Taino

by Jose Barreiro

  One hundred fifty-seven. Journey with cohoba, a returning memory.

  I entered the Coaybay in my trance. I saw my elders again. Smitten I am by the cohoba messengers, and I walk every day, all day and all night, in the company of that recent memory.

  Baiguanex and Enriquillo assisted me. Light already from my long fast, I was led by them to the fire. Behind a western peak, the day’s sun splayed its final signals. Light I was of body but not weak inside, not in my heart nor in my mind. The moment was alive as in my childhood days. Nor were my eyes weak that could see with precise clarity. A long, low duho seat Baiguanex had out for me. I sat in the recline of its curve. “Close your eyes, uncle,” the behike instructed, and I did.

  Baiguanex said: “Prepare to leave our world of human senses. Prepare in darkness now as the cacique and I will smoke you with sacred tobacco, as Doña Mencia prepares your tea and cleans your spatula. Prepare in the darkness of your own mind, human being. Share the darkness, little guaxeri, as we clear the spirits of animal and tree, shrub and herb, and we open the very place where we are sitting. Yes, our little uncle, keep your eyes closed. Here, drink from this güira the juice that will fully cleanse you. But don’t open your eyes while the snuff of cohoba I prepare in your bowl; stay in the darkness from which you will travel, yes, yes.”

  I sat in darkness and remembered the words of Guanahabax, our old man of my home island. “Remember all your days that cohoba loves you,” he said. “It will always welcome you. Xán, Xán Katú.”

  All these years later and I still have my own spatula. I lost the feather fans, the two-pronged sniffer, I lost the rattle and broke my gourd, all years and years ago. Somehow, the spatula I never lost. It was my father’s spatula, made of hard, smooth coral, and I always managed to keep it. I drank freely from the cleansing tea, filled my belly to its bursting, then asked to face the woods. Eyes closed, I was guided by my assistants. The tea caused my belly to expand. Situated, then, I heard, “Give it back, now, uncle,” and I used the spatula to cause a sudden torrent of vomit, long and dark, to flow out of my body. I staggered, and my assistants held me up then guided me back to my reclining seat.

  “Prepare to travel,” Baiguanex said, approaching me. “I will now load my cacimba,” he said. “It has two blowholes that I will place at your nostrils. Then, as I was taught, I will blow the cohoba dust into your head. And you will be released.”

  I heard him stand up then. He offered the loaded cacimba to the four directions. He sang the song of Deminán and the four Caracaracoles, the skywalkers, the ones without fathers. He sang the areito of Attabei, the Ancient Bleeding Mother. Then he invoked his two cemis, Baibrama, to guide me, and the Jumper, a helper who would instruct Opiyelguobirán—canine guardian of the Coaybay—to not accost me but to receive me and, later, release me. In a few moments the behike said, “Are you ready, uncle?” I nodded, then felt the cacimba lean into my nostrils. “Blow,” I whispered to my guide. “Push off gently from this shore my slippery canoe.”

  One hundred fifty-eight. The cohoba journey.

  There was light, and transference was immediate. I held the sneeze, felt my body give, then succumb. Then it was midday, clear as sunlight, and I sat on a dock made of two long tree trunks, tied together with bejucos, that jutted out into a cove. The cove was on the mouth of a river, and many canoes paddled out to sea. In the cove, some canoes were latched to each other as people talked. Two men in a canoe glided up the dock. They were old and naked, brown wrinkled skin hanging from thin arms and faces with missing teeth and alert eyes. “Boy,” one said to me. “We have a full canoe, but you can’t come with us.” I looked and saw that their canoe was not full but actually upside down. And now they paddled away, chuckling to themselves at my surprise.

  Now I was chopping wood. I was by myself. I had a Spanish ax and I had a log against which to chop. I was cooking leña for Ceiba. I was in my woodlot, near the bohío we kept in the valley of Guarionex. I was chopping wood by myself, and I could hear the twins calling to each other. I could not see them, but I could hear their voices nearby. “Good Wind,” said Heart of Earth, “come see my worms. I have many of them in a pool.” And Good Wind replied, in that high, pretty voice he had as a little boy. “Let’s go fish the river, my himagua.”

