Caribbean (15 page)

“But General Colón did leave the men in a kind of settlement? I mean, there were paths and latrines and places to sleep?”

“Oh yes! It was the beginnings of a town. After all, it did have a name, La Navidad.”

“But no real houses? No women?”

Céspedes laughed nervously: “The men thought of that. A year, maybe two years with no women. My friend from Cádiz said: ‘Maybe we’ll take the women we need from the natives.’ ”

“When you sailed, you ordinary sailors, did you expect the thirty-nine to survive?”

“Yes! Just as we parted I loaned my friend my good knife. ‘I’ll be back to claim it,’ I told him. But as I said, he died and I didn’t.” He dropped his head, brought his hands to his lips, and stared at Ocampo, then whispered: “The natives killed them all, but even though I don’t like Colón, I don’t think you can blame him for that.”

“How did you get back to Española?”

“On the next trip with Colón in 1493. He was an admiral by then. He didn’t like me, for I reminded him that he had stolen my prize, but he knew me for a good sailor. And what a difference between the two trips! First time, three little ships, only a few men, feeling our way across an unknown ocean and terrified we’d fall off the edge of the world. Second trip, near two dozen fine ships, hundred of men, swift passage across a friendly ocean, and as soon as we passed through
that chain of islands guarding the eastern edge of this inner sea we recognized the beauty of what the men were beginning to call ‘our Spanish lake.’ It was becoming home to us, the more so when we spotted this island we already knew. Our hearts expanded and it should have been a triumph. But when we reached La Navidad we found nothin’… houses torn down … skeletons where the natives had attacked. I found one body that could have been my friend, head severed. And I said a prayer as I buried it: ‘You gave your life for me. I’ll live on this island and make it a decent place in your honor,’ and here I am.”

One important question remained, but it was Céspedes who brought it up: “Sir, will you give sailors like me the money the admiral stole from us?”

“You still believe he did that?”

“Not only from me, from all those poor men who died at La Navidad.” When he saw Ocampo glaring at him for repeating such rumors, he ended lamely: “Maybe he felt their money would be safer that way. Besides, what could they have used it for in a place like La Navidad?”

An old sailor, a widow and an abandoned son each came forward to relate how men had been paid only a portion of their wages or none at all, when it was clear that funds were available for this purpose.

A local resident named Alonso Peraza, whose manner and speech indicated that he had profited from the education his priest in Salamanca had given him, offered a partial explanation of why Colón may have acted in this miserly way: “The admiral was insane about money. He said the king and queen wouldn’t pay him what they promised. He said they owed him a tenth, an eighth and a third.”

“What do those terms mean? I’m unfamiliar with them.”

“When Colón returned from his first trip it was some time before he was recognized as a great hero. Then King Ferdinand and his Queen Isabella agreed to a document written on parchment and sealed by notaries which formalized a preposterous proposal, put forth by Colón, that he receive in perpetuity one-tenth of all the wealth generated by the new lands he discovered.”

“In that document, did
perpetuity
mean what I think it does?”

“Yes, for Colón during his lifetime, and his heirs forever after.”

“A fortune, eh?”

And Peraza replied: “No ships large enough to carry it home.” He then explained that the eighth referred to the portion of wealth that might be generated during the voyages by bartering trade goods with the local settlers, whoever they might be. “That made sense,” Peraza said, “but Colón found it difficult to collect his share because accounts were too complex to keep.”

“What was left?” Ocampo asked sardonically. “A third part of anything is apt to be substantial.”

Peraza broke into disrespectful laughter: “Colón seriously demanded the right to levy a tax in that amount on every business transaction carried out in the Indies. Yes, one-third of everything.” Ocampo leaned back and studied his thin fingers as he made a calculation: “Those three taken together—tenth, eighth, third—would have added up to more than half the total wealth developed in the entire New World. It would have made him the richest man in Christendom, and no king could permit that.” Leaning forward, he asked: “Yet you say he demanded it?”

“He did, and his heirs still press those ridiculous claims. They seek to be richer than the king.”

