by Gayl Jones
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting to be told where I’m to sleep.”
“There are three hammocks hanging in this one,” he said, pointing to the one he had just entered. “There is red meat hanging in that one, and in the other tanned hide. What will it be? Choose as you wish.”
He went back inside. Silently I followed him.
After I had been there a week, the wife of Sobrieski asked her husband why I couldn’t do chores for her while the men did chores for him. She could not understand why he had me in there with the men and I was never getting any stitches right; she said why couldn’t I help her, with the laundry and the housework and other things that were women’s work.
I did not hear her say these things of course but soon it was that in the mornings I would do the things she wanted done, taking the laundry down to the stream, baking cassava bread, polishing the rosewood furniture with coconut oil. She would only speak to me to tell me what thing it was she wanted me to do, and she would always find a great many things, and sometimes I felt that she was putting clean clothes in with the dirty ones. In the afternoon my hands would be shaking from the work she had demanded. Then there were more occasions where Sobrieski would slap my fingers, and she would stand in the doorway smirking with the baby sucking at her breast. But again in the day, I would say nothing to her and she would say nothing to me except to make her orders of my chores for the morning.
Once when I was down at the stream washing clothes I heard footsteps and here she was, coming toward me and carrying a basket. I thought she was bringing more work but she set the basket down away from me, upstream, but I could see the top of the baby’s head and hear his sleeping noises. She stood there beside the baby, away from me, and not saying anything, looking out into the clear water as if she were contemplating something.
Then she began slowly to undress, first taking off her top garments, so that her large breasts dropped out, then she took off the rest of her clothes. She swam, she played, she bathed. I continued to wash the clothes, the dirty ones and what looked like clean garments. Then she was suddenly up there beside me, her light hair out about her shoulders, her white shoulders and breasts out of the water.
“Almeyda, it’s nice in here,” she said. “Why don’t you take your clothes off and join me. There’s room enough for two women.”
I did not know why she said the last thing she did the way she said it. “This is how I used to see the Indian women bathing,” she said, “looking like enchanted Moors.”
“Come and get in,” she said, looking at me now with hard eyes. “It’s so comfortable. One feels as if one’s whole spirit is being healed.”
She stayed in front of me, till I could no longer scrub clothes.
“I’ll bet you’d look just like them, just like an enchanted Moorish woman,” she said. “I bet you’d look just like them. Come and get in the water. Do you want me to pull you in? Do you want me to tell my husband that you won’t behave? Do you want him to beat you?”
Slowly I began to take my clothes off as she watched me.
“You look just like them,” she said, as I stepped into the water. She kept her eyes on me. “You look like an enchanted Moorish woman like in the storybook. Except your hair’s not long, except your hair’s so awfully short.”
Her own hair was floating on the water now.
“I always wanted black hair,” she said. “Like the woman in the storybook. But my husband likes my hair, he does. I’m not a Polish woman. I’m a full-blooded Portuguese woman,” she said proudly.
I said nothing. I had not gone far into the water, but stayed with my back against the bank.
“Doesn’t it feel as if your spirit is being healed?” she asked.
I did not answer. Again she played, and swam, and sprinkled water on her breasts and arms. Then she was in front of me again and turned her back to me and sat in the water.
“I’ve got lice in my hair. I think there’s lice in my hair,” she said. I put my fingers to her loose hair and searched for lice.
Then I felt a sharp stone graze my thigh. I reached down and grabbed my thigh as she sprang from the water and the water reddened. I turned to see her tossing her clothes into the basket with the baby and running into the forest, disappearing. Still holding my thigh I climbed further down into the water, and sat against the bank. I washed the leg. It was a long but not a very deep cut. I tore some of the linen and wrapped it. I put on my clothes and rinsed the few pieces that were left. I started to throw the torn undergarment into the stream, but instead put it back in the basket. Near the house, I flung everything onto low branches to dry in the sun and wind.
When I finished I walked into the hut but not knowing there was blood on my dress.
“Is it your time?” Capao asked, when Sobrieski was not present.
