Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  And I heard the young man reply, “But, Padre, you hyperbolize, you hypercriticize, you hyperbola, he he, you hyperborean, you hypercatalectic hyperborean, you hyperesthetic hypercatalectic hyperborean, you must confront the realities of life, the realities of language. The beatings?”

  “Foolish boy,” I heard Father Tollinare say.

  I did not hear anything else for my mother came, saw me eavesdropping and drew me away.

  The Woman and Palmares

  I’D NEVER SEEN A BLACK WOMAN dressed like her before. She rode up in a carriage beside a white man. People along the road stopped and gaped at her. Those inside came to the doors of their huts. She was dressed in a long silk gown full of pleats and folds and ruffles and there was a crucifix around her neck. Her hair was straightened and tied in a ball just like a branca’s. Her neck looked very thick and deformed, but my mother explained to me that that was the kind of woolen collar that she wore in the city; it was considered very stylish, very much in vogue, although she agreed with me that it did look like some deformity, and must be very hot in this climate, but near the coast it was not so hot as here, though hot enough.

  The crucifix sat between the woman’s breasts. The woman herself sat very straight and tall. I looked at her feet, though, and saw that she was wearing no shoes. She was as barefoot as myself, and her toes stuck out from the full pleats. I smiled. I saw other people smiling too but I felt it was for a different reason. I myself was in awe of her. I can’t describe the white man very well, because it was the woman who kept my attention.

  However, I remember that he was wearing a broad hat and a dark suit. The woman’s eyes were slanted upward and there was a gold comb in her hair, like a little crown. She seemed extraordinarily tall, but perhaps it was where she was riding, right in the front seat beside the man.

  “Who’s that woman?” I whispered to my mother.

  I’ve not described my mother. A big-boned, handsome woman, she did not comb her hair down or tie it in scarves like some of the other women; she wore it so that it looked like the crown of a tree, high all around her head. She said nothing until she went and got her long pipe that was in the corner of the room. A long slender reed, the stem pointed downward and ended below her knees, then there was a very small bowl. I didn’t know what she smoked in it, as I’d smelled tobacco and it wasn’t that.

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard stories of her, though,” she replied.

  “What stories?”

  She looked at me without speaking and drew at her pipe. She looked as if she were thinking through something, which she didn’t tell me, then she said, “Some say she’s a princess from Africa . . .”

  “From Guinea coast?” I asked, my eyes wide.

  “From Africa,” she repeated, “and that that white man, that branco, went and got her and brought her here and shared his wealth with her.” She puffed on her pipe, then added snidely, “Or she shared hers with him.”

  And there was something else. This she thought through, but didn’t say.

  “Why were they laughing at her?” I asked.

  “Cause he’s dressed her up to look like a white woman, a branca, eh, that’s why they laugh. Cause of the way he’s dressed her up.”

  “If I wore a silk dress would they laugh at me too?”

  “Where’d you get a silk dress?” she asked. “Or brocades or satin or velvet too. You do good to get Sea Island cotton. Or muslin too.”

  I said nothing. She took a draw from her long pipe.

  “I bet she’s got diamonds and gold rings. I bet she’s got a velvet saddle and diamond sevigne too.”

  “What d’you know of diamond sevigne?” she asked, and drew on her long pipe. “Straw sapatos do you good.”

  My mother and I were the ones who were sent for to come up to the casa grande to see about the new guests. I didn’t know how to treat the woman except as a branca. She was sitting in a big chair in the room they’d given her. When I came in with the angel cakes I was to bring to her, she wouldn’t look at me. She held her head high, but wouldn’t look even in my direction. They’d given her an elegant room with Dutch furniture, but the women of the house didn’t gather around her as they did when other lady guests arrived. Then the women of the house would go off into the mistress’s room and gather around the new lady, sitting on pillows and mats or lying in hammocks, chewing plums or sweet cakes. But this lady sat alone and very straight in a wooden chair with her bare feet sticking out from the hem of her dress. She wouldn’t look at me and there was nothing I could say to her. I thought of the slave women gathering around her and of Antonia offering her a swig of rum and my mother a puff from her long pipe. And I’d bring her a mandacaru. But I felt that it would be somehow wrong and that she wouldn’t like it. I sat the tray of angel cakes down on her table and bowed to her. I curtsied properly like to any lady. She held her back like an arrow.

