by Gayl Jones
That was the first time I’d heard her name. Joanna looked at me sadly, then walked and sat down at the table. Her shoes and the hem of her dress were covered with mud and leaves.
“So you intend to flee to Holland,” Martim said to his brother. He took a seat, but Barcala remained standing. “Well, poor devil, I’ll be sorry to see you go.”
Barcala said nothing then he said, “I’m no more a poor devil than you are.”
“Why is it always ‘poor devil’?” Joanna asked. “Why isn’t it ‘poor angel’?”
The men said nothing. There was silence for a long time. Barcala stood in the same place for a long time. Occasionally he would look at me. Was it with reproach?
His brother sat very straight in his silence, and Joanna occasionally looked at me with sad eyes.
“Look at the madwoman,” Barcala said.
“Well, she’ll feel better when we get to the new place,” Joanna said gently.
“She’s not going, neither there, nor with me to Holland,” Barcala said.
“Where is she going?” Joanna asked.
Martim had turned to look at me, but said nothing. “She’s going to stay right here,” Barcala said.
“Will Old Vera stay?” Joanna asked.
“No, Old Vera’s coming along. But this one is a determined creature. She won’t budge.”
“Alone?” Joanna asked, looking at me.
“Oh, maybe she’s waiting for someone,” Barcala said, brushing his hands in the air.
Joanna parted her lips to say something, but did not. There was silence again.
We heard the sound of birds.
“That’s right. I want some gaiety about me,” Barcala said, clapping his hands. He was still standing. “That’s right,” he said, as one bird called after another.
“How much gaiety can you handle?” Martim asked.
“Oh, a great deal,” Barcala said matter-of-factly and aloof. He looked at me again, with reproach, but said nothing. Then, “And how long will you wait? But you won’t answer . . . Why don’t you turn the place into an inn? A Spirit’s Inn. They’re sure to come in and out then. I’ll help you change the place around.”
I said nothing.
He started to say something, then looking despondent, turned to his brother. “Tell me, is it presumption or destiny?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
I felt that Martim was a man of as little conversation as Barcala was of much.
“I mean, dear brother, you’ve been an actor, an engineer, an astronomer, a rebel,” he said. “Is it presumption or destiny? Have you become what you’ve presumed you could become or is it simply destiny, or does one chance to be at the proper place and time?”
Martim said nothing, though he was looking at his brother strangely.
Then he said in a studied voice, “I’ve never really thought of it, but I suppose it’s a man’s fate what he becomes, or a woman’s fate,” he said, looking at his wife, with a curious look on his face.
Barcala brushed back his hair, and held it. “That’s because you were raised by nuns. This one was raised by nuns. That’s why he dresses the way he does. They used to dress him up in little gentlemen’s clothes, and the boys about the city would rail at him, throw rocks and taunt, and once they caught him and tore his fine clothes off, and said he should wear something more fitting of his birth and position. A horse blanket I think they gave him. Was that fate?”
Martim was silent.
“You didn’t say you were raised by nuns,” Joanna said.
“It was whispered that we were the children of a local priest and a black woman,” Barcala said. “The priest gave Martim his schooling and Martim gave me mine. For which I am grateful. But was it fate or a man’s own disposition? Do I speak like a fool and a clown? I’ll dye my face purple. But no. It’s the force of man’s imagination. Oh, you’ll say it was fate that we were given our freedom, sent abroad for our schooling. But no, it’s one’s man’s imagination versus another that takes a man from place to place and through time and the spirit.”
My eyes widened, but I said nothing.
“I believe in the force of the imagination,” Barcala declared. “I’ll spend years in that struggle. While you make your oaths and war, I’ll make mine.” He paused. “Almeyda, am I a fool and a clown?” he asked, looking at me.
I shook my head.
“No? Or don’t you know?” I said nothing.
He looked down, despondent again, then raised his head. “Anyway, it takes an act of the imagination to talk such talk at such a time, between destructions.”
“You honestly believe the new place will be destroyed as the old one was?” asked Martim.
“Old Vera says so.”
“But Old Vera is going with us.”
“Ha ha,” he said. “And that’s the real force of the imagination.” He was silent, letting his hands drop.
“Or maybe what’s a man’s fate here,” he said, looking at me, as if I would understand, “is the force of a man’s imagination there.”
“Some things lie beyond a man’s choice and imagination,” Martim said.
“Ah, but the thing is not to accept the difference.”
“What?”
“Between the things that do and don’t,” Barcala said with a laugh.
Martim’s Plan
JOANNA SAT NEAR ME, but saying nothing, respecting my silence, while the men, her husband and his brother Barcala and the two men, the printer’s slave and the mulatto ‘priest’ sat at the table talking.
“And what is your strategy, Martim, what is your plan?” Barcala asked Martim.
“Well, to become a part of the New Palmares,” Martim said.
“And what is it you really want, what do you really want, what is it you see for the future, what is it that makes you remain here?”
