by Gayl Jones
“What do you want?” my mother asked the man.
“Master Entralgo wants the other woman.”
Mother looked at Grandmother, wondering what she’d done wrong again. Grandmother sat on her hammock weaving, looking nonchalant, then she looked up.
“What does he want?” she inquired, not of him, but of Mother.
“You must come,” the man told her.
Grandmother shrugged. “I’ve done nothing,” she said. Then she got up from her hammock. “Almeydita, I want you to come with me and carry my basket.”
I picked up her basket which had various medicines in it, as if it contained treasures.
“He didn’t send for Almeydita,” said my mother.
“No, he didn’t send for the little one,” said the man.
“What little one?” I pouted. I straightened my shoulders and placed my hands on my hips. Could this be Pao Joaquim? You don’t defy Pao Joaquim.
“But I want her to come with me.”
“All right. Do what you will. You’ll do it anyway.”
I walked behind my grandmother and the tall man, carrying the basket of charms and potions. When we reached the casa grande, we were taken into the music and sitting room. Entralgo was surrounded by all kinds of musical instruments and paintings. Indeed, I hadn’t noticed Entralgo at first. But he had hung a hammock up and was lying in that and eating a mandacaru.
“Why’ve you brought that little girl?” he asked with anger.
He looked as if he were ready to swoop down on me. Did I remind him of Selvagem?
“She won’t understand what language we speak in,” retorted Grandmother. “Or why you’ve sent for me.”
“Then tell me why I’ve sent for you, Old Witch?” he asked, throwing the mandacaru onto the carpeted floor. A servant whom I hadn’t noticed came and scooped it up and put it in a basket. He waved the servant out and raised up somewhat to look at her out of hawk’s eyes.
“For a gift I might give,” she replied, looking at him steadily, and not from the corner of her eyes.
“There’s no gift that such a woman as you might give to such a man as me.”
“So you have no need of me,” she said, turning.
“What did you bring?” he asked, motioning toward the basket.
“Do you think I can touch the eye and heal it without medicines?”
“What eye?”
“I thought it was the eye that needed to be healed. Isn’t it the eye that’s somewhat bloodshot?”
“No, it’s not the eye,” he said. “I’ve heard that men go to you for such problems, though, and though you’re not exclusively concerned, not wholly concerned with such matters, you’ve been very helpful and have cured such problems. And that many times after you’ve healed the eye it gives no more trouble. It works as it should.”
I looked at him, wondering why he was now talking about the eye when he had just said it was not the eye. And he looked like he had two good eyes.
“Yes, that’s true, yes,” she said. “I recommend coffee mixed with clots of menstrual blood of the desired woman, very strong coffee, much sugar. Some say it’s the blood of a mulatto woman that’s the best, but I don’t agree.”
He sat looking at her with his mouth slightly open. “Do you want to poison me?”
“If you have trouble getting the menstrual blood, the other remedy I’d recommend is fresh air, plenty of exercise, not the kind you get beating Antonia . . .”
“Careful, Witch.”
“A change of food, plenty of vegetables and fruits. But besides that, Sir, I don’t know what to recommend. As far as magic goes, Sir, I’m not very skilled.”
“And not at all crazy either, I wager. Send the girl out.”
“Sir, I’m not one of those magicians who can simply touch the eye and heal it.”
He tossed his hand into the air and told my grandmother to get out, although after that one began to see him walk more and ride around less in his hammock, carried by servants. And I recall that Antonia began to be beaten not so frequently as before.
“What did that devil want?” my mother asked when we got back inside.
“Me to teach him how to be the master.”
“What? What craziness is that? I’ve never seen more master. Has Antonia seen more master than that one?”
“To teach him to conquer himself,” said Grandmother, going back to her weaving. “To teach him to master himself.”
Mother shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“He believes I have some sexual magic, but I told him I hadn’t any.” My grandmother gave a deep laugh.
Mother, silent, looked at me then at her. “He wanted you to cure him?” She looked at me again.
