The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (41 page)

More plantations burning, more uprisings, more soldiers coming. Everywhere it happening, even in the islands I never gone to: Martinique, Nevis, Monserrat, St. Domingue. In Suriname, the governor make treaty twice with the Bush Negroes. But most uprisings happen in the island I born on: Jamaica, land of wood and water. We paying the price. More Africans getting shot, getting hanged for planning revolts. British government want more whites in the islands for every black. But is one a them to ten ah we now. White men ignoring im own laws – im need slaves to cut the cane. Because they getting less sugar now.
The soil is less fertile
, they complain. But I know is not that only. Is what Johnny teach the people, what I tell them. The gods on we side, time on we side. The whiteman measure time in im lifetime, maybe im chirrun lifetime. The African know im ancestors from back to Time creation and so im know im descendants till Time destruction. The African know time doan move in a tick-tock-tick-tock. I teach mi people that too, because I doan change at all at all. The world change around me. Some slaves buy freedom, work lil plots in dey backyard, like small plantation. More mulatto chirrun, black but born free, some even inherit property if is male. I hear talk of Abolition coming from the whiteman Mother Country. Slavery illegal there now, but not here. Black planters now too in most a the islands, but not freeing dey African brothers at all, so James a fool like I thought. I hate them black planters almost as much as the white ones. The white planter is a natural devil, but them is unnatural ones. They choose to be devil. But I doan badtalk them, no need to make confusion in mi people's minds. The black betrayers damage the fight for freedom just by existing, I cant let weself get distracted by them.

I miss Johnny too bad. He understand Aye better than me. I move in and out, between Orun and Aye, praying to Oludumare and Ogun and Damballa, seeing Babaloawo's visions, calling on Ifa, praying to
egunguns
, talking to the ghosts, calling on Eshu to guide me.

Is Eshu who lead me to Hispaniola, once called Bohio, now named Santo Domingo and St. Domingue. I hide aboard a Dutch ship that was suppose to be going to St. Kitts and Ogun come to me and test me and when next I awake I was in Santo Domingo. This place not like any of the other islands. It bigger even than Jamaica, and you could only walk so far before the mountains stop you. The place familiar, even though is the first time I coming here, but the people look different, even though is mi people. I remember the mountains and the curve of the coast, but is strange to see all these black people labouring in the plantations with wooden shacks and a Great House behind them. Mi eyes keep wanting to see brown people with straight black hair working in fields of cassava and maize, talking and cooking and resting in a village of thatched huts. But that is the past, and is not mi eyes that want to see them people.

My eyes have pleasure in seeing what really there. Strong black people with the memory a Africaland still reflecting in dey eyes, the tongues ah the tribes still alive in dey mouths, the black magic still chanting. These Africans have not become Negroes. They doan trust me at first because they think I is Creole. But I join them in the
houmfort
in the deep forest where they do the
vodun
, and I show them mi power. And they see that I is a true
houngan
, and more than
houngan
since I could raise myself from the dead, because I speak with the voices of
loas
living inside me. Not only Creole, I show them how I is even more African than them, since I see all the tribes as one under a God who have no name. Because I realize now that Damballa and Obatala and Eshu and Yemoja and Shango and Erzulie and Nyankapong and Oludumare could only be different names for the nameless God. Because how each god could have all power? You cant have many gods with all power. Great power, yes, but to be All is to be One. And if a god doan have all power, then im not really a god, im just have plenty power. But even plenty power is just a gift from the One who have All power.

So I learn that lesson. But when I try to tell mi African brothers of this great truth, they look pon me with suspicion, not wanting to accept that they gods is gods but it have a God, like small jars inside one big jar. (Yet plenty a them ready ready to believe in the whiteman One God!) Is because dey spirit still back in Africa that they forget dey bodies here. But if dey want to be free, dey spirit have to reach here too. But I have sense in mi old age (I nearly fifty wet seasons, twenty-five more than what most slaves does live) and I realize I must free dey bodies before I could free dey spirit, make mi people whole again. But I cant postpone the truth, and I also see that it have a lesson for Aye from Orun: that just as the gods have One God, so too must mi people have One Leader. And finally I realize that that is why the God With No Name give me all this power – not just to give mi people hope, but to lead them out a bondage!

