into a vast room where an enormous iron chandelier hung menacingly above their heads.
Before them stood a man with his back to them. He wore a black beret. In front of him was a solid wood table with papers scattered over it. The man was staring out of the window, which overlooked the port. At this hour of the day (and at pretty much every other hour of the day as well), the docks were aswarm with porters moving goods this way and that.
Cervantes elbowed the Greek: he had spotted his friend’s paintings, piled up in a corner of the room.
Without turning around the man spoke: ‘You may thank your protector, who brought me your artworks, and God, who has granted you a certain talent.’
They could tell from the man’s imperious tone that he must be an important person. And indeed he was. It was Admiral Coligny.
When he finally turned around, he gathered up the papers from the table and waved them under Cervantes’s nose: ‘A conversation between talking dogs? Very amusing. And that com- edy of the miraculous altarpiece … Have you read it, Monsieur the Artist? No? Let me summarise the story for you: two skilful charlatans persuade some villagers that they have an enchanted altarpiece whose treasures can only be seen by old Christians with pure blood, free of all Jewish or Moorish antecedents. Of course, it is all a trick. But what do you think happens? A miracle! Every villager goes into ecstasies of admiration over the altarpiece’s supposed wonders.’
The king of France’s first counsellor burst out laughing.
‘Isn’t that an amusing fable?’
Neither the Greek nor Cervantes dared respond. The admiral stroked the thick gold chain that hung from his neck. ‘The great nations beyond the sea – the Mexican Empire, under whose protection the kingdom of France has been placed, and the western Inca Empire, which is its faithful ally, as well as ours – are looking for painters and writers, since painting and writing are two domains in which these formidable empires, for all their power, cannot yet boast of their superiority over those of the old world. You are not completely without talent, and that is why you will be leaving on the next ship, as part of the tribute that France owes to Mexico. Over there, you will be sold to the highest bidder, and you will be able to buy back your freedom, if God wills it.’ Then, with a gesture, he ordered the guards to take them away. The next day, they were aboard a galley loaded with wine and men, sailing towards Cuba.
An old Spanish sailor had once told Cervantes: ‘If you want to learn to pray, go to sea.’ However, that crossing, which took only two moons, passed like a dream.
Our two friends met a Genevan shoemaker, a Mexican merchant, a Jew from Salonika, a producer of Haitian tobacco, and a princess from Cholula who was travelling with her jaguar.
All of them extolled the beauties of those lands beyond the sea, their infinite spaces, their generous natures, their abundant riches, and the possibilities of making one’s fortune there, just so long as one did not set out with any seditious plans.
Then, one morning, the outline of Baracoa, the capital of Cuba and crossroads of the two worlds, appeared on the horizon. It was a city of palaces, palm trees and earth huts, where dogs spoke to parrots, where rich merchants came to sell their slaves and their wine, where the streets were fragrant with the scent of unknown fruits, where the naked Taíno nobility rode their Chilean thoroughbreds, wearing nothing but eighteen-row red pearl necklaces and crocodile-skin bracelets, where even the beggars resembled ancient dethroned kings, with masks and mirrors of copper and gold on their heads, where the shops were so overflowing with merchandise that, in the evenings, crested lizards ventured through the streets in search of crates that they could crack open. In that land, they spoke all languages, loved all women, prayed to all gods.
The Greek, dazzled by this torrent of colours, his nerves set on edge by this Babylonian excess, started laughing like a madman.
Looking up at the sky, forgetting his uncertain future, Cervantes marvelled at the red-headed vultures flying above him and thought that all those creatures were ghosts of this enchanted island. And so, undoubtedly, was he.
ALSO BY LAURENT BINET
The Seventh Function of Language
HHhH
A Note About the Author
Laurent Binet lives and works in France. His first novel, HHhH, was an international bestseller that won the prestigious Prix Goncourt du premier roman, among other prizes. The Seventh Function of Language won the Prix du Roman Fnac and the Prix Interallié. Civilizations is a bestseller and won the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française. You can sign up for email updates here.