“No bad blood,” my grandmother said. “A lack of power.”
My mother gave a sigh of relief. I didn’t know what it was about then, but learned later that the superstition was that only virgins could cure bad blood, and only black ones, though myth had it that there were very few of those.
My mother nodded, but still kept looking at me.
“She stayed outside,” Grandmother said, although she did not explain that it was only in understanding that I’d been outside.
Gold
WHAT’RE YOU SELLING, SIR?” my grandmother asked the itinerant peddler, whom we met as we walked along the road gathering cashew nuts.
“Wigs, silk stockings, wine, olive oil, and wheaten flour.”
“Wheaten flour?”
“Yes, and tobacco, brandy, rum.”
“I’d like some wheaten flour.”
The man, who was wearing high boots and a broad-brimmed hat, didn’t move to get her any of the wheaten flour that was in the cart that he pulled along behind him. Finally, she reached into a hidden pocket in her skirt, took out a little bag and sprinkled bits of gold powder into her hand. When he saw it, his eyes lit up and he jumped down from his horse and went quickly to the side of the cart and got a bag of wheaten flour. He opened a bag that he carried at his waist, and she emptied the gold powder into it.
“You see me today but you won’t see me tomorrow,” said the man.
“And why’s that?” asked grandmother, holding the bag of wheaten flour in her fist.
“Cause I’m on my way to the gold mines at Minas Gerais. If I don’t find gold I’ll still be a rich man.”
“How will you be a rich man if you don’t find gold?” I asked. “How’s that?”
“Cause he’ll charge outrageous prices,” said my grandmother. “Isn’t that so, Sir?”
“Sim, I’ll charge outrageous prices,” he said with a laugh, going his way.
“Where’d you get the gold?” I asked as we walked back to the senzala.
She explained that when she’d gone into the interior of the country with Rugendas, into the sertao, they’d met Indians who lived in cities, not like the tiny mission villages along the coast, but real cities, and these Indians made many things out of gold, except that gold meant nothing to them.
“Were they Tupi?”
“No, the Tupis live near the coast. I don’t know what names they have in the interior. Gold didn’t mean a thing to them, though. They saw the tools that Rugendas carried, and exchanged their gold for his tools.
“Gold didn’t mean a thing at all to them.”
I asked her why she’d spent some of it on wheaten flour.
“It’s enough for wheaten flour,” she said, “but not enough to buy freedom. Did Rugendas have to buy his?”
A Conversation with Antonia
WAIT A MINUTE, LITTLE GIRL,” she called. “Come here, menina.”
It was a Sunday and a holiday and she was sitting out in front of her hut, drinking rum. I’d been walking along the road as I always did on holidays. I’d gone to the palm grove where my grandmother had taken me. I’d still discovered no mysteries there nor had I seen the invisible Rugendas. I was on my way back to my mother’s hut.
“Come over here, menina,” sh
e called again.
I went over and stood in front of her. She was a tall and big woman but not a fat one. She wore one of her breasts covered but the other free. A hard-drinking and hard-working woman, she took no nonsense from anyone, and I wondered why she took it even from the master. Although she was a slave and he was the master, she still seemed to me, even then, a better woman than he was a man. She took a gulp of rum and stared at me in silence. Her eyes were bloodshot but sparkling.
“I’d like to invite you into my hut to talk to me,” she said. I shook my head and backed away from her.
“I like you, menina,” she said. “Hasn’t your spirit ever been attracted to someone?”
I nodded, though I only guessed at what she meant. She stood up and I followed her inside. She took her clay jug of rum with her. Her hut was very small with only one short hammock, which looked as if she couldn’t stretch out fully in it, many multicolored mats that she’d woven from pieces of Sea Island cotton, clay jugs along the wall, some decorated with pretty designs. She motioned for me to sit down on one of the mats, while she sat on another one. She lifted the clay jug and took a swig of rum.