  Then I was alone again in the same place, but there was no sound at all. I felt a group of men approach through the woods, eight or ten of them, Taíno guaxeri of the old generation, all hardy and straight standing. Without sound I could tell they meant for me to drop the ax and go with them. They walked, and I fell in line as they moved fast through the woods. They half-ran in the old manner, single file, at a half-trot, for hours. This is the way the men liked to travel in the old days. Form a line, put a singer at its head, and trot to the next destination. And there I was for hours, it seemed, trotting behind a pair of calves and hairtail spinning in the wind and running. Once the singing started, it went on and on. Among many voices I heard Baiguanex, and I knew, briefly, he was working with me from the living world.

  Then we were at the bottom of a rocky mountain. The man before me pointed out a small trail, and I was alone again, walking that trail up the hill, which suddenly opened to a plateau. I heard a snarl behind me, turned quickly, and saw only a rustle in the grass. Then he was ahead of me, the cemi Opiyelguobirán, guardian and master of Coaybay. I could do nothing suddenly, could not move as his mere gaze captured my movement. Opiyelguobirán sat just as his cemi depicted, on his haunches, with front arms extended like legs. The friar, Pané, called him a dog spirit and having known the Spanish dogs I can see why. Opiyelguobirán was small and he was big, so big at moments I felt just his nostril could take me up in a breath. Suddenly the songs caught up with me, the sweet running songs and then the ones of Guarionex and the ones of my father and even the death song of Cibanakán, long imbedded in my ear from the time of his freezing. Hearing Cibanakán’s song, Opiyelguiobirán began to diminish in size. Then, quite small, he wagged his tail, tended his head for me to pat, and darted away.

  Sunshine appeared. In a wide field I saw multitudes. There were Taíno people all over the plateau, and I could hear talking and I could smell roasting cassabe bread and roasting corn. An old man I did not recognize came up beside me. “We can smell the food,” he said wistfully. “But we cannot eat it.”

  He moved on, and then Guarionex was there and my father behind him, and the other old men of our cohoba circle in Guanahaní. It was all men, and they circled around me then began to walk me up the hill.

  “We welcome you, beloved,” old Guanabanex said, and I heard my father singing softly behind him. I could see ahead of us the entrance to a cave, a dark hole in the side of the mountain, maybe three feet wide.

  “This is the way we come,” the old man said, crawling in. “Now, let’s enter.”

  Inside we could stand. Sabananiobabo, lord of the jobos (dead men turned to wood), guarded the entrance from inside. He is an old man with grave eyes. He greeted us and walked next to me. Suddenly, from above, large swarms of bats dislodged and flew around us. Sabananiobabo waved them away. The last flier of the swarm was not a bat but an owl, who circled once over me and flew off. Sabananiobabo sat the others in a circle but took me aside. “Come look at the owl’s reminder,” he said. “You have something here that he retrieved for you.”

  Then in front of us, near a stream, there was a hut. He pointed through the door. A long log bench I saw inside, with two men sitting on it. One was the soldier Manasas, a hefty Extremaduran man; the other was the foreman Moises, thin and slight. They didn’t look up, neither of them, their necks hanging low. I recognized their bodies and faces. They are the two men I have killed.

  “I can do nothing with them, so they will wait, until you meet them at your proper time,” Sabananiobabo said.

  The cave was large and open, very old and musty, humid, almost cold. Now, both women and men walked through as I sat in the men’s circle. The cohoba twins—the twins in everything—I saw flo
at by, crying, yet watching everything and reminding me of the meaning of cohoba, the opening to the other self. Reminding me, too, of my own boys, gone from me now these many years.

  My father now sat to my left in the circle. “They still live, both of them,” he answered my silent question. I was totally happy and dared not inquire further about them.

  “And your mother,” he said. “She is alright, here, in the Coaybay.”

  Happy to know that much, I inquired no more about her either. He said nothing more but sang his canoeing song for me. “Glide in this cloud of a sea,” he sang. “Carry my son ahead of me, carry my son ahead of me…” And for a long while, in his celestial canoe, I leaned into my father’s back, smelling the sweat of his neck, listening to his favorite song. Suddenly from our right side, out of the endless sky, Opiyelguobirán and his twin brother, Corocote—one guardian of the House of Death (and felicity), the other always harbinger of life (and love heat)—flew past us, crossing our path.