In this island, I see the seeds I planting for so many years beginning to flower. It have ackee growing here now, we could sleep under the red flowers of the flamboyant tree. The people is true African, but plenty of dey leaders is African-born-in-the-islands. Is because we who born here know here, because we suffer under the lash longer, and because I make we want to be free. On the other half of the island, we hear that the mulattos causing trouble by wanting same rights as dey grandparents' masters. But I know they wouldn free dey black half-brothers.

‘Black man must free imself!' is mi eternal message. And, though I always keep mi hope for the future, for the first time here in Santo Domingo I feel hope for the present. For here are come African warriors who do not fear death. All that dividing we is the clinging to tribe, instead a Africaness. That is why I look to the creoles for leaders, and why I give special blessing to two small boys, who I see have the braveness and the brain we go need in the years ahead. One a them I bring with me from Jamaica, the other come from one a the smaller islands. They name Boukman and Christophe. And when I go to the western half of the island, I meet a man in his thirties named Toussaint, and im power I see at once. I talk plenty to him about what he can do, and he listen but he doan say much. He can read and he know medicine, so he comfortable. But I feel the desire for freedom in him, burning like a hidden flame.

One night I go to the
sobagui
to be cleansed, so I might become a true
houngan
and win their loyalty for the coming revolution. And at the
bruler zin
afterwards Babaloawo seizes me and I have a vision. I see blacks slaughtering whites by tens of hundreds. I see Africans slain by the thousands, but not faltering. I see mi boys, now men, leading their people. I see a great army sent by a short white man with waxed sideburns. In Jamaica, the Maroons rise again, in Grenada planters fight one another, in St. Vincent the brown people fight the planters, and everywhere in the Caribbean the revolution spreads. I see Toussaint, short and stocky, running the campaign in Hispaniola, playing whiteman against whiteman, then uniting all Africans to drive all the whitemen out and then, proving his wisdom, torturing and killing thousands of mulattos. I see the short white leader defeated in his own land, because his troops have been defeated in this one. I see him forced to sign a treaty with Toussaint. And I see the island name Haiti – Haiti once just a village a the brown-skin boy people –Haiti now a proud outpost of Africaland here on the other side of the world.

But, in all this, I do not see myself.

I awake, disturbed, and walk through the dark forest. Ogun, shavenheaded and thick-limbed, waits for me like a lover in the shadows. But he is no lover. He holds the silver spike in im iron fist. And I know this is mi final test. If I pass, I can lead mi people to freedom, become dey warrior queen. If I fail, I pass on to Orun. But I doan want the door to Orun unlock just yet. I draw mi knife, knowing I cant fail. Because mi people not free. And Toussaint go be betrayed by im own generals, ending im days in the whiteman gaol. I have seen it. I am mi people's only true hope.

The ghosts inside me scream. I must run. I must fight like a conquistador. I must get behind him. He is the Shadowman. But Ogun is no Shadowman. He is a god, and I do not listen to ghosts. I shall pass this test so I can lead mi people. The gods go protect me. But Ogun so quick, giving no quarter. His iron arms trap me, I feel his chest like a stone wall against mi back. The ghosts, mi true
egungun
, reach out in desperation. The conquistador knows how to break this hold, the slave captain knows a trick, the pirate moves like quicksilver, the Taino knows where to stab him! But I have spent mi whole life trying to shut out their voices, and now is too late to listen, too late for me, too late for mi people.

I cannot explain the phenomena I witnessed during my sixth consultation with Mr. Avatar. This does not mean that I believe his stories. Proof by ignorance is no proof.

Mr. Avatar said he had to write the account of his sixth incarnation under my supervision. He said that this incarnation, who lived in the mid- to late eighteenth century, was unlike any of his other selves. He needed me, he said, to ensure that his past did not overwhelm his present.

Perhaps I should have anticipated what happened. I felt, however, that Mr. Avatar, by writing his account in my presence, was attempting to provide “proof” of the truth of his stories.

