Diego's Imagined Diary: The Night of the Animas
This diary is imagined, not a recovered manuscript. The land was not empty. Native peoples already lived along this river and knew it long before any Spaniard arrived. Diego is a guest here.
This chapter takes a simple position: the river was never the haunted thing. The fear belonged to the strangers who came late, named what they did not understand, and carried their dead without knowing how to lay them down.
What follows is Diego’s imagined hand, written in the autumn of 1719, beside the river the Spanish called Río de las Ánimas, in what is now Las Animas County, Colorado.
October 31, 1719
I have come again to the river.
The men call it the Río de las Ánimas, and even in daylight they lower their voices when they say the name. Souls. Spirits. The dead who wander. A river can carry many things, and I think our words are among them.
I remember my first arrival here, when I heard the old story of Bonilla and Humana. More than one hundred years have passed since that Spanish party vanished in this country. Some say they were killed. Some say they were swallowed by the plains. Some say their souls still move along the water because no priest came to them, no bell rang, no Mass was said, and no family knew where to light a candle.
That story has followed me like a burr in my blanket.
Tonight the air has turned sharp. The cottonwood leaves make a dry sound, like old paper rubbed between fingers. Our fire is low. The river does not sleep. It pulls at the dark with a silver hand.
I write with my cloak around my shoulders. I am far from Toledo. Far from the stones of home, far from the church where my mother prayed, far from the graves where the names of my people were spoken by those who loved them.
Tomorrow is Todos los Santos, All Saints. The day after is the Dia de las Animas, the Day of the Souls. These are not small days. They are the most serious days of my year.
On All Saints, we praise the saints in heaven. On the Day of the Souls, we pray for the dead who are not yet in heaven, the souls still waiting in purgatory. The animas. My father taught me this when I was a boy. He would take off his hat before the church door and say, “Diego, the dead are poor unless the living remember them.”
I did not understand him then.
I begin to understand him now.
This evening I gathered stones from the riverbank, smooth and cold from the water. I set them in a little place near my blanket. I did not make anything grand. I have no church here, no altar cloth, no bell, no painted saint, no priest’s hand raised above me.
I have one candle.
I have a cross I carry under my shirt.
I have memory.
That must be enough for a man so far from home.
The others have gone quiet. One man crossed himself before he lay down. Another laughed at him, but softly, as if he feared the river might hear. I do not laugh. I have seen brave men become children when the dark is deep enough.
A dog barked once beyond the camp, then stopped.
Somewhere out there are people who know this country as I know the lanes near Toledo. They know where the water bends, where the deer pass, where winter sits first on the ground. We Spaniards come with maps that are mostly hope, and names that are mostly hunger.
This land does not belong to our fear.
I write that so I will remember it.
November 1, 1719
Todos los Santos.
At first light I washed my face in the river. The water was so cold that it took my breath, and for a moment I felt as if I had been struck awake by God himself.
I set my candle between the stones. I shielded the flame with both hands. The wick caught slowly, then stood upright and bright.
I prayed for the saints in glory, known and unknown. I prayed to be made brave in the right way, not the loud way. I prayed for patience, because a traveler without patience becomes a thief of meaning.
Then I prayed for my own dead.
For my mother’s mother, whom I knew only as a voice in stories.
For my little brother Tomás, who died before he grew tall enough to reach the latch.
For my teacher, Father Alonso, who smelled of ink and dust and once struck my knuckles for writing a foolish poem in the margin of a holy book.
For my mother, still living when I left Toledo, but often sick, and so close to my prayers that fear speaks her name before hope can answer.
I know the day is for the saints in heaven, not for grief. Yet grief will come even when a man sets the chair for joy. I let it sit beside me.
The land was quiet by the time the sun rose. Not empty. Never empty. Quiet.
Near midday an older man came to the edge of camp.
He did not come like a thief. He stood where we could see him. He carried himself with a calm that made our hands seem foolish when they moved toward weapons.
One of our men knew a few words from trade. Another had seen him before near Taos. He was Pueblo, from there, though he lived and traded among the Apache of this country. I had heard of such men, people who moved between worlds better than we moved between hills. He knew the plains, the towns, the trails, the tempers of men.
We offered food.
He accepted slowly, with care. We gave him a little bread and dried meat. He gave us, in return, something of his own pouch. I will not name it wrongly, since I am not sure what it was. It was good, and it warmed the mouth.
We sat near the fire.
There were few words at first. A little Spanish. A few words from his tongue that I could not hold well in my ear. Some signs. Much waiting. Waiting can be a language when men do not fill it with pride.
He looked at my stones and the candle.
I touched my chest and said, “Ánimas.”
He watched the flame.
“Dead,” I said in Spanish, then tried again with gesture. I pointed to the earth, then to the sky, then folded my hands.
He understood enough. Or perhaps he understood more than I deserved.
He said something softly. I could not follow all of it. The man who knew a little trade speech helped, though poorly. The older man did not hurry him. He spoke as one laying sticks on a fire, one at a time.
I told him, as best I could, that these were holy days for me. I told him of the dead in Toledo, of prayers, of souls waiting for mercy.
He listened.
That was a gift.
November 2, 1719
Dia de las Animas.
The Day of the Souls.
I woke before dawn because I had dreamed of bells. Not the bells of this place. There are no church bells here. I heard Toledo, or the place in my mind that still calls itself Toledo. The dream was so strong that when I opened my eyes I expected stone walls and narrow streets.
Instead I saw the river.
Mist lay close above the water, pale as breath. The candle had burned out in the night. Only a black thread of wick remained.
