Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  Mauritia said yes, but that “Almeyda” only ate fish, grain, and vegetables. Mariana looked at me oddly, then prepared our plates.

  “I thought there was a food shortage here,” said Mauritia, holding a plate of pork and green vegetables. Mariana had given me fish and manioc cakes.

  “If he comes in I’ll say you paid me for it,” she said quickly.

  I started to offer her gold from my pouch, but she said, “No, No,”then she answered Mauritia’s question. “There is a food shortage, but you wouldn’t know it by him. He has ways of getting it. When he can’t get beef he buys whale. When it’s cooked with cabbage or beans you think it’s beef.”

  “This is pork, isn’t it?” Mauritia asked, her fork pausing in the air.

  “Yes, yes,” said Mariana, “and very good pork. This is real beef. I’d serve it to you, but I’m afraid he’ll come in. But I’ll give you some to take with you.”

  Mariana looked at me. “Yes, there are a lot of Mohammedan Negroes . . .”

  I quickly interrupted and explained that “Mohammedan” was considered a pejorative term for Muslims, and perhaps even an insult because they don’t worship “Mohammed” but “Allah,” their word for “God.” I thought of the Mohammed of Bahia.

  “Allah is their ‘Almighty God.’“

  “Well, Muslim then,” she went on. “There are a lot of Negroes of that faith from the coast. Is that why you won’t eat pork?”

  “What?”

  “They don’t eat pork. Is that why you don’t eat pork?”

  “No, I’m a Christian, a Catholic to be more precise,” I said.

  “Well, all of the Muslim Negroes I know stay together and don’t like to mix. Did your husband try to make you change your faith?”

  “No.”

  “You’re asking too many questions,” said Mauritia. “Don’t you see she’s shy of answering them.”

  “Oh, am I asking too many questions? I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. I told them how when we were married we had both a Muslim and a Christian ceremony.

  “That’s a luxury,” said Mauritia.

  “To get married in both faiths?” I asked.

  “To have the luxury of a marriage to a man you love,” she said.

  “Ah, that was when we were in Palmares,” I said. “If Palmares hadn’t happened, I don’t know!”

  “You’re such a loner, Mauritia,” said Mariana. “Why should it matter to you?”

  “It’s not impossible for me to imagine another world,” said Mauritia. “Or myself in different circumstances in this one,” she added.

  No one spoke. The mulatta, Garimpeira, had left the kitchen and returned several times since we were talking. She did not say anything to us, but once when she came into the kitchen I caught her eye. Her look was friendly, though “restrained.”

  “Bring me some more.”

  “Throw him some more. All of those foreigners in from the coast, trying to take over.”

  “Foreigners? This is my country as much as yours.”

  “You’re all crabs, fit to crawl along the coast. No more.”

  “Leather breeches.”

  “Sure, I wear leather breeches to protect me in the wilderness. But I’m no bird with feathered legs!”

  “You’re more cowardly.”

  “Cowardly, eh? These foreigners think they have a right to everything. If it wasn’t for me and men like me, you bird legs wouldn’t even know there was gold here. You wouldn’t even know the country had an interior.”

  “That’s why I stay out of cities,” said another voice. “I prefer exploring to this.”

  “Eh, we’d know it was here. We knew it was here before y’all did, we just ain’t seen it with our own eyes. But I knew there was lakes of gold here.”

  “Superstition. All those tales of shiny mountains and golden lakes mean nothing unless a man sees them with his own eyes. All you ‘birds’ wait until other men sees them and then you want to make claims to things you ain’t never seen.”

  “If it wasn’t for us this country wouldn’t have any development. It would be all wilderness if it was up to you irresponsible men. Maybe you did find it, but we came in and developed it. And now it’s . . .”

  “Armchairs and plumed hats.”

  “That’s better than ambushes and assaults.”

  “I don’t assault nobody. Y’all birds come here last and then you want the best ‘oles. Ain’t that so, man?”

  “I’m a stranger here.”

  “You’re a Paulista, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah. But I’m a trapper, not a miner.”

