Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  “Laugh and cry, blasphemer!” one and two more yelled back from the crowd.

  Forty years later, I still fear the memory of this event. I have seen even worse happen to my own people, death accosting us on all sides, but nothing had ever prepared me at that age for watching that goat lick the man’s toes, tongue lapping the arches of his feet, and the man stretching himself taut, a forced smile breaking his anguished lips as the goat licked and licked, and a giggle broke out of his throat. The crowd laughed heartily at the man’s giggle.

  In my throat I could taste the heavy sausage of my meal, and it is that sensation I remember most of that moment. Because the very next thing, the honey was licked clean and the goat, after licking his lips and looking around, bent down and siezed upon a large toe, ripping strips of flesh as the poor devil’s shriek in that cathedral square put the shock of ice on my spine. The goat chewed for a hour, taking his time and looking around.

  That was la lengua de cabra, “the goat’s tongue,” a favorite punishment, among many, meted out in Spain by Inquisitors. It was one of many tools of torture. That luckless peasant, while drunk on wine after a Saturday market, had cursed the Virgin Mary, describing her genitals in a lewd bar song. Several people heard him and reported him to the office of the Grand Inquisitor, who promptly had him arrested. As the peasant did not deny his song, he was sentenced to laugh and cry with the cabra, who might teach him the difference between solemnity and frivolity. Others, such as heretics and witches, would be burned to death, much as I have described in Jiqui’s execution. I saw two of those in Granada, where a man and a woman, she a Moor, were immolated for having raised a question on the identity of Jesus Christ as prophet rather than as Lord or God. They were flogged and burned, both of them, and before that she had the nipples of her breasts yanked off by a special instrument. The torture session was private, but they announced the torture and the executioner held high the actual iron instrument, and I myself saw the blood on her garment as they went to burn her. I know the institution of the Inquisition well and have discussed it with Father Las Casas and others of the monks many times. They are of various minds about it now, but at that time in Seville and Granada, all the religious backed the Inquisition as the main defense of the Christian faith.

  “Laugh and cry!” I remember people in the crowd yelled as the goat ate the man’s toes on both feet and licked at the blood for a full hour. “Laugh and cry for all blasphemers! Laugh and cry for all Jews and Moors!!”

  Remembering la cabra makes my leg twitch even now. I can still see Torres taking our hands and leading us away, and I could tell he was shamed and worried for us to have heard the taunts at the judíos.

  He took us into the church of the cathedral, a huge cavern but built by human workers, big as a small mountain, a door like the entrance to our largest caves. Inside it was dark and cool, and the tap of a boot resounded deeply into the huge space. Every surface of the wall seemed to be handworked, and looking up and up, craning the neck to follow huge columns as thick around as three ancient ceyba trees and three or four times as high, all polished stone, it had a clean look but smelled of musk and incense and oils and dead people.

  Entering the large central hall, where Mass is celebrated, Torres pointed to the altar. “Go kneel and make your prayers,” he said to us. “Remember the storm we survived together.” Caréy and I both prayed, kneeling by that altar. As prayers help me respond to my pained spirit, I asked for the man outside the huge cavern church, whose feet were eaten by a goat and who would undoubtedly die. (Actually, he did not, I now know. He survived the ordeal to join more than two dozen other such men in Seville—the cabra men of the Inquisition.) I was very intense in my prayer and have sometimes since wished I had not been so intense about this man, as I have dreamed the event numerous times throughout my life, and I have always awakened from those dreams in ice-cold horror.

  October 20, 1532

  Eighty-one. How Las Casas remembered me.

  Father Las Casas has told me he saw us, los indios, that time with the admiral in Seville. I don’t remember him then. My earliest memory of the good friar is from the time he first came to Española, in 1502. Of course, I believe he did see me, as he has described me correctly, at the admiral’s side, a skinny, long-haired young boy handling four cages of parrots. “A boy,” Las Casas has told me, “who had an eye for everything.”

  Eighty-two. The admiral requests my words.

