The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (24 page)

‘Hello, Sarah,' he said.

I didn't answer him and he said, ‘I used to work at thy home. My name is Benard.' He spoke slowly, and very formally, but he leaned close to me as though he knew me well. I found his accent strange. He said, ‘I loved thy mother very much.'

His eyes now became wet, too, and I saw that he had long black lashes just like mines. Teardrops stood on them like morning dew on the grass. I was glad deep inside that my mother could make other people cry. But I could not cry. There were no tears in my stomach, just an emptiness. The man said, ‘If thou needst anything, come to me. I live in the town.' He looked at Hamilcar, who did not look at him. ‘You know where my house be?'

‘Yes, massa,' Hamilcar said.

The man nodded and got to his feet, dusting the bits of grass off his trouser knees. He reached to touch my face but I pulled away. My hand was still in Hamilcar's. ‘Sorry, massa,' he said. I was angry with him for saying sorry, and I pulled my hand out of his hand. The man shook his head and walked away quickly. Hamilcar took my hand again as though he had not noticed I had pulled it away, and I let him lead me away from my mother's grave. Everyone had left now, except for a Negro who stood some way off under a yellow-flowered flamboyant tree that grew on the breast of the hillside. I could not see him clearly in the tree's deep shadow but I could see that he was strangely dressed, in a brown tunic, and that he was very big. I had never seen him before, and there were not many Negroes on the island.

‘Who is that?' I asked Hamilcar. The man had a bald head and, in the distance, his eyes were hidden in the shadowed cups of their sockets. It was as though two holes had been punched in his head and, for a moment, I forgot that my mother was dead.

‘Me na know,
doux-doux
,' said Hamilcar, and we went down the hill.

The house felt completely empty without my mother. My days were filled with missing her. Everywhere I was aware of her absence: I did not hear her voice, I did not see her smile, I did not feel her touch. Bartleby ignored me as he always had. He bought a Negress to take care of the house. She cooked and cleaned and washed and everything else. I came home only to eat and sleep. I spent the days in the fields and the forest. I played with the Negro children. There were only a few Christian children on the island, all older than me, all born outside the island, all living in the town. I did not like the town with its streets and low white houses. I only passed near it to get to the beach. I liked to bathe in the sea. I wandered all over the parish, and if darkness caught me far from the house I climbed a tree and slept in the crook of the trunk. I picked fruit and caught fish with a rod and hook I made myself. I knew how to roast the fish over a fire I also made myself, though I did not know how I knew to do these things. Those who saw me thought I had forgotten my mother. They thought I had run wild, or more wild. I was only trying to escape her death, but from death there is no escape. Or so I thought then.

One night, Bartleby came to me. I was asleep on my pallet and I woke up to find him kissing the slit between my legs. I was surprised how soft his lips felt, and I drew up my knees as I had seen my mother do. He glanced up at me, also surprised, but his mouth did not stop. Instead, he put his tongue into my slit and I felt a kind of pleasure I had never felt before building in my belly. He licked and then stopped and I realized I had been holding my breath. When he moved on top of me I did not push him away. I felt his thing, stiff and huge, nudging at my slit and I opened my legs as I had seen my mother do. He pushed and pushed but it would not go in. He got up and went to the corner where the pot of lard was. I got up and took off my dress and went naked to my mother's bed. I never wore underclothes. Bartleby grunted when he came back and saw me lying there. He had put lard on his thing and also rubbed some on my slit. Now he slipped inside easily, but he felt so big and I felt so stretched and there was a tearing pain as he thrust down. When I felt him deep inside me, I rolled over to be on top. It was less painful and I could move my hips as I had seen my mother do. Bartleby stared at me with wide eyes, as if he were frighted. I ignored him and rolled my bottom. His big hands reached up and squeezed my chest but I pushed them away because I had no breasts. He did not object. His face looked strained, feverish, and I saw that as long as he was inside me he was in my power. I moved my waist faster and he said ‘Ahh!' as though something had struck him and his eyes rolled up in his head and his tongue stuck pinkly out of his mouth. I felt Bartleby's thing bulge inside me once, and then again, and become soft. But only when I eased myself off him did I feel the stickiness in my crotch.

