Taino (5 page)

I knew this would cause me trouble, although, of course, among our people we have always known Cuba to be an island. All of our pilots who ever guided the admiral—all—always referred to Cuba-cubanakán as a land that can be circled by canoe. But when I loudly translated the young man's description of Cuba as an island, the admiral reddened in the face and widened his eyes at me with a terror that frightened me.

Old Bayamo, I could tell, saw the heat of the admiral and watched intently. The Castilian captains and sailors had also heard me say “island.” Looking at the admiral, I knew that he knew I had consciously betrayed his idea. From that moment on, the admiral always saw me as a potential betrayer of his intentions. Because I did know his intent.

In Barcelona and Seville that previous winter, I sat next to the admiral at the many dinners given in his honor, where he claimed to have touched the lands of China by sailing west. Thus, he called Cuba, which he renamed Juana, a peninsula of the distant mainland ruled by the Grand Khan. I knew the sovereigns granted him one in ten of all the wealth generated from lands he discovered and claimed for the Crown. Thus the noblemen who wined and dined him and who would finance his return made much of his assertion that Cuba might, indeed, be that main motherland of the rich and vast Mongol Empire, a gold-hued heathen civilization.

Fourteen.
The admiral is cursed.

It is true the admiral felt great pressure in his mind to find the nearest source of gold. He said directly to
Cacique
Bayamo: “In the most powerful land of Castile, my queen hurts deeply in her breast with a pain most horrendous. Only one thing can cure her: the shiny metal we call gold.” I translated the Spanish
oro
for Bayamo as both
guanin
and
caona
, “copper” and “gold” in our language. “My queen and her king will love dearly any people that can provide them with the shiny metal, and they need much of it to quench their heart's pain,” the admiral said.

Those words I remember distinctly. Since by then I knew how gold is used by the Castilians, what it means to them, I was daunted by his expression. It made everybody wonder just what he meant and how it could be that the shiny metal might help a sick person, which, interestingly enough, was also our custom. We did not know yet, not even I, the lengths to which the covered men would go to secure the gold.

When Bayamo stood to speak, I translated his words for the admiral. Bayamo called the admiral by a Taíno name, Guamíquina, which means something like “main chief.” He was direct and, again, I remember his words quite well, as they still bounce in my ears.

“Tell the Guamíquina that in these parts we have our kind of people. The good people, Taíno-ni-Taíno, are peaceful. We share what we have, what the land and the sea give us. As you can see from our many foods, we are a fortunate people. Our spirits are plentiful. Because we are good, our spirits like us. They fortify our plantations. Thus the
yucca
, thus the
maize
, the
aji
, the beans, fruits of the trees, fish, turtles, and iguanas. In the sea, the Kaçi, our eldest Mother Moon, guides the women and the snappers…”

“What spirits is he referring to?” the admiral interrupted, out loud. His voice was accusatory. Bayamo fell deeply silent and looked surprised. I could tell he had never been interrupted in his life. In our people's ways, an elder is never interrupted, much less in midsentence. Young Taíno faces turned away out of respect for Bayamo, who patiently heard my translation. “It is a natural curiosity for spirit men,” I added by way of excuse, although I had no doubt by then that the covered men were not spirit beings.

“What spirits would I speak about?” Bayamo responded. “I speak of the grandmothers and grandfathers, the Taíno who are in us. I speak of no one else. I mean only our old ancestor spirits, the spirit of the sea, the spirit of the mountain, the spirit of our incense and our tobacco, spirit of our
yucca
and our corn, those ones that forever have helped us…”

I interpreted. The admiral responded thus: “This that he says is mistaken. Tell him his faith is misplaced. Tell him he would fare better by accepting our Lord, Jesus Christ, and baptism in the true faith. Then he could travel the road to Heaven and Life Everlasting. Tell him those who do not accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior will go to Hell, tell them their souls will roast and burn for ever and ever.”

My translation was more gentle and included an apology for the whole interruption.

“Tell him about Hell. He must understand how the punishment works,” the admiral insisted.

I translated. The
cacique
peered silently at the admiral. At that moment I saw Don Christopherens rear back slightly, detecting the intensity of the
cacique
's
goeiza,
or living spirit, which emanated that light hummingbird tremor.

Cacique
Bayamo was truly of the elder men of our people, of the ones that spoke to the earth directly, keen with the certainty of our Taíno love and common spirit with the living world.

It is true that the Castilians have reduced us, have just about destroyed us. I admit that our fighting skills could not match their furious thrust. Truly were they decisive and resolute when we, in our trance, in our habitual and cyclical understandings, took forever to decide anything but what our culture dictated, responses so slow that they still hurt. But I know this: the superb among our people, those most steeped in our traditions, were men and women who could spark response in wind and cloud, could converse with plants and trees, could hear the animals speak, could even be heard by snake and
caimán
, turtle and
manatí
.

For generations on generations were our Taíno guided by those conversations, held by our elders with the dream-time leaders of the reptile and bird nations, with the leaders of trees, the
ceiba
and the
guásima
, with the discernible snake motion of the long fish runs, the passing of the flocks, with the very swell of the sea.

Bayamo himself was of the snake. His neck and sloping shoulders on a thin body, his flattened forehead, carefully manipulated from his birth by grandmothers of his line, a practice for precisely such babies in whose reptile eyes could the great mothers feel the cold, penetrating, never-forgetting, never-ignoring justice of the snake, who can snatch time from the quickest prey.

Such men and women among our people were extraordinarily powerful. And I can state with certainty that there never was and never will be even one such as those among the covered people, whose very best can forge wide roads out of forest and cross worlds of water and command huge quantities of death and mayhem, but cannot ever hear the adjoining voices, the surrounding and constant conversation from our living world.