  In Seville, at a luncheon sponsored by the Duke Medina Sidonia, the admiral requested some words from Caréy, as the elder Indian left from Guanahaní and also from an even older uncle of Guacanagari’s. But my fellow Guanahaní-ti proved shy in front of an audience, words failing him, and the older uncle, quite frail and having suffered tremendously during the ice storms, said little that was understandable. After Seville, the admiral had Caréy handle the parrots and freed me up to speak as he might request. He told me to stay close to him at public appearances and banquets.

  Eighty-three. Rodrigo Gallego becomes our servant.

  In Barcelona, where Queen Isabel of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon, the Catholic monarchs, held court that season, the crowd was no less excited. We were traveling by royal wagon train now, and even us six Indians had servants. Torres remained with his parents in Seville, but Rodrigo Gallego was still in our party and was assigned by the admiral to cater Caréy’s needs and mine.

  “They treat you like kings, and me, a boy of the country, no less a hero, I am your servant,” he complained, but mostly in jest. Rodrigo was unlike most of the white men I ever met. He never minded anything he had to do and was always helpful. Rodrigo was humble by nature, smart, and kindly disposed. He was also sixteen years old and, we were finding out, had an itch for adventuresome ladies.

  Eighty-four. Meeting Queen Isabel, who requests my adoption by the admiral.

  We spent the night in a royal farm on the outskirts of the central city of Catalonia, and the next afternoon, the twentieth of April, 1493, flanking the admiral, who rode horseback with his officers, we entered the Plaza of the Cathedral, crowded with townspeople. King’s guards opened the way for us as trumpets sounded. It was sunny but cold, and the admiral had requested us Indians strip to the minimum, wear our feathers, and hold high our parrots, spices, cassabe, and several large jars in which fruits from our islands were preserved. I remember that someone suggested the Indians wear a bozal, or muzzle, as they would put on wild animals, and we even tried some on, which, to our relief, did not fit us. I wondered about this idea, seeing that the cathedral was carved on the outside with beasts, gárgolas, that seemed to leap out from the dark stone.

  King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel received us in a small plaza, seated up at one end of a platform that had stone steps leading to it. As the monarchs rose for him and the crowd gasped, Don Christopherens hurried forward to kiss their hands. They blessed him and his whole enterprise, welcomed him, and requested he seat himself with them, whereupon the crowd gasped once again. They sat thus a few minutes only, as a wind picked up the cool of the afternoon and the queen requested the reception be moved into her royal chamber.

  Caréy and I were quite happy to go into the large stone room and placed ourselves near two large fireplaces that were burning warm. Before even all the seating had been arranged, I noticed the queen’s eye on me and perceived her kind smile. I felt a great deal of love for her at that moment. Later, after all greetings and reports were heard and new honors were bestowed, her page found his way to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to the edge of her court. “Veníd,” she signaled with her hand. “Come.”

  “And this one,” the queen said to Columbus, as I stood before her.

  “He’s the one who speaks our language,” he said.

  “What are you called?” she asked me.

  “Guaikán is my name,” I said, adding as instructed, “Your Majesty.”

  She smiled, but I could tell she was curious about the name. “It means a kind of fish,” I said. She n
odded, raising an eyebrow at me. “You’re very smart,” she said, and I looked down.

  “And your home is the Antilles?” she went on.

  “Yes, Your Majesty, the islands.”

  “Then tell me, what is the most beautiful thing in your homeland?”

  “The ocean,” I said, “and the face of my mother.”

  The queen almost cried. She pulled a silk cloth to daub her eyes, and a lady-in-waiting behind her grimaced, clicking her tongue at me. But the next moment the queen hugged me, and the same lady-in-waiting immediately smiled.

  “What a darling child,” said the queen. “You should adopt this boy, Columbus, give him a Christian name. Name him Diego, for your younger brother who accompanies you.”

  Don Christopherens nodded and put his arm around my shoulders as all rose to sing the Te Deum in thanks to God for the successful voyage. The next Sunday, I was baptized Diego Colón, and the queen had several of her ladies attend. Caréy was also baptized and the rest of my Indians. One was named Fernando de Aragon, after the king, and given to the monarch’s young son, who was chosen as godfather to all of us. This Indian Fernando, whom we knew as Atoya but whose child’s name was Ximon, was most unfortunate of all. Years later, when I was enslaved in Cuba during the time of Velazquez, I came to know that the young man was from the region of Bayamo and Macaca, who had cursed the admiral. Atoya, although from the opposite coast of Cuba, was in fact one of the ones taken captive by Columbus in Guamax’s area, where the young man was visiting relatives to attend an areito and a ball game ceremony. The time that old man Guamax came to curse Columbus from the water at the stern of the Santa Maria, he was complaining about the taking of several captives but primarily about Atoya, a son of the sister of Macaca and a very sensitive young boy, destined by his people to become cacique someday. Poor Atoya. He was taken from us right away by the prince, Don Juan, who wanted him instructed in the Christian faith.

