Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  Then we were going. He took my arm. “It is good to be a silent man,” Luiza said.

  Is it to the mountains? I did not ask him. No, it was back into the palm forests the way we had come.

  When we returned, I placed the yellowed papers into my grandmother’s palm. She handed them back to me.

  “Now you will see how an old woman defends her blood,” she said, her cheekbones growing higher.

  A Messenger from Aprigio

  THE MESSENGER FROM APRIGIO had been wounded in the shoulder. They had found him unconscious near the entrance. My grandmother came out and told them to bring him into her house. “Come with me, Almeyda,” she said.

  She washed his shoulder, and crushed some dried leaves and packed it into the shoulder and bandaged it. Then she wiped his forehead and the blood from his arms and fists. He was still unconscious.

  Anninho and others gathered near the door. Grandmother told them to go away. All but Anninho left.

  “And you?” she asked.

  He smiled at her, bowed and left. One of Zumbi’s messengers entered. “Has he spoken?”

  “No.”

  He went to the man.

  “How long will he stay this way?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When he’s conscious, send someone to the king.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  The messenger left. She touched the man’s high forehead. He looked no more than thirty, of mixed blood. His hair was short and curly. His shirt and trousers were smeared with blood and dirt. His nose and chin were angular, but his forehead and jawline were soft and rounded. My grandmother put her hand under his head and lifted it slightly. She rubbed oil in his hair.

  Almeyda’s Conversation with the Young Man; His Message Told

  SHE TOLD ME TO KEEP AN EYE ON HIM. She put on her sandals and went out. I sat by the low hammock and dampened the cloth again, wiping his forehead. In his sleep, he twisted away from me. I put my hand on his arm and held him gently.

  He opened his eyes suddenly.

  “I am sent to the captain named Zumbi.” He looked at me as if I was not there.

  “Sir, they are sending a regiment of more than . . . I am afraid Palmares . . .”

  I wiped his face with the damp cloth again. His eyes were wide and glassy. I took one of his hands.

  “They are sixteen leagues from Porto Calvo. Bandeirantes from São Paulo. Domingos Jorge. The Paulistas have reached Pernambuco.”

  He closed his eyes and slept. When my grandmother returned, I was still holding his hand. She came over to him and touched his forehead.

  She touched him in his armpits.

  “He says the Paulistas have reached Pernambuco,” I said.

  She went to the doorway and called someone and repeated the message, then she came back inside and told me to go to my own house, she would look after the man.

  When I came to the house, Anninho stood in the doorway.

  “I want to protect you. I want to put you in the least danger.” I said nothing.

  He pointed to a sketch he had drawn. “You know this?”

  I nodded.

  “I have built an underground hut of mud and bushes. If it is possible we’ll meet here. You see it well?”

  I nodded.

  He burnt the sketch on the edge of a candle.

  We lay down in the hammock; he put his head against my shoulder. “Do you want me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I kept waiting for him to touch me, to take me in his arms, but he did not. Then I felt that perhaps I’d only thought he’d asked me that, that I had only imagined it. I touched his forehead and his hair. He kept his head against my shoulder.

  “You will remember this place, Palmares?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “The Rio Mundahu valley is very beautiful.”

  He kept his head on my shoulder and fell asleep.

  Barcala Aprigio, the Brother of Martim; a Young Brazilian Writer

  MY GRANDMOTHER STIRRED HONEY and ginger together and gave it to him in small spoonfuls to take. He tightened his mouth at first, but then opened it.

  “Who is that woman?” he asked as I came into the door.

  “That is my granddaughter Almeyda,” she said, without turning.

  He kept looking at me. Then he raised a paper and began reading it to my grandmother, as if he were continuing something that they had already begun. It was written in Portuguese but he spoke with the accent of a Dutchman, saying the following things:

  “. . . but only the offspring of the white men and black women—these are the beauties of this continent. Their bodies have a natural grace and they have huge dark eyes. They are the real beauties of this continent . . . But the dances, I have never seen such jerks, such lascivious movements—the passions of the devil released. I have never seen such devilry before. It makes me blush when I think of our own women . . .”