The session took place in my office. He sat at my desk with a fountain pen and a sheaf of unlined paper. I sat opposite him, with my notebook in hand and the tape recorder running. He wrote a few lines quickly, then stopped. His gaze became unfocused. He was holding the pen in a normal manner, with the barrel pressed against the middle finger, thumb and index finger guiding. As he began to write, however, his grip shifted so the pen was gripped between his tightly-curled index and middle fingers. He wrote quickly, but his gaze never focused on the pages. He developed a slight head tic.

I called his name, but he did not answer. I opened an issue of
Psychiatry Today
and began reading. I glanced up several times during my reading, but about half-an-hour had passed before I noticed that Mr. Avatar's copper-penny complexion had grown considerably darker. I thought it was a trick of the light, and dismissed it. Fifteen minutes later, however, his skin had become far too dark for it to have been the light.

I went around the desk and checked his pulse at the base of his throat. It was rapid, but normal. He gave no sign of awareness of my finger at his neck. His skin was now a sooty colour. I checked his blood pressure. It was a little high, but safe. I was puzzled, but I felt the change could be explained by some sort of capillary action. It was when I was taking off the gauge that I noticed that his hair had also changed.

Mr. Avatar's hair is dark brown, with small tight curls. What I saw now was that the roots of his hair were dark and kinky. At first, I assumed I had not noticed this before. But, fifteen minutes later, the kinkiness was quite obvious. The curls of his hair had become tighter and smaller. At the same time, his hair seemed to have got longer.

I was now quite nervous at what was taking place. The only similar psychosomatic phenomenon I had ever heard of (but read nothing about) was the stigmata: those wounds that mimic the supposed wounds of Christ, and which psychiatrists believe are brought on by stress. I could, with some effort, see how stress might darken Mr. Avatar's skin. I could not understand how stress would cause his hair to change texture and grow. I certainly could not expect to see what I did in fact see about half-an-hour later. His fingernails had also grown.

I sat in my chair and waited. Two hours and eight minutes after he began, Mr. Avatar ceased writing. He did not put down his pen or sit back. He simply stopped writing and remained in that position. When I checked, I discovered him to be in some sort of catatonic trance. He did not respond to pinpricks, and his pupil reflex was slow. His arm did not fall when I raised it.

I did not call at once for an ambulance. Instead, I put a diskette, given to me by Mr. Avatar, into my floppy drive and ran the program. It was a Star Trek screen-saver. Mr. Avatar had told me, in case anything like this happened, the theme music, the catch-phrases, and the electronic sound effects would serve to bring him out of his trance. Since I was certain any such trance would be self-induced, I was also certain that his self-prescribed cure would work.

It did not. That was when I called for the ambulance.

Mr. Avatar remained in this state for three weeks. I made sure he was in a single room at the private hospital of which I am part-owner. His brainwave graph was atypical of a catatonic patient, with jagged peaks and valleys. I believe he would have recovered sooner, but I did not discover the key sooner and, when I did, it took me some time to figure out how to use it.

When I returned to my office, the manuscript was on my desk. I read it at once. ‘Remembrance is resurrection,' he had written. It was that belief which had caused his catatonia. The entire story was, in effect, an admission of his own mentally disturbed state. It was also, more obliquely, an admission of the abuse he had undoubtedly suffered at some time in his life. I was no longer sure, however, that the abuse had happened in childhood (or at least not only in childhood). He may have gone through some very traumatic experience as an adult, possibly in his thirties. There were other possibilities and, when he recovered, I decided that I would ask him to do a CAT scan. However, the manuscript did not provide what I was really hoping for, which was a way to bring him out of his trance.

It was not until the following week, when the cleaner came, that Mr. Avatar's leather briefcase was discovered pushed beneath my desk. It contained only his appointment book, a novel and a binder of typed pages headed, simply, ‘Seven'. I read this over the next few days, making my notes, wondering what treatment I could give Mr. Avatar. The Clozapine had not worked, or else his delusion would not have been powerful enough to induce his catatonia.