Taino (20 page)

Eighty-six.
Out with Aragonese girls in Catalonia.

The girls, who liked to have fun, invited the three of us to drink wine with them at their home, on the boardwalk near the municipal docks. As we had our own quarters at the Royal Pensión in the city, no one to report to, and nothing in particular to do the next day, we accepted. Everyone else in town that we knew was also celebrating that evening, and some were quite drunk, talking and talking, and some of the women tipsy with wine were dancing. Both Caréy and I were quite happy to follow Rodrigo (and a fourth comrade), as they walked down the dusty shoreline streets of Barcelona looking for the fiesta house.

Rodrigo himself had a bottle of wine, and his friend Mateo, a local boy who spoke the Catalan language, had two. Caréy and I had none, but we were quite willing to drink. “These two Indians are good boys,” Rodrigo kept telling Mateo, who understood Spanish. “You should have known their uncle; he faced down a shark in midsea.”

Matilda and three “cousins” were home and let us in quickly. Two older women were also home and, after greeting us, made us stand still to be looked at. “So this is what Matilda drags in,” one said. “Who's the captain?”

Rodrigo nodded. She looked him in the eye up close. “You can cover these boys?”

“I can,” Rodrigo said. “But these boys are faraway guests of our king and queen's court. It would honor our grandees to gift them at least once.”

“They're a bit dark and swarthy,” she said. “But do they got a pecker like any old boy?”

Rodrigo laughed and pulled out a bag with a thousand
maravedí
in it. I am sure he did not have much more, but this impressed the older woman, who immediately leaned up against him, fondling his butt in jest. “I'll send you kids up some wine,” she said.

Eighty-seven.
I find the fair-haired woman of my dream.

It was quite a party. The older woman sent a mandolin player along with the wine. I drank a good bit of wine, but Caréy drank even more. He was really funny for quite a while and danced with Matilda and her cousins and Rodrigo and Mateo. That night I met and talked for a long time with Maria del Carmen, who was very sweet and curious about me. She drank wine, too, and we both drank together, and I talked to her for quite a while about our islands, the storms on the trip, and the king and queen. She was well impressed and did not hesitate to touch me, and very affectionately. I fell in love with her and we retired early, and I am not ashamed to say it—we spent a night of much comfort in each other's embrace, humid and passionate, with a natural timing in our passions that not only overwhelmed me, the first-timer, but even impressed her, who had considerably more experience. We took to each other like honey and wax. Maria del Carmen was exceedingly exciting to me, and I went back to her house several times during our stay in Barcelona.

Eighty-eight.
Caréy's bout of drinking.

The next evening I was off with Don Christopherens to a round table of town burghers, men who would invest in the mining enterprise that the admiral envisioned for the Indies. It was our first in a round of important meetings, where Don Christopherens formally introduced me to give testimony on the gold, pearls, and precious woods in our “Indian” lands. We went to several dozen like that over the next few weeks while the admiral arranged the credits and provisions of our return trip to the “Antilles,” as everyone was calling the Taíno islands.

My cousin Caréy, however, continued the party through the next day. He and Mateo had become friends while Rodrigo was off in love with Matilda. Through the day, the two young men found a sailors' whorehouse and through that evening and subsequent days drank many bottles of wine. They became a famous duo on brothel row, and the whores celebrated Caréy from one end of their street to the other. On the fifth day, Rodrigo came running to get me. Caréy is very sick, he informed me, and is vomiting blood. I found him at Matilda's house, on a cot, facing up. There was blood on his shirt, and every few minutes he was wracked with dry heaves. His eyes were wild and far inward. “He can't stop vomiting,” one of the older women informed me. “Leave us, please,” I said.

Alone with Caréy, I talked to him sweetly, in our language. Instinctively I wet a rag and held it to his lips, as we do for the elders at the end of a night of
cohoba
. I stayed with him all day, gave him lots of water, held him, and rubbed his lungs from behind. He coughed up horrible things and then fasted on only water. That night, as he was breathing calmly and sleeping soundly, I went to the admiral about the need to employ Caréy in something, and it was decided he would be sent to Seville as a second Indian page for the queen's prince Juan during our time in Spain.