A Note About the Translator
Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. His four novels have been translated into ten languages, and he has translated more than sixty books from the French, including Laurent Binet’s HHhH and Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny. You can sign up for email updates here
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Epigraphs
Part One: The Saga of Freydis Eriksdottir
1. Erik
2. Freydis
3. The South
4. The Land of the Dawn
5. Cuba
6. Chichen Itza
7. Panama
8. Lambayeque
9. The Death of Freydis
Part Two: The Journal of Christopher Columbus (fragments)
Part Three: The Chronicles of Atahualpa
2. The Retreat
3. The North
4. Cuba
5. Baracoa
6. Huascar
7. Lisbon
8. The Land of the East
9. Catalina
10. The Incades, Book I, Verse 1
11. The Tagus
12. Toledo
13. Maqueda
14. Salamanca
15. Charles
16. Plaza de San Martin
17. The Incades, Book I, Verse 11
18. Granada
19. Marguerite
20. Sepúlveda
21. The Incades, Book I, Verse 20
22. The Alhambra
23. Cadiz
24. The Incades, Book I, Verse 24
25. The Conquest
26. The Incades, Book I, Verse 74
27. Young Manco
28. The Alcazar
29. The Cortes
30. Letter from More to Erasmus
31. Letter from Erasmus to More
32. Letter from More to Erasmus
33. Letter from Erasmus to More
34. Letter from Thomas More to Erasmus
35. Letter from Erasmus to Thomas More
36. Letter from Erasmus to King Henry VIII
37. Elizabeth
38. Valencia
39. The Council
41. Tunis
42. The Mita
43. The Prince
44. Algiers
45. Flanders
46. Gand
47. Brussels
48. Germany
49. Little Johan
50. The Twelve Articles of the Alsatian Peasantry
51. Charlemagne
52. Augsburg
53. The Protestant Princes
54. Wittenberg
55. Luther
56. The Dilemma
57. The Castle Church
58. The Church Doors
59. The Ninety-Five Theses of the Sun
60. The End of Luther
61. The Coronation
62. The Empire’s Ten Laws
63. The Age of the Papa
64. The Silence of Cuba
65. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
66. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota
67. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
68. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota
69. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
70. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa
71. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota
72. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
73. Letter from Manco to Atahualpa
74. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa
75. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
76. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa
77. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
78. Quipu from Huascar to Atahualpa
79. Letter from Atahualpa to Jean de Saint-Mauris, Imperial Ambassador in France
80. Letter from Atahualpa to Higuénamota
81. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
82. Letter from Ambassador Jean de Saint-Mauris to Atahualpa
83. Letter from Higuénamota to Atahualpa
84. The Division of Bordeaux
85. The Death of the Inca
Part Four: The Adventures of Cervantes
1. On the circumstances in which the young Miguel de Cervantes left Spain
2. Which treats of young Cervantes’s meeting with the Greek Doménikos Theotokópoulos, who leads him to Venice
3. Which treats of the most glorious affair ever seen in centuries past, the present century or in centuries to come, and which was also responsible for the great misfortune of poor Cervantes
4. Of what followed young Cervantes’s misfortunes
5. Of their adventures at sea, so extraordinary and unprecedented that no sailor or navigator in the entire world could have completed them with less peril to his person than did the valiant Cervantes and his friend the Greek
6. Which treats of how Providence allowed Cervantes and the Greek to escape death and how they found refuge in a tower
7. Of how Cervantes and the Greek met the owner of the tower and lived with him in great harmony for a time
8. Of how Cervantes finally crossed the Ocean Sea
Also by Laurent Binet
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2019 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle
Translation copyright © 2021 by Sam Taylor
All rights reserved
Originally published in French in 2019 by Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle, France, as Civilizations
English translation originally published in 2021 by Harvill Secker, Great Britain
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2021
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-60082-2
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
www.fsgbooks.com
www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks
This book is supported by the Institut français (Royaume-Uni) as part of the Burgess program.
* Illegible (chronicler’s note).