Taino (6 page)

“We are going now,” he announced, standing, though with a slight wobble. He stared at the
cacique
, who stared back. “The fire is good,” the old
cacique
said. I translated. The admiral stared at him. “Tell him that fire burns,” he said.

Then the curse was pronounced upon him.

The gnarled old man, the
behike
of Bayamo standing by the women's council, cleared his nose and throat, then coughed into his left palm. Cupping the thick snot with his right hand, he walked between the fire and the admiral, suddenly showing the gob directly to the admiral. “With this I will teach you humility,” he whispered harshly, in Taíno. “The door to your dreams, I close.” The admiral turned quickly to face him and our soldiers stepped up too.

The old man had no fear in him at all, his palm and fingers slicing through space at the admiral. “Hell is in your dreams if you, a far-seeing man, commit the deeds that are in your mind,” he said.

A soldier drew his sword, sensing the old man's hostility.

“Don't quarrel here,” the admiral told the soldier.

With the growing sense of threat, the admiral regained his composure. He felt the men of Bayamo might overcome our small troop of not quite twenty. “Our business is over here,” he said and ordered Captain Herrera to organize the troop. The soldiers and sailors surrounded the admiral, and as we began to walk, he asked what the old man had said at the end.

“He said to watch your dreams,” I said. “It was a kind of farewell gesture.”

The
guanguayo
had power, I knew, particularly for Bayamo's people.
Behike
men like the gnarled old-timer meant everything they said. For myself, I knew they would not attack us under the circumstances, and indeed they lit resin torches and thick, rolled tobaccos and led us down to the shore, singing once again. They carried dozens of baskets full of foods for the ships. But the admiral had been shown a
guanguayo
,
cohoba
medicine, teacher of our people, veil of water between the worlds. Don Christopherens moved stridingly, in measured long steps, but even so, walking to the boats he stumbled several times. Later, climbing on ship, he tripped and had to hang by an elbow from a net while sailors hauled him on board.

We sailed on for many more weeks during this journey, the admiral intent on proving Cuba a peninsula of the mainland. The weeks dragged on and fewer and fewer of his officers believed him. Twice, out of spite, I reminded him of the words of Bayamo's young chief on the island nature of the Cuba. He had me flogged the second time—five swift ones from the many-tailed whip. For that I cursed him myself and intoned the
guanguayo
of the dark over him as we sailed for long weeks among the islands. And it happened that as the weeks rolled on, he slept less and less, and I believe that special curse, which he now and forever carried from the people of Bayamanacoel, blocked the doors between his waking and dreaming selves. Truly, the navigation was difficult through the channels of the smaller islands and the admiral became extremely nervous. Finally he got sick and brittle. And for weeks, in feverish deliriums, he exclaimed how much the queen would like it that the Indians believed in a heaven and a hell, evidence to push the enterprise of their Christianization. “For the use of their labor,” he half sang sometimes, “we will bring them the true Faith!”

I would add, good friar, that from hearing these ravings (which later became law), Cúneo must have picked up the reference to Heaven and Hell, as he helped nurse the admiral during that voyage.

May 1, 1532

Fifteen.
Hard to explain our Indian religion, even to a good friar.

Don Bartolomé read my pages of the admiral's meeting with Bayamo. He shook his head at me. “Cúneo mentioned nothing about a warning or curse. In fact, he said that the
cacique
wanted to go with the admiral to visit Castile. He said the admiral had gone ashore to hear Mass when the
cacique
approached him. And that he was very happy when the admiral mentioned that he would help the Taíno against raids by Kwaibs.”

“No,” I said. “What got the admiral that time was how clear the
cacique
and his
behikes
were about the fate of our Taíno people.”

“It would seem so, from your pages.”

“I was there. I saw it. The admiral was fashioning the idea of the
encomienda
.”

“Yes, I admit that. Your perception on Indian servitude being exchanged or requested for Christianization, that is a very good, Dieguillo. And you remember that from the meeting with
Cacique
Bayamo?”

“Oh, yes. He said that even then. And Bayamo knew what it meant. We all did. Even I, as dense as I can be, I finally understood they meant to own us forever. All of us were to be their
naboria
, or worse, their complete slaves…”

“A great sadness you must have known.”

“Indeed, but for that little revenge of the
guanguayo
, which I confess, Father, lifted my Taíno spirit.”

“That's witchcraft, Dieguillo. You would persist otherwise?”

“Father, please, trust my character, which you have known. There is no devil in it. The
cohoba
was at the center of our minds. It was the veil of water for us, it was the passageway between this world in our hands and the one of our memories, in our dreams.”

“You still believe in that, Dieguillo? And you, a baptized Christian, and so knowledgeable in our sacraments?”

“This is what I mean. Even now, the Christian owns everything. Even you, the best of Christians, would choke my little space. Let me have a moment with this. Or would thou call the Inquisition on me for explaining my people's beliefs?”

“Very well. I try to understand you. Proceed and forgive me.”

“Understand, they were angered. And they did have a power. In our way. Now, let me finish, Father. Don't start again. Because they did curse him, directly. And never again would he be as certain. He began losing his way then, after his encounter with Bayamo. By the time we arrived on ship, he looked graven. It was our old medicine, good friar. It was one connection that we Taíno had, a power that existed here even before your word of the Christ and the Supreme God with no mother who begot a man-son with no father. You see, even in that, ours was an opposite way. Our Supreme Being, Yucahuguama, had spirit mother but no fathers, no grandfathers.”

“You help yourself not with these fancy notions.”

“Let me tell you, Father. Because, it does not deny your way. It is opposite, yet it is also true. Our
behikes
used to say, the opposite of everything is also true. What would you say to that thought?”

