The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (37 page)

The moon had gone behind the clouds. The lamps burning fore and aft cast long dancing shadows across the deck. And suddenly all darkness vanished in blaze of pure white light. At first, I thought that the gunpowder had blown up, although I had heard no sound. Then the light vanished. It did not fade; it was simply gone. I turned, and there he was standing aft, casting a solid shadow in the re-emerged moon. The crew were all sprawled on the deck, not dead for I saw them breathing, but as though asleep. Even the goats and the pigs were in an unnatural stupor. The Shadowman had power over both men and the beasts of the field, it seemed, but not over me.

I drew my pistols and fired. He flung his arms up crosswise in front of his head and I saw sparks fly as a ball was deflected from his metal wristbands. I dropped the pistols and drew my sword in left hand and dagger in my right and, with a scream of pure hate and terror, leaped down to meet him.

I fought well. I fought better than I had ever fought before. For the first time, nearly all my selves were focused. I could feel Guaikan's calm that was so necessary in battle; Colon's strength of wrist and natural coordination; Antam's sharp eye; and Mary-Anne's speed and stubborn refusal to accept defeat.

But the Shadowman was as quick as a whip, blocking every stroke of my sword with his wristbands, sidestepping every thrust of my dagger with a fluent footwork I could neither match nor grasp. And in his right fist the familiar silver spike stabbed like a snake's fanged head. I was soon bleeding from waist and thigh and shoulder. And I was weakening. I needed a different strategy.

I pretended to be weaker than I was. He intensified his attack. Came the moment when he knocked my sword out of my grasp and moved swiftly behind me, arm across my windpipe to strike the only blow that could kill my body. But I moved back as I had been taught, reaching behind to grab his tunic and shifting my weight, and I threw him over my hip. He hit the deck with a thud that rattled the planks but, even as I dived for my sword, I realized that he had not even grunted. I got my sword and rolled and I could hear his sandals rapidly slapping the deck as he raced up behind me, already recovered, and I spun, still crouched, sword thrusting for his torso. His right forearm was already sweeping out to deflect my blade, but I held the sword in my right hand, and I skewered him right through the body. Now he grunted, and my yell of triumph was cut short as the force of his rush carried us back against the railings. The breath was driven out of me, but I drew up my legs and thrust him back, but the effort overbalanced me and I fell with a yell into the cold dark waters.

I resurfaced at once, tossing my head to clear the water from my eyes. The hull was sliding past me. I had already drawn my spare daggers to thrust into the wood when I felt something butt my torso below the water. Only then did I remember the sharks. 

Two days before our next session, the laboratory report on the log arrived. Much to my surprise, the report said it was authentic. Ink and paper were definitely from sixteenth century Europe. I decided not to tell Mr. Avatar this. It showed how much effort he had taken to create this fantasy, and if there was any confirmation from me, it would only strengthen his delusion. Instead, I began by asking about the process by which he wrote his stories.

‘I notice that you have tried to go to each country you lived in when you write your stories. Why is that?' I asked him.

He said, ‘To restore my sense of place. To sharpen my memory. After so many centuries, my recollection is a little rusty.'

‘Oh. And do you become that person as you write?'

‘Not exactly. My memories in that life dominate. I feel what I felt then. But I don't lose my present awareness.'

‘I see. I noticed, in your last story, that the step-parent is again a malevolent figure. What do you make of that?'

‘That I was unlucky with step-parents. Until this life, anyway.'

‘You don't think it significant?'

‘Come on, doc. You know that step-parenthood is the strongest risk factor for child abuse. Step-parents are forty to a hundred times more likely to kill a young child than a biological parent, right?'

‘I believe that's correct.'

‘I was pretty lucky with my father and grandfather in this life.'

‘I see that the “I” in this account gets along quite well with the father.'

‘Yeah, well, he was indulgent and I was shallow.'

I asked him if he did not think that relationship might be wish-fulfilment. He laughed at this.

He said, ‘So if I don't get along with my stepfather in one account, it means I had problems with my father in this life, and if I do get along with my father, it's wish-fulfilment?'

