The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (29 page)

‘How so?' he asked.

I gave him my sweetest smile. ‘Why, father, 'twas you who taught me to fuck when I was just ten years of age. Without that early education, I might never have gone into this business.'

Bartleby turned red. ‘You were not my daughter!' he said.

‘Would it have made a difference?' I asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

He did not answer.

I expected him to get up and leave. But he merely sat there in glowering silence. I suppose 'twas a matter of pride: to leave would have been an admission of shame. Inside, I burned with a cold, surprising rage. As with Hamilcar, I had not thought of Bartleby in years. But, seeing him now, all the old hate rose inside me. Had he in fact left at that point, I think I would have followed him at once and killed him. 'Twould have been easy: I had the skills now, and he was old. Instead, I chose a more cruel fate for him.

I said, ‘But I am not vexed at thee, Bartleby. I like this work. And I earn more than any milkmaid or mistress.'

He watched me quizzically. I said, ‘'Tis better that a woman learn of lovemaking when she is barely ripe. It makes her more skilled. Especially when she had a good teacher.'

His gaze softened, became curious. ‘You found it good then?' he said, thickly.

‘Of course,' I said, touching his hand. ‘Even after all these years, I think of it often. A woman cannot forget her first time.'

‘No,' he agreed.

I said, ‘And to prove it, I shall offer thee a special treat.'

‘A treat?'

‘Two women. Free. To do anything you wish.'

Bartleby's gaze now had that intent yet faraway expression which by now was so familiar to me. ‘Truly?' he said.

‘Truly. Go upstairs and wait. We shall be up shortly.'

‘We?'

‘I want to watch.'

He went out, grinning nastily, and I went to the kitchen to get two girls who worked there. I took them upstairs and watched while they fucked Bartleby until he was delirious with pleasure. Afterwards, I walked with him a little way into the night.

He said, with some difficulty, ‘'Twas good of you.'

I said, ‘Not as good as you think.'

‘Eh?'

‘The two women you were just with worked as harlots until a few months ago. But I have put them to work in the kitchen until they begin to show signs.'

‘They are with child?' he said, confused.

I laughed and turned to face him. ‘No, Bartleby. They have the syphilis.'

I saw his face darken in the moonlight. ‘You lie!'

I shrugged. ‘You will know in a few months. Perhaps weeks.'

He tried to strike me, but I easily evaded him and ran back, laughing, to my inn.

It took four years for Bartleby to die, although he spent three of those years locked in his house hiding his sores. 'Twas good timing anyway, for I had planned to quit: the career of a harlot, even an immortal one, cannot long persist after her twenties. When Bartleby finally died, I claimed his estate. There was no difficulty. My claim was rightful, and I had influence. The plantation was not one of the more prosperous ones in the island, Bartleby not being a good owner, but so powerful a King was Sugar that even a badly-managed estate returned significant profits. The money I got from the sale, plus my own savings, was more than sufficient. The last part of my plan was simple: I got an old buccaneer drunk one night, took him to the loft, and taunted him when his phallus stayed limp. He drew his dagger and stabbed me through the heart. Learning well from Adam Colon, I had converted my assets to gold and pounds and arranged to be buried in a shallow grave. A few days later, disguised as a man, I sailed to England where I had already had an agent purchase a property for me just outside London. It tore my heart to leave Barbados, the only home I had ever known, but as I looked back at the receding shore and saw the stocky figure in his brown tunic standing under a palm tree, I knew I had no choice. If I stayed on the island, or anywhere in the West Indies, the Shadowman would find me. In the Mother Country, also an island but far bigger from all reports, he would find it difficult to track me. Most importantly, he was black: he would be noticeable in England, would almost certainly be thrown in gaol. I sailed out of the West Indies feeling truly safe for the first time in three and a half centuries.

