Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  One hundred ninety-eight. Happiness to be in thick of events.

  After so many cloistered years, I am living grandly these days, a purposeful happiness in my heart. I am relishing my intense participation in the effort for Enriquillo. Suddenly that old gift (or curse) of mine, to arrive at places of central action, to be in the mix between men who must converse, I feel it working for me. Something in my soul tells me I am the one to carry out this function, and I am enthused to join the two men and put them through an old-time, Taíno peace pact. Even the song of the guatiao, our exchange-of-names ceremony, I have been singing to these lonely waves. I feel I am ready to fulfill this destiny and through this work, if successful, to salvage from this life my shame that I carry to have introduced, so many times, the Castilians into our people. Shaking off the life of the monks, I feel more than ever my life is clear before me and I am my own man.

  Catalina is to meet me at Yaquimo, and right at this moment, the wind in my ears whispers the music of another areito, also of the four brothers, about the time the men lost the women and how Deminán helped us. Why is it when I think of her the music of my childhood resounds in the wind? I long for Catalina so deeply right now, I want so much to be in her presence. And here I am again, after all these years, riding on the royal ship of the king of Spain, toward an Indian cacicasgo, a sovereign, and a people. The wind holds.

  June 6, 1533

  One hundred ninety-nine. Catalina becomes my wife.

  Out again in the bush, down old trails and small carreta roads. Catalina is with me, and Silverio, both with good mounts. I have my Cariblanca. Today, the three of us rode the coastal savanna to these first foothills. We are resting tonight under the perfect canopy of two huge ceiba trees, where we made a small fire and hung our things. The horses we have tethered in a pasture of tall grass nearby.

  Catalina met me at the dock, dressed like a white lady, Silverio acting the servant and holding the three horses at a distance. Her daughter, Inez, known to the Castilians as Julia, came along. I introduced the two women to Barrionuevo and Rodrigo. I used the phrase my betrothed when introducing Catalina, and both men bowed deeply to her. Her daughter stayed under the protection of both men, who vouched for her well-being. Julia will act as a guide to Enriquillo’s camp when they spot sign to follow from the ship.

  Catalina becomes my wife now, setting my hammock next to hers at night, prescribing my tea, and even tasting my food. I love to have it so. There is nothing I would not do for the Catalina now, nothing. As a teacher and midwife I have appreciated her and now, as my wife, her way I will make easier. Catalina is full of spark yet in the daytime but a bony bird she is at night, slight to settle in the curl of my arm and chest. I am complete once again in my time, called to the active life by this great occasion. Suddenly there is Catalina, again, the same and yet this time a different Catalina, ready to have me and give me life. Oh, I am full of happiness and optimism as we ride into the hills of Enriquillo’s country.

  (Difficult it will be to write long here. I’ve only ten sheets of paper left and little time. Nevertheless, I will continue to make notes.)

  Two hundred. Going to the Bahuruku again.

  Where the plain breaks into bush and begins to climb sharply, eight young guaxeri made rendezvous with us. I recognized only one man, but Silverio knew several by name and talked our old language to them without hesitation. They are severe about moving rapidly to meet with Enriquillo.

  Two hundred one. Deminán and the guanguayo turtle create the islands.

  At night, the warriors are polite but cautious. They are particularly impressed with Catalina, who shows them how to improve on a good balm for cuts and bites with the bark of the jagua tree. Now she hums areito music late into the Bahuruku night. The eight warriors crowd around her, listening.

  I finish here the Deminán story, the one where he again accosts the bohío of a holy spirit man, requesting his cooked cassabe to eat. The irritated old man spirit spits a gob of cohoba on Deminán’s back. A swollen hump forms on his back and he loses strength. Lying down on a sliver of sandy beach, in the middle of the vast ocean, Deminán takes deadly sick. Using a coral knife, one of his brothers lances the swollen hump. Out of his back comes the turtle. Where the first turtle grows, land surfaces, where a bohío can be built, where good people can make a home. Thus were our lands created.

