The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (27 page)

In the next few months, more men happened by my lone hovel than had happened by in the past three years. Perhaps it was that Will Powell had told other people about the woman living alone on the uninhabited coast, or perhaps it was that more settlers had come to Barbados. At any rate, no man ever passed by and said truly what he had come for. All made excuses: they said they were just looking over the land or exploring or just happened by. But all came with coins, when coin was rare enough in the island, or with gold, or with goods. Even those who came to rape came with something to barter. I was raped only once, though, by three men. Other men tried, but even when they were bigger than me my fierceness and my sharp-bladed machete made them think again. The three who came together did not live on the island but were, I believe, buccaneers. They had their way and slit my throat. But I caught up with them three nights later, my machete in hand, as they lay snoring around their campfire. I had run all day and night, easily. 'Twas as though I were a tireless ghost, or a demon. As I set about my murderous work, I felt a coldness in me that I had never known. Two of the men I nailed to a tree. The third escaped, wounded. I could have caught up with him, but I let him go to warn others. No more men visited my hovel for a while after that, but when, like dogs in heat, they began to come around again, none came to rape.

But 'twas not many who came over the next few years. After all, 'twas a long journey, even by horseback, and not many men had coin. I accepted goods at first, but only in such quantities that they needed to be brought by horseback or even cart. However, I never refused anyone who had my price. If they made the effort, I thought I had an obligation to accommodate them. Also, most of those who came were among the most important men in the island. 'Twould have been bad business to turn them away. There were by this time quite some few other women on the island who could give them what I gave. But my isolation had an important advantage: I offered a privacy crucial on that small Christian island. I was clean, insisting the men bathe in the river before we did any business. Often lacking that habit themselves, my insistence helped allay any fear of disease, although the true root of that comfort may have been the rather curious assumption I discovered each man made: that I had few or no other customers. Another important attraction was that I did not speak much. Men liked that quality in a woman. They often spent most of their time with me just talking: about affairs of trade or politics or crops or their own wives. There was something amusing to me in this: that although women were supposed to be the chatterboxes and men the ones who would do anything for sex, the truth was that the men were not capable of spending much time on sex, and liked nothing better than an attentive ear. I realized that people have a great ability for not seeing life the way it is.

Eventually, though, my trade began to diminish. Over the next few years, my corner of Barbados became quite crowded. When someone built their estate house a mere ten miles away from my shack, I began to wonder if I should move. 'Twas the fault of the sugar-cane, as I knew from my talk – or rather my listening – to my visitors. The profits from the tobacco had fallen because a better crop was being grown in the American colonies. The cotton and the fustic did not bring much income. So the planters had abandoned those crops entirely and had turned to the sugar-cane and within a few short years had begun to earn great fortunes. Thousands of slaves had been brought from Africa to work on the plantations. The wealthiest planters were building Great Houses that made Captain Ketteridge's cottage seem as rude as my shack when it was first put up. (It was now considerably improved.) There was now a Parliament, only the third such in the entire world, and Dutch ships, loaded with every imaginable sort of goods, put in regularly at what was now called Bridgetown.

The slaves spoiled my business. Mostly males were brought to the colony, but there were sufficient women to slake the settlers' needs. (In fact, I thought this was the true reason that female slaves were bought at all, since they never bred enough children to replace lost stocks, as was the argument.) So, with free slave-women so readily available, few were the men who saw any further need to make the trek out to my hovel. When it comes to lust, men care little about race. At first, I thought I could return to my old ways. I had lived without comfort or coin for years, and I thought I could do so again. But I thought wrongly. I had changed. My hovel now had wooden jalousies, an outside kitchen, and a wooden floor. I was too aware now of the world beyond my little corner, beyond even my little island. I wanted to be part of that world. No, more, I wanted to take my place in it. But I could not see how. I had only one commodity, one skill, to sell and that, like the tobacco, was now in little demand.

I found the way after the Shadowman killed me.

