The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (17 page)

Addendum:
I have reread my previous entry several times and am surprised to find I derive great comfort from seeing the words in solid black ink. I also find myself impressed with my unsuspected gift – perhaps I should consider publishing a memoir? A man of action can also be a man of letters.

July 14 
— Introspection does not come naturally to me. Yet, having begun the log in this style, I find self-examination becoming a compelling act. I suspect this to be mostly a sign of age. As a child and a youth, I do not recall ever thinking about my own nature in any great depth – certainly not for any length of time. Perhaps this was a measure of my good fortune in all things. My childhood was a very happy one, and therefore I was never aware of being happy. My mother was very loving. I am proud that she was Spanish, not Portuguese. Perhaps that is why I feel this connection to Hispaniola, since my mother lived there and fell in love with my father there. And perhaps the secret of my seamanship lies not only in family tradition, but in my being born at sea, on the way back to Portugal. The roll call of our great sailors resounds in my mind like a trumpet: Diogro Cam, captain for John II, who discovered the Congo River in 1482; Bartolomo Dias who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and beheld the Indian Ocean; the great Vasco de Gama who reached India in 1498; and Pedro Alvares Cabral who discovered Brazil in 1500. These were the men who, along with my father, I wished to equal; and I have done not so badly for my nation, I think.

My father was a stern and reserved figure, but he treated me fairly and was interested in my upbringing. I was the only child: my mother was unable to have any more children after I was born. So I was never concerned about my future: I knew I would be a sailor on my father's ship and I expected that one day I would be captain of my own. My only shock came when, at the age of 14, my father took me on as cabin boy instead of, as I had expected, first mate. But he was wiser than I: sailing is no easy life and I had to learn the ropes before I could be a captain. For the first years I sailed with him, I was treated as no more and no less than any of his crew. I learned everything from tying knots to reefing sails to navigating with the cross-staff. The only skill I never learned was that of swimming and, believe me, this motivates me greatly to keep my ship afloat. There was no prouder moment in my life when, on the day I turned 21, my father told me that he had never known a finer sailor than myself. And two years later, he put up his own ship as security to the Jewish moneylenders so I could commission the Kush. I repaid the loan within 18 months.

My life, therefore, has been satisfying and successful. A man, having said that, can say nothing more that is worth saying.

August 1 
— A sudden squall yesterday. But we were not caught offguard. After so many years sailing this ocean, I need not even see the shift of the swells: I can smell a coming storm in the sudden bitterness of the air. So we had ample time to furl the sails and batten the hatches. The squall lasted about half-hour – I have just finished checking the ship. No damage. There will be several more of them as we draw closer to the West Africa coast – these are the hottest months in this part of the world. But my
Kush
weathers them well, as always. I have taken good care of her over the years and she has served me well. I named her the
Saõ Kush
because I intended from the first that she would ply the trading route between Africa, Brazil and Hispaniola. Strange as it may seem, I have always felt at home in Africa. Were it not for the lack of civilised amenities, I believe I could live there quite happily. The vastness of the land gives me a feeling similar to the feeling I have when I sail the ocean: of being a mote in the eye of God. I feel both tiny and immense at the same time.

It will be difficult never to experience this again. I have already found a buyer for the
Kush
. I would have liked to save her for my son, but too many years will pass before he can be a sailor. But wait! It only now occurs to me that he may never be a sailor. He is more likely to be a farmer or a cleric or a lawyer or a doctor or a merchant. I will no longer be sailing the oceans where I can instruct him; seamanship will not even be in his blood. My father, and my father's father, must be turning in their graves.

