The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (22 page)

March 4
— The dreams continue. In the day, I dream I am the Taino Guaikan. I remember being with Columbus and going to Madrid and coming back to my beloved islands. And when I awake and the Egyptian lights the candle, I see the dark flush below my skin. After darkness falls, I dream I am the conquistador. I relive his vile pleasures and the torture he underwent. My heart pounds and my body sweats but I cannot awake. When dawn comes, flushing the hold with a pale-gold light that is like a mockery, I see that my belly has become pale. But my skin returns slowly to normal once I am awake.

I had exchanged food and water with Mr. Cebola. He asks no questions – he trusts me because I am his captain. He has had no dreams and his skin does not change colour.

March 5
— Once again I exchanged food and water. Again I dream of these lives that now seem as real to me as my own. It occurs to me that there is a simple way to prove the truth or falsity of these visions. I shall do it now.

The cut has healed. Now I know why I have never been sick, why all my wounds have always healed without even a scar, why all my crew lie dying around me while I am without fever, cough or even sores. I am immortal.

I can write nothing more today.

March 6
— Knowledge is a terrible thing. I feel as though the last 50 years of this life have been wasted. Not to have known what I truly am, to have lived a life confined to accumulating wealth. Yet do I not deserve some comfort after what I have been through? To see nearly all my people killed, to become a killer myself and then to be tortured for so many years... Perhaps I did indeed live those lives. But I am Antam Gonçalves now, a decent God-fearing man. But who is this mysterious God who created me a primitive Indian? Why would He give me this gift and allow me to become the monster that was Adam Colon? The Bible says nothing of men such as me and that means the Bible does not have complete knowledge of God. No! I shall not tread that blasphemous path, no matter what mysteries lie in my past and within myself. Still, the question remains: why has God cursed me with this strange immortality? I am an immortal who can be killed. And who is this black Angel of Death who finds me wherever I am reborn? Surely he has been sent by Satan, for twice now he has prevented me from fulfilling my destiny. Perhaps this is why God refuses to let me die: so that, in His infinite mercy, I may have another chance to save my soul from the eternal fires of Hell. That must be it. I wish only that He had granted me knowledge as well, that I might have discerned my path beforehand. But I must not question God's mysterious ways. No doubt He intends I must face trials in order that I may be purified. I take heart in knowing that, no matter how harsh my tribulations, my Lord is with me. But what do I do? Hiding my actions from the others, I use the rough edge of the foot manacle to make a deep cut in my forearm and, although I expect it, I am still amazed when I see that the wound has sealed itself within hours. I had thought the Shadowman – for there is now no doubt in my mind that that is who the Egyptian is – had left my hands free in order that I could write. Now I see that he chained me in order to prevent escape. I could have broken the bones of my hand to slip the cuffs. I could try doing so with my feet. But I cannot cut off my own head.

March 7
— I write sitting cross-legged on the deck, squinting against the sunlight that glares off these pages. The ink gleams blackly, so my words, my writing, seems to have its own life. I know these will probably the last words I ever write. And only now I remember: today is my fiftieth birthday. The Shadowman stands with his back against the mast, waiting. His legs are planted on the deck like tree trunks; he does not seem to even brace himself against the yaw of the ship. The Africans stand around watching. Most are expressionless, some intent. But all their pigeon-egg eyes, moving between myself and the Shadowman, are rapt. They consider him to be a god, and why not? Has he not lived at least as long as I? I suspect the Africans may know of me, too, for there is a peculiar respect, even awe, in their gaze as they watch me write. Perhaps they see our duel as a battle between Good and Evil – I, of course, being the white evil. Ironic, since his immortality comes from Satan as surely as my own is given by God.