  Then he was out of that voice but still reading, “What are the true emotions of this continent? Who can tell what the true emotions are? Do we go back only to hunger, thirst, sex, and blood?”

  He looked up at her. “It had to do with the Dutch experience in this continent. I lived in Holland a long time with my brother, but it was here not there I wanted to write about and somehow combine here and there.”

  “Who is your brother?” I asked, coming near.

  “Martim Aprigio.” I nodded.

  “We have a young Brazilian writer in our midst,” my grandmother said solemnly.

  “The book I wrote was at first celebrated in Holland; they even wept over it. But here they condemned my use of sex in the writings. There were complex relationships I was trying to deal with between black and white, rich and poor. They did not know I was a mulatto, but claimed Iknew nothing of such relationships and the work was very immoral and decadent. And besides, I did not write in ‘pure’ Portuguese but a ‘bastard’ of it and my inclusion of the occult demonstrated without a doubt some connection with devilry. My brother had hoped that I would stay in Holland, but I decided to return here. Of course I was treated with more respect and dignity there, but then I did not know firsthand what was happening here in Brazil, and although I felt there was some spiritual validity in what I was saying about my own country, I realized I did not present ordinary days and normal traits of personality and feeling. But isn’t the whole country one of exaggerated personality and feeling, much of it taking the form of sexual atrocities . . . Yet, I often wonder what it would be like to return to Holland and be treated with dignity again . . . Now it is my brother Martim who wants me to stay.”

  He looked at me and asked me to come closer. I did. He stared at me.

  “Do you think I have come to witness the final destruction of this place?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  My grandmother looked at me but said nothing.

  “Forgive me for observing you so strangely,” he said. “I am still learning how to look at my own women, the women of my own country. I think you’re quite beautiful. I’m wondering who you were in your other life.”

  “The devils are running through the forest,” someone yelled. “They’re here! They’re not two leagues from here.”

  “What’s the most horror you’ve seen?” he asked, as Indaya grabbed the long swords and a musket and he raised himself up.

  Escape, or a Supernatural Intervention

  I REMEMBER ONLY FOLLOWING my grandmother outside. She pushed me to the ground and I saw her cut into the belly of a man. As she did so she called out, “Allah!”

  “Stay close to the ground,” she whispered, and I felt a heavy weight against my back. But when I reached behind me, there was no one there. Still I felt it. I tell you, it’s true, and not the delusions of a melancholy woman.

  I stayed close to the ground. Was it hours, or months? I know now it was months, but how could I have lost time? I remember nothing. All I remember is when Anninho took my arm and pulled me up
.

  “You fools,” a commanding voice declared. “Why have you let them overtake us? Why have you let them build their stockade next to ours? Who was on watch last night?”

  We moved swiftly through some dark labyrinth until we arrived at the place in the ground Anninho had prepared for us to stay. It was close to a gameleira tree that Anninho had dug an underground hut and covered it with vines, branches, palm leaves, and grass. He lifted a mat of grass. He jumped down and helped me down. He covered the entrance. It was dark inside, and we crawled into a corner where he had piled small sacks of manioc, yams, cucumbers, coconuts, peanuts—but mostly yams and peanuts. He had pounded stakes into the ground to string a hammock, and we felt our way. He helped me up and rested beside me.

  We stayed hidden for several weeks. Anninho would leave when it was dark and return with handfuls of wild vegetables and fruits, and sometimes wild flowers that he would present to me. Once he stayed out all night and did not return before dawn. I lay in the dark all night, fearful for him. I lay in our hammock with my knees drawn up to my chest. At dawn he lifted the mat and jumped down. He came and stood near me. He said that he thought it safe to go further this time. He wanted to find out all that he could. He said that Palmares was deserted, that the Portuguese had taken many prisoners and divided them as slaves among themselves. He didn’t know how many had escaped, though he had seen the bodies of many who had thrown themselves off of cliffs, and had escaped that way.

