The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (61 page)

Bear this in mind if you can bring yourself to read the diary. I did not mean to sound blasé about evil. Surely you know I am not. You were brought up a Christian and, as you know, Christian theology's answer to the contradiction between God's omnipotence, goodness and the existence of evil, is ‘God moves in mysterious ways'. The Hindu answer may not be entirely satisfactory, but it is far better than THAT! And, as I said, Hinduism provides explanations for my own lives. On top of which, I can assure you that there are no atheists in war.

At any rate, I can no longer be part of it. Perhaps, if I see Germany winning, I will reconsider. But the Allies should triumph, now that America is committed. I do not know exactly how I will do this. But the opportunity will surely present itself – war, I have long observed, is a godsend for conmen.

Yours soon,

Krish

January 31, 1944

Dear Em,

I did it! I'm on my way to Trinidad. New name, new look. I've gotten a berth on a cargo ship named the
Hesperus
. Due in Trinidad on Feb 4. Phone the port the day before, they'll tell you what time we're due in. My new name is Adam Avatar. My new look... well, just look out for a green-eyed man. I cannot wait to be with you once again, after so many years!

Yrs VERY soon,

Krish

January 1, 1950

My dearest Em,

So once again we are writing letters to each other. My wattle hut is more comfortable than you would think. Reminds me of how I lived as Guiakan and Sarah and Mary-Anne after I became a pirate. Which is not to say I don't appreciate the modern conveniences, like insect repellent. The boat will come once a month with supplies, but I can always hunt if push comes to shove.

I spend my mornings cooking, cleaning and doing other chores. I've always been amazed how much time one can while away on housework. In the afternoon, I read. When the sun has cooled, I train. I run for miles, do katas with sword, stick and unarmed. Afterwards, I swim in the river, remaining close to the shore. As I float in the dark waters, I feel completely at peace, at one with the universe. Tulisadasa, the Shakespeare of India, has a verse in his
Ramacaritamanasa
: ‘Rama's holy lake puts an end to all the sin and sorrow of the Age of Kali, it drains away the fatigue of birth and death, gratifies gratification itself and destroys sin and pain and poverty and error. It destroys lust, anger, pride, and infatuation and builds wisdom and detachment. By reverently bathing in it, all traces of sin and remorse are banished from the heart.' For me, these words are about you, dearest Em. I have bathed in you. It is you who is my lake of Rama.

I know I told you this countless times before I left, but the past six years have been the best years of my lives. I have experienced more than any mortal man or woman could have in my centuries of existence. But I have never experienced true love. ‘Men who worship your lotus feet fall not into the stormy sea of rebirth with its suffering waves,' says the
Ramayan
. And, now that I have known this with you, I know there is nothing more important, nothing more ennobling, in all human existence. I love you as my wife, and I love Adaku as my daughter, and in that circle is contained the deepest purpose of life. So simple, yet so profound. And still so many people search for meaning everywhere except where it is.

Were it not for you, I would surely do again what I did as Adam Chardonbois: let the Shadowman kill me with his silver spike. You already know how much the war made me despair. The only ground on which I could excuse humankind's barbarism was that it was the only way the greater evil of Nazism could be defeated. Then Germany surrenders, the war is as good as over, and the United States drops the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

During the war, I thought I had despaired for humankind. But I did not truly know what despair was till that day. My immortality itself was now my greatest burden – the knowledge that, unlike fortunate mortals, I was condemned to return to this planet, where the landscape changed and men increased their powers daily, but the human spirit remained as petty as ever. We saw it as soon as we returned to Guiana, with Africans and Indians virtually at one another's throats, as though the just-concluded war had no lessons for them, as though they were not all living in the same land. And the looks we have got! Both sides hate us because our very appearance breaks the bigotry they both adhere to. That we are in love increases their outrage. Love is what they most hate. Is it any wonder that I despair?