  “If it wasn’t for us this town would still be mud and sticks.”

  “Belaude, have the woman dance and sing for us, or I’ll start a war here me own self. If you fellows is so panting after development why don’t you go off to the African colonies? We’re our own men here.” He clapped his hands. “Have her dance or I’ll start me own war with these Emboabas and gold-thieves!”

  There was some commotion, as if some of the men were exchanging fists. Then there was the plaintive sound of a mandolin, and the commotion was hushed. There was a very warm, private sound in the music.

  “Put some spark in it, girl,” someone said when the first song was done. “Be more venturesome.”

  “Tuck up your skirt.”

  “Play a sultry air.”

  “Bring the black one out and turn her loose.”

  “Give me a big embrace. That will bring you to life.”

  “See how her eyes take everything in. I’ve seen cut diamonds that ain’t no brighter.”

  “Stand there too long you’ll grow mouldy.”

  “Sweetheart, play us a air you can dance to. It ain’t against your religion is it? No, it can’t be. What are you doing, standing there contemplating God?”

  “It takes her a while to get started,” said another, more authoritative and measured voice. Belaude, the owner? “She’ll play a dancing tune in a moment, and kick up her heels, and tuck up her skirt to the pumpkins, or she’ll get forty lashes.”

  Then there was livelier music and the sound of heels clicking. “Shake your head more.”

  “Show some fire.”

  “Yes, that’s what gets me.”

  “That puts a twinkle in the eye.”

  “Aye, and in more than the eye.”

  The music got more intense. One of the men began to roar and bellow.

  “Sit down, Urano, you’re acting like a simpleton.”

  “Consider the beam in your own eye.”

  “Yes, Mister, I’m given up to vice. But if you don’t sow you don’t reap.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She gone into hysterics.”

  “And a swoon!”

  “She’s playacting.”

  “In ecstasy.”

  “No, I think the woman’s ill.”

  “It’s just exhaustion. I’ll take her in the kitchen.”

  He came in, a tall muscular Paulista, carrying Garimpeira. “Get up, girls,” he said, “and let me put her on the bench.” He lay her on the hard bench.

  “Take care of her, Mariana. Give her some salt or something.”

  He went back into the other room. Mariana came over and put something under Garimpeira’s nose. She moved her head to the side but that didn’t revive her. She touched her forehead.

  “She’s got a fever. Those simpletons making her dance about so.”

  “They may be simpletons, but they’re dangerous,” said Mauritia.

  We had placed our empty plates on the table, and stood by watching.

  “I think we should take her to Dr. Rosa,” said Mariana. “I don’t think it’s just exhaustion.”

  “Could I see her?” I said.

  “Do you think it’s malarial fever?”

  I looked back at her. “I don’t know.”

  I knelt down and put my hand to the woman’s forehead and under her neck and chin.

/>   “Do you know medicine and healing?” asked Mariana, but I said nothing.

  I heard Mauritia mumble, but I could not make out what she said.

  I kept touching the woman about the face and neck until she woke up. She complained of chills and a pain in her back and a severe headache.

  “Maybe a good night’s rest,” said Mariana.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Will Dr. Rosa treat her if we take her to him?”

  “Yes, he’ll treat her. He treats everyone,” said Mariana.

  “Can’t you cure her?” asked Mauritia.

  “I think we’d better take her to him. Does he have rooms set aside for hospital?”

  “Yes, but not for slaves. But he’ll see her.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Mauritia.

  “We three can take her there,” I said. “We’ve already breathed the same air as she has anyway. All he can really do is relieve the headache and backache, but the rest we’ll have to wait for.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mauritia.

  We carried the woman to Dr. Rosa, who was an “Emboaba”—a Portuguese from the coast. A younger man than I had expected to see, he looked to be about thirty-five and wore a black coat and black trousers cut in the European manner.

  We were told to carry her to a room and she was placed on another table—while he went to see other patients. It was nearly two hours before he came to us. There were other slave women lying in hammocks in the long room. I suggested to Mariana and Mauritia that they wait outside, but they wouldn’t.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m protected against it.”