England turned out to be not what I had expected. Indeed, I must confess that after only three years in the Mother Country, I was seriously wondering if safety was worth it. The very climate was oppressive to me: cold air, grey skies, continual drizzle. I missed the bright sunshine of the tropics, the heavy downpours that were like a cleansing. The English countryside I liked, with its downs and the water meadows, the little streams you could picnic by and the distant castles. Yet, though I lived outside the city, the place still seemed too full of houses and cobbled streets and pale-skinned people. I missed the open spaces, the freeing flatness, of Barbados. I went into the city only to go to the playhouses, and then only when they were doing the plays of Master William Shakespeare. I liked
The Tempest
,
Othello
and
Romeo and Juliet
especially. But, although I enjoyed their theatre, I did not take to the English people. I felt foreign among them. They smiled at my speech and told me I was clearly Creole, as though 'twere an insult. I never understood the insult. They had thick legs, as though the cold air had pinched their flesh into white dough. All of them stank, either of dirt or of perfume, according to their class. When London burned in 1666, I regret to say it gladdened my heart to see the fire leaping monstrous against the dark sky. In the nigh twenty years I lived in the Mother Country, the memories of the fire are the only ones that remain clearly with me: the houses at the end of London Bridge all aflame, St. Magnus Church and most of Fish Street only blackened wall and timbers, hordes of people removing their goods by horses and cart and on their very backs, flinging their possessions into the Thames or bringing them into lighters that lay off like a school of jostling fish, sick people being carried away in their very beds, and over it all drops of flame carried on the high winds, as though the very fire wept. But the only creatures I felt truly sorry for were the pigeons, which were loath to leave their houses and hovered over windows and balconies. Some of them lingered too long and got their wings alight and fell like burning embers to the ground.

I stayed in this land, unhappily, until my forty-ninth year. But I had moved to Liverpool by then, for rumours were being bruited about my persistent youth in London. There was even talk of witchcraft. And 'twas in that city on a winter's morning when I glanced out of my lead-paned window to see a man looking up at my house from across the way. He was dressed in a brown fur coat but his bald head was uncovered. His skin was so white it seemed to match the snow on the ground. His lips were red, his eyes cold slits set deep in his shaven skull. His features were the same, African, but his now pale skin gave him an appearance of arrogant sensuality, so he would have been taken for Spanish or Greek. I fell back, almost fainting from terror, and when I recovered sufficiently to look through the window again he had vanished.

The following month, I sailed on a ship from the Liverpool harbour back to Barbados. The ghosts were louder in me now. I ignored them. If I had to die again, I wished to die in my native land. But I confess that fear was clamped like a cold fist around my heart. I kept thinking of when I was Adam Colon. I remembered my man's body then: strong and swift and sure. I had been a trained soldier. Yet the Shadowman had killed me with my sword in my hand. What chance did I have then in this frail female form?

My previous thought – that the Shadowman had three times failed to stop me being reborn – now provided no comfort. Why did he pursue me so relentlessly, seeking me out even across oceans? How could I stand against his terrible power? I could not look to God for help. Not only was I a fallen woman, but God had clearly washed His hands of this battle. I felt like Job, suspecting that perhaps God had made a wager on the outcome. If that were so, then my fate was in my own hands. My biggest disadvantage was I did not know my enemy. He knew me. But, in a sense, perhaps he did not know me, either. I thought of the time he had killed me when I was twenty-one. Perhaps he had been seeking a method of killing me so I would not rise from the dead. And he had failed.

This thought exercised my mind until the ship sailed into the bay off Bridgetown.

