by Gayl Jones
“Leave Almeydita here,” Entralgo’s messenger said when he came to our hut. “Dr. Johann wants you alone today.”
“Almeydita can watch as he paints me,” my mother hastened to say.
“He wants you alone,” repeated the messenger, looking at her sternly.
Mother left with him. When she returned she was very silent.
“Did you see the painting of me?” I asked with excitement. “Has he finished mine?”
She stared at me, then she said, “He wanted your face and eyes, but my body.”
Her solemn face had made mine turn solemn.
“Will he paint you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. Then she knelt in the corner of the hut, lifting rice in her hands.
I pictured Dr. Johann coming to her and touching her as he’d done me, her jawline and her eyelids. She was silent, standing stiffly and solemn. I wanted to ask something, but she was too silent, and she wouldn’t look at me. I watched her preparing the rice. I peeked out the door of the hut and saw Dr. Johann sitting on a rock painting a man who was standing holding a basket and a woman who was balancing a basket of bananas on her head. I tried to imagine the painting he’d done—with the face and eyes of a young girl and the body of a woman. Dr. Johann looked over his canvas. I half-imagined that he saw me, but his eyes returned to his canvas. I pulled back inside and my mother handed me a plate of coconut and rice and onions.
Tempo, the Horse Trader
HE WAS A MAN WHO KEPT HORSES, not for white men but for himself. He lived outside of the plantation in a square hut made of mud bricks and straw. Whenever I’d go with my mother to the stream with the other women, I could catch glimpses of Tempo on the side of the hill with his five saddle horses, or four or three, that he rented out to people, or exchanged with men who were traveling distances on the road and needed fresh horses.
Because he wasn’t a branco, he couldn’t ride them his own self, although he was free. At the stream, I’d kneel with my mother, rinsing clothes after she’d washed them, wringing them and putting them into a basket. I’d beg my mother if I could race up to the hillside and see him.
“See who?” she’d always ask, although she knew who I meant.
“Senhor Tempo, Senhor Tempo,” I’d say impatiently.
“Go ahead,” she’d say with a slight smile.
I’d rush up to the hillside and he’d be waiting for me and smiling.
Always he wore a loose gray-white shirt and gray-white trousers and carried a pole or stick. He’d help me up on one of the horses, and he’d hold the bridle and we’d walk around the small barn where he slept in straw alongside the horses. Because I was a menina, he thought he could bend the laws for me.
“How old are you now, Almeydita?” he’d ask, although I kept telling him the same thing, or it seemed like I always told him the same thing. He knew perfectly well my age.
“I’m eight,” I’d say, stroking the horse’s mane. Once it had been seven, once six, once five that I’d said, but it was always the same question.
Then he’d be silent and we’d walk around and around the barn until my mother lifted her arm and waved. Then he’d help me off the horse, holding me by my thin waist.
My mother had never come up there with me and had never that I could remember spoken to the man, yet whenever I would leave he’d say, “Give Acaiba my best thoughts.”
I’d smile and he’d nod at me and I’d rush down the hill to the woman gathering up laundry. Then we’d go to another place and I’d help my mother hang the wet clothes on bushes and low trees. If I’d been older I might have noticed a certain look my mother had whenever I’d return from Tempo. She’d be silent but there’d be that certain look, and once when we returned to our hut she spoke aloud.
“He’s the only free man I know,” she said. She was silent, then she said, “Or maybe he just thinks he’s a free man. Maybe he just thinks he’s free.”
A Man Comes to Ride a Horse and Work on a Dictionary
AFTER DR. JOHANN ARRIVED, my mother was brought to work in the household, in the casa grande. I was many times there working along with her and so got to see many visitors. Since there were no inns in our part of the country—and indeed in most of Brazil there were no inns—those with letters of introduction and visiting dignitaries were allowed to stay at the casa grande; those without letters of introduction, if they were not thieves or ruffians were allowed to camp on the outskirts of the plantation or in the fields surrounding the senzala. Therefore many of the visitors were not even relatives of Entralgo, but having letters of introduction from noblemen and viceroys and other senhores de engenho, a caudilho or cornel, fazendeiro, or ouvidor—more were welcome as if they were, as plantation owners did in those days, and were given guest rooms. Rubber gatherers, cowboys, muleteers, slave-hunters, bushwhacking captains, tropas de resgate and the like had to camp on the outskirts of the plantation or near the senzala.
Well, this one senhor was a short, dark-haired man with blue steel eyes. When we first saw him, everyone was told to come out into the yard and even the family of Entralgo was brought out sitting in hammocks, except the women and the girls of course were in covered hammocks.
Immediately the visitor jumped onto one of the horses and began to ride. Grinning like a lunatic, he stood up on the horse’s back as it galloped at full speed. Then stepping down as if he were falling, but holding onto the horn, he pulled himself up again. Next he jumped from one side of the horse to the other, climbed under its belly to the other side, disappeared several times behind the horse and appeared again. He did other stunts and acrobatics. His expressions brought laughter, his tricks delight. My grandmother had once told me that her mapmaker, Rugendas, was capable of such stunts.