Ocampo’s attention now began to focus on one of the most serious charges against the admiral. The testifier who broached the subject was an ordinary sailor, one Salvador Soriano, who had served on the famous
Niña
and returned to Santo Domingo to live out his life: “It’s a miracle I’m here to answer your questions, Excellency.”

“I’m not really an excellency, you know. What do you wish to tell me?”

“We called him Colón the Killer because when he was viceroy in charge of this island he had a passion for ordering men to be hanged. There were gibbets all over the place … six … eight, all bearing fruit, men dancing without their toes touching the ground. And the hangings would have continued if Special Emissary Bobadilla had not had the courage to halt them.”

“What were the charges? Mutiny?”

“Anything that irritated him at the moment. Hiding gold from the appointed collector. Speaking poorly about the admiral or one of his family. He kept going back and forth to Spain and bringing more and more of his family and they were sacred here. Two men were hanged for using a fishing boat without permission.”

“That sounds incredible,” Ocampo said, but the man surprised him by saying with great force: “I was sentenced to be hanged, with
my nephew Bartolomeo, and for what? Eating fruit that was reserved for some other purpose and then arguing with one of Colón’s men about it when we were reprimanded. Mutiny, he called that mutiny, and we were led to the gallows.”

“I see you’re still here. Did the admiral relent?”

“Not him. He hanged a score of us. Fearful temper.”

“Then who saved you?”

“Bobadilla. You might say he saved the whole island. Because the way Colón was going, there’d have been revolution for sure.”

Since this was the fourth time Ocampo had heard the name Bobadilla, the first having been when the king himself referred to him, it became clear that he must fix firmly in his mind who this shadowy figure Bobadilla was, for regardless in what direction Ocampo turned, he found himself face-to-face with this elusive man who seemed to have played a major role in Colón’s life. Setting aside an entire afternoon, he sat with his scribes and asked: “Now what do we know about this Bobadilla? The king told me several things. Bobadilla was Queen Isabella’s choice, not his. He was a man of distinguished background, overly fat, an errant coward.”

“Doesn’t sound appealing,” one of the scribes remarked.

“Very intelligent. And most important, he arrived on this island to track down Colón’s misbehavior armed with five different letters empowering him in ways far beyond my commission. In fact, the king told me: ‘Because Bobadilla abused his five letters, I’m giving you only one.’ ”

“You mean you have no power to arrest? To force a man to give evidence? The rack if necessary?”

“I do not have such powers, nor would I want them.” He concluded the meeting with an order: “Let us direct all our attention to learning as much about Bobadilla as possible, for if we first understand him, we may understand Colón.”

Two days later the senior scribe informed him: “I’ve found a man whose life was saved by Bobadilla,” and Ocampo said: “Fetch him.” Within minutes one Elpidio Díaz, sailor from Huelva, was seated uneasily in the tilted chair eager to testify: “Bobadilla was a gentleman, a splendid man. He knew how to govern. Stepped off the ship that brought him from Spain, first thing he saw on the island was me and my cousin waiting to be hanged, rope ready and all. And he cried in a loud voice, I can still hear the words, believe me: ‘Release those men!’ Colón’s people were furious. Refused to obey. And I thought:
Here we go. But Bobadilla whipped out some papers which showed he’d been sent by the king to clean up the mess on Española, and the hangings were stopped.”

“You say hangings? Plural?”

“There was a score of condemned like me waiting in this area or that. In the little town of Xaraguá far west of here, sixteen of us prisoners were held in a deep well, all sentenced to be hanged. It was Bobadilla who saved our lives: ‘Get those men out of there. Set them all free.’ ”

“You have a high opinion of him?”

“The finest. A man of common sense and order.”

Ocampo began to acquire a balanced assessment of a man whom neither he nor the king liked. He might have been cowardly in battle, but he was certainly not afraid to confront ugly messes. He seemed to have exercised solid judgment and was certainly not a cruel man. He was honest, so far as could be seen. But there the list of positive aspects stopped, for again and again he emerged from the testimony as an obese, gluttonous, self-important functionary who used his five royal letters in an obscene way, like a cat using her claws to play with a mouse.

