God Carlos (10 page)

“Helmsman,” de la Serena shouted, “helm hard aport!”

The
Santa Inez
, creaking and groaning with the sudden turn, came about sluggishly. The breeze was light and fitful, gusting from the land in teasing puffs, and if the person in the boat wanted to escape, all he had to do was turn around and head toward the shore, where the bigger vessel could not follow.

But he did not try to escape. He did just the opposite: he turned and headed directly toward the
Santa Inez
, lifting up his hands and hoisting the steering wood overhead. Then he slid to his knees in the small boat and tried to bow low, nearly causing his craft to capsize. The men gathered at the railing of the ship and watched with amazement at the antics of the strange brown man headed for them in his odd-looking craft.

It was Orocobix. He was yelling in the Taíno language, “Gods from the sky, I believe! I believe!”

Chapter 11

Orocobix was fishing over a reef when he encountered the weary
Santa Inez
. He was fishing in the traditional Arawak way—with a remora he had captured months ago and kept alive in a bamboo pen in the shallows. The remora, transported aboard the canoe in a gourd of seawater, had been fed so little so that it was ravenously hungry and would fasten itself onto any passing prey. When Orocobix came to a place where there were fish, he would release the remora with a dyed cotton line tied to its tail. As soon as the remora had attached its suckers to a passing fish, he would pull them both into the boat. Then he would pry the remora off its prey by exposing it to the air where it could not breathe.

Since the death of Brayou, Orocobix had been living under a lingering sadness. Normally, he was lighthearted with all among whom he lived. Even the cacique, Datijao, found his good spirits infectious and often came to him seeking companionship when his own heart was heavy with his many responsibilities. Being the cacique, he had his own ceremonial
duho—
an elaborately carved stool that an attendant carried wherever the cacique went, so that he would always have a seat befitting his dignity. This particular cacique did not like the responsibilities of his office, but he had no choice, having inherited the throne from his mother's line. He was no older than Orocobix, but in these unusual times, his spirit always seemed weighted down.

It was a time of change for his people, Datijao said, and he admitted to Orocobix that he did not know what to do. His was the only reign that had to face up to cruel gods. What could anyone do if the gods were evil?

The cacique asked Orocobix this question on the night of the feast in remembrance of Brayou. He had a puzzled look in his eyes, for he had been smoking cohiba, and it had gone to his head. As usual he was attended by four naked elders who dogged his every footstep, correcting him for any ceremonial flubs and reminding their naked king constantly of the high standard of behavior he was expected to follow. That night, as the ceremonial feasting was coming to an end, and during a moment when his advisers had drifted off to celebrate with nearby friends, the cacique whispered to Orocobix, “I wish I could live like you.”

Orocobix did not understand why the cacique would say something like that, but he thought perhaps he was under the influence of the cohiba. He had no reply to such a comment, so he said nothing.

His eyes darting furtively at his clutch of advisers who squatted nearby, the cacique sighed and mumbled, “What do you think about the gods from the sky who walk among us, Orocobix?”

Orocobix was silent for a long moment, almost to the point of rudeness, before he finally stirred and said, “I believe that the gods are good and mean us no harm.”

“That is a good belief,” the cacique whispered in the voice of a fellow plotter. “Others say that they are bad gods who must be resisted.” He made a vague motion with his head toward where his advisers sat in a gossipy group, and Orocobix could almost hear the voices of dissension shouting conflicting advice to the young cacique.

“I will try to meet these gods myself and learn about them,” Orocobix quietly replied. “I will go fishing and perhaps meet one of the ships that fly and see the gods face-to-face for myself.”

“That is good,” the cacique said, “because I have seen them face-to-face and still do not understand their nature.”

A few remaining celebrants, sluggish from too much food and revelry, were sprawled out drowsily around the fire that licked at the darkness with a serpent's tongue. Here and there, in the roseate glow of the flames, some couples lay entwined in their private passions. Most people had drifted away to their
bohios
—the round wooden houses built with poles driven in the ground and lashed together with river withes and vines and covered with a roof of palm fronds. Foraging among the drowsy celebrants sprawled on the ground were alcos—the small barkless dogs that squeaked like rats—hunting for scraps of discarded food. Occasionally, a drowsy reveler would slap irritably at one of the animals, sending it scurrying away squeaking.