When he jumped down from the horse, everyone applauded, the master most raucously. I went with my mother to prepare the meal. After dinner I was told to bring the visitor water, a glass of strong beer, and a Portuguese cigar. He was sitting at a mahogany writing table bending over some papers. I was surprised to find a man doing such stunts bending over papers. He didn’t look like a simple licenciado. Most scholars had squinty eyes, and his, though they squinted some to look at the papers, flashed clear and generous when they looked at me. He wasn’t exactly a polished man either, but he wasn’t as coarse as a muleteer. He motioned for me to set the water, beer, and cigar on the table. His look was cantankerous.
“I tell him that a dictionary of the Brazilian language should not be only academic Portuguese words, but should include Indian words and contributions to the language by Negroes and others.”
I look at him. I’d never heard a branco speak to me in such a way, not even Dr. Johann. When he noticed I didn’t understand him, he explained.
“Father Tollinare and I, you see, are working on a Brazilian dictionary. He feels I’m making it imperfect by the impure words I wish to put into it. So we finished it in the strictest most unadulterated Portuguese, but now I’m doing my own supplement, you see. Now I’m collecting as many of the ‘impure’ words and phrases as are common only to this New World. When one is in a new world one must have new words, you see. Certainly the contributions of the first Brazilians should be here, at least the first ones that we know about, and what the Negroes brought here along with the Portuguese. You see what I’m saying? Why are you looking at me so? Do you think I’m a funny man?”
I shook my head.
“Do I look like a man of learning, then?”
I shook my head again.
He said he was a self-taught man and he mentioned places he had traveled to, places in New Spain, and in the Old World too—Paris and London. I wondered if self-taught meant that he was a man of as much learning as Father Tollinare. I wondered whether he had read forbidden books.
“Did you like my riding this morning?”
“Sim.”
“Well, you’ve seen the only two things that I’m good at, putting together dictionaries and doing stunt rides. Well, in New
Spain I’m good at juego de canas. Do you know what that is?”
“No.”
“Jousting, my dear. It’s done on horseback and it’s like throwing javelins, except it’s done for sport at holiday and we only use lightweight canes.”
“Are you from New Spain?”
“No, I was born and bred right here.” He gulped his strong beer, lit the Portuguese cigar, and took a few puffs. “I don’t know anything else. Oh, I know a thing or two about the world and a thing or two about the imagination, but it’s not stuff you can use really except in a book or two. I’m a very timid man.”
“You don’t act timid.”
“Sim. Dictionaries and stunt riding. I do one thing because I do the other. I balance my timidity with a show of recklessness, but it’s all very controlled, every bit of it. I’m not at all spontaneous really. Long, patient, difficult work. And that’s from a well-traveled man but a man who also has a disposition for leisure, strong beer, and a good cigar.” He nodded, smoked, took another huge swallow of beer. “If it were up to me, perhaps, I wouldn’t be so well-traveled. My father, now that’s a lover of adventure and novelties. It’s he who taught me to stunt ride while my mother wanted me to be a licenciado at some great university in Europe. My father’s an archeologist. He’s somewhere in Africa or India now and my mother’s traipsing with him. Me, I came back here because I wanted to make something of the New World. So I say this is important work. Do you think dictionary-making is important work?”
I said I didn’t know. I wondered whether a dictionary could include forbidden words, but I didn’t ask him.
“Is it important? Well, I make claims that it is. You use a word, but me, I isolate, analyze, explain, give history to it. My father thinks it’s some silliness I’ve gotten myself into, some estupidez, some obsession. Even Father Tollinare and I have disputes on what are the highest and most imaginative words. I say one thing and he says the other, and he wants to ban some words altogether; he doesn’t want those in the Old World to see the new one as a prurient or vulgar place. But if the words are here, I say use them. He says one thing and I say another. I say one thing and he says another. It’s not just imagination that’s meaningful in a word, it’s the preservation of tradition. That’s the important thing. The purpose of a dictionary, he says, is not to say what words are in use, but what words should be in use. He’d transport the whole Portuguese language here, if he could, not taking into account what changes would be naturally made, how one comes to terms linguistically with new geography and experiences. When I was in Portugal they laughed at the way I spoke my native language. Perhaps that’s what obsessed me, and even Father Tollinare complains that I don’t talk much like a lexicographer.”
“What’s a lexicographer?”
“Why, a compiler of dictionaries. That’s what I am. Didn’t I say so? I don’t talk much like one, you see, and I don’t have letters of credence from a university. And in Portugal they laughed at my native tongue, called it barbaric. So I’m making my own little supplement on the New World Portuguese. Do you hear what I’m saying? A maker of dictionaries. For my father, that doesn’t begin to be anything for a man to do, a real man, a true man. He’d never understand. Do you think it’s something for a man to do, even a man without letters of credence?”
I wasn’t sure what letters of credence were. I said, however, I didn’t know.
“A man should live within his own imagination. By that, I mean what he can imagine himself to be. How can he live beyond it?”
I kept looking at the man. His hair was so black it looked blue. “Ah, this is a very useful expression,” he said, scribbling something on the paper. “What if it doesn’t mean literally what it says? Sometimes we use words here as we imagine them to mean.”