  October 23, 1532

  Eighty-five. A dinner party in our honor, Rodrigo meets Matilda.

  There was actually a dinner party in honor of our baptism later that week, a large one, at the house of a Catalonian duke, whose name I forget. Of course, our baptism was a miniscule occurrence, a pretext, I believe, for the duke’s lavish display of public support as the Catholic sovereigns presented their new hero of the ocean sea. The queen was in those days nursing the king, who was under rest orders. Only months before, King Ferdinand was stabbed in the neck by a madman, saved, so the legend went, by a thick chain of gold he wore as a collar. The monarchs did not attend, but sent several of their ladies and gentlemen, plus many royal dishes, to this great party attended by local royalty and landed barons. While the grandees ate in the fancy salons, Rodrigo, Caréy, and I explored the kitchens and the many side salons where various parties had settled themselves to enjoy the feast. Among the younger ladies-in-waiting, a young Matilda Cuesta de Peralta was quite brazen. She and Rodrigo got along quite well, and she teased him that many of the girls talked about Rodrigo “and his Indians.” We were the novelty of the season in Barcelona that spring.

  Matilda was no noble but a muchacha from one of the families of fancy courtesans kept by high men in King Ferdinand’s side of the court. She had many relatives in Barcelona, and it appeared that other women in her family were also courtesans. They were not prostitutes, as I have come to understand the term, and did not have a brothel, such as the one in our docks here in Santo Domingo, but their whole house seemed to ply the trade of entertaining men discreetly.

  Eighty-six. Out with Aragonese girls in Catalonia.

  The girls, who liked to have fun, invited the three of us to drink wine with them at their home, on the boardwalk near the municipal docks. As we had our own quarters at the Royal Pensión in the city, no one to report to, and nothing in particular to do the next day, we accepted. Everyone else in town that we knew was also celebrating that evening, and some were quite drunk, talking and talking, and some of the women tipsy with wine were dancing. Both Caréy and I were quite happy to follow Rodrigo (and a fourth comrade), as they walked down the dusty shoreline streets of Barcelona looking for the fiesta house.

  Rodrigo himself had a bottle of wine, and his friend Mateo, a local boy who spoke the Catalan language, had two. Caréy and I had none, but we were quite willing to drink. “These two Indians are good boys,” Rodrigo kept telling Mateo, who understood Spanish. “You should have known their uncle; he faced down a shark in midsea.”

  Matilda and three “cousins” were home and let us in quickly. Two older women were also home and, after greeting us, made us stand still to be looked at. “So this is what Matilda drags in,” one said. “Who’s the captain?”

  Rodrigo nodded. She looked him in the eye up close. “You can cover these boys?”

  “I can,” Rodrigo said. “But these boys are faraway guests of our king and queen’s court. It would honor our grandees to gift them at least once.”

  “They’re a bit dark and swarthy,” she said. “But do they got a pecker like any old boy?”

  Rodrigo laughed and pulled out a bag with a thousand maravedí in it. I am sure he did not have much more, but this impressed the older woman, who immediately leaned up against him, fondling his butt in jest. “I’ll send you kids up some wine,” she said.

  Eighty-seven. I find the fair-haired woman of my dream.

  It was quite a party. The older woman sent a mandolin player along with the wine. I drank a good bit of wine, but Caréy drank even more. He was really funny for quite a while and danced with Matilda and her cousins and Rodrigo and Mateo. That night I met and talked for a long time with Maria del Carmen, who was very sweet and curious about me. She drank wine, too, and we both drank together, and I talked to her for quite a while about our islands, the storms on the trip, and the king and queen. She was well impressed and did not hesitate to touch me, and very affectionately. I fell in love with her and we retired early, and I am not ashamed to say it—we spent a night of much comfort in each other’s embrace, humid and passionate, with a natural timing in our passions that not only overwhelmed me, the first-timer, but even impressed her, who had considerably more experience. We took to each other like honey and wax. Maria del Carmen was exceedingly exciting to me, and I went back to her house several times during our stay in Barcelona.