“Sim, who knows why the spirit attaches itself to someone?” she said. “It’s just the way and you don’t know why.” She took another swig of rum. “What do you think of my face? Do you think it’s ugly or beautiful? Or can you tell?”
Another one for the Negro asylum, I was thinking, as I watched her.
She didn’t frighten me, but I stood as far away from her as one could in that tiny hut. It was true she had one of those faces that could be different things for different people. Was she ugly or beautiful? It was difficult to tell. Her most generous features were her ears, which stuck out from puffs of fluffy black hair. The rest of her was cat-like, a small nose and mouth, slit-like but attractive eyes. And there were little marks on her face, like scratches, patterns that I’d mostly seen on the faces of old people and newly arrived Africans.
She gave a little laugh as she looked at me. “What d’you think of me? Do you like me?”
“Sim.”
“He thinks I’m in the hands of the devil, that Entralgo. He thinks I’ve bewitched him,” she said. She tilted her head to the side and gave a short jerk. My eyes widened. “That’s why he sent for the Old Witch . . . That’s what he calls her, not me.”
I stood against the wall of the hut.
“You don’t know whether I’m ugly or beautiful?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
“And don’t you know whether I’m good or evil either?”
“They say that you’re a thief and a drunkard.”
“Oh, do they? Yes, they do, don’t they? So am I good or evil?”
I said that I couldn’t decide.
“Well, after you have decided that, you must decide what punishment or what reward you’ll give me.”
“How can I reward or punish you?” I asked. I felt like the little one the tall servant had called me.
She looked at me for a long moment.
“No, I’m not beautiful,” she said suddenly. “And I’m not ugly either.” She drank another swig from her rum, then she gave me a look like Entralgo had Selvagem when I thought he would swoop down on her. Then she wiped her right hand across her mouth, then up and down her right thigh. Her thigh had scars and scratches on it too. Her eyes seemed to grow smaller as she looked at me.
“D’you think I’d bewitch a man?” she asked. “D’you think I could do it? I’m not very beautiful. But he thinks I bewitched him and so he got your grandmother to unbewitch him . . . Do you think the master takes care of me?”
I asked her didn’t he take care of all of us, since he owned us.
“Owns us, eh? We’re in a foreign land, menina. It’s not our own. We’re in a foreign land that’s not our own. What land d’you live in?”
“The same as you.”
She clucked. “Why my spirit’s attracted to you, I don’t know. But you won’t be able to forget about me, either. He thinks I’ve enchanted him and so he got your grandmother to disenchant him. It’s she wanted me to tell you that, as if she couldn’t tell you well enough her own self.” She swallowed more rum. “I’m a generous woman and I’m not wicked. I’m only unmanageable. There are things I won’t swallow. Things I won’t swallow, you see. No, not a bit. I’ve got no magic charms.”
She arched her back.
“I heal fast, only because of the help of your grandmother, but me, I have no magic charms. I’m just an ordinary mulher, not wicked. There are just things I won’t swallow.”
She leaned toward me and I backed into the wall. If I could have become the wall, I would have.
“See that woman?”
I peeked out her door. It was Mexia there in the road. Yes, I nodded that I saw her.
“Her eyes are as meek as a cow’s, as meek as a cow’s. Do you know what relationship there’s between her and the old priest?”
“Sim,” I said meekly.
“Is she good or evil?”
I tried to remember Father Tollinare’s question.
“Yes, you know it, but you won’t say.”
I tried to remember how Father Tollinare had phrased it.
“She’s got some power over the old priest or he’s got some power over her. But she’s a fool and a simpleton. Nobody should be as yielding and pliable as that.”
I felt as if she were talking about a different woman, not the Mexia that I knew, but I nodded anyway.
“She doesn’t know she’s in a foreign country that’s not her own. She thinks it’s hers too. They call me a drunkard and a thief, but I’m not so drunk as that, and I can’t steal a land that’s not my own.”
