The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (59 page)

My grandfather's indentureship had been for five years. At the end of that time, instead of returning back to India, he took the passage money and indentured himself for another five years. Soon after this, he married my grandmother, who at fifteen years of age was five years younger than him. She had recently come from India, and was of the vaisya, or merchant, caste.

My father, the last of seven children, was born in 1860. There were four boys and three girls. All were born in Guiana, yet all believe that India is our true home. It is difficult to understand this unless you actually hear them talk and see how they act. My parents spoke Bhojpuri and, while most of my older siblings could understand or even speak it also, I picked up only a few words. But it was me my mother sent to a pundit to learn Hindi. I was the ‘bright child' and I took to the language rapidly – something about its rhythm makes me feel as though I understand myself and even the universe more deeply when I read and speak and think in that tongue. Yet I have never been to India – still, in my mind's eye I see its pale sky and dry, dusty plains. Guiana, with its deep-blue sky and flooded fields, is for many Indians only a place to work. When they look at the shimmering waters of the Berbice river, it is as if they see the Ganges. When they pause to wipe the sweat from their brows while planting rice, it is not the green slopes of the Pakaraima Mountains that confront their gaze, but the Himalayas. The presence of the other people – the Amerindians, the Portuguese, the British and, especially, your people – always remind us that our forefathers were the last to come to this unwelcoming land. Their bodies are here, but their spirits live elsewhere.

I realise now that this is not true of me. Indeed, I would not have been with you if I shared the typical attitudes of my race. I admit that, when I was a younger man, I shared the prejudices of most Indians. But it was not an active dislike, merely an acceptance of the status quo. And even as a boy, I used to play cricket with the Negro boys. This is important, because cricket was our main activity when we were not working and, on the pitch, race does not matter. The only things that matter there is if you could bat, bowl or field. Rivalry was between the estates, and every estate had teams of Indians and Africans playing together. And when, at twenty-one, they called me for tryouts for the national team, it was one of the greatest moments of my life.

Believe that I am not boasting when I say I was (and probably still could be, if I trained) Test cricket level at bowling. I had the physical power, the determination, the co-ordination, and pace from the pitch which made me quite dangerous. Most importantly, I had the intelligence. Many men have the qualities I have listed, but first-rate bowling depends on knowing where to pitch the ball on a particular run-up, when to quicken the pace or slow it down, according to the batsman you are facing – anyway, to cut a long story short, it was because of cricket that I began seeing myself as Guyanese, not Indian. So, were it not for cricket, perhaps we would have never been together.

But what I have never told you was that it was a specific incident which changed my attitude. This was when I almost died. Just before I went for tryouts, I was playing nearly every day, making sure I'd be in top form. One evening, just before dusk, a stranger came wanting to take a knock. He was very tall, bald-headed, looked as strong as a bison. My first thought when I saw him standing with huge folded arms was that Rawan, the villain of the best-loved Hindu epic, the
Ramayan
, had incarnated on earth and, as he had fought the great king Rama on the plains of the Ganges, had come to do battle with me on the cricket field of Georgetown. I was batting. The first ball he bowled I just barely blocked. The second one came even faster, bounced high and hit me on my breastbone. Em, I actually FELT my heart stop in my chest. My throat locked, I could not draw a breath, and then I blacked out.

Later, I found out I was only unconscious for five minutes. I say ‘unconscious', but I don't think I had merely fainted. When I was out, I had the most vivid dream I have ever had in my life. I dreamed I was an egret, flying above the green plain and forests with their silver lakes. Then I was an anaconda, sliding through the grasses of the Rupununi savannah. And then I was a sloth, hanging easily from the tree branches, searching for fruit and insects. Lastly, I was a cayman, resting on the muddy river bank, swimming downstream. I remember dreaming of my mother as a young woman, with her yellow skirt wrapped around her legs, as she scrubbed clothes on the smooth boulders of the riverside, her stomach already swollen with a child I knew was me. And I always remember coming to and seeing the sea of concerned faces above me – all Negro. The stranger had disappeared. Everybody said he had run off, frightened that he had killed me. I never have thought so – he did not look like a man who was scared of anything.

