The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (42 page)

It took me two weeks to try reading his seventh story out aloud to him. The actual reading took about two hours. By the end of the first half-an-hour, his complexion had begun to return to normal. After an hour, his hair had unkinked. And, by the end, he was awake and alert. Only his long finger nails remained as a reminder of what had happened.

My diary, in the name of Adam Chardonbois, lies beside my computer. It runs to nearly twelve hundred pages, but my task now is that of editor, not writer. My mind's eye, humankind's best and most dangerous gift, can remain closed for this next stage.

August 1, 1828—

Today I have turned 40. The house abuzz with activity as the servants prepare for the grand fete I am having in my own honour. Thin smoke bearing the fragrances of divers meats drift through even the upper part of the house as I sit writing in the oasis of my study. It shall be a grand feast indeed. I have invited 50 persons and ordered a young ox killed. I can smell it roasting even as I write.

Yesterday, I personally went down to the harbour to purchase the various spirits for the evening's celebration. I bought claret at 20 shillings per bottle, old hock at £3.25s. a dozen, champagne at 25s.10d a bottle and cider at 40s. a dozen.

I am looking forward to embarking on my forties in truly fine style. Yet the ball seems so far away, the bustle unconnected to any detail of true import to myself. Instead, seeing the black ink leap across these white pages, I feel that this journal is a truer and better way of marking the next stage of my life.

When I was 15 years of age, I attempted to keep a diary of my thoughts, aspirations and everyday activities. That venture lasted only a few months, if I remember aright. Youth is always too busy plucking the fruit of life to contemplate its cultivation. Yet, looking back over the misty plains of memory, I regret that I do not have a written record of my life over those past years, that I might compare the boy I was to the man I have become. ‘It might have been' are the bitterest words in life, yet, though we cannot revisit the past, by keeping a true record of it we may avoid repeating our mistakes. Pascal, whom I consider the most brilliant of all philosophers, puts it this way: ‘One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better.'

Assuming I live the usual threescore and ten, my life is already more than half over. So my purpose in beginning this diary, which I am committed to maintaining until the hour of death is hard upon me, is not really to steer clear of future error. I am hardly likely, in middle-age, to repeat my youthful follies. But Socrates says, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living', and I find on this introspective day that there is born in me an overwhelming desire to leave some record of myself. After all, I have lived a life of substance – as a man of affairs, a man of wide knowledge and ideas, and as a man who has struggled against significant odds. Although this document is private, I am sure I shall derive comfort from it in my dotage – when mayhap I shall feel the black wing of the Angel of Death beating over my shoulder, or when fallible memory steals my own past from me.

So I do not undertake this commitment lightly. I am resolved to make at least one entry every week. There may be more, but that one entry shall sum up my thoughts and activities for the preceding seven days. In this manner, I shall avoid the preeminent sin of most diarists – banality. Pascal writes: ‘Eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way – (1) that those to whom we speak may listen without pain and with pleasure; (2) that they may feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.' True, I intend no other eyes to see these words. But this is the standard to which I shall try to adhere, for true excellence, like true morality, consists in doing one's best even when there are no witnesses.

My plan is to set aside the whole of any convenient evening for my diary. But a schedule is easy. I am also resolved to write down the many ideas on many matters that I have contemplated since my twentieth year. Too often, I have let those ideas lie fallow, have not thought them through, or have not worked out satisfactory conclusions. Writing is the best method of clarifying one's ideas. This diary shall also serve as a palliative, for always there has been within me an unease, a sense of things undone. Yet that, too, shall be relatively easy compared to my core resolve in beginning this diary. For what I am most committed to is unflagging, even violent, honesty in this record.

Montesquieu in his
Persian Letters
notes: ‘With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such a kind are moral truths.' A venture of this kind, since not intended for public consumption (though naturally I shall consider extracts for publication, mainly on philosophical and social matters) can only be worthwhile if it is an unabashed record of the whole truth. Given the nature of man, which embraces me as surely as it does all others, this commitment shall undoubtedly be the most difficult to meet. But it is also my nature, as an exceptional man, to adhere to my resolutions with an iron will.

