Caribbean: a novel Part 5

'Where I'm concerned, anyone who comes with your powers from the king is an excellency. Now, what I want to remind you of is something that the others may be too delicate to speak of, but did you know that Cristbal Coln was a Jew?'

No, Ocampo did not know, and he was offended by the intimation, but the woman continued in her confidential, raspy whisper: "Yes, unquestionably a Jew. A converso. Made a false show of converting to Christianity but continued to practice the Jewish rituals, and if you and I reported him to the Inquisition, he'd be burned at the stake.'

'Ma'am, I find it impossible to believe that a man who has been so amiably accepted at court ...'

'The court! It's infested with Jews, and many of them ought to be burned, too.'

Striving to discover how this woman had penetrated the secret of Coln's Jewishness, he asked her various questions there in the hallway, but she always retreated to her first justification, that 'everyone knows his ugly secret.' But later, when questioning through the town, Ocampo learned that only this woman and a few other malcontents mentioned anything of Coln's supposed Jewishness, and even though he remembered the king's determination to stamp out the Jewish religion wherever it appeared in his realms, he now concluded that there was no substance to the charge against Coln.

Ocampo's att.i.tude was that of most sensible educated Spanish gentlemen of the time: He respected those Jews who, recognizing the superiority of Christianity, had converted to that faith, and he welcomed them without reserve to the core of Spanish life; he had extended his friendship to converts many times in the years since the great expulsion of the Jews in 1492. But he was repelled by those Jews who made a public gesture of converting but who then continued to practice their ugly rites in secret; they were beyond the pale and deserved the harsh treatment the Inquisition handed them. He had attended several big public burnings in Sevilla and had seen G.o.d's hand in them.

He was therefore pleased to hear rea.s.surance from many islanders that whereas there were many things wrong with Cristbal Coln, princ.i.p.ally that he and his brothers were Italians, it was good to know he wasn't also Jewish, and one afternoon he gave his scribes forthright instructions: 'We will say nothing in our report regarding the scandalous rumors that the viceroy was a secret Jew, still practicing and warranting the attention of the Inquisition.' And no notes on that delicate subject were transcribed.

But there was another matter regarding Coln which involved a question of somewhat similar moral gravity for which Ocampo was quite unprepared. It was presented to him by a most unusual visitor who came unannounced to his office, a young priest of twenty-six named Father Gaspar, a nervous sort of fellow, with stringy hair, a bad complexion and fidgety hands, whose awkward behavior betrayed the fact that he knew he was stepping outside his field of responsibility. But there he was, sitting in the witness chair, showing every indication of staying there until he had said his piece: 'With your permission, Excellency ...'

As always, Ocampo declined that t.i.tle: 'I'm like you, Father, a worker in the vineyard.' The disclaimer rea.s.sured the young priest, and he said with a rush of words: 'Sir, everyone is aware by now of what you're doing, and what I have to relate is important in the completion of your portrait of the Great Admiral.'

'That's well said, Father. Very aptly phrased. That's what I'm trying to do, paint a portrait of the viceroy as he conducted his important office on this island.' Leaning forward, he added: 'So what are the brush strokes you think I might have missed?'

'The natives.'

'You mean the Indians?' Ocampo asked.

'Indians, if you wish, Excellency.'

'It's not important,' Ocampo said as he leaned back.

The priest continued: 'We in the church have been told that a princ.i.p.al mission, especially insofar as Queen Isabella of sacred memory was concerned, of any Spanish activity in our New World is the conversion of Indians to Christianity ...'

'No higher mission on earth, Father. Why do you raise the subject?'

'Because the admiral did not try to convert the Indians ...'

'That's not true, young man, and I hope you'll withdraw such an accusation. Everyone tells me how devout Coln was and how a.s.siduous in bringing Indian souls to Christ. The testimony's unanimous.'

'Not from members of the church,' the young man said stoutly, and when Ocampo started to reprimand him again, the priest astonished him by interrupting: 'Please let me finish my statement.' The licenciado, slowly awakening to the fact that he had a rather difficult situation on his hands, nodded to the young man as if the latter were a cardinal: 'Please continue.'