He didn’t tell me what the word was and I couldn’t make out his scribbling. Perhaps it was a word I shouldn’t know. Perhaps it was forbidden.
“All of this in just one word,” he mumbled.
Since he had not dismissed me, I remained standing there.
“What is it you want?” he asked, looking at me suddenly, as if noticing I was still there, or noticing me for the first time.
“I’m waiting for you to dismiss me, Sir.”
He looked at me, then looked down at his work again, then scribbled something else. Strangely, he still did not dismiss me. He gulped some more beer and puffed again.
“How many hyphens?” he asked himself. “I could write volumes and volumes of supplements, but Father Tollinare despises this, he ridicules it. But this is a new country. Who knows which language will develop here? Especially fertile is the linguistic imagination of the lower classes. And all kinds of words have entered our language from the Guinea coast.”
“Guinea coast?”
“Don’t you know your own country?”
“I know a guinea fowl when I see one.”
“Our native expressions . . . What was I saying?”
“The Guinea coast.”
“All new countries have a murderous tongue, but that’s how one survives. That’s a New World. Who knows, what Father Tollinare despises now might be what someday distinguishes our whole country. And if your people had their way, little black girl . . .” He looked at me, but didn’t continue what he was going to say. “I’ve heard free Negroes talk, the learned ones, the ones with pretensions, and they’re worse than Father Tollinare.”
“Father Tollinare’s from Portugal.”
“He claims that, does he? He’s a Mazombo like the rest of us.”
“Macumba?”
“A Brazilian born in the New World not the Old. Of European parents of course. Macumba is the Guinea version of our Holy Faith. Father Tollinare . . . this has nothing to do with religion.”
“How can a priest have nothing to do with religion?”
He looked impatient, cantankerous again. “What I’m saying though about the Guineas who try to use a privileged language, like the criollos, their language is the most circumscribed, the most absolutely perfect, rigid, unimaginative guff. All they’ve learned well is the language of the Master . . .”
“But you just said they were free.”
“Some are free, others merely pretentious. The language that prevents subversiveness is what I’m saying, just like the criollos and there’s talk among some criollos of one day having our own country where we can make our own cigars and don’t have to always import expensive Portuguese ones. Do you know that we can’t even make our own cigars in our own country? No manufactured things, only raw materials. That’s what a colony means. They talk of winning our freedom, but shouldn’t we be free to use our own language?”
“What does a colony mean?”
“That you must import every manufactured thing. Didn’t you know that? But you have never been to the coast. Raw goods go out and manufactured goods come in. It is the same in New Spain. It’s a crime to even manufacture our own rum.”
“Antonia makes her own.”
“Antonia? Eh, some slave girl. Antonia? I’ve heard that name. The rascal, he calls her. Why, this is a world of rascals. These are the laws of import-export I’m talking about. It’s all economics and the official prohibition of anything manufactured here, even the mustache cup. Shall you deny me my mustache cup?”
“No,” I said and started to rush about to find one.
“Come back here.”
I came and stood before him again. He squinted his eyes at me.
“You don’t look dumb,” he said. “You look well-fed. You look like one who always drinks the beastings. Language, let me tell you, has its own genius for rebellion or compromise. And should we always import our art from Europe, as Entralgo does even his paintings?”
I started to tell him of Dr. Johann, but he was so rapid with his talk that I just listened.
“My father goes hunting for lost races and the races are here!” he shouted. “Try to improve the ones here I say, and he calls me a discredit to the family. He’s off to some
magic desert and I’m here where the manioc grows. So, you see I’m a maker of dictionaries and a clown and acrobat. Do you think I’m a clown? Do you think I’m uncultivated?”
“Sim,” I answered, although I was uncertain what he meant.
“Well, this is a land of clowns, or at least exaggerated personalities. But isn’t this a country enough for that? Don’t we have passion enough for that? Just like you drink the beastings. Anyway, we should all take advantage of opportunities for racial improvement, shouldn’t we? When I was in Europe, I married a Swiss prostitute. How’s that for improving the race? I tried studying archeology, but I changed to etymology. The spoils of my father’s adventures all go to museums. And my mother traipses about with him, like a woman on the edge of a storm. This dictionary-making, child, this is patient, difficult work.”
He took another swig of beer. “Antonia, did you say? Well, Entralgo and his slave-making activities. Me, I’m a lover of language. New words for a new landscape, that’s what I say. Authority and submission. Subject and object. I see you’re an intelligent little girl. This word here is from the Dutch. Eh, this is a common error. And this an uncommon one. Words for a new generation. Keep the secret. Can you keep a secret?” He took another swig of beer and leaned into my ear. “Language and politics, my child, is very interesting.” He leaned back into his papers. “Let us return now to the previous footnote. Very interesting. Similar in style these two personal expressions. This letter. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Just then Father Tollinare came into the room, saw the young man had gotten quite drunk, and motioned for me to leave. When I was outside I heard him say, “Foolish boy” and “Foolish notion” and “but a language of tremendous prestige” and “off with our boots.”