August 3 
— Whatever I have set my mind to in life, I have always accomplished. But I have no doubt that giving up the
Kush
will be the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. This is not mere sentimental attachment to a barque of wood and sail. Sailing is what I am best at. Indeed, I have mastery in nothing else: I speak several languages and I fight well and I can read and write and I bargain skilfully. But only in sailing am I a complete master. My crew respects me because I work as hard as any of them. But they do not understand that there is no greater joy for me than performing my duties. There is no time that I feel more alive than when I am at the helm of my ship: as I stand at the wheel, I know how God must feel. Whether it is tying knots or reading tide and cloud or navigating by Pole star, sun or cross-staff, I am the equal of any man and the superior to many. I have steered my ship safely through storm and doldrums and rocky coasts for over two decades. I have never been injured, shipwrecked and none of my crew has ever died through any error of mine. In Portugal, Brazil and Africa, it is considered an honour to sail on the
Kush
. And all this, with only two-thirds of my life lived, must I give up. It is a difficult thing to do. But I must do it. Now, it is only in the daylight that I am a master. In the night, I am a slave to my dreams. I cannot understand why these dreams should come to me now. I do not accept Maria's view that they are portents: women always have these silly, superstitious ideas. Nor should the passage be any more dangerous now than it has ever been: indeed, it is less so, both because of my own long experience and because the trade is far more organized now than it was when I first began. But, perhaps because of this very thing, there is more dispute now about the enslavement of the Negroes. Fr. Paulo, who preaches in my parish, had become persuaded by those who are against the trade and, because I am a trader, copied some of these arguments are gave them to me. I put them in my desk without reading them, but before I sailed on this last trip it occurred to me that these dreams may have been started by Fr. Paulo's sermons. So I have brought the documents with me: perhaps by reading and understanding them I can rid myself of the dreams. I am sure they have nothing worthwhile to say; and I am leaving the trade anyway. But I have been hesitant to read them: if I am right and it is only Fr. Paulo's talk which has set off these nightmares, might my nights not become more terrorised by actual reading? But, again, I must not surrender to my fear!

This is no easy task, though. All that never happened to me in life now happens in my dreams: the Kush is shipwrecked on a reef, I am drowned in a storm, my ship is becalmed while supplies run out, I am wounded by spear-wielding Ethiopians during a raid, I am marooned on a deserted isle, I am eaten alive by Caribs on Hispaniola. And, in all these horrors, the figure of the Shadowman stays omnipresent. But I never see his face.

August 5 
— Priests, I think, should confine themselves to matters pertaining to God and leave the affairs of this world to men of the world. Hear one Fray Tomas Mercado: ‘No end of deception is practised and a thousand acts of robbery and violence are committed in the course of bartering and carrying off Negroes from their country.' Pah! No business venture of any sort – including, I dare say, the business that allows the Church to be so well accommodated – can be successful without some measure of deception. But Fray Mercado becomes even more foolish: ‘The Ethiopians make war on one another, their gain being the capture of their own people, being induced to do so by the profit derived.' The priest knows that the Africans, of their own will, supply us with slaves, but condemns us for paying them for this service. Perhaps he feels it would be better if we eschewed payment! Without the slightest knowledge of these primitive people, the goodly priest assumes that they are ‘induced' to make war on their own kind by greed for gold and goods. Well, if so, should not that in itself suggest to him the sordid outlook of the Africans and should he then not conclude that they stand in even greater need of Christian teachings? Fray Mercado goes on to make even more ridiculous statements: ‘In addition to the pretext of parents selling their children as a last resort, there is the bestial practice of selling them without any necessity to do so, and very often through anger or passion, for some displeasure or disrespect they have shown them.' But, in my nigh-seventeen years as a trader, I know of no case of parents selling their own children, for the Africans value their children as much, or even more, than civilised peoples. Yet, even if Fray Mercado was right, would not the children be better off without such parents or better off being taken away from a situation so desperate that parents are willing to sell their children into slavery?

Another priest, Fray Alonso de Sandoval, asserts ‘Half the number of wars reported among the Negroes would not be waged if they knew the Spaniards were not buying Negroes.' What Fray Alonso fails to understand is that these people would make war and enslave one another whether or not the traders of Europe were there: the Africans do not value land, because there is so much of it. An African king's power instead resides instead in the number of men he rules over: it is therefore to his advantage to kill, get rid of, or enslave the men of other kingdoms. When this is pointed out to those who condemn our trade, they argue that slavery between Africans is like peonage in the Christian nations. Absurd! That argument rests on the assumption that the Africans are more civilised – indeed, more moral – than Christian men. I find it incredible that educated men can make such absurd statements. The fact is, we Portuguese provide a valuable service: not only have we brought Christ's teachings to this dark continent, but we save the very Africans from being killed – and these savages have horrible ways of killing one another – by providing a means for kings to reduce the manpower of a rival kingdoms without killing or enslaving potentially hostile captives. I may also mention that the higher classes of men are not very displeased that we thin the ranks of males, for polygamy is a widespread practice there and the less men that are available, the more wives the others can have. However, I do concede some of the priests' points: Fray Mercado says that ‘Spaniards trick and carry off the Negroes with a few bonnets, gewgaws, beads and bits of paper. They put them aboard the ships under false pretences, hoist anchor, set sail, and make off towards the high seas with their booty.' This indeed may be the practice among the Spanish. It is not so among the Portuguese traders, who have established good relations with the rulers of these continents; and it is certainly not my practice. As for ‘gewgaws' – even a priest should know that the value of an item lies in the buyer's desire for it. Would the Church's coffers be so swollen if men did not desire salvation? What are ‘gewgaws' for us are treasures for the Africans; and what is a treasure to us – freedom – is a mere commodity to them. At any rate, I have always dealt fairly with them. I have not even raided much, although I will have to do so on this last trip.

