Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  “Did you see Luiza Cosme?” I asked.

  He looked at me for a moment, then he said, “No.” He said he had merely gone into town to observe what was going on, and it was easier for him alone than if he had taken me with him.

  He sat down at the table, and moved the lighted candle and books and papers toward him. Some were maps, some writings, his own and other people’s, in both Arabic and Portuguese—some were not words, but small drawings, others numbers and figures.

  I sat on the hammock, sewing straps into a pair of sandals.

  Occasionally I would look at him; sometimes he would seem unaware of my presence. Other times he would look at me and smile.

  “You went there only to observe?” I asked after a long time. “What is going on?”

  He looked at me, at first not speaking, then he said, “I wanted to see what is going on with the local militia.”

  I stared at him without speaking. I had heard them only speak of danger and horrors; and when I was growing up it had been the tales of horror, somewhat distant brutalities of existence. I had only seen one man and one woman hanged with my own eyes, and my grandmother had shown me the dried ears and feet of an enemy, the first one she had slain, and had told me stories of other exploits; and there had been the old woman’s tales and Pedro’s, and there had been the tale of the straw woman, and the sight of the women healing.

  He watched me, then he said, “They are making preparations to destroy Palmares again. Another expedition will be sent. When I don’t know, but it is better to think it is every minute. It is better to think every second is the second.”

  I said nothing, then I asked, “Is it coffee?”

  “What?”

  “Is it coffee?” I asked, pointing to the sack.

  “No.”

  He poured over the maps again, began to make little marks and signs.

  “It is not the visible world but the invisible one I am most drawn to,” he said, looking up at me. “And that I would devote myself to completely if I were given my choice in this world.”

  I said nothing. The sandals I was making were not made of leather but vegetable fiber.

  “A new expedition will be sent very soon,” he said, looking up at me and saying it as if it was something he had just heard.

  A man knocked at the door, a dark-skinned man of royal bearing. He came in without being told, bowed to me without speaking and then walked up to Anninho.

  “This is the passage,” Anninho said.

  The man said something to him in a tongue I did not know. Anninho replied back in the same language. But it did not sound like the Arabic one I had heard him and my grandmother speak. Even when she refused to teach it to us, she had referred to it as a language that literary men spoke. She had said that there were few among even the colonists who could read or write the language they spoke. She had said it in an arrogant way, and still even now treated it as though it were a forbidden and sacred language.

  The man stayed there for close to an hour and they poured over books together and spoke together in that language. Then the man bowed to him and bowed to me and left.

  “Is that . . . was that the man they call Zumbi?” I asked hurriedly.

  Anninho laughed. “No,” he replied. “I sent for him because he is one of the few who still understands an African tongue. But he has also been known to use the language of Virgil and Horace.”

  I looked at him, not knowing what he was talking about. “Latin,” he said.

  I nodded, thinking of one of the books Father Tollinare had that he had refused to instruct us from.

  “He is renowned for his knowledge of dead languages as well as living ones.” He laughed. “And also for his casting of love spells.”

  “What?”

  “He was driven from Porto Calvo not because of his learning, but because there were nine women—nine white women—who accused him of casting love spells and making them do things. At first he had been celebrated for his learning, a curiosity, but then one woman, then another claimed his eyes made her do things. First he was sentenced to a special jail and then to perpetual imprisonment. It’s a funny story when he tells it. How in court they made him cover his eyes, the women afraid to look at him when they told their stories.”

  “Was it true? Had he made them do things?” I asked, for the man seemed to have very “strong” eyes.

  “Perhaps,” he said with a shrug. “Or perhaps only what they themselves wanted . . . He escaped and came here. He has a number of women, but none has complained of his love spells,” he said with a laugh.

  “Do you have . . . a number of women?” I asked.

  “How many do you see?” he asked.

  I said nothing.

  “I only have time for one,” he said, smiling a bit, and looking at his studies. Then he glanced up again. “There were many women in my family—wives of my father.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “He felt there were not enough believers in Allah. I don’t know where he is. The last thing he’d done was left all of his women, including my mother, and tried to convert a tribe of Indians to have them wage a holy war with him . . . I don’t know nor does my mother.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  “I won’t talk of her. I won’t talk of her to anyone,” he said. “That is something I don’t do. I’ll stay with you as long as you love me, but she’ll remain unknown.”

  His look made me glance away from him.

  In silence, I sewed the vegetable fiber sandals while he made marks on the pages, wrote strange figures, traced new lines on the maps, then he rose, and said, “Come on, I must see someone. This time you may go. I need your company.”

  Whale Oil

  I RODE BEHIND HIM ON HORSEBACK, holding him around the waist. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow line. His stomach was flat and hard. Though he had said he wanted my company, he did not speak to me in the whole time we traveled.

  He stopped outside of an old tavern on a road somewhere between the Palm Forests and Porto Calvo, perhaps eight leagues from the town.

  He jumped off the horse and said, “Wait here for me,” started in but on second thought came back, held his hand up and helped me down.