She took a new swig of rum, swirled it in her mouth, and swallowed. She put her hand to her lips and belched, without excusing herself. “I don’t know why, but the spirit’s a funny thing. Mine’s very jolly when I see you. Do you know why everybody calls me a drunkard and a thief?”
“No.”
“Because he started it. Entralgo. He started it so everyone took it up, whether they knew it to be true or not. I drink, yes, because I’m in a foreign land that’s not my own.”
I stared at the scratches on her thigh.
“But I’ve stolen nothing,” she continued. “Now he’s got two new names for me. Now he calls me a madwoman and a murderer, but I dare him to spread that about. I dare him to.” She slapped her hand across her thigh.
We looked at each other for a long time. She arched her back again, then she came forward and caressed me and said again that she didn’t know what moved one spirit toward another.
“Your grandmother told me to tell you all this. I wouldn’t have otherwise. Of my own nature, I don’t speak such things.”
Then she apologized for keeping me too long, although I felt I could have stayed longer then. “May God keep you,” she whispered, then took her eternal swig of rum.
Dr. Johann
ACAIBA, BRING ALMEYDITA.”
My mother brought me outside. I stared at the green hills but not at the white man who was standing in front of us.
“Is this the one?” Entralgo asked him.
The stranger was a young man, about twenty, although he seemed older to me then. I stared at the green hills and then at the man from the corner of my eyes. He had high cheekbones and full lips, his dark eyes slanted downwards. I looked at him fully. He was more beautiful than handsome and there was something womanly about him.
“Yes,” he nodded, looking at me. He wasn’t really smiling, but he looked at me in a full way that made me feel he was not from this country.
Now I might describe his look as a mixture of curiosity and tenderness. Still I’m not sure. It was one of those kinds of looks that changes meaning with time and place. Certainly, he was not from this country.
“Dr. Johann wants to paint her,” Entralgo said to my other. “Bring her to the veranda.”
We went onto the veranda and then followed
them into the place with thick white walls and oriental carpets and Dutch chandeliers. I was taken into the interior of the house, the part of the house where the doctor was staying, toward the back, a room with Dutch windows facing the orchard.
Most of the house was dark and damp and I was glad for the sunshine. “Do you want the other wench to stay?” asked Entralgo.
Dr. Johann looked at my mother. He gave her a different look. “Yes,” he said. “I might want to include her too.”
I’d never seen a man like him before. A master would give you a bold look but not a full one. I assume now that it was not simply because he was not from this country, but because he was an artist. He explained to my mother and me—he spoke to us directly—that he had seen me in the yard and that my face had interested him, particularly the huge eyes—he called them “dark, intelligent” eyes, not the sort of eyes that you’d describe a slave as having, and he had wanted to paint me. But he added that I had a miserable body, so skinny. Entralgo interrupted to say that I was fed well and lazy enough—”All of them are lazy enough,” he added, meaning both my mother and grandmother too. He said that we were all useless as field hands and too haughty for our own good so he’d set us to weaving baskets and making hammocks and such. “But a more well fed or lazier bunch you’ll never see,” he said.
Dr. Johann didn’t reply to his harangue, he simply told me where to stand to get the best of the light, while he stood behind a long board, a canvas I learned, and held a brush and a smaller board full of an assortment of many different colors. He told my mother, who stood back watching me, that she might stand closer near me. Entralgo stood by looking serious, then bewildered and curious, then disgusted.
“But, Senhor, there are so many white women in the house,” said Entralgo.
“I have seen so many white women,” replied Dr. Johann. He put on a bored expression.
Entralgo stood by watching, then grunted and left. Every now and then as he worked, Dr. Johann would come to me and touch my hair and run his hands along my jaw and touch the lids of my eyes. His hands were soft and I found myself waiting for him to stop painting and come and touch me. My mother stood in silence and watched him with some wariness until he finished that day, and then the next day and the next I was taken there, while my mother would stand waiting. Then one day it was not me that Dr. Johann wanted but my mother.