Afterwards, I put on my nightdress and went out in the night under the glowing white moon. The crickets and the frogs fell silent before me as I walked through the fields. The shadows were deep so I could not see to pick my way. The stones underfoot were sharp but I did not feel them. I had always run about unshod and my soles were like leather. But the tall razor grass did slice my bare shins. I went down to the sea. The crash of the waves seemed louder in the night. The waves foamed onto the shore like flung sheets; beyond, the moonlight glinted off the water. I took off my dress and waded into the water to wash off the blood caked between my thighs. The salt stung at the thin cuts on my legs. I liked the pain. The wind was strong but not cold. I lay back in the shallows and let the waves push and pull me. The sky was black and silver with stars. When I sat up, running water through my cupped hands over my body, I could see these stars flowing like silk over my skin. Then a great wave of terror flowed over me as from the hills, behind the swaying palm trees, ghostly white wisps came speeding down at me. My heart seemed to stop before I realized they were cotton seeds. I watched them spin and dance in the silvery moonlight over my head and I wondered how the wind could be blowing out to sea. But I felt no fear and I began following the seeds that streamed over my head on that perverse wind. I swam for a long time. My arms and legs became heavy and I realized my entire body was heavy. I plummeted slowly into the deep waters, now no longer heavy, thinking that I, too, was like a cotton seed. Then I stopped thinking.

I remember darkness. I remember a dream. The Negro who had stood under the tree at my mother's funeral was in it. I was fighting him. I had a sword, but it felt clumsy in my hand. This was strange, because I knew I had once been a master swordsman. I could not seem to touch the Negro, who was as swift and as elusive as a running shadow. But his arms were as solid as tree trunks when they closed about me. I lay dying. It was a death without dreams. His voice whispered at my ear, cold as the water I now sank into. ‘Your book shall be at the tomb of your ancestors.' I died. Then I was on the beach, the white sand gritty against my cheek. I rose to my knees. I could not breathe. My chest heaved, and something broke within me. Water poured out from my mouth and my nostrils. The salt water burned my throat, my nose, the backs of my eyeballs. My stomach heaved, sour green-grey bile spurted out; another heave, but just a sour trickle now. I gulped for breath, my stomach like a locked door. The world was grey and quiet, save for my whooping breath. I flopped down on my back, a gasping fish. The sky above me was now turning silver, the far horizon flushing a pale rose. The tightness in my chest began to ease. The cold air bit at me. My nightdress had blown away. I got up and peered at the palm trees. The dress was white and I would have seen it had it been caught on a bush. Then I looked down and became rock-still. My small footprints leading into the sea were still printed on the sand. But beside them were larger sandal prints. Bartleby, I thought. But the prints were too big and cut too deep in the sand. I saw that whoever had stood there had not saved me – the prints stopped short of the tideline. He had watched me drowning and left. I shivered and hugged myself. I felt very small and very naked. I had to get home before anyone saw me. A strange thought. I had never worried about nakedness before. I ran home as fast as I could. The cock was crowing when I let myself in. Hamilcar was at the stable door and saw me. Inside, I put on my breeches and shirt. I had only one other dress, which I never wore. Bartleby was snoring behind the curtain.

I spent the day in the forest. That night Bartleby came to me again. He came naked, but I was awake and I pushed him away. My mother was dead. Bartleby cursed and tried to hold me down. He said what I later knew men always said: ‘You know you want it.' His thing waved hugely in front of my face, the slit at the red plum-tip winking at me like an eye. I kicked at the double-wrinkled bag beneath his thing and Bartleby gasped and fell like a cut tree. While he clutched himself and whimpered, I went outside and slept in the stable. Hamilcar was there on the straw.

‘Ye awright,
doux-doux
?' he asked.

‘Yes,' I said and fell asleep with my head cradled on his chest.