  Two hundred two. Warriors who would be husbands.

  On the trail, I talk openly with Catalina and Silverio about our mission to Enriquillo. The young men warriors listen. I talk about our old Taíno peace pacts, and Catalina confirms my description. A leader of the warriors says: “Our cacique maintains we will marry, all, and settle down to farm with our wives. Is that possible? Do you think so?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “If the peace can be arranged, it could be a very different life.”

  “I can help you boys get matched up with your own women,” Catalina said. “When the peace is made, we will work on that problem.”

  The young men smiled all around. “Anything you need, great mother,” one said, humorously but not in jest. “Only look my way.”

  Two hundred three. Catalina stays with Mencía.

  Mencia recieved us at the water’s edge. She led a troupe of twenty men and her three women assistants. Everybody is very tense.

  Enriquillo is with the young behike. They are in cohoba. Tamayo is also gone, along with Cao and six other captains. Mencia is in charge of everything at the camp, which has been reduced. I do not discuss with her Tamayo’s mission, which I put out of my mind.

  “We prepare a great lot these past few weeks,” she told me. “It is confusing because we build new hidden camps as precaution against sudden raids, yet I tell my young people a peace may take place, that we may get our own farms. It is confusing for the men who might now think of peace, yet still we prepare for war.”

  At their main camp, Mencia and her women received Catalina formally, singing an old areito about the creation of the moon for her. Catalina, who knew Mencia as a child, offered to stay with her while I go to Enriquillo. “I want to help my niece,” she said. “You go see what you can do for the baby boy.”

  Two hundred four. At the enchanted falls.

  Silverio brought me here. We arrived at midday. There are little falls just at the entrance to a cave facing the ocean. A gentle trail leads to it from the forest behind it, but facing out from the cave to the sea is jagged rock straight down to the hard-breaking waves. At the entrance, a pool is formed on clear white stone from a cascading spring of fresh water. The cascade flushes a mist that cools the day. We sat down a while, and Silverio cooed like a dove. Finally, Baiguanex came out.

  “Guaikán, uncle, I see you again,” he said, but heavily, not his usual light singsong greeting.

  “Behike,” I responded. “I find you in a place of beauty.”

  “We are in the enchantment now,” he said, still serious.

  “And how is our serene cacique?” I asked.

  Baiguanex asked us into the cave, which smelled of cohoba mixture and old fires. At the rear of the cave, an opening from the top let the sun shine in. Enriquillo lay curled beneath a sheet, his lower body in the sunshine. The cacique slept with abandon, his breath pulling and blowing in long, rythmic aspirations. “Three nights he has been in cohoba,” Baiguanex said.

  Baiguanex led me to a ledge at the cave’s entrance. This side of the cave is high on a steep promontory that juts out to sea.

  “Seven days we have been here, four in fasting and three in cohoba. He has one more to go.”

  “So much cohoba for the cacique?”

  “He requests it. As you see him sleep now, he has not rested in many years.”

  Two hundred five. More cohoba revelations.

  I smoked with Baiguanex. He grew his own and rolled tobaccos like an old Cuban. We faced the ocean, and he would not look at me.

  “The cacique is tired. His young body has lived in perpetual alertness.”

&nbs
p; “It is good to see him rest.”

  “Cohoba forced him. For two nights he saw nothing, heard nothing. They filled his mind with night and collapsed him. On the third day, I fed him. He ate a cassabe tort and drank fresh water from this well. Then I gave him a piece of roasted iguana. He sprang to life like a gray-tailed hawk. At noon, he danced for me, low on the ground, swooping at the earth. That night, two evenings ago, they talked to him. They thanked him for what he has done, and they gave him permission on his new path.”

  Baiguanex scratched his back against the rock, watching the ocean. “Then, last night, he saw the ocean and a Spanish ship coming toward him. It was coming from Spain, for him. The ship, they told him, has the answer he desires.”

  “Barrionuevo’s ship,” I said.

