The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (2 page)

Caon was called a bad boy by the grown-ups, because he was not interested in planting and would work in the fields only if forced to. He was also strange in his ways. He wore three times as many decorations as the grown-ups. He had coloured feathers stuck in his hair and on cotton strings tied around wrists and ankles. He wore several darts of wood and bone in his ears, and on them hung various pendants and a long feather. He did not just paste on the dyes which we put on their bodies to keep off insects, but pasted them on in different colours and designs. I thought he decorated himself to draw attention away from his odd features – a foolish idea, since his decorations made him look even stranger.

But it was not only his appearance that was not usual. He would disappear into the forest for half-a-day, but he never came back with any fruit or fish. When he did not go into the forest, he would spend hours sitting at the edge of the clearing, chipping stones into knives and whittling pieces of wood. This habit added to the strangeness of his body, because regular playing of
batey
made everyone's bodies as taut and as flexible as carved spears. But Caon looked smooth and full, like an almost-ripe squash, and he did not have scars on elbows and knees like everybody else.

I did not have these scars either, but for a different reason. I did not play with the other children, but I was always busy. I went into the forest alone to try and catch iguanas, and climbed the trees to set traps for parrots, and I went down to the river that ran behind the village with a cotton net I had made myself to catch fish. I also walked to the sea and played on the beach with a
batey
ball that I borrowed from Guacamari. I did not tell him I was borrowing it.
Batey
balls were the most valuable and valued objects in the village. The balata trees, from whose sap the balls were made, grew only on the greatland. The small land Tainos got the balls by trade and they were kept by the cacique in his
bohio
. I knew Guacamari would never lend one to a child, kin to Yúcahu or not, and so I got a large cloth from one of my
bohio
mothers and I would conceal a ball in it when I was going into the forest or down to the beach alone. I became quite skilled at keeping the ball in the air using only shoulders and thighs and head. This did not mean I was good. After all, I was playing only against myself. But another child might have given up on
batey
entirely. To me that would have been admitting defeat. By practising
batey
, I refused to be defeated. It is in such small things that a man's spirit truly shows itself, though there can be no pride in this since that spirit is given to him at birth. And so I played one-person
batey 
every day in a cove where no one could see me. The only movement I could not do was the body dive and twist to keep the ball bouncing, because there was no one to bounce it back to me.

I was less than ten seasons old when I started doing these things, but there was no grown-up watching to stop me. Since I had no parents, it was easy to slip away. Guacamari ignored even his own children, as he was occupied with his duties, and his wives naturally paid more attention to their own children than to me. Once I came back at mealtimes or was there for planting, no one noticed my long absences. I was injured often when I first started running away. The first time, I fell from a tree and broke my leg. It hurt very much and I cried for hours, alone in the forest. But I was able to straighten the leg, and by the time I returned to the village late that evening, it was strong again. On another occasion, I was attacked by a quenk. But I ate some fruit and drank lots of water and my wounds closed enough so that when I returned home at nightfall no one noticed. I always got very hungry and very thirsty when I was injured, and the few times I was unable to get food or water I fell asleep and awoke healed, but very weak. I never had any scars. I did not think there was anything strange about any of this, and it was not until much later that I found out that other people were not like me. Yet I must have known by instinct, or at least by the power of observation that all small children have, that I was unusual. I always felt that other people were less brave than I. I was not afraid of anything. I think it was this bravery that prevented the other children from teasing me, as they teased Caonabó.

For all these reasons, I realized Caon was like me. I do not mean that we had anything in common. I mean that he was like me because he had nothing in common with anyone else, including myself. That in itself can be a stronger bond than same interests, tastes or character. I do not know whether he felt this same connection. He was about two or three seasons older than me, I think, but he was even more reserved and more separated. I, at least, had the respect of the elders. So it was I who made friends with him when, returning one day after a day's iguana-catching in the forest, I almost tripped over him at the edge of the village clearing – I had not returned by the trail.

‘I am sorry,' I said.

He was sitting cross-legged with a stone knife in one hand and a wooden bowl in the next. He looked up at me. He was surprised, but the expression had come on his face after I apologized, not when I stumbled out of the bushes. I suppose he was not used to politeness from the other small-ones.

‘It is well,' he said.

I gestured with my right hand – I was holding two fat iguanas tied like bows with cotton string in my left – at the bowl he held in his lap.

‘Is that from Gonave?'

He was carving a pattern into the side of the bowl. When I looked closer, I realized that the bowl was unfinished. ‘No,' he said.

I saw that he was pleased at my mistake. Gonave was a very small land on the sunset side of Haiti, and its people had such skill in woodcarving that it was said that even the food of the worst cook tasted wonderful when served in a Gonave bowl.

I put my iguanas on the ground and sat down cross-legged beside Caon. ‘Where did you get the knife?' I asked. Most of our stone tools came from the mainland to the south.

‘I made it.'

‘I can never find a good stone,' I said. My own knife was the usual limestone shard wrapped with cotton. Caon's knife was a longish stone flaked until it had a razor edge. It even had a carved wooden handle wrapped in cotton.

He did not answer for a while, then he said, ‘I can show you a place where you might find some good pieces.'

‘Yes?'

‘Yes.'

I looked up at the sun. ‘Tomorrow?'

‘That would be well.'

I got up and then I untied one of the iguanas and re-tied him, neck to tail. ‘You can have this for your pepper-pot.'

Another boy of my age would have said for your mother's pepper-pot.

But neither of us could make that mistake. He nodded.

‘Thank you.'

We were friends from that day until he died twelve seasons later, in the giant stone bohio of the covered men.