  “Zumbi?” I asked.

  He said nothing at first, then he sighed deeply.

  “Some say he escaped with about twenty men, others say he has been captured and beheaded . . .”

  I stared at him.

  “. . . and his head hung in a public place to prove to us that he is not immortal.”

  I lowered my head. We did not speak. I lay back down. Anninho came softly and stretched out beside me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  He shook his head, saying nothing.

  After a while he said, “Already he’s become a legend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They are saying all kinds of things. Some are saying that when they discovered King Zumbi on a cliff at the edge of the palm forest that he metamorphosed himself and became a bird and flew off. Others say that he simply flew as a man. Others are saying that his great feat was to jump from the cliff, to commit suicide rather than be taken as a slave. And there are still others who say that he removed himself to another place and time and that he’ll return again to lead his people . . . Garrostazu prophesied that Zumbi, the spirit of Zumbi, would return again and again, but he fears it will be destroyed again and again. When his spirit cannot be destroyed, they destroy the body that carries it.”

  I was silent.

  “Zumbi escaped with about twenty men and they found their way to a cabin on Barriaga Hill, but one of the men betrayed them, and that same one, it is said, held King Zumbi’s hair while a Portuguese soldier beheaded him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. It could have been anyone of them. Some blame a mulatto.”

  I was silent, then I asked, “Do you believe that if they had not banished the medicine man, that he could have prevented such disaster?”

  “No, I don’t believe it. I believed he was correct in his prophecy from the beginning, but I don’t believe that his remedies would have had any effect.”

  I thought again of the strange experience that I had had.

  “No, I don’t believe in any occult stratagem,” he said. “I cautioned Garrostazu to maintain his silence and reserve, to work his remedies in secret if he felt he must. Perhaps in another world it would have mattered, but here it doesn’t.”

  I looked at him. I wanted to tell him about my strange experience.

  Was it some occult stratagem? I held my silence.

  “The prophecy I believed, but not the remedy. But he knew. He blessed my amulet anyway, even if I did not believe. ‘And what if it is only in the mind,’ he said. ‘What if I possess no medicine, and it is only an act of the mind, then go with that, my friend,’ he said. But he should have kept his divinations to himself. Praise Allah that banishment was all he got for it.”

  The Tapuyan Woman and the Discovery

  IN THE MORNING there was the sound of rustling above the entrance to the underground cave and then a low bird’s whistle like a tui.

  “Come on,” said Anninho.

  “What is it?”

  “Just come.”

  We climbed out of the hammock. Anninho lifted me up by the hips, and someone outside grabbed my hands. I drew them back at first, but then relaxed, as Anninho knew what was going on, even if I didn’t. As I was pulled up I saw the brown muscular legs and thighs of a Tapuyan woman. Woman? There was a bow and arrow slung across her shoulders, and her hair was cut short like a man’s. Her face was broad, her cheekbones very high. She was silent as she lifted me easily and I stood on the ground next to her. Anninho climbed out of the hole and nodded to the woman, and we followed her through dense forest and into a clearing where there was a long wooden house that looked like a warehouse. We went inside, where there were rows of hammocks, but no one in them. We sat on mats and another Tapuyan woman, with very long, very clean and well-combed hair, braided in the front but falling about her shoulders, came and served us fish and pineapple. Her lower lip was pierced and a small stone placed in the hole. I stared at her, though I did not mean to. The Tapuyans near the plantations where I had lived had been discouraged from “mutilating themselves” by the old custom. Particularly the younger ones. I was not used to seeing such a young and handsome woman with a stone placed so, though I had seen older Tapuyans with stones and holes in their faces. After she had served us, she left us and went to a corner at the back of the room.