That dream, that experience, changed my life more profoundly than anything real that has ever happened to me. When I awoke, I felt for the first time that I was truly part of Guiana, I knew its earth, air and water. I knew that the Negro people were also part of this land, and that all our ancestors, Indian and African, were far away and indifferent. So I have always wanted to thank that man, who came so suddenly out of the shadows, for making me appreciate life so much more from a young age.

Even so, I did not think I would miss Guiana so much, yet hardly a night passes when I do not dream of home. My dreams are very vivid – of the glistening paddy-fields and patches of woodland. No other country I have been to over here has as many birds as Guiana. They fly through my dreams at night – the jacanas with their pale-yellow wings mincing on the lily leaves, the egrets striding through the paddies, the snail hawks calmly writing in the blue sky, and the dozens of military starlings – do you remember how their crimson breasts flash like lights against the green? Sometimes when I awake in the morning, I hear the call-notes of the tanagas as they hunt for insects and, before I open my eyes, see the amazing blueness of their feathers.

I often dream I am with you, in the interior. I see the miles of grassland, the scattered shrubs, the occasional lake. I dream we are once again on the Rupununi, with its great banks of golden sand where the river curves, with its tacoubas lurking just under the surface and the great slabs of smooth, grey rock. And I often dream of that creek we sailed up, so mysterious, with its twisted trees forming a tunnel festooned with lichen, grey Spanish moss falling like waterfalls, the pink and magenta orchids that I picked for you. Remember how we could not even see the water at the edges of the creek because of the mat of flowers and green water lilies?

My point is: I know the difference between dream, memory, and reality. And I am glad for these dreams. They help me bear the reality of this war. And I am gladder still that we had that week in the interior. Only now do I realize that that week was the best time of my life and, if I die here, I die without regret because I once knew seven days of perfect happiness.

Yours,

Krishna

July 1, 1942

Dearest Em,

Still no letter from you. I still write every week. I have been in actual battle several times now. I have killed German soldiers. You were right about men – in war, it seems perfectly natural to kill. Yet there is always a psychic emasculation afterwards, a feeling of being in the grip of forces far greater than oneself. And I have the same sense of futility now that I did four and half centuries ago. To have such power on one's side, yet to feel that one's efforts are merely a drop in the ocean! Yet I constantly remind myself that enough drops do, in fact, make a raging sea. And we have right on our side. But right, as my many incarnations have taught me, only works with might. Perhaps I should not be writing of these things to you. Were I with you, I could prove the truth of my memories of past lives. As it is, I can only tell you what happened two weeks ago and assure that you that this was not hallucinations brought on by the stresses of war. I have to go, there's an attack happening even as I write, and I'm out of paper anyway. I love you.

Krishna

September 14, 1942

Dear Em,

Still no letter from you. I hope you are well. As far as possible, I will send my letters with other soldiers from now on – I won't always know someone going to the West Indies, but I think I'll be able to find someone who will know someone who will know someone stationed in Trinidad. So you should get my letters more regularly, and I won't have to bother with the Army censors either.

I am tired and miserable. We have been trying to advance our line for several days. That is how war works – we take some territory and try to hold on to it, the enemy tries to take it back. Who moves forward more and holds on longer is winning. Funny. You would think in war, in the midst of battle and death, one would gain a sense of the value of life. But all I feel is a sense of futility and that life is without meaning. To hold that at bay is the harder battle, and I could not do it were it not for the thought of you. Your letters, sparse though they are, are like gleaming talismans in this dark night.

I had an experience some weeks ago which I must tell you about. I have saved sheets and bought some with cigarettes so I can write you a long letter. I'll also bribe the sergeant to give special attention to getting this letter on the cargo plane – no guarantee he'll do it, of course.

