Caribbean (6 page)

On this day of special significance the spectators crowded the platforms behind the two goals and lined the spaces between the big upright stones. Flowers festooned the perimeters of the field, and boys with drums made a lively racket. In the interval before the game started, women sang and men danced stately measures intended to placate the spirits who determined the growth of manioc. When the excitement was at its height, an older man serving as a referee sounded a horn made from a big conch shell, the revelers cleared the field, and the play began.

Deftly tossing the rubber ball so that it bounced between two opposing players in the middle of the field, the referee started the game, and the movements of the two men were so brilliant, one striking the ball with his hip, the other rejecting it with his shoulder, that the game got off to a noisy start. Back and forth the ball sped, with the two goal tenders sending it down the field whenever it came their way, but the most exciting moments came when some daring player in midfield threw himself with abandon onto the hard earth, skidded
along on his protecting pads, and gave the ball a sharp thrust with either shoulder or hip. Then the crowd roared.

As the game progressed, it looked as if Bakámu’s team would be defeated, because for each time his team had a shot at the far goal, the other team had three or four at his. But he was so agile that he deflected them when the situation looked least promising, and thus kept his team in the game.

Then, suddenly, he took one enemy shot on his hip, struck it with his big stone girdle, and sent it adroitly into the face of one of the standing stones, from which it reflected in such a way that he was in the right spot to give it another shot onto the face of another upright. In this remarkable manner Bakámu ricocheted the ball five times from stone to stone until he had it clear down the field, where, with a mighty swing of his heavy girdle, he smashed it home for a score.

It had been a prodigious feat, a one-man gallop through the entire opposition made possible only by the exquisite skill with which he used those upright stones for his carom shots. There could not have been many young men in the world that day who could have duplicated his amazing combination of agility, skill, precision and endurance, and when he completed his tour de force, the crowd broke into ecstatic cheers, with the old shaman coming down onto the court to congratulate him: “This year the manioc will grow.”

In the ancient days among the Arawaks, at such a moment of triumph it was customary for the captain of the losing team, the guardian of the far goal with his own heavy stone belt at his waist, to be decapitated and his blood to be scattered over the playing area to ensure that the grass there would remain green for the next ritual game, but after some centuries of such sacrifices the practical-minded Arawaks had reasoned among themselves: “Isn’t it rather ridiculous and lacking in profit to kill off each planting season the second-best player we have?” And when it was found further that grass outside the playing area grew just as green without the constant application of human blood, it was decided to halt the decapitations. Henceforth, the losing captain bore the pain of having lost an important game but not the greater pain of losing his head, and everyone in the village applauded the new rule, for it was certainly more sensible in that they preserved good players for later games.

However, there was a shaman, in the year when the sacrifices following the games ended, who was a powerful man who had the welfare of his community at heart, and whereas he was more or less
forced to approve the cessation of decapitations after games, he insisted that the bloody ritual continue on the eve of the winter solstice, that tremulous day when the sun reached its farthest dip to the south, leaving the world uncertain whether it would ever return north to bring its bounty with it: “We must sacrifice something precious to the sun to lure it back. That’s obligatory.”

But Tiwánee’s great-great-grandmother many generations back had been a woman of powerful reasoning, and she argued: “Some say we must behead people to solve two important problems. To ensure the growth of manioc and to ensure that the sun comes back. Sometimes manioc does not grow well, so maybe sacrifice is needed to make the choice. But there has never been a time when the sun did not come back, so maybe that sacrifice is unnecessary. Then again, we’ve already proved that manioc can grow whether there’s sacrifice or not—even if you do sacrifice and it doesn’t rain, no manioc—so why continue sacrificing good men when we know the sun always comes back?”

She carried the day, whereupon the outraged shaman predicted that she would die within the year that the sun sacrifice ended—but she lived for another sixty.