  “Are you a slave woman or a free woman?” I dared to ask.

  “I am neither kind,” she answered, still without looking at me.

  In the living room, the men, my mother related to me, spoke of Palmares for the benefit of Dr. Johann, who had heard stories and legends of the settlements of escaped slaves and had asked Entralgo and the other senhores native to the region to speak of it. He had wished, he said, to travel where they were and to paint them, but both the visitor and Entralgo and the other senhores present persuaded him or rather dissuaded him, saying that it was foolish, it would be too dangerous. They’d cut off his ears and feet. And they spoke also of how the Palmaristas, as these fugitive devils were called—that was their language—had had some women stolen some years ago, some comely women. No, not white women, gracas a Deus, but black ones and Indians. But stealing white women wasn’t beyond those devils. That time, though, they hadn’t. The savages had killed no one, that time, they’d only taken from the stores and stolen the women, but that was a long time ago, because with the aid of the Paulistas, they’d driven them further into the forests and mountains, so that kind of thing they didn’t expect. Some comely women too, repeated Entralgo. He himself was just a boy, but he could appreciate . . . But it would be dangerous and foolish, he told the senhor, even if he did want to keep an artistic record of the times, hadn’t he gotten enough black faces already? Anyway, what he’d like to know, pelo amor de Deus, where were his white sketches of the New World? Was it only those people he wanted to depict for immortality? What did he have to show to the estrangeiros of the lovely white senhoras e senhorinhas and the interesting white senhores of the territory? All the possibilities and challenges to his talent were right there. He couldn’t understand himself how Dr. Johann could see any interest or complexities in those pretos. For complexity or interest a branco or a branca any day. Why didn’t he paint pictures of the people in whom man’s fate lay? Wouldn’t that be a challenge to his artistic talents? These others, these pretos, they’d forever be a threat to Brazilian progress and civilization. He could tell Dr. Johann was after all an artist of intellect and religious feeling.

  “There’re enough black faces around here already,” Entralgo had said. “What, to paint new ones. No, Senhor, you don’t have to put yourself in the way of danger to get any more of them. And like I said aren’t there lovely and interesting white people in this territory, who’d challenge your talents more?”

  “Sim, sim, sim, sim,” toasted some of the senhores present.

  “The captain could direct me how to get them,” said Dr. Johann. “I know it wouldn’t be an easy thing.”

  Entralgo laughed and continued laughing. The captain said nothing.

  “Even the captain has fought his last expedition against the Negroes. But with him it’s an example of what love can do. Captain Goncalo has discovered that even Negroes are human.”

  Captain Goncalo was silent. He sat stiffly in a chair. Entralgo lay in a hammock. Dr. Johann sat with his arm thrown along the back of a couch.

  “My wife lived in Palmares for four years,” Captain Go
ncalo told Dr. Johann. “She was one of the captured women.”

  “You do not kill them in these wars?”

  Entralgo laughed hard, causing his hammock to swing. My mother stood near, fanning him and handing him imported chocolates and bits of angel cake. Dr. Johann, she said, looked at her every now and then as if she were doing something disrespectful, not for herself, but to him. She said “him” but I did not know whether she meant Dr. Johann himself or Entralgo.

  “Few women are ever killed. Those Negroes who are captured are divided among the soldiers.”

  “And that one he could not resist,” Entralgo said. “And in your love for her haven’t you turned her into a laughingstock?”

  Captain Goncalo was silent. He cleared his throat. He stood up. Dr. Johann looked at my mother.

  “There’d be no guarantees for your safety if you were to go on an expedition against the Negroes,” said the captain.

  “It wouldn’t be against them,” said Dr. Johann.

  “And who knows perhaps a little negrita would be distributed to you if you were to escape with your life,” Entralgo said.

  He opened his mouth and my mother popped a chocolate inside. Dr. Johann gave her that look.

