Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  “Pavao,” I said to the bright bird who strutted near my feet. I reached down and touched his feathers.

  “I kept thinking when we first rode up to the inn—they had inns in that part of the country—I hadn’t liked the eyes of the woman. He was talking to her now and suddenly she just sat staring at him. The innkeeper, watching them too, came up and asked, ‘What’s wrong with the woman?’ Rugendas said he didn’t know. But I knew exactly what it was. She just kept staring. ‘I don’t know,’ said Rugendas. ‘She just started staring like that.’ ‘Come and look at the woman,’ the innkeeper said. ‘She’s gone mad.’ Someone touched her forehead and the side of her face. Everyone was looking at her, except for Rugendas who was looking at me. A doctor was sent for, but even he couldn’t discover what was wrong with the woman. The doctor claimed it was called epilepsy, that she’d had herself quite a fit. Oh, he said a number of strange words for it. But Rugendas just kept looking at me.

  “‘What weed did you give her?’ he asked when we were alone. I didn’t answer.

  “‘Is that what you’ll do to me?’ he asked.

  “I was silent. In the morning, she recovered and food was taken to her room, she was quite famished, and Rugendas and I rode into a new territory, where there weren’t any inns at all.”

  “Tomorrow they’re going to send me away from here to a Negro asylum,” my grandmother announced matter-of-factly to my mother and me. She sat in her hammock eating a mandacaru while my mother was spreading manioc paste on banana leaves, and I stood in a corner of the hut slicing bananas. In another corner of the hut were baskets woven from palm fronds.

  My mother looked toward her, waiting for her to explain. “They say I’m the one whose been setting the fires.”

  My grandmother’s own hut had burned down and that’s why she had moved in with my mother and me. I couldn’t imagine her setting fire to her own hut. One of the fields had burned and they had to put out a small fire at the side of the master’s house, the casa grande. One man claimed he saw my grandmother sitting inside the hut while it was burning, and furthermore, he said he saw her light the fire and then go inside and sit.

  They might have believed the first part of his story, if it had not been for the second. He was sold with some slaves on their way to North America, for the crime of telling lies and my grandmother was brought to the hut of my mother. Then a cane field burned and next, one side of the master’s house.

  The next day they put my grandmother into a wagon. I ran up to her. “When I first came here, I was a crazy woman,” she explained. “They said when I first came to this land I was crazy. Ha ha ha ha. They wanted to put me into a Negro asylum then. Now look at me. You have to be crazy in this land.”

  She kissed my forehead and jaw. My mother came up behind me and held my shoulders and kept me from plunging forward, into the wagon too.

  A Disillusioned and Sadistic Man

  WHEN I SAW THEM TOGETHER, it was as if the dreamed had stepped out of itself and plunged into the world. They stood with their backs to me, and so instead of coming out into the clearing I squatted in the bushes. She seemed taller than him, her back broader and darker than it had seemed whenever I’d see her inside the chapel. He held his hand, as I remember, fist against her back.

  “I beg you to understand,” he was saying. “I’m not a sadistic man, I’m a disillusioned man. I beg you to understand me.”

  She did not answer, nor did she turn around. Was it really her, I wondered then, or was it some other woman? No, the muslin, the small waist.

  “I don’t know what kind of woman you are,” he said with anger, his hand still on her back. “You’ve become a symbol of something to me. You’re like a religion.”

  She said nothing.

  “Why do you make me say absurdities? I enjoy no favors, none, except what the eyes see.”

  He put his hand against her small waist. The other hand disappeared in front of her.