'I was saying that Coln was supposed to convert the Indians but instead he slaughtered them.'

'An appalling statement.'

'I have made bold to bring before you the figures which none of your other people would dare even to discuss.' And the young priest unwrapped a silken cloth tied at the corners and brought forth a carefully prepared summary of what had happened to the Taino Indians in the years since Admiral Coln's arrival in 1492. And he proceeded to recite the dismal figures: 'In 1492 this island seems to have had about three hundred thousand Tainos.'

'How can anyone state a fact like that?'

'Church records. Our priests went everywhere. Four years later, in 1496, the population-and this figure we know for sure, because as a very young priest I helped a.s.semble it-the population had dropped by a third to two hundred thousand.'

'What do you mean by the word dropped? Who dropped what?'

'I mean senseless slaughter.' The ugly word struck the placid witness room like the explosion of a carelessly piled sack of black powder, and Ocampo was singed. From this moment forward, the interview took on entirely different dimensions, with young Father Gaspar a.s.suming the role of accuser and Ocampo that of the Great Admiral's defender.

The licenciado coughed, adjusted uneasily in his chair, and asked: 'Now what do you mean by the words senseless slaughter?'

Undaunted, the priest said: 'Unnecessary, barbarous killing.' And Ocampo snapped: 'But if our frontiers had to be protected, certainly the viceroy had every right to defend the king's lands?'

'Were they the king's?' Father Gaspar asked with an almost boyish simplicity. 'The Tainos had occupied them for centuries.'

The question was difficult, and Ocampo knew it, but he had strong and rea.s.suring doctrine to fall back upon: 'The pope has decreed that all savages who know not G.o.d or the salvation of Jesus Christ are to be civilized by us and brought into the safety and sanct.i.ty of the church.'

'Yes. That's why I'm here, and the others, and we labor mightily to achieve that salvation.'

'And so did Coln. Everyone says so.'

'Not those of us who work in true conversion.'

'And what do you mean by that?'

'Conversion of men's souls. The bringing of light to dark places so that even the Indians can know the love of Jesus Christ.'

'Isn't that what we all work toward? Isn't that the mission of Spain in the New World?'

Father Gaspar, only twenty-seven that year, made bold to smile at this idealistic version of Spanish goals: 'I would rather say that our mission in the New World is fourfold: finding new lands, conquering them, finding gold, and Christianizing the savages, in that exact order. The hundred thousand Indians missing in this first four violent years were needlessly slaughtered under the orders of Admiral Coln.'

Profoundly agitated, Licenciado Ocampo rose from his heavily ornamented chair, strode about the room, and returned to stand over the priest: 'I cannot accept that word needlessly. Surely Coln chastised the Indians for their own good.' He stopped abruptly, realizing the essential foolishness of that statement, and as a man of good sense he altered his argument: 'I mean, weren't the savages threatening our settlement?'

Father Gaspar broke into a nervous laugh: 'Excellency, did your ship stop at Dominica on the way here? Did the sailors tell you of how those fierce Carib Indians, cannibals all, killed every Spaniard who tried to land on their island? That's what the word savage means. Our Tainos are not like that at all. They fled the Caribs. Gentlest people in the islands. At no time did Coln have any excuse for destroying them.'

'Now just a minute, Father. I've sat here for days listening to how your gentle Indians killed every one of the thirty-nine men Coln left at La Navidad in 1493. And how they killed so many of our men at Isabela in those bad years around 1496. Don't tell me that your precious Indians were gentle-'

To Ocampo's astonishment, the young priest broke in unceremoniously to make a point he deemed so relevant it could not wait: 'But your men stole their food, for one thing. Their women, for another.'

Ocampo recalled that memorable phrase of the sailor Cespedes reporting what his friend from Cadiz had said: 'Maybe we'll take the women we need from the natives ...' but he said: 'I would hope that self-respecting Spanish men would not have-'

But again the fiery young priest interrupted: 'Let me complete my figures. Last year, in 1508, we took another census, this time very accurate, seventy-eight thousand Tainos left. Down from three hundred thousand only a few years ago. Soon, at the rate we're going, there will probably be less than a thousand.'

