The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (43 page)

That dislocation, of time rather than space, is oddly the more terrifying experience. And, sometimes, in the midst of my waking activities, I have the same feelings of dislocation descend upon me, so that my own drawing room seems suddenly unfamiliar. Worse yet, I seem sometimes to hear the whisper of voices, speaking words which I understand perfectly, but which are neither French nor English. I have not had such experiences since I was a boy.

Worst of all, though, is a new vision that plagues me: the image of a tall, powerfully-built African who appears both in my dreams and my waking visions. I call him African, not Negro, because he is clearly no slave. He is always dressed in a brown tunic and leather strap sandals. There are bands of a dull metal, like copper, on his forearms. His head is shaven and his eyes hooded. But that he is no slave, not even a free Negro, is conveyed to me most clearly by his bearing: he carries himself with a self-assurance which no Negro in these islands ever displays.

I have no idea who, or what, he is. He is often present in the background of my dreams, an onlooker who seems an inexorable part of my dream world. I fear him yet also trust him, and there seems no paradox in this. I believe he is part of my childhood, for I have a memory of just such a man helping my papa when we fled from St. Domingue to Trinidad to escape Toussaint' murderous hordes. I was twelve years old at the time, and in my adolescent years, I believe – though I cannot claim absolute certainty – that I several times saw this man watching me. Perhaps he was some relation to my mother, though when I asked my papa about him, just before he died, he said he could not remember who I was talking about.

Papa has been dead ten years now, and in the years since I have several times seen – or think I have seen – this strange figure slipping through the trees, or as a shadowy figure on the road at dusk, or walking over the far fields. I never see him clearly, and so I have christened him the Shadowman. I am sure he is not real, though I am equally sure that he is a real memory. But I am yet to figure out why he has impacted on my imagination with such force, so that I see him even in my waking hours. Perhaps this over-activity of imagination is a usual experience for other people, particularly those who are as mentally active as I. But, of course, no one ever speaks of their imaginations running wild, as I do not. The reason is obvious: those who have been given the supreme gift of imagination are often considered mad by their fellow man. They are considered dreamers, eccentrics, fools, who while away their time looking at the clouds instead of attending to the practical business of the world. Pascal himself wrote: ‘It is that deceitful part of man. Being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false. I do not speak of fools, I speak of the wisest men; and it is among them that imagination has the greatest gift of persuasion.'

Pascal's passionate denunciation shows, I believe, that he had the same fears as I. In any case, I disagree with him. In my opinion, imagination is man's greatest virtue, the single most potent cause of mankind's greatest works, the root of his arts, his philosophy, his sciences. It is the eye that God gave us that we might conceive of Him.

Yet we should not forget that no one can ever truly see God. Moses saw a burning bush, Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt. Were any man to look upon the face of God, we would be blinded by His glory, our mortal minds shattered by His magnificence. And so I ask if, in all my researches and meditations, I have come so close to true knowledge, which is the same as Divine Knowledge, that I tether on the edge of madness myself?

August 15, 1828—

Dinner this evening consisted of pea soup and cassava bread seasoned with red pepper, lemon juice and piece of bacon. Afterwards I read for some hours. I finished
Observations in Husbandry
, by Edward Lisle Esq., then began René Descartes's
Meditations on First Philosophy
, which I have long wanted to read. He is called the father of modern philosophy, and from what I have read thus far, the title is well-deserved. (Interestingly, rumour has it that Descartes was a mulatto.) His style is remarkably clear and lucid, yet his thoughts lose no profundity because of that. One passage I found quite fascinating, because it rebuts Pascal's opinion on imagination more effectively than I ever could. Descartes writes:

If we suppose that there is a body so associated with my mind that the mind can ‘look into' it at will, it's easy to see how my mind might get mental images of physical objects by means of my body. If there were such a body, the mode of thinking that we call imagination would only differ from pure understanding in one way: when the mind understood something, it would turn ‘inward' and view an idea that it found in itself, but, when it had mental images, it would turn to the body and look at something there that resembled an idea that it had understood by itself or had grasped by sense. As I have said, then, it is easy to see how I get mental images, if we suppose that my body exists. And, since I do not have in mind any other equally plausible explanation of my ability to have mental images, I conjecture that physical objects probably do exist. But this conjecture is only probable. The distinct idea of bodily nature that I get from mental images does not seem to have anything in it from which the conclusion that physical objects exist validly follows.