I saw that I had would have to be quite careful with Mr. Avatar. I said nothing. He continued speaking.

‘Did I tell you that Emily's husband was my best friend?'

‘Your grandfather?'

‘Not biological of course.'

‘Yes.'

‘He was a very smart man, very well read.'

‘Intellectual development is important to you, isn't it Adam?'

‘Of course.'

‘I get from your accounts, especially the last one, a great concern for social issues.'

‘I suppose. I mean, I wasn't, as you put it, “concerned about social issues” when I was Mary Anne Rackham. I was just vex.'

‘You lived in Jamaica for some years, I believe?'

‘Yes. I lectured at Mona.'

‘What did you think of Jamaica?'

‘Exactly the same thing I thought two hundred and fifty years ago. Societies like that change very slowly.'

‘I think, Adam, that you are still “vex”, as you put it, and frustrated at your inability to do something about the many deficiencies you see around you.'

He shrugged. ‘I do what I can, and I think I'm lucky because I can do more than most people.'

‘How so?'

‘Because I'm rich enough to set up a Foundation, intelligent enough to educate others, and immortal enough to continue doing so for a long, long time.'

‘Oh.'

He chuckled. ‘You know, doc, you have a kind of cynical way of saying “Oh”.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Oh, it doesn't bother me. I was a bit concerned about your other patients, though.'

At this point I opened his file. I said, ‘I see that you're not married Have you ever been?'

He said, ‘And we're back on track. No, never been married, never lived in sin, either.'

‘Why is that? I would think you would have had quite a few women interested in you.'

He batted his eyes. ‘Why, doctor, I didn't think you'd noticed.'

I ignored his humour. ‘Any particular reason, Adam?' I asked.

‘Nothing distracts you, does it? Yes, several particular reasons. I don't want to make a commitment to one woman. She would have to notice there was something weird about me – that I don't get sick, or scar, or get wrinkles. Plus, she might be in danger from the Shadowman. Plus, it wouldn't be fair to make someone fall in love with me, knowing I would probably be cut down in my prime.'

‘Which raises an interesting point. All your selves die at fifty years of age. And you will be fifty next year. How old was your grandmother when she died?'

‘She was in her seventies. And my mother was in her late sixties. No psychological significance there, doc. The Shadowman just chooses to kill me every time I hit the half-century. Let me tell you, it is very frustrating.'

I closed his file, and opened another one. ‘I got the report back from the linguist.'

‘Hm. Took long enough.'

‘I sent it to a university in Canada. Since you work on the campus here, I wanted to avoid any chance of collusion. I also wanted to find a linguist who specializes in Amerindian languages.'

‘Very sensible. I'm impressed with myself.'

‘Eh?'

‘For choosing such an intelligent psychiatrist. You wouldn't believe how many I saw before you.'

‘Ah. Well, anyway, the professor says it's a viable language. She was very impressed at all the work that had gone into creating it.'

This annoyed Mr. Avatar.

He said, ‘Creating it? It's an actual language!'

I said, ‘So is Klingonese. But that was just invented for the Star Trek movies.'

He laughed. ‘I didn't know you were a Star Trek fan. The original series, of course?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘And I bet your favourite episode is “The Enemy Within”.'

‘Adam, I must tell you that I have no reason to believe that any of what you tell me is objective fact. I think you have put a lot of work into making your beliefs tenable. But the sooner you accept that they aren't, the sooner you'll be on the road to true healing.'

‘Well, doc, I'm afraid you haven't offered me any proof that what I believe isn't objective fact. But maybe my next account will help us decide the issue one way or the next.'

‘How so?'

‘You'll see. It isn't written down yet. I'll need you to be there when I do write it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because what I said before, about what happens when I write, may not be true this time.'

He then told me what he wished me to do. At that session, I examined Mr. Avatar thoroughly for any extrapyramidal reactions from the Piportil. He had no tremor, rigidity, dystonia or dyskinesia. I was confident we were making progress. That is partly why I did not anticipate what happened next.