  “Against what?”

  “I’m waiting for Dr. Rosa to say what it is,” said Mauritia. When the doctor came in he told us all to leave.

  I stepped forward to ask him if I might stay while he examined her. “Certainly not,” he said.

  “But I . . . I’m protected against it.”

  “Against what? Go on with you.”

  When he was done with examining her, he sent for us and told us to take her home—that it was merely exhaustion, and in the morning she would be well again. He would give her an emetic to be administered to her before she went to bed.

  “But you can’t send her back,” I said. “Aren’t you going to keep her here and observe her, aren’t you going to have us destroy the things that she’s touched, and wash the things that can’t be replaced?”

  “Destroy the things she’s touched!” exclaimed Mariana. Mauritia also laughed.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It’s just some light tropical ailment,” said Dr. Rosa, as he handed Mariana the emetic, and started preparing to “bleed” another patient. “My medicines wouldn’t do her any good, anyway, because she doesn’t have the right constitution for them. All she needs is plenty of rest and a room full of sunshine. That’s the best cure in the tropics.”

  I wanted to call him a quack, a curandeiro, but the other two women were preparing to help Garimpeira off the table and back to the tavern, where she and Mariana had rooms in the back.

  “But aren’t you going to observe her for at least three days?”

  “Come on, Almeyda, and don’t make a fool of yourself,” said Mauritia. “She fancies herself a medicine woman,” she said to the doctor, who smiled with tolerance.

  “I don’t fancy myself,” said I. “Perhaps you know what it is and don’t want to leave her here.”

  “Of course, I know what it is,” he said. “Exhaustion. Now I have other people to see. Excuse me.”

  “We brought her here for nothing,” said Mariana. “Just a good night’s sleep and taking care of.”

  “Yes, for nothing,” I said, as I helped them carry Garimpeira back to the tavern, and we put her in a hammock in the back room, and as she complained of chills, covered her with a cloak of anteater’s hair. Mariana brought her hot teas to drink, but she could barely get them down without feeling as if she would vomit. Then she slept.

  “What did you fancy she had?” asked Mauritia.

  “I won’t know for several days. But I have something that you and Mariana should take for your protection—if what I believe is right.”

  “Eh, I don’t believe in witchcraft and magic.”

  “Eh, I’ve seen you picking up every disgusting thing. Every time we’d stop you’d pick up some disgusting thing. Well, not disgusting . . . but, foolishness.”

  “May I stay with her?” I asked.

  “If you promise not to give her anything,” said Mariana. “I’m following the doctor’s orders. Mauritia, she can sleep in the room with me.”

  “Yes, and I’ll help you cook and serve tomorrow.”

  “Where have you been?” asked Belaude from outside.

  “To Dr. Rosa’s.”

  “What did the witch say?”

  “Eh, that it’s mere exhaustion and she must rest,” said Mariana.

  “That’s what I said. Oh, I know as much as the witch.”

  I wondered at how he spoke of Dr. Rosa in the same way that they spoke of me.

  In several days, the small red bumps began to form on her forehead and then on her wrists and feet. After six days there were blisters. On the eighth day, the blisters ran with pus. But by then the smallpox epidemic had begun. Everyone who had been in the Belaude tavern immediately came down with it. Garimpeira was the only one who let me look after her. I kept her skin clean and applied a solution to it. I wouldn’t let her scratch herself but stopped the itching with an ointment that I mixed. I kept her drinking liquids and eating fish and fruit and vegetables. When the others were being ravaged by the ailment, she was already convalescing with only a few dried scales on her skin and very few pockmarks on her neck and hairline.

  “Are you a witch as they say?” she asked.

  “No I’m not. A witch is a very terrible thing to be,” I said, when she was sitting up in the hammock. “I know a little about healing, but for me to know such things—it’s witchcraft or superstition.”

  “Let me see my face,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to ask.”

  She was sitting up in the hammock. I brought her a small mirror. “Eh, I thought I’d have holes all over my face.”

