Taino (3 page)

“We need only to be left alone,” I said, in an eruption of words. I must confess that his inquiries and assertions have triggered my memory. I am agitated. I do not mean to be blunt with the good friar, but he speaks sometimes without thinking.

The good father listens to me sometimes, and I feel his acceptance of my truth. But other days he walks as in a waking trance, like a guilty man smitten by the
cohoba
. Then, he admonishes me: “Only through the Lord Jesus Christ can you find salvation.” Or he says: “Bringing Christ on the cross was our mission to you. Before, it is true, you were lost.” When he is like that, when he must own not just my memory but my very own spirit, I shrink from his verbal embrace. Today, at first, it was like that. We couldn't talk. I withdrew into my silence rather than argue, and my good Castilian friend, this brother of Christ who so much has suffered for my people, he, too, withdrew, mumbling quietly to himself, his gaze roaming the valley beyond my window.

Five.
The story on Enriquillo.

A full hour went by before the good friar continued.

“Let's stick to Enriquillo,” he said. “As I understand it, twice before going to the mountains, Enriquillo filed complaints. He tried to use the lawful means to achieve justice.”

I know that story, too. I know exactly who Enriquillo is and how he comes to have hundreds of Indians in the bush mountains of the Bahuruku, how he has changed our lives, and what he means to the Indians and African Negroes of this island.

“And he is a Christian, is he not?” Las Casas said, to pull my tongue.

I reminded the priest that Enriquillo is a survivor of the Massacre of Anacaona's Banquet, which in 1503 destroyed the last major Taíno
cacicasgo
on Española. I myself saved Enriquillo's father, then took his young boys at my side, though I did not say so. That was the time when Governor Nicolás de Ovando, a friar and, in my estimation, an assassin, pretended friendship and accepted Anacaona's hospitality. Then, on his signal, Castilian soldiers attacked the friendly village, shooting and hacking and stabbing. I did remind the good friar of my presence at that massacre.

“But I didn't know Enriquillo was there,” he said.

“Yes, he was,” I said. “And, you should know, before he was taught the catechism, he was brought up for the
cohoba
.”

“Leave the
cohoba
aside. It is a drunkenness by any other name.”

This is a regular conversation between the good priest and me. He knows I will defend our
cohoba
ritual to him. I won't attack him, but I will argue with him.

“You have your wine. And you use it in ceremony, in communion with the Christ.”

“This is not fruitful, Dieguillo…”

“With
cohoba
, our
behikes
, our priests, communicated, too, with our Yucahuguama, our supreme God.”

“Enough. You are going too far and twisting my intention. Tell me about Enriquillo's life.”

“After the massacre dictated by Fray Don Nicolás de Ovando,” I said, to irk him by reminding him that the assassin was one of his brothers in the cloth. “Enriquillo was educated by the Franciscan fathers, as you know. Then, along with what remained of his village, some eighty or ninety people, he went to an
encomendero
named Valenzuela. When old Valenzuela died, his son, Andrés, received Enriquillo and his people for his own
encomienda
.”

“So he was inherited by Andrés Valenzuela from his father?” Las Casas asked.

“Yes,” I explained. “The old Valenzuela, named Francisco, died. And, you know, he was a calm man and not given to fits of temper like so many of the Iberians. Enriquillo's people paid labor tribute but kept their own
conucos
and much of their dignity under him.”

“Nevertheless, by the king's law of 1517, an Indian was to have been freed upon the first
encomendero's
death. It was an illegal inheritance.”

“So it was,” I said. “Like so many, even today.”

I saw Enriquillo occasionally at the convent until 1505 or 1506, when I myself was
encomended
and lost touch with him. He was only seven years old then, but I remember his serious eyes and his alert mind.

It was late in the year of 1518 when the story changes for Enriquillo and his people; that was when they took their fate in their own hands. Young Andrés Valenzuela, an obscene profligate who lives in Santo Domingo even today, took away Enriquilo's mare. The mare was special, a deathbed gift to the young Taíno
cacique
from Andrés's own father. Enriquillo complained, but Valenzuela claimed it as his own father's inheritance to him. His overseers overtook Enriquillo in a field and beat him down, bruising his ribs and breaking a finger. A month went by. To fulfill his prescribed obligation, Enriquillo took a group of his
guaxeris
, his working men, to the mines for a four-week period. While he was thus occupied, Valenzuela came to his home and lewdly demanded sex from Doña Mencia, his wife.