So this year the glorious day of the ball game in honor of manioc ended in near-perfection. After Bakámu’s unparalleled feat of bouncing the ball five times against the upright slabs and catching it each time on a dead run, two more games were played, with Bakámu’s side winning two goals to one. A feast ensued, at which Tiwánee supervised the distribution of cassava cakes and small bowls of her pepper-pot stew made from what had once been poison. There was dancing, and lovemaking for the young, and singing far into the night. These eminently practical people who had long ago dispensed with human sacrifice loved the joyousness of living. They revered the wonderful mysteries that came with the setting of a blood-red sun and the ending of a perfect game and the soft approach of night with its own triumphs, like the golden moon which rose to irradiate the beach and the sea and the watching mountains.

The day of the game there was another spectator—hiding in the mountains behind the town and watching with increasing bewilderment all that unfolded on the plain beside the sea. It was Karúku the Carib, and what his dark, scowling eyes beheld astounded him:
Grown men playing a game! No warriors anywhere. No barriers protecting the approaches to the village. Everyone seems to be in attendance, but I see no weapons of any kind. The men in the game look strong, but even they carry no weapons that I can see. What is this?

It was incomprehensible to him that men of fighting age should not be constantly ready to fight and that a village with obvious advantages had taken no steps to protect itself from possible invaders: What kind of people are they, down there? No army? No weapons? No defenses? What do they think life is? And he reached the only conclusion that concerned him: Properly led, my men could capture that village and everyone in it without the loss of a man. And then he ticked off on the fingers of his left hand the unprotected booty that awaited him: Women for breeding. Boys for fattening. Men for feasting. And as the sun set over the peaceful and even benevolent scene he smiled grimly, and started planning how to prepare his people for the task that confronted them, a task of extreme simplicity, it seemed to him.

When Karúku returned to his temporary ill-constructed village on the Atlantic shoreline north of the cliffs, he shared with his people the results of his spying, and with cunning and skill outlined a clever three-pronged assault on the unsuspecting village: “I’ll lead my men in from the north and make a noise. But then you, Narivet, make a big attack in the middle, and when they’re confused, running this way and that, Ukalé from the south will start the real assault. I’ll wait till they run to that side, then I’ll rush in, no stopping, and kill them from the rear.”

Three times he drilled his cadres, arranging signals and making it clear that he intended his men to sweep forward into the center of the village regardless of what belated defensive steps the Arawaks might take: “If any man on our side falls back, he is dead. Even if they start fires to hamper us, we run right through them. Everyone!” And he indicated by the fury with which he spoke that he included himself in that command.

During the third rehearsal he carried in his right hand the wand of office. It was a long bludgeon fashioned from a very hard gray-green wood into which had been imbedded with a powerful forest gum sharp slivers of rock and conch shell, so that no matter from what direction the club came, it tore any flesh it struck and thrust into the wound the manioc poison that tipped the sharp cutting edges. It was a dreadful instrument and an appropriate treasure for
the Caribs, for they had brought with them in their canoes from the Orinoco no household deities or ancient treasures which defined the tribe, but only this dreadful war club which had been perfected into a superb tool for killing. It symbolized the difference between the two peoples: the Arawaks treasured the golden conch shell as the source of tools and adornments for their women, the Caribs for the lethal spikes it gave their clubs; the Arawaks had adapted manioc liquid to enhance their food, the Caribs used it as a fatal poison against enemies; the Arawaks had a rubber ball as their totem, the Caribs this murderous club. But most significant, the Arawaks had progressed to the point in civilization in which they respected, defended and adored women, while the Caribs treated them only as beasts of burden and breeders of new warriors. The impending struggle between these two contrasting groups was bound to be unequal, for in the short run brutality always wins; it takes longer for amity to prevail.

This first battle would foreshadow many more that would scar the islands of this beautiful sea. In far western reaches, brutal warriors from central Mexico would crush the kindlier civilizations of the Maya. Exploring newcomers from Spain would decimate the peaceful Indians they found. Englishmen on far western Barbados would harry peaceful cargo ships and put all to the sword. And in island after island white owners would treat black slaves with a sickening barbarity. The assault of the warlike Caribs upon the peaceful Arawaks was merely the first in an unbroken chain of brutalities.

