Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  Food was brought to us by a very tall broad-shouldered woman. She was silent as she walked among us, and she looked at no one as she bent from the shoulder to hand us the dishes of onions, baked fish, rice, cassava bread, fried bananas, coconut, and fresh cow’s milk, which I do not remember ever having, and did not like its taste, but drank it as I was very thirsty. I kept staring at the woman who served us with lowered eyes. She was dressed not unlike us, but in the distance there were some men and women dressed in Portuguese and Dutch clothes, some which I later learned were spoils from their raids, while others were from an ordinary and quite regular trade they carried on with certain Pernambucans. This, of course, was not official and was in defiance of the laws and of the government which had resolved to destroy Palmares. Many Pernambucans, I learned, sent their slaves as agents to trade with us or they themselves met with the Palmares agents. These Pernambucans were in that way also protected from our raids.

  But I did not know all that then, and it was too early for me to speak of “us” and “ours.” I spit out the cow’s milk, and grabbed a coconut.

  The man with the musket was soon relieved by a man with a bow and arrow. However, he was dressed in a Portuguese military uniform, which made me want to smile, though I kept my face without any expression.

  Then I lifted up the coconut and drank.

  I thought of Father Tollinare’s question years ago about what my true place was in the world.

  “Do you think you’ll find your spiritual place in this world?”

  “Palmares!” I shouted. Then I whispered to the woman beside me, “Who is that pacha?”

  “Pacha? Why that’s King Zumbi. That’s Zumbi himself. That’s Zumbi himself. That’s the king of Palmares himself.”

  “Don’t talk to me of kings,” said another of the women. “It’s freedom I want to hear.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place,” I said. “For Palmares and freedom are the same.”

  “Come? Come? Come? Did you say?” asked another. “Why, they dragged me here. Is that what freedom is?”

  I lifted up the coconut and drank.

  QUILOMBO

  Ritual of a Stranger

  I THOUGHT WE WOULD BE MADE to sit there through the night, but I heard hoofbeats and raised my head to see a man riding into the village on a horse, sitting very straight and tall, a very broad-shouldered, handsome man. He drew nearer and stopped at our camp, looking down at us, though his eyes caught on me. I felt we were strangers and not strangers, for he seemed to be the same man I had seen many years before, who had stopped and spoken to my grandmother once when we were walking on the road. He sat the same way and his hair was long and bushy and hung down in the same manner. But if he were that man I felt he would have been much older and not simply by the ten years he seemed to have on me. But it was the man, I kept thinking. It was him, and he had looked at me with the same eyes as I was seeing now, though he looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. He jumped down and went to the man who was carrying the bow and arrow and dressed like a Portuguese military man.

  “These are the new women?” he asked, though I felt unnecessarily.

  “Yes.”

  “Who is this new woman?” he asked, nodding toward me, but speaking to the guard.

  The guard said that he had not yet been informed of the names of the women, nor which were free, nor which were slaves.

  My eyes widened. The man stared down at me. “I am called Almeyda,” I said.

  “Like the governor.”

  “Not like the governor,” I said. “I spell it differently. With a ‘y.’“

  “You spell it differently,” he said. He seemed to be mocking me, but then he asked, “Do you read and write?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “More than your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “We may have good use for such a woman,” he said to the guard. “She is free.”

  I thought he would go to the other women, but he did not. He climbed back onto his horse and rode into the village. After some time, the woman who had served our camp came to me and bent down.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  As I rose, Old Vera touched the calf of my leg. I looked back at her, but we did not exchange words. Then I followed the tall woman.

  Conversation with a Slave

  I FOLLOWED HER TO A SMALL HOUSE that was on the edge of the village. Behind it was a cocoa grove, and behind that more spikes sticking out from the ground.

  She ducked to enter and I followed her.

  The house was small, but with a thatched roof. Inside there was a single room; a very pretty oriental rug on the tiled floor, a hammock; there was a European table and several chairs and someone had hung a picture on one of the walls, of a stream and palm groves. If one looked closely one could see miniature pictures within the picture: some ships, a three-walled house with a man and woman sitting in a hammock, a strange little picture of a cat breaking the neck of a serpent and a tiny crocodile riding the back of an ibis.

  I stood in the middle of the room on the rug and felt its softness against my heel.

  She remained standing as if she were waiting. I remembered seeing my mother standing that way waiting for Entralgo to speak to her, and I had stood myself that way before Sobrieski. She stood with her eyes slightly lowered, but still on my face.

  “Is it true we are free women here?” I asked, not knowing what to say, and uncertain about that matter, though I had been totally certain about it before I arrived here.

  “It is true you are a free woman. I am a slave.”

  I stared at her. Her eyes were still lowered and she would not look at me directly. I saw her bowing to me again as she placed the food. She was a handsome woman but not pretty and had a broad face, broad in the middle, but tapered at the chin and a high forehead and very high cheekbones.

  “Is there anything you would have me do? Is there anything you need?” she asked.