Eighty-nine.
The admiral is titled and granted.

On May 28, 1493, in a large ceremony, the Catholic sovereigns granted Don Christopher Columbus full perpetual nobility and his own seal. His brother Don Bartolomé was titled
adelantado
, a type of forward commander. This was a great day for the Columbus family, and everyone acclaimed the act. The admiral kept me close to him all that day. I was very proud and felt the genial delirium of our great Guamíquina, and I was quite conscious that a large fleet was getting together for our return to the islands and men of the highest ranks in Spain were pressing the admiral to go along. Father Las Casas's own father was among those who went on that second trip. Friends of the admiral arrived from Genoa and Portugal and Flanders. All of the Spanish court, including many destitute noble families, glued their attention to the admiral's tales of the islands' wealth. That other Spanish historian, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who is presently here in Santo Domingo, has told me he was there in Barcelona and saw me with the admiral as we walked and rode carriages around the city. Several times that I have seen him here in Española, Oviedo has declared this knowledge.

Ninety.
Something about Oviedo: he lies about my people.

I will say something here about Oviedo, who was and is a gold counter and
encomendero
who has become a historian. Oviedo is not a friend to us Indians; truly he has put forth many peculiar lies about our Taíno life and mocked our religion many times. It is true that Father Las Casas dismisses our Taíno religion, but at least he defends our capacity to become Christians. Oviedo scoffs at that very idea, accusing us of “wanton heathenism” for having ignored the preaching of the apostles, whom he says must have come among the Taínos at the time of Jesus Christ. This opinion he bases in the writings of Saint Gregory, who claimed the church had predicated all over the world the doctrine of redemption. “Indians can't pretend to be ignorant of the Christian faith, as they had news of the evangelical truth,” Oviedo says now, and he justifies the
encomienda
as our fair punishment. He also says that we Indians have rock skulls so thick the Spanish used to break their swords on our foreheads. That is another of his lies. However, it is true that he was in Barcelona at that time, and the words he remembers me saying ring true to me now. “You talked about rivers of gold and men walking about wearing large plates of gold, who would trade gold for many of our things. You, Diego,” he has mocked me several times, “brought more of our people from Castile to this island than anyone I know.”

As I think about it now, this despicable man who predicates the enslavement and inferiority of my people is right to taunt me. And I do take responsibility that I seconded the admiral his claims during my stay on the Castilian lands. I got so used to talking up the good things, telling everyone what the admiral wanted them to hear, that I myself elaborated how much my people would love them, treat them graciously, and feed them, and I know that already in these claims the elements were being gathered for our destruction.

Why did I not see that earlier? Why was I so trusting to continue to believe that the Castilians had our best interests at heart? Why did I not see that as I bragged up my people's gentility, the men of those cities saw not friendly tradesmen and neighbors but easy servants and slaves; as they heard of gold in our hills, they thought not to go themselves to gather it but of how to force my people—men, women, children—to dig the gold and take it out for them. Oh, what my people have endured, what suffering and physical reduction for that mining of the gold! I hate to think of how I helped open that door, and even now I feel the need to atone for that and to do what I can to see that our people, however reduced, survive.

November 2, 1532

Ninety-one.
With Rodrigo's Gallegos at Otero del Rey, his mother's offering to the
duendes
of the water spring.

Rodrigo Gallego, our faithful friend, was going home and invited me to go along. He was from Galicia, from the village called Otero del Rey, near Lugo, west of Catalonia across the Basque country to the northwesternmost part of Iberia, north even of Portugal, where his own Gallego people lived. The admiral was done recruiting investors and granted me permission to go for the more than four months of the journey. That was my good-bye to Barcelona, as I would head south to Seville from Galicia. Rodrigo was not to go on the second voyage, but, as he was granted a royal appointment for the Academy of Guards at the court in Seville, after our visit to his parents he would accompany me to the Andalusian city, where I was to meet the admiral, Caréy, and the other travelers.

