Taino by Jose Barreiro Page A

was a sensitive man, and could read and speak several languages. On ship, he was under constant suspicion for any lapse in his Catholicism, as he was a first-generation converted Jew. He compensated for his fate with a very light foot and quiet demeanor. Among the Castilian men, he was one of the very few who had abstained from lying with our women, making it a point to be at the admiral’s side at all prayers, although he was a man of fine features and liked to gaze nonetheless.
    The speeches over, Baigua had large gourds and clay pots of water brought in for us to wash. All the men first and then some of the women smoked large tobaccos. Torres was curious about their smoking and they showed him the tobacco plant, our coxibá , sacred offering to the Creator Beings and all cemis . The older women, who liked the tone of his words, then whispered to the cacique a request that I had anticipated by the manner of our reception. Our own Guanahaní people had the same custom whenever, quite infrequently, visitors arrived at our villages.
    â€œ Jaguajiguatu ,” the old women whispered, meaning, literally, “fire in the loins,” an old right of the housemothers to mix into the village life, and their bloodlines, the potential contributions of men visitors. Baigua, gentle chief, was delighted, even enthusiastic at the request, which I explained to Torres as best I could as the older matrons ushered out their selected young women, who commenced to wash our feet and, in Torres and Jerez’s case, to pull and half-carry them into a large bohío scented by a thick floor of freshly cut pine boughs. I never looked in on them all night, but I laughed with Caréy at Torres’s ever-weakening admonitions as the women swarmed him and silently urged from him his traveler’s duty to our Taíno grandmothers, ever watchful for their future generations. Jerez, the old slaving hog, needed little prodding, though he was a peculiarly ugly man, short of leg and long of torso, little neck. “What good seeds you’ll get from Torres, you are losing with the no-neck,” Caréy kidded, in his sardonic way, and we laughed with Baigua’s old woman bohío -mother, who said, “We’ve never seen anything like those two. They look strong. I truly hope some of the girls will take.”

    August 14, 1532
    Thirty-five. Torres reports to the admiral, Cuba as mainland.
    Not ten minutes back from Baigua’s village, while waiting for Don Christopherens to complete his meal service, Jerez had told the Santa Maria ’s pilot, Sancho Ruiz, about his night of abandonment. Torres’s participation in the overnight adventure came out in the telling, and, immediately, several sailors made the most of it. Three men in particular, bad characters from the ship’s home port of Palos, made a song about “the converso’s hiccups of ecstasy, how the old rabbi must have left something for him to use, after all.”
    Finished his dinner, the admiral came out of his cabin. “Torres!” he called. Torres was before him as the sound faded.
    â€œDid you meet officials of the Khan?”
    â€œNo, my captain.”
    â€œWhat did you see?”
    â€œA very large village, sir, very large.”
    â€œAnd the people?”
    â€œAbout the same as our guides, sir.”
    â€œNo slipper shoes, head casks?”
    â€œNo, sir, they were all naked as their mothers birthed them, sir.”
    â€œThe way Torres likes them!” someone shouted, from starboard, causing some laughter. It was Clavijo, a nasty character who was one of three convicted criminals granted clemency to join the expedition.
    The admiral would have none of it. “ Alguacil !” he ordered, quieting everyone. “Arrest that man.”
    Clavijo was led down the hatch by three men.
    Don Christopherens asked next about geography and the Great Khan’s whereabouts. “It’s a long way,” Torres told