  “No.”

  I kept looking at her. Though she still didn’t look at me, I felt her discomfort.

  “Master sent me to take care of you until you know your way around here.”

  “Master?” I asked. “There are no masters here. We are all the same people. We are all free,” I said, though I remembered the man had said Pedro would come as a slave. Then I asked, “Didn’t you come here on your own free will?”

  “I didn’t know where we were being taken. There were women captured and we were brought here. Some were brought to be free women and others slaves.”

  “But they did not ask you if you chose to come?”

  “Oh, there was choice,” she said. “There was choice when we got here. Those women who were chosen by certain men were free. Women like you. They captured me only to be a slave again.”

  “You must be wrong. If you are a slave I am one,” I said, though I knew the man on the horse had said I was free.

  “No, there is a man who has chosen you. You will not be a slave. The men see me and look away.”

  She raised her eyes to mine, but did not keep them there.

  She went away and came back carrying a plate of cassava, rice, and pears. She placed the dish in front of me. I had not sat in one of the chairs, but on the carpet.

  “All my life I’ve heard stories of this place,” I said. “I was told black people were free here. I longed to escape here to be free.”

  “You are free.”

  I said nothing.

  “I will go now,” she said. “Unless there is something you wish for me to do.”

  “No,” I said, rising.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Nobrega.”

  “I am Almeyda.”

  She widened her eyes, looking at me. She said nothing, then turned and left quickly.

  I sat back down, holding the bowl of rice and cassava against my lap.

  The Wife of Martim Aprigio, Reunited with Her Husband

  MAY I COME IN?”


  I stared up at Martim Aprigio’s wife. She was wearing a long dress with ruffles around the high collar. She was smiling, but though her eyes were bright there also seemed to be a sadness in them.

  “I am going to my husband,” she said.

  “What?” I asked, thinking that he had been executed.

  “He’s alive and living in Porto Calvo, which is not very far from here. Perhaps sixteen leagues. But he’s there and a free man. He built a bridge for them or something and now they are all over him. I don’t know how it came about but I am told he—that he continues to be instrumental in helping the people here. I mean, in Palmares. He is an agent. It will be dangerous, as what he does, if discovered is still forbidden and a criminal act. I don’t know. He was taken one way and I the other and I did not think I would see him alive again. It was someone of the Macombo, one of the smaller settlements, that rescued him.”

  I stood up, and I kept looking at her in amazement.

  “When I told them—as I always tell anyone, as if I myself have no name, and will never have another one—’I am the wife of Martim Aprigio,’ they knew him! And they said they would be taking me to my husband. I will be a free woman, living with my husband again.”

  She hugged me and then she ran outside.

  The man who had been riding on the horse and who had asked my name was waiting outside. This time he was standing by a wagon. He helped her up and then climbed to the driver’s seat. She waved at me and I lifted my hand. The man did not look at me.

  When Nobrega came in the evening, bringing me water, fruit, and oils, I asked, “Was the man, the man who came in on the horse—was he Martim Aprigio?”

  “No, Martim Aprigio lives in Porto Calvo.” I waited. She said nothing else.

  “Who was he then?”

  “His name is Martim too. Martim Anninho.”

  “Does he live in Porto Calvo too?”

  “No, he lives here.”

  “Is he a slave or a free man?”

  “A free man,” she answered. She looked at me as if she were going to say something else, but didn’t.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I can’t say anything else about him.” She looked at me. “Except he’s the man who has chosen you. He’s my master.”

  I said nothing, and she left.

  A Man Is Brought Back; An Old Woman’s Stories of Brutality

  IF I WAS THE WOMAN HE HAD CHOSEN, it was a very long time before I saw him again, and when I did see him he did not even speak to me.

  The next day in the morning Nobrega came to take me down to one of the running streams where the women went to bathe in the morning.

  There were two other women there who told me their names were Francisca and Antonia, and Old Vera was there sitting on the edge washing herself between her legs. She raised her skirt and knotted it but did not remove her blouse.

  I undressed and got into the stream. “Aren’t you coming in?” I asked Nobrega.

  “No, I can’t,” she said.

  Nobrega stood on the edge holding my clothes.

  “Put them down and come in,” I asked. “It’s very nice in here.”

  “No, I can’t,” she said, then, “I’ve already bathed. I bathed very early.”

  I said nothing. I soaped my shoulders with a good smelling soap she had given me and then soaped the rest of my body. My thigh was still sore from the sharp stone.

  Nobrega stood looking at me strangely, then she lowered her eyes.

  “What do they grow here?” I asked. “I saw fields in the distance.”

  “Cacao, manioc, corn, sweet potatoes,” she said.

  I raised up out of the water and she handed a cloth to me. “You look like the African Queen of the Waves,” Old Vera called, as I stepped out of the water. “What blessings do you have for an old woman?”

  “To always be loved,” I said.

  “Where is your necklace?” she asked.

