It was March 29, 1520, a Thursday. But Orocobix, who was an Arawak Indian, knew neither the day nor the year, for he could not write and had no calendar.
However, he knew that it was still the rainy season and the time of the year when the wind sometimes blows fiercely from the north and for several days the sea is torn by huge white waves. He also knew that it was not the season to worry about huraca’ns—hurricanes—which during the warm months would sometimes ravage the island with a cataclysmic wind and rain, uprooting enormous trees and changing the shapes of rivers.
He poignantly knew that it was time for his Uncle Brayou, who had grown old and frail, to travel to the land where sky-dwelling gods walked on clouds and where the sky was always blue and everywhere was dancing and feasting.
Yet his Uncle Brayou had a dark fear in his heart about dying. He would not admit it, but Orocobix knew and had asked the zemi to help.
And the zemi did nothing and said nothing.
Orocobix looked out to sea as if for an answer, but saw only the distant reef lined by a glistening lace of shimmering surf. He stared at the sky, which was bright and tinged with a brilliant blue so thick that the very air seemed palpable and crystalline like spring water, and the sky had no answer.
He was standing on the shore of what Columbus had called Santa Gloria Bay, now St. Ann’s Bay, on an island the Indians knew variously as Yamaca or Xamaca or Hamaica, but whose name has come down to us as Jamaica.
What the word originally meant no one knows today, although the tourist brochures and guidebooks claim its meaning was “land of wood and water.” Others have guessed that it meant “land of springs.” Still others say it meant “land of cotton.” But whatever the origin of its name, Xamaca was the only island in the Indies that Columbus called “the fairest that eyes have beheld.”
Orocobix was a brown man of twenty-five, well-proportioned, with dark straight hair hanging down the back of his neck. His forehead, thick and sloping like a slab of upraised bone, was the most distinctive feature of his face.
It was a look the Arawaks created by tying boards to the foreheads of their newborns. Why they did this is inexplicable today, but if intended for aesthetics this odd custom had at least the practical effect of making the Arawak forehead so tough that in combat clubs and swords often shattered against it.
Curling out of the sand like the bony claws of a sea monster were the rotting remains of two wrecked caravels, Capitana and Santiago, which Admiral Columbus had abandoned seventeen years earlier in Santa Gloria Bay on his fourth and last voyage to the Indies when shipworms had made the vessels unseaworthy.
It was in this very spot that the gods from the sky had worked a great miracle, causing a serpent to devour the moon and spit it out again only after the Arawaks had publicly repented for being inhospitable to the marooned foreigners and vowed to do better.
Orocobix did not know it now, and would never know it, but the miracle Columbus had performed for the Arawaks had come not from the Spanish god, but from a German book, the Ephemerdies of Regiomontanus, which forecast a total eclipse of the moon on February 29, 1504.
When the Indians would not feed the gluttonous appetite of his marooned crew—one Spaniard ate as much in a day as an Arawak did in a week—Columbus warned the caciques of the surrounding tribes that the Spanish god would devour the moon as a warning of the pestilence and famine they would be punished with for mistreating the shipwrecked Spaniards. And then the moon was devoured, just as the god from the sky had predicted, causing widespread panic, consternation, and wailing repentance among the Indians.
All this magic happened when Orocobix was a boy of eight. Even then he was a devout believer in the zemi and slept with it at his side. All his life he had believed with heart and soul.
The zemi, representing the great god Yocahuna, was now resting against the trunk of a seagrape tree, looking inscrutable. It was made of dark wood carved in the image of a bird that had the feet of a man, a prominent beak permanently impregnated with a sidelong painted grin, and two arms jutting from its side like wings except that they were tipped by what looked suspiciously like fingers. In truth, the effigy was hideous, and liking it—to say nothing of idolizing it—took a zealot’s devoutness.
On the day that Orocobix stood on the seashore, the Arawaks had already been in Jamaica for an unknown period of time, perhaps hundreds, even thousands of years. Although Orocobix did not know the origins of his people but believed they had always lived in Jamaica, their roots actually extended to the Orinoco River and Delta Amacuro.
