The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (11 page)

So I reasoned, Holy Father, from what I had been taught and from what I had seen since I was a child. I submit this reasoning, not to excuse the atrocious act I am about to describe, but to offer Your Grace some whit of explanation, lest he burn these pages before reading to the bitter end. I do not excuse myself in the slightest – Satan had entered my heart even as a boy, although I was not aware of it – but I beg of you to read my Confession entire, no matter how appalled you understandably may be at the evils I committed until I had lived on God's Earth some thirty-odd years. Perhaps the acts I did after that time may redeem my tale, if not my soul.

My first atrocity, then: The same girl that Br. Muñoz offered ended up working in the church kitchen for almost a year. This was unusual. The Indians frequently died after only a few months, and my understanding at the time was that this was because they were not used to hard work. Before the coming of the Spanish, I was told that the Indians, an idle race, spent their days playing ball games and lying about in sinful idolatry. Now, as I saw for myself, they often had to labour for the entire day carrying loads almost as big as themselves. Fray Ortiz often expressed regret at the treatment of the Indians, but said that at least they now died Christian. They also often died diseased. The most common affliction was the pox, which swept through their ranks like a pale horse of the apocalypse. Their brown skins were spattered with red pustules and running sores. This, along with their staring eyes and protruding cheekbones and skeletal ribs, made me view them as creatures of living death. The kitchen girl, whose name I never knew, was different. She was free of the pox, and well-fed, since she and the other two girls got whatever was left on our plates after our meals. But, after the incident I have just recorded, I grew to mistrust the very health of her appearance. I began wondering why she did not look like the rest of her people, and I had nightmares where she would be holding me down with hands of iron. In my dream, she would be trying to kiss me and her face would suddenly collapse into a mass of oozing sores. The other kitchen helpers came and vanished within the space of months. This one stayed, healthy and alive, and my nightmares became worse. Mixed with my fear was anger, for when I came to the kitchen her black eyes crossed always with my green ones. I never looked back, and I became angry that I could not look back at this girl who looked at me so directly. As time went on, my anger overwhelmed my fear. I would NOT be fearful of an Indian, I remember thinking, for I am protected by the Lord.

Eventually, I conceived a plan. I had seen how the Indians loved food. Very often, a master's personal servants would creep under his table to grab up any scraps which might fall as he ate. So, one day, when everyone was out, I tempted the girl with a side of bacon into my cell. She followed willingly and, when we were inside, I placed the bacon on the small table where I did my studies. I then bent her over the table, pulling up her frock. She smiled at me over her shoulder, thinking that she knew what I was about to do, then leaned forward and began to gnaw at the pork. I watched her naked buttocks, so lean that the bud of her anus and the fleshy petals below were prominently displayed, and my
pene
did not stir. So it was with full Christian pride that I drew the knife I had hidden in my robes and, reaching over the girl's bony shoulder, cut her throat.

I had not expected so much blood. It was stupid of me: I had seen enough Indians killed by sword to know that they bled like stuck pigs. The girl's body slid off my table and collapsed to the earthen floor, which soaked up the spurting liquid. But my table, and the Bible that lay open on it, was already stained. And then, as I was trying to wipe off the blood with an inadequate piece of cotton, Fray Ortiz walked in.

Naturally, he was appalled. I was quick with an explanation. She had been trying to seduce me, I said, and I had fought her off.

‘But why did you kill her, Adam?' he asked.

‘She asked me to,' I said. I explained that, once I had stopped her advances, the girl had asked me why I didn't want to do what her people did all the time. I told Fray Ortiz that I had explained to her that God had said sex between a man and a woman outside the sanctity of marriage was a sin. I remember him nodding, the motion of his chin echoing the slow twitches of the girl's dying body. She said the need for sex was like a demon inside her, and asked me to absolve her and kill her so she would go straight to Heaven.

Fray Ortiz frowned at this. ‘You should have sent her to me,' he said.

I said that I was afraid that, if I waited, she would change her mind and her soul would be lost. ‘Did I do wrong, Padre?' I asked. ‘You said that priests in Peru baptize Indian infants and dash their brains out so they will spend eternity in Heaven.'