  Then I was in the circle of men, and I was very young, a boy in a circle of elders. I knew I was receiving instructions. “Protect the baby boy,” one man said. It was Caiçiju, father-uncle of Guarionex, prophet of our people’s doom. There was also my second father, Cibanakán, and my grandmother, and my uncle Jiqui, and my brother-cousin, Caréy, all among the many faces in the circle of cohoba. I had no need to greet them directly, but they had come and I had come, so we were all now here together again. Guarionex sat next to me, real as anything, and now as I write in this Christian convent I close my eyes and see him next to me still, as in a waking dream.

  My cohoba memory comes and goes. I remember most the talking, the sound, darkness in my eyes but all from sitting in that circle, between the songs. Guarionex was much there. He whispered in my ear. “The Castilians need us no more,” he said. “That I know.”

  Someone else said: “Between the Castilians and their gains of gold, the baby boy now stands. They would make a peace, finally, and leave him more or less alone.”

  Guarionex said: “A warrior of the Castilians who has killed must be opened again. Sing a song of words in his ears. Clean his eyes, his ears. He must hear if he would give the baby boy respite…”

  This was repeated. I remember clearly, he said: “Those who would kill him: put gold in their path. Even revenge they will ignore for gold.” He repeated, several times: “Gold in their path.”

  They talked about our people and continuing to be.

  “Our own warrior man-killers, they too must be cleansed. Taíno they all must be again.”

  “Guaikán of the living sea,” I heard, and it was Caiçiju, our prophet of doom. “Taíno they must be!” I could see him, how skinny he still was, even in spirit. But he was the most adamant, crying at me from his duho seat while the others stood to dance. “Torrent waters of white and black faces will wash the mountain current of our blood. But Taíno they must be, even if all that remains of our generation is the depth of our black eyes and the love in our living bones.”

  One hundred fifty-nine. Message of the cohoba, a way to guard the survival.

  I sat with Enriquillo and the behike for two days. I fed on bits of cassabe and dried fish and drank the juice of guayaba and other fruits of our trees. Everything of my cohoba they would know and interpret, and I told them everything I could.

  “The ones who would murder you,” I said to Enriquillo, after hearing Guarionex’s message. “We should guide them to the gold. A few bars of the bullion that you have left we can put in their path, with which to knock them into our trap.”

  This was agreeable as the method has worked before, though the details remained shadowy. I mentioned Valenzuela and Pero Lopez as likely culprits, among others. And I prepared a written message for Lopez, an invitation for him and Valenzuela, the offer to meet and exchange gold bullion for a pardon and good terms for Enriquillo. I suggested the use of the good friar as a go-between, to confirm the gold exchange and the manner of the pardon. This, too, was agreeable.

  The message I wrote with the point of a fishing hook on leaves of the copei tree. This broad leaf will maintain such an inscription forever. I saw it used by Captain Hojeda early on in the conquest, and he would fool our people often by sending messages to others in ways that appeared divination to us.

  With Doña Mencia I talked about Catalina Diaz and her daughter Julia, who work on the Valenzuela estate. If the would-be murderers can be diverted and a real peace is possible, I promised that it would be Julia who would deliver the message.

  Enriquillo himself took me to my horse, crossing the lake accompanied by eight canoes. I felt very connected to the young cacique and loved everything about him. We found my poor mare, Cariblanca, quite molested by red ants during my absence. She was a bit wild, and it took me an hour to calm her down. “The good friar gets full of ants like that,” Enriquillo commented. Then he instructed me with great certainty: “I do not want him near the peace negotiations. Later, to guarantee the safe passage to our new community, yes. Then he would be useful. But not now, not for this mission of peace pact, when calm must be at the center of our discussions.”

  I took this as an order from him.

  Cacique that he is, Enriquillo then listed for me the core of his negotiating conditions: “I must have these four things: One, the embassy must come from the king himself. No one from the island will I speak through. Two, the king must guarantee full pardons and freemen status for all our people here. Three, he must guarantee land and our own community. And lastly, the law should deputize my captains to guard the peace and manage the arrest of future runaways. Thus we will keep our weapons and our power to travel the roads.”

