The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (30 page)

‘I don't believe in morality.'

‘Oh. You consider yourself amoral?'

‘No, I didn't mean that. I meant that I don't believe in arbitrary moral rules. I believe in ethics.'

‘And you define ethics how?'

‘As demonstrable moral rules.'

‘So you have no objection to homosexuals?'

‘No.'

‘Yet you killed the monk who sodomized you in your incarnation as Adam Colón. You also killed Bartleby by deliberately infecting him with syphilis.'

He became irritable. ‘That was child abuse. So was what Bartleby did. I do object to paedophiles. Do you, doctor?'

‘I understand.'

‘Good.'

This was the first time Mr. Avatar had lost his composure even slightly. Until that session, he had always been quite self-possessed. Even in his irritability, he spoke to me as if to a somewhat weak-minded child. I was now certain that Mr. Avatar had undergone significant emotional trauma as a child. The trauma probably involved his mother and/or grandmother. His biological father or his stepfather – most likely the latter – had played a key role in this trauma. The Shadowman seemed to be Mr. Avatar's true father figure: menacing and mysterious. There was a possibility that the father had abused him as a child, and that either the mother or grandmother had condoned it.

To this point, I was satisfied with my analysis. If I had any doubts, they came only from Mr. Avatar's personality. I never thought of him as being about the same age as me. His attitude was that of a much older man, and his appearance that of a much younger one. He lacked the nervousness, the anger, or the insistent conviction that is usual in these cases. He was self-assured, and he always seemed secretly amused at my analyses. At the same time, he appeared to be genuinely interested in my deconstruction of his delusion, and would often pursue those suggestions that implied there was no foundation for his belief about his past lives. Save for these atypicalities, his delusions characterised him as suffering from textbook hebephrenic schizophrenia.

But my doubts, if they existed at all, were minor. What I was not at all satisfied with was my progress in treating him. The chlorpromazine seemed to have had no effect. I decided to switch to Clozapine.

‘It's more effective than the Thorazine, but you will have to have weekly blood tests for agranulocytosis – that's an infection that may be caused by reaction to the drug. But the risk is low.'

‘Whatever makes you happy, doc.'

‘You seem amused again, Adam.'

‘You'll get the joke soon.'

My task was to get Mr. Avatar to confront his trauma. My conclusion was that he had repressed his memories, substituting these complex fantasies instead. (Though, again, his ready admission of homosexual encounters contradicted my assumption of repression.) The written accounts had made my analysis much easier. But the very complexity of his constructions meant that it would be much more difficult to get him to abandon his delusion of being immortal. He seemed to have compensated for his sexual insecurities by developing himself intellectually. However, this had only concealed his trauma, not healed it. I hoped that, as I continued reading his ‘accounts' of his past, I would find a means to help him face what was truly bothering him.

For the first time, I asked him to read me the story of his next incarnation. This fifth account showed me that my task was going to be even more difficult than I had imagined

I did not get my wish. Not only was I reborn a female, but I was reborn the type of female that my former self would have detested.

Of all the islands, Jamaica is the one that has changed least over the centuries. Nowhere else does the landscape so dominate: not Barbados, nor Trinidad, not even Haiti. To be sure, the sprawling shanty towns of Kingston, the massive hotels and mansions, the modern middle-class duplexes are new. Yet all these human accoutrements seem like petty impositions on the green ring of the Blue Mountains. Many areas of old Kingston are falling into decay: walls of business places are cracked, the roads are unswept. The rough wooden shacks lie just behind the middleclass apartments, like a mango whose smooth red-green skin hides a rotted pulp.

But the most constant element runs deeper than even the landscape: it is a latent violence, an alert savagery, a primal spirit that seems to permeate the very air. It is there in the faces of the people today, black, brown, pink and other, and it was there three hundred years ago. You hear it in the people's dialect, with its listen-to-me accents, and in the bloodbeat pulse of reggae music. An argument, you might think, for the influence of climate on character. But this age-old savagery was not there when I lived on this island as Guiakan. Landscape shapes an economy and an economy is shaped by people making their history. None is separate; all determine the outlook of a people. The unslouched beast I speak of came later, after Columbus, and had taken root when I was reborn in 1679.

