Taino (11 page)

Thirty-six.
Cibanakán, my father-uncle, comes on board.

We sailed east from there, as the admiral decided to round the cape of Cuba at Maisí Point and strike southward to explore the large island of Bohío, now Santo Domingo or Española. Touching points on the coast of Cuba, the ships took in sixteen more Taínos, chosen from the crowds to be kept as captives. This new action disconcerted me. Like our own Guanahaní people taken by force, the Cuban Taínos were selected for their strength and physical appeal. Of our own men, three had already slipped overboard at appropriate moments, hitching rides on the canoes of friends. In one case, the rescuer was none other than my uncle, Cibanakán, who later returned to get me, talked at length with me, and ended up staying. Cibanakán being at the time some forty-five years of age, we made up a story about his wife and children being aboard in order to obtain the admiral's permission. “He should work with you to keep our captives calm,” he told me.

Thirty-seven.
The old man Guamax, his curse on the admiral.

I promised to tell about the elder Guamax, the old
cacique
of Baracoa who held the name at the time of the first voyage. I believe he was related to the other great
cacique
of eastern Cuba, Bayamo, whom we met in the first of my pages.

As the Taíno men and women taken on the Cuban coast numbered twenty or more, the story of the takings spread on land. From coastal promontories, signals of smoke that told of seaborne danger (very black smoke from the resin of the
jobo
tree) could be seen, and for days after a taking, shore after shore turned up empty. Once our sailors, ashore to search an empty village, found the skull and bones of a grandfather, as customary, resting in a basket near the ceiling of a tall
bohío
. After the admiral inspected it and both Caréy and I explained its significance, the sailors played with it on the beach, in sight of his hidden relatives, who watched from a hill out of reach. Two sailors tossed the skull around by its long hair, finally discarding it into a river. I remember being sickened by their game. This occurred, I am reasonably certain, near the end of November 1492. I had been with the admiral six weeks.

On December 3, as I count suns in my memory, after three days of absolutely contrary wind, the caravels moved east along the coast of northern Cuba, entering small coves as they made their way out of the Baracoa area. That day, as we took final pass of a wide river mouth, the local ni-Taínos, despite their fear of the Castilians, perceived us to be leaving and several dozen canoes came out. One of our captive Indians, taken days before, pointed out to me an old man, tall and thin and wrinkled, wearing a wide headdress, who directed his young paddlers round the stern of the
Santa Maria
, where Columbus was standing. “
Taíno-ti, Guamax-cacique
,” I heard a captive man say, next to me, by way of greeting the old man.

The old man who at that time held the title of Guamax pointed directly at the admiral, took off his headdress, and slipped into the water. Kicking against the current, he rubbed himself with sudsy
digo
herbs all through his body and, when cleansed, swam to just below the admiral, who looked down at him. Guamax spoke.

“Here I am in the water, a fish in my river. Understand that my words are clean, like my body in this river. Now hear me: my sons and daughters you have in your canoe. I know they have been swallowed. You are to let them go. Those are my children who belong to me. Now, you must respond.”

The admiral understood not a word, and I wasn't much help. I was getting so I could understand many of their Castilian words, and I could interpret their wishes for my people, but old Guamax's speech shocked me dumb, speaking as it did to the only secret doubt in my immense (at that moment) reverence for the Castilians.

“Respond!” the
cacique
demanded, when the admiral, who perceived the scolding tone, stared at him.

“Do not take them, for I will curse the Guamíquina his red hairs,” old man Guamax said. “You will be crazy among our trees and rocks. You will die a fool.”

At this moment, another man taken from us, Manaya, yelled back from the boat. “You will be the one that dies, if you threaten the Guamíquina.” Manaya took up a sword and a crossbow, showing them to old man Guamax, who was still in the water. “This big knife, it slices a tree in half. This arrow shooter will pierce the clouds. Don't make the sky-men angry, old
cacique
.”