There was a mid-afternoon storm. Long whips of rain beat the plain. I stood in the verandah of my cottage, listening to the falling water drum like God's fingers on my now-shingled roof. Beyond the cliff's edge I saw the sea boiling foamy-white and green. The pelting raindrops stitched the dirt just beyond my shelter. I laughed. Thunder cracked overhead, but I was not afraid. I took off my clothes and ran naked, exulting, into the storm. Silver needles stabbed my shoulders, my breasts, my upturned face. The mud squelched between my bared toes. I ran through the billowing wet curtains. More thunder, as though the sky itself would split asunder. I was not afraid. Since the night I had drowned, almost drowned, I knew that my mother's spirit watched over me. I danced, arms upraised, with the rain. I felt its streamlets drip off my chin, run between my breasts, pool in my navel. Water cascaded down my back at the tail of my soppy thick mass of hair. I stood with feet planted in the muddy earth and let the rain beat upon me, as it would beat upon a rock. And, in the far distance, I saw him.

He wore a hooded cloak and was walking towards my cottage. I felt a moment of resentment that this man should arrive now. But business was business. I went back to the cottage, the rain now only wet. I would charge him a few coins extra, nonetheless. I towelled myself as dry as I could, tying up my hair, and pulled on my dress. Then I sat on a high stool in the verandah with one musket across my lap, the other just inside, and waited. The pistol was inside, under my pillow, as usual. The cloaked figure was already much nearer. Even through the flinging downpour, I saw that his gait was sure and steady, as though the wind and rain did not rush upon him. He was a big man. When he arrived and pulled down his hood to reveal his bald head, I remembered him from my mother's funeral.

He had not changed at all in the twelve years. He was even wearing the same brown tunic under his cloak. Still I could not see his eyes, which were mere slits in a carved and expressionless face. But he felt familiar to me. I put down my musket and nodded. He did not speak but merely offered a leather pouch which, when I opened it, proved full of gold coins. I did not question whether he was a free man or not, although I did not see how this could be since, after some argument about ten years before, the settlers had passed a law saying all Negroes and their offspring were slaves for life. But there was nothing servile about this Negro: it occurred to me that, though he had not spoken a word, he was the first man to say plainly what he had come for. I stood up and leaned close. There was no smell to him save rain-wetted leather. I took him inside.

He removed only his cloak. Beneath it, he wore the same tunic I had seen him in all those years ago. He never spoke; I assumed he did not know English. That he could not speak never crossed my mind: there was too much authority in his carriage. He turned his palm upward, and I removed my dress. He moved his forefingers downward, and I lay back on the bed and pulled my knees to my chest so he could see my privates. He remained standing at the side of my bed. I opened myself with two forked fingers and, when I looked, saw his phallus rising under his skirt. Were it not for that sign, I would not even have known he was aroused. His eyes were still hooded. I did not mind. I never took any pleasure in the act. I merely did what my customers wished. I pretended to pleasure myself with my fingers; the Negro remained stolid. I thought for a moment that perhaps men from Africa behaved differently. But then I decided not: that he had paid me a whole bag of gold showed that African men were just as subject to their cocks as English men. His forefinger moved in a circle. I turned over, propping myself on elbows and knees, and thrust my buttocks boldly at him. Now he touched me for the first time, his fingers tracing my spine from base to neck. I shivered. I wondered why he had not removed his gloves; but had he been wearing gloves? And, as I thought this, his hand gripped the back of my neck with terrible force and his other hand grabbed my thick hair and pulled back sharply. The crack resounded in the centre of my brain, and darkness enclosed me.

Awaking, as always, as from a black dream. Through the window, the setting sun painted red strokes of light across the cloud-sunk horizon. But I knew 'twas not the same evening. A day of death had passed, perhaps even three. But a different death: this time my unknotted soul a net that had caught strange fish from that uncharted sea. The Shadowman – I knew his name as soon as I awoke – had gone. I awoke, sprawled in bed as though I had merely overslept. A slow gathering of wits, then a harsh roll to my frightened feet. Why had he not killed me? Always he had before, he alone having that power over me. But I was still myself – or was I? Now fear unleashed panic, and I scrambled to the brass-framed mirror hanging on the wall. Other phantom faces swam there briefly – a pug-nosed man with dark hair and a red mouth, a blonde-haired man with face of an angel and the gangrene gaze of a devil, and a brown-skinned boy with high cheekbones and an expression of heartbreaking sadness. Then 'twas just my own face with jewelgreen, staring eyes. But I feel these other ghosts tangled inside me, flapping like strangely familiar fish. My revived body feels strange, too lumpy all over save between my legs, where I feel an awful absence.