'I cannot accept those figures,' Ocampo said, and suddenly Father Gaspar became all humility: 'Excellency, forgive me. I've been most rude and I'm ashamed. But you're preparing an important doc.u.ment and the truth really must be respected.'

'Thank you, young man. I shall pray that what you've been telling me isn't the truth.'

'With your permission, Excellency. Could I recite the details of an incident, a typical one, I believe? I served as chaplain to an expeditionary force sent out from this capital and I was a witness to it myself.'

'Proceed,' and the licenciado, a somewhat chastened man, leaned forward once more to hear what this ardent young fellow had to say, for what he'd heard so far was certainly disturbing but also curiously convincing: 'In the summer of 1503, I was ordered by my superiors to report to Governor Nicolas de Ovando, who was about to launch an expedition of many soldiers to discipline the Tainos on the far western tip of Espaola. We marched for many days before we reached that distant and dangerous part of our realm, but when we arrived there we began a systematic punishment of those caciques, or native rulers, who had hitherto refused to obey orders issued by our governor, the said Ovando.

'In every instance, before the killings started, I begged the governor for permission to visit the Tainos, because I was certain I could resolve their worries, explain the new laws, and pacify them as I had done so often before. But always the governor said: "They've disobeyed my p.r.o.nouncements and must be punished."

'So without war ever having been either declared or conducted we rampaged through Xaragua Province, burning villages and slaying inhabitants. In all we killed eighty-three of the caciques, and when I say killed I mean we racked them, garroted them slowly, dismembered them, and slowly burned them alive. When we wanted to show our benevolence, we hanged them swiftly and properly. Besides the important caciques, we must have slain forty thousand.

'Among the caciques there was a most beautiful lady leader, Anacoana, not yet thirty, I judged, with long and graceful hair which flowed over her body that was otherwise naked. When she scorned Governor Ovando and refused to pledge obedience to his future p.r.o.nouncements, he, in a rage, ordered her to be burned alive, but while he was attending other matters I ordered three soldiers to strangle her quickly and as painlessly as possible, and when she felt their merciful hands about her neck, she smiled at me, and it was I who wept, not she.'

The licenciado had listened to this narrative with close attention, then sent for local officials, whom he questioned on the spot with Father Gaspar listening: 'Was there an expedition against Xaragua Province?' Yes. 'Did Governor Ovando lead it?' He did. 'Were many caciques slain?' There had to be. 'Was a beautiful lady cacique burned alive?' That was the order, but this good priest here signaled to me and two others to strangle her, which we did.

Ocampo sat silent for some moments, forefingers propping his chin as he tried to visualize what had happened, but then he coughed and leaned forward as if to say: Now let's get to the facts in this case. 'Tell me, Father Gaspar, are you one of those who hold that black men and Indians have souls?'

'I am.'

'What justification for such belief have you heard?'

'That all men who live are human, all equal in G.o.d's love and the care of Jesus.'

'Even savage Indians who know not G.o.d ... or Jesus?'

'Jesus instructed us to teach them the truth, show them the light, so they could know.'

'Then you hold that white men are wrong in making blacks their slaves?'

'Yes. It would be better if they treated them as brothers.'

'Then you condemn our king and queen for having slaves?'

'I do.'

'But if by making these savages slaves, we are able to bring them into the sheepfold of the Good Shepherd Jesus, is that not a path to salvation?'

Father Gaspar studied this neat dilemma for some moments, then conceded: 'If that is the only avenue to salvation, yes, it would be justified. But I would think that as soon as the black man or the Indian became a Christian, he would have to be released from his bondage.'

'To get back to my original question. Do you really believe that black men and Indians have souls, like you and me?'

'I do. Else, by what means could they see the light of Christianity? Through their eyes? Their ears? Their stomachs? It can only be apprehended through their souls.'

This gave Ocampo trouble, and after a while he asked, almost tentatively: 'You know, I suppose, that many learned doctors of theology deny that savages have souls?'

