The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (13 page)

There was, at this time, a particularly persistent band of Indians raiding the Spanish towns and mines. They attacked under cover of darkness or the forest and, although I led many expeditions to the mountains, I was never able to discover their sanctuary. Even engaged in battle they were not as easily defeated as the other Indians of the islands. This particular group either included some Aztecs from the mainland, or had learned from them, because their weapons included javelins with throwers, swords with sharp obsidian stones set in grooves, and shields of wood or hide. As time went on, they also acquired metal weapons from fallen Spaniards and a few had even captured and learned to ride horses. It was rumoured that the group was led by a cacique who had been alive since the Tainos were created, and even the colonists had begun calling this person
Diablo Bestias
. While not a serious threat, they were a perpetual thorn in our side; and I, because I was Constable and because of my special hatred of Indians, was outraged by their existence. The New Laws, reflecting what I then considered to be the Crown's ignorance of the settlers' situation, enraged me further.

In my capacity as Constable, and using my own gold, I went through the town and collected twenty Indians of various types – of different markings, build and age. With the help of my lieutenants, I brought these men, women and children back to my hacienda and had them staked to the ground. I then proceeded to systematically torture them, asking them in their own tongue (I was quite fluent in their language) where in the mountains the raiders hid. This took the better part of the evening and continued well into the night by the light of torches. Hell must have some chamber exactly like my yard on that night: the staked people screaming in the writhing shadows while I moved among them like an angel of death, a grin of delight glued to my face, doing unspeakable things to each and every one of them. Several of the hardier ones shrieked so loudly that a Negro slave arrived at the hacienda late in the night bearing a complaint from a neighbour who was unable to sleep because of the noise. That neighbour lived a mile away. I therefore stuffed rags into the Indians' mouths before continuing. This torture was not for information – I had actually learned the location of the Indians' retreat before sundown – but I continued it, I told myself, to ensure that they were not lying. (Curious, this impulse of even the most evil of men to justify their actions.) By morning, the place looked like a butcher's shop: limbs and organs scattered everywhere, and the very earth and grass stained a diseased maroon. The coppery smell of blood filled the air, along with the insane buzzing of flies. A few of the Indian bodies still twitched weakly, but not for long. My dogs fed well that day.

A normal man would have been weary after the night's work. Not I. A few hours after dawn, having supervised the Negro servants as they cleaned the yard, I set out to find the Indians' mountain sanctuary. I was able to get only four men to join me in this plan. Word of my night's activities had already spread throughout the town and, wealth and influence notwithstanding, even the hardiest colonists averted their gaze from me when I went into town. They were not brave enough to look straight upon me with the disgust they no doubt felt. I am sure that it is those same citizens who eventually accused me of heresy so that the full authority of the Inquisition might be brought against me. It is worth noting, however, that they did not do so on that day, but three years later, when my actions threatened their wealth. The four who came with me were men of no standing in the community – they had neither skills nor trade and were too lazy even to cultivate a plot of land for their immediate needs. Yet, as is usual with men of that type, they always had sufficient money for drink.

On the 15th day of the month of September, I gave them each a horse, a lance and a sword and we set out for the forested hills of Espanola to find runaway Indians. On the ride out, we came across a bedraggled file of Indians, walking to their homes where they would have a few months respite after the eight months of steady work in the mines. We ran our horses over them, swinging our swords with glee. I did not even look to see my targets. The hate I always felt for these people was like a hunger in my head. It was an appetite that demanded red mouths in brown flesh, that could be assuaged only by the fearful and agonized cries as my gleaming blade leaped and winked among their bodies. The torture of the previous day had only increased my bloodlust.