  “What will you fix for me tonight, Mexia?” he asked. He looked like a man in fever, but it was a fever that he relished. “Something with a fine flavor, something made with almonds and lots of sugar and lots of cinnamon . . .” He sniffed at her hair as if it were that sweet thing. “I’m not a sadistic man,” he repeated softly, whispering against her back. “You won’t make any sound, will you? Nothing. Something smooth and mouth-watering and full of flavors and yams and meat. I know it’s you who’s been setting the fires. Some delicacy to preserve a man’s spirit. Something wholesome and delicious. I’m disillusioned. Rolls with jelly mango, coconut. I know it’s you who’s been setting the fires. I know it’s you . . . I wanted you to come out and enjoy the air with me, but always you’re silent, and you begin to disappear. I can’t bear to have you away. You’re like some rare, nocturnal bird. Why do you lead me to say such things? You’re a woman of nobility and dignity and energy. Mexia, ah Mexia, Paixao. These are the rules of the game? But there’s an exception to every rule. Estas são as regras do jogo? Noco ha regra sem excecao. Ah, Mexia, no harm done, is there? I’m not a sadistic man, I’m disillusioned. I know it’s been you setting those fires.”

  As she was about to turn, that was when I fell flat on the ground.

  When I raised myself up again, they were gone. After that, she seemed even more mysterious too, and there was a mingling of fear mixed with affection for her. For him, I felt suspicion and pity. But I told no one it was her setting those fires.

  And still sometimes at night as I lay on my hammock, I’d make up my own conversations and actions for them, but always they’d have their backs to me.

  “Am I more understandable now?” he’d ask. Silence.

  “I’m not a sadistic man; I’m a reminiscent man.”

  Both words I’d heard, but I didn’t know their meanings.

  Silence. He touched her small waist. “You’re so callipygous.”

  I’d seen the word once in a romanceiro. Father Tollinare took the book from me and handed me a catechism.

  “I like the way you’re constructed. I like a woman built just so.” Silence.

  “I tell you you’re not a wench, you’re a lady. Your Negro and Indian ancestry is not imaginary, but that’s got nothing to do with worth. It’s insignificant. You belong to the better class of mulheres.”

  Silence.

  “I like the aroma of your hair, like cinnamon.” Silence.

  “Will you fix me coconuts and oranges, mangoes and cacao, yams and cinnamon, and coconuts, coconuts, coconuts, coconuts? Mexia, you’re a sacred being. I don’t have the same feelings about color as the other senhores. To me you’re a sacred being. Perhaps it’s my theological upbringing and my . . . the fact that I’m from the Old World. Please forgive me. I’m a disillusioned man. Why do you keep so quiet? Why are you such a danger?”

  At this point in the dream of daydream, whenever she’d turn I’d wake up. But somehow whenever I saw the woman, I’d stand in affectionate awe of her, and yet feel at the same time that she was dangerous, “spiritually dangerous,” a phrase I heard Father Tollinare say often. How all those words entered my dream I don’t know.

  “I know you’ve been setting those fires,” he’d whisper against her hair.

  The Book Room

  THERE WAS A ROOM in the back of the one we learned to read in. I used to imagine that it was the room where Mexia and Father Tollinare spent time alone together and where she talked. Once I dreamed that I opened the door of the room and instead of finding Father Tollinare and the lovely Mexia there, I discovered the ugly sea monster hipupiara with his sharp teeth and pointed ears and claws. I stood still, almost as if I was in a trance, unable to speak or scream, staring at the water devil, who had large, almost human eyes but a horrid pointed animal’s face, breasts like a woman, but the rest of him a hairy fish. And then Mexia placed her hand gently on my shoulder and pulled me away and shut the door. I knew it was Mexia even though I did not turn to see her. The animal brayed behind the closed door.

  “Come away
,” said Mexia. “You’re not the captain’s son; you’re his slave. Do you think you’re Baltesar?”

  Baltesar Ferreira, the son of the Captain of Sao Vicente, had killed such a monster over a hundred years ago. My grandmother had told me the story of the water devil who ate the secret parts of children. Of everyone, but especially he liked the secret parts of children, she said. “They killed one in 1564, but do you think that was the only one? Do you think in the big, mysterious sea there was only one hipupiara?”