Old man Guamax made no answer, swimming slowly away and slipping into his canoe. From the canoe, he stared at the stern of the
Santa Maria
, then ordered his men to paddle away. I remember Caréy standing next to me on the
Santa Maria
. He was more trusted now and had the run of the ship after his trek into Camagüey. Increasingly fearful to be lost among Taíno angered at the loss of their relatives, he had not dared run away. At that moment, like many times during those first days, Caréy took my hand in friendship and held it tightly. “I hope you are right about our getting home safely,” he would say.

August 17, 1532

Thirty-eight.
Life on board and learning Castilian ways; out from Punta Maisí, at one with the admiral.

All us shipboard Indians, as the admiral had begun to call our people, were closely watched. No more escapes were to occur. We were to sail to Haiti, the Bohío, a major Taíno homeland. Among the captives, and even myself, an intense fear arose, moving now as we were to lands beyond our usual realms. We knew of the Bohío land, of course, as we knew of Borikén and Xamaica and all the many islands in our fecund sea, but we feared the added distance from our home. A fearful outcry now began among three women from the village of Quiribe, across my island from Old Guanahaní village. I had not known them much before this trip and had kept my distance as they were harsh to strangers, even people from the same island. They wailed about not going home, about their fate to be eaten by our legendary enemies, the Kwaib “thigh-eaters/heart-eaters,” who were known to raid our coasts.

By day's end, the outcry affected the men so that everyone was sad and crying, and the leaders took the job of imploring for their liberty, for canoes to make the trip home, for guarantees of return. “We are heading for the heart-eaters' islands, the thigh-eaters. Bad men who eat other men,” our people claimed to the admiral. I seconded them, though timidly, but the admiral had made up his mind that we would sail across the (windward) passage to Bohío, and there was nothing to be done.

Thirty-nine.
Ignoring the feelings of my own people.

I am chagrined now, asking myself what kept me hopeful about the covered men. Yes, many of us were taken forcefully, I would think, but no one has been harmed. It did not seem so to me, in any case, and, then too, I was busy every moment on board. I kept with young Rodrigo and often Caréy joined us. Among our men, six were learning ship's ropes, and they included three from Guanahaní—Cibanakán, Caréy, and myself. Those of us on the ropes, or, in my case, often at the admiral's side with Rodrigo, had little contact, for days at a time, with the huddled group in the holds that came on top to sit together in the sun and, without task, could only wonder on their fate.

Forty.
Getting closer to the admiral.

Rodrigo was grommet, cabin boy, and, with my arrival, Castilian instructor. He taught me the daily routines, their timings and sequences and commands, and he taught me to never disturb the admiral's habits of prayer and dining, so that his mood of fatherly disposition toward young men could be sustained. That was the knack of the early Don Christopherens, I think, that fooled my tender heart. Going through his day, particularly when busy with stellar calculations and the making of knots and sea leagues, the admiral could be a most happy and pleasing personality. The day he saw me keep the
ampolleta
, the hourglass, for the first time, he worked at his desk, writing and yet noticing my attentiveness. Rodrigo had set me up to the task of turning over the glass as the sand ran out every half hour. I took the shift from three to seven in the afternoon and was strictly attentive throughout my eight spins. “Excellent,” Don Christopherens commended, talking to Rodrigo, who came to relieve me. “Your friend has a sharp eye.”

Don Christopherens liked chickpeas and lentils in soups, took to using our
cassabe
bread almost immediately (for mopping his bowl). Near shore, he was always pleased to get a basket of fresh fruit, which I would get for him at least once a day, and often he would have me sit and look out his small porthole as he wrote and napped, then wrote again. Not often, but occasionally during those first days, in the reverie of long tropical afternoons, he would pull my head to his shoulder and sing me a song or recite a poem or tell a story from the Bible. He never reached that kind of intimacy with Rodrigo, who served him zealously, but would with me, which endeared me to his instinct and his ways and added to my considerable resolution at the time to champion the covered men's mission to my people.