Rage rose within me like a high and vicious tide. 'Twas the Shadowman who had done this to me! And he had done worse than not kill me: he had raped me! He who was my mortal enemy – no, worse again: he who was my immortal enemy. I looked around for my machete, and on the table I saw the leather pouch, gold gleaming in its undrawn mouth. He had left his payment. I picked up the pouch, fingers nudging the mouth wider. Coins clinked with gentle music. 'Twas not a fortune, but 'twas plenty. My rage ebbed. The Shadowman had killed me, but he had left me myself this time. I did not know why. Perhaps to show me that he given up pursuing me? Perhaps it was because I was now a woman? I did not know. I knew only that, because I was now a woman, it would be madness to pursue him. What chance had I, if Adam Colon and Antam Goncalves had both failed in face-to-face battle?

There came a knocking on my door. Automatically, I smoothed back my hair, checked my appearance quickly in the mirror. Then I opened the door with a bright, false smile. Two men stood without, sailors by the look of them. They were young, with nervous eyes. I invited them in. They said they had been exploring the countryside and had happened upon my cottage, were hoping for some bread and cheese. They would pay for it. As if I had not heard all this before. They were shipmates. But one wanted to explore the coast. Could he return in a half-hour? I could feed his mate in the meantime; he would eat when he returned. I smiled inside myself at these absurd games. Always these encounters were a game, sometimes tense, always the outcome known. The advantage always was mine, though. I merely had to play it as much as possible. This time, though, advantage did not seem to matter. I felt all-powerful, although there were two of them. Especially because there were two of them. My wrists were like blades, my breasts felt full, the nipples painfully hard. The groove between my legs was a full, empty purse. I said, ‘No one needs to go anywhere.'

They acquiesced, readily. Though there were two of them, I was not their slave. Because there were two of them, they were my slaves. I told them what to do, in a voice that brooked no disobedience. It was my voice, but Antam Gonçalves' voice too. They did me, in every orifice, in every position and then I made them do each other. That voice, with its undertone of cruelty, came from Adam Colon. The sailors had no objection, being shipmates. The satisfaction, the joy, I felt watching them was all my own. Only now did I understand why men parted with their hard-earned coin for this. I had not known how deep the roots of lust lay in men's souls. 'Twas all-consuming, undeniable, this need that filled the mind as a stared flame fills the eye with swirling colour. I came, and I came again, and yet again. My entire body burned with a most delicate, a most intense, fire. The rushes of swooning pleasure, the tingling of fingertips and toes, the almost painful sensitivity of skin – all this consumed me, as wood burns down to ash.

When I was done, they were finished. I let them leave without paying. They wished to stay the night, but my lust was spent and I wished to be alone. I told them they could camp in the copse or down on the beach. They did not protest. I commanded them. It felt wonderful.

I slept. This Shadowman could not finally kill me. Thrice had he tried and thrice had I returned. He had even spared me the rebirth on this occasion, I knew not why. But I knew now what I had to do in order to finally escape him. And the bag, plus my savings buried in a deep hole out back, would help me to accomplish it.

I had not been to the other side of Barbados in years. It was like returning to a different land. Where once there had been open fields planted only with the cotton and cocoa trees, now the fields were covered with rows and rows of undulating green cane-arrows. Behind this sea of spears lay the Great Houses I have mentioned, with outlying buildings, and stone windmills that squatted weirdly on the land. I saw many Negroes working in the fields and among the buildings, watched over by a few English men, who wore hats with wide-floppy brims and always carried a gun and a whip.