  I found a sword in my hand and shook Mexia loose. “I may not be the captain’s son, but I’m as brave as he!” I declared and opened the door, but the monster was gone.

  But on waking from my dream I was not so brave, and the dream kept me for a long time from discovering what was behind the door, until one day when I was there early, and both Mexia and Father Tollinare had left the room. So I dared to open the door. But there was no monster, only walls and walls of books, more books than I’d ever seen or imagined in the world. Then it seemed so to me.

  I walked down the two wooden steps, entered the room, and turned in circles. Shelves and tables of books. I lifted one and then another.

  Among the titles were Robert Boyle’s The Skeptical Chymist, Rene Descartes’s Discourse on Method, Galileo’s Letters on the Solar Spots, Moliere’s Le Misanthrope, Milton’s Paradise Lost, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Gine Perez de Hita’s The Civil Wars of Granada, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote, Soror Maria Agreda’s Mystical City of God, Pero de Magalhaes’s The Histories of Brazil. There were so many books I can’t name them here, but there were hundreds of volumes, not only in Portuguese, but in French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and English. I opened the book by Magalhaes to see what he said of our country, but on the very first page I read the following:

  I have read the present work of Pero de Magalhaes, at the order of the gentlemen of the Council General of the Inquisition, and it does not contain anything contrary to our Holy Catholic Faith, nor to good morals; on the contrary, many things well worth reading. Today, the 10th of November, 1575.

  Francisco de Gouvea

  And beneath that was written:

  In accordance with the above certificate, the book may be printed and the original shall be returned with one of the printed copies to this council, and this decision shall be printed at the beginning of the book together with the above certificate. At Evora the 10th of November. By order of Manuel Antunez, Secretary of the Council General of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in the year 1575.

  Liso Anriques Manual de Coadros

  I stared at the approbation almost as long as I’d stared at the monster. Then as I began to read the verses and the prologue to the reader, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look up at Mexia whose look was solemn, worried, afraid. She took the book from my hand and put it down on the table, then she drew me out of the room and closed the door.

  “Those aren’t for you,” she said softly, the first line of words she’d ever said to me. “If Father Tollinare had found you, it’d have been your time of troubles like it was mine.”

  “Did Father Tollinare find you in there?”

  “Yes.” She looked down at her fingers.

  She sat down on a bench and I sat down beside her. “What did he do to you?”

  She wouldn’t answer, but continued to stare at her hands. Her fingers were very long and delicate, but the fingernails were short and ragged.

  “I want to read more than the lives of saints,” I said.

  “So did I,” she said gently.

  “Do you suppose if I asked him kindly, he’d allow me to read some of them?”

  “You wouldn’t understand most of them,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll learn to understand them,” I protested.

  “Not so loud,” she whispered. “If he ever knows you were there, there’ll be trouble.”

  I pouted. She stroked my head.

  “Even he thinks the books are dangerous.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me? What like me?” she asked.

  “Dangerous,” I said.

  She clucked her teeth. “Some of them belong to him, but others belong to his uncle, Father Froger.”

  “Then I’ll ask Father Froger.”

  “He was burned over fifty years ago in France, for witchcraft.”

  She was looking at me oddly now, but when I caught her at it, she looked away.

  “What did he do for witchcraft? How can a holy father be a witch?” She looked as if she wanted to laugh.

  “I don’t know the whole story,” she said. “Perhaps he was angry only because when I was in there I discovered the wrong book. There are right books and wrong books. The one I found was an unpublished book by his uncle. He talks about witches, but claims that there are no such things, that witches, or rather the things that witches declare they do and see are merely the hallucinations of melancholy women. That’s why they burned him, as a witch and a friend of witches. That’s why Father Tollinare . . .”

  I waited, but she wouldn’t continue.

  “Do you think his uncle was a witch?” I asked.

  “He was a strange and different man, that was his only crime,” said Father Tollinare entering the room and spying us. But he didn’t look at me; he looked at Mexia with hard eyes. “One can believe anything, no matter how impossible.”