I do not grasp Descartes's idea fully. But I do know that my own body possesses unusual attributes, which, if Descartes is correct in his assumptions, may well explain the even more unusual attributes of my mind.

August 17, 1828 —

Looking back at all I have written, I find that, after a mere four entries, my diary has taken a morbid turn that I cannot countenance. For it conveys a false impression. Yes, I do admit the possibility of my losing my grip on reality, and, yes, I do admit to a perennial concern about such a possibility. Yet it is this diary itself that may negate the possibility. After all, what is insanity but a mind whose thoughts are in chaos – a mind without discipline, without control? And what does a diary impose upon its writer's mind but the need for discipline, order and control?

September 2, 1828—

The two-week intermission between my last entry and this one does not mean my resolve has already begun to falter. Rather, I have got into a rhythm of thought and writing, and now must discipline myself against writing too quickly and too much. Mundanity, triviality, superficiality – those three besetting faults of most diarists – would be the inevitable result otherwise.

In my entry of Aug. 9, I wrote of the Shadowman: ‘I am yet to figure out why he has impacted on my imagination with such force.' It is this question that has mainly occupied my mind in my spare hours for the past two weeks. It seems to me that the image of the Shadowman can hardly be unconnected to my other main hallucinations – to wit, the several voices I hear speaking in my mind and the different surroundings I sometimes awake to.

Descartes provides me with a useful insight on this matter: ‘I find in myself innumerable ideas of things which, though they may not exist outside me, cannot be said to be nothing. While I have some control over my thoughts of these things, I do not make the things up: they have their own real and immutable natures.'

Now it is reasonable to assume that I am neither insane nor plagued with demons (for surely Father Pierre would have remarked on my condition in either case). That being so, it is also reasonable to assume that the voices, my dreams, and the Shadowman are all expression of an imagination attempting to express longings which cannot be expressed in any normal manner. What would such longings be? My feeling on awaking that time and space are out of joint may well be a dissatisfaction with the world as it is – a dissatisfaction that, obviously, I cannot as a respectable Negro express. The voices may reflect a desire to assume other roles. After all, we all have different selves to a greater or lesser degree: the self we present to the world and our private self being the most obvious split. We also present different selves to different people: I speak and behave quite differently to the Governor than to my butler, and differently to my butler than to a field slave. So, perhaps, given my more powerful imagination, that characteristic expresses itself in voices in my head; or perhaps all people have such voices but never mention them, in the same way one does not speak about one's activities in the privy.

Which brings me to the Shadowman. He, I suspect, is a culmination of all the previous hallucinations. He comes from a different world, as witnessed by his odd dress. He is obviously a figure of power and authority. In other words, this Shadowman may well be my ideal self. And in writing this I note that he always stays in the distance. In other words, I consider my own ideal to be unattainable. But this does not dismay me. On the contrary, I think it merely reflects my sturdy common sense. It is that common sense that accounts for my success; it is my common sense that will prevent me falling prey to madness.

September 9, 1828—

As if to prove me wrong, the Shadowman this very evening stepped out of the shadows. But before I describe our encounter, I must give an account of my day, for what I did beforehand may have some bearing on what transpired.

I attended an auction at the home of Monsieur Michel Rogét. I have sufficient slaves at present, and normally buy at a price agreed beforehand when slaves are brought in. Prices continue to rise – a sign of the growing strength of the Abolition Movement in the Mother Country. But the talk was that Monsieur Rogét had some very special property, and so more out of curiosity than any wish to buy I attended. But my curiosity was only in part about Rogét's goods. Truth to tell, I was more than a little surprised to have been invited to his auction.

