by Gayl Jones
“Do you think I need special custody?” asked the man.
He was a dark man with a white turban wrapped around his head.
He looked to be in his fifties. There were strands of gray in his short beard and mustache. He had a huge mole on his left cheek, jutting out at the edge of where the beard began. There were deep furrows in his broad forehead. He was wearing a white shirt and trousers. When he looked at me, I looked away in embarrassment. His eyes were the same as Anninho’s—piercing and dark.
“You haven’t told me the name of the woman,” he said.
“She is called Almeyda.”
“Call me the fool of Bahia,” he said. I looked at Luiza. She was silent.
“Are you the wife of anyone?” he asked me.
“She’s Martinho’s wife,” said Luiza, “and she’s looking for him. She’s disguised that way, for safety.”
“I haven’t seen him,” said the man. “The world is a savage and brutal place. But Allah is here all the time, to bless me. He doesn’t keep them from hitting me in the head. Eles me batiam na cabeca o tempo todo. They hit me in the head all the time. But look at me. I’m still whole. I still look good.”
“When did you last see him?” asked Luiza.
“I haven’t seen him in a very long time. He’s very unfaithful. Do you think that if I had led the others in a holy war, my son would have joined me?”
“I thought you had made peace with him that you had joined him.”
“Do you think I would have killed him in the holy war? No, I would have locked him up with the Indians until the war was over, and then made him serve his God. But he won’t come to his senses. I haven’t seen him. I haven’t seen him since he took up with the Palmaristas.”
“Palmares was destroyed,” said Luiza.
“I know that,” said the man. “I knew it would be. Didn’t I say so? The only true rebellion is a Male rebellion. Allah is against them. Didn’t I say he would be?” He looked at me. “Why isn’t she saying anything? She must be a shy woman. Você é tímido? Você é uma mulher tímida?”
“Do you want me to help you escape from here?” asked Luiza.
He was still looking at me. “How old are you? You must be about thirty.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m almost thirty.”
“He’s thirty. This world is a savage place. Savage and brutal. The only God is Allah.”
He looked at me with large fierce eyes. “Are you a Christian woman?”
I said yes that I was Catholic.
“Católica? Ah, if I had not made my peace, I would have killed all of you.”
“How long have you been here?” Luiza asked.
“I don’t know. And these others. What can I do? This is how they’ve made their peace with the world. How can I gather forces when I’m surrounded by lunatics and New Christians? How can I make warriors out of them?”
He stared at Luiza fiercely and then at me fiercely. “None of them know the sacred language. I try to teach them the Koran and they close their ears. So what do I do? I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I’m writing about the Koran. Forty volumes. And translating it into Portuguese, but they’re so stingy, they won’t give me any paper!”
He started to say something else but the guard came and unlocked the door and motioned for us to leave.
“Venha comigo. The Mohammedan should rest now.”
“I’m not a Mohammedan. Do you think I worship Mohammed? It’s not Mohammed I worship, but Allah. I’m a Muslim. I’m of the tribe of Mecca. There’s only one God. The God who feeds me with his spirit and protects me from the likes of you!”
I stared at Luiza as we were leaving, but she wouldn’t look or say anything.
“You should have known him before,” she said solemnly when we were outside. “You should have known him when he was waging his holy war. But he would have killed us both then. But still he was a very wise and thoughtful man.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She said something about belief and not color being the significant thing.
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about,” I said. “I thought that once I found him I’d know where Anninho was. Whether he’s wise or thoughtful or a fool, I thought he’d point me toward Anninho. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. None of what you’ve taught works—not for me. Oh, I’m capable of healing. I can make medicines, but I don’t have any real power. I can’t command the supernatural. None of my visions have told me where he is. I can’t predict where he’ll be tomorrow. I want to leave. I want to search for him in the real world, in the visible world.”
She was silent.
“How much of the real world is invisible?” she asked. I was silent.