“There are hundreds of quilombos scattered about in the mountains of not only Barriaga, but in Cubatão, São Paulo, Lellon, Rio de Ianeira, Maranhão, Matto Grosso, and even unknown, unseen places, independent African states. If we could get the hundreds of them to come together, that would be my future for Brazil. Independent African States. Oh, the Portuguese can have their territories, and we have ours. One man’s existence should not depend on the extinction of another.”
Barcala began to laugh. “But it does, doesn’t it, brother? We know that every site is initiated with blood. So you’ll take the mulatto priest and I’ll take the printer’s slave. What does that mean? And what about the unseen populations? How will you see them, how will you know them?
“Will you know them when they are exhibited in public, as King Zumbi was, with their heads on poles?”
Martim was silent.
“Why do you laugh at such serious matters?” the mulatto priest asked.
“Because he knows that he himself is in a dangerous position,” Martim said. “And his sight is initiated in blood.”
Barcala said nothing, staring down at the backs of his hands. “Once a woman I was courting read the backs of my hands. She looked at the palms and showed such fear, that I turned them over and said, ‘Read the backs of them.’“
“How could she read the backs of them?” the printer’s slave asked.
“There’s nothing, you see,” Barcala said with a laugh.
“Poor devil,” Martim said.
“We used to eat fruit every day, and sleep well every night,” Barcala said. “It was all very good,” and then he looked at me. “No woman loved a man as well.”
“I want it to be all very good here,” Martim said with a sadness. “Well, it must have some meaning, it must make some sense,” Barcala said, still looking at me.
“It’s without any reason,” the mulatto priest said.
“Well, I’ll devote myself to matters of life,” Barcala said with a smile. “And be without any reason.” His smile changed to a frown and he grimaced at the backs of his hands. “And what is your plan?” he said, looking at his brother. “
And it’s more fantastic than in a book. Do you think real men and women can accomplish it?”
“They’ll have to.”
“I’m a man of little faith.”
“With the help of God,” Martim said.
“Oh, I have great faith in God but little in people,” he said, still grimacing at the backs of his hand. “And even less in the unseen populations,” he said, looking at his palms, as if he were trying to see them.
“Admit Martim has a great spirit,” the printer’s slave said.
“I admit I have little spirit for the talk any longer,” Barcala said rising, then he looked at me. “And her strategy, her ideal? Her ideal is the truly silent woman. Is that your plan, Almeyda, the eternal truly silent woman? Oh, don’t you wish!” He looked at his brother and said, “Yes, he has a fine one,” and went out.
The Narratives of Barcala Aprigio
The following are narratives written by Barcala Aprigio. I have decided to include them here in this history, although it was not until years later that I had the opportunity to read them. He never had them printed as he was dissatisfied with them. They were written, he said, during his passage from Brazil to Europe. I have not had the opportunity to read any of the printed manuscripts, those written during the years abroad, though in one of his letters he translated a piece that had appeared in a French newspaper. The critic spoke of having admired the writings of Barcala Aprigio until he had “got religion,” as the critic said. Barcala “the mystic,” he declared, was not nearly so entertaining as Barcala “the profligate.”
I received the letter first and then I was delivered a box of handwritten manuscripts.
(I purposely do not include here where I was or what I was doing those later years, as I would prefer to relate that in another history.)
On a slip of paper inside one of the manuscripts the following list was scribbled:
The rarer ipecacuanha A freakish memory Mystical unity Man and the Universe
What he meant by this, I don’t know. But here are the narratives:
THE FAMILY OF MARTINA P.
Goncalo P. annulled the marriage of his son Valdes to the young Martina without even seeing the woman, only knowing she was a mixture of blood and parentages, perhaps “a whole series of bastardies,” in fact the blood of the whole continent ran in her veins. Knowing this, he knew she was not the woman for his son, who was “of clean birth and purely European origin.” His son, in the woman’s favor, said that she was a highly educated woman, and though her mother was of pure African blood, her father was a mulatto geologist and physician, the son of a wealthy Scandinavian physician and a Bahian woman. “A profligate mulatto,” his father had said, attempting to strike down any good thing he might say of the woman. He told his father that she was a fascinating and intelligent and beautiful woman. “And even if she is the prettiest on this continent, you do not need to marry her,” his father had said. The son persisted in saying that he would marry the woman.
“You are crazy,” his father said.
“Why is it that I am the lunatic and not you?” the son had asked.
The father looked at him, saddened that his son would want to marry a woman of such low degree.
“She’s not a woman to speak of,” his father said. “What about these women of good families, old and respected families? Many admire you.”
“It’s true she’s not to speak of, but not for your reasons. I would trade whole populations of such women for Martina.”
His father could not believe his ears. “Women of good blood,” he said.
The son laughed, and made a joke about all the “bad blood” since the Dutch and Portuguese came.
“What claims does she have on you? I can’t understand your lunacy. Is she a love sorceress as well as the daughter of a profligate mulatto, working some danger on you? Why this woman? I say no to it.”
“You have not set eyes on her.”
“Nor do I intend to, nor upon the children of her children, who, if in God’s power, will not be yours.”