I know there is going to be a duel because my manacles have been removed and a Toledo blade has been placed beside me. It is a heavy sword, sharp-edged steel, the half-sphere grip solidly-wrought. The Shadowman has no weapon save a dagger – no, as I look more closely I see that it is a silver spike. I have seen that spike before, in my dreams. He is dressed as usual in his brown tunic and leather sandals, but he now has metal bands on his forearms. They are a greenish-brown in colour, neither brass nor bronze. Toledo blade against a spike and armbands. Victory should easily be mine. But I glance longingly at the island that lies about a mile off the ship's bow. If I could swim, I would be overboard in a flash. The white sand of the beach and the cool green of the forest seems to beckon to me. But it is a mile-long swim: I might as well be chained down in the hold. The Taino Guiakan could swim it easily. But, if I ever was truly him, I am so no longer. I could still leap overboard, let myself sink to the bottom of the sea. But just because I can survive mortal wounds does not mean I can survive drowning. Suppose I end up spending eternity at the bottom of the ocean, while fish pick at my ever-regrowing flesh? No, I must stay and fight. But I have seen the strength of the Shadowman. Even with a sword in my hand, I do not think I can match him. I am no soldier. Adam Colon knew how to fight, but I am not he.

I can delay no longer. Strange the thoughts that enter one's head as death looms: I now remember the woman's name in the Arabian tales. It was Shahrazad. Even she must have run out of stories eventually. The servant never did tell me if she lived or was executed. I can think of nothing else to write. But I know that God is on my side. If I survive, there shall be another entry. I must take heart: after all, David did slay Goliath.

[Entries end - A.A.]

My professional opinion at that point was that Mr. Avatar was suffering from a unidimensional delusion, which did not affect his normal functioning in the other areas of his life. I had tentatively decided that Mr. Avatar's feelings about his mother to be the root of his delusion. His stories reflected obvious issues of guilt and abandonment. In his third story, where he imagined himself to be a slave trader, the mother-figure is mentioned only briefly and in a most positive light. I asked him about his father.

‘I never knew my biological father. He was British. I always considered my stepfather to be my real father,' he said.

‘So your biological father was white?'

‘Yes.'

‘And your stepfather?'

‘He was Trinindian, like you.'

‘Trinidadian of Indian descent?'

‘Exactly. And my grandmother married a white Trinidadian after –' he hesitated. ‘After her first husband died.'

In his account, Mr. Avatar had expressed no guilt over being a slave trader, as I would have expected. There were, however, themes of repression and identity that were very revealing. That his father and his grandmother's second husband were both white was, I felt, significant.

I said, ‘Your mother and grandmother are of African descent, correct?'

‘They're both mixed. But mainly African, yes.'

‘Do you think you might have feelings of guilt about your past? Especially since you are an historian. I mean, this third account is really about expiation, isn't it?'

‘I have guilt about many things.'

‘What's your ethnic ancestry?'

‘European, African, Indian, Amerindian and other meaningless terms.'

‘You think these terms are meaningless?'

‘They're political labels.'

‘So how do you see yourself?'

‘Human, mostly.'

‘But not an ordinary human.'

‘No.'

This brought me to my main concern, viz., Mr. Avatar's belief about his invulnerability. This belief had been present in the first two accounts, but a conscious realization was expressed in the third. This particular delusion, combined with his conviction of a Shadowman pursuing him, suggested a condition of paranoid schizophrenia, although it did not seem chronic.

‘You believe that these accounts are memories, not invention, correct?' I asked.

‘Yes, but I'm biased,' he said.

‘You would like me to believe that your past lives are real, not figments of your imagination?'

‘Only if the evidence persuades you.'

‘Well, I see you believe that you cannot be harmed, that all your injuries heal.'

‘Yes.'

‘Yet you haven't offered to demonstrate this ability to me.'

‘No. And I won't, if that is what you're worried about.'

‘Good. I don't want you to. But would you mind telling me why?'

‘Small wounds heal pretty much at a normal rate, except that I don't scar. The more serious the injury, the faster I heal. Is as though my body mobilizes its defences accordingly. But if I inflicted a serious injury on myself, you would lock me away, right?'

‘I would have a responsibility to do so, Adam.'

‘Exactly. And I don't want to be locked away.'

‘So you have no intention of injuring yourself?'

‘No. Besides, it wouldn't prove anything.'

‘How so?'

‘The issue here is whether I have really experienced these past lives or not. An unusual ability to heal would prove only that I have an unusual ability to heal. Right?'