“You are very ignorant,” she said, when we had returned home. “You are too ignorant to leave now. What do you know? The time must be right. Haven’t I taught you the importance of time in everything one accomplishes? O tempo é mais importante do que qualquer outra coisa.”
“I must go, Luiza. I’m very grateful. I’ll always be grateful for what you’ve taught to me. The world is not as fearsome a place.”
“The world is always a fearsome place!” she said, turning away from me. “You have learned nothing. Você é uma mulher tola.”
“Tomorrow, early in the morning I’ll leave,” I said. “And I have learned much and am grateful to you. Perhaps I am a fool, but I’m a more knowledgeable fool.”
I don’t know if she heard me or not, for she had gone into the study and locked the door.
The paje’s daughter leads me to the Indian woman and the old man who still sits in the shadows of his long hut. The same barbaric ritual. I touch the women. Their skins become smooth and supple. They are middle-aged and still very beautiful.
“We are saved,” one of them says.
But they continue to sit in front of the hut, as if that is the only place they know.
“More is needed,” says the paje’s daughter. “You have cured their bodies but that is not sufficient. Their wills must be cured.”
“I only have the power of bodily healing,” I reply. “I am not yet able to heal the spirit.”
“Curandeira, and your will?” she asks.
I touch their forehead and eyes and the women rise and leave.
“Now they are whole women again,” says the paje’s daughter, laughing.
“But I’ll never know,” I said. “I should have followed my first plan, to pretend to be a traveling storyteller, to go about the country looking.”
“You are so ignorant,” she said, her eyes blazing. She made furrows along her nose and forehead. She frowned and squinted at me. “You are too ignorant to leave me. You know nothing. I’m more than an ordinary woman.”
“You taught me how to heal myself with medicines found everywhere. I know the tapir’s trails. I know how to follow rivers. I have a horse and a good disguise. Now I also know how to observe nature and make good use of it. Perhaps I am still an ordinary woman, and an ignorant one according to your knowledge, but to those who don’t know the power of plants, perhaps I too am a master of magic. Those who don’t know that there are sounds in the air, that the untrained ear cannot hear, will think that I can hear inaudible sounds. Those who fear their dreams will think that I have some power over them. Those who observe in bad light, will think that I’m a magician, because I watch in good light.”
“You want to be a fraud as well as a fool.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. I am an ordinary woman, but you have taught me things that will be useful in my journey to find him. And perhaps this is better than being a contador de histórias.”
“You’re a poor, ignorant woman to leave me now. With me, there is still so much to learn. Ah, you foolish woman. I’d bring him back to you with such ease.”
“All these months I’ve asked you to give me some vision, and you haven’t, or you couldn’t.”
The old man, hearing them go, comes out screaming. He h
as not relinquished his embrace of the straw woman.
“What can be done?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says.
I leave them, afraid to look back.
Have You Always Been a Woman Alone?
THROUGHOUT THE REST OF THE EVENING, Luiza would not speak to me.
After a few hours she came out of the study, but she would neither look at me nor speak to me. She triturated dried parts of certain animals and plants and filled empty bottles. I offered to help her, but she waved me away, so I went into the study and got one of the books and brought it out and sat on my hammock to read. She passed by me, seeing me with the book. She looked at me fiercely. I thought she would grab the book away from me, but she didn’t. She went into the study, got her own book, and sat across from me but said nothing. Once we looked at each other at the same time. I smiled, but she sulked.
“Luiza,” I said after a while. She did not look up. “I’ve enjoyed staying here. I’ve learned more from you than anyone. What you’ve taught me, and from the books, even the forbidden books. I’ve really felt at home here. I really have. You’ve been very kind to me. Perhaps after I find him . . .”
“No you won’t.”
“What?”
“No you won’t,” she repeated.
“Does that mean I won’t find him or I won’t see you again?” I asked, after a minute.
She still did not look at me.