  “I’d really like very much to go,” he said then. “There’s some more work I’d like to finish up here, and then I’d like it if you’d write me a letter of introduction to someone.”

  “Letters of introduction to Negroes?” asked Entralgo. “Is this the New World?”

  “I don’t mean that,” explained Dr. Johann. “I mean to another captain when they go on their next expedition.”

  Captain Goncalo nodded and was silent. My mother felt that he was thinking about the woman even before he spoke.

  “My wife tried to commit suicide twice when she was first with me.” He paused, looking at no one. “She’s not tried to commit suicide now in a number of years.”

  “What? Her desire for liberty isn’t so great now, eh?” Entralgo said and laughed. “Scratch my head,” he told my mother.

  My mother scratched his head and picked lice from it. Captain Goncalo was silent. Dr. Johann stared at my mother. She parted Entralgo’s hair, searched and searched for more lice.

  “I took her back,” Captain Goncalo said. “After the second time she tried to kill herself, we went back there only to find Palmares had been abandoned. They’d left that part and gone somewhere else and formed a new Palmares, those who were not killed or captured. ‘Do we continue our journey?’ I asked. She’d simply sat down and began to cry. ‘Do we continue our journey?’ I asked again. ‘Sim,’ she said, but it was back the way we had come that she pointed. It was then that I kept her for my wife. I took her legally for my wife.”

  “He he,” laughed Entralgo. “Is that a lie or a true story?”

  “Weren’t you afraid to go back there alone with one of their women? Suppose they’d been there?”

  “They say the leader has a blonde wench,” Entralgo said. “One of his women’s a blonde wench. But perhaps she has some Guinea ancestor. I’ve an imaginary Guinea ancestor. Ha. Ha. Don’t we all? Everybody in this country has an imaginary Guinea. No no. I can prove I’m of good blood and purely European. I’m of pure blood.”

  “I always imagine that’s what the woman was thinking,” Captain Goncalo said in reply to Dr. Johann. “I had taken her back there anyway, regardless of what harm might be done. I imagine that’s why she came back with me.”

  “It’s not true, Captain, I can’t believe it, it’s not true,” Entralgo said, pushing my mother’s fingers out of his hair. “What’s your true feeling for the woman? Dr. Johann, go and paint the wench for him. Go and paint the wench for him to see what she’s really like. Show him what she’s really like. Use your talent, man. Go and paint the wench for him. That’s what you can do for this territory, show us what the devils are really like.”

  “Sir,” Captain Goncalo said to Dr. Johann. “I’m going to my room and to my wife now. I’ll write you a brief introduction to a Captain Moreira who’ll be leading an expedition against the Negroes very soon now, and perhaps you’ll be able to accompany him. But for your own safety, Sir, I would agree with Senhor Entralgo, that you should remain in this territory, as the blacks are not very dangerous here.”

  “Not dangerous,” Entralgo said with a grunt. “Rascals every one of them.”

  “Not very dangerous,” continued the captain, “and you’ll be able to collect a number of excellent faces . . .”

  “But not nearly so interesting and complex . . .”

  “A number of very excellent types even among the Negroes here and the various Indian tribes, the Tupi, the . . .”

  “That’s an idea for you,” Entralgo said. “Have Father Tollinare take you to see the Indians. Do you think the Negroes are the only dark people here? Go see the Indians. It would be less dangerous and your safety would be better guaranteed. At least our Indians here are quiet . . . except for the men, they’re always running off. Except they are such loners in the forests. They’re such mavericks.”

  “Yes, I’d appreciate a letter of introduction. I’ll stay here a bit longer as I intended to visit the Indian groups,” Dr. Johann said.

  “Yes, Father Tollinare has them all in hand.” Entralgo waved his hand in the air. “Except for the men, like I said, they’re such mavericks. Living alone in the forests, the way some of them do.”

  My mother watched his hand in the air. She saw Dr. Johann observing her, disapprovingly, and so stared at nothing.

  Captain Goncalo sat down at a huge desk, wrote a brief letter, folded it, and presented it to Dr. Johann.

