The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (10 page)

No woman came forward to claim me nor had any shown signs of pregnancy in the past nine months. Given the few Spanish women then on the island, such a condition could not have passed unnoticed or been kept secret. I was therefore taken in by the Franciscan brothers as a child of God. They christened me Adam, after the first man, and Colón after the discoverer of New Spain. It was their intention to raise me in Holy Orders for, they said, why else would God have delivered me to their door? That I eventually became a soldier instead was a direct result of the conduct of two of the priests I committed violence upon: Fray Ortiz and Brother Ricardo Muñoz.

I must admit that, in many ways, I had advantages which I would probably have not have experienced had I been born an ordinary child in Spain or even as a child of one of the conquistadores whom I so admired when I was growing up. Fr. Ortiz was a highly educated man, well versed in the Scriptures, as well as Latin and Greek and even mathematics. Until I turned fifteen summers, he made sure to take a few hours with me on every day (except the Sabbath) to impart his vast learning. So I grew up as well-educated as any nobleman or priest of Spain. I also grew up with an understanding of Spanish greatness which would have been denied any person who had not experienced life in the islands. All around me I saw a people whose only purpose on Earth, it seemed, was to serve Spaniards. Thanks to the encomienda, even the lowliest white man had these brown-skinned people to carry him on their shoulders if he was not inclined to walk. When a Spaniard rested in the afternoon heat, he always had an Indian woman to fan him with cooling leaves. The Indians even supplied food to us. It was, in other words, a Paradisal existence.

Fr. Ortiz explained to me that God had so ordained it that the Indians should be servants to the Spaniards in order that their souls be saved. They had, he said, none of the accoutrements of civilized men: no writing, no art, no religion, no clothes. It was this last detail that, in growing up, I thought most strongly reflected the inferiority of the Indians. After all, there were many men, even among the Spaniards, who could not write or had no interest in art or did not attend church. But there was no man who went about unclothed. When Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge, was not their first act to cover themselves? In their nakedness, the Indians revealed their inferior physique: they were without exception small-boned, so thin that their ribs and knobbly joints stood out. They often had sores on their brown faces and bodies. Even as a child, I noticed how frequently these Indians fell dead, or were killed for some transgression, and I remember thinking how fortunate they were that Fr. Ortiz and the other priests had come to grant them salvation before they left this realm of clay.

All this I accepted as part of my faith. It was not until many years later that I began to question – no, I never questioned what I was taught about the Faith. My reversal, when it came, came in the form of a Revelation. Faith itself, as Holy Father knows, reveals all Truth. But often attaining that Truth requires much effort and much pain. This is the lesson of Jesus's life – one too often ignored by those who call themselves Christians. One such person was Brother Ricardo Muñoz, he whom I beat almost to death. What I am about to reveal will explain my admittedly intemperate reaction: I should have beaten him only half to death.

My apologies for that last line, Holy Father. I know this is not a Christian attitude. Yet even Jesus must have inflicted some telling injuries when he drove the money lenders from the temple, and I had much more impelling reasons than He for doing what I did.

It was when I was ten or eleven years of age – of course, I am not sure exactly how old I am – that my faith was shaken for the first time. It happened on a day when Br. Muñoz and myself were alone in the church kitchen preparing the midday meal. All the other brothers were out on various tasks and Fr. Ortiz was busy in his study (really a little room behind the altar). It so happened that, as we were moving around the cramped quarters, Br. Muñoz jogged my arm and a clay bowl of goat's milk I was carrying fell and broke. Br. Muñoz became quite angry and shouted at me, even though it was really his fault. I knew better than to say so, of course, for Br. Muñoz had often administered whippings to me as part of my discipline. So I was not surprised when he sat down on a stool, and pulled me over his knee and raised my smock. But I was surprised when, running his hand over my buttocks as he always did before administering several hard smacks, he stopped and said, ‘You are becoming too old to be spanked.'

He let me off his knee and I stood up, smoothing down my smock.

‘But you must be punished for wasting the precious milk,' he said. He was not watching me as he spoke. His small black eyes were fixed on a point above my head, and the tip of his tongue ran over his lips briefly, reminding me of a small snake I had watched one day in the bushes behind the church.