  Mariana and Mauritia, when they recovered, did have pockmarks all over their faces. They looked at Garimpeira with amazement, but still Mauritia would not give me credit for the feat—claiming that it was something in Garimpeira’s blood mixture that kept her pretty.

  “And me?” I asked. “Don’t you think my blood has some ingredient in it that protects me from that ailment?”

  But Mauritia would not answer. “Why am I wrong?” I asked Mauritia.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whenever I do something it’s wrong. Dr. Rosa misjudged her illness, and he’s still right.”

  “How should I know what’s right!” she said, turning on me with anger. “Do you think the secrets of the world have been revealed to me that I should know what’s right!?” she said, and stomped out.

  “Sometimes I think she’s crazy,” said Garimpeira. “She can see with her own eyes that you’re right.”

  “Mauritia doesn’t believe anything,” said Mariana. “I don’t even think she believes what she can see with her own eyes. She complains about everything.”

  “I don’t understand her,” I said.

  “Nobody does,” said Mariana.

  I told them the story she had told me about her three masters who had been murdered.

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Mariana. “That’s a true story. She didn’t lie about that. Why isn’t she glad that they leave her alone, that she’s not passed from hand to hand?”

  “Does anyone suspect that she murdered them herself?”

  “No, of course. Because the Paulistas and Emboabas are always warring. You heard them in there. They’re always warring. Do you know what I think?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I think she’s afraid of ‘magic.
’ I think she believes that story that she’s ‘bad luck.’ And so she’s afraid of magic because she’s afraid of her own. If it’s true that you have powers to heal—then it might be true that she’s got powers to destroy.”

  I said that that was possible, that it was a very good explanation. “Do you think she dislikes me?” I asked.

  “No, she doesn’t. Because when we were coming here she was telling me how kindly you treated her. In fact, you’re the only one I know she’s ever even mentioned liking. We’ve known each other a long time, but she doesn’t really like me. And she always complains about everything, all the time. At least that’s the Mauritia that I know.”

  I was silent, watching the pockmarks on her chin and neck.

  A Shy, Silent, and Confused Woman

  HAVE ANY OF THOSE MEN ever bothered you?” I asked Garimpeira once.

  “That’s no question,” she said. “But to answer it, Belaude keeps them away from me. But not himself.”

  “I could make it so he’d stay away.”

  “Eh, how could you do that?”

  “I can’t explain, but I can do it.”

  “Eh, I can’t exist without someone,” she said.

  “You could make it your choice,” said I. “Isn’t there another man here that you’d choose if you had that power?”

  She looked confused and was silent.

  “Think about it,” I said. “And let me know what you decide.”

  She said, “Of course,” but she did not give me her answer, or decide anything, and whenever I would look at her directly she would look away, shy, silent, and confused.

  A Prosperous Man and the Incarceration

  THE TOWN WAS GETTING BACK TO NORMAL after the epidemic. Mauritia and I continued to help out in the kitchen of the tavern. Whenever a miner would come in on Sundays, I would ask if he knew of an Anninho from the coast. At first they would invariably think that I meant newly arrived from the coast of Africa, but I would explain the Brazilian coast—the Porto Calvo-Olinda-Recife area. No one had heard of or seen such a man, though they would always add that there were many “Mohammedan Negroes” there. I did not always correct their nomenclature.

  There continued to be brawling between the Paulistas and the Emboabas and there was confusion over claims, and a number of arrests of those who did not or could not make payment to the king his royal fifths. Several of these men had been arrested since I had come, and then incarcerated. Some had their gold mines confiscated by the government or they were deported to a prison in Lisbon or to one of Portugal’s African colonies to serve in the garrison there. This as well as the “foreigners” was cause of much violence and bloodshed, though a number of quarrels were also settled over strong beer, and many new quarrels were made at gambling tables. I also discovered that not all of the blacks in the town were slaves and that some had come here to make their fortunes in mines the same as the white men. Some of these men also had slaves, others were independent prospectors, or worked in groups of freemen. I had spoken with some of these men who were eager to elevate themselves through “wealth” and the “possibility of commerce” if they couldn’t through the “prestige of blood” or “their civilization.”