Orocobix left the celebration and walked into a vast moonless night splattered with the pinpricks of numberless stars. The trail underfoot was dim but he had walked it so many times before that his feet saw what his eyes could not. All around him the lights of the
cocuyos—
small lightning bugs—flickered a blue glow in incomprehensible patterns.

The next morning he put out to sea in his small canoe.

 

* * *

 

De la Serena was like a child in his excitement and was openly brimming with delight as Orocobix paddled his canoe furiously toward the hove-to ship whose sails were flapping like the wings of an enormous sea bird. From every part of the ship, bored crew members streamed onto the deck of the
Santa Inez
to gaze with curiosity at the solitary figure who was paddling energetically toward them as though he feared they would flee.

“Gods from the sky,” Orocobix occasionally cried over the effort of paddling the canoe, “wait for me!”

“Look at him,” de la Serena chortled to no one in particular, “he is a man of the New World. What is he saying, I wonder?”

The boatswain bellowed to the men gathered along the railing of the ship, “Anyone understand him?”

The string of seamen shook their heads.

Old Hernandez stepped forward. “George, the Englishman who is the cook's mate, has been to the New World and says he understands the Indians.”

“George?” someone scoffed. “The one they call the magpie because of his constant chatter? If you listened to him, you'd believe he can talk even to birds!”

“Nevertheless,” said old Hernandez, “this is his third trip to the Indies.”

“Call him!” de la Serena said sharply.

The cry went up for the Englishman George, who emerged from the bowels of the ship, wiping his greasy hands on a soiled apron. He was a little man who stunk of the kitchen and yesterday's food, and his pale complexion was soft and puffy like that of a mushroom growing under a rotting log.

De la Serena looked him up and down. “You understand Indians?” he asked incredulously.

“Oh, yes, monsieur,” George said with an ingratiating smile, inflating visibly with a show of self-importance before the watching crew. “This is my third trip to the Indies and I have learned their ways.”

“Yes, yes,” de la Serena said impatiently. “But can you understand their words?”

“Not every one of them, signor,” George admitted, adding quickly, “but enough of them to catch their meaning.”

Orocobix, meanwhile, had clambered aboard the ship from his small canoe and was staring at the gods with open adoration. He threw himself facedown on the deck, prostrating himself just as Moses had done when he saw the burning bush.

“Gods from the sky, I know you are good. And I do believe,” Orocobix said fervently. “I have come to serve you.”

“What'd he say?” asked de la Serena.

“He said,” George answered, “that he's most pleased to make your worship's acquaintance even though the weather has been foul lately.”

De la Serena looked suspiciously at George. “Are you absolutely certain that's what he said?”

“No, not absolutely. But these people here are a funny lot. You have to learn to read between the lines, if you follow my meaning.”

The seamen who gathered to gawk at Orocobix stirred restlessly. One of them touched him on the shoulder as if to verify that he was made, like them, of flesh. They saw standing naked before them a trim brown man in his early twenties, with dark glistening straight hair and a physique as well proportioned and sleek as that of a deep sea fish. His body was decorated all over with streaks of ocher, white, and red paint, his dark eyes burning with the glint of intelligence. Between his legs dangled his bare genitals under a ruff of wiry hair. The Spaniards around him, in contrast, looked gnomic, squat, and misshapen, like burrowing animals.

“He's as naked as when his mother bore him,” murmured one seaman.

“Are the women also unclothed?” another asked hopefully.

Orocobix looked nervously from the face of one god to another and got to his feet slowly, his hands held palms-up in front of him to show that he had no weapon and had come in peace.

“Ask him if he knows where the settlement is,” said de la Serena. “Sevilla la Nueva.”