‘Lean over the table,' he said.

‘But brother!' I protested. ‘I thought you were not going to beat me.'

‘I am not,' he said. He had begun to sweat, although the morning was still quite cool. ‘But you must be punished.'

I did as he instructed, twisting my head back to see what kind of punishment I was going to get. He told me to look straight ahead and to say nothing or he would increase my punishment tenfold. I had said we were alone, but there were two Indian girls in the kitchen. Br. Muñoz told them to get back to work. One started sopping up the spilled milk with a cloth, while the other continued cutting the side of pork that had been roasted earlier. Br. Muñoz raised my smock and ran his soft hand gently over the crease of my buttocks, tickling the sac of balls between my legs and making me jump.

‘Be still, little brother, be still,' he said, cooing the words like a pigeon and making me think my punishment would not be so bad because I was getting big now.

He told one of the girls to hand him the jar of goose grease and began spreading the grease with his finger between my buttocks. I became confused. Then I felt something thick and hard pressing against the small hole of my bottom.

‘Brother...?' I said.

‘Look forward!' he said. ‘Unless you want to be whipped as well!'

I looked forward, and clenched my teeth because the thick hard thing had begun to force its way inside me. I did not know at the time what Br. Muñoz was using – I remember thinking it must have been some special punishment stick I had never seen – but it hurt very much, despite the grease, pushing into my innards like a molten bar of iron. I felt as though my bottom was being torn apart.

‘Aiee! Aiee!' I shrieked. ‘Please, brother, please beat me instead!'

‘Be calm, little brother,' said Br. Muñoz from behind me. He spoke as though he were being strangled. ‘Be calm and it will feel better.'

But even as he said this, the thing inside me began moving back and forth, bringing waves of pain with every movement. It seemed as if it was penetrating my very stomach. I shrieked again, and again. The Indian girl who was wiping up the milk looked up from the floor and caught my tear-filled eyes. It was the first time I became aware of an Indian as anything other than an unimportant presence, like a dog. And I hated that she should see me being punished like a dog.

I do not remember the rest of my ordeal. I just remember Br. Muñoz giving me a bowl of water and telling me to go and ‘clean up my punishment'. I ran into the forest behind the church and washed off the grease and the sticky fluid and, with shock, blood from my bottom. I did not return until late that evening, spending the entire day in the forest. Again, I do not remember what I did. I may have just wandered around. I do remember hoping I would get lost. But some instinct led me back to the church as the sun was setting, where Fr. Ortiz, although relieved to see me back, said he would have to whip me for going off to play for the entire day.

‘I am too big to be whipped now,' I said. ‘Brother Muñoz says so.'

I was hoping he would ask me what I meant. But he only nodded and told me to say thirty Hail Marys.

From that day, Br. Muñoz punished me whenever he got the chance. At first it was always very painful, but it gradually became easier. I stopped finding threads of blood. And there were other things Br. Muñoz did which I actually liked: when he rubbed my
pene
so it became stiff like a flute and, sometimes, put it in his mouth and sucked it. I did not like sucking his, though: it tasted bad and it forced my mouth so wide that my jaw always ached afterwards. Most of the time, Br. Muñoz did these things at night in my cell, but there were occasions when he did it right in the kitchen, like the first time. He seemed to like the danger of discovery, but I was always in a panic that Fray Ortiz would walk in. Br. Muñoz had told me that Fray Ortiz would not approve and I must therefore never tell him; and I felt, if I did tell, the Father would accuse me of causing Br. Muñoz to commit a sin. Br. Muñoz often told me how beautiful I was and how he could not resist me. Perhaps it would have been easier if I could have thought the same of him, but he was plump and bald and always sweated. Yet I grew not to mind the things we did, and I did not feel I was doing such a terrible thing since in all other ways I served God faithfully. I said my prayers regularly and read the Bible and obeyed Fr. Ortiz. Besides, Br. Muñoz never had me put my
pene
inside him. He said he would not put the sin of sodomy on my soul. The only thing I disliked was when he put his
pene
inside me in the kitchen, because the Indian girls were usually around. I think Br. Muñoz liked having them watch, but I always felt they were laughing at me behind their expressionless faces. Once, he bent one of them over the table and pulled up her frock – Fray Ortiz insisted that the Indians who worked in the church be decently dressed – and told me to put my
pene
into the slit between her legs. I was a little surprised: I thought that I should put it into the hole in her bottom. But as soon as my
pene 
touched the strange, fleshy folds between her legs, it grew soft. Br. Muñoz let the girl up and she turned, smoothing down her frock, and looked at me straight in the eyes. No Indian had ever done that: her eyes were very black. She was no more than nine years of age, but I knew she was mocking me. Br. Muñoz laughed and told me not to worry: I would always be safe of the sin of fornication. So I was proud of my disgust and turned away from the girl. Her gaze had angered me, however, and that anger was to lead to my first act of true evil.