On the day of attack the Caribs struck according to plan, with the first group under Karúku rushing in from the north and making a considerable clamor, which drew the frightened Arawaks to that quarter to protect their village. But when they ran in that direction, the second group of Carib warriors rushed toward the middle with even greater noise, and all became confusion.

Then the third contingent, brandishing war clubs and shouting wildly, swept in from the south, and any defense of the village collapsed. But Karúku’s victory was not going to be as uncontested as he had hoped, for in the final moments of the attack, the big man he had watched admiringly in the game, the one with the stone belt about his waist, summoned young men who had been on his team, and these four, joined by men from the team that had lost, gathered at the playing court on which they had performed so well, and there,
with sticks and improvised clubs, defended themselves as good athletes would.

Led by Bakámu’s fierce determination and encouraged by his shouts, they gave such a strong account of themselves that they drove some of the attackers from the fight, an event which infuriated Karúku, who directed four of his men to seize Bakámu and immobilize him. When this was done, at great risk to the assailants who felt the power of the Arawak’s resistance, Karúku rushed up, spat in the face of the prisoner whose arms were pinioned, then swung his deadly club in full circle over his head and brought it down with bone-crushing force on Bakámu’s skull, killing him on the spot.

Then, in Carib battle ritual, he called for branches from a tree, and when these were provided he gently placed them over the dead hero’s chest and cried: “This one was the bravest. On him will we feast!”

Next he ordered his warriors to parade before him, as he sat on the edge of the playing field, the entire group of Arawak prisoners, and he delivered his judgments: “Those three boys, to be castrated and fattened. Those four little girls, too young for any good, kill them. Those older women, no good. Kill them. These women, yes, save them.” And then his eyes fell on Tiwánee, pale and weeping over the slaughter of her husband, and she was most desirable, so he cried: “That one for me!” and she was thrust aside.

On and on he went, ordering his men to kill the old ones, men and women alike, and the very small girl children who would require years of care before they could breed, but saving young women for his men. Most of the Arawak men were slain on the spot, there on the playing field which they had once graced, but some sixteen of the hardiest were saved for later feasts. The young boys were castrated, also on the spot.

Tiwánee, forced to sit by Karúku, watched with growing horror as his orders were carried out. But the strangulation of her beautiful daughter Iorótto, her forehead already sloping backward, was more than she could bear, and she started to faint. In that moment she felt beneath her thin garment the fire-hardened wooden dagger she had concealed there at the beginning of the attack. “I will never allow them to use me,” she muttered as the slaughter continued. “Either they kill me, or I kill myself.”

In those moments when grief had driven her close to insanity, a chain of things happened which suddenly cleared her mind, allowing
her to see not only today’s horror but also the dreadful future of this hideous new society.

The first was a desecration, for Karúku strode in triumph to the middle of the playing field and shouted: “Knock down those silly stones!” and brawny Caribs threw down the upright stones defining the field on which the lovely, spirited game had taken place. “This will be a training place for warriors,” he cried, and Tiwánee wept as the site where so much good had occurred was obliterated. Here young men had proved themselves without harm to others; here contests had been held in which all were winners; and now the field was converted to death. She felt a dull numbness, as if the world had gone mad. And when the blood-red sun started to drop toward the west, Karúku waved his deadly club and Carib warriors lugged to the middle of the field great burdens of wood, which they stacked so as to ensure a roaring fire when set ablaze.

At this moment Karúku saw something which irritated him mightily, the rubber ball used by the Arawak men in their game, and he shouted scornfully: “Destroy that plaything of children! This village is now occupied by men!” Carib warriors hacked the precious ball into halves and then quarters, which they threw upon the rising fire. Flames leaped at the segments, dark smoke swirled from the pyre, and the ball which had appeared on the island so mysteriously vanished forever.