  Baiguanex looked up, but past me. “And then this morning, this morning early, as he napped again, I saw the ship. Right out there. The Spanish ship of his cohoba vision.”

  “A long one, with three main sails?”

  “Yes. And a second one, a coastal launch with one sail.”

  “Exactly. Barrionuevo’s ship. You actually saw it.”

  The behike nodded. “That much I think is good,” he said.

  Two hundred six. Details of contact.

  Enriquillo awakened an hour later. He called the behike, who brought him water and a cassabe tort. Then he came out to the pool and greeted me with eyes deep set, holding a dream.

  “I am to meet the Castilian captain,” he said. “Have you prepared a way?”

  I gave him the details of the contact with Barrionuevo, how I sailed with him, how Catalina’s daughter, Julia, will be sent by Barrionuevo’s guides.

  “And is this captain from the king?” he asked.

  “He is that,” I said. “Even the ship he commands is the king’s own.”

  “Can he enforce the king’s law?”

  “Yes, cacique, he can.”

  “Your path crosses with my cohoba, uncle,” he said then. “I need your heart’s eye on this man.”

  “Barrionuevo I felt in my being,” I told him. “I believe he would be true to his word.”

  “We will guide him in then. Wherever he lands, we will have men chopping wood, calling attention to themselves. They will bring him to the edge of our lake. Julia can be sent for me from there. I will send Romero to set up the parley. Myself I will come down when this captain is settled on our lake.”

  Two hundred seven. A hint of reversal.

  “I am ready to help with all that,” I said. “The songs of Guarionex I have rehearsed. A peaceful moment we can make—”

  But Enriquillo looked up, and I felt Baiguanex behind me.

  Baiguanex touched my shoulder silently.

  “I should tell you, Guaikán,” Enriquillo said, for the first time ever calling my own name to me. “Many runners have come, from dozens of families, maybe hundreds, who want to join us if a peace is made. A very complex thing will peace be now for this cacique.”

  “Do you doubt that peace can be made, cacique?” I asked.

  “No, but I know I won’t live long enough to see it survive.”

  Two hundred eight. Guarocuya does a hawk dance, he takes me out.

  The Guarocuya boy danced at noon again. He is a hawk when he dances, pure hawk spirit and motion. Baiguanex beat the drum, and Enriquillo twirled left and right, first one leg then the other, twirling and looking, swooping at the ground and pecking. I could see the hawk mind in his eyes that no longer would focus. Then, he slept.

  When he awoke, he called me to him. “Uncle. Everything is set,” he said. “This Barrionuevo I will meet. I am ready for peace if he is and if the king’s word he carries. If so, I will make peace with the sovereigns and see what of our people can be settled, that at least a town of us could survive, a place we can gather our survivors.”

  “A town may be too big a project,” I said. “But at least your band here could get a farm. There is talk of a farm at Azua.”

  “We will have a town,” he said calmly and with total assurance. “The Indians on the island, the ones of us from here and the ones like you and so many others brought here from the islands and from the mainland, all will come to our free land.”

  “If the cacique says so,” I said.

  “Yes. And the Africans, the ones that came to us in ’22, after the rebellion of the slaves on the second admiral’s sugar mill. They must have a place in this town. So will you and Catalina.”

  “It is a dream of mine to live among Taíno again,” I said, though in my heart, at that moment, I did not believe it. I have thought more in a pardon for Enriquillo. What the cacique now envisioned implied the end of the encomienda in Española.

  “Possibly Barrionuevo is not authorized for suggesting a community scheme or a refuge for Indians. This is what Las Casas throws at them and arouses their anger.”

  “The good friar is accusatory and he angers everyone,” Enriquillo said. “But he was right to push for abolishing the encomienda.”

  I nodded, thinking briefly of the good friar, where he might be at that very minute. I thought of Tamayo, too, and Valenzuela and Pero Lopez. There was agitation and cross-purposes in my mind suddenly where before I felt the medicine to make the peace pact.

