Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  I could see the tree grove through the door of the caney. Small groups of Indians still confronted soldiers in the distance, but around the bohíos the fighting was dying down. I walked rapidly to the grove of trees, wearing the commander’s red cape. “Come, boys,” I whispered, as I came near. “Follow me to your Guarao, your father.”

  The boys came out and took my hands. Just then three Castilian swordsmen came around a corner of a bohío. “Who goes?” they challenged me. “Under orders of the knight commander,” I lied, walking away. “I am to care for these boys.”

  “The knight commander has skewered half a dozen like that,” a big soldier said. He had huge hands and forearms. Manasas (Big Hands) was his nickname. “Don’t you know that nits make lice?”

  He walked behind me, on my left, his sword in hand. The two boys and I hurried, but now the other two men ran around my right, to cut me off. They were mostly playing, those two, but I lost sight of Manasas, who was not. Then I heard the swoosh and the sword clearing by, and the boy on my left dropped, both legs cut off at the knee.

  “And fuck the cunt of your mother to hell,” Manasas said, threatening to strike me. I huddled down under the cape, pulling both boys under me, although the one struck was quickly dying.

  “Enough, Manasas,” one soldier said. “The commander ordered safe passage for this son of a dog.”

  Manasas put the point of his sword under my ear, then pulled away. “A turd on this guy,” he said.

  The boy was already dead as the four swordsmen walked away. The other one I picked up in my arms and held to my breast. I ran with him to the commander’s caney, where his father hid behind bales of cotton.

  That boy, then five years old, was Enriquillo. It was his older brother, Nicosa, whose legs Manasas sliced off.

  In the late afternoon, the knight commander returned. He was weary and sore, having taken severe hits by stones and sticks on his body. One elbow was the size of a pineapple. As I helped him undress and hung his hammock, I explained to Ovando about the wounded father and his son, how they were good people and had volunteered to come under my command. “Let them rest in the corner,” he said, as he lay down, “so they won’t be counted among the slaves.”

  One hundred seventy-six. Encounter with Manasas at the stream.

  In the fainting sunlight, I noticed myself caked with blood and thought to wash in a nearby stream. On the way out, I spotted several daggers in the knight commander’s sword case and, on impulse, pulled one out, tying it to a cord under my shirt and the commander’s red cape, which I still wore.

  Outside, some soldiers made small fires as others piled the dead in rows at the center plaza. Indians not captured had retreated across the wide savanna to a nearby forest. Captives were crammed into bohíos, threatened with death, and cut on the slightest pretext.

  I carried a jug and told the guards, “The commander requires water.” Then I walked down the maze of bohíos to a small hill circled by a brook. I followed the brook a few minutes into the grove of trees, in the darkening woods, to a small, deep pool. I took my cape and shirt off, folded the dagger into my clothes, and was about to enter the pool when I heard a crashing through the trees and retreated with my things behind a bush.

  It was a Castilian soldier. I watched his big shadow as he took off his helmet and chain-link shirt and breeches. Then I could see quite clearly it was Manasas. He stood by a tree to piss, then took his pants off and boots. He was naked but for long socks, and then he was on his knees, leaning on the water’s edge, splashing his face and scrubbing his hands and forearms, which glistened in the receding light. I was naked, too, and it was not even a thought but a silent command I felt in my chest and thighs, and in two bounces I was on his back and straddling his waist like a horse. I spiked the dagger deep into his lower back, right along the spine.

  “Cabrón,” he jumped up, “Indio e mierda,” spinning around once and twice, but my legs were strong, and I held on to his hair and the hilt of the dagger that was deep in him. His hair smelled of rancid olive oil. I felt his hand came up behind me and grab my shoulder, and I twisted the dagger hard as I could and scraped it through the bony column and felt his back snap. He dropped to his knees and I fell off, rolling to the side. I could see him leaning on his elbows, trying to look up.

  “Man of the Devil,” I told him as his head drooped. “I have killed you.”

