About the author
Pablo Montoya (born 1963 in Barrancabermeja) is a Colombian writer best known for his novel Tríptico de la infamia which won the Romulo Gallegos Prize in 2015. He studied music at Escuela Superior de música de Tunja and holds a degree in philosophy and literature from Universidad Santo Tomás in Bogotá.
About the book
Jacques Le Moyne, François Dubois and Théodore de Bry were three Protestant painters who were witnesses and interpreters of the horrors committed in the name of religion – and the desire for wealth – by Europeans in the 16th-century conquest of America. This novel is a reconstruction of the complex relationships between the old and new continents. It shows the impact this unfamiliar world had on the European gaze, with the religious wars in Europe as a backdrop. Tríptico de la infamia is a novel that abounds in historical richness and poetic beauty, and gives a new perspective on one of the bloodiest and most difficult moments in history.
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Triptych of Infamy by Pablo Montoya, published by Random House Colombia, 2014. 328 pp.
WINNER OF THE RÓMULO GALLEGOS PRIZE 2015
Part One: Le Moyne
1
His name was Jacques Le Moyne. He was short of stature, though with firm muscles. His clear blue eyes stood out against a shock of dark, untidy hair. When he spoke, he tended to mumble. But it was his hands that drew people’s attention: they were elegant, yet strong. If it hadn’t been for the war that was shaking the country, he would long ago have devoted himself to a life as a painter, and to producing the navigational charts known as portolans. Rather grudgingly, but spurred by his desire for adventure, he became an arquebusier, not unaware that, in times of terror and despoliation, it was important to know about arms and ambushes. For a period he worked in the personal guard of a gentleman of Dieppe, which took orders from Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The latter fired them up recalling the ignominious events at Wassy, when Catholic soldiers massacred defenceless Huguenots. But Le Moyne found the arquebus difficult to handle, and was clumsy with a halberd. Instead, he spent his time sketching forts and castles, the horses at rest, and his companions playing cards or drinking while they relaxed in the camp. The men would roar with laughter when, for a few coins, he would show them salacious drawings of lovers endowed with huge members, or quick sketches of peasant women on their haunches with their skirts raised, launching streams of urine against a tree. Le Moyne fulfilled his duties as a mercenary without feeling any emotions about the ebb and flow of the opposing factions, until one afternoon in April, when events overtook him. The squad he belonged to spotted a farm that had fallen under suspicion. It was rumoured that these ramshackle buildings at the field edge concealed a priest who was spying for the enemy. Le Moyne hung back, as he always did when things got heated. He kept his distance from the houses, and awaited some clarity about what was going on. Soon, shouts of warning and startled cries were heard, and figures could be seen fleeing in the direction of the forest. The fuses of the arquebuses were lit. Le Moyne remained paralyzed as he watched his companions take some men prisoner, begging for their lives. But no priest inciting attacks on the enemies of Christ was to be found. It was just a group of travelling Gypsies taking a rest from their wanderings. That night, the company received permission to empty a cask of sweet thick wine from Rouen. Three musicians were also brought in who celebrated the soldiers’ bravery with the trumpet, tambourine, and bombard. Le Moyne stood apart from the racket. In the flames of the brazier, he saw gestures of despair, expressions of terror, the black blood oozing from the bodies. The exultation was owed to the message that had been sent to the gentleman of Dieppe. It said that the priest had been run through, together with his retinue of acolytes and perverse concubines.
2
Philippe Tocsin received him in his workshop. His letter of presentation was nothing special: a note from the gentleman in whose service he had worked, praising the young man’s reputation and his faith in the precepts of the new religion. Enclosed with this recommendation were the best drawings Le Moyne had made during his military adventures. The lad was not naïve, and knew that the pay would be meagre, at least initially. But he would rather undergo the hardships of an apprenticeship in cosmography than continue to debate with his conscience. He knew he would feel nostalgia for the vast and luminous landscapes of Normandy, with their forests of beech and flowering apple. He knew that horseback rides through Landes would be a distant memory in his new profession. Anyway, it was fitting to turn to more sensible matters: to attend to the call of his vocation. Moreover, he would soon have to marry Ysabeau, establish a home and grow old in the proper manner. Then there was Tocsin, the master of navigational charts and planispheres, who had accepted him as an assistant in his workshop. And then—why not? who knew what surprises life had in store for him?—he might travel to that world so recently discovered on the far side of the great ocean. Tocsin had arranged to meet him at the church door. Seagulls weaved among the towers. The late spring breeze still carried with it the last flutters of cold, but a feeling of warmth had begun to imbue the city. The master artist cut a bony, stooped figure as he stalked the narrow streets in search of geographical information. When he saw him, Le Moyne felt pity for the solitude in which he was submerged. His workshop was a large, gloomy attic, full of books and instruments of measurement. The apprentice liked the atmosphere straight away. Among the accumulated dust and tang of wine and cheese, an intense odour of wood merged with the smell of paper and ink. A telescope, its lens pointing through a skylight, stood out like an emblem. A red tapestry hung from the rafters, bearing a pattern from Brazil. The table was cluttered with ivory compasses set in oak cases, each one pointing in a different direction. A similar confusion reigned with the hourglasses, which all marked different times. When he observed Le Moyne’s dismay at this disorder of the instruments, Tocsin said, as if it were the motto of the workshop, that here they were in all places and none, and that though time might be undivided and eternal for God, for mortals it is but caprice and imprecision. The shelves were laden with thick folders. In one, the young man saw what Tocsin claimed was the oldest map of Greece, created by Anaximander. Then they looked at the Orbis Terrarum, a map used in the military campaigns of Augustus as he took over the world. There too, was the Hereford Mappa Mundi, about which the master of Dieppe spoke as if it were a document criss-crossed with extravagant illustrations rather than a learned exercise in cosmography. Another folder contained the Catalan Atlas, made by Abraham Cresques and his son Jafuda, Jews from Mallorca. Then the conversation turned to the fearful Christian persecutions in Spain, and the desperate conversion Jafuda underwent to escape death, and to be able to complete the work begun by his father. The Cresques had a better idea of what a Mappa Mundi was, Tocsin argued: an image of the regions of the Earth and the endless peoples who inhabit it. Le Moyne observed the old man’s finger indicate the lands of Asia, depicted on the vellum for the first time. However, there was one map above all others that would light up the face of the master, who spoke uninterrupted in these first days of the apprenticeship. This was the Mappa Mundi of Fra Mauro, a monk from Murano, illuminated and detailed to the point of transfiguration. The admirable Mauro barely slept, Tocsin explained, so anxious was he to hear every piece of gossip or story told by the mariners arriving in Venice. He tried to get his hands on all the ships’ logs. And just when he believed his work was done, and his map fully represented this frantic gathering of sources, some new piece of information, yet more fevered and far-fetched, would arrive from a distant corner of Asia or Africa, preventing its completion. Amidst this torrent of information and numbers, which sometimes lasted until midnight, Le Moyne suddenly felt his gaze drawn upwards. His eyes opened wide. He stood on one of the workshop stools and, aided by the oil lamp passed up to him by the master, peered at the creature. Above the shelves, enclosed in a frame of white wood, there was a parrot. Its wings were spread, its beak open, and its eyes laughed from the afterlife of strange birds.