Fray Ortiz sighed. ‘Your intent was good, little brother. But there are certain things you must leave to God, to those who have more experience than you.'

‘I am sorry, Padre,' I said, hanging my head.

He ruffled my hair. ‘I know. Now go to the graveyard and dig a hole for the body. I will do the final sacraments so your act will not have been in vain. But you must never again do anything like this. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, Padre,' I said.

But as I was digging the grave, I recalled the sheer pleasure I had felt when that first warm rush of blood spilled over my hand. I had never experienced such a feeling. I recalled the girl's body twitching in my cell, her black gaze now forever closed, her body now no more than a meaningless lump of flesh. I felt, in that moment, truly close to God, like unto Him. And I knew that if being a priest meant I could never again have that feeling, then I could never again be a priest.

The next day, I went to the barracks of the conquistadors. Despite my admiration for them, I had never actually spoken to any of the soldiers who protected the town. There were four or five men there on my first visit, drinking wine and talking. There were also some half-naked Indian women, doing nothing. The soldiers were at first surprised to see me there, but soon welcomed me when they realized I had not come to preach to them. I became friends with the garrison's commander, a big man with a black beard, who was of the well-known Ledsema family of Madrid. He was a loud, cheerful man, whose manner was completely different to the priests I had grown up with. He at once labelled me
El Padre Poquito
, and laughed when I was offended. Ledsema was a marvellous fighter and, when he and the other men practised with wooden swords in the barrack yard, he would invariably win. With the crossbow, he was a master, able to loose five bolts within a fifteen-count. He was also a superb horseman.

When he learned that I wished to become a conquistador myself, Ledsema held his sides with laughter. On seeing that I was serious, however, he made time to teach me all he knew of the fighting arts. I realized later that he did this mainly because he wanted to irritate Fray Ortiz, who every Sunday used the pulpit to castigate the settlers, especially the soldiers, for their loose and sinful ways. When Fray Ortiz realized that I was spending all my free time with the soldiers, he tried to discourage me by listing a litany of their sins. When that failed, he gave me many tasks to perform around the church and increased my studies. But I always found time to go to the barracks. Fray Ortiz could not imprison me in the church, and he knew that if he was too harsh with me, he would drive me away all the faster. Br. Muñoz no longer came to my cell at night and no longer touched me in the kitchen. I realized that he had been frightened by my killing the girl. That realization strengthened my resolve to become a conquistador. I wished to learn to kill properly.

As I have said, Ledsema began training me mostly because turning ‘The Little Father' into a little conquistador was a fine joke. But I soon proved to be an apt pupil, and I think he became assiduous in his lessons for sheer joy of passing on his hard-won skills. Good swordsmen are born far more often than they are made, and I had the natural coordination and the quick reflexes that made me, eventually, a master. I also discovered another talent that is always inborn: I could communicate with horses. The animals took to me, and I was able to command them. Ledsema offered to hire me as the garrison's stable boy and I at once agreed. So I moved out of my cell in the church and into a manger in the stable. Little did I suspect that, more than thirty years later, that decision would help bring me before the Inquisition. Fray Ortiz came to the garrison and quarrelled publicly with Ledsema for turning me away from God's ordained path. But the more Fray Ortiz shouted, the harder Ledsema laughed, and the Padre shocked the congregation the following Sunday by predicting that Ledsema would burn in Hell for his sins. Ledsema then threatened the Padre with a charge of slander, and he had to withdraw his statement. This was nine months after I had murdered the Indian girl.

Did I regret leaving the church? I cannot say I did. I had no natural affection in me. Even my admiration of Ledsema was not for him as a person but for what he was – a conquistador. That bond was, in some ways, stronger than any bond of love. In the following year, he taught me the arts of the warrior. We practised swordplay and the use of the pike on horseback. I learned to use both the crossbow and the longbow. Ledsema even taught me to use the quarterstaff and to wrestle for, he said, the deadliest weapons might not always be at hand, and the deadliest weapon was always one an enemy did not expect. When he judged me ready, he pitted me against real enemies, bringing Indian boys for me to wrestle, then battle with the quarterstaff and then with the sword. I always won: even the grown Indian men were small and slow. Nonetheless, my skills developed rapidly, for I trained by killing my opponents, whether with weapons or my bare hands. The most important lesson I learned in this training, however, was not the technique but the attitude: the inner emptiness, the focused rage, which all warriors know. It was a state of peace and power.