Holy Father will perhaps understand why I had reason to hate Br. Muñoz and, more importantly, why I did not tell of my childhood ordeal to the Court of the Inquisition. Besides the shame I felt, it was likely that the Court would have either disbelieved me, or believed I was trying only to bring the Church and its clergy into disrepute, or believed me entire and then punished me for the sin of sodomy.

‘So you believe in God and the Holy Church?' was Zumárraga's next question.

‘I do.'

‘But is it not true, Señor Colón, that you left the priesthood to join the conquistadors as soon as you became a man?'

‘I was never in the priesthood.'

‘My understanding is that you were raised in a church and personally educated by Fray Ortiz, whom you murdered.'

‘The killing of Fray Ortiz was an accident!'

‘We shall come to that. You do not deny that you left the church to become a soldier?'

‘That is correct.'

‘I put it to you that you did not leave of your own will, but were cast out by Fray Ortiz because he discovered the evil in you.'

‘It is true that Fray Ortiz discovered the evil in me. But he did not cast me out.'

Zumárraga pounced like a hawk. ‘So you admit there is evil in you!'

‘I did not earn the title of “
El Carnicero Sangriente
” by accident. But if this Court is to condemn me, it must condemn me for the true evil that I committed, and that is not what I am charged with.'

‘And what evil is that?' Zumárraga asked, with a thin smile. I could see that he thought I was digging my own pit.

‘My part in the extermination of the Indians known as Tainos. That is what I should be condemned by this court for. All other acts pale in comparison.'

‘Señor Colón,' said Zumárraga, in a tone of disbelief, ‘are you really comparing any violence you may have committed upon heathen Indians as a soldier in the service of the King, to the violence committed upon three clergymen of the Holy Church and the murder of a priest?'

‘I can give an account of how I came to leave the church. I can also give an account of that violence and the evil I speak of. The court can decide which is the worse sin.'

Zumárraga inclined his head. ‘Very well. Let no one say that the Court of the Inquisition does not give even the greatest sinner every chance to receive God's mercy.'

Most of the following account, Holy Father, is contained in the court records. I have in this Confession added a few details to complete your understanding. I have already described the scene with the young Indian girl to Holy Father, and I did so because it has a direct bearing on how I came to leave the church and become a soldier instead. I had always admired the conquistadors, with their polished helmets and coats of mail and sharp swords. As they swaggered about the town or galloped by on their magnificent steeds, these men seemed to me to be the epitome of Spanish magnificence and masculinity. They gave to the settlers in New Spain a sense of security, for the Indians so outnumbered us that we could all have been murdered in our sleep in one night save for the protection afforded by the soldiers. So they were treated with respect by all the adults, and this respect flowered into hero-worship in a young boy.

Br. Muñoz had already shown me that even those adults who served God could do wrong. The same was not true of the conquistadors in my eyes, for they pretended to nothing and therefore broke no rule they had sworn to uphold. I had seen them beat the Indians and use them for target practice and even chop off their heads with a casual swing of their Toledo blades. Nothing struck me as evil in this: I had seen such acts for as long as I could remember. Also, the power invested in the conquistadors meant that whatever they did had to be right, for my priestly upbringing had taught me that God was the source of all power and life. Fray Ortiz had power too, for all Spaniards, even the soldiers, deferred to him. But God had given the conquistadors the clearest power. He would not have given them that power unless it was their right to wield it as they chose. Besides, the Indians were heathens: the conquistadors' total power over them, power even of life and death, was proof of the power of God.