I went back to the cottage on the western side of the island. It had remained unoccupied and fallen into disrepair but I made it habitable. One way or the other, I did not anticipate needing it for very long. I spent the following months walking: along the beaches, through the forests, and among the growing sugar plantations. The rustling forests of canes with their sweet juice seemed to me like a blight upon the land. The royal palms still stood proudly, tall and elegantly thin, as did the traveller's-tree with its unfolded fan and half-folded leaves. I passed the yellow-and-green croton, picked the pink flowers of the bouganvillea, rested against the small sturdy trunks of the palm trees. This was the land I had known since I was born as Guiakan, the Preserver, whose people had now vanished from these islands. Time had moved on and I had moved with it. Now the whites ruled here and the blacks worked here and nobody lived here. But that was not quite true: I lived here. I had done so for three lifetimes, not counting Antam Gonçalves's. With some astonishment, I found myself almost grateful that the Shadowman had killed me in that life, so I could be reborn a Creole. But it would mean nothing unless I could continue as I was. And the thought that had been exercising my mind since I sailed from England now flowered into a clear, cold acknowledgement: only as Sarah Wiltshire had I once had a real chance to kill the Shadowman.

When he entered my cottage some months later, on a moonlit night, I lay naked on the bed awaiting him. His skin was black once again, and a silver spike protruded from the fist of his right hand. The yellow flame of the oil lamp printed a streak down its gleaming length, turning the spike partly gold. I ran a lecherous finger over the slit between my legs. I was fifty years of age but I had still the unsagging flesh of a healthy thirty-year-old. The Shadowman came forward, but his expression did not change. His phallus did not rise beneath the skirt of his tunic. Fear coiled within me, but I smiled my sweetest smile and spread my legs farther apart. And, as he loomed over me, I sat up and gave myself into his embrace, resting my head against his rock-hard breast. I sensed his spiked hand rising behind me and I pulled out the pistol I had hidden under my pillow and shot him in the heart. He grunted in surprise, then his hand fell like a thunderbolt. Regret seared me like flame: at my greatest moment of need, my greatest power had failed me.

In my dying moments I wondered if I would be reborn. I wondered who I would be next.
I hope I come back as a man
, I thought as the now-familiar darkness washed over me, carrying away my soul like a piece of broken wood to the light beyond.

Mr. Avatar's fourth account showed me that his case was more complex than I had initially thought. There was a definite issue involving his father. This was shown by the incestuous rape by the stepfather (‘Bartleby'), the meeting with the natural father (‘Benard'), and even the relationship with the rebel slave (‘Hamilcar').

At our fourth consultation, I spoke with Mr. Avatar about his relationship with his stepfather. This talk was not very revealing. He did not declare himself to be unusually close or unusually distant from the man who had raised him. There was the Oedipus complex, which is present even in males towards their biological father. Mr. Avatar seemed to have a quite normal relationship with his stepfather. I did not trust what he told me. His written accounts showed that he was quite adept at hiding his true past.

The fourth account, although confirming my earlier diagnosis (abandonment issues related to his mother) also added confusion about his sexual identity to his other identity issues. Mr. Avatar's self-portrayal as a female prostitute suggested strong, but repressed, homosexual desires. This had been implied since the first account, in his relationship with ‘Caon'.

‘You mentioned before that you have no male friends,' I said. ‘Why is that?'

‘Most men aren't too bright,' he answered.

‘Surely that isn't the only reason,' I said.

He said, ‘Well, I do have what you might call friends, both male and female. Is just that I don't use the word loosely. A friend is someone who knows your true self, and at least some of your deepest secrets. Me, I have several selves, and I certainly don't go around telling people I'm immortal.'

‘I see.'

‘But I am closer to my female friends than my male ones.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it easier to be emotionally intimate with women than with men. My relationships with men are primarily intellectual.'

‘You don't think your relationships with men have other dimensions?'

He smiled at this.

‘You mean I might have an unconscious desire to take man?'

‘Well, don't be offended, but there are suggestions of repressed homosexuality in your accounts.'

‘I'm not offended. When I was a woman, naturally my attraction was for men. And I did have some sexual experiences with men when I was in my twenties in this life. That's because my past selves were all tangled up with my present one. I hadn't matured when I started regaining my memories. But I'm male in this life, and by my late twenties I had come to terms with my pasts. So my memories from when I was female don't condition my present sexual orientation.'

‘Do you regret your experiences with other men?'

‘No. I don't regret anything in my present life.'

‘Do you think homosexuality is wrong?'