The Taíno people to whom the island Arawaks and Orocobix belonged had puddle-jumped their way up the Lesser Antilles over the past centuries, driving ahead of them an even more primitive Stone Age people known as the Siboneys. Using as stepping stones the islands of the archipelago, the Arawaks moved into the Greater Antilles displacing the slow-witted Siboneys from Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica. What happened to the people they dislodged, no one knows, and on this day in 1520 when Orocobix stood on the shore, the Siboneys were nearly extinct.
Now the same implacable fate was threatening the Arawak. Already they had been driven from the Lesser Antilles by the fierce Carib Indians, a savage, warlike people who ate their male Arawak captives and bred their females. His village had been struck by these murderous raiders many times and several Arawak children taken to be caponized—their testicles removed—making them soft and fat for the roasting spit. The raiders were wicked canaballi, cannibals, and just thinking about them made Orocobix shudder.
* * *
Orocobix was naked. But he was not self-conscious about his nakedness, for he had never worn clothes. His body was painted with black, white, and red dyes as adornments to advertise his youth and manhood, and his right nostril was pierced with a small delicate ornament made from an alloy of gold and copper the Indians called guanin. He did not know it, but the dyes protected his skin against the pitiless sun like a lotion.
He stood on the shore of the land he belonged to and loved deeply as his home and asked his god again, “Aneke?” Why?
Why would the zemi not help Uncle Brayou who lay dying alone in his hammock somewhere in the bush?
If Brayou had been a cacique, his counselors would have sent his soul peacefully to coyaba—Arawak heaven—by quietly strangling him one night as he slept.
But Brayou was an ordinary man whose time had come. And in spite of all the desperate pleas of Orocobix, the zemi said nothing and made no move to help.
“Naboria daca,” Orocobix said humbly. I am your servant. Help me, please.
* * *
Orocobix gently picked up the zemi and headed toward the sloping grasslands fringing the foothills. He was following a footpath marked out over the years by Arawaks going back and forth between the village at the foot of the mountains and the sea. As Orocobix walked he was careful not to bump the zemi against any overhanging bush, but sheltered his god protectively under one of his arms.
Following the footpath, he entered the woodland and made his way into the dense foliage until he came to a clearing where he found Uncle Brayou dozing on his hammock slung between two jagua trees.
The elders had brought his uncle here following a long-established Arawak custom of taking the dying with their hammocks to a place where they could be left to die alone in dignity. It was what was done when an Indian was old or sick beyond hope. On the ground next to the hammock the elders had thoughtfully left some cassava bread and a gourd of water.
Orocobix, on seeing that his uncle was asleep, tried to sneak away without disturbing him, but the old man opened his eyes and cried, “Orocobix, am I in coyaba?”
Orocobix drew close to the hammock and whispered to his uncle, as Arawaks do in the presence of death, “No, Uncle.”
The old man began shaking, his body raging with a fever. Orocobix touched him gently on the arms and whispered, “I have prayed to the zemi for you. But so far, he has not answered me.”
Uncl
e Bráyou laughed loudly. “He is wood. You expect an answer from wood? Wood has no tongue to speak.”
“Uncle!” Orocobix scolded, making a shushing motion with his hands. “The zemi will hear your blasphemy and be offended.”
Uncle Brayou sagged into the hammock and laughed so hard that he began coughing. Orocobix stroked him gently on the back.
When he recovered, Uncle Brayou gasped, “Wood has no feelings. Oh, Orocobix, you are such a child.”
“One day, Uncle, you will see that I was right and you were wrong. Then you will appreciate the zemi for its protection.”
Uncle Brayou coughed and spat an ugly chunk of green spittle, which nearly hit the zemi straight on the beak.
It was an old argument that had raged between them since Orocobix was a child. Even on his deathbed, Uncle remained stubborn and would not be moved.
Uncle Brayou was one of the bravest and strongest of his generation. One time when the village was under attack, Uncle Brayou killed three of the raiders by himself, using a spear taken from a Carib warrior. He had the heart of a fighter, but he was also a woeful unbeliever. And even though age and disease had struck him down and he had been taken out into the bush to die, he still would not recant his disbeliefs. The Arawak zemis were not gods but statues made of wood or stone. Yocahuna did not exist. Others may have thought such terrible things, but Uncle Brayou spoke them openly to all who would listen.
Orocobix gathered up the zemi carefully in his arms, said goodbye to his uncle, and headed toward the village.
“Orocobix,” his uncle was shrieking in a surprisingly strong voice, “you might as well pray to my hammock! If that wood is God, so’s my hammock.”
Orocobix did not answer the taunt, for any reply would only goad Uncle to harsher blasphemies. What he had already said was enough to bar him from entering coyaba.
The young Indian walked doggedly through the thicket, waving to his uncle without looking back and pretended not to hear the sacrilegious words.
In his painted arms, he cradled the zemi gently as if he were carrying a newborn.
Chapter 8
Brayou passed sometime that night in the presence of no loved ones or even indifferent onlookers. The next morning, Orocobix found him curled up in his hammock like a man not asleep but dead.
It was time for weeping. Orocobix stood silently beside the hammock on which his dead uncle lay, and he wept. He touched his uncle on the arm and felt the chill and stiffness of death. The zemi said nothing about his sorrow and made no move to console him. So Orocobix just stood beside the hammock, with the sadness pouring out of him.
Brayou had been a big man when he was young, but age had shrunk him over the years. Now there were two uncles, the little naked one who was shriveled up dead on the hammock, and the big, strong one who lived on in Orocobix’s mind.
A black bird perched on a nearby branch and sang a lighthearted song almost boisterously until Orocobix threw a stone and drove it away. Then he was sorry for he thought it might have been a sign sent by his uncle. From somewhere in the woods came the song again, and Orocobix felt consoled.
He did not know how old his uncle was. He did not know what had killed him. He did not know his uncle’s birthday. He had no name for this day, but it was marked forever in his heart as a day of pain and grief. He would observe it in his memory, and it would never leave him, but without a calendar and with no writing, Orocobix would have no anniversary of his uncle’s death and no way to remember to mourn it with the passing years. He would remember only that the uncle died at the end of the rainy season and before the coming of the hot weather that brought hurricanes.
Unlike the Spaniards, Arawaks like Orocobix felt the years flow past only in the rhythm of the seasons. The naming of days and months and the mechanical segmentation of time into repetitious and measured units was beyond them because they had no writing.
European Romanticists would later celebrate the West Indian Arawak as a man of nature and praise his unlettered ignorance as if it were a blessing. But illiteracy and naturalness are no blessings if all they do is make you easier prey for literate invaders. Over the next century the privileged sons of Europe would gather in brocaded drawing rooms to read asinine poetry extolling Arawaks as noble savages—all this while her armies of conquistadors and adventurers would be kept busy slaughtering these mythical innocents.
These ruminations and speculations, however, were beyond the grieving young Arawak. As he stood over the hammock on which the dead man lay curled up, Orocobix felt that he should go and inform the elders that Brayou had become a goeiz—a spirit—before he took the body to the burial cave, for it was his obligation to let them know. But his heart was still burning with anger that the elders had not strangled Brayou in his sleep as they would have a cacique.
He was thinking about what he should do when he heard the crackle of approaching footsteps. He darted behind a bush and crouched low and rummaged over the ground for anything he could use as a weapon in case the intruders were marauding Caribs. Finding a big stone half buried in the dirt among the tangled roots of a bush, he dug it out with his fingernails and clutched it in his right hand like a club while he kept his eyes riveted on the trail.
As the footfalls drew nearer, Orocobix tensed and held the stone ready. He was crouching behind the bush when he saw an old man limping along with the aid of a stick toward the hammock, glancing around like a frightened bird. He was naked and had a full head of graying hair, but he looked like no one else Orocobix had ever seen. He stooped over as if weighted down by a heavy load on his back, and his legs were as crooked and thin as drought-stricken bamboo. His entire body was covered by a fine pelt of thin hair. What was most curious about his features was that he was missing the thick forehead of the Arawak.
