The Tale-Teller (5 page)

***

I COULD PACE THE circuit of my island in two days but did not feel confined by it. Nature was so various there: the waterfall tumbling into the valley below, the beach of laying turtles and the beach of nesting birds, a meadow of lush white flowers and a cave crawling with poisonous snakes. Every place was different yet familiar, and I loved each more than ever once I had left it behind.

The
Santa Maria
was not a prison, but sometimes it felt like one in contrast with the paradise I had lost. It was a box with a base of ocean and a lid of sky, open to the weather. There was nowhere to go except around the deck or below it; nothing to see but scrubbed wood and shifting clouds and endlessly tossing water, the occasional flight of gulls or sleek grey back of a dolphin. I drew comfort from the familiar smell of earth and trees whenever we neared land. Nothing else broke the monotony of my first weeks on board.

In a way this was a good thing, as I moved in a new landscape of words, a cartographer of human speech. For though the apes were expressive creatures, among them communication was limited to immediate needs. Such statements as “Bad girl! Don't eat that!” or “I love you; come here so I can groom you,” or “Where's the baby?” stretched their vocabulary of sound and gesture to the limit. They had no interest in knowledge for its own sake. In fact, the apes avoided thinking because for them mental activity — being solitary — was its own kind of prison. Who would wish to dwell among phantoms, alone, when she could be part of a warm and busy community? Who would wish to be trapped in her own mind when she could find comfort in someone else's arms?

With the apes I had lived a life of feelings, responding to the world through my body. We existed in the present, our awareness of past and future confined to anticipation and disappointment. We didn't expect to understand the causes of events or to influence them, so we didn't blame ourselves when things went wrong. Paradoxically, this brought us both anxiety, since the world was unpredictable, and peace, since nothing was our fault.

By contrast, the sailors of the Santa Maria experienced the unknown as a constant threat. Because the ocean was mysterious, they feared and respected it. Their lives depended on knowing which routes led to shelter and fresh water, where dangerous reefs of sharp coral lay, and how to avoid the whales' nursery or the shores of cannibal isles. Their minds were active all the time, adding fact to fact, subtracting error, multiplying by probability. Reasoning was no luxury for them.

Indeed, philosophical arguments often went on late into the night, while I lay in my hammock listening, rocking with the ship's motions as I once had been rocked by the wind in the trees. Despite the cabin's closeness and foul odour, the groans and snorts, farts and belches, and occasional nightmare shrieks of my companions, I liked sleeping with the crew. I felt safe there, as though I had a family again.

One of the sailors adopted me as a daughter. His name was Joaquin Fargo and he was a quiet fellow with a balding head, an asthmatic wheeze, and a long red scar crossing his face from his left cheek to above his right eyebrow. Joaquin had a wife and three grown children in Cadiz; his oldest daughter had married before he took off on this voyage and might, for all he knew, already be carrying his grandchild. And that child might even be walking before he ever laid eyes on it, if it lived past its first birthday.

He confided this to me with a kind of calm acceptance, as though he didn't mind missing most of the important events of his own life. As a matter of fact, he'd been at sea when all three of his children had been born and they hardly knew him. He kept promising his wife, Estella, that he would give up seafaring as soon as he had enough money to retire. They had plans to return to her father's village and buy a place with an orchard, a few goats, maybe even bees. What more does a man need but the blessed sun, a handful of olives, and fresh bread spread with honey?

But after a month or two on land Joaquin got restless. After two more, he found himself pacing the docks like a dog at the end of its chain. And a fortnight later, he'd have signed on for one last journey, poor Estella pleading from the shore, sympathetic tears in his own eyes but no ambivalence in his heart. Most of the sailors were just like him. I understood their dilemma, for I too had abandoned my family for the ocean's embrace. But what I could not understand, and they could not explain, was why there were no other females on board the ship; why — if what they said was true — there were no women on board ships anywhere.

How could I be the only one of my sex to be called by the water? I had been alone among the apes because of this obsession; now that I had found others who shared it, I was alone in a different way. Whenever the
Santa Maria
made port somewhere to trade goods or fill our dwindling food supply, I had to stay on board and hide as though there was something shameful about me. Joaquin insisted that I was being concealed for my own protection, but I didn't believe him. So sometimes I would peer over the side of the ship, wearing my boy's clothes, spying on the busy dockside life to see what other females looked like.