  When I was down, he tied the horse to a post and I followed him inside. It was a tavern, but when we got inside there was no one at the wooden counter or the tables near the window. In the corner only sat a man with a brown and red scarf wrapped around his head, clumps of straight black hair sticking out; there was a patch over one of his eyes. His one eye seemed fierce and “possessed”—if that is the proper word for the mad, dark mystery some eyes seem to have. He looked at Anninho but stayed at the table. Anninho walked me to another corner and told me to sit down. But instead of sitting with me, he walked over to where the man sat, and sat down, without speaking.

  The man said something softly about “the woman” but I could not make out what it was, and I did not hear any answer from Anninho.

  It seemed that they sat there for a long time in silence and then they began to whisper and when the whispers grew louder, I still did not know what it was they said, for it was in yet another foreign tongue—French or English or Dutch—but not Portuguese. I had learned a little English, but this did not sound like the English I knew.

  Anninho spoke in very level unemotional tones. The man did too at first and then his words grew passionate, excited, “possessed.” Once he even rapped on the table, then he got up and started across the room—that was when I saw that his left leg was wooden, and there was only that sound as he walked slowly. When he passed me, he glanced but only for a moment. Behind the counter he poured two wooden mugs of beer. He started to pour a third, but Anninho called, “She doesn’t drink it.”

  The man picked up the two mugs and walked back across the room slowly, the tap of wood on wood. He stared out of his one fierce eye.

  He set the mugs down heavily, then sat down.

  Again here was silence, th
en the foreign language—Anninho’s even-toned. The man’s, even-toned in the beginning, then possessed.

  “Allah,” I heard Anninho say, then he was talking steadily in the other man’s language.

  After what seemed like several hours the man again got up and walked across the room, came back carrying a small keg; barely larger than his hands. He set it down on the table beside Anninho. Anninho took it and rose. Anninho walked over to where I was and tapped me on the shoulder. When we were standing, the man was looking at me out of his fierce eye but said nothing. He said something to Anninho again in his language. Anninho nodded firmly, but said nothing. Then we left.

  He got onto the horse and then reached down and pulled me up. “Who is the man?” I asked.

  “A crazy man,” he said.

  He placed the small keg in one of my hands, then took the reins. “What is it?” I asked, holding it in my fist.

  “Whale oil,” he said, and he was silent the rest of the way, and did not speak of the man even when we returned home.

  Of the White Woman from Porto Calvo and Other Women, Black and White

  I STOOD IN THE DOORWAY watching the men return. They had some black and mulatto women with them and one white woman. Anninho walked behind the others. Some had spears, others bows and arrows, some swords, some firearms. A few men were carrying both swords and firearms, the firearms having been taken from the sugar plantation. One man walked with a limp, but no one else was wounded. Anninho did not look toward me as they walked past in the wide road. I did not go out to him, but went back into the house and began work on a new pair of sandals. By now, I had a pile of sandals in one corner of the house.

  Later, Anninho came with sugar and rum. We kissed and then sat down. He took out a silver necklace and handed it to me. I shook my head and said, “No.” I fingered the one made out of cacao seed and trumpet shells. He laughed. He put the silver one back in his pocket. We sat at the table in silence. I wondered if the necklace had been taken from that woman I had seen.

  “What will they do with the white woman?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He lifted his elbow and said, “She will be held for ransom. She is the daughter of a rich man in Porto Calvo.”

  I looked at him without speaking.

  “They imagine things we are doing to her. She is in her own hut, guarded. She is the same woman she was when we brought her here. She is as whole as she was when we found her.”

  He said everything without raising his voice and without any feeling, then he looked away from me.

  “One of Zumbi’s women is a white woman,” I said.

  He nodded but said nothing. He spread his maps and books out on the table. Then he said, “What does it matter? A woman is a woman.”

  I looked down at my hands. At first I had had no opinion of her or feeling toward her, but I had passed her this morning. Her long hair was parted in the center. She was wearing many layers of beads. I could not bring myself to look at her, though I could feel her eyes on me. I had kept my head down. I glimpsed her black skirt hitting against her ankles and then I passed.

  I went back to the sandals I was making. After a while, Anninho stood up.

  “I’m going out,” he said.

  I nodded. I tossed the sandals into the corner with the other ones and lay down in the hammock. I dreamed that Anninho and I were standing together and the woman came. I would not look at her, but he watched. I touched the beads on my neck. They were gone. I thought she was wearing them, but I was afraid to look. Out of the corner of my eye I saw circles and circles of color around her neck.

  “Who is that woman?” I heard Anninho ask. He was not talking to me.

  “She came here yesterday. Zumbi has taken her for his woman. I didn’t think he would want that kind of woman. But a woman’s a woman, I guess.” I heard the voice, but I did not know who was speaking.

  Anninho said nothing. I could feel him watching her. She started to sing. I was afraid because her voice was beautiful. I stared down at the ground. I left them. Anninho stayed watching her. I walked down the side of the mountain, hearing her voice.

  Color is not contagious. A woman’s a woman.

  When I awoke, I could still hear the woman singing. Anninho came back. He stood watching me, then he climbed into the hammock and lay down beside me.