August 2, 1828—

My party was a resounding success! Nearly everyone came, and I was especially pleased to see the Lieutenant-Governor and his wife. I invited only those whites whom I was fairly certain would not decline. I have no desire to put anyone in an awkward position, or to make influential people think I am getting above myself (for they would certainly try to return me to my appropriate stature, even if they had to cut off my legs to do it!) Most of all, though, I had no intention of letting anyone snub me. So most of the whites who attended were doctors, clergymen, lawyers, traders. There were also two or three officers of the militia. But there were no poor whites. I invited some free blacks, mostly craftsmen, poor but respectable. It is important to show the whites that black people can conduct themselves in good society, and I cannot be the sole example for I would always be viewed as a notable exception. That is why I was so pleased to see the Lieutenant-Governor in attendance.

Yabba and her four helpers outdid themselves on the feast. I must remember to give her some bitts. She served the ox in fourteen ways: rump boiled, chine and breast roasted, and cheeks baked; tripe and ends were minced for succulent pies seasoned with suet, sundry spices and currants; plus the marrow bones. There was potato pudding, collops of pork, broiled chickens, a shoulder of goat, a whole kid with pudding in its belly, two suckling pigs, a shoulder of mutton, a pasty of young goat, a loin of veal with an ambrosial sauce made of oranges, lemons and limes, two turkeys, three capons, four ducklings and three rabbits. Fruits there were in abundance: a table groaning with bananas, guavas, melons, prickled pear, avocado.

We ate out in the garden, by candlelight, served by thirty slaves in white uniforms I had had specially sewn. My guests all rose from the tables swollen-bellied, but happy. Afterwards, we had music, drinks and conversation in the drawing room. The last person left in the small hours of the morning.

So I have entered my forties in fine style. Yet on looking back at last night's fete, I find that I was marking, not my entry to middle-age, but my departure from youth. My celebration was really to show what I have achieved. But, in this regard, I frankly found the event hollow. As a party, it was marvellous. But as a fête, it fêted nothing. I suddenly feel that I have not achieved enough to warrant feting. More strangely, I suddenly feel that there lies an eternity behind me, and that the sands of time have hastened their flow in my remaining years.

However, while forty is not old, it is undoubtedly true that my time on this earth is less ample. Therefore, any future achievements must be conceived, executed and attained in a focused manner, before I depart this earthly plane. But it is not death that worries me, so much as actually growing old. I know I should not worry. My face remains unlined, my hair is still as black as ever and my waist almost as trim as when I was a young man. I look five, even ten years younger than my actual age!

The signs of my aging are more subtle, and no doubt no one notices them but I. I go to bed later, for one thing, and awaken earlier. I think, when one is old, one sleeps less because one realizes one has less time left. The deep sleep of my youth is also a thing of the past, and I am most aware that ‘tired nature's sweet restorer' is not what it was through one simple but telling observation: I no longer awake every morning with a full erection. Not that my waking sexual vigour is diminished. I perform with my slave wenches as lustily as I ever did. Perhaps a man who does not desire children should not be concerned with retaining sexual vigour, for animal lust does indeed distract from more uplifting and meaningful pursuits. Yet I find myself, in this new period of contemplation, anticipating with resigned regret the day when my competence must inevitably vanish, like the snows of yesteryear.

This leads to another concern, one logically more vital, though I must confess that, emotionally, it affords me less worry than the other inevitable effect of aging. This is the possible diminution of my intellectual capacity, perhaps even the loss of my mental competence. I have always prided myself on my clarity of thought. Indeed, it is to this attribute that I attribute my success. Whether in practical affairs of business or the loftier concerns of philosophical issues, it is my keen intelligence even more than my strength of will, that has won me the respect of even the white planters. They see me as a credit to my race, and I am well aware of the responsibility I have to both uphold and enhance that position.