I made the altar again. The stones had fallen a little, disturbed by wind or by some small creature. I set them right. I placed a new candle in the middle, though I have few left. A man who saves every candle may still arrive at death with no light.
The older Pueblo man returned after sunrise.
I was glad. I had hoped he would, though I had no right to expect it.
We shared food again. This time there was less caution between us. Not friendship exactly, for friendship is a road that takes many days. But there was a path.
I showed him the page where I had written the name of the river. Río de las Ánimas.
He looked at the letters. I do not know if he read them. He understood that they mattered to me, and perhaps that was enough.
Then I asked the question I have carried since I first heard the story of Bonilla and Humana.
I touched the page. I pointed to the river. I said, in slow Spanish, “Is this river truly haunted by lost souls?”
The trader helped me. The older man listened to the words made again in another form. He did not answer at once.
He looked at the river for a long time.
When he spoke, his voice was not angry. That almost made his words heavier.
His people’s dead, he told me, are not lost.
The trader searched for the right Spanish. The old man waited and then spoke again. The meaning came to me in pieces.
Their dead are remembered by name. They are spoken of. They are carried by their families as a lamp is carried through a house. They are not wandering because strangers cannot see them. They are not missing because Spaniards do not know where they rest.
I felt shame rise in me, hot and quick.
The old man did not press on the wound. He only told the truth.
The lost ones on this river, he said, were my people.
Bonilla. Humana. The men who followed them. Spaniards who came long ago with iron, hunger, prayer, and fear. They died far from their churches. No priest came. No rites were given. No mother knew where to mourn. No child was told, “Here he lies.” No candle burned for them at the proper time.
Those, he said, are the kind of dead a man prays for on the Dia de las Animas.
I looked at my little altar of stones.
The river moved beside us as it had moved before Spain knew this country existed.
Then the old man said the thing I will not forget.
The Spanish looked at a living river in a living land and named it for their own fear.
I had no answer.
In my heart, I wanted to defend us. I wanted to say that names are only names, that fear is natural, that men lost in a strange country will speak as lost men speak. I wanted to say that I, Diego of Toledo, did not kill Bonilla and Humana, did not name the river first, did not come here to steal a story.
But a man can defend himself so loudly that he misses the door God has opened.
So I kept quiet.
The old man picked up a small stick and drew a line in the dirt. Then another. Not a map, I think. Or if it was, it was not for me. He wiped it away with his palm before I could fix it in my memory.
I asked him then, foolishly but with honest longing, if he would tell me the river’s own story. The one his people tell. I said I would write it carefully. I showed him my diary. I touched my pen.
He looked at me with kindness.
Then he said, through the trader and also with his own eyes, “That story is not yours to write.”
The words entered me like cold water.
Not cruel. Not proud. Firm.
I closed the diary.
I told him yes. Or I tried to. I put my hand over the page and bowed my head. He watched me, and I think he believed me.
There are things a traveler may receive. There are things he must leave untouched. I had thought writing a story was a way of honoring it. Today I learned that sometimes honor means silence.
So I will not write the story he would not give me.
I will write only what the night taught me.
A river may have names laid upon it like blankets, but under them it remains itself. A land may be called unknown by those who do not know it, but that does not make it unknown. The dead may seem lost to strangers, while their own people hold them close with words the stranger has no right to take.
And some dead truly are lost, not because the river keeps them, but because the living came too late with prayer.
The sun went down red.
I kept the candle for the dead.
I prayed first for my own family in Toledo. For those whose names I know, and for those whose names were lost before I was born. I prayed for my mother, though she may still be living, because distance makes a man fear every silence.
Then I prayed for Bonilla and Humana, and for every person who followed them into this country and did not return. I do not know if they were brave or foolish, cruel or kind, faithful or proud. Most men are more than one thing. God saw them whole. I see only their shadow.
I prayed for the priest who never reached them.
I prayed for the Mass never said.
I prayed for the hands that never buried them, the bells that never rang, the mothers who never knew where to place their grief.
Then my prayer grew larger than I knew how to hold.
I prayed for every dead this river has ever known.
Not to claim them. Not to name them. Not to gather them into my book like trophies. I prayed because the water moved beside me, and the night was full, and I am small.
There are names here I will never learn. There are griefs that do not belong to me. There are stories I must not write. Still, I can sit beside the river and be quiet. I can let my candle burn. I can ask mercy for the dead and humility for the living.
The older man did not return tonight. I am glad of that too. Some lessons should not be chased.
The men in camp sleep badly. One mutters. One turns and crosses himself. The river keeps speaking in its own tongue, which is not Spanish, not Latin, not any word I can set down.
I once thought the name Río de las Ánimas meant the river was full of wandering souls.
Now I think it means we arrived carrying souls we had forgotten to pray for.
The candle is low. Wax has run over the stones and cooled in small white tears. The flame bends when the wind comes, then stands again.
I will leave the stones here when we go. I will not carve my name. I will not mark the place as mine.
I am a guest.
Tonight I understand that better than I did when I first crossed into this country. A guest may warm himself by another’s fire. He may drink water with thanks. He may listen. He may be corrected. If he is wise, he will not mistake welcome for ownership.
The river has carried older prayers than mine.
It has heard older names.
It will move when I am gone, when my diary is dust, when no one remembers whether Diego of Toledo came this way in fear or wonder.
Still, for this one night, I have given what I can give.
A candle.
A prayer.
A late remembrance.
"The souls were never lost. Only our prayers were late."
KIKO ARTESEROS:::...
Comments