  I had worn the necklace of cacao seeds and trumpet shells into the water, but when I touched my throat it was not there. I got back into the water, ran my hands along the shallow bottom, but could not find them. I got out again. I felt as if I had lost something that was magic.

  “Perhaps they dissolved away,” the old woman said, looking at me. She stood on the side of the bank oiling her legs.

  I dried myself again, and Nobrega, laying my clothes down on a stone, began to oil my back and shoulders. She started to oil the rest of me but I took the bowl away from her, and rubbed the back of my own thighs and my belly and breasts. The palms of my hands were white from the cool water. My arms seemed very long and dark in the long white sleeveless dress she had given me.

  “Wait for an old woman,” Old Vera said, as she climbed to meet me. “Wait for an old slave.”

  I turned back at her with deep surprise.

  “You’re not an old slave now?” I asked. “You’re a free woman?”

  “I’m an old woman,” she said, still holding the hem of her dress, then she let it drop. “I’m an old woman,” she repeated. “Ech, I’ve watched many generations lie in their hammocks, and scratched lice from the heads and genitals of every one of them. But none can follow me through that space. None can go there.”

  I looked at her, not knowing what she meant. Nobrega walked in front of us.

  “Are there fish in that other lake?” Old Vera asked.

  “Yes, in abundance,” Nobrega said.

  “Are you a slave?” I still wanted to know.

  “That handsome one said perhaps they’d have use for my magic as long as their king does not know about it. He does not favor such things.”

  “Is he ever seen?” I asked.

  “Yes, he is seen,” said Nobrega.

  We passed a sentry box and entered a small wood.

  “Let me rest,” said Old Vera, sitting on a stone.

  I sat beside her. Nobrega stood; not knowing what to do, I said, “Sit down,” patting the side of me. “We are the same woman, we are one woman.” Still she would not sit down.

  Old Vera began to talk. “Do you know what he did? I did not tell you what he did. Afterwards. After I healed. He called me an old serpent then. But after that, the only women he would purchase were mutilated women, who had been punished for crimes or suspected crimes, or for no reason. From jealousy. One woman, jealous of her slave’s beauty, burned her with hot irons between her legs and left her for a dead woman. It was Azevedo who purchased her, said, ‘Here, fix this one up. Cure this one with your devil’s magic, your serpent’s magic.’ And another mutilation and another. All sexual atrocities. All aimed at the groin or the bosom; but women whose facial beauty was untouched—those are the ones he would purchase. ‘Here, Old Serpent, heal these.’ All mutilated women. Those were the ones. But all the men there. Perfect. Whole men. You see. And all those beautiful mutilated women. But the mutilations unseen. ‘Here, cure this one, heal these ones. Draw the pain out.’ All the mutilated ones. They got so they saved them for him. Every new atrocity. ‘This one for Azevedo.’ ‘I hold this one for Azevedo. If she lives long enough. Ha. Ha.’ ‘See if you can cure this one, Old Serpent.’ ‘Are you still unfinished? Don’t you have the cure?

  “‘Haven’t you had enough experience? Here’s another one. It’s not lack of knowledge. Here’s one for you. Here, I’m afraid to look at this one. From what I’ve been told. Here, you look.’ All the mutilated women, mutilated in impossible ways it seemed. And whole men. No men, except the whole ones. And all the women with the handsome faces and . . .” She stopped. “You did not see. You saw and did not see. You saw and did not see those women. ‘This one won’t last the night.’ But she did. They walked around him taking what they wanted. Gold, ammunition. The Palmaristas, when they liberated that place. ‘Send the old serpent to finish me.’ But then I’d see. He thinks all that long time I did not see. You saw and did not see, Yemanja.”

  Why did she call me by that name?

  The old woman got u
p and we walked through thick underbrush, past one of the lookout towers and into a stretch of woods. Nobrega gasped. The man, tied to a tree, raised his eyes to us. He was tied to a tree; his legs looked like bloody bags.

  He gave out a curse, then he began to talk softly to us. “For God’s sake take pity.”

  “What happened?”

  Nobrega spoke. “He deserted to return to his old master and they brought him back and crushed his legs. Crushed all the bones in his legs. They’ll let him hang like that until the evening and then chop his head off.”

  The man cursed and then again asked us to have pity on him for the Lord’s sake.

  “Go on, women,” the man standing on the parapet called out to us. “It’s not your concern. Go on.”

  “Let me talk to the women. Let me talk to some good women for the last time, in the name of God.” Then he cursed at the man and tried to raise himself up on his legs but could not, and his feet were twisted almost to the back, since the bones in his ankles were also crushed.

  “What shall we do?” I asked.

  “Kill me,” he said.

  “Go on, women. It is not your concern what is done here. Go on, I say.”

  “We’d better do as he says,” Nobrega said.

  I started to go with her, but Old Vera reached down for some leaves that grew at the base of the tree, and popped them in the man’s mouth. He looked at her with his eyes very wide and began to chew slowly.