'I've heard that argument, and all who make it have a lot to explain.'

'I make it. I have tried incessantly since landing on this island to understand how the savage Indians I see, the ones our Great Admiral had to chastise so harshly, could possibly have souls. Nor can they be cla.s.sified as human.' He said this forcefully, then asked: 'I suppose, then, you consider them human beings?'

'I do,' and before Ocampo could respond, he added: 'And I do for this reason. I cannot believe that the uninstructed Indian standing over there under his tree has no soul, but if he comes over here and listens to my instruction and accepts baptism that somehow I confer a soul upon him. How? In the water I pour over him? I think not.'

'What do you think?'

Very humbly Father Gaspar said: 'Excellency, I do honestly believe that at birth every human being on earth arrives with a G.o.d-bestowed soul which can remain hidden in darkness until someone like our n.o.ble Queen Isabella, may G.o.d grant her peace in heaven, sends someone like Admiral Coln aided by men like you and me to explain Christianity and salvation to them.'

'But at the beginning of our talk, you were very harsh with Coln.'

'He lost sight of his primary mission. He was satisfied to become a killer, not a savior.'

'Are you still as harsh ... after this exploration we've had?'

When the young man nodded, unwilling to yield an iota to his superior, Ocampo rose in some agitation, walked about his office, and stopped at a window that looked out upon the busy street, where his eyes fell upon an unfamiliar and startling sight-a big, handsome black man, his sweaty skin glistening in the sunlight as he strode along behind his master. The slave had come to Espaola on a Spanish trading ship, having been bought in a Portuguese port on the African coast since at this time only the Portuguese were engaged in that trade. From his viewpoint Ocampo had a sudden vision of what was to come-turbulent days when the streets of the town and the roadways of this island would be crowded with such black men and their women, and he was both fascinated and disturbed by this prospect.

In real perplexity he summoned Father Gaspar to stand beside him, and when he pointed to the black man, he asked: 'Father, do you really believe that that one, the big black fellow ... does he have a soul like you and me?'

'Yes,' Father Gaspar answered, and then the gift of prophecy came upon him, for he had brooded upon this matter since the day Admiral Coln started ma.s.sacring the Tainos because they did not conform to his idea of what a subservient people should be, and he predicted: 'The history of this island, and all of the islands Spain has captured in this lovely sea, will involve the slow and even reluctant admission that the big black man down there has a soul.'

Ocampo, in no way convinced by the young priest, now turned his attention to the most difficult part of the investigation, this matter of the great indignity Francisco de Bobadilla, his distinguished predecessor as special investigator, had visited upon Admiral Coln. As he started his intensive study, he felt like Bobadilla-both had been dispatched with roughly the same kind of commission-but Bobadilla's task had been much the more difficult, and Ocampo realized that, so he started gingerly, and the testimony of the early witnesses was reported succinctly by the scribes: Melchior Sanchez, an unpleasant man and an avowed enemy of Coln, gave it as his opinion that Bobadilla had arrived three years too late, had performed brilliantly in clearing up the mess, and had treated Coln justly and even mercifully. Sanchez thought that Bobadilla would have been justified in hanging the admiral, but this evidence was neutralized by Ocampo's discovery that Coln had justly hanged the oldest Sanchez boy for repeated theft.

Alvaro Abarbanel, a responsible merchant in goods imported from Spain, whose trade the admiral had a.s.sisted by bringing in merchandise in government ships, said briefly and harshly: 'Bobadilla should have been horse-whipped for treating a great man as he did. The admiral would have been justified in shooting him, and I came close to doing so.'

And so it went, back and forth. After some sixteen witnesses had split about nine in favor of Bobadilla, seven supporting Coln, Ocampo told his scribes: 'We had now better get some rational statements, no opinions, no heated animosities, as to what actually happened,' and an official who had served each of the viceroys of the island, one Paolo Carvajal of good family and better reputation, laid out the facts: 'Francisco de Bobadilla arrived here on 23 August 1500, bringing with him a complete set of papers from the king awarding him plenipotentiary powers, but the important thing was, none of us knew the extent of these powers, and Bobadilla conducted himself, I must say, brilliantly. No general, master of strategy, ever did better.