Rogét has a reputation as a particularly cruel slavemaster, in a land where kindness is not a noted quality among the planter class. That is why, although last year the trade in slaves was declared piracy and therefore punishable by death, he continues to aid and abet. While he has never displayed any malice toward me personally, there has been rumour of him punishing runaway male slaves with a device he had had specially made. It is an iron chair with front legs in the shape of iron boots. The slave's lower legs are put in them and clamped in place. Rogét then pours boiling water into the boots, often continuing until the flesh is melted off their bones. If he is feeling merciful, he then pours the boiling water down their throats, so they die. His mildest punishments are perverted humiliations, such as making male slaves suck one another's penises or sticking phallus-shaped rods into their anuses. I also heard that he has trained his hunting dogs to mount female slaves if they displease him (or even if they do not) and, if he is not satisfied with the women's ‘performance', the dogs tear out the women's throats at a signal from him.

In my opinion, it is planters like Rogét who do most to strengthen the abolition lobby in England. Not that the other planters do much to stem the growing tide of public opinion there. Nearly all of them refused to support the Amelioration. It's simple measures – like not flogging women, giving male slaves a day's respite before flogging, not splitting up families, keeping a record of punishments – were all resisted. The planters here have argued that if they give an ell, they'll lose a yard. They also resent that the Amelioration plan was introduced by absentee planters who live in England.

My feeling, though, is that in particular they did not wish to keep a written record of their punishment of the slaves. On many plantations, the crack of the whip is virtually incessant. The planters know that if a punishment book ever fell into the hands of an abolitionist or was otherwise published, the calumny would crack the skies. I also think the planters themselves would be personally uncomfortable to record their own infliction of punishments. To whip a slave and be done with it is one thing; to have it permanently written down must eventually nag any normal man's conscience.

Not a man like Rogét, though. The stories about him were, to me, so incredible that I had gone to some trouble to confirm them, through the doctor who tended to Rogét's slaves and through some slaves who knew the slaves on his plantation (named, I suppose, with deliberate black humour – Egypt). This monstrous man is of medium height, slimly-built, with thinning grey hair. Although he is probably not much above 40, his face is a nest of wrinkles from which pale-blue eyes peer curiously. He had always spoken to me with strict courtesy at social functions or when we met in town, but I felt that his inhuman callousness towards his Negroes must extend even to someone like myself. Thus, once I confirmed that the other planters were indeed going to be there, I made sure to attend. Not that I feared Rogét, for no one knew my deepest secret. And, as it turned out, it was fortunate that I did attend.

Rogét had somehow managed to obtain some very special slaves indeed. Here was a young man who could add figures like lightning. No matter how large the numbers, he would spout an answer in seconds, and much slower checks with pen and paper revealed him always to be accurate. Yet, strangely, he was otherwise even more dull and speechless than the most vapid Negro. There was a young woman who played several musical instruments, from flute to lute, and had the voice of an angel. There was a boy who made up witty (and often amazingly vulgar) rhyming couplets on the spot on any topic named. More mundanely, but valuable nonetheless, were three skilled boilermen, a carpenter, two masons and two cooks (the last whose superb skills we were able to experience first-hand).

None of these slaves I would have spent money on, for my success has been built largely on my frugality. But then Rogét brought out his
piece de resistance
, which he had kept hidden in an adjoining room while the bidding went on.

She was brought in by two muscular slaves, dressed in leather skirts and sandals, like Roman soldiers. Rogét liked his melodrama, but in this case it was hardly misplaced. She was a quadroon, but such a quadroon as I had never seen. Her complexion was so creamy she could have been white – only the faintest duskiness, like a slight curdle of the cream, betrayed her Negro blood. Her hair was straight and straw-yellow, but its thick ropiness again showed her mixture. She had grey eyes, cold as a rainy sky, and her face was a heart-shaped, heart-stopping oval. But her features were clearly negroid: full, sullen lips and flattened nose with broad nostrils.