The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (62 page)

But I am a fool! Only as I write do I realize what truly grieves you. Even if everything works out as planned, we shall be separated by the gulf of years. Is that what makes you cry? For me, time means nothing. But you are mortal. But that, too, matters not. Love, too, is immortal. And my love for you shall triumph even over death. If you believe nothing else, believe that.

I can offer no guarantees, but I think this will work. I have never before succeeded in killing myself, but this time I believe I have figured out how to do it. And, if I succeed, then it is even more likely that our other assumptions shall hold. In nearly every life, I have been reborn in the land where I died. But only when I saw Adaku's swollen stomach did I realize that there was often a pregnant woman nearby also. I have never known what happens to my soul between rebirths. But I think there is a good chance that, with the right timing, it may enter the foetus Adaku carries. I still wish she would have an abortion, but her Catholic schooling makes the sensible course too traumatic. I did not want to tell you before, but I tried to find the soldier who attacked her. I did not plan to kill him, but I would surely have made him sorry he had ever been born. But he has been sent back to England, and I have no time to track him down now.

Adaku will hate the child. It is obvious. But perhaps not if she knows that my soul inhabits it. (Are you also surprised how readily she believed in my immortality?) Once the baby is born green-eyed, you will know we have succeeded. It has been the only constant throughout all my lives. How we shall deal with the reality, how and when you shall tell me what I truly am, I leave to your wisdom. You shall know what to do, and what will happen after – well, that is one bridge we can cross only when we reach it.

My only regret is not being able to face the Shadowman, this Rawan who so tests me. I really feel I would have triumphed this time. Remember, when you find my body, make sure that the spike has been placed properly, or else I shall rise from the dead, which is more confusion than we want. And don't forget to burn this note. [She did not destroy it - A.A.]

Even if I am not reborn as Adaku's child, rest assured that I shall seek you out, whoever I am. The
Bhagavad Gita
again: ‘
Avyakto yam acintyo yam avikaryo yam ucyate tasmad evarh viditvainam nanusocitum arhasi
– The soul is invisible, inconceivable and unchanging. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.'

Em, I have told you many times, and I will write it now for the last time: my true life in this life began with you. All that came before seems, in hindsight, but a preparation for your arrival. Because of you, and our daughter, I will prevent the Shadowman from killing me. We shall be together once again – still a family, albeit in a different relation. That I promise you. Already I have been reborn, in a way I never was in all my long centuries of life. For you gave me my soul.

See you.

Love forever,

Krishna

At the beginning of the ninth session, I said, ‘This last account has some very significant...'

Adam held up his hand to stop me. ‘Doc, I have a question.'

‘What is that?'

‘What is your psychiatric evaluation of the Shadowman?'

‘My psychiatric evaluation of the Shadowman?'

‘Yes.'

‘I've told you what I think he represents.'

‘Forget that. I want to know how he thinks, what his motivations are.'

‘I can hardly give a psychiatric evaluation of someone I've never spoken to.'

‘But isn't that what police psychiatrists do?'

‘Well, yes. But it's not the same thing.'

‘Is similar enough. You know his
modus operandi
. You have any theory as to his motivation?'

‘Adam, you're speaking about him as though he's real. I don't think that's a healthy...'

‘Indulge me.'

I was hesitant, but I decided to do as he asked. ‘All right. What do you want to know?'

‘Why do you think he tracks me?'

‘From your accounts, he seems to have an interest in directing your life. Or lives.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Neither do I.' He was silent for some moments. ‘I guess what I really want to know is, do you think he's malevolent?'

I thought for a while. ‘I would say, no.'

‘Why?'

‘There's the incident you spoke of during the war, where he protected you. But, if you look at the previous accounts, it seems as though every time he kills you – before the final killing, that is - it is at a point where your life might take a negative turn. And you always recover with some new knowledge or skill.'

‘That's true. But why does he kill me at fifty, before I can really use my experience?'

‘I don't know. Do you think that's important?'

‘It must be.'