Bartleby came into the stable just before dawn. I only knew when he kicked me off the straw. Hamilcar ran away. Bartleby removed his belt and wrapped the buckle-end around his fist and started strapping me. I was curled in a ball on the packed dirt so the belt whapped mostly my back and my legs. After I don't know how long Bartleby stopped and when I peeped out he was standing with his chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face, the belt a limp black tongue at his side. My back was sore and stinging, but I couldn't help it: I laughed in Bartleby's face. That was when he backhanded me with his other hand and I went back and my head hit something. When I came to, I was naked and between my legs was very sore. So I knew Bartleby had been inside me again. He was gone. I went into the house and put some goose grease between my legs to ease the hurt. I couldn't reach my back, though. The Negress, whose name was Eliza, came in and asked me what I was doing. I said that Bartleby had strapped me and had put his thing inside me and it was hurting. I asked her if she had any of the healing pulp from the spiky thick-leaved plant that I knew had come from her country, though I did not know how I knew this. But her eyes had opened till they looked like pigeon's eggs and it was some moments before she spoke. ‘These white men– savages!' she said, and it was strange that I knew she said this for she spoke in a tongue I had never heard before. Eliza didn't have any of the plant but she rubbed the grease on my back for me. She was very gentle and pain rose anew in me, for I could have imagined her touch was my mother's touch. Afterwards, I put on my clothes and went down to the sea. When I passed back through town on my way home that evening, I noticed how people were looking at me and whispering. At the house, the servants did the opposite, avoided looking at me and not talking at all. Hamilcar was still missing. They would catch him, I knew. The island was small and flat, so the sky seemed to fall away and you felt you could fly away off the earth like a bird. But because the island was small and flat there was no place for a runaway slave to hide.

Bartleby did not try to interfere with me that night. Perhaps he saw how the other people were watching him, or not watching. But some days must have passed before he knew why people were doing so. For it was about four days later when I came home one evening to find him outside the house dressed in his baggy suit.

‘I must talk to thee,' he said.

He had never spoken to me in this formal way before. I said nothing but stood and waited.

He said, ‘Thy mother died before her service to me was done.' Bartleby spoke as though this were her fault. I watched him and still said nothing. He ran his finger around the inside of his round high collar. His face was very red, though that may have been the light from the setting sun. He said, ‘I am not a rich man. 'Tis time you started earning thy keep.' He pulled out a rolled paper from his pocket. ‘I have sold thy mother's contract to another person. Since she is dead, you shall serve out the remainder of her service.'

I shrugged and went inside. The next morning Bartleby dropped me at my new home. It was a red-tiled stone house in the very centre of town. The front was of wood: a shop that sold cloth and dishes and cutlery. It was owned by an old woman called Widow Simmons. Her face was thin, and she had a big nose and thin, pursed lips. She wore black dresses with high stiff collars and sleeves down to her wrists. No lace or ruffles for her, she being a Puritan.

‘Dost thou know why I have bought you?' she asked me.

‘To work,' I said. I did not much care.

‘To work,' she agreed. ‘And to save thy soul from sin.'

She looked at me closely with her narrow-set eyes as she said this, so I knew she knew what Bartleby had done; and I knew for the first time that this was a sin.

Widow Simmons took the saving of my soul seriously. We said prayers at every meal and before going to sleep at night. She made me wear black dresses all the time and beat me severely when she caught me smoking. She was also strict about my being a lady, hitting me in the small of the back when she caught me slouching, insisting I keep my eyes demurely downcast, and always telling me to speak properly. ‘You sound like one of those illiterate Negroes,' she kept telling me, although she never made any effort to teach me to read or write.

She also took my working hard very seriously. I spent the day cleaning and cooking and tending her garden. I planted and tended tomatoes, beans, squash, and even a few corn plants. The widow also kept three milch cows, which I milked every morning, churning butter every week for the widow to sell. My days of playing and running and swimming in the sea were behind me now. It was strange that I let go of my old life so easily, yet I never thought of running away. They had caught Hamilcar and tied him by the wrists to the gibbet in the harbour and whipped him till the dirt below his swinging feet was stained dark red with blood. The whole town came out to watch, including Widow Simmons. She pursed her mouth so tightly while they beat him that her lips disappeared, but I saw how her small black eyes gleamed. Hamilcar fainted twice and was revived and beaten again before they stopped. I saw how his back was a pulpy mass; and they threw sea water on his wounds before putting him in Bartleby's cart. Bartleby didn't speak to me though I knew he saw me. Hamilcar had fainted again.