'First he called us together and had the notary read out what one might call a standard commission to look into things generally. Men like that with letters like that visit Spanish territories, here and at home, frequently, so we thought little of it, and we helped him as he made routine examinations, which did not focus on the admiral at all. In fact, Coln showed his disgust for the whole affair by stalking out of town in the middle of the investigation. "I'm off to chase down Tainos," he said with an insolence that infuriated Bobadilla.

'What did he do? Nothing vengeful, but he did summon the people again to hear the reading of his second letter, and I remember standing in the sunlight beside him as citizens gathered in the square before the church, all three hundred of them. The fat fellow climbed onto the church steps, a rickety affair, for we didn't even have a steeple in those days, and in a surprisingly strong voice, read words which shocked us all. They came from Ferdinand and Isabella: "Our good and faithful servant, Francisco de Bobadilla, is herewith appointed governor of Espaola."

'Well, that created a storm, but the arrogant Coln brothers, and they were Italians, mind you, refused to obey him, and again Bobadilla was all patience, but on the next day he had the notary read his third letter, which gave him power over all military establishments in the island, and under this edict he began to a.s.semble power about him. But it was the reading of his fourth letter, on the next day, that gave him the power to strangle the three Colns. Again I hear the notary's voice, for its message affected me personally: "Our loyal and trusted friend and brother, Francisco de Bobadilla, shall have the power to pay all loyal subjects who have wages coming to them but have had them sequestered." You can see what this meant. Men like me would now get, immediately that we applied to Bobadilla, all the money that the Great Admiral had kept from us. Naturally, we became outspoken supporters of Bobadilla, and when Coln finally returned to the town, all were against him.

'And then came the crushing blow, for with this support behind him, Bobadilla revealed the most powerful letter of all, the one which gave him complete power to make whatever changes in administration and arrests he saw fit. And before its words had died in the tropic air, the three Coln brothers were grabbed by Bobadilla's police, thrown into jail, and forced to undergo the indignity of holding out their arms and ankles while the blacksmith fastened iron fetters about their extremities, with heavy chains linking wrist to wrist, leg to leg.'

At this point the licenciado interrupted: 'You mean like common criminals? Like robbers or smugglers or murderers?'

'The same.'

'Not the admiral?'

'Especially the admiral, and in that condition the three were unceremoniously dragged down to the waterfront, tossed onto a small ship, and sent off to trial in Spain.'

Here Carvajal paused, looked at his interrogator and made a cruel and telling point: 'I was commissioned by Bobadilla to accompany the Colns to Spain and see that they were delivered over to the proper authorities, and on my own responsibility, as soon as the ship had left the shadow of Espaola, I took into the hold, where the Great Admiral huddled against the rough planking, my blacksmith, and I said: "Admiral, it's not proper that a man of your dignity, a viceroy no less, should remain in chains during this long voyage. Pedro here will strike them off and we'll replace them just as we arrive in Sevilla." But with difficulty Coln rose and said: "These chains were thrown upon me by the king and queen, and I shall wear them until they personally give the order to have them removed," and he refused to allow Pedro to touch them. When he sank once more onto the floor, his chains clanking as he did so, tears came to my eyes, and when he saw them he told me: "You do well to weep, Don Paolo, for you see the man whose courage alone gave Spain all of j.a.pan and China, wealth unmeasured for all time. And his reward?" He held up his manacled arms and cried: "These chains! This great indignity!"

'I visited with him often on that long trip and in time I became accustomed to seeing him in his bondage, for he wore the chains as a badge of honor, and I developed immense respect for this fighting hero. One thing, however, perplexed me, and still does.'