  Eighty-eight. Caréy’s bout of drinking.

  The next evening I was off with Don Christopherens to a round table of town burghers, men who would invest in the mining enterprise that the admiral envisioned for the Indies. It was our first in a round of important meetings, where Don Christopherens formally introduced me to give testimony on the gold, pearls, and precious woods in our “Indian” lands. We went to several dozen like that over the next few weeks while the admiral arranged the credits and provisions of our return trip to the “Antilles,” as everyone was calling the Taíno islands.

  My cousin Caréy, however, continued the party through the next day. He and Mateo had become friends while Rodrigo was off in love with Matilda. Through the day, the two young men found a sailors’ whorehouse and through that evening and subsequent days drank many bottles of wine. They became a famous duo on brothel row, and the whores celebrated Caréy from one end of their street to the other. On the fifth day, Rodrigo came running to get me. Caréy is very sick, he informed me, and is vomiting blood. I found him at Matilda’s house, on a cot, facing up. There was blood on his shirt, and every few minutes he was wracked with dry heaves. His eyes were wild and far inward. “He can’t stop vomiting,” one of the older women informed me. “Leave us, please,” I said.

  Alone with Caréy, I talked to him sweetly, in our language. Instinctively I wet a rag and held it to his lips, as we do for the elders at the end of a night of cohoba. I stayed with him all day, gave him lots of water, held him, and rubbed his lungs from behind. He coughed up horrible things and then fasted on only water. That night, as he was breathing calmly and sleeping soundly, I went to the admiral about the need to em
ploy Caréy in something, and it was decided he would be sent to Seville as a second Indian page for the queen’s prince Juan during our time in Spain.

  Eighty-nine. The admiral is titled and granted.

  On May 28, 1493, in a large ceremony, the Catholic sovereigns granted Don Christopher Columbus full perpetual nobility and his own seal. His brother Don Bartolomé was titled adelantado, a type of forward commander. This was a great day for the Columbus family, and everyone acclaimed the act. The admiral kept me close to him all that day. I was very proud and felt the genial delirium of our great Guamíquina, and I was quite conscious that a large fleet was getting together for our return to the islands and men of the highest ranks in Spain were pressing the admiral to go along. Father Las Casas’s own father was among those who went on that second trip. Friends of the admiral arrived from Genoa and Portugal and Flanders. All of the Spanish court, including many destitute noble families, glued their attention to the admiral’s tales of the islands’ wealth. That other Spanish historian, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who is presently here in Santo Domingo, has told me he was there in Barcelona and saw me with the admiral as we walked and rode carriages around the city. Several times that I have seen him here in Española, Oviedo has declared this knowledge.

  Ninety. Something about Oviedo: he lies about my people.

  I will say something here about Oviedo, who was and is a gold counter and encomendero who has become a historian. Oviedo is not a friend to us Indians; truly he has put forth many peculiar lies about our Taíno life and mocked our religion many times. It is true that Father Las Casas dismisses our Taíno religion, but at least he defends our capacity to become Christians. Oviedo scoffs at that very idea, accusing us of “wanton heathenism” for having ignored the preaching of the apostles, whom he says must have come among the Taínos at the time of Jesus Christ. This opinion he bases in the writings of Saint Gregory, who claimed the church had predicated all over the world the doctrine of redemption. “Indians can’t pretend to be ignorant of the Christian faith, as they had news of the evangelical truth,” Oviedo says now, and he justifies the encomienda as our fair punishment. He also says that we Indians have rock skulls so thick the Spanish used to break their swords on our foreheads. That is another of his lies. However, it is true that he was in Barcelona at that time, and the words he remembers me saying ring true to me now. “You talked about rivers of gold and men walking about wearing large plates of gold, who would trade gold for many of our things. You, Diego,” he has mocked me several times, “brought more of our people from Castile to this island than anyone I know.”