We had just taken a key front – well, we had been told it was key – and were engaged in trying to hold on to it until reinforcements arrived. (They often do not.) Our battalions were doing quite well, but it was not very comfortable for the boys because the important front we had taken was mostly swampland. I had lain for seven hours in a horrible marsh, in reedy-smelling water into which I seemed to be interminably sinking, though it never covered me. But that was my world: faintly sulphurous water, the stars cold and indifferent in the black sky, and the mocking (so it seemed to me) croaks of the frogs.

As soon as dawn came, the Germans launched an all-out attack. I remember the crack-crack-crack of bullets a foot or two above my head and myself firing back – at those times, one's mind simply shuts down and you act as automatically as a machine-gun. Then, behind the gunfire, I heard a loud whistling sound in the air and I heard my sergeant screaming at us to retreat. But I had only got to my knees when the whole marsh seemed to leap at me. I remember flying through the air, and my mind was quite calm, my body felt almost lazy. I landed on swampy ground and I saw German helmets moving up on me from the distance and I knew I should get up and run but my body did not belong to me any more.

Then a pair of hands hauled me up from below my armpits and I was slung over a pair of broad shoulders. The soldier began running and I was astonished because he carried me as though I were the merest babe-in-arms. He ran with amazing speed towards the distant forest, and I must have blacked out because when next I awoke I was lying beneath a tree. My benefactor stood some distance off, back towards me, machine-gun at the ready. He was dressed in our uniform and, when he turned, I saw that it was the same man who had bowled me down when I was a youth. He looked exactly the same, as though the intervening years had never passed. He came and knelt in front of me, and only then I saw that I was badly wounded. The whole front of my uniform was soaked with blood and I felt strange inside my body, as though my organs had been moved out of place. My saviour, who had risked his life in vain, looked at me with hooded eyes.

I said, ‘I going to die?' and I was immediately vexed at myself for being so inane at such a moment. But the man shook his head. ‘Rest,' he said. His voice was deep yet whispery. I could not see not see the colour of his eyes and this bothered me. And, because I felt very tired, I rested. And, though the sun had not quite dispelled the morning mists, I seemed to see a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. I thought I was never going to wake.

I lay in that forest for two days, drifting in and out of consciousness. But I believe I was actually drifting out of life and death. My protector stayed on guard, bringing water to me. He moved in a strange way, very smoothly and, when he stood guard, he was always perfectly still, like a statue. At times, I saw him in my dreams, standing at the end of the tunnel, a black and massive shadow against the bright light. And, though the light seemed warm and comforting, I knew he stood there to prevent me walking through it.

On the morning of the third day, I awoke to find him gone. My uniform was stiff with blood. Yet I felt perfectly normal. When I checked, I found that there were no injuries anywhere on my body. Not even a scar. I was surprised, though I should have been flabbergasted. And, yes, I did wonder if I had dreamed or imagined the whole episode. But my uniform was tattered and blood-soaked.

As I say, I can offer you no proof that this actually happened. But remember how you used to always comment on the extraordinary smoothness of my skin? It was never something I noticed myself, but now I do recall how, even as a child, although the other boys always had scabbed knees and shins, I never did. I mean, I got the same cuts and insect bites they did, but when I tore my scabs they always healed in a day. I do not even have a scar anywhere on my body, remember? It appears that my abnormal healing ability works for more than scabs.

I have told you all this for a reason. Indeed, there is far more I have to tell you, concerning what I remember of past incarnations. But that I must save for when we meet again. There are two reasons I have told you as much as I have. First, you need not worry about me dying over here. Second, and more importantly, you and I can be together as we always wanted. Because, when I returned to camp later that day, the captain had already filled out my Killed in Action report. So you see what that means? When the war ends, I can arrange for us to start a new life together, free of the past. We can be together as we have always wished. I close with these words from India's greatest modern writer, the poet Tagore: