The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar

 

Kevin Baldeosingh

www.peepaltreepress.com

To Zoë

First published in Great Britain in 2004, reprinted in 2013

This ebook edition published in 2013

Peepal Tree Press Ltd
17 King's Avenue,
Leeds LS6 1QS
England

Copyright © 2004, 2013 Kevin Baldeosingh

ISBN 978184523-225-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission.

My name is Dr. Surendra Sankar. I am a consulting psychiatrist. Between March 1 and December 27, 2000, I had regular consultations with Mr. Adam Avatar. His case is unique in my experience and, as far as I am aware, in the psychiatric literature. This is one reason I have decided to publish the following account, but it is not the main reason.

I wish to assure the reader that I did not come to my decision lightly. Doctor-patient confidentiality is the most sacrosanct of all professional relationships. There is also the fundamental principle of the medical profession, Hippocrates's first axiom: “Do no harm”. My dilemma lay in these two principles being in conflict. I pondered the problem for several months. All my colleagues advised me against publication of these transcripts, notes and records. At the very least, they pointed out, I ran the risk of ruining my professional reputation. I might even have my licence revoked. The reader holds my decision in his hands. When the entire account has been read, I hope the reader will agree that I made the right choice.

When I first met Mr. Avatar on February 29, I had no inkling that he was to provide me with a unique professional experience. He was unusually relaxed, but that is sometimes a trained characteristic of people who live under great stress. What I first noticed about him was his skin. He had a glowing copper complexion, like a new penny. Coupled with his trim, athletic appearance, he seemed to be bursting with health. When he told me he was forty-nine years old, I thought he was lying. But his birth certificate confirmed the truth of his statement, although, as it turned out, he believed himself to be more than five hundred years old.

I did not discover this at our first meeting. That was spent with Mr. Avatar interviewing me (hence the reason I do not count it as a consultation). No patient had ever done that. He was pleasant, but quite persistent. He evaded my questions. He wished to know about my childhood, my education, my ideological beliefs, my views on marriage, sex, art, my favourite books and films. He was particularly interested in my religious beliefs, and seemed pleased when I said I was an agnostic. I readily answered all his questions. We established trust.

Finally, I asked him what he had come to me for.

He took out a large envelope and said, ‘I want you to read this and tell me if I am mad.'

I said, ‘I will read it and I will tell you if you have a problem we need to deal with. When would you like to come back?'

‘As soon as you read it,' he said.

I said, ‘I can read it today.'

‘Then I'll come back tomorrow,' he said.

Before he left, I conducted a standard physical examination. I found Mr. Avatar to be in excellent condition. He had the physique of a healthy thirty-year-old. That night, I read the story of Guiakan, the Taino, who Mr. Avatar believed was his first incarnation.

My first memory is of walking out of a cave. That was more than five hundred years ago. My people believed that our race came out of a sacred cave on the small land of Ciguayo, that came to be called Hispaniola and later Haiti. They said I was a special gift from our supreme zemi Yúcahu, who was the lord of the cassava and the sea. When I was older, I heard that my mother had walked into the cave with her stomach flat like a
buren
and come out three days later as round as a
batey
ball. The
bohutis
said that Atabey, the goddess of fertility, had planted the seed in my mother's womb. That made me kin to Yúcahu, who was Atabey's son. My mother never removed her virgin's headband. That caused much talk among the tongue-waggers, but their gossiping was whispered because of what the priests had said.

When her time came, my mother returned to the cave with a
bahanarotu
, who was to be the midwife and to read the signs of birth. The village waited outside. The cave was somewhere in the mountains that rose in the centre of the land like the backbone of a sleeping giant. The people waited three days, and when I walked out there was a great and fearful silence. I remember the tall trees and my people with their bodies like smooth wood, and the green land falling away to a silver strip of sea, and I remember the bright blue sheet of the sky. I must have fainted, for I remember nothing more until I awoke in the
bohio
of the cacique.

They told me later that my mother had died in giving birth to me and that the
bahanarotu
was found raving mad in the cave. So the Ciguayao people, and later all Tainos, knew that my coming was not a good sign. The priests talked about what to do with me. The
bahanarotu
only said the same words over and over again in her madness –‘water demon, water demon' – but it was not clear whether I had been sent to stand against the demon, or whether I was the demon itself.

My people were not a fearful race, for Taino means ‘noble', and the priests said that Yúcahu would not have sent me unless it was for a good purpose. Talk stopped when our cacique, Guacamari, took me as his son and brought me to live in his bohio. Guacamari was a good chief and a good man, but he did not take me in because the sap of his heart overflowed. Later, when I was older, I understood that he won respect in the eyes of the other five caciques of the small land by what he did. If I were a protector, having me in his home would bring fortune. If I were a demon, he showed courage by taking me into his home. In either case, I was kin to Yúcahu, as my sea-green eyes showed. But it was all for nothing. Neither I nor any other Taino could have protected us from the
guamikinas
, the covered men. Our god, Yúcahu, gave the Tainos cassava; their god, Jehovah, gave the
guamikinas
swords. My true nature was one which no one could know. Only the mad
bahanarotu
, whose name was Maiakan, might have known. But she now spent her days mumbling to herself.

I stayed out of this woman's way. She began screaming whenever she saw me. It was hard to keep out of her way, because Guacamari put her up in a hut right next to his own. He wanted her close if she ever began to speak in the voices of Atabey or Yúcahu or some other powerful zemi.

There was always a space between me and everyone else. How could there not, when at birth I was already a child of five seasons and, I was told, grew to the size of ten within one passing of the rains? I do not remember any of this. I only remember that this tale of my life was sung in the
areyto
, which told the deeds of our ancestors, and that particular song was not made until the covered men came and it was known that Yúcahu had sent me because of them. Then everyone understood why, even before I was born, my mother had said that my name was to be Guaikan, which means ‘precious crossing'.

I had no kin. My mother had been marked from childhood. Both her parents and her two younger brothers had been drowned in a storm when she was ten years old. Her father, who would have been my grandfather, was a trader. He rowed his canoa over the sea as far north as Guanahani and to many of the small lands in between, and even paddled as far south as Iére and up the rivers of the greatland for the stone tools and the gold ornaments that the Mayans made so well. It was on one of the short trips that the family was caught by a storm on the sea. The girl-child was the only one who survived. She was found two days later holding on to an oar by a lone fisherman coming from Cubanacan. So our people knew she had been protected by Yúcahu, and when she became pregnant by no man, no one was surprised. After she lost her family, she was brought up by her father's brother and, even among our well-made people, was considered of great beauty. She was named Wai'tukubuli, which means ‘Tall is her body'. But by the time I was born, her father's brother had died. He had been killed by a demon in the forest who had pierced his neck with a dart dipped in cassava juice. But I do not know if this is true. The imaginations of the village tonguewaggers were as fertile as the land itself. I was born shortly after my uncle's death and my having no blood relations was a sign that I was indeed a Chosen One. What need has the kin of Yúcahu for any earthly family?

The grown-ups looked on me with respect, but because of this the children did not play with me. I had no friends until I was nearly a man, and then only one. This would be hard on a child anywhere, but it was especially hard on a Taino child. Tainos lived by three things – worship, cassava, and
batey
. I was allowed to help with the sweet potato and squash and beans in the small garden at the back of the
bohio
, but I never got to play
batey
with the other children. When they were playing hide, I was never asked to seek. When they were playing with a wooden ball between three or four of them, they never chose me to be on a team. But, like all small children, I was not aware of my hurt.

Batey
was the centre of our lives. We worshipped the cassava because it was a crop that did not need much tending and it could keep in the ground for three seasons if need be. This left plenty time for
batey
.

This is what I was left out of. The only friend I had was the only other boy in the village who also did not play the game. His name was Caonabó. He did not have any parents, either. His mother had also died in childbirth and his father had rowed out to sea and never returned. Caon was a strange-looking boy because his kinfolk, given the newborn baby at the time of the yearly celebrations for the cacique's zemis, did not bind his head with boards as carefully as they should have. As a result, his forehead was straight instead of sloping back from the brows as it should have been. He was not ugly but he looked like he was of another tribe, like the Arawaks or the Caribs. That was enough reason for the other children not to be friends with him, since children never like those who are different. This proves that most grown-ups stay as children inside.