  “Not mayacus,” Anninho said to me with a short laugh.

  “I would not serve you mayacus,” said the woman, who had been silent all the time. “I would not poison you and your woman.” She looked hurt. “You are a very honorable man. Very kind.”

  “No, no, Maite, I did not mean . . .” He explained to her what had happened.

  She smiled broadly, but did not laugh. Then she looked at me as if she too were puzzling over my intentions. I felt foolish and looked down. The woman got up and came back wearing a shawl made of anteater’s hair.

  “Ah, you have been many places since I last saw you,” said the woman to Anninho. “What hardships have you endured?”

  “Ah, I have been luckier than most.”

  “Ah, they are not so valiant, nor so enlightened as you are. Ah, if my ancestors had been so!”

  I watched them, but it seemed as if it were not a real conversation but a ritual one. Then Anninho stood and bowed to the woman and she stood and bowed to him. The other woman, whose hair had been well-combed before, came out from the corner with disheveled hair and kissed Anninho’s hands.

  I nodded to both the women and we left.

  “Why does that woman look and behave like a man?” I asked.

  “She’s taken a vow of chastity, like the Catholic nuns do. Such women don’t have men, but they must look like men, cut their hair like a man, and do the things that men do. They hunt like the men. In the old days, they went to war along with the men. They have serving women. Now that one lives alone with her ‘woman.’“

  “Do they . . .?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  We walked on. Anninho kept his arm about my shoulder. Vines and gameleira leaves covered the ground.

  “Are we going back underground?” I asked.

  He said, “No. Maite has not seen any Portuguese or Tapuya soldiers in many days . . .

  “We’re supposed to meet the others in the Barriaga Hills. How many escaped, I don’t know . . .”

  “Tapuya soldiers?”

  “They recruited some Tapuyan soldiers to fight along with them. They know the forests. And it’s my suspicion that the strategy they used
was Tapuyan strategy, though Velho will take the credit for it.”

  “What? I don’t know what you mean.”

  We came to a clearing and a small stream and sat down on a stone. “I have known of Tapuyan battles in which the Tapuyas build stockades next to the stockades of their enemies, and gradually move the stockades up closer, until they build the final stockade next door to the stockade of their enemies, and in that way they prevent their escape at the same time that they are able to overrun them, or at least fight with them hand to hand. But to the Portuguese their wars were all confusion, with no leaders, and no strategy.”

  “Who is Velho?”

  “He’s the Portuguese who led the attack against Palmares.”

  “They’re all the same to me,” I said. “I don’t know their names, nor do I want to.”

  He frowned. He was silent. Then he said, “If it ever became time for you to document this time and place, wouldn’t you want to know the enemies’ names the same as our own?”

  I was silent. He touched my face, then he went to the stream and took his shirt off.

  “Do you want to bathe here?” he asked. I shook my head.

  “There may still be Portuguese around,” I said. “Perhaps the Tapuyans have also taught them how to hide from us.”

  “They have captured their niggers and are gone,” he said. I slid the shirt off my shoulders but kept the trousers on. “Is that how you bathe?”

  I said nothing. He had unbuckled his trousers and was in the stream.

  I took off my trousers and walked in. The water was warm, drawing the sting from the scratches and bites on my legs. He held me close for a moment. I thought he would make love, but he did not. He held me against him for a long time and then he turned me around and rubbed the water against my shoulders and rubbed the backs of my legs. I stared up into an iuca tree.

  We did not hear them till they were upon us. They stood around the back silent, Tapuyans, Bandeirantes, and Portuguese soldiers. Was one of them a black man? One was almost as dark as me. A Tapuyan? A Hausa? A dark-skinned Portuguese? The Bandeirantes and Portuguese soldiers had muskets, the Tapuyans spears and bows and arrows. I stood close to Anninho, but he pushed me behind him. The captain walked to the edge of the bank and pointed his musket. Anninho put his hand behind him. I took it and we came out of the stream.