‘Well, perhaps we can discuss that, then.'

He smiled.

‘Doc - Suren - I have a confession.'

‘What?'

‘I was never really consulting you to find out if I was delusional or not.'

‘Oh?'

‘No. I mean, what's the definition of a delusion?'

‘There are three criteria. It contradicts the person's cultural beliefs. It is contrary to reality. And it's not amenable to argument.'

‘Right. Now in Trinidad's culture, there are so many belief systems that the first is hardly applicable. As for the second, reality is defined by whatever the majority of people believe, according to their experience. Normally, common experience matches objective fact. But that criteria falls apart when it comes to things like quantum mechanics or even evolution. It can't be applied to any experience outside what is usual. As for the third - well, I could use that criterion to prove that you are the deluded one.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Let's apply Hume's rule. I can speak several languages. I can write and understand extinct languages. I have detailed knowledge of the past five centuries. I have diverse practical skills. The documents I have given you have been proved genuine. I have strange physiological reactions. None of your drugs have had any effect. If you accept, at the very least, that I am an unusually evolved human being, does it seem likely that someone of such development would be likely to be insane?'

‘Do you really want an answer?'

‘Please.'

‘There's no contradiction.'

He sighed. ‘See? Your beliefs are not amenable to argument.'

I said nothing. After a while, Adam said, ‘I turn fifty next week.'

‘And you're afraid you'll die?'

‘No. I'm not afraid of death.'

‘You believe you can stop the Shadowman this time?'

‘If you're right, I won't need to stop him.'

‘Right about him being unreal or about him not being malevolent?'

He put out his hand. His smile was cryptic. ‘Thanks, Suren. Seeing you was very helpful.'

‘I don't think you should stop seeing me, Adam.'

‘Call me after New Year's Day.'

That was the last time I saw him. When I called his home on January 2, I got a message that his phone was out of service. I decided to go to his house. But the address he had given me was an empty, grassy lot.

Two days later, a document was delivered to my office by normal mail. It had been posted on the same day as my last consultation with Adam. It is an essay, rather than an account. There was a short note attached. It read, ‘Mortals can only understand so much. My experience is all that I have to give.'

Flying, to me, is like sex. No matter how many times I do it, I never get tired of it. I like everything about travelling by air: the high-backed padded chairs, the pleasant hostesses, the miniature drinks. I like the clever fold-out trays, the little reading-light, the neat bathroom. I even like that the windows have blinds to pull down.

I especially like the take-off – the sensation of gathering speed, the pressing down as the aeroplane leaves the ground, the upwardness as it climbs the air. I like how every detail of the land – trees, cars, houses, fields, hills – becomes toy-like. I like watching the grey-skinned sea so far below, crawling. And I love watching clouds from an unnatural viewpoint, above.

In my younger years, in this life, I went to all the places I had lived in my previous lives, to see how they had changed, and for the sheer pleasure of reaching these places so easily and so quickly. I also went to other places that I had never been. I have flown to Africa, gazing down at the orange endlessness of the Sahara desert, romancing in the names of the cities on the flight path – Athens, Baghdad, Casablanca, Algiers – and I get some protean understanding of the world that I did not have before. The aircraft descends into Accra at night, and I watch how the electric lights below are strung out without pattern, vast hearts of darkness in between, a city with no centre. I'm there for an academic conference, and I see how the ease and friendliness of the ordinary people, with their slow and balanced walk, contrasts with the intensity and formal manners of the intellectuals. I visit a chief's house, and we must shake hands with all the elders and their wives before our group is seated. They're bored by this visit, but they're polite and, dressed in traditional garb of wrapped cloth, must display their culture to our vulgar eyes. Later, I go down to the coast where there are the slave forts that I once knew so well, a tourist attraction now. I look out from the sentry post at the flat sands where black children scamper and fishermen pull their nets from the unceasing sea, and the ghosts of long gone Africans whisper like madness in my ear.

