Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  Anninho’s Story

  REST, AND THEN WE‘LL TALK,” he said, as he helped me into the hammock. I felt the dizziness again as I held his arm. He kissed me and I lay back. I watched him standing with his back to me. His shoulders seemed broader, his arms more muscular, as if he’d been rowing. I went to sleep and woke and saw him again, sitting at a table, drawing figures, designs. What had become of his plans? Why was he here in the New Palmares? I thought again of the thing that Mauritia had said, or that Luiza-Moraze had had her say to me. What would he be accomplishing if he had not chosen to come back here and fight for what other men took for granted, and what he himself could claim any time? What might I be doing if I had stayed with Moraze, or if I could change my circumstances in this world? The smell of butter and chocolate. What would I like to do? It gets dark and he lights a candle. Yes, the way he’s sitting, as if he’s spent days in the galley of a ship. What would I wish to be doing? I’d be like Barcala, writing histories of the country. I’d write a history of this place, this Palmares—but how can one write such a history and live through it at the same time? And many herbals. Books and books about the medical properties of all the plants in the country, roaming about, observing and questioning and finding new cures.

  When we were coming here they were returning another deserter and condemning him. I wondered what his story was. There was a woman watching.

  “Who’s that woman?”

  “Cere.”

  “What’s she to the man?”

  “They were going to be married.”

  “So the same laws here as before?”

  “Yes. He’ll be whipped and then executed.”

  Sound of rain, wind, thunder. He covers me with a blanket. Joanna comes to the door, carefully wrapped up, wearing boots. “Is it true Almeyda’s come? Oh, yes.”

  “Yes, and she’s very tired and has been sleeping. She’s asked about you and we’ll visit you tomorrow, or will invite you here to have dinner with us.”

  “I’ve given her my prayers.”

  The smell of cabbage and potatoes and black beans. Cere comes in, her arms and legs bleeding.

  “What happened?” he asked. He gets a wet towel and starts rubbing her arms and legs down.

  “He hung himself before they got a chance to. I tried to stop him but they flogged me.”

  I got up and took the towel from Anninho, who was holding it clumsily. I wiped the blood from the woman, and washed the blood off, then I rubbed her with an ointment from the medicine gourd. Anninho looked at me strangely, though he continued to console the woman.

  “Think of what his choices were, Cere.”

  “I wanted to climb into the halter with him, but they flogged me and kept me away.”

  He asked her if she wanted to sit down, but she refused to, and when I had finished coating her wounds, she ran out into the night.

  I looked up at Anninho, but he said nothing. I looked at the drawings and documents, an assortment of maps and manuscripts on his desk, and then back at him.

  “Nobrega prepared a nice dinner for us,” he said.

  “Nobrega is here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And my grandmother, did my grandmother escape too?” I asked eagerly.

  “No, she’s not here.”

  I looked down. He touched my shoulders.

  “I suspect she’s all right. She’s a cunning old woman.”

  I wondered again if the Indian woman who had mistaken me for someone she knew, might not have met my grandmother instead. Then a thought hit me. Suppose she were to venture into Turiri’s village. Would they not also mistake her for me? Would they not think she was the Old Devil?

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s sit down to the meal.”

  He took my hand and we sat down. He kept looking at me. I felt as nervous as the first time.

  “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “I look awful,” I said.

  “No, you look very good, maybe better than before.”

  We ate for a while in silence. I stared at the writing desk, and the candle, papers, glass bottle of ink.

  “So you’ve had adventures,” he said. “What have you learned from them?”

  I looked up at him in alarm. What alarm I don’t know. Was it that I felt after leaving Moraze’s I had received nothing? Had my adventures taught me no lesson? Had not Moraze said that adventures were worthless unless one learned something?

  “I can tell you what’s happened,” I said, looking down. “But I’m not sure of what’s come of it. I learned a great many things when I stayed in Bahia with Luiza. Do you know she’s a medicine woman?”

  He nodded.

  “Yes, and she taught me many things. But I left her prematurely. Did you see how I fixed the woman? The wounds will be gone in the morning. But I can’t do anything for her soul. I wish I could have cured her spirit too. But I’ll tell you what’s happened from the beginning to this day I’ve found you. A lot of wandering about and maybe I’ve learned nothing.”

  I told him everything, except about Luiza-Moraze’s prediction of the destruction of the New Palmares. Why I could not tell him that I don’t know. He listened carefully. When I told him Luiza’s story about Azamor the explorer, his eyes lit up and a strange expression took hold of him when I mentioned her feelings that the Angolans and Sudanese were too busy fighting each other to accomplish anything and that it was all the same circle—betrayal, capture, and execution. Indeed, she had even left the story unfinished.

  “I have never heard her talk that way,” he said. “But I have not seen her in a very long time, and perhaps she is not so hopeful as she was in the old days. It surprises me that she did not try to dissuade you from coming here then.”

  It was just then that Joanna rushed in and told us what had just happened to Cere, that she had walked barefooted over the caltrops, spikes in the ground used for defense against our enemies, and that she in that way had caused her own death. I started to go along, but Anninho made me remain while he went to see about the woman, though there was nothing that could be done now.

  When he returned I looked at him, but he sat down quietly.

  “You see if I could have repaired what really needed to be repaired,” I said.

  He said nothing, then he said, “Why isn’t the woman Mauritia with you? I thought you had made such a friendship.”

  “She decided to stay in Bahia.”

  “I thought cities muddled her.”

  “I don’t know. When we got there, she decided to stay. The devil knows why.”