  “It’s been a great pleasure to meet you,” he said standing, bowing to Dr. Johann. Dr. Johann bowed and said it had been his pleasure to meet a man such as the captain.

  Captain Goncalo bowed to Entralgo and said, “Sir, I am no longer a guest in your house, nor will be from this day.”

  He stood stiffly and walked out.

  Entralgo laughed and put my mother’s hands back in his hair. Dr. Johann looked at them both, then he told Entralgo that he was going for a short walk.

  “And then we’ll dine,” Entralgo said, still laughing. “But go see the Father, he’ll be glad to show you where the Indians are. He knows them quite intimately.” He chuckled. “My father had a number of them, but I prefer to do without them myself, but I have a number of the mixed variety, the caboclos. They provide some variety, you see. Some diversion for the eye.”

  A High Post in the Government

  HE WAS AN INTELLIGENT, tall, and attractive young Indian. He’d been one of Father Tollinare’s students many years before, and had been sent to study in Europe, first Paris and then Berlin. The older people knew of him. My mother said that she knew of him and that they were about the same age. In those days my mother was in her early twenties, though I don’t know her exact age. She said that she too had been one of Father Tollinare’s students, which surprised me, because she’d never given any indication that she knew either how to read or write. She explained that she’d been among the generation of “experiments.” In those early days, she said, they believed that the Senegalese Negro with a drop of Arabic blood was the most intelligent, and so even though her mother was thought of as “the crazy woman,” Father Tollinare had chosen her anyway among other little girls. Still, whenever she saw me with my copybook she behaved around me shyly, as if what I was doing was something very strange.

  “Your grandmother speaks and writes Arabic,” she said now, as she watched Father Tollinare parading the ground with the dark-suited young man, whose Portuguese name was Alejandro but whose Tupi name my mother couldn’t remember and confessed that perhaps he himself had forgotten it if he had ever known it as a boy. “But she would let none of them know. And me, she’d laugh at me when I’d read out of their books. She’d laugh and then recite long poems in Arabic. Odes, she’d call them. Qasidas. She’d sing of dark-eyed and dark-lipped people, just like us. And she’d make fu
n of Father Tollinare always having us pray a lot, always on our knees. She’d pound her own knees with laughter. Yet, I remember as a child she’d always pray a lot, on her own knees, and recite that strange language she refused to teach me. And her copybooks full of those strange scribblings; she keeps them hidden. Qasidas. I remember that thought, like my own name. She’d eat sprigs of wild onion and sing of Amru al-Qays and Labid and Tarafah.”

  I said nothing. For some reason, I thought of the woman, Captain Goncalo’s wife riding off in the wagon and looking haughty when they left Entralgo’s plantation, looking as haughty as a branca. I imagined her with scrolls around her neck and waist instead of jewels. I imagined her hiding her scrolls in secret places, even keeping them from her husband, Captain Goncalo.

  Alejandro was silent while Father Tollinare spoke loudly and with his hands. He seemed very proud of the young man and wanted to show him off. I felt eager to go for the lesson that day, thinking I’d catch a closer glimpse of the young man. And I did, for as I entered, Father Tollinare had him sitting in the front of the room, in a cane chair up beside his desk. He never spoke, but I was sure that Father Tollinare had him sitting up there as an example to us. (Later I found out from Father Tollinare that the young man had asked him who I was, after I’d read my lesson, and although I’d only met him in his silence, it had made me very proud. He was one of those people, like Mexia, whose presence remained with one.)

  When class was dismissed, I left with the other children, but went back to the low window to peek at him again. He still sat stiffly, watching Father Tollinare, who made excited gestures. From that angle, in profile he reminded me of one of those still and silent Egyptian pharaohs I’d seen in one of Dr. Johann’s paintings. He said that it was a reproduction of a painting which he’d seen in one of the museums of Europe. I was so drawn to it that he gave it to me, but when Father Tollinare saw me with it he took it from me, declaring Egypt to be an evil world peopled by worshippers of serpents, and that the only paintings I should have were those of the Holy Virgin.