But it was the fear and furtiveness of the intruder that Orocobix noticed first. He acted like a preyed-upon wild animal that sensed it was being stalked, and with almost every move he paused to gaze around him, his small eyes darting from bush to tree, his frame freezing against the foliage while he cocked his head, sniffed the air, and listened.
He saw the hammock, and his eyes flitted indifferently over the dead body and came to rest, burning with hunger, at the pieces of cassava bread that the elders had left for Brayou.
His eyes fixed on the cassava bread, he was making his way cautiously toward it when the sound of approaching footsteps thumped softly on the morning wind like a baby’s heartbeat. The old man spun in his tracks, glanced longingly at the cassava bread before plunging into the thicket with surprising stealth and melting into the foliage. He had just disappeared when a group of elders emerged into the clearing, talking animatedly among themselves.
One of them was the shaman of the tribe, Guaniquo. He was in a bad mood, and when he noticed Orocobix, his face darkened with anger.
“Brayou is gone?” he asked abruptly, making a gesture of impatience with his right hand.
“He is gone, Guaniquo. He went sometime during the night.”
“It is well that he is gone, Orocobix,” said Guaroco, who everyone in the tribe said was the oldest and wisest of the elders.
“He went alone, with no one to watch him go,” Orocobix said bitterly.
“And what would watching him have changed?” Guaniquo asked harshly. “Would you have caught his spirit and held it back so it could not fly away into the darkness?”
There was a long, strained silence while Orocobix carefully weighed his reply. He was tempted to speak some sharp words, but the combined presence of the elders momentarily cowed him and made him hold his temper. “When your own time comes, Guaniquo,” he said carefully, “we will see how eager you are to take that journey.”
“The time must come for all of us,” one of the elders muttered. “There is no cause to fear.”
“What is that doing here?” Guaniquo suddenly demanded to know, pointing at the zemi that Orocobix had placed against a nearby tree. “It is unclean for the zemi to be in a place o
f death.”
“He goes where I go,” Orocobix said defiantly. “If he were displeased, he would tell me so.”
“Zemis do not talk to everyone,” Guaroco said cautiously, flicking a deferential glance at the shaman, who was known to be very jealous of anyone else’s claim to be able to talk to the gods.
“It is a way of the young,” Guaniquo, the shaman, spat. “They would claim privileges without fasting, without sacrifice, without a knowledge of the gods. It is the times. That is why the gods from the sky have come among us. That is why many of them are so cruel to our people.”
Orocobix almost laughed out loud, which would have been sacrilegious with Uncle Brayou lying dead nearby, but again he held himself in check.
“I am not to be blamed for the movement of gods, Guaniquo,” he said. “Gods can do as they please.”
Guaroco interposed with the weight of his years. “It is enough,” he said. “Brayou must be taken to the place where all eventually go.”
Orocobix nodded, asked Guaroco if he would carry the zemi for him, then gathered his dead uncle in his arms, and set out heavily toward the burial cave. His uncle was light but burdensome because his limbs had stiffened and his flesh had grown cold. And even though the elders offered to help him, Orocobix said no, and continued carrying his uncle on the trail that led to the burial place.
Every now and again, especially after the trail had wound up a little slope, he would set his uncle’s body gently on the ground and take a brief rest.
Everywhere around them was a surrounding loveliness, a benignity of climate, and a land softly rising in undulations of flowering bushes and trees. The day was mild and stirred by a soft breeze. Being naked, Orocobix reacted to climactic conditions like an animal, with an innate sense of comfort and discomfort. He did not know what temperature meant or how it would be measured more than a hundred years later by the German physicist Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit. He only knew that on this day he was hot from the burden of carrying his dead uncle, but when he could sit in the shade and rest, he felt cool. The year-round sameness of the island’s climate made this day seem no different from the rest.
God Carlos Page 5