And yet, even as I sank into this pit of darkness, I carried two lights with me: you and Adaku. And it was the both of you who allowed me to find my way out again. For I knew that, as long as the human race had such as you amongst it, the wick of hope was not snuffed.

But, Em, I can never truly express in my own words the true depth of my feelings for you. That is another of my great regrets: that in all my lives, I have never acquired the skills of the painter, composer or poet. So again I needs must borrow from Tagore, that you may have some inkling of what is in my heart:

Let thy love play upon my voice and rest on my silence.

Let it pass through my heart into all my movements.

Let thy love like stars shine in the darkness of my sleep and dawn in my awakening.

Let it burn in the flame of my desires and flow in all currents of my own love.

Let me carry thy love in my life as a harp does its music,

And give it back to thee at last with my life.

I love you. And I shall return to you.

Always,

Krish

March 3, 1950

Dearest Krish,

Your letter made me cry. But I am trying to be brave.

Six years! It seems to have passed so quickly. As have the years since we first met. Adaku is now a young woman, and my breasts have sagged. And you and I. So strange to think that I was a mere girl of twenty-two when we became involved. Stranger that, save for those white hairs you got during the war, you still look the same now as you did then. It was when I saw that you had not aged, that day on the docks, that I knew everything you had written was the truth. The curly hair, the cafe-au-lait complexion (which you foolishly thought would prevent me recognizing you) did not convince me as much as the lack of wrinkles on your face.

I hope you do survive this encounter, though I still think we should have faced it together. I keep thinking that that is the real mistake you have made in the past. I know that you would never put me or Adaku at risk. But I still think you should consider it and, if you think it may give you an advantage, return to Georgetown before your 50th birthday. (I know you won't, you stubborn mule!)

Whatever happens, I would not have missed knowing you and being with you. I think we have loved more, even during those years we were separated, than most people do who have been together for decades. Our marriage has given me emotional fulfilment, intellectual stimulation and a continual sense of wonder. (The sex hasn't been bad, either!) To have actually read the stories of some of your incarnations, for you to have told me of the others, to have seen your healing with my own eyes – I only feel sorry for those people who do not know what an extraordinary universe we live in! I feel truly blessed, and nothing can take that away.

I loved you as Krishna Singh, and I loved you more as Adam Avatar, the sum of your selves. Remember this when the Shadowman comes, and come back to me and Adaku.

Yours,

Em

April 5, 1950

Dearest Em,

Without wanting to sound overconfident, I must say that I have a sense of power – of invincibility, really – that I have never before experienced. It is not the rage of my first self or the bloodthirstiness of my second or even the arrogant superiority of my fifth and seventh incarnations. It is simply a clear knowledge of my own capabilities, matched to a cool assessment of my opponent's. The Shadowman is bigger than me, but that advantage is offset by my superior speed. Nor, judging from our last battle, is his martial technique especially developed. But these technical details are not the heart of the issue. What matter is motivation. It seems as though his killing me when I enter my fiftieth year is some kind of duty. I, on the other hand, am fighting for my life with you. That gives me an incomparable advantage.
Scribo ut supersum
, as I would have said when I was Adam Colon. And survive I will. The Shadowman shall not kill me this time. I promise you.

My only doubt lies in my not knowing what our eternal conflict is about. HE knows – always, he has found me when I am reborn and, always, he has been able to find me wherever I am on my fiftieth birthday. Moreover, I realize now that those times he has attacked me before my fiftieth year has always catalysed my regaining my past memories. So it seems he works to some plan, but what that plan might be I have no idea. And that is HIS big advantage. But I can hear your voice in my head now, Em: ‘Why don't you ask him?'

You know, I think I will. In all these centuries, he has spoken to me only twice, but one of those times was to tell me where to find my logbook. For some reason I cannot fathom, he WANTS me to know about my past. So who knows? Talk might work. And, yes, I hear your voice again: I'll be careful, I promise.