None of them resembled me in the least. They wrapped brilliantly patterned cloth around their bodies and occasionally their heads as well; ropes of beads hung on their necks and golden hoops shone in their ears. They laughed or quarrelled in high voices or sang sweetly to fat naked babies swinging on their hips. Some balanced baskets of food on their heads; some sat behind stalls of fruit, chanting prices to passers-by. And some nursed their children, baring breasts far larger than any I had ever seen on apes. Would I one day grow up to be like them? It didn't seem possible.

All around the calm brightness of the women, men sweated and swore, pulling ropes and heaving enormous boxes and bales of stuff. They were bigger than the females, and fiercer, and — especially when they got drunk, which was often — much louder. Some drank until they vomited, spewing greenish bile on the dock. Others passed out, groaning. Some sat lazily in the shade, smoking or playing gambling games. One time I saw such a game end badly, with a single flash of silver from a hidden knife. That time the puddle on the dock was red. I nearly fainted at the sight, so evidently I wasn't much like a man either. Was I always going to be different from those around me? Would I ever belong anywhere, or to anyone?

I confessed these fears to Joaquin. He listened with a serious expression on his face, nodded from time to time, but said nothing. Finally he asked me to sit on the bowsprit with him to watch the moon rise and he would tell me a story that might help. Someday, if you like, Marie-Thérèse, I will tell you that one.

***

OF COURSE THE HOUSEKEEPER wanted to hear the story right away, but at the same time enjoyed an unaccustomed feeling: anticipation. She recognized that waiting for the next instalment of Esther's tale would enhance her pleasure when she eventually heard it. Being entertained was a new experience for a woman whose whole life had consisted of labour. Now as she bustled about, her hands occupied with familiar duties, her mind replayed Esther's tale, reliving it with herself as the heroine. She mourned with Esther the loss of her childhood paradise. She scarcely knew what an ape looked like, having seen only an organ grinder's monkey at a fair, but she could imagine the wordless pleasure of animal communion by recalling her dear cat, Minou, back home on the farm. The drunken, gambling men were familiar to her, as were the nursing mothers and their babies. And she too had sailed on a big ship when she came to New France fifteen years before, so she could easily imagine Esther's life on board the
Santa Maria
.

Though many of the other passengers had been sick crossing the Atlantic, Marie-Thérèse had not. For the first time in her hardworking life she had nothing to do, so she had stood on deck for hours, gazing out at an ocean as unreadable as her own future. She, who had spent her youth fenced in as much by convention as by wooden barriers and stone walls, saw nothing around her but water and sky and perpetual movement. Clouds raced overhead; birds cried from unfathomably high and then plunged into the waves to emerge with flopping fish in their beaks. She felt so dizzy with freedom she imagined, for a moment, she might fly away with them.

That dream melted like snow in springtime once the daily routine of cooking, cleaning, and waiting on preoccupied men took over. Life in the New France — despite the occasional glimpse of an Indian clad in deerskins or a huge moose like a walking tree — was not much different from life in the old. She had been born to serve others. At least here her industriousness was rewarded, and she made her way quickly up the ladder of the household staff. But though Monsieur Hocquart was kind and treated her well, he rarely spoke to her except to give instructions. The laundress and the cook were both married and had very full lives outside the house; they chattered all day about their husbands and children and, in the cook's case, her grandchildren. They were polite to the housekeeper but rarely included her in the conversation.

Though she hadn't given much thought to it before, Marie-Thérèse now realized how lonely she had been until Esther arrived. The girl had become her constant companion and seemed to have no interest in making friends with the servants her own age. For their part, though they were curious about the visitor with the exotic history, the chamber and scullery maids were mainly interested in the boys who worked in the stable, on the grounds, or at the prison. But though all the boys were fascinated with Esther, she seemed invulnerable to their charms. She refused to flirt. She moved clumsily in the long gown she was now compelled to wear, frequently tripping over the hem, then holding it up too high and revealing more leg than was respectable. When Monsieur Hocquart admonished her for this behaviour, she retorted that he should try wearing a dress sometime and see how well he could move around in it. This comment shocked the poor man into complete silence and forced Marie-Thérèse to run out of the room, unable to suppress a fit of giggles at the thought of her portly employer laced into female dress.