“What?”
“There’s blood stains on your dress. What goes?”
I was silent.
“What goes, woman?”
“I cut myself on a stone,” I said. “When I was down at the stream. I fell against a stone.”
“Where?” he asked, frowning.
“Just my thigh. It’s not very bad. It doesn’t hurt.” He said nothing.
“Did she send you to wash the laundry and her hair?”
“What?”
“I saw the woman coming back with wet hair.”
I said nothing. He looked at me. I looked away.
“I’ll make a salve for you to put on it,” he said, and went back to his work. “Cuts can be dangerous.”
I said nothing, and stitched the leather with shaking fingers.
This time I did not think she would appear but she did, holding the baby against her breasts and watching my back. Had she tried to raise the stone higher? I wondered. Did she know it was only a scratch on my thigh or had she done me some greater harm?
She left the doorway and came back without the baby. Her hair, still damp, was down about her shoulders. She started to brush it.
Her husband did not look back at her. I continued sewing the thick leather.
The next time I was alone with her she held a piece of broken glass.
I was in the kitchen, wringing the moisture out of cassava paste, getting ready to bake it. I felt her and turned and she was holding a piece of broken glass.
“This is a devil of a thing,” she said. “My husband ordered me a pretty glass vase from Lisbon, and it arrived broken. I thought I’d gotten all of it up. But this is really a devil of a thing. I’m glad the baby didn’t crawl onto it. In my own country, glass seems so pretty, but here it just seems a devil of a thing.”
She went to dispose of it, but each day I waited to feel the cut across my face, or the slash in some more secret place, but nothing happened, nor did she come down to the stream again. But each afternoon she would stand in the doorway while her baby sucked at her breast, and after she put him down, she would begin the new thing—brushing her long hair. Had it been her threat to show what she would do to me if given any reason? Yet if she did fear that her husband would take notice of me, it was needless, for he went about his shop as if I were not there, the same way he went about it in her presence, yet she would continue to watch me as if I were the only one in the room, and as if her husband were in some danger of my charms.
Once a day Sobrieski would stand and watch our hands as we worked. If something was done wrong, he would slap the fingers that did it or rap the table. Always, I was the only one who would sometimes put a stitch wrong. And as Capao had said he expected us to observe silence as he himself did when he worked. For Pedro the Third it was no burden, as he neither talked when Sobrieski was there or away. And at night when we lay in our hammocks, he spoke not a word.
But there was one time when Capao drove into the city with Sobrieski to take a wagonload of shoes to be sold in a shop there, and as we continued to work in silence, Pedro the Third said, “Do you wonder why this man stopped talking?”
“You
have told me,” I said. “That you informed on your own people and captured them.”
“And performed all horrible cruelties against them without once seeing my own face. I was in Portuguese service. They were not my own people. I did not see my own face anywhere among them.”
“Did the white men turn on you and make you a slave after you had served them?”
“No. I made myself a slave.”
“You made yourself?”
“I did not go into the military thinking that it would be fugitive slaves I would be sent after. No. First we were promised our freedom if we would enlist, and what did I think? I imagined exploring all parts of the world unknown, and what if there was danger? It was the places unknown. But what places unknown!” He thumped his head and then his heart. “Here and here.”
Then again he was silent and continued to go through his days without saying one word to me or to anyone in my hearing.
Mr. Iaiyesimi
A BLACK MAN STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, and a woman stood shy behind him. They were both dressed in expensive European clothes. The man was very large with broad shoulders and very dark smooth skin, and the woman’s skin was dark and soft and was very delicate looking, but she wouldn’t come from behind the man.
Sobrieski did not see them as he sat in the corner, but then he saw them and got up hurriedly.
“Are you . . .” he began.
“I am Mr. Iaiyesimi.”
He stood stiffly and spoke with dignity. I’d never seen such a man and I thought of the one the wife of Martim Aprigio had spoken of and imagined this was him. It was only years later that I discovered that this was indeed him and that they were not what they seemed, but spies for the rebels. Then, however, I simply stared at them like they were curiosities.