“This I had heard,” Las Casas said. “It was the rape—how Doña Mencia was raped.”

A boy was sent for Enriquillo, and he returned immediately. He complained to Valenzuela and demanded an apology to his wife. “I love my wife,” he is said to have told Valenzuela, who replied: “Neither Indians nor dogs know how to love. What would an Indian know about love?”

“Valenzuela said that?” Las Casas said, taking detailed notes as I spoke. He knows I know the Indian side of this story.

“Of course, he did. And this is well known, how Enriquillo and his wife love each other. Those two were close since early childhood and were brought up together by their families.”

“They are lineage?”

“Yes, an arranged marriage. But let me finish. Because Enriquillo, an Indian like me and educated to his legal rights by friars, followed the good course and took his complaint to the lieutenant governor, Pedro de Badillo. And again, Badillo laughed him out of court in San Juan la Maguana. Then he had him arrested for public insubordination and beaten severely.”

“It's a miracle he survived!” the friar said.

“It took Enriquillo weeks to recover, but when he did and could get around, he went to the court in Santo Domingo, where he hoped the
oidores
, or judges, would hear his complaint. But they, too, laughed at him. He stood up, again and again, in court, insisting that they hear his complaint. They placed him in chains for a week, then sent him home, where, at the courthouse of San Juan la Maguana, once again, three Castilian peons jumped him and beat him severely.”

“‘I went to them three times,' Enriquillo then told his people. ‘All the talk of the priests is for nothing.' This time, when Enriquillo recovered, he rounded up the families under his care and took to the bush mountains of Bahuruku. Valenzuela pursued him with eleven foremen, but Enriquillo easily ambushed them, killing two of the men outright. He caught Valenzuela and stripped him naked, but merely chased him away. ‘You are lucky I don't kill you, Valenzuela,' he told his former
encomendero
. ‘Don't let me see you again in these parts or I will.”

The friar laughed heartily, contentedly. “I have always heard that Enriquillo is not blood thirsty,” he said.

No, Enriquillo is not blood thirsty, but he is tough. As I write now, thirteen years later, Enriquillo and his many warriors, who number into the hundreds and include African men, have this Española island near paralyzed. Christians, whether Castilian or Indian, dare not travel the roads without strong guard. The Spanish are not as numerous as they once were on these islands, many having gone on to the mainland, although the
encomiendas
that remain are quite large. Not a few have lost great sums paying for useless expeditions against Enriquillo, who is one Indian cunning beyond the Castilians and forceful enough to frustrate them at every turn.

“I think all authorities want to kill Enriquillo,” I told Don Bartolomé. “I will do all I can do to save him.”

Six.
My own truth I pledge.

I write this now in a late night of full moon and calm waters. I feel the sea breeze enter my room, lick at my lips. Crickets chirp their long rasp, again and again, and the tree frog bellows back. Beyond earshot but not far, the waves, I know, caress our shore, once and again, an ancient stroke by which my people breathed. What our world was, how we saw life, how we lived by our heart, by the belly button of belonging and the memory of ancient teachings—this of my blood and my heart, it seems, the friar does not hear. He has an argument that we were almost like them, nearly Christian, as if this proves us a better people, we who were Taíno—“the good people.” No, I respect him, but I have lived too long. I know what we had, the personality of our people that was like a gentle breeze, how they saw only seed in the rotting fruit, what would come forth. But, in forty years, I have yet to hear a Castilian priest express such a thought. Yes, I have seen too much, and now, in my time of illness and pain…my arm and leg on the right side stiffen with their own memory of injury and travail…[illegible]…in this providential gift of paper, I pledge my own truth to the mysteries, even if in the foreign language of Castile, which I have commanded since my first weeks with the admiral.