It was a wild place then, with a reputation that extended even to Buckingham Palace. Taken easily from the Spanish in 1655, Port Royal had quickly become a base for buccaneers who mainly attacked Spanish ships and ports but were beholden to no one, least of all the English crown. But wildness alone would not have made it noteworthy: it was the fabulous wealth of the port which made its name synonymous with decadence throughout the then-fledgling British empire.

None of this I knew until I became an adult; much of what I am about to write I never knew until I began recovering my past memories in my present life. To write this account, I have rented a cottage high in the hills, where the air is cool and I am not likely to be interrupted. There are enough supplies for a month. It will not take so long to record my next two lives. But to remember is dangerous. Memory catalyses change and change always hurts.

When I wrote my notebooks, I easily recalled all the details of my past lives. But the information there was separate, distant. The notebooks will interest the anthropologists and the historians. In the writing, there was no intrusion from my present consciousness. But this is a different exercise. Now, recollecting my past selves, I feel a growing instability taking hold of me. The voices of the past, once a murmur, are rising to a shout. I must remember who I am. But my mind is splitting, literally. The deeper I go into this process, the more dangerous it becomes. I am Adam Avatar. I knew this could happen; that is why I had put off the true process of recall for so long. But now I know I have no choice. Timing is crucial if I am to have any chance of surviving my fiftieth birthday. I know this from my life as Mary-Anne Rackham, the only one of my selves who ever escaped the Shadowman.

I was reborn the daughter of a wealthy Jamaican planter. Our Great House was one the most magnificent on the island. There was a cobblestoned road, lined with elegantly tall royal palms, leading up to the front verandah where slender red-brick pillars rose from maidenhair and fishtail fronds to the shingled roof. I would have preferred the round stone columns I saw in drawings of the palaces of kings and dukes, but I considered my house a Jamaican palace. To the back, narrow wooden stairs led to the kitchen, the stables, and the slave quarters – all upwind so we never disturbed by any rude smells. When it rained, I often played princess in the glacis at the back. Sometimes, I played in the pantry among the large earthenware jars which were filled with water. I pretended that Maroons were hiding inside waiting till nightfall to attack and murder the white people while we were sleeping and I was the brave heroine who poured in boiling oil and killed them.

My only playmate was a Negro girl of my own age, whom my father had bought to be my friend and servant. I named her Anne-Marie, which I thought was a fine joke indeed. There were other white children on the island, but none of my own class. The rich planters often went with their children to live in England, leaving their estates to be managed by lawyers or relatives. But my father already owned two small plantations in Barbados – I had, in fact, been born in Barbados – and preferred to oversee his newest and largest acquisition himself.

Since he could not bear the thought of being parted from me, I was brought up on the island with the best of everything life could offer. Father called me his little princess, and I was indeed the prettiest thing for miles around. I had rosebud lips and a button nose and long-lashed green eyes topped by a mass of dark-brown curls.

Everyone loved me. Only my mother was reserved towards me: when I became aware enough to be conscious of this, I thought it was because she was jealous of my beauty; later, I thought it was because she had been unable to have any more children after me. She did her duty by me, but always as a duty. She was tall, with a long horse face, and her hair was always pinned up. She had some curious habits in private, like sitting and staring at herself for hours in the mirror. She did nothing but stare, not even brush her hair or put on make-up. Several times, when my father was away, I saw her standing at her window looking out at the slaves in the field, with her lips were drawn back so her upper teeth were exposed like a snarling dog's. So I was cautious about her, but I do not recall ever being hurt or bothered by her lack of affection. My father showered more than enough attention upon me. He was always buying me little presents, making jokes with me, and he hugged me all the time. However, I do remember always wanting to emulate my mother in her ladylike deportment and elegance of dress.