[The next set of log entries consists only of observations about weather, tides, and shipboard details. The following entry was made six weeks later, after the ship reached the Cape Verde islands - A.A.]

September 19 
— We dropped anchor off Saõ Tiago at 1400 hrs. I had considered pushing straight on to the coast – we had enough supplies. But fresh water, fresh fruit and unsmoked meat – to say nothing of shitting with one's feet planted on solid ground – will help revive the crew's tired spirits. I want them as strong and alert as possible when we start the inland trek to gather slaves. I have assigned men to replenish our supplies and will stay on board myself to supervise. There is another Portuguese ship in the harbour, a four-master named the
Saõ Joaquin
. The watch tells me that the captain has gone into Ribei Grande. The captain's name is Juan Portillo – I have met him several times since he started sailing the passage about six years ago. We finished storage at 1700. I told the men they could stay on shore for four bells each – ten men at a time. I know they will all get drunk but at least the first set should be sufficiently recovered by 600 hrs for us to heave to. I left my first mate on board to supervise the first watch and went ashore to pay the harbourmaster for the goods and to get the latest news about goings-on on the coast.

I had not intended to stay on shore for more than an hour but, while talking to the harbourmaster, Portillo came in and invited me to drink some
cerveza
with him. I almost did not recognize him: when I had seen him just three years before, he had been a pleasant-faced young man. This man looked tense and ill and, even though Portillo is about fifteen years my junior, he now looked older than me by that same measure. He had clearly spent most of the day drinking.

‘I hear this is your last trip,' he said. I was not surprised he knew this. Ours is a small community. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘I am going to become a farmer.' ‘Why?' he asked. ‘The wife says I must,' I told him, laughing, but Castillo did not smile. I noticed that his eyes were rimmed red and that his lips trembled. ‘I want to get out, too,' he said. Castillo's haggard features made me wonder if the Shadowman had invaded his dreams too. ‘Why?' I asked. He said, ‘I lost three hundred and seventy-nine slaves on my last trip. Disease. And most of the remaining two hundred were as good as dead by the time I reached Brazil. It was the first time that has happened. ‘Did you lose many ducats?' I asked. He said, ‘I didn't even pay for most of them. We took an entire village, just a hundred miles inland.' I said, ‘No more tight packing for you, eh?' Castillo held his head. The
cerveza
in that saloon kicked like a mule and he had been drinking for many hours. ‘It wasn't the gold!' he cried. ‘It was their cries – all day and all night for five weeks I heard them dying below my cabin. And now I still hear them.' I attempted to calm him through reason. ‘It is part of the risk we take.' But Castillo seemed not to hear me. ‘And the corpses!' he said. ‘Every day, we had to go into the hold and unchain them. Every day we threw dead men and women and children overboard, like spoilt meat. The sharks followed my ship for weeks, waiting to be fed. They would fight, and the water would froth red and sometimes arms or legs or a head would float up...' I suppose I was the first person of his own rank that Castillo had been able to tell his story. His experience seemed to have eaten into his spirit like maggots, although, since he had said he had not paid much for the cargo, I could not understand why. I tried to offer him solace. ‘These things happen. All we can do is forget it and go on.' ‘I can't forget!' he almost snarled, sounding more dog than man. ‘I can still hear them! Every creak of my planks sounds like a groan, every splash of a wave reminds me of a body being tossed into the sea, every flap of the sails sounds like a body being crunched.' This irritated me. ‘Get hold of yourself, man!' I told him. ‘They were only Negroes.'