Taino (24 page)

My elders' words came back to me often at that time, and I so much wanted to see them and my mother again. I had already a terrible agitation in my belly, and then our heat made the Castilians' wine go sour. As the covered men built their houses, our
guaxeri
, by order of Guacanagari, brought them gourds full of juices from dozens of fruit trees that grew all around, wonderful juices not to be found anywhere in Spain. But the Castilians cursed them nonetheless, and many sipped obstinately on their rancid wine. The darkest of clouds was gathering, I could tell, a temper of ire in the back of the eyes, the
cassabe
-colored men were so hard. Such was my feeling in that first season of colony, as their first houses were built and the plans were drawn, right at the admiral's table, for the settling of Castilian towns on our Taíno lands.

January 6, 1533

One hundred eight.
My loss of innocence.

It has been three weeks and I pick up this pen. This pen I hold that opens forth so much hurt, arousing memories of a more innocent time, of my own elders and what happened to them. I sit to write and the mere act provides picture after picture, as in those painted
cuadros
that I saw at the Cathedral of Seville, Christ being flogged, Christ being stabbed, Christ bleeding in the agony of crucifixion. I remember real crucifixions; I remember beheadings upon beheadings; I remember wanton injuries to child and mother, wanton, wanton, the boot of the soldier applied to the neck, the torch of the Inquisition to the pyre of Taíno. But of all that my mind can hold, I most dread the memory of my own innocence, my Taíno goodwill upon which I have gathered so much hatred.

One hundred nine.
A devilish bout with the grape.

The result of memories brought on by this task of writing, plus a touch of devilry, an incident occurred on New Year's Eve. It has cost me dearly with the monks and even puts in jeopardy how much I can do in the Enriquillo negotiations. I am so bothered with myself, I will write it here, as confession.

In agony had I finished writing on Caréy and my elders when Fray Remigio offered a bottle, an error in judgment for both he and I. A bottle of wine we passed back and forth, the young monk and I, as we weeded my patch of onions and peas. The wine we drank in the late afternoon as the sun cooked my brain. By dinnertime, a holiday affair that day, I was deep in my spine, or, I should say, my spleen. For one thing, I sat at the abbot's table without care, waiting as the younger monks served me. Usually, I would serve some part of the table. As wine was passed, I drank a glass and then another. His Eminence, abbot Enrique Mendoza, sat at the head chair. He is a calm man, old and a bit frail for his many duties, though he walks steadily through his day, and his sharp eye misses little.

“Master Diego has had his pleasure in the wine today,” he said, with a glance at Fray Remigio, who immediately felt the scrutiny.

“My mind is clear, Your Eminence” I said. “Fear not unreason from this humble
guaxeri
.” It was true: I had just entered that place that wine can bring you where everything gets starkly clear. It had been a long time, nearly five years since the last time I succumbed, though I admit I have had my long days of inebriation.

“I fear not,” the abbot said. “Tonight is the eve of the new year. We shall eat well and enjoy good company. Among others, Judge Suazo himself will soon join us, and I believe he brings along that noted intellect Don Gonzalo, who I am sure will prove highly entertaining.”

A worse combination could not have been joined by the devil himself. Don Gonzalo, of course, was Oviedo. I felt my whole body stiffen—anticipation and loathing quickly stirring my senses.

“Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés,” I said with loose tongue, pronouncing fully the Castilian sounds I have learned too well. “It is a good thing Don Bartolomé is not present.”

Several monks laughed a bit too heartily and the abbot smiled, mischievously, knowing Don Bartolomé and Oviedo are bitter enemies. Abbot Mendoza has a sense of strategy. He supports the positions of Don Bartolomé, but the two men are often at odds on daily matters. The good friar's reputation and authority can at times suffocate all other volition, and the old abbot is often overshadowed by Las Casas. So, in his absence, the abbot courts the same high office holders of Santo Domingo, including Suazo, who have approached the good friar.