  One hundred sixty. I conduct a strange ceremony.

  I did the old peace-pact orations with the captains during my final days at Enriquillo’s camp. I offered this to follow the instructions in the cohoba, to cleanse the warriors of so much violence. Our pine tree resin the behike had shaped in candles for me, and the altar I set up as Guarionex had shown me. Then I called on the fiercest warriors to come into my discipline that I carry from those times.

  Tamayo was the hardest, but even he believed in me when I knelt him down facing the fire of the resin and its smoke and I asked him to feel it in his chest. I implored him then to open up the throat, the ears, try to use the eyes, deliciously, to love the world again, what he might see or sense of being alive.

  Tamayo’s mother had been disemboweled, his father burned alive. In reprisal, these past few years, he had killed much. “I have liked it,” he said, his voice quavering. I asked him to cry if he must and he did. He cried vigorously. Tamayo has been very hurt. “You’ve made me cry, uncle,” he said after the ceremony. “I hope peace is truly our new way. Because war will be harder now.”

  I worked on young Cao, who, to my dismay, had killed almost a dozen times. Of all of them it was young Cao surprised me the most, as he truly had killed without bother and had no remorse to clear away.

  Astin the Lucumí, a veteran from the rebellion of enslaved Africans at Don Diego Columbus’s sugar mills in 1522, was another hard one. He helped hang many whites during that rebellion, even one or two who were friends. “Ever since, I have killed Castilians,” he said. “By myself, more than twenty men.”

  So much hatred came quickly out of the men that I became concerned lest they surrender their fighting spirit too soon. One plan I could not get out of my mind: the capture and just punishment of Valenzuela and the monster Pero Lopez. Tamayo it was, I felt, that must set the trap for Valenzuela and Pero Lopez. In the midst of my doings with them, I was suddenly certain, in a darkening of heart, that I wanted Tamayo and his most experienced killers to do that job. Tamayo and Cao and the Lucumí, I knew, would kill Valenzuela, would kill Pero Lopez, if given the chance.

  I enlisted Tamayo for the ambush of Valenzuela and Lopez then, and on his own he picked Cao and Astin and three others to go along. I would lure the men to their trap, where they expected gold. The rest was left open
, though Tamayo hated Valenzuela immensely, and I knew, in my revengeful heart, survival was not likely for our former masters. A strange ending such talk provided to a cleansing ceremony, and Enriquillo avoided having to approve the plan. I did feel twisted, behind my eyes, and I noticed later the behike disappeared to the woods without saying good-bye.

  One hundred sixty-one. At the convent, Las Casas returns.

  Las Casas is back. He returned quietly, day before yesterday, on a busy morning when four other ships came in. From my high window, I saw him enter the convent, hiding under a cape. The next evening, Fray Remigio came for me. “The good friar wants to see you.”

  In his main room we met, Fray Remigio quietly withdrawing after ushering me in. Las Casas sat in darkness by the window. “Do not look upon me,” he said. “I may or may not be here yet.”

  He would go out this evening, and he intended the next day to come in overland, as if from La Plata, he said, to dissimulate his comings and goings. “That way, maybe I was in Spain, maybe I was not, but on the mainland or in Cuba.”

  “I am happy not to see you again,” I said, following his logic. The logic was not strange considering that assassins have tried to kill the good friar. He ignored my remark.

  “I have had your letter,” I informed him. “The news of Barrionuevo has reached the baby boy, who is willing to entertain a real peace.”

  “Excellent,” Las Casas said. “It is of great importance that I carry word of the rebellious cacique myself. I must have an exact idea of his demands when Captain Barrionuevo arrives.”

  “Enriquillo has formulated his own plan on this,” I said, feeling guarded about the priest’s willingness to command the negotiations with Enriquillo.

  “The final crisis for Enriquillo is upon us,” he pressed on. “Barrionuevo arrives in days. I have things set up so that the results of Enriquillo’s treaty with Barrionuevo will be taken immediately to Spain, where several orders are ready to carry our demand.”