Yet I sometimes find it difficult to conceal from them the truth of Montesquieu's observation that, ‘An intelligent man is usually difficult when he goes into society. Few men meet with his approval; he is bored with the large number of people whom he chooses to describe as bad company. Inevitably, they become aware of his disapproval, and he has made so many enemies.' Fortunately, I have been too intelligent to fulfil the latter part of this comment.

I am therefore resolved that if ever my mental capacities begin to decline, I shall immediately retire from public life. I have already made arrangements with my lawyer for my affairs to be placed in his hands, should that sorry pass come to pass. (For that is another key to my success in a world where nearly every man of my race is either a slave or a savage: planning for every contingency, no matter how small.) Yet to be aware of one's own mental decline poses an obvious contradiction: how can one know for oneself if one's mental abilities are becoming less acute, when one has to use those same faculties to make such a judgement?

This is where my diary assumes key importance for, even in my dotage, I see no reason why I should not be competent enough to note any decline in the quality of my thought between earlier and later pages. Besides, if my decline should be so serious as to make even such judgement impossible, then my affairs shall perforce be taken out of my hands. But I do not know why I should worry so about this matter: the mind, I suspect, is much like a muscle, and grows stronger with use. And I am surely the most mentally active man on this island – indeed, if I am to judge by the occasional writings that emerge from the region, perhaps in the entire West Indies.

August 9, 1828—

Those with whom I hold regular conversation, and the public that has read my several writings, would doubtless be astonished at the private concerns expressed in these pages. My image is that of a devoutly Christian, highly intelligent Negro. I would prefer to be seen as a devoutly Christian, highly intelligent MAN, but that is hardly possible in this world. I am quite certain that the rankings that obtain in these colonies are far more finely-drawn than precedence among the nobility of any court in England or France or Spain. This is so among the Negroes as well as the whites.

It is therefore inevitable that all men see my skin colour before they see me. Yet I am by no means the typical Negro. My green eyes clearly reveal the blood of my white grandfather, as does the fine sculpting of my nose and my thin lips. Of the many gifts God has blessed me with, I am also a very handsome man! But, no matter how much knowledge I gain, I will surely never comprehend why Papa, a fair-skinned and straight-haired mulatto, chose to marry a pure Negro woman. Perhaps it is just as well that my mother died when I was still an infant, for I would probably have resented her for the difficulties her dusky hue and kinky hair have brought into my life. For who can say what one of my capacities might not have achieved, save for the limitations imposed upon me by the colour of my skin?

My mother was said to be a woman of magical powers, reputedly a powerful African witch among the slaves of St. Domingue. Even the white planters were said to have consulted her for potions to improve their potency, and to foretell their future. I, of course, do not believe in such nonsense. I am a Christian and a rationalist. Only the Bible and those anointed by God can heal the sick and tell the future It is from my Papa that I got my love of books, though I never started reading the great philosophers until a mere 10 years ago. Yet not a day goes by when I am not reminded that my mother's blood also flows in my veins, and it is for that reason that I am concerned about my mental acuity. For clearly she could not have practised such superstitions without being, in some clinical sense, deranged.

I worry that I may have inherited some such tendencies. If so, my rational conduct and logical thought has offset them. But, of late, my dreams have become unusually vivid and intense, so much so that on awakening I am frequently confused about what is reality and what is dream. The confusion lasts only a few seconds, but it is troubling. Sometimes I look at around my bedroom with the feeling that I am in the wrong place: that I should be seeing a thatched roof above me, or stone walls, or a woman's dressing table, or the naked forest. Sometimes I feel that time is out of joint: that the sounds outside of cocks crowing or cows mooing or the slaves chatting in their uneducated accents do not belong here, that the island has returned to a more pristine era when the white man was still on the far side of the world, and everything I hear outside are the sounds of ghosts – or that I am become a ghost.