To this brief encounter, there was a strange witness: a Negro who stood half-hidden in the forest at the side of the trail. As the number of Indians had diminished, we had had to bring in these African slaves to provide labour. Preferring Indians, I used only a few Africans, who worked inside my home. (Indian servants had four times tried to poison me but I survived each attempt, although I did not understand at the time what my immunity betokened.) This Negro, whose stonelike presence gave me pause in the midst of my carnage, seemed both strange and familiar. He was taller, and far stockier, than the others of his race. He was bald and wore a brown tunic and strapped leather sandals. I was certain that I had never seen him before, yet I felt I knew him. When I turned to strike down the last Indian, and looked back, he had vanished. As I spurred my horse onwards, a fleeting but disturbing thought occurred to me: that, although the Negro had been close enough for me to reach out and touch him with my lance, I had not seen his eyes.

Given a different outcome, the story of how I attacked the hidden camp of the Indians would have been the stuff of legend. The men with me possessed no woodcraft, of course, so I left them in the foothills and made my way alone into the forest. It was near dusk, so I commanded them to build several campfires, widely spaced, so that the Indians would think a large force was near. I wanted to make the Indians send out scouts, thus weakening their forces, as well as helping to point me in the direction of their camp. Sure enough, as I made my way through the silent trees, I was able to pick off several Indians. They never saw me, save in the moment before my knife found their throats or kidneys – my senses have always been preternaturally keen and I possessed a natural woodcraft whose origins I never questioned. Although delayed by these quiet kills, it was not too long before I was pressed against the back wall of their cacique's
bohio
, where five Indians sat in council around a small fire.

Peering through the cane-and-straw walls, I received my first surprise: their cacique was a white-haired Indian woman. It was she who was laying out the strategy to attack the Español soldiers whom they thought were camped in the foothills. Listening to her speak, I changed my plans. I had planned a frontal assault on the raiders, confident that our superior weaponry would allow us to inflict considerable damage before my companions fell. (For myself I had no such concern.) But my thirst for blood had caused me to commit a basic error in tactics: when your force is outnumbered, you must use the advantage of surprise. By killing the scouts, I had ensured that my smaller force had lost that crucial element. When the raiders discovered that their scouts had not returned, they would probably move camp. They had not remained free this long by being inflexible. I therefore attacked at once, quietly severing the binding vines and then bursting through the wall into the
bohio
. My sword and my knife thrust and sliced with exact swiftness, but the old woman received only a sword hilt to the skull, after which I slung her unconscious body over my shoulders and exited as I had entered. By the time their guards had responded to their leaders' dying screams, I was running tirelessly along the forest trail. They would not catch me in the dark.

It was in this triumph that I returned to the town, my men half-asleep in their saddles, just as the sky began to turn gray. The old woman, with hands bound, stumbled behind my horse. She was naked and bleeding from having been dragged when she could not keep her footing, but I had not dragged her too much. This was not kindness on my part: I wanted her alive to be executed by hanging, for it is a death of which the Indians were particularly horrified. It took all my self-control not to kill her on the journey back, however, for she never said a word but only watched me with a complete contempt that I had never seen before from any of her race. Her gaze enraged me, but I held my sword by thinking of the shameful death awaiting. The event would both tear away her maddening calm and bring me public acclaim when the colonists learned who she was.

Because of the earliness of the hour, I decided to imprison the cacique woman at my hacienda until noon, by which time word would have gone throughout the town about the planned hanging. I wanted to ensure a good crowd. I gave the men some money and sent them off with instructions to tell everyone that the
Diablo Bestias
had been captured, but to say no more than that. But this was not my only reason for dispatching them: I also wanted no witnesses to what I was about to do next. I took the old woman into the house and tied her face-down to an X-shaped bench I had had specially made. I then whipped her until the wrinkled skin of her back rose full of weals, so that I mocked her in her own language, saying that she was regaining her youthful plumpness. Yet, save for her grunts of pain, she never spoke . And I did more things I shall not tell.