  It is not often in this world that such a thing happens.

  What?

  That a man and woman return to each other.

  “What will they ransom the woman for?”

  “Muskets, gunpowder, gold.”

  A Slave Captures a Slave and Redeems Himself

  PEDRO THE THIRD CAME TO THE DOOR of my hut. He stood in the doorway as if he were waiting for me.

  “I am no longer a slave,” he said, “and am free to talk to you as any man.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, coming to the door, frowning because of the thing that had happened when he had stopped on the road to talk to me.

  “I’m a free man,” he said, both hands on his chest. “And can speak with you the same as any other man.”

  I stood looking at him, feeling cautious. “How can you be a free man?” I asked.

  “Don’t you know the law here?” he asked. “That if a slave captures a slave he redeems himself. Isn’t that the way?”

  I said nothing. He was looking at me with large eyes.

  “I’m a free Palmarista man,” he almost screamed, leaning into the door.

  Someone walked by on the road and looked over but went on.

  “A slave capturing another slave. That’s my profession and has always been. Except now I capture a slave for my own freedom. Then I used to capture a slave for the Portuguese, but now it’s for my own self. Isn’t that something for old Pedro?”

  Why had he called himself that? I stood looking at him, a tall, mustached, quite handsome man.

  “Isn’t that something? That’s what I like in a woman. No answers. I had a woman. I’d tell her all of it, every bit of it. And you, Almeyda, you’d say nothing to all that, wouldn’t you? Each time, if you were the woman, I’d come back after an expedition, telling you. And you’d say nothing.

  “Wouldn’t that be fine for an old slave catcher. But her—her look accusing me. And yours? What does yours do? Everything in the eyes, and yet they’re silent now. Unspeaking. I’m a free man, and if you weren’t taken, I’d choose you. But you’re that man’s woman.”

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  “I wanted to come and tell you how I redeemed myself. A slave catches a slave. That is how one buys his own freedom here.”

  He kept looking at me strangely.

  He asked me, “Where is your husband?”

  I said I didn’t know. Perhaps he had gone into Porto Calvo on some business.

  “That is how I redeem my existence,” he said. “That is how I get my manhood back. And do you believe the spirit of the man returns as well? What will I do with my freedom? Well, I’ll fight along with the others to maintain it, but not as their servant, but their equal, a man knowledgeable in the ways of the military. I’ll be of some use. Don’t you feel it is right for a slave to capture another slave and redeem himself?”

  I was silent.

  “What shall I do with my freedom? Freedom now to capture the slaves whom I choose, and do what I choose with them. Isn’t that something? Doesn’t that give a free man something to do? Isn’t that a way to exercise my freedom? I was tired of being a slave, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone after him.” He laughed, but out of anxiety. “What is your opinion on the subject?”

  I said nothing.

  “Well, it is the way of the nation. Another man’s freedom depends on the slavery of yet another. How many slaves must I capture to get the maximum freedom? Are you in disagreement? Why do you look at me so? Do you think I am a crazy man? A silly man? Ah, I am not the man who puts his own freedom in danger to help rebels. If I were that man, do you know what I�
�d do? I’d leave this place and exercise my freedom daily. Buy your freedom, take you with me. My regards to this place. Have our little world. Travel about my country, the cities, the backlands, by horseback, by canoe. See my country in ways I am longing to see it. That’s what I would do if I were that man. See my country. And what kind of knowledge does he have? Is it some knowledge of the stars? Is he an astrologer? Does he know the sea? Some knowledge of the oceans? Is he a geographer?

  “Is that the word? I see him with his little books and figures, his maps, his secret codes, his knowledge of languages. His secret codes. Or perhaps he’s not here to do these people any good, but a spy for them? Is he a traitor?”

  I shook my head, but said nothing, and thought of the man he had met in the tavern.

  “No, he is no traitor. He is no spy for the military. But I’d go about my country with you, and then to another one and another across all the oceans. Look how they fight for a limited existence, some little piece of independent ground. But what if there are no other choices? You exchange one limited existence for another. But here I am within the confines of it. But when I was a military man, first I fought in the wars against the Dutch, and then when there were no more Dutch to fight, what is it they do? I am sent in the punitive wars against the Negroes. Ha. Ha. And I did it, in exchange for some little freedom. Some mobility, some trek across my land. But if I were that man, I’d go to the very heart of my country. What is the heart? Perhaps I am there. Do you think I am there? No, but they call us the scabs of the country, and it is their duty to remove the scabs. I’d see all sorts of people. Do you think our country is an interesting comedy or a tragedy? What do you think is the essence of it?

  “What are the emotions of the ordinary people? The extraordinary, the freakish even? What are the hopes of men in other countries? I’d take my new freedom and do things with it, learn whatever secrets there are. Or do you think that I live in the big secret now, that I’m in it now? Ha. Ha. Why don’t you take my dream of existence to that man? Without dreams you will receive nothing. And without them, what do you receive? Tell him to take his freedom by the collar and pull it about where he wants to go.”