Although Mr. Iaiyesimi spoke to Sobrieski, he didn’t look at him, but over his shoulder at me.
“Yes, yes,” said Sobrieski. I had never seen him behave so excitedly. He began to make exaggerated motions with his hand.
“Mr. Sobrieski?”
“Yes, yes.” He ushered them inside. The woman still lingered behind.
“Come in, Zaria.”
Sobrieski took them over to his desk. Mr. Iaiyesimi was carrying a box that he set down on the desk.
“This is not your concern,” Sobrieski said, and we went back to work. “There are the bark cloth shoes that my company makes. And this is vegetable fiber.”
“You say it holds even in rainy climate?”
“Yes. These I’ll leave with you. We’ve purchased a shop in Porto Calvo, and have taken a house there.”
I felt as if he were looking at me and when I turned he was, as was also the woman, who stood shyly near her husband. I looked down at the work I was doing—embroidery work on a pair of special sandals for a rich woman in Porto Calvo.
“What house have you rented?” asked Sobrieski.
“The house and shop both from a Dutchman named Lantz.”
“Oh, yes. What do you think of our town of Porto Calvo?” Sobrieski spoke to him as if he were a white man.
Mr. Iaiyesimi was silent.
“My wife and I, they laughed at us until they found out we were of royal blood in another country and that I’m the owner of much land and many factories and many slaves. Now we’re treated with respect suitable to our position. By those who know. Mainly the town’s businessmen, of course.”
“Yes, yes,” said Sobrieski.
“But it’s of little consequence. I don’t think my wife and I will spend very long in this place, to suffer the insults of strangers. But eventually we’ll get a white man to manage it, although sometimes it’s taken me moments of ponder to decide who is who in this land.”
He looked at me then, although I was certain that I couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Besides him and his wife, though, my skin seemed to take on a lighter shade, but beside Sobrieski’s it seemed as dark as anyone’s.
“This country is not unlike my own, Sir, as far as the climate goes, and what I hope to do is to introduce certain building materials as well as my shoe manufacturing. Because these Dutch houses are nonsense. But I don’t feel it will be accepted. ‘It’s not Africa, Sir,’ said one of the fellows. ‘But neither is it Portugal or Holland,’ I told him. Or better, it’s France or England they want to see here. My wife and I come into the city and it’s not Mr. Iaiyesimi and his wife they see, but buffoons and clowns. And they’re surprised at how tender and shy my wife Zaria is.”
“Who is this woman?” he asked, pointing at me.
Sobrieski looked uncomfortable, then he explained that I was one of his servants, one of his slaves.
“In my country, she would be a woman of quality,” said Mr. Iaiyesimi.
He continued to look at me, and so did his wife, while Sobrieski stood by with a look of much discomfort.
“So, they see my black face, they think it is the same one they see here,” said Mr. Iaiyesimi, still looking at me as if the two men Capao and Pedro the Third were not there. Pedro continued his work in silence.
Capao continued his with a frown.
“Well, she looks fierce and intelligent enough,” said Mr. Iaiyesimi, with a deep sigh. Then he turned to his own woman and clasped her shoulder. She still looked at me, but with shy curiosity and not like most women whose husband had spoken of another woman in such a way. “Well, Zaria, if my plans were not unsettled I would purchase her for you. What would you say to that?”
Zaria nodded. I did not know the meaning of it all then, as Mr. Iaiyesimi turned to Sobrieski. “Mr. Sobrieski, it’s been a pleasure,” he said, with a slight bow. “Please let me know your decision about the matter.”
Sobrieski shook his hand and nodded, but now he was looking at them with curiosity and confusion. Mr. Iaiyesimi left without explaining anything.
“Get back to work, you,” said Sobrieski.
Men from the Quilombo
AS I SAT CUTTING AND SEWING LEATHER, I thought I heard the scream of a woman. I don’t know why, but I pictured the Indian woman with her back on the ground, then I pictured Mr. Iaiyesimi’s shy and tender wife, Zaria.