“Mmmm,” George said, scratching a trail of soot across his grimy chin, “that's not easy.”

He turned to Orocobix and practically shouted in his face, “Sevilla la Nueva. Where? Here? Or back there?”

Orocobix took a step backward and bowed from the waist. “You are the gods. Anything you want me to do, I will do.”

George thought for a minute and then exclaimed, “Here, let's try this!”

He began an elaborate pointing all over the ship, meaning to indicate everyone aboard as well as the vessel itself, and then he pointed to the shoreline and gestured with his hands to show where they were headed. After some minutes of this pantomime, Orocobix gradually began to understand—the gods were looking for the dwellings of the other gods. He had never been there himself but he had rowed his canoe past it many times. His face lighting up with understanding, he pointed to the east where the land clubbed at the ocean with the blunt end of a distant promontory.

“He says it's over there,” George announced, clapping Orocobix on the back.

With the canoe in tow, the
Santa Inez
caught a land breeze and ghosted up the coast. De la Serena took the breeze as a good sign, for it eased his fear of a deadly lee shore in strange waters. Nevertheless, he sent a grommet forward to keep a sharp lookout for shoals that splattered the clear water like the grimy handprints of children.

The
Santa Inez
rounded the promontory and sailed into a broad open bay in which several coastal vessels and one brigantine swung at anchor. Beyond the bay the land swept up a slope and furrowed into a dark green mountain. Scattered over the hillside were several small houses and buildings laid out in roughly a circular pattern. A tail of smoke curled into the air from one of the buildings, and one slope of the mountain range showed scribbles of a plow and other signs of cultivation.

It was impossible to say why, but from the point of view of the
Santa Inez
, the settlement was so crude and dilapidated that it seemed infected with the lassitude of malarial fever, and even so far out to sea, the men of the
Santa Inez
could feel the dispiritedness of the colony.

De la Serena, who had remained on the deck all day, said to George, “Ask the Indian the name of that settlement.”

George pointed to the shoreline with its few buildings and a decrepit wharf, and raising his voice as if he was speaking to a deaf man, he bawled out, “What settlement name?”

Orocobix gestured to show humility and said in a prayerful voice, “I'm your servant. I will do anything you wish because I believe with all my heart that you are good, kind gods who will do me no wrong. Tell me what to do.”

“Well?” snapped de la Serena.

“He says he's not sure, that the name keeps changing.”

“I don't believe you understand a word of what he's saying,” de la Serena said crossly. “Go back to your pots and pans.”

“I do understand,” yelped George, “although he's speaking with a funny accent. Nobody's perfect, you know.”

“I said, get back to your station.”

George retreated, grumbling that it was all unfair, and disappeared below deck. Orocobix glanced around him at the men, who were staring openly at him with intense curiosity.

Some of them were ogling his canoe, which was dug out from the trunk of a cotton tree and had no seams or joinery and no thwarts. A few of them were discussing his paddle, which they had never seen before although they were quite familiar with oars. Several of them seconded the opinion of Columbus that it resembled a baker's peel.

Orocobix, uncomfortable at being the center of attention, was nevertheless pleased. He was in the company of the gods, aboard their vessel that soared magically through the seas. They were good gods, just as he had thought. None of them had attempted to harm him. All of them were staring at him if they had never seen a man before.

“I wonder what he's thinking,” de la Serena muttered to no one in particular.

“He thinks we're gods,” Carlos said brashly.

“How can you tell?”

“Let me show you,” Carlos replied in a strangely formal voice.

Stepping forward until he was face-to-face with Orocobix, Carlos pointed imperiously to the deck on which the two men stood. Orocobix stared at him fixedly before he understood.

He fell to his knees and prostrated himself before God Carlos. Orocobix did not know the tradition of kneeling and had no inkling of the various body positions used by European Christians to signal self-abasement. But the posture he struck was a universal one that required no interpretation—one human being groveling abjectly at the feet of another. Some of the seamen took a step forward as if to help Orocobix stand, but the eyes of Carlos the murderer flashed a warning.