Ocampo, much moved by this portrait of a stubborn hero fighting the world, said: 'Don Paolo, you speak of him as if you loved him.' And Carvajal reflected on this before answering, which he did in slow, carefully chosen words: 'Love is not the word you'd use for him, because lovable he was not.' He stopped, then started brightly, as if opening a wholly new conversation: 'One noon when I took him his bowl of gruel he pushed it away and said almost pleadingly, as if eager to convince me who needed no convincing: "They never understood, Carvajal. They didn't send me to serve as viceroy in Sicily, settled for a thousand years with roads and men who could reason. No! I was sent to where no man had ever been before." And I protested: "The Indians were here, of course," and he snapped: "I was speaking of Christians." '

When this revealing narrative ended, Ocampo and Carvajal sat in silence, staring at the floor as if afraid to look at each other and acknowledge the terrible wrong that had been done Cristbal Coln, discoverer of new worlds, new opportunities and new ideas. After a while, Ocampo said: 'Strange how fate teases us. As I prepared the final pages of my report last night I was haunted by what had happened to Bobadilla when he finished his report back in 1500. It was voluminous and supported by sheaves of doc.u.ments and individual statements. They tell me that it took three men to carry the whole affair onto the ship bound for Spain. But the ship had barely left harbor, when it sank, taking Bobadilla and all his papers to the bottom of the sea. That might have been G.o.d's judgment on the whole sad affair.'

Before Ocampo left Espaola with his amazingly even-handed report on the behaviors and misbehaviors of the Great Admiral, he had two additional interviews, each accidental, each compelling. The first involved an ordinary sailor, an illiterate, who brought with him his priest, who could read, a man Ocampo had not seen before. And the sailor said: 'I heard people were telling you bad things about the admiral and I was afraid you might take them as truth. I wanted you to hear the real truth. Coln was a sailor, first and last, and a better never sailed. I was with him on two voyages, but the one I'll never forget, nor none of us, was the last, after he got out of his chains, that was.'

'No one has told me of that,' the licenciado said, leaning forward as he always did when he suspected that something he was about to hear might be of more than usual interest, and the sailor said: 'It was a disappointing sail. Nothing new in the little islands, but when we reached the sh.o.r.es of Asia we did find some gold but hardly worth the trip, and we lost a lot of men in the fighting.'

It was a dreary tale of meaningless forays and repeated disappointments, and Ocampo, losing interest, began to fidget and seek some way to get the sailor out of there, but then the narrative caught fire, and in its blaze the licenciado saw the ghostly figure of the real admiral: 'On the way back to this island, with little to show for our troubles, we were seized by violent storms that seemed never to relent and that punished our two old and creaking ships, driving their timbers apart and allowing great waves to wash aboard. Only by the most diligent effort did the admiral keep us afloat and together, and in this pitiful condition we staggered onto the north sh.o.r.e of Jamaica, an island we had discovered years earlier on his second trip, but still settled only by Indians. There we beached the two ships and built over them a kind of roof to protect us from sun and storms. Dreadful situation, for we now had no means of sailing on, since the ships were beyond repair. What made it worse, there was no way by which anyone on Espaola could know that we had been marooned or where we were, and each morning when we woke someone would lament: "How will we ever get out of here?" and we could think of no way.

'To tell the truth, Excellency, I thought we'd perish there and that no one would ever know how we died, for no ships would come to Jamaica.'

'How did you escape?' Ocampo asked, and the sailor said: 'Only through the courage of the admiral. He never flagged. Each new day he'd a.s.sure us: "Somehow we'll be rescued," and when we were starving, he promised: "Somehow we'll find food," and he led us in making clever traps for catching fish. Also, he himself tested new kinds of fruit to determine which were safe to eat. He was tireless in driving us to build better huts.'

'Huts! How many days were you marooned on Jamaica?'

Aghast, the sailor simply stared at his interrogator: 'Days? Excellency, it was months, June of one year to March of another. Excellency, we were at the end of the world. n.o.body could know where we were. In Espaola they thought we were dead, and some said "Good riddance," because the admiral could be a difficult man, especially where young n.o.bles were concerned.' Wiping his nose with his left forefinger, he leaned close to Ocampo and said: 'Excellency, we were all dead. The last months was special h.e.l.l.'

'How?'