Then I saw the man again at the cassava barn shielding his eyes from the fire as he opened the small door to put more wood into the furnace. I saw the tall woman holding cassava bread over the furnace. All the women’s arms were white with cassava flour, the white rising past their elbows, their hands sticky and white. I saw Azevedo with his machete. Then everyone looked to the door.
Four black men stood in the doorway, two holding knives, one a sword, one a musket. I was the first to see them. The man holding the musket steadied it at me. I was silent. Then Capao and Pedro saw.
Sobrieski saw and remained at his table, although he looked quickly at the direction his wife might be, but she was not standing here. I wondered how the scene might have been if she’d been standing there with the baby at her breast.
“Who else is here?” demanded the man holding the musket. “There is a white woman and a baby,” I said.
“Araujo, go see.”
Araujo went into the next room and came back, the woman walking in front of him and holding the baby. She looked frightened, and for the first time did not look at me.
“Do you wish to come freely with us and be free men and a free woman?” the man with the musket asked. “For if you do not come freely, you’ll be slaves wherever you go.”
No one said anything.
“It is to Palmares,” Pedro said knowingly.
The man with the musket said nothing, then he came and took my arm.
“Do you go with me of your own will?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
He told the men to follow if it was their will. Capao stood but Pedro the Third remained sitting.
“Araujo,” said the man, still holding my arm tightly. Araujo put the sword under Pedro’s chin.
“Come. And it is not to your freedom that you go.”
The two men had tied Sobrieski and the w
oman with leather straps and lay the baby on the table on a pile of soles.
We followed them, walking in a column. Two of the Palmares men were in the lead, two others behind us. Araujo held the sword to Pedro’s back. As we walked through the dense forest over tangled vines and palm leaves, I kept waiting for signs of blood, but saw none. We marched through the heavy forest, everyone as silent as Pedro.
When we arrived at the place called Palmares, I saw the old woman Vera, and two of the younger women from Azevedo’s plantation, one being the wife of Martim Aprigio. It was the old woman Vera who winked at me. When I got close to the old woman, I asked her what happened and why hadn’t more come to be free here. She said that Mascarenhas had been killed, and the men who’d not wanted to come they had murdered. After that, I wondered why they hadn’t murdered Pedro. She said that Pita had come and the Fazendo had stayed.
“Did they kill Fazendo?” I asked.
“No.”
“You just said they . . .”
“Fazendo said that he wanted to stay with his woman.”
“His woman? What woman?”
“The Indian woman.”
My eyes widened. “And Azevedo. Is he dead?”
She laughed, then she said, “I wasn’t there, but I’m told that they went through his mansion taking everything they wanted, gold, silver, provisions, arms, and ammunition. All he did was sit in his hammock and watch them. He said nothing, but I’m told that he asked them to finish him and perhaps that’s why they didn’t, because he asked them to, because it was his will. And when they refused, he asked them to send him Iararaca, send him the mystical serpent, send him that one to stare at him and finish him.”
Her eyes widened, and the light jumped out. The man, Pedro, who’d refused to come was marched off before the rest of us.
“He wasn’t killed,” I said to Vera. “He refused to come and they didn’t kill him.”
“Didn’t they kill him?” she asked.
We still stood at the entrance where the caltrops and spiked pieces of wood rose up from the ground. They hadn’t yet taken us into the village surrounded by palm forests, but we could see the many large and small huts and many comfortable and fine-looking houses, and a large palace where we were told King Zumbi lived. And there were gardens and fields. We stood there for what seemed like hours, the man with the musket standing near us, and another standing on a high rock looking down on us. At the edge of the village was a very high cliff that dropped down. When we entered, they didn’t take us very far when we were told to sit down in a circle and we made sort of a camp at the entrance to the village. I tried to breathe in being a free woman, as I was told would happen here, but instead I felt uncertainty and danger, although in the distance I saw only black men and women and a few Indians walking about. I stared at the banana groves.