“It means what you say it means. You’re the wise one,” she said. “A mulher sábia, that’s what I should call you. Or you think you are.” She looked up at me. “You’re the woman of will.”
“I can’t accept your will. You’re not being fair.” She laughed a bit, then was silent.
“If I stayed here any longer, it wouldn’t be a home, it would be a prison. I’d feel like those lunatics chained in the dungeon. Or it would be like being your slave.”
She twisted her mouth to the side.
“Have you ever . . .” I began. “Have you always been a woman alone? Have you ever been in love with anyone? Have you ever loved anyone?”
She looked up at me, but was silent. She looked back down at her book.
“Azamor,” she said quietly.
“What did you say?”
She was silent.
Was he the one who taught her?
The Explorer
SHE LOOKED AT ME, though she kept her hand inside the book.
She said, “He wanted to be an explorer and discoverer. I shouldn’t say he wanted to be—that’s what he was, what he became. Ele era um explorador. A city of the Indians in the interior of the country. He was the slave to a Portuguese explorer. There were Spanish and Portuguese on the expedition. He was more than a slave really, though he was owned by that one. He was a guide and an interpreter for them among the Indians. He knew all kinds of Indian languages and dialects. He could pick it up just like that. Even the Aimores who have always been the enemies of the Portuguese and every other tribe, would talk to him. He knew their language, and he had healed many of their people. In fact, he was the one who got the expedition as far as they went. He was more than their equal. I’ll say it, though history won’t say so. Their storytellers won’t tell that tale.
“Do you know why I liked Anninho from the beginning? Because he reminded me of that one. Don’t look at me so. There was nothing that you imagine in our relationship. Azamor was all.
“In the wilderness, in the bush there is no distinction between slaves and freemen. They are all slaves, all freemen—and any claim to superiority was in their work, their actions, their faith.” She looked at me carefully. Their will.
“Azamor was a medicine man as well as a guide and interpreter. He was useful in aiding them and the Indians. The Indians began to look on him, however, with the greatest distinction and began to follow him, because of his cures. The white men, because of the hardships of the land, finally turned back. But since he had such ‘luck,’ his master told him to go on, to send reports, while he returned to the coast, and finally back to Portugal. So Broadilla returned. Broadilla was his master’s name.
“So Azamor went on exploring the interior, getting further and further and further into the ‘lost cities of gold’ of the interior. As cidades de ouro that they built legends of.
“Why did he not accept my prophecy? He was neither my teacher nor me his. But he was esteemed by the Indians and he felt he would be esteemed and honored by the Portuguese as well—indeed, by the whole world.
“He continually sent messages, reports, maps, drawings, plus details regarding the characteristics of the Indians, and how to establish friendship with them and be assured of a good reception. As he traveled, he cured many of them and made many medical discoveries as well. And they exchanged knowledge. He taught them many things and they taught him. Many things that I know are because he knew. I was the one who was sent his medical notes and not them, although they got all the maps and drawings and other detailed reports. But how would they have received those medical notes? They were not concerned with the native knowledge, ours or those of the Indians, only the gold. Eles foram hipnotizados por ouro. Ouro. Ouro. Ouro.
“After he discovered the golden city that everyone had been looking for, he was betrayed. They claimed that the Indians killed him, but the Indians were very civil to him. You see how civil they are to me? But he picked up an Indian dialect just like that!” She snapped her finger. “Even the Aimores!
“This is what happened. You’re an old storyteller. Listen. After he discovered the territory, the master who had never seen the place claimed discovery, and published and disseminated all the information he had received from Azamor. Everything. Except, of course, the medical notes which came to me. But he probably wouldn’t have known what to do with those. He might have even destroyed them as worthless knowledge or forbidden knowledge.”