I have been doing a lot of reading, of course. The
Ramayan
gives me the greatest comfort at this time. Tulsidas, who was born in India when I was learning to hate those people who may have been descendants of people who left the subcontinent many aeons before, describes it as ‘a lake of merit that destroys all defilements and ever blesses the soul, granting wisdom and faith and washing away the filth of ignorance and illusion by its pure, clear waters brimful with love. Those who plunge with faith into it are never burnt by the scorching rays of the sun of birth and death.' And so I read and reread of the battle between Rama and Rawan, trying to find some clue as to how I may triumph over the Shadowman.

As for the other books, I cannot believe I did not read them before. Reading Tagore, Berkeley, Wordsworth, Blake, Jane Austen and Henry James was not a waste of time. And yet, immersed in the works of Sankara, Darwin, Einstein, Bertrand Russell, D.H. Lawrence and even P.G. Wodehouse, I feel as though I am discovering grander and unsuspected worlds. Einstein's Relativity Theory, which Russell explains with amazing lucidity, makes even my immortality seem commonplace. I have also read Russell's
In Praise of Idleness
,
ABC of Relativity
,
The Conquest of Happiness
. Simultaneously (not, apparently, that simultaneity really exists) I have been reading
The Rainbow
. I think it may well be the greatest novel ever written – Lawrence seems to go more deeply into the human soul than any other writer I have ever read. But, perhaps not coincidentally, of all these writers the passage that struck me most came from Sankara, who wrote the following five centuries before I walked out of a cave in the mountains of Haiti: ‘You never identify yourself with the shadow cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. Therefore, you should not identify yourself with this living body either.'

The feeling I get when reading these men is of being in contact with intellects, with creative spirits, qualitatively different from myself. With lesser lights, one feels at any rate that one is of the same species, that one partakes of the same divine spark. But in these men, that spark seems as a flame – the analytical metaphysics of Sankara, the mental clarity of Russell, the creative eloquence of Lawrence, and the deeper understanding of Darwin and Einstein of the physical world. Yet they are all mortals. And, laughing out loud in the middle of all this emptiness as I read Wodehouse's
Something Fresh
, I find myself once again thinking that the species is not so bad. And I realize that my physical immortality is trivial compared to the immortality of the mind.

I value this new knowledge for itself, mainly. But there are three other reasons I am so enthralled. Firstly, because I know for a fact that knowledge is all that I can carry beyond the grave. Second, because it seems to me that our shared love of knowledge is what has made our relationship such a constantly exciting one. (And, yes, the sex hasn't been bad, either!) And, three, I am NOT going to let the Shadowman take me out of this world just when it's starting to get interesting.

Always,

Krish

May 1, 1950

Krishna,

You must come home. There was a riot. Adaku was attacked in the street, coming home from school. I think she may have been raped. We need you, she needs you. You must come now.

Emily

August 6, 1950

My dearest Emily,

I can hear you in the bedroom trying not to let me hear you cry. I want to stop writing and come and hold you, but there is nothing that can be said that hasn't already been said. And I must finish this letter to you. Time grows short. I cannot stop. The guests will be here at eight, to provide your alibi, and I must be gone by then to do the deed. More than that, I fear that if I wait too long the Shadowman shall appear and forestall me. He has always seemed to know exactly what I am planning and where to find me. Outside, the forest is silent. I can see the moon over the top of the trees. I do not want to leave all this, I do not want to leave you, my love. But I must do this for Adaku.

Why do you cry? I know you have said you believe in my immortality, but I suppose some part of you still doubts. Nor can I blame you, though you have seen me rise from the dead. Or perhaps you are crying because, however I am reborn, I shall not be this self. But believe this, my love: I shall be my self. Believe. The
Bhagavad Gita
says, ‘
Dehino smin yatha dehe kaumuram yauvanam jara tatha dehantara-praptir dhiras tatra na muhyati
– As the soul exists within the body from childhood to youth to old age, so too does the soul pass to another body at death. The wise person is not confused by this change.'