Supporters of Colón, and there were many, especially those who owed their jobs to the admiral, excoriated Bobadilla as an unfeeling, vengeful man who delighted in bringing the great explorer down, but more sober citizens assured Ocampo that Bobadilla had done a masterful job in a humane way, and it was almost impossible to discern who was telling the truth. And so the questioning about both Colón and Bobadilla continued.

In the late afternoons, when the interrogations ended, Ocampo liked to leave his office and take an evening walk along the beautiful waterfront of Santo Domingo; he preferred to walk three paces in the lead, with his two scribes trailing behind him. In this way, the three Spaniards from the homeland formed an elegant trio: Ocampo in front, tall and rigidly erect, with his conspicuous eye patch and scar attesting to his valor, the two scribes dressed in black marching behind in orderly fashion, and all comporting themselves like grandees from earlier centuries.

When they encountered citizens they knew, Ocampo would bow graciously and inquire as to their welfare. His scribes noticed that it
was he who always bowed first, and when asked about this, he said: “A soldier carries his dignity in his heart. He can afford to be generous to others, especially if they have no dignity whatever.”

When his oldest scribe said: “But you’re a
licenciado
,” he replied: “Once a Spaniard has borne arms, he’s a soldier forever.”

In his walks Ocampo learned much about this tropical capital, not yet twenty years old, for to its harbor came all the ships traversing the Caribbean or putting in to islands like Puerto Rico and still-unsettled Cuba. Watching these daring ships, he saw clearly that it was Spain’s destiny to rule this inland sea, but he was equally interested in the natives, whom men were calling Indians, a name Colón had proposed when he finally had to admit that he had not reached China. In his obstinacy he had said: “Then it must have been India,” and thus the natives, offspring of those early Arawaks who had escaped annihilation by the Caribs, received a name totally inappropriate and erroneous.

Sometimes as he took his evening stroll he would meet Alejandro Pimentel y Fraganza, the lieutenant governor, and the two proud men, each suspicious of what hidden powers from the king the other might have, would bow formally, say nothing, and pass on. It was obvious to Ocampo that Pimentel feared that he, Ocampo, had arrived on the island to investigate Pimentel’s behavior. Once Ocampo told his men: “I am so relieved we’re getting on well with that fellow. I’m sure he is suspicious of us, but I like him.”

On two occasions when the strollers met Pimentel, they saw with pleasure that his young wife was with him, but she was so closely guarded by her onetime
dueña
that they had no opportunity to speak with her.

Occasionally the evening walks bore unexpected fruit, for strangers would approach Ocampo and whisper furtive hints regarding questions he might want to raise, but a more important consequence was that the women of Santo Domingo became accustomed to seeing the man they had supposed to be so austere coming toward them with a gracious smile and a gentlemanly bow. So when the town felt at ease with him, he surprised certain citizens, especially those from good families who adhered to the old patterns of Spanish life, by inviting to his interrogations several women, as if the time had come when they, too, should be listened to, and from them he obtained those unusual insights which so often illuminate major concerns. For example, when he interrogated Señora Bermudez he listened patiently
while she outlined the distinguished heritage from which she came. It was much more exalted than her husband’s, she claimed, and Ocampo learned several interesting facts: Francisco de Bobadilla was exactly the right man for the job, for he was of ancient lineage, had served the king in many positions of honor, and was a caballero in the military Order of Calatrava, than which there was no higher. A most excellent man, wise in the ways of the world and more than able to penetrate the effronteries of a peasant like Colón and the insufferable members of the admiral’s family working here, who only wanted to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

Ocampo felt that he must correct such a gross misstatement lest it find its way into his official report: “But certainly, Señora Bermudez, there could not have been seven Colóns here, because there weren’t that many in Spain. His brother Bartolomé, his brother Diego, and his own son Diego and maybe one of his brother’s sons. Counting him, that’s only five, and it’s not unusual for the head of a Spanish family to find jobs in his retinue for five family members.”

Señora Bermudez, once started, was not one to surrender easily: “You’re right in your count, as far as it goes, but you’re forgetting men related to his wife, or his brother’s wives, or associated in other ways. Seven?” and her voice rose. “More like a dozen.” Then she became conciliatory: “But Colón did discover this island … and all the others. He alone kept his ships from turning back. He alone persevered.”