She was silent for a long time, then she said, “All the districts the master claimed to have discovered, Almeyda, he never even saw! He never laid eyes on that interior land. All the maps, the reports, and the documents were Azamor’s. He discovered the place everyone was looking for. The golden city. When Broadilla presented his report to the crown, there was no mention of Azamor. Even as a guide and interpreter.
No. Everything went to Broadilla’s credit and honor. Everyone thought he had explored the territory.
“What did they fear? I’ll tell you. An alliance with the Indians? That’s all the story I want to tell you. It’s the same tale in the end. Betrayal, capture, execution. It’s the same tale from the beginning to the end. É a mesma história.”
She would not tell me the whole story. But why was she looking at me as if I were somehow to blame? I could not take my eyes off her strange, fierce ones.
“Why was he called Azamor?” I asked.
She kept looking at me, then she said, “I don’t know his true name. Some called him ‘do Broadilla,’ naming him after his master, as they do with slaves, but he refused that name. He called himself after a place that he was born in Africa, a town in Morocco called Azamor.”
“Then he too was a Mohammedan like Anninho?” I asked.
“Don’t call them Mohammedan, that’s depreciativo. Muslim or Catholic, it’s not his faith that matters, it’s his deeds. I have no proof of his accomplishments, which are the property of the master, the same as the slave, only notes on medicinal plants and herbs and other wonders.”
The Departure
I STILL BELIEVE YOU‘RE IGNORANT and foolish,” said Luiza, as she walked with me to the door at sunrise the next morning.
When we were at the door, she kissed my forehead and said, “Take shelter from bad weather . . . Travel as if you had such powers.”
She kissed my forehead again and we embraced, and then I went outside and untying the horse, rode off.
I turned down the hill leading to the docks. Even though it was so early, there were slaves on the road, walking down the hill, carrying grain, textiles, Brazil wood, and manuf
actured products to the foreign ships and those that only traveled along Brazil’s own coast. If not the Bay of All Saints, I was thinking, what bay? What coastal town? If he had not been captured, if he escaped and the maritime plans had continued, should I travel along the coast, or go into the interior? Had Luiza pointed me toward the interior by telling me the unfinished story about the explorer? Should I go to Minas Gerais or travel along the coast to Porto Seguro?
Ahead, a gang of newly arrived slaves, chained together, were walking toward me. I spurred the horse around and rode back up the hill, and through the commercial district to the edge of the city. Was it not a crime in this territory for an African to be on horseback? I left the city, and dismounting, led the horse into the forest, following the trail of a tapir, going westward, into the interior.
The Russian
I CAME TO A CLEARING AND A SMALL STREAM. I did not see the man until I was upon him—a black-haired man sitting on a rock. He was wearing a loose white blouse and black trousers and high boots. When he looked up he remained silent, but looked at me with some interest. He had one of his hands in his tuft of black curls. I stopped the horse, ready to turn around or present free papers. But there were those who stole solitary freemen and returned them to slavery.
Then he asked me in Portuguese but in a foreign accent whether I spoke Portuguese.
I told him yes.
“Are you a Brazilian?”
No one had ever asked me that before. I answered, “Yes.”
“I’m from the Russian ship that unloaded furs and vodka. Well, it’s not a Russian ship. Dutchmen built it. They imported Dutch shipbuilders from Holland. It cost nine thousand rubles. Absolutely no one is supposed to be where I am, but I don’t think they’ll search for me. Maybe they’ll get a vagabond seaman from the dock or a nigger and take him back. They’re making some repairs now, and then they’ll go on. It may not be a year before I’m back in Moscow. It’s a hard life for Kalita to be a seaman’s wife. I should write her a letter, and then she’ll fall in love with another one, instead of waiting for my return. An extraordinary woman, though she thinks she’s an ordinary one. She could have a chance to marry a Moscow doctor. I’ll ask her to forgive me. Maybe she won’t be able to, but then she’ll love someone else and I’ll stay in this strange city, or go to the gold field. Everyone will call me a scoundrel but things will be more hopeful.