Esther was as impatient with all recommendations pertaining to femininity as she was with her clothes. She didn't care how she looked, and rarely brushed her lustrous black hair. Exasperated, Marie-Thérèse would insist that the girl sit still while a comb was dragged through her knotted tresses; she would scrub at the girl's fingernails with the kitchen brush and pare them with the kitchen knife, muttering that, since Esther was as brown and dirty as a potato, she merited the same treatment as a potato.

One day, while she was subjecting her charge to this enforced
toilette
, Marie-Thérèse asked if she might have the tale she had been promised, the one that Joaquin told Esther on the ship. Esther agreed, and launched into her most elaborate narrative yet.

***

JOAQUIN TOLD ME THAT he had first gone to sea as a cabin boy, fifteen years old and as skinny as an anchovy. All the men in his family had been fishermen and lived their lives on the sea, but he was the first to venture any distance from the village, running away to Cadiz in pursuit of the beautiful brigantines they sometimes saw rounding the Straits of Gibraltar. Like those gallant ships, he longed to travel to the Atlantic and the mysterious lands beyond, lands of gold and silver and spice, of wild Indians and wilder mountains and forests. As soon as he was old enough, he ran away.

The first voyages were uneventful. The ships returned laden with sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and coffee from plantations in the West Indies, and smelled like paradise to a boy who'd grown up reeking of fish guts. He'd come home for two weeks each time, taller and stronger, with gifts for his family and a pocketful of cash. He'd become a man with capital and a trade, and was respected in the village. Even his fearful mother admitted that maybe his ambitions weren't unreasonable after all. Maybe a big ship was safer and more profitable than the fishing boats her other sons piloted; vessels which had already claimed the lives of her husband and her brother.

But the third trip was wrong from the start. When a boy he met on the docks told him that the
Imperio
would soon be leaving for the west coast of Africa, Joaquin signed on without a second thought. God would curse him for his ignorance. The crew proved to be miserable scoundrels, the captain a violent man eager to flog miscreants, and Joaquin spent the whole trip down the coast fingering his medallion of San Cristóbal, patron saint of travellers, and praying to be home again with his mother. When they reached Guinea things got worse, for the cargo loaded day after day for a month was no longer exotic foodstuffs but living beings: tall, graceful men and women with skin like burnished wood against which their scraps of rag and strings of bright beads glowed.

Begging for mercy, the Africans were driven with whips and guns into the belly of the ship. Men were shackled together on one side of the hold; women and children were crowded miserably, though unfettered, on the other. It stank of sweat and vomit and piss down there, worse than in the sailors' quarters, and the prisoners were rarely allowed on deck for a breath of fresh air. Nor was there enough water or rations for all of them. Some of the Africans arrived already starving or wounded, having been forced to march many miles from the interior; others became sick from the terrible conditions they were subjected to on the ship itself.

At last they left that cursed place and put out to sea. Joaquin hoped he would be able to distract himself with ordinary nautical activities but when they were only three days from shore, two people died. The first to go was a skeletal woman no one had known was pregnant who miscarried bloodily, her husband crying and reaching for her from the men's side of the hold; the second was an adolescent with a high fever, calling for his mother in the universal language of delirium. No sooner had they thrown his corpse overboard than a tropical storm blew up, sending huge waves crashing over the sides of the ship. The slaves screamed in their fetid prison while the crew scrambled frantically on deck. Being the youngest and most agile, Joaquin was sent crawling along the boom to lash down the sail. It swung wildly over the deck and then out over the water, where it flicked him off as easily as he might a mosquito from his sleeve. He was lost in the tossing dark. Those on board were too busy saving the ship and their cargo of bartered souls to worry about a single doomed cabin boy, and they abandoned him without a moment's thought.

Joaquin nearly passed out from the shock of the freezing water. He struggled, screaming for help whenever he got his head free of the churning waves, and then gave up, numbly resigned to the fate his mother had predicted. It was this he regretted most: that he had condemned his mother to spend the rest of her life alone in mourning black instead of dressing her in bright silks and getting her a housemaid as he'd intended. Before this last trip, he'd promised to buy her a talking parrot to keep her company. Indeed, he'd inquired among the crew for the likeliest place to purchase such a creature, but they'd simply mocked him.