I believe I was somewhere between fourteen and seventeen summers at this time. When Ledsema commissioned me into the King's army, I knew the ecstasy of having a dream become reality. I did not know then that my reality was a nightmare.

I sailed to Espanola soon after my commission. I wanted to use my martial skills and Hamaica was relatively peaceful now that most of the Tainos had been sent to the larger island to work in the mines. I sailed with one of the transport ships, my first trip across the sea. I was assigned to guard the Indians and I almost hoped they would try to escape, but, although there were five hundred of them, they were well-secured in the hold with all the trapdoors and portholes locked tight. Naturally, the lack of food and water and the heat resulted in deaths, so that another ship could have followed us by the trail of the two hundred or so bodies we had to cast overboard. Most of them made it across, however, and, after being branded with an F on their brows, were put to dig for gold.

What happened over the next ten years is not important. This may seem an odd thing to say, since it was in these years that I became known as
El Carnicero Sangriente
for my attacks on the Indians who took to the forests and mountains of Espanola and occasionally attacked Spanish settlements. The outing I became best known for was at Vega Caliente where, leading a battalion of just thirty horsemen, we killed five thousand Indians in one day. I was also lauded by the governor for my part in executing a group of Indian leaders, whom I met under the pretence of discussing terms of peace. While I engaged the caciques in conversation, my soldiers advanced through the forest and ambushed them, locking them in one of their own huts. I personally set the thatched roof afire. So, yes, I rose rapidly through the ranks; and, yes, my reputation reached even the ears of King Carlos, who sent me a personal note of congratulation which I have submitted to the Court as evidence. But none of that is important.

I also became quite wealthy in those years. In recognition of my ‘noted valour', as he termed it, the governor gave me an encomienda of one hundred Indians and made me an inspector. Even among the settlers, who treated their hunting dogs better than the Indians, my harshness was cause for comment. On the very first day I received my encomienda, I kicked one Indian to death because he was slow in bringing me my wine. Fray Bartolome de Las Casas has, in years past, reported in great details the many cruelties inflicted by many Spaniards upon the Taino Indians. I can state with complete truthfulness that Fray Las Casas exaggerated. His exaggerations were not deliberate: he could not be everywhere and therefore depended on what he was told. It is true that most of the colonists treated the Indians with great harshness. Over these people we Spaniards had the power of gods: the power of life and death and suffering. Men, however, are not equipped for godhood: given such absolute power, they are driven to use it through rape and torture and murder. Such acts become part of their existence and their purpose. So I do not deny the colonists' savagery. But Las Casas's accounts of ordinary Spanish soldiers lopping off the Indians' limbs for sport, roasting them over slow fires for amusement, casting infants off cliffs into raging rivers are only partly true – only a minority of Spaniards indulged in such acts. I, Adam Colón, indulged in them all and did so frequently. Many of the stories Las Casas heard, and the acts he saw for himself, were at my hand.

It was this lack of mercy which, in part, accounted for my rapid acquisition of wealth. Nearly all the Spaniards worked their Indians mercilessly. I was both merciless and cruel. The men worked the mines: breaking rocks and carrying them on their shoulders upriver in knee-deep water. The women worked in the fields with digging sticks to plant crops. Each field needed over ten thousand holes, each hole 32 inches deep and 12 inches wide. So their labour was as hard, if not harder, than the men's. The Indians cost me nothing: they were given nothing but cassava bread to eat, which they had to plant and bake themselves. They would get some pork, although I ate more meat in one week than my entire encomienda would receive in a month. And the white men I had working for me soon became almost as cruel as me, if only because they feared my rage or wished to win my approval. My cruelty was all the sharper because of my devilish vitality: I needed very little sleep and never got tired. This was the true secret of my martial success.