Even Caréy and Cibanakán, who followed my lead but wearied of the experience, could not help admire the admiral his way with a ship or any kind of boat. Although we helped him a great deal to navigate our channels and reefs, it was always uncanny the way he could immediately size up shoals and sandbanks, depths and winds, and the landfall ahead. Long after I too knew the Castilians were no good at all, I would be startled awake by the certainty of his directions, that quality he had to pull my heart, to make me want to cling to his back. That certainty of his word during storms and dangerous moments at sea later carried me through my second season of servile stupor with the Castilians; truly, he projected a God of Destiny, a naming God, his suddenly distant eyes focused on the far point of the horizon.

Forty-one.
Even closer to the admiral.

Don Christopherens was quiet and dignified in his personal habits but sharp and severe in his judgments. Everything about him was steeped in his Catholic faith and devotion. The day's prayers, from the morning Salve Regina to the vespers and its Ave Maria, he led or watched over with intense attention. He missed nothing about a religious service, how it was done, who was respectful, penitent, or devout. Once, I saw a man laugh quietly during a Mass. Next day, he was worked mercilessly until he dropped and then set in the filthy bilboes of the ship for a fortnight. Don Christopherens was somber in correcting waywardness among Christian men and would always turn them over to the worst elements among the marshal's enforcers for severe punishments.

Those days of his first voyage to our sea, as I knew the admiral, he never changed his mind about anything. He was easy to follow and obey. Much beyond the other covered men, Don Christopherens gathered into himself a mystical force that seemed to carry him. All the early Castilian captains were hardheaded and single-minded and would strike out at long distances; they were tough and mean and powerful. But one had to see the admiral in his long mantle on deck in a misty evening to also see his
goeiz
, his personal spirit, surrounding him. Even his keenness for gold, which later turned to virulence and
sinrazón
, was during those days a detached inquiry, something investigated but not coveted. At least, that was his style. Often he delighted in odd little things, like cakes of wax, the smells of particular woods, or the counting of each and every number of flocks of parrots or doves, such as the ones that can blacken out the sun of our islands for days sometimes.

More than a
guaxeri
, our word for the common independent man, even among the totally uncommon covered men, he was Guamíquina, principal man, the flaming hair who commanded everything, spirit driven by spirit. I would look at him standing among his officers and think: spirit man, what wonders you must behold. Take me to your spirit lands, take me to your shining cities of gold. I want to see, I want to hear and smell your world. This, as we sailed to the island of Santo Domingo for the first time. It didn't yet touch me how the disturbance of my people had already begun. The repercussions were slight yet compared to my wonder. And I was clever, too, easily adept at projecting devotion at his Mass. His crucifix I revered and learned to genuflect before. I quickly learned the Ave Maria, with Rodrigo's tutoring. One afternoon, standing at the admiral's side, I joined the singing. He touched my shoulder proudly, for all the men on ship to see, and next morning he gave me a long shirt to wear. A few times, with the shirt hanging to my knees (as did his cape on him), I found myself standing on the poop deck, in the posture and position of the admiral, watching the horizon. I could feel the shape and power of his spirit at those times, a “greeting of
goeizs
,” as the old people would say, calming a longing in my own soul.

August 29, 1532

Forty-two.
The good friar returns from La Plata.

Father Las Casas came in last night. He rode my Cariblanca back to me, having sent young Silverio by ship with several letters to the mainland. The letters were to his Dominican friends in Mexico, who have appealed to the king on behalf of Enriquillo. The good friar is a hurricane of activity, his mind raging. I could tell by the state of my poor Cariblanca, girth swollen and head hanging low to the ground as he dismounted in the convent stable. “We must talk,” he said, shouldering his own pack. “The final campaign begins.”

Forty-three.
Preparations for his trip to court in Spain.

In my room, by candlelight, the good friar discoursed on his strategy to move court and king on Enriquillo's behalf. It was hours before he stopped reviewing the arguments and only then did he wonder about the message in my letter, “Something about a young boy,” he said.