  “With careful words, I am sure, you opened my path to this new captain,” Enriquillo said. “This means that twice you have saved me, uncle. I thank you. Our people thank you twice.”

  The words had a finality to them I did not like.

  “There is more to be done,” I said. “The negotiation is ahead, and the settlement—”

  “My message is clear, uncle,” he said, in that way of Enriquillo, that sense of knowing exactly the road to follow. “Your part of the task is done.”

  I felt very old suddenly. I felt his truth, that my part was done. I felt maybe my life was done.

  “My cacique,” I said feebly. “I know Barrionuevo now. Even his main guard is an old friend of mine, Rodrigo Gallego—”

  “The cohoba says no. Your path is blocked now.”

  And I felt exactly that way, blocked. I had felt greatly needed, central, and now I am out of the events I have been fashioning. Over and over have I prepared for the pact, reflecting on the ways taught to me by Guarionex, thinking the words aloud.

  “Forgive me, Enrique,” I tried one more time. “I need to continue in the making of this…”

  “It cannot be,” he said and walked back into the cave.

  Two hundred nine. The behike explains.

  I sat on the outside of the cave, looking out to ocean. Silverio readied our things to lead me back to Mencia’s camp. Baiguanex came to say farewell, bringing two tobaccos for me.

  “We follow the old ways here,” he said. “The priests will never know it, not even the one they call good friar, but this great cacique of ours is guided by the cohoba. The time you came and were in cohoba with us you also helped us see the past and the future. You have brought much, Guaikán, but the spirits don’t want you near it now. The cohoba says: take the edge now, not the point.”

  “I have done no wrong, behike,” I said.

  “No wrong,” he said. “But you have worked too long in the devious mind of the covered men.”

  “I have learned to spin a web of scheme,” I said. “I know that. But I do it for this purpose—”

  “It is complicated, Guaikán, and we appreciate you. But you are not to come. Your heart is not right in this cycle. Now is time for you to smooth and comb your mind,” Baiguanex said. “Pray for this peace and go home. The cacique will take the words from here.”

  I bowed, took his hand, and put it to my head. “Taíno-ti, Baiguanex,” I said to this young man, then got up to leave.

  “When you get back to her camp,” he instructed. “Ask Mencia to send for Tamayo, who has been by here already. He has something to tell you.”

  (My supply of paper is running low. I have so much I want to write. And even back at the convent, I have but a few more sheets s
tashed away.)

  Two hundred ten. Tamayo’s report.

  Mencia sent for Tamayo. Cao came with him. Both men were cordial but formal. Tamayo was sterner than usual.

  “I thank you for your clever scheme, Guaikán,” Tamayo began, and I understood completely why I could not be a peacemaker this season, why, as Baiguanex said, my “heart is not right.”

  “The piece of gold led the pale ones to us like the flower calls the hummingbird,” Tamayo said.

  I looked away. He would have to tell me his report, and I would have to hear it, just now. In my anticipation I felt deeply chagrined. I took Tamayo and Cao, and we walked up a nearby hill. The two tobaccos of Baiguanex we smoked.

  Tamayo waited. When he told me, he relished the telling. He had killed for me, and he would have me hear it all. I will write this about it: Pero Lopez died quickly. He begged not for his life, and they were kind to him. They didn’t stretch him up but put him on a horse. His neck snapped in the fall. (It is true, I could not resist feeling satisfaction when I heard it. The behike is right, I receive this death gladly in my heart.)

  Valenzuela and his servant managed to break free, Tamayo said. They grabbed weapons and put up a strong fight. Cao himself was cut in the face before both men were run through with lances and daggers and Cao wrestled the servant down and cut his throat.

  “Valenzuela lived the whole night,” Tamayo said. “He cried for water all night.”

  The old war captain grinned at me. He has scars on both cheeks and an eyelid that dangles from an old wound. “The Castilian dog was gut wounded but didn’t bleed much,” he said. “He dried out quickly. You should have heard him cry for water.”