Had I to actually to write an account of all my lives, I would surely go mad before finishing. Fortunately, in ten incarnations, I have left written records four times. That is an improbable percentage, but I am beginning to see that little of my life or lives has been ruled by chance. My next incarnation, however, left no record, and I have never written one, even in my so-called novels. For there is great danger to me in recollecting – and, being immortal, my recollection is resurrection – this self.

Were it not for the evidence – the knowledge of historical facts and of languages I could not possibly speak, and the independent records left by myselves and discovered by me – I would call myself insane. But the evidence shows that I am not mad. I know what is my voice and which are the voices in my head and how all those voices are me. But, in writing the following account, there is a strong chance that my mind may be trapped in the world of two and a half centuries ago. This is why, though my story begins in Jamaica and touches every major island but Trinidad, it is to Trinidad that I have returned to write it. Only by being in a different place to the then can I keep my grip on the now. I am depending on the known space of my home and the pressing brink of the millennium to act as a magnet, drawing me back from the valley of a psyche to whom time and space have no reality. The paper stares at me blankly. I relax my too-tight grip on my pen. My mind, a heated comet, flies backward.

Always they want to know from way me get mi power. They think the old gods dead, and nothing bout me say is not so. If I was a man, they wouldn question mi words. If I was old like Mother Earth self, they wouldn question mi power. But I standing in front them, an unwrinkled and unscarred woman looking like I not no more than thirty wet seasons, telling them they must be free. And they want to know what spirit speaking through me. I claiming Nyankapong, the creator, but that name doan mean nothing to them. I claim Oludamare, the supreme god, but that name doan mean nothing neither. I claiming mi mother other gods – Ogun, Shango, Damballa – but the people forget dey names. The only gods them know is the whiteman guns and im whips. Them believe in them, for they could remember that the old gods was cruel too.

If I had the usual badges pon mi flesh, mi task might be easier, if not easy. But they does see that I unscarred, unmaimed, and they does feel that I cant speak for them because I doan know dey pain. ‘House nigger she,' dey mouths mutter. ‘Whiteman whore she,' dey eyes snap. That is the root a dey deafness: these men who pride a possession tek way, these women who doan enjoy the pride of husbands who wield power. But I was always a field slave. I's too black to of been a house nigger, doh mind mi savanna-green eyes. The planter does only take them females im want to fuck regular as house slaves. No white man ever fuck me. So I shout pon mi people, a river a words flowing from me. And they force to listen, because I does speak three whiteman tongues and I even speak the tongue a the people who was in these islands before the whiteman come.

I use these tongues to show mi power. But is bitter, bitter to me that I must speak in the language a we oppressor. I speak none a the old tongues. I know only some words a the tribes: the Igbo, Akan, Kongo, Xhosa, Yoruba, Wolof, Fulami. But it have no power in them tongues now, and the tribes living in one space now and cant speak to one another now. Now all a we Negro. So, when I tell mi people that they must be free, I speak the tongue all a we share. Is the whiteman tongue, but not the whiteman tongue. The whiteman think that this speech good only for obeying im orders, that it too simple for anything else. But is this speech self I use to lift mi people, like the tide raising a barque on im breast.

Words is never enough, though. I does tell them the truths they forget, tell them that the old gods living still, ruling over even this portion a the earth. But words cant reach the minds a those who doh want to hear. Doubt does fill dey face like dark clouds. For the whiteman one God is strong, no doubting
that
! Mi words does fall like rain on dusty ground, making mud.

So I does show them why I unwrinkled an unscarred. ‘Not because I fuck the master!' I say. ‘I getting whip since I's a small chile!' I shout. But I seal mi lips on the memory a mammy's strong, loving fingers breaking open the striped wounds on mi back when she saw that they had close early early. For the overseer might a notice and call me witch and kill me. Or the other slaves might a notice and call me witch and kill me. So mammy protect me and teach me to be fearful. When I did born, she keep she breast from me for seven days. A baby did have to be strong to survive on the plantation. Not many live. Most die even in the womb. Better the weak die, we women know. But I was born and I live and after seven days she did give mi suck.