April 24, 1532

Seven.
What the friar wants.

I worked the garden all morning, ate lightly at lunch, attended a Mass, then napped. I was washing up after waking when the knock came and my benefactor, Don Bartolomé, pronounced by King Ferdinand “Protector of the Indians,” entered forthrightly. He announced the continuation of what he called our “historical witness,” and requested I take notes.

“I remember a story told by Michele de Cúneo,” the friar began, and he must have seen me grimace, because he said, “I know you did not like Cúneo—but you were there in his story. It happens during Columbus's second trip, when he explored the southern coast of Cuba.”

I remember the trip, during the admiral's second voyage, in April to September of the Christian year of 1494. Don Bartolomé has brought up this episode before. I can tell he wants this episode because of his argument about our Taíno people being almost Christians in their old beliefs.

“Cúneo told my father about that trip. He said that a Cuban
cacique
spoke of a heaven and a hell among his people…”

It was not quite so. However, I held my tongue. Cúneo was a total bastard, abusive, deceitful, a man who let his balls squeeze his mind, a rapist of women and buggerer of boys. Cúneo was on board only because he was a boyhood friend of Don Christopherens, from his own city of Genoa. He came back from Castile with us, on that second trip, a guest of honor of the Grand Admiral of the Ocean Seas.

“It was the trip to the south of Cuba,” the friar continued. “Cúneo told my father that a prominent Cuban
cacique
, chief of a large
yukaieke
called Bayamo, feasted the admiral, then had long words about his own spiritual doctrine. Cúneo said you translated at the meeting.”

“I was translator,” I said, and I felt faint to remember that time. The friar went on but, again, he had thrown my mind back. That was the voyage of the miserable, when I confirmed for my thick-skulled self that the Castilians were not only cruel and violent men but also liars and crazy. It was during that voyage, too, that Don Cristopherens lost his own mind for weeks at a time.

“Cúneo said the
cacique
spoke in Christian terms about Heaven and Hell, and expressed his belief that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell,” Don Bartolomé repeated.

“Cúneo is full of shit, Father, with your permission,” I actually said. I could not help myself.

“He was a loyal friend to my father,” Don Bartolomé responded solemnly. “Though he was a rake.”

“A perverted man, Father, with your permission,” I said.

The good friar looked past me for a few moments. He admonished me finally. “You speak with vehemence again, Dieguillo.”

“Yes, Father,” I said. “With your forgiveness, Father.”

He was right. I insulted him, and I do not mean to do that. But my breast was a sail taut with wind.

“I beg your forgiveness, Father. I only meant to say it was not like that. Cúneo did not understand the language, and in any case he was not there during that talk between the
cacique
and the admiral.”

“Where was he?”

“He was exploring, Father.”

“Exploring what? The coast?”

“Yes,” I told him. “The coast.” I did not need to tell him that Cúneo was, as my people would say, emptying his fleshy gourd all through that evening. Chasing for a place to stick his
yuán
was always the main occupation of Monsieur Michele de Cúneo.

“And well then, did the two men discuss the existence of Heaven and Hell?”

“It happened,” I said. “But it did not mean what you think it meant.”

“Write about it anyway, Dieguillo. It could be very important.”

I told him: “That was the time Don Cristopherens lost his mind.”

The good friar shook his long face. “No wild stories now, Dieguillo. I can take your testimony to the king. I need something new from that time that will help him sympathize with your people.”

Eight.
Starting out.

The problem is: I remember so much more.

The trip to Cuba of Don Bartolomé's question came after our return from Castile, during the admiral's second voyage and four months into the settling of the new colony of Isabela.

But for Don Bartolomé's insistence, I would not begin my narrative there. My inclination is to start at Guanahaní, when we first saw the admiral. That would be the proper sequence. I would start that first morning, with my father-uncle, Cibanakán, who was the first to see the giant seagulls and tell how in the company of six of my kin, I sailed away in the Castilian ships through our small islands of the Bahama, how we guided the admiral to Cuba, then to Bohío, now the island Española, where he lost a ship, was embraced by Guanacanagari's people, and left forty men at Fort Navidad.