Returning, I must stop in England with its old houses and neat fields, which I call meadows when I am there. The British have become taller but they are still smaller than their cousins in North America. Some are darker than the Europeans of the continent. I listen to the accents, so many varieties, all English, the educated people's intoned with a stomach-deep articulation that bespeaks centuries of cultural confidence, a culture shaken only now with the new generations of former colonials who are now also British in speech but not always in manners, but everything is organised and focused and I feel as though it is not a country but an organism and I leave as soon as I can.

Many years later I go to India. From the air, the country looks entirely unlike any other country I have ever seen. Perhaps it is because I've lived almost all my lives on islands. England from the clouds did not seem so different from Trinidad. But I suppose there is an essential difference between even a huge island and a sub-continent. The arid, brown, unending landscape, the horizon disappearing into haze, seemed even stranger than the Sahara, perhaps because the Indian desert is not dead. On the ground, the first detail that made India exotic to me, a person born and bred among the most exotic-looking people in the world, were the sari-clad women. In Trinidad, women wear saris for special occasions, like Divali or weddings. But everywhere in New Delhi I saw these women wrapped in wonderful cloth, most of them displaying a wedge of tummy, as they walked on the side of the road, or waited at bus-stops, or rode by on motor-scooters seated demurely side-saddle behind their men. The men were ordinarily dressed in long-sleeved shirts and slacks. In this city, artificial natural selection had clearly been at work for centuries: almost all the women were fair-skinned, whereas most of the men were brown. And, everywhere, the droves of people, the cacophony of traffic, overwhelms me, used as I am to Caribbean space and the noise, not of machines, but of music and human voices. As I explored Delhi, I found the drabness of modern India starkly contrasting the decorativeness of its ancient sites. On the two-hour train journey out of New Delhi to the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, I noticed how the enamel paint of the carriage was chipped and the seat covers worn. Outside, tracts of arid land and broken buildings flash by. But the train's air-conditioning worked well, and breakfast, served in the same style as on a commercial airline, was tasty.

And, later still, America. Miami, which is like a Caribbean city ahead of its time, modernity uneasily imposed on a rural sensibility, clash of accents and appearances. New York, whose buildings overwhelm, a city where culture is a
raison d' etre
. So many people, so purposefully busy, so closed off, so confident. A nation too large, too complex, to write about. And I see that, though I am not American, to be Caribbean is also to be ‘Americasian'.

And so I fly all over the world, but what I most like about flying is always to return to Trinidad. It is the view that I never tire of. I've never been able to decide if I prefer to return by day or by night. In the day, the Caroni swamp always surprises as the aircraft makes its approach. I watch the flat expanses of water, shining so brightly that it reflects nothing save its own brilliance. The dividing clumps of trees are an unnatural green, like jeweled moss, hiding prehistoric secrets. Sometimes, the scarlet ibis are startled from their nests, arrowing over the trees like flung drops of blood.

In the night, it is the west coast of the island that holds my attention as the aeroplane flies over. The island is a portrait in light: the crawling headlights of the cars, the electric yellow bulbs of the houses and apartments, the blue and green and red neon signs of the malls, and the frosty white lights of the office-buildings. On the lowland, all the details are visible but softly outlined. The lights become sparser as they crawl up the vast shadow of the encircling Northern Range: the glittering chandeliers of the mansions, the dim oil-lamp flicker of the invisible wooden shacks, peaked by the red signal lights at the outermost points of the range.

Sometimes, I think it a pity that the laws of physics and natural selection did not allow human beings to evolve wings. People might have been more civilised. To return to the ground always demands a change in sensibility. Airports are like no other places on earth. People are casually travelling distances that would have been impossible only decades ago. There are the arrivals, lines of tiredness on their variety of faces, curious or unfamiliar or nervous. There are the departures, perhaps also excited, often at the centre of their chattering group, they overwhelmed by the breaking of ties. The technology may be casual, but the human reactions rarely are. In airports, there is always a shift, always transmutations occurring. That is why, to me, the accustomed air of the airport staff in their starched uniforms always seems odd.