  And I had. His one elbow gave and then the other. I jumped on his back again, pulled the dagger, and carefully placed the point at the base of the neck, as I had seen the Spanish captains do. Then I drove it in. Manasas gurgled and vomited and defecated, and his body went totally limp on the edge of the pool.

  I washed hurriedly, dressed, and came out of the woods with a full jug of water. The light of the sun made faint effort to guide my steps. I felt the cool of the woods recede, and I felt very good, and I felt very hurt, out of balance. I felt a great release in my breast, but a clog was coming up in my throat that I would cough up for days.

  One hundred seventy-seven. Suspected in the killing.

  Soldiers found Manasas’s corpse early next morning. Some remembered my encounter with him, and others remembered my going for water the previous evening. I had put away the dagger unnoticed and stayed in the caney all day, but they came to accuse me. “Son of a dog,” one of Manasas’s squad told me. “Manasas should have killed you. You put the blade to our capo from behind.”

  “I am incapable of such a deed,” I said to the knight commander, Nicolás de Ovando, whose side I dared not leave. “Besides, I carry no sword.”

  “It is true he is unarmed, and he has served me loyally,” Ovando told the men, who desisted upon his word.

  Captain Velazquez believed against me. He kept me in service until the main villages of Anacaona were secured then released me with these words. “Castilian blood stains your hand, Dieguillo. But for the knight commander’s piety your eyes would be the shit of worms now. So take not glee in your freedom, a debt you owe my Lord and king.”

  One hundred seventy-eight. My village is encomended.

  That was, I think, late in 1503. I returned home, but within six months my little yukaieke was run over by new settlers and soldiers, veterans of the campaigns against Higuey and Guahaba granted their own lands. The next year, Queen Isabel called for hearings on the dreadful massacres, then died. Ovando held the requested hearing, where his own captains testified to the guilt of Anacaona in planning an insurrection. No one paid attention. New ships were arriving by the week. Before long, I heard say, twelve thousand Castilians populated the island, and some three hundred hacendados held very large estates of gold mines, sugar cane, and cattle. They had founded seventeen townships, and the great hunt for Indian servants and slaves was on. Those taken in war were to be slaves. But all were counted and tagged or branded and assigned to encomiendas large and small. Every soldier, every newcomer, brigand, or noble demanded his Indians to command and work.

  In mid-1505, our whole yukaieke was encomended to Juan de Prastrana, a Christian man who died suddenly one night, having worked us for a horrible year that cost us forty-two people. Branded I was in the shoulder, yet I might have traded freedom for my early services, when, in 1506, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Don Christopherens Columbus, died in Spain. His brothers and sons still owned property and political office on Española, but they had many problems, not much real power, and no time for me. It was then Pero Lopez de Mesa bargained with Commander Ovando for the rest of us, and Ovando parceled us out to that son of a great whore. Our encomienda to Pero Lopez appears in the books, when such were formalized by Pasamonte in 1514. Although by then we were not even any longer under Pero Lopez, the book shows my assignment, with fifteen persons, and Ceiba’s, under the name of Maria de Luna, with fifty-eight others. But truly, not six years later, even before it was recorded, I had not one of my village people, not Ceiba, not my boys, not anybody, all dead or lost. But for that bastard, Pero Lopez, I might still have some family. Damn hi
m to hell and to rot in the swamps for his wretched deeds!

  Folio VI

  The First Good Treaty

  Death remains… Morning feeling… More gold for the Castilians… Rodrigo comes and hears my tale… I arrange with Rodrigo to guard Enriquillo’s safety… On the king’s vessel… Conversation with Barrionuevo, his campaign in Borikén… Barrionuevo has questions about Enriquillo… Picking at my wound… Hatuey, “Certainty of sun in the sky,” our great hero… The spirits are all around us… Another conversation with Barrionuevo… Continuing to work with Barrionuevo… Opening the path… Making connection, the change of heart… Cruelties of Vasco Porcallo… Caimán-hunting days… One areito remembered… Another gold trap… Happiness to be in thick of events… Catalina becomes my wife… Going to the Bahuruku again… Deminán and the guanguayo turtle create the islands… Warriors who would be husbands… Catalina stays with Mencia… At the enchanted falls… More cohoba revelations… Details of contact… A hint of reversal… Guarocuya does a hawk dance, he takes me out… The behike explains… Tamayo’s report… My paper runs short… Staying away from the peacemaking… Feeling the good friar… Last of the paper on the ship… Indians as dignitaries… All that I can fit…

  One hundred seventy-nine. Death remains.