Leaving Maria del Carmen was difficult. I had little realized how deeply in love I had become. She was my first love, and, for days, as we rode away from Barcelona, lonely as a baby possum, I longed for her and cried. I thought of my elders in Guanahaní, and I remembered the dream of my puberty night and it was certainly her, Maria del Carmen, waiting there in my destined path, coming toward me across the
batéy
, old Ayragüex laughing at how he had seen it and it was all true.

The trip with Rodrigo had many weeks. He had bought all sorts of provisions for his family, including ax and hoe heads for his father and needles, cloth, and iron pots and pans for his mother. We traveled on two horses and led two pack mules, one with our provisions and the other loaded with gifts. We also carried the queen's seal in a letter of free passage, which proved useful while crossing the country of the Basques, through the low southern hills of the Pyrenees.

Ninety-two.
A run with bulls for San Fermín.

One of our stops, about halfway to Galicia, found us among the Basques, in a town called Pampeluna. I do remember we arrived there on July 6 of that year, 1493. I remember the day because the admiral had instructed me to keep a count of my days. He gifted me a pen, which I kept for many years, and two long-scroll rolls of paper. Every day of every week and month I made a mark. I did not yet know how to write or read (my Jewish friend Torres would begin me in that stead later in Seville), but nonetheless, I dutifully made my daily mark. This is why, often, long-distant dates jump before these written memories in the eye inside my mind, certain as the convent calendar.

Pampeluna was a crazy place, as cattlemen had driven in their cattle and their
vaqueros
had money for wine. A ceremonial time it apparently was, too, and a god of the Pamplones, a spirit man they called San Fermín, was on everyone's lips that day. In the early morning, an explosion of cannon or rocket awakened me to see Rodrigo already dressed and hanging out the window.

It was a cool summer morning, crisp as baked
cassabe
, but everything was confusing for me. The streets of the large village were crowded with people yelling and dancing with their arms around each other's shoulders. Before I could ask who San Fermín might be, so that I might greet him, too, Rodrigo joined in with the crowd, squirting wine out of bags into everyone's mouths. Then the crowd was yelling, “
Encierro
,
encierro
,” meaning “enclosure,” which I also wondered at, and then we were all moving down a very dusty street, the dust so thick I could hardly breathe. Down the street I could make out two big wooden corrals on the edge of an enclosed field, both full of ornery, horny bulls, big and thick as a fat
manatí
, thicker even, and with pointed stakes coming out of their heads and big sacks of balls dangling under the hind legs.

I was carried by the crowd at times, as everyone pressed together, jumping and crowding around the corrals. There was a priest, and some of the cattlemen stood by the gate of the corrals and they, too, were drinking wine. The crowd, all men, was hooting and laughing, and the bulls pranced around wild-eyed inside the corrals. Then the priest blessed the bulls with holy water. The crowd quieted and he was very solemn, speaking not Castilian but the old Basque language, and it made sense suddenly for me that they lived off the balls and production of these great bulls, and they were appreciating their food in a way we do also our
yucca
and our
hutía
, our doves and parrots, our iguana and our many fish and turtles, especially the turtles, which are so very useful and sacred to us.

What happened next was craziest of all. As the priest ended his blessing, cries of “
Viva San Fermín!
” filled the air, and the jumping and hollering all began again. I wondered about this San Fermín, that he might be a bull spirit, and was thus daydreaming when the crowd began running past me, and I found myself facing four bulls sniffing an open gate briefly before charging on me like a pack of sharks.

I folded myself into a ball on the hot sand. I pretended to be a turtle, just as I'd been thinking, and the bulls stopped short of me, again sniffing, and then there was Rodrigo actually hitting one on the snout and running, and the whole crowd running, and the bulls jumping past me. One stepped on my hand as he charged away.