“Perhaps if you could just answer my question, Dieguillo. I don't want to get lost in too much detail. The thing is: did the
cacique
believe in Heaven and Hell?”

I shook my head.

“But do you not see the importance. It makes your people nearly Christians, even before hearing the gospel. We can argue that the Indian can reach Christ directly, through the clergy, without need of overseers and masters.”

I have grown used to his thick-headedness. The friar's cause before the Spanish court has lingered for twenty years to little avail. Our people, those who are not in active rebellion or who, like me, have received special dispositions, have remained miserable slaves—killed and raped, cut at will. No, I do not care to prove that our people were like Christians before the coming of the first Iberians.

We were not a perfect people; I only look in the mirror to prove that. But, I know the truth of what was. So, in my poor health, as I am become nearly a dried up man, my family lost and my heart on the ground, I no longer need to please anyone. I respect the friar, yes, and I am obliged for the many gestures he has had with me, but what I saw and heard I know and remember.

“He did not mean Heaven and Hell, as you say it,” I told him. “Bayamo used the admiral's own words to warn him to stop stealing our people. Good friar, our world here was very different. We did not just talk of the Spirit World as an afterdeath; it was not a place faraway. We could walk in and out of it, our ancestors danced with us, even as we lived.”

“Don't speak of pagan things,” he snapped at me. “I won't allow it in my presence.”

That was his precise response, and at that moment I felt a nausea from this greasy-smelling, thick-headed Spaniard. Truly, sometimes I wish to
macanear
this priest, smash his head like pineapple.

I stared out my window for a long while. The friar assumed I was in meditation and scribbled away at my desk, copying selected paragraphs from my manuscript. I don't like to displease him. I know we need him, and, in fact, I respect him very much. Presently, he wiped his pen, folded his papers, and stood up to go.

“You should confess yourself soon, my son,” he advised as I lowered my head to receive his blessing.

May 2, 1532

Sixteen.
Enriquillo's conditions and vigilance.

He came again in the afternoon.

Father Las Casas is dark for a Spaniard. He had the cowpox as a child, in Seville, and it scarred him. His nose and face are long and he is thin but for a bulge at his belly, like the
mahá
snake after swallowing one of our tree muskrats. He sat on a three-legged stool next to my cot and, as always when excitation takes hold, the bulge of his stomach wiggled. His torso truly resembled the
mahá
with a meal still living in his guts.

“Enriquillo is much the topic again at the government house,” he said. “They are obsessed with pacifying him. Another delegation has gone already to king's court about it, even as I would go.”

Enriquillo himself will not parley anymore with officials on the island, as the troops here have tried to sniff out his hidden camps while pretending peace. Once, shortly after taking to the bush, we met at the ranch of friends. He told me: “On our island all are thieves and liars. If the king is just, as they say, he cannot know what is going on.”

Another time, I was sent to him by the governor general, Don Diego Colón, son of the admiral, with a partial offer of amnesty. Then, Enriquillo would not let the Castilian official with me within four leagues of his camp. Even I, who once saved his life, did not visit the main camp myself, though he did greet me properly with a feast at the edge of the Lake of the Encomendador. There I met Ciguayo, his allied chief, as well as the one called Romero.

“Vigilance guides my every step,” Enriquillo told me then. “I trust not a one of them but the good friar, and even he I would hang if I had to.”

I acknowledged that the good friar and some others among the Dominicans and the Franciscan priests were indeed trustworthy, but advised him equally. “Learn from the fate of your fathers,” I told him. “The Castilians are masters of treachery.”

“The king might capitulate now because their campaign to ensnare Enriquillo has absolutely collapsed,” Father Las Casas said today. Again, he told the truth. The island government has fielded ten experienced captains to root out Enriquillo's camps, causing him no end of trouble. Enriquillo retaliated by destroying the
encomiendas
of the specific captains sent against him, burning several and forcing the other four captains to stay close to their haciendas. I can say without any exaggeration that in the past year, Enriquillo's prestige among our own people and among the Africans here has grown. Since the failure of the last campaign against him, many Spaniards are talking about returning to Spain or migrating to the mainland.

“I am informed the king reasons he risks loosing the island if he does not interfere,” said the good friar.

“Enriquillo has never asked for more than the king's intercession,” I said.

“Intercession in freeing all Indians,” he said. “Fray Remigio, when he saw Enrique in the mountains, reports that among the
cacique
's demands is an end to the
encomienda
system in Española.”

“He is a true hero,” I said, though I suspected the good friar was exaggerating. “It concerns me, Father, that he may ask for too much. All-out war from the king will come next if a peace is not reached.”

“Not at all,” the good friar said. “He must do no less than demand an end to the
encomienda
.”

Seventeen.
The Bible guides Las Casas.

Tonight, one day later, Father Las Casas stopped by again. He leaves in the morning for the monastery at La Plata, where meetings to discuss the Enriquillo negotiations are being held. Together we read a chapter from the Old Testament, one in Ecclesiastes where the good book tells of misbegotten gifts, how property and goods obtained immorally are not acceptable to God. He read it out loud after we read it silently and then reminded me of how he released his own Indians in Cuba, in 1514, to begin his work on our behalf.

“The truth of our Bible guided me, Dieguillo,” he said. “The good book I have given you before. Read it. As you know how to, read the gospels. Read Matthew. This you must do every day, on three occasions. Empty your head of the things of
behikes
. The Devil can control that. You may not think so because you have a love for your people's things, this is natural. But beware that the Devil can control them and you will fall prey. He will damage your soul. He will steal you from us. Fill your head with Christ, my son, Dieguillo.”

“Yes, Father,” I agreed, though I hate to be spoken to in this manner. As I wrote before, I am past the point where I have to please anyone. But I said, “It is only that my memories exist, Father.”