He stood firmly before his son who straightened his shoulders and left the house.
“Can you remember anything? Can you remember anything since you’ve met this woman?”
The son married the woman, and the father, hearing of it, and having connections among the officials, had the marriage annulled, arranged for the woman to be stolen and sold into slavery (he himself buying her through an agent, to make sure it would be done). The son, thinking the woman had been unfaithful and all of the things his father had called her, left and went to North America, avoiding such women.
One day the father, Goncalo P., was walking about his plantation and saw the woman (since he had arranged to purchase her through his agent he had not laid eyes on her before). He asked his overseer who she was, saying that he did not remember such a woman, and that he did not know of any slave woman of such refinement. Upon hearing her name, his mouth fell open, but being fascinated by the strange beauty of the woman, he took her as his mistress. He felt he too had lost himself, but he could not help it. Eventually, he slayed his wife so that he could bring his mistress into the house to be with him all the time. “There is no such woman,” servants heard him say until he moved them out of the house, so that he could be alone with her. He hid his wife inside one of the thick walls of the house. He stayed with the woman for five years, having two children by her.
Finally the son returned from North America and went to visit his father to tell him he had been right about such women and to make friends with him again. Before he got to his father he saw the woman Martina. He went up to her. He wanted to strike her. He had his hand drawn back, but seeing her eyes, he stopped. He began to wonder what she was doing there. He asked her to forgive his look and his cheap clothes. He asked her to ignore what he had just done. He said for the last five years he had felt so isolated, but he had never traveled before, and he had tried to make that take the place of any experiences of being loved.
“What do you want, Valdes?” she asked.
Did he detect bitterness, and for what? Hadn’t she left him and denied him his dreams? Wasn’t he the one who had never really escaped the woman? Hadn’t she stayed in his memory and imagination?
“What do you want of me?” she asked.
“First I want to know what you are doing here.”
She explained what had happened, with a slowness and nonchalance he could scarcely believe. She explained that their marriage had been annulled without his knowledge of that fact, and how she had been stolen and sold to his father, and how his father had murdered his wife and taken her into his house. She brought out the two children who were his brother and sister.
He scarcely looked at the children but continued to look at the woman who was still beautiful and fascinating, the same round eyes that seemed to take him to some mysterious region. (These were his words and thoughts), and in his rage, on account of the jewel he had lost (again his words), and her degradation, he ran to his father, and without even greeting him, slayed him and hid him inside the thick walls of the house, where, if such things are possible, the bones of his old wife, laid immediate claims on the man.
Then the son took the lovely Martina (who to his eyes had not changed in all that time) into the house to live with him, and in the five years that they remained together, had two children by her—another boy and girl. He had wanted to sell his father’s children, but the woman would not part with them, loving them dearly, and so he let her keep them. He did not marry the woman this time, but merely lived with her, and then he grew tired of the woman, and began to feel that she might not have been as lovely as he had considered her to be, or as fascinating; in fact, she seemed to him a taciturn, unimaginative woman. So he went back to North America to the delights of the wilderness. (His vocabulary.) It was then, and for no other reason, than that the woman, Martina, seemed to have taken over the plantation, that the people began to realize and to whisper that they had not seen the old man Puerr
eydon nor his wife for many years. The old wife’s disappearance they had never noticed, because she was not a woman given to public appearance nor did her husband like to exhibit his wife in public. Then when the old man went unnoticed, they excused themselves by saying it was because the son had returned and they had assumed that he had taken over the plantation and that the father, as such old men often did, had merely hidden himself inside his huge mansion. As for the woman, they thought the son had inherited her too along with the other property. And now for this “property” to be running things, they began to take notice. What had become of the old man and the wife? And even though they knew the son had gone to North America, they asked what had become of him too? Perhaps if the woman had given them some notice they might have lessened their suspicions, but as she did not and was content with her children, and seemingly with the whole order of the universe, as if she felt it revolved, or was resolved in the children, the people were very suspicious. What had become of the Puerreydon family? First they began to ask questions, and then when they attempted to search the mansion, Martina fled with her children and was discovered by the author—
A fascinating, intelligent woman, whose family revolve around her like a planet. The beautiful Martina. What would be the consequences of loving such a woman? She claims she will be no man’s wife, and will go to the New Palmares with her children. What will become of her there?
“There is no such woman.”
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN’S SLAVE
She was neither a medicine woman, nor a witch, and yet people feared her, and let her do as she pleased in the town. It was not because of the woman herself but because of the woman’s ancestry. It had something to do with her great-great-grandmother. And if it were not that woman’s spirit they feared, it was certainly that other spirit, for Anna Bejerano herself did nothing. She was rather a shy, inoffensive, peaceful woman, who kept to her house and made sails for the fishermen of the town. It might seem strange that they would fear the woman and yet eagerly take her their sails that needed mending and buy new ones from her, but though they distrusted the woman, they thought her sails had some magic and would protect them, so that although she was feared and shunned by the town and its people (which did not set badly with her as she was a shy woman to begin with), she was respected by the fishermen.