When, at noon, I led my half-dazed prisoner to the town gibbet a murmur of surprise arose. The colonists had not expected the
Diablo Bestias
to be a woman, and an old one at that. The hangman was already there, along with Fray Ortiz. I pulled the cacique woman up the stairs and motioned the hangman away: this was my capture, my victory, and I wanted to dispatch her myself. I greeted Fray Ortiz civilly enough: there was no rancour from the past between us. He performed the final rites for the woman, who only stared ahead with dull eyes. Then, I placed the noose around her neck and tightened the knot. The feel of the rough hemp around the scrawny throat seemed to rouse her, for her head lifted. I stepped back and put my hand on the lever.

For the first time she spoke, ‘Fray Diego?'

Fray Ortiz's eyes widened. ‘Maria?' he said.

I pulled the lever. Fray Ortiz shrieked, ‘Adam, no!
Esta tu madre
!'

The trapdoor fell with a clatter, there was a choked-off cry, and then only the creaking of the rope.

Bishop Zumárraga said, ‘Señor Colón, are you telling this court that this Indian woman, this cacique, was your mother?'

‘That is what Fray Ortiz said,' I answered. It was clear that Zumárraga had already known this fact, undoubtedly from the same persons who had accused me and who would have been present at the hanging.

I said, ‘After the execution, I returned with Fray Ortiz to the church. I was enraged that he had embarrassed me in that way, and I almost struck him down in front of everyone.'

‘So you were not concerned that you had killed your own mother?'

‘I did not believe him. I felt he had used the opportunity to get back at me for leaving him and leaving the church?'

Zumárraga arched an eyebrow. ‘You believed that Fray Ortiz carried a grudge for all those years?'

I shrugged. ‘I would have.'

‘Tell us what happened at the church.'

‘Once we were inside, I handled the Padre rather roughly, pushing him bodily against the wall and demanding from him an explanation for his words. He was like a puppet in my hands, not because of my strength, but because he seemed to be still in shock at the turn of events. “Why did you say that woman was my mother?” I asked him – no, snarled at him – and he answered, “Because she was.” He then told me that she had been a servant in the church and had become pregnant after being raped by a Spanish soldier. I had not been left on the church's doorstep by an unknown person, as I had been told. I had been born right in the vestry. It was my appearance at birth that had convinced Fray Ortiz that the church should adopt me, for there was no trace of my Indian blood in my appearance.

‘So you admit that you are half a savage?' said Zumárraga.

‘As I have been telling the court,' I said, in a tone of weary patience, ‘for most of my life, I have been entirely a savage.'

Zumárraga sniffed. I continued, ‘Fray Ortiz had sent my mother,

who had been converted and christened Maria, to work in the fields. He did not want her tainting my upbringing, he said. He wanted to raise me as a perfect Christian. It was, he said, the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the power of Jesus's message – that even a person of my heathen antecedents could, with the right upbringing, become the perfect servant of God. Fray Ortiz was very concerned about perfection. He said he was very disappointed when I decided to leave the church to become a conquistador. I asked him why he had never told me the true story of my birth. He said, although I had failed to be the perfect Christian, he still wished for me to become the perfect Spaniard.'

I stopped speaking and Zumárraga said, ‘Yes? And what happened next, Señor Colón?'

I took a deep breath, knowing my next words condemned me. ‘I told him, “Your wish was granted” and I drew my knife and plunged it into his heart.'

Zumárraga turned to look at the President and the chief constable and even the notary. Unnecessary theatricality: the Court was weighted on his side, as always. ‘So, Señor Colón,' he said. ‘You freely admit to murdering a servant of God?'

‘I do,' I said. ‘And I put it to this court that my act was justified.'

This assertion surprised even Zumárraga. He said, in astonishment, ‘How can you possibly justify to this court the cold-blooded murder of a man of the cloth?'

I said, ‘in the first place, Fray Zumárraga, the act was done in the heat of passion, not in cold blood.'

‘That is no defence!' he snapped.

‘Agreed. But I would ask the court to consider the cause of my passion: that, because of Fray Ortiz's deliberate deception, I had incurred upon my soul the unforgivable sin of matricide. There is no question of forgiveness in my mind: I have no doubt that God will punish me as I undoubtedly deserve to be.'