But that was only in the house. I was, after all, a child. When it did not rain, which was most of the time, I played in the wild, sweeping garden. Here the ferns grew tall under the trees, and the pink and red hibiscus flowered everywhere. There were orchids with snaky roots, crowned by bell-shaped masses of white, mauve and deep-purple flowers. Their scent was strong and sweet. I liked best of all how the garden smelt. I would often lie in the hammock, Anne-Marie fanning me with a palm-leaf fan, and doze among the sweet scents of cloves, cinnamon, roses and orange blossoms. But I could never quite sleep away, because I was always aware of the nearby mountain, rising purple against the blue sky, like a living presence.

But it was not merely in my imagination that I was a princess. In real life, I was pampered in every way imaginable. There were slaves to meet my every whim, and I understood from early that there were few things in this world that my father could not buy. Father insisted that we live like gentlefolk, as befitted our wealth, even though we were not in England. He always impressed upon me that I conduct myself as a lady, so I could take my place in proper society when we returned to the Mother Country. So we always dressed for dinner. It was no bother for me, though my mother was always silent at the table, save when she told me to hold my fork properly. I liked dressing up, and I had servants to lace my corset and button my boots and brush and pin my hair.

At least once a month, but sometimes more often, we held magnificent feasts. All the wealthiest folks on the island were invited, as well as others who were not wealthy but important nonetheless. (This distinction always confused me.)

I loved these gatherings, which were held mainly for the sake of relieving the tedium of life on the island. There was music and cloth-covered tables lain with all sorts of succulent dishes: the largest table was laden to groaning with various meats: turtle and goose, ham, tongue and game fowl, pickled oysters, caviar and anchovies. Our plantation supplied beef to Port Royal and a young ox was always killed and the main cuts roasted, rump and tongue boiled, cheek baked, the rest minced in pies. Sometimes, there was a suckling pig roasting on a spit outside. Another table had all sorts of fruit: bananas, guavas, melons, prickled pear, custard apple and watermelons. And a third table was almost as laden as the first with liquors, which father allowed me only to sip: there was brandy, which I didn't like; sherry, which I did; and various wines: claret, white, Rhenish, and Fiall are the ones I remember.

We had white servants who prepared all this food, though they had nigger slaves to assist. But no planter would trust even the most faithful niggers not to put ground glass, or some kind of poison, in the food. They were, after all, savages.

I was, of course, the darling at these balls. Even as a small girl, my flirtatious comments drew roars of laughter from the men. I could play the piano and sing. And, when I grew older, I learned to look fascinated by the conversation, whether it was dull old women talking about recipes and knitting or dull old men talking about crops and weather and British politics. So everyone found me perfectly charming. But the topics that truly interested me – the latest fashions and new hairstyles and eligible men – there was no one to talk to about. Indeed, until I was sixteen, I recall only two interesting things ever happening on the island.

The first incident, which occurred when I was already eleven years old, was the slaves in Clarendon running away. There had always been free niggers living in the Jamaican hills. These had escaped when the English expelled the Spaniards from our island. They were called Maroons. The runaway slaves joined up with them, and, from what I overheard from conversations between my father and the other planters, attacked colonists in a most cowardly fashion. The runaway niggers would never fight in the open, but use tricks like disguising themselves in leaves and ambushing the soldiers. If they found themselves at a disadvantage, they didn't stand like men but retreated into the woods. ‘I suppose it would be too much to expect honourable warfare from these heathens,' I once heard my father remark in disgust, as I sat behind the folding door that separated the dining-room from the drawing-room.

The colonists were forced to build forts and barracks close to the Maroon settlements, but this didn't help much. The free niggers had become very organized; there were rumours that their new leader had been a great warrior chief in Africa. They said he was tall as a tree and the wideness of his shoulders made even the Blue Mountain look small. They said he didn't carry gun or machete, but if he looked at a man in a certain way that man would drop dead from fright. (This I was told by Anne-Marie.) The wailing sound of the
abeng
, became common. Everyone, whites and blacks, always stopped what they were doing when that unearthly call wafted over the air from the hills. When I asked my father what the sound was, he said it was the signal of the escaped niggers running away from the soldiers. He was always trying to protect me, my father, and I hated the Maroons for causing the fear I saw on his face.