Minutes later,
Oidor
Suazo and Oviedo were the first guests to arrive. Oviedo recognized me at once. I remained in my chair as he took his seat, and in his face I could see some wonderment at my presence at the table. “Our great admiral's Dieguillo-boy has grown into quite the personage,” he said. “Now he sits as a guest of abbots.”

“Properly, sir,” I responded. “It is you who are my guests, as the islands are my natural home.”

Food and wine were presented promptly by monks who hurried in the silence following my remark. But I was feeling good. Besides, custom was on my side. Governor Diego Columbus himself it was, legitimate son of the admiral and former governor of the Española island, who in his father's own memory granted me the right to join a Castilian table, sitting me near him many times at official gatherings in the final weeks before leaving his governorship.

“The Indian is a notable one,” Suazo joined in, as always speaking of Indians only in the third person. “Truly, he can say he was with the first admiral, may his grand soul rest in eternal peace.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied, reminding them: “It was by order of the Columbus family that I have this privilege—”

“Very well, Dieguillo,” the abbot interrupted me. But I continued.

“—to sit in the company of such esteemed intellect and authority as the present company.”

The meal began quietly at that juncture, and I was silent as the young monks serving plates of fish, fowl and pork, rice and beans, scurried about. I knew a reproach was likely from the abbot if I persisted, and though my nerve to push the conversation was taut, I naturally backed off. In my mind I have been contemplating the work ahead with Enriquillo and the good friar and have wanted to avoid, now most of all times, any public altercation whatsoever.

In my silence, as always with a
guaxeri
like me, I was totally ignored. Perhaps I am that good at dissimulation by now, after years of surviving by blending into my own trance. But it was not hard, really, as the company quite readily ceased to see me altogether, even the abbot (thus I continued sipping).

As they do on this island on New Year's Eve, other gentlemen dropped by, and the table grew to more than ten important men. Only I and young Silverio, who was helping to serve dinner, were Indians in the room. The convent cook had prepared four large
brazos gitanos
, a common sweet cake of Valencia, and the abbot turned over the wine cellar key to the serving monks, who kept pouring it. The company conversed about many subjects, from the preparations for planting new sugarcane to the variety of accommodation and experience of the ocean passage, but finally, as always, their conversation ranged to the life of the people who had been encountered on our islands, how they did this or that, subjects acutely painful to me.

Of course, Oviedo dominated in this regard. He liked speaking about my people, as he is also writing a history of the Indies, talking of Indios and ni-Taínos, this
cacique
and that one, about villages of the large islands and of the
lucayas
, speaking even of my long-lost home of Guanahaní. I sipped as he explained who we were and how we acted in the times before the Castilians. For nearly two hours, the wine, rather than excite me to violence, distanced me from Oviedo's words.

At one point, while drinking steadily, Oviedo talked about the marriages of my people and how they were accustomed to making love. He went on and on, as I had heard him years before (and precisely at the table of Don Diego Columbus, the second admiral), about the
caciques
having many wives and how upon a
cacique
's death, sometimes one or more wives would be buried with him.

Everyone laughed. “A hard lot on wives,” said an
ascendado
sitting to my left. “Of course, the Indians did many barbaric things.”

I twisted inside myself, not because what he said about
cacique
's wives was totally untrue, but because in my mind it was not cause for such ridicule. In my mind, the Castilians did much more barbaric things. “It is of interest,” I said, “that more often than not, a wife's devotion and love compelled her voluntary journey to the spirit island, what we call Coaybay.”

“Even so, a barbaric custom it is,” Oviedo answered quickly.

“Yet, I wonder if a Christian lady would ever consider doing so, that is, out of devotion?”

I got a laugh out of most of the men, including
Oidor
Suazo.

“The Indian is clever,” said the
oidor
.

“So observed the most revered Queen Isabel, the Catholic, at Barcelona, when she met me in 1493,” I said.

I realized I was being boorish to speak so much, interjecting myself like this, but as I sat in my chair and looked upon their persons, they all became smaller and smaller, and I felt the superiority of my knowledge.