These were his last thoughts before he woke only God knew how much later. His face was pressed into a litter of broken shells and the surf licked his feet like a dog trying to wake its master. He moved his limbs, tentatively. They hurt. It was possible his left leg was broken. But what was worse was that he could see nothing, nothing at all, even though his eyes were wide open. He passed his hands in front of his face; only a slight thrill of air confirmed that he had moved them. He blinked his eyes a few times; clearly the muscles still worked. He even touched his closed eyelids gingerly, one at a time. The orbs felt intact and firm as grapes. The lids were gritty with sand and fluttered instinctively at the pressure of his fingertips.

What would it mean to be blind? He thought of the raggedy, foul-smelling beggar man of his village who sat all day outside the church, yellow palms outstretched to receive the coins of passersby. Sometimes he sang or chanted in a melancholy monotone; sometimes he offered to pray for the souls of those who took pity upon him. If this were to be his life, Joaquin concluded that he would rather have died.

Or perhaps he was dead already and in Limbo, waiting for his designation in the afterlife. What did anyone know of Limbo, after all? That it was a borderland, as was this beach; that it was nowhere, as was this beach; that it was full of lost souls, as was this beach — at least, insofar as he was there, and as lost as any soul could be. For in truth, he had not the slightest idea where he ranked on the scale of human wickedness. In school, he had not recited the catechism with authentic fervour and had made fun of the adenoidal priest behind his back. As an adult he had refused to go to Mass with his mother; yet another way he'd disappointed her. In his last memory of her, she was standing fixed as a statue in the doorway, pleading with him not to go to sea. When he insisted that he had to go, she flung her apron over her head and started moaning that she would lose him as she had his father. Her behaviour had irritated him so much he'd left without kissing her goodbye. This was surely his worst sin.

For though he had filched oranges from his fat neighbour to the east and olives from his thin neighbour to the west, though he had told plenty of girls he loved them in order to steal kisses sweeter than oranges and more bitter than unripe olives, he had committed no major crimes. His conscience was clear of robbery, adultery, and murder, though there had been plenty of temptation — and opportunity (that freckled young wife behind the chicken coop, for example). And he'd been generous with what he had, sharing with others less fortunate even when he knew they couldn't pay him back.

Rehearsing these small villainies and smaller heroisms reminded Joaquin that one's whole life is supposed to flash before one's eyes at the moment of death. So I am dead! he thought, relieved to have at least one mystery resolved. Then he heard footsteps, and the next thing he knew, a gentle hand caressed his face and a woman's voice murmured something vaguely familiar close to his ear. His panic subsided, and he lay there waiting for his fate to unfold.

A wooden beaker was held to his lips and he drank the sweet water eagerly. The sodden remnants of his clothes were stripped from his body and his wounds were dressed with fragrant ointments. Then he was lifted onto some kind of hammock and carried, swaying between two poles, for a great distance.

How long he was carried he couldn't say, as he passed in and out of consciousness, lulled by exhaustion and the incessant movement of his conveyance. He could tell that the ground was rocky, and for a long time they definitely walked uphill. Once someone stumbled and he was almost dropped; when he cried out in pain and alarm, there was a flurry of apologetic voices in that vaguely familiar tongue. He also heard many birds; some, like seagulls, he recognized immediately; others were unknown to him. The wind sang in the trees, and when they moved into the open, the sun beat down on his unprotected face. He was everywhere and nowhere, saved and lost, alone among strangers.

Days might have passed, or hours. Time no longer had any meaning. There was only movement and then stillness; drinking and then sleeping. He had become an infant again, strapped to his mother's chest. He was oddly content in this unaccustomed passivity.

Eventually they entered a cool darkness. His hammock was suspended above ground to keep the weight off his injured leg, so that he continued to sway slightly as though his journey had not yet ended. Then someone spoke kindly to him and spooned thick soup into his mouth. It was full of some kind of grain, and beans, and chunks of tender fish, aromatically seasoned. Smelling of comfort, this was the best meal he had tasted since he left Spain, but he could eat only a little, his belly heaving from having swallowed so much salt water. His mind also was overwhelmed by his experience. Too exhausted to grapple further with the mystery of his rescuers' identity, he gave himself up to sleep, confident that he was among those who would not hurt him. Around him were the sounds of laughter, the high voices of women and children, and delicious smells. Wherever he was it was infinitely better than the floating hell of the
Imperio
.