We set out the next day before the sun got too high. But it was a cool day, for there were long black clouds in the sky. Caon led me into the forest, in a direction I had never gone before. It began to drizzle almost as soon as we left and then a heavy downpour started. We squatted underneath a large tree, still getting wet, but the pelting drops were broken by the tree leaves so they did not sting. We both wore loincloths so we did not have to carry our knives in our hands and would have bags for game or shells. Caon had stuck several things into his loincloth – his stone knife, as well as a limestone one, and a gouge made of conch shell. He had also strung the small bowl he had been carving the day before around his neck. Now, as we squatted beneath the tree, he began carving an intricate pattern around the outer rim of the bowl.

‘You like carving, eh?' I said.

He nodded.

I said, ‘I like it a little. But it is hard work.'

‘It takes much effort. But it is not like work for me.'

‘How so?' I asked. I expected to hear a secret of how to make work seem not like work.

‘I like to make things beautiful,' Caon said.

It was not the answer I had been hoping for, but I thought it was a good answer. I did not know anyone else who liked to make things beautiful so much that they would carry a bowl on a trip just to do that. I had walked only with my knife and fishing cord wrapped around my waist. I sat and watched Caon carve his bowl in the rain. He used both his limestone knife and the shell gouge. He did not make a simple design of lines or circles as most people did. Instead, leaves and vines appeared around the lip of the bowl. I was almost disappointed when the rain stopped and he got to his feet.

We walked for a long time, often leaving the trails and at one point climbing down a low cliff, until we came to a small valley. One side of this valley was of gray-blue rock and at the foot of it were many pieces of stone. It did not take long to find a long, tapered piece that would make a fine knife-blade.

‘How did you find this place?' I asked Caon, for even the men of our village did not know of it. Those who had stone knives had got them from trade.

‘I go everywhere,' Caon said.

We started back up the trail. We did not want to reach back to the village too late. I said, ‘Is that what you do when you come in the forest? Walk on the trails, look at animals?'

Caon nodded.

‘Why?' I asked.

‘It gives me ideas. And I see interesting things.'

I didn't quite understand this. Things were interesting if they were useful; and ideas were only ideas for getting food and other things of value. But Caon meant something more than this, which I could not grasp. But I did not mind. The stranger Caon seemed, the more I liked him. For I had always been viewed as by other people as strange, and I thought of myself in that way also. In most ways, we all become what we are told to be. But, as far as it is possible to escape that fate, Caon had done so.

So the moon grew ripe and was eaten many times Caon and I learned from each other. He taught me stillness, for we spent long times in the forest simply looking at animals. To learn the habits of animals – the trails they used, the prints of their feet and the shape of their droppings, where they fed and where they lived, how best to catch those worth catching – all this was basic knowledge for any Taino male. But Caon's knowledge went further than this. He knew the movements ants made when signalling that there was food. He could tell what the different sounds of different animals meant – danger or a call for a mate. He knew that the presence of a certain plants or insects meant that certain types of animals were close by or would visit a particular area regularly.

With such knowledge, and given his skill with his hands, Caon could have been a master hunter. But he was not interested in killing animals, not even for food. Even fish he ate only sparingly. His kin, who would have known of his strange diet, must have thought Caon was mad. To not eat meat was like a man deciding to live by smoking tobacco alone. But Caon's connection with the animals was a special gift from Atabey. While I squatted hidden in bushes upwind, he would stand in a clearing, making a strange squeaking sound and after a short time a tree rat would appear, small round ears upraised, nose twitching. Caon would stand perfectly still, still squeaking, and the hutia would eventually shuffle forward and sniff his feet, at which point Caon would be able to pet it and play with it. He could imitate most bird-songs almost perfectly and I had even seen him bring a parrot, which men spent long hours trapping, down from a tree on to his shoulder.

All the animals interested him – he showed me how even frogs had beauty, for, after birds and fishes, there are no more colourful animals. We would even spend most of a day just looking at spiders and their webs. And, because he had spent so much time in the forest, he knew where many useful plants and trees grew. I was able to please my
bohio
mothers by bringing back many roots and herbs from these trips, and I urged Caon to do the same for his relatives. But he did not see the point. He seemed to me at that time to have no need for affection. Once he had his knife and some duho wood, he seemed perfectly content. Caon would sit for hours, carving small animal pendants or belts or leaf designs into bowls. Many of these he just threw away. He seemed always to be trying to express some vision from inside himself and always failing.

I had no skills I could teach Caon in return for all he taught me. But once he showed me something, I often seemed to get an instinctive knowledge about it. It was I who told him that the eggs of a frog had to be fertilized outside the body and, later, he told me he had seen this. I also knew more about the various uses of plants than he did, though how I came to this knowledge I could not say. Caon already knew a lot from looking at what plants the animals ate.

In all this, I learned more patience than most Tainos had, though we were not a hurried people. It was not a hard lesson for one who had no sense of urgency about time. (
In all my lives, I have always known instinctively that I cannot die.
) That was part of what made Caon and I friends. And to learn that even ‘useless' knowledge could be interesting, and that beauty could be its own point, provided a path to peace that I never equalled until five centuries later. I felt that Caon and I were closer to Yúcahu than other people, including Guacamari with his many zemis.

There were two things I gave Caon in return – my friendship and
batey
. I think he did not know his own loneliness until we became friends. I have said that he did not seem to need affection. His reaction to my appreciation for his work showed that this was not true. I was the first person to really see and appreciate Caon's work. And, whether it was because of this, or whether it was just because he had reached a certain stage of maturity at the time we became friends, his carving got even better. There was a new precision and delicacy of line in his pendants, a sweeter curve and exactness to his carvings and bowl designs.