Cacique
Bayamo began the shaking in Columbus's Christian heart. I saw it, and I was glad to see it and, now, to remember it. It was in his look, how he transferred to the admiral's eyes his own body's terrifying inner shaking. Yes, at that very meeting it was that the hummingbird medicine grasped the admiral's heart.

“We have guided you in our world,” the
cacique
talked on. “So you would not be lost. And now you know us. We are a people that stay to our islands, fishing and visiting, mindful of the present business of our foods, our
bohíos
, our
conucos
, and our ceremonies. We have been here for a long time, drink the same water, eat the same food. Always, in our gatherings, amongst us, we love the children. And our children, in turn, love and respect us. Even our dead, our
opías
who come through the treetops from the Coaybay, House of the Dead, and have no belly button, sometimes they stay around us and dance with us. We are good, Guamíquina. We don't raid. We never raided, always build and fish and plant, do for ourselves. In our way, we feed everyone. If a man comes from other islands and he accepts our peace, we take him in, marry him into our people, exchange names with him. In this way, we extend our houses, our
bohíos
, and give roof to everyone. Our ni-Taíno circles and the outlier
guaxeris
listen to each other. That way we have grown strong and are growing still on these islands.” (I translated
islands
as simply
lands
this time).

“The bad men, Kwaib, thigh-eaters, heart-eaters, from the south and some raiders from the north, are mean-spirited,” Bayamo continued. “They raid for women, raid for our young ones. Among them even, some are very, very bad,
caniba
warrior bands that leave their women on their own islands—the Matininós—and raid for the joy of killing, bent on tasting human flesh. My old people said, ‘Watch out when you see those uglies coming!'”

The other headmen all laughed, out of habit, at the
cacique
's joke. As I translated, the admiral smiled, but very lightly. He liked it that our Taíno had their longtime enemies and made much of it to the king and queen. I myself always thought Bayamo and other
caciques
who said such to the admiral exaggerated their old enemies' cruelties. However, it appeared Bayamo had someone else's cruelty in mind.

“The giant seagulls that carry you across the ocean, your garments and sand-skin, these things I have heard of,” Bayamo continued. “Our brother-cousins from
Cacique
Baracoa's villages, over the mountains on our northern coast, they told us about you. Many things were told when we met them at our common
areito
, the dance for Yucahuguama Bagua Maórocoti. They even said you came from the skyworld and could fly away. They also said that when you left, you took ten of their people, those you put in a cave hole in your floating house.”

Columbus stood up with a bound as I translated the words. Again, he interrupted.

“All people are lost without the knowledge of Christ. Those taken are better because of it.”

“He is agitated,” I said in Taíno, trying to bridge the minds and minimize the impact of his eruption. “He is a great captain but he is not well.”

The admiral spoke hurriedly. “The light of the Lord has now come to your lands, headman. Innocence cannot save you from eternal torture. The word of God is in your ear now and only the Holy Doctrine will capacitate your people to enter the Kingdom of Heaven…”

Bayamo began to talk for himself. I stopped listening to Columbus, who predicated for another full minute, and listened to Bayamo.

“I have a question of yourself, great lord—are you
caniba
that your giant seagulls eat Taíno people?” Bayamo asked. “Are you a cousin of thigh-eaters who kidnap our people? I ask the question: Are you good or are you bad? Because if you are bad to my people, you will go to that hell you have mentioned. If you believe every man answers for his deeds into death, then you will not harm those who do not harm you, or you will certainly go to that fire place of hell.”

Having said that, the
cacique
sat down and the admiral stopped in midsentence. The silence left behind by the sound of Bayamo's voice seemed to dumbfound him.

I translated the
cacique
's words then and did not tone down the directness, seeking to maximize the impact. But the admiral had regained his composure. He was not Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Christ-bearer, and grand navigator to be without the capability for an answer.

“Tell him again,” the admiral said, looking to his own captains and twirling his finger to signify a closure to the parley, “that the people taken are meant to serve us and in return are instructed in the true faith of our Catholic kings.”

I translated this as gently as I could. However, the precision for terms of bartering in our language made obvious the faults of the admiral's proposition.

The old men of Bayamo understood and did not like the admiral's reasoning. “What if we don't want to be taught?” one asked. “Why that place of burning?” another one asked. “Why is that necessary?”

An old man who was gnarled and had not aged gracefully, like Bayamo, stepped into the circle in front of the
cacique
. He looked to a line of elder women, mostly sisters and aunts in Bayamo's line, standing together behind the seated line of men. The women all had a rearing-back look, fixing wary eyes on the admiral. The old-timer raised his palm and pointed toward the women with his open hand. “Be careful,” he said. “When you counsel your
cacique
, be careful of the hair-faces.”

I translated bluntly again, and the admiral smiled bitterly. “He should fear us more,” he said plainly to no one. It was not meant for translation.

The old man had stopped. Now Macaca, the village chief, joined him and they went to stand by a tree. I noticed the old man wore a thin belt of caracol shells around his hips and held a small gourd in his hand. Now he took a plug of rolled leaves from the gourd and put it in his mouth. I could tell he was a medicine man, a
behike
, and that, like his
cacique
, Bayamo, there was no fear in him.

The
cacique
, Bayamo, stood again.

“Tell my words to the Guamíquina,” the
cacique
said, and I stood by him to hear him better.

“The fire is sacred to us,” the
cacique
said. “We talk with our sacred fire. In fire we think not of death but of life. As for the Spirit World, as I said, our grandparents await us there.”

The
cacique
himself nodded at the admiral, but warily.

Again, I translated his words and, again, the admiral was taken aback. Momentarily, his face looked flush and his eyes darted about.