  “No one has bothered you in all this time? It’s strange that a woman alone . . .”

  “But don’t you see, I disguised myself.”

  “Ah, yes, but I bet you were still handsome.” I was silent.

  “And . . .” I started to touch my bosom. “Yes,” he said, with a short nod.

  I was silent.

  “You still have my necklace.”

  “What?”

  “The necklace I gave you.”

  “Yes.”

  I thought again of the woman’s horrible suicide and looked melancholy.

  “Who was the discontented old woman?”

  “What?”

  “The one you mentioned. The one who was discontented with every fellow she met.”

  “Ah, Rapadura.”

  “Like the sugar cakes.”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Did you have any amusements?”

  “What?”

  “On your journey. Were there no amusements?”

  “No. Well, maybe some things are funny now. Like that crazy miner, the one so fond of agriculture. I thought he was going to keep us there and make us work for him on his manioc plantation, but he was content to talk our ears off. It’s funny now, but I was scared to death then.”

  He had his hand on his forehead and was rubbing his temples. I felt as if I had said something foolish and so looked
away.

  “Ah, tell me your story now,” I said, looking back at him. He was looking at me with his intense dark eyes and I thought of the Mohammed of Bahia again. “Mine is full of neither real amusements nor real misfortunes. Ah, the great fortune was finding you again! Ah, I’ve been luckier than most!”

  He said nothing, but he smiled.

  He said he could not give his story in as much detail as mine, though many things had happened to him. Most of his adventures were not controlled by himself, but by others, his capture and his being sold to a maritime trader, was ironical, but it was true.

  “A fleet of canoes, he had, like the man you told me about, except he was a Portuguese. There were perhaps three hundred or four hundred canoes in his convoy, that went through very difficult regions, full of ambushes and assaults from Indians—the very ones you spoke of—the Paraguas would attack us from their canoes, while the others, the Guiacuru would attack from the shore, riding on horseback. I knew no words of friendship for them. I fought to stay alive. Since I was one of the boldest fighters, after some time, I got to be one of the guides. There was no real stratagem for these attacks. How could there be any stratagem, when one never knew when to expect them. One had to stay open, and use one’s judgment at the time. In the final war, the Paraguas and Guiacuru had joined each other, and it seemed impossible. We knew we were doomed, but nevertheless, two of us escaped, myself and another African, an Angolan, who were the bravest fighters. I think the Indians had respect for us even though we were enemies, and we respected them as well. But we escaped, and taking one of the best canoes, took to the sea. Lucky for us we were captured again, or I don’t know what misfortune would have befallen us.”

  My mouth was open when he said that, but I was silent and kept listening until he eventually explained what he meant.

  “Cosme was delirious from hunger or some disease and once he even tried to leap overboard but I restrained him, though he kept saying how he wanted to end with dignity and honor . . . A flying fish jumped into the boat and we ate it raw. Surely Allah had sent it. He took spirit again and so did I, even though I had caught some fever as well. But we were captured, I should explain,” he said with a slight smile and a fierce twinkle in his eyes, “by African pirates who took us aboard. I thought at first that they were slaves of European pirates, but they were their own men.

  “Different tribes, some from slave ships that had been captured, others had always been free. They stayed at sea most of the time, because the only place they were welcome was Madagascar Island. Privateers as well as navies were after them, so they were in perpetual warfare, and each of them expected some day to be hanged at Execution Dock. For some reason I was not well liked; perhaps the leader felt that I wanted to be a prince. Not only were the tribes fighting others, but they were also fighting among themselves; each tribe wanted to have its ruler to rule the others.

  “The Sudanese wanted to put me up though I did not want to play the role. The Angolans put Cosme up. But I refused to play such a game, and there was much resentment, and many disparaging accounts of my conduct, even though I was as bold as any of them in our encounters, but I refused to do any unnecessary cruelty. Finally, I was set ashore on the African coast, but not my homeland—but North Africa, where they knew the Arabs would take me and make me a slave again, as I had no ransom, and what gold I had accumulated had been taken from me. It began as they thought it would, with my enslavement, but my knowledge of the scriptures and of the Muslim ships that my master owned, won me respect, and I was put into one of the Arab military units, riding about the land on raids, sailing in their ships, learning their stratagems, fighting with them in their wars against the Spaniards. My service bought my freedom from them. But I had to go to Morocco before I could get a ship that would bring me back here without my fearing I’d be tricked into slavery again. I searched the Barriaga mountains for you, and finally came here. Perhaps you were the reason I came back at first, but there were things I learned on the raids that would be useful here when we prepare to fight the Portuguese again.”

  I was silent. I looked at him.

  “It’s a longer story than it comes out as being in my telling it,” Anninho said, “and there are atrocities that I have not told you, and amusements that I haven’t told you either and I have learned things in a day of that adventure, that I might not have learned in two days without it. There is a secondary story about the maritime plans I made that involves betrayal, but I will not tell you about that one today—but there will be other days to tell you the details of that story, and to fill in the gaps in the other one.”

  1701

  BEACON PRESS

  Boston, Massachusetts

  www.beacon.org

  Beacon Press books

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2021 by Gayl Jones

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Jones, Gayl, author.

  Title: Palmares / Gayl Jones.

  Description: Boston : Beacon Press, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021012710 (print) | LCCN 2021012711 (ebook) | ISBN 9780807033494 (hardcover; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780807033524 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Slavery—Brazil—Fiction. | Blacks—Brazil—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3560.O483 P35 2021 (print) | LCC PS3560.O483 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012710

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012711

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