  He kept staring at Mexia as if he were trying to discover something hidden at some depth. With a look of fright, as if he were the sea monster hipupiara, she got up, holding her skirts and ran. She wore a full dress, like the brancas. Father Tollinare looked at me fiercely, then threw the book he was carrying down on the bench beside me. It was the life of St. Mary Magdalen, the beautiful woman who washed the feet of Jesus. I’d already read the book many times. It was illustrated, but the Christ inside of it was a white man with blue eyes and blond hair, not like the man on Father Tollinare’s wall. But my grandmother had already explained to me by then that the Christ on the Father’s wall was to attract the Indians and Negroes to Christianity. “Either that,” she declared with a laugh, “or the white one in the book is to attract the Englishmen and Frenchmen and Dutch and Finns to it.”

  I stared at the longhaired penitent kneeling at the feet of Christ. Did I hear him whisper, “Why are you crying? Don’t you think God knows who to bring together? Don’t you think he knows what to arrange?”

  I sat there in silence, for it was then that I discovered places that Father Tollinare would not allow me to go in my learning, and I wondered what my real education would have been if he’d allowed me to be alone in that room of books.

  The next time I tried to get into the room, the door was locked. “Almeydita, you sly one, read from the life of St. Mary.”

  I began, “To know what great love is . . .”

  Lorraine Alsace

  DO THEY BURN WITCHES HERE?” I asked my mother.

  “What do you mean, burn witches?”

  “Mexia just told me that Father Tollinare is the nephew of a priest they burned for witchcraft.”

  My mother gave a short hum. Sitting in the corner of the hut, she wove a large hammock with cotton threads. I had taken over the task of weaving the baskets from palm and banana leaves, and sat on the floor with one between my knees. I wondered whether my grandmother was weaving baskets at the Negro asylum. I’d asked my mother about the place but she’d refused to divulge any information. I knew that there were many Negro asylums scattered about Brazil because slaves were always going “off” in one way or another. Slaves who weren’t crazy, but simply intractable were sometimes shipped off to a Negro asylum. Sometimes, I learned later, women slaves who were “unapproachable” were sometimes sent there.

  “Mexia talked?” my mother asked.

  “Yes. But I think she got herself into trouble. I never saw Father Tollinare look so angry.”

  “Priests get angry. But the son of a priest burned for witchcraft.”

  “Nephew.”


  “I bet he’s the son,” she mumbled.

  Then she gave a short hum.

  “In England they hang them,” she said.

  “What do they do here?”

  “The Portuguese, eh the Portuguese, they don’t do anything, here or in Portugal. They’re like the Spanish. They’re too busy hunting Jews and Moors. In Spain, a witch wears a Jew’s hat.”

  “Are we Moors?”

  “We’ve got a touch of Moorish blood. We’re Sudanese with a touch of Moorish blood.”

  My mother gave another short hum.

  “Is grandmother a witch?” I asked, for that hum sounded exactly like hers.

  “A witch?” she repeated.

  It was then that grandmother peeked her head in the door. I’ll swear it’s so, but mother says I was merely daydreaming.

  “A witch? I wouldn’t be a witch,” she said. “A sorceress is the thing to be. A witch is nothing.”

  “Mother, don’t talk so,” my mother said, but she swears it’s not so, that I was merely daydreaming.

  But I remember it exactly like that. I kept looking at my grandmother.

  She winked at me. She said, “But a curer of those who have been bewitched is the best thing to be.”

  “Belief in witches is unchristian,” said my mother.

  “Well, I’m no Christian,” said my grandmother. “Old or new.” Then grandmother laughed and hummed. “Witches is how Christians settle unsettled times.”

  I asked her what she meant.

  “May I tell her about Lorraine Alsace?”

  “I don’t believe there was such a woman.”

  She looked at her mother, frowning, then went back to twisting the cotton threads, her fingers quick and agile.