  Today I woke up tired. I wrote late into the night and didn’t dream but turned over and over. If I lay still my heart thumped brusquely in my chest, bringing a tremor to my limbs. I was not made for killing, and even the memory of my act, and of my second such act, later, in Cuba, when I killed “Skinny” Moisés, put shivers in my bones.

  “Death stays with the man who kills,” Guarionex used to say. I know what he meant. He did not mean the spirit of the dead will haunt you or that death itself will take you prematurely. He meant that the cold breath of death will be there to stunt the things that you give life to, to sour your human communion with the earth.

  One hundred eighty. Morning feeling.

  I reread last night’s entry. This is true, too: writing these memories helps lift the weight of my spirit. More and more and more, I like what it does. Oh, but to have the time and paper to write it all, everything, now that my memory has fully awakened. I fear not the night, for I will never be alone. The little voices speak to me, the little souls of my dead people that say: remember it all, Guaikán.

  One hundred eighty-one. More gold for the Castilians.

  Time is now for the gold to be shown, according to our strategy. Fray Remigio I send today to Valenzuela. He will carry the message from Enriquillo, the one written in the broad leaves of the copei tree. I send with him also one of two small gold bars I obtained from Enriquillo.

  At his mountain yukaieke, Enriquillo told me: “Use these gold bars, the last ones I have left. This is the gold they love that shines beautifully and is heavy.”

  “I see its light,” I told him. “And it is beautiful.”

  “They will follow the gold,” he said. “It is a certain thing.”

  The gold bar should convince the would-be assassins. The message tells them of the trail they will be shown. Valenzuela and Pero Lopez and one Vadillo cousin we will lead to the gold. Thus they will travel away from the place of negotiations. Thus we will protect the baby boy.

  One hundred eighty-two. Rodrigo comes and hears my tale.

  This afternoon Rodrigo came, my friend of the days of the Santa Maria. He has grown stout these past forty years and has a full beard, and his head is balding, but in his smile I could see the boy I knew.

  “Guaikán,” he said, embracing me. “My boyhood friend.”

  We sat near the garden, under a tall guásima tree.

  “When Friar Las Casas delivered your letter, I was very happy,” he said. “I knew that, if chosen, I would come.”

  “There are but few of us left, Rodrigo,” I said. “You will remember the hundreds of villages, all over the islands?”

  He nodded. “I forget not Guacanagari and the kindness of his people. I remember that time like a beautiful dream. Your people seemed so peaceful to me, the way they lived.”

  “We have nothing left of all that,” I said. “But for the young man in the bush that you are here to pacify.”

  “I have heard the stories, through Las Casas and others,” he said. “It saddens me what has occurred to the good Taíno.”

  Again, I think that Rodrigo is the only truly pure one I ever met among the Christians. There is an opening in him for me and my people because he himself is a man of pure motive. I have lived long enough to confirm that this is a rare thing among the covered men.

  “Enriquillo, he is the only one we have left,” I repeated, looking at Rodrigo’s sincere eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I believe we can settle with him. In fact, we have to resolve the hostilities. Total war will follow the failure of peace.”

  A young monk served us tea. Rodrigo was impressed and winked at me. “They treat me well,” I said. “My place here is on a grant from the second admiral, Don Diego Columbus, who recognized my service to his father.”

  We talked of the first admiral, my adopted father, whom I had seen a final time in 1500, when Bobadilla accused him of corruption and took him back to Spain in chains.

  “I saw him not much later, in Seville,” Rodrigo said, “when the queen reinstated him and before he embarked on his fourth and final voyage.”