“The Dieguillo is clever,” said the abbot, “but tonight his tongue rides the nectar of the vine. He forgets our Spanish ladies, whole convents of nuns, are devoted to the one true Lord.”

I raised my glass to him with a nod, both in deference and mockery. But it was a table gesture I had seen in the nobility, and it ingratiated me somewhat (or so I thought) to the group.

Oviedo continued, more calmly now, about our abilities. “It is true that here and there a clever Indian is found. Witness our natural companion this evening. But overall the Indians were a sorry lot before our coming. Most were imbeciles, made by nature to serve.”

About our holy people, he said: “Blindly, the Indians believed their witch-men,
brujos
they called
behikes
, who fooled everyone by babbling with their little
cemi
idols. Of course, our priests discovered immediately an assistant of the
brujo
who would hide behind the altar of
cemi
and emit sounds, so as to frighten the people.”

Oviedo lifted his wine glass and pretended to hide behind it, making phantasmal sounds, then feigning a witch's voice: “I am your master. Give me your tribute!”

He might have gotten applause for his drama, but at that very moment I interceded. “We never had tribute; it was always exchange, trade.”

It was my mistake. He had had enough of me. Quietly, a blotchy redness flushed Oviedo's oval face. “Idolaters!” he spat. “The true Indians from those days worshipped images of the Devil himself!”

“Never mind this
diablillo
know-it-all,” the abbot interfered, to calm him down. He looked at me sternly, then turned with a smile to Oviedo.

“I understand from Don Bartolomé that they were an abstinent people about coitus,” the abbot goaded him deftly, by way of deviating his anger.

Oviedo snapped forward. “Nonsense. They did as snakes, wrapped up under the leg, men with women, men with men. Anti-
natura
, in the wrong hole!”

I gestured to speak and spilled my glass of wine.

“Diego might consider a retreat,” the abbot said quietly.

I shook my head, and he did not insist. “Father Las Casas is a truthful man,” I said. “Of all Castilians, he understands our people best.”

“Only in going after gold did they abstain,” Oviedo said loudly, talking over me as if to ignore me. He glanced around the table and laughed loudly at the group. “Did you know that? Before going to gather gold, the Indians abstained from coitus. It was the only time. Every other time they plugged everything in sight, mothers excluded.” He laughed again. “But they abstained when they went after gold. Ha, and Las Casas the Great Defender says the Indians didn't put value on gold!”

Of course, he was all wrong, but for the moment my head swirled and my heart raced. Twice, my elbow slipped on the table as I tried to keep a silent composure. The love I do feel for the good friar was suddenly high in my breast, mixing in with the many emotions.

Oviedo spoke on of sodomy now, in a torrent of words that pierced me deeply, though he ignored my face. “Repulsion and shame,” he kept repeating, calling our people “irredeemable liars, lazy, dumb, a people who would rather kill themselves than work hard. The pestilence,” he said, “was only to be thanked for wiping nine out of ten Indians off of the Caribbean islands.

“It was divine intervention directly worked to deny a place on the earth to such savage and bestial peoples, abominable and vicious. It fits them well and it is most convenient the frightful sentence carried out against them by an eternal and sovereign God!”

My head in a fog, his words pierced my breast, again and again. It was another half hour before my mind calmed enough to formulate words. This is where the wine lifts all caution.

“Only the blacks of Africa are more bestial than were our own natives,” Oviedo was claiming, recalling Governor Diego Columbus's acts of swift violence in 1522 while suppressing a slave rebellion in his own sugar mill. Then he made a mistake as he wound down to stop. “Your own benefactor, Dieguillo,” he said, pointing at me. “He hanged them by the dozen, including many Indians who joined in.”

“The second admiral, who saved my life twice, was only a man,” I retorted. “And a Castilian.”

I saw young Silverio jump in a corner.

The abbot sized me up. As I only held him in check with the potential for greater scandal, I continued quickly, by way of explanation.