This was a quite clever rationalization to avoid giving proof of his belief. I decided to push a little further. ‘Yet, in this last account, you say a small cut healed quite quickly. In about a day.'

‘Yeah, well, I was three hundred and fifty years younger then. It doesn't work that way now.'

I was reassured by this. In retrospect, perhaps I should have issued at least an urgency order for temporary certification. But I do not think that this would have changed the eventual outcome.

‘Who is this Shadowman?' I asked.

‘I'm not sure.'

‘He obviously frightens you.'

‘He did, once.'

‘Not any more?'

He shrugged. ‘He's a more complicated figure than I first thought. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.'

‘If I'm to help you, Adam, you have to be completely honest with me.'

‘I'm always honest, doc. But I want you to learn about my lives as they unfolded.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it will give you an overview that I can't have.'

‘Fair enough.'

I asked him if he had experienced any side-effects from the chlorpromazine.

He said no.

‘Nausea, vomiting, dizziness, shaking?'

‘No, no, no, and no,' he answered. He was smiling.

‘You seem amused,' I said.

‘Private joke. I'll share it with you one day.'

‘And you've had no change in your perceptions?'

‘No. I still remember my pasts.'

‘I'll increase the dosage to 150 mgs,' I told him. ‘If you are delusional, it will help.'

‘And if it doesn't?'

‘Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

He took out a leather-bound book from his briefcase. ‘I'm not imagining this, right?'

‘What is it?'

‘The logbook I copied that account from. You can have it authenticated.'

I took it and opened it. The pages were stiff and yellow, the Portuguese phrases written in faded black ink. There was melted candle wax on some of the pages.

Mr. Avatar knew as well as I did that the log did not prove anything. Before he left, he also gave me a typewritten account of his fourth life. This account had a twist that I had not expected.

Leaving Europe for the Caribbean, first stop Barbados. Tourist island, hotels of elegant concrete scattered along the beaches, so close to shore that the white sand seems the encroachment. The palms look merely decorative and even the clear blue sea, conditioned by commercials, seems to cooperate for the client economy. I sit in my hotel room, pen in hand, heavy curtains drawn to reveal a blind tropical glare whose heat cannot penetrate the hermetic cool of the air-conditioning. The leaping words scribble busily across paper that is as white as my complexion shall be when I am done. Stories have power.

My mother got pregnant by an actor from the Globe theatre and her father sent her to the West Indies in order to avoid the shame. She hardly ever spoke of her father, and she died when I was only nine, but I somehow knew he was an aristocrat and a prominent member of the Church of England. He must have been a very cruel man, for he could easily have sent her away to the countryside instead. But he put her on a ship as an indentured servant heading to the island of Barbados five thousand miles over the sea and, though he gave her some gold, I am sure this was only to salve what little conscience he had. My mother was fifteen years of age. Her father was doubtless aware of the danger he was placing her in, but without doubt thought that, since she was already a trollop, such a fate was no more than she deserved. However, being a woman helped ensure her safety. The ninety settlers, rough and ready to a man, observed my mother to be a lady. They were going to a land where what mattered was the strength of a man's back and the strength of his will. They saw that my mother wore no ring and, although the loose dress of the time would have concealed her gravid condition, they made a good guess as to why a young woman of her breeding was off to a primitive land. They all saw themselves as worthy suitors, in a way they could not have been in England, and they all therefore conducted themselves as befitted gentlemen. But my mother never learned of the twist the sailors' natural assumption took. They knew the usual reason noble families disowned their daughters, but given the harsh exile imposed they thought the worst. Thus, thirty years later, when I went to London in 1659 to take my place as a wealthy Creole lady of good society, I made inquiries about my then-deceased grandfather, named Henry Wiltshire. It turned out that popular rumour told of him sending away his daughter to the West Indies because she had borne a child of his loins. The situation, I discovered, had even been the subject of a play in the Globe just before the Puritans shut down all the theatres seventeen years before. I took great pleasure in the thought that the old man would have still been alive to hear his good name bandied about. (He brought an action but died before it was heard.)