  “He stranded himself in Xamayca that time.”

  “Around 1504,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Knight Commander Ovando was governor then. Ovando would not rescue him. He left the admiral stranded for months. They say around here that voyage broke his health.”

  “I remember the news of his death, in 1506,” Rodrigo said. “Meager was his funeral.” He shook his balding head. “Aye, Guaikán, it has been a whole lifetime for us since then. By 1506, I had three children of my own.”

  “I had two,” I said. “Twins.”

  “Boys?”

  “Yes, boys,” I said.

  He wanted to know my story, everything about it, from the time of our tearful farewell in Seville, in 1493, to the very present. His own children were grown, he said, with their own families, and he was a grandfather twelve times. I told him about my boys and what happened to my wife, Ceiba.

  “In 1509, just after first rain, they took one my boy. Good Wind. He was eleven. They sold him to become a pearl diver. I never saw him again.”

  My words quickly watered his eyes.

  “Captain Hojeda set up an operation at Cumaná, on the mainland, where large beds of pearls were found. Pero Lopez, a man who still lives, owned my encomienda then. My boy could dive well, and Pero Lopez realized it. One afternoon, while I planted a field, he took my Good Wind away.”

  “That presents a tremendous disgust,” Rodrigo said. “Agh, what horrible disgust!”

  I told him about Ceiba, how she fainted, again and again. Good Wind had understood immediately. This is what hurt her so much. His mind was always so keen and clear. “Tell my father I am gone,” he told her. Then he put up both his thumbs next to each other and told Heart of Earth, his brother, “This is us. At night I will look at my thumbs and think of you.”

  Two weeks he was gone when Ceiba took the hyen, the poisonous juice of our yucca, and lived three days in mortal pain. “I am sorry, my husband, my son,” she said to me and to Heart of Earth. “I can no longer live.”

  Rodrigo looked away from me. “She was heartbroken,” he said. “She died of a broken heart.”

  I thought of Ceiba in my cohoba dream, how lucky I was to have seen her. But this is only mine to know.

  “And the boy?” Rodrigo asked.

  “I heard years later, from a sailor. Ten months my boy dived for pearls. Then once, he dived and never surfaced.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “I believe he escaped,” I said. “ I don’t know how, but I believe he escaped. He swam underwater somehow and escaped into the great forest.”

  “I pray
that it is so,” Rodrigo said. “And the other?”

  I told him that story, too, how Heart of Earth and I went to Cuba with Velazquez in 1511, how we lived the conquest there, which was the very worst, how my boy left with Ponce de León on his voyage to explore the coast of La Florida, how he never returned.

  “And his fate?”

  “He lives. This I know, but nothing else.”

  “So he stayed in the Florida land?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe he is alive?”

  “With certainty.”

  I caught his eyes, which, without knowing how, understood the depth of my certainty.

  “I am disgusted by my countrymen, old friend,” Rodrigo stood up suddenly, going nowhere. “The thought of their deeds sickens my heart.”

  “Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sit nomen Domini benedictum,” I said to calm his spirit. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  One hundred eighty-three. I arrange with Rodrigo to guard Enriquillo’s safety.

  I am thankful for the presence of my friend. He stayed late into the night, and I told him many things. On our last few weeks together in Seville, after I had learned the Castilian thoroughly, it was the same. He liked to hear my stories then, too. I talked to him today about Ovando and the Massacre of Anacaona’s Banquet and about how I carried the Enriquillo boy after his brother was killed.

  “So you know the young man?”

  “Like a son.”

  “Will he make peace?”

  “If these monsters don’t kill him first.”

  He promised to help in any way possible. I told him about the assassination attempt we expected and gave him the names to watch for among Valenzuela and Pero Lopez’ henchmen, particularly that of Francisco Hernandez, Valenzuela’s foreman, who will go along on Barrionuevo’s ship.

  “Barrionuevo is encouraged to go in search of Enriquillo,” he said. “We are to sail along the southern coast. I can bring you along as an interpreter.”