Many days passed before he was well enough to get up, leaning on a stick because of his broken ankle, but he had not regained his vision. His hearing was unimpaired however, and it confirmed his impression that the language around him resembled Spanish, so he assumed that he must have been propelled by the storm to one of the American colonies. Indeed, the people acknowledged that they had heard of Spain and that Spanish ships came to the area occasionally. Maybe one day they could take him home. He was in no great rush to quit the hospitality of his rescuers, however, as he had grown fond of their quiet voices and sad music. That they preferred not to talk about who they were or where, exactly, their island was located, struck him as odd, but he attributed this reticence to their isolation, their primitive living conditions, and his own problems with communication.

As the days grew into weeks, he understood more of what was said to him and the others began to understand some of what he said to them. He learned that the place was called “Fogo” and the language, “Kriolu.” He was convinced that he had been to this country before, perhaps in another life, or that he had sailed to one of those islands he'd read about in travellers' tales — a secret place that appeared out of the ocean mist every fifty years.

There was one girl in particular he became friendly with: the same one who had found him on the beach and saved his life. Her name was Aissata and she was sixteen, just like him, and had two big brothers, just like him, and her father was dead, just like his. She was the sister of his soul. He spent his days trying to think of ways to make her laugh, for the pleasure of hearing that silvery ripple of joy. Aissata's laughter redeemed him and made life seem worth living. Aissata's laughter promised that nothing bad could ever happen again.

And then one day when the wind off the ocean was brisk and cold, and Joaquin was helping the others carry armloads of firewood back to their cave, there was a sudden cry of alarm. It was quickly followed by the menacing crack of pistols and the smell of gunpowder and the fierce barking of dogs. Terrified, Joaquin clung to the side of the cave for support. All around him bodies swirled and eddied; running, fighting, falling. Strangers smelling of sour sweat and dirty beards pushed him aside roughly while the others were rounded up and dragged down the beach. A few small children were crying, but otherwise the people had become eerily silent. He kept shouting for help but no one answered him.

He recognized at once that the invaders were speaking Portuguese. They must be buccaneers, he thought, and here he was, defenceless. He had no weapon; he didn't even have eyes! Presumably they would execute him as soon as they had plundered whatever they could lay their hands on. They had only ignored him so far because, being blind, he had no obvious value to them. Joaquin crossed himself, said a quick prayer, and waited patiently for death, the death he had so recently outwitted, to find him at last.

To his surprise, one of the ruffians spoke to him in Spanish, asking if he was all right. Joaquin replied impatiently that he was more concerned about the others. The man laughed, and asked why he cared what happened to a bunch of black savages.

The others were black?

Yes, the man told him; they were runaway slaves who had been hiding in the hills but were now being returned to their masters where they belonged.

How could that be? They were kind, courteous people, nothing like the naked wretches he had glimpsed shackled below deck on the
Imperio
, screaming and moaning in an inhuman tongue. They ate proper food and made proper music. They were as civilized as any Spaniard he knew. More than most, perhaps. It was inconceivable.

His blood thundering in his ears so that he feared he would faint, Joaquin let himself be led to a boat anchored in the shallow bay. He felt the presence and heard the murmuring of many bodies on board, but did not reach out to them. He felt betrayed. Why didn't Aissata tell him that she was black? How could she make a fool of him like this?

On the other hand, he hadn't told her he was white. But he hadn't needed to; she could see that easily enough for herself. He was blind and, knowing he was blind, she had lied to him. She had tricked him into gratitude to her; no, more, let's be honest, into friendship with her. Maybe love.

He cringed when he remembered that he'd had fantasies of marrying her and taking her back to Spain with him. He had imagined the joy of his mother, discovering he was still alive, and her pride in his coming back with his lovely bride, the daughter she had dreamed of. They would have a big church wedding and invite the whole village and afterwards they would live with his mother, who would help with their children. Though sightless, he could still work for his brothers mending nets and maintaining boats, gutting and cleaning fish. He and Aissata would live a long and happy life together. That he had planned this phantom future with a miserable black slave made him sick to his stomach. His mother would doubtless prefer that he died here than come home with a woman like that!