by Gayl Jones
Once we were sitting in here and I wasn’t saying one word to her. “Brazilian women have an exaggerated desire for privacy, don’t they?” she asked.
I didn’t know what she meant by that and so I didn’t say one thing to her, and she kept looking at me.
“I bet that’s true, isn’t it?” she asked.
And why is it true? I wanted to ask. Maybe I did know what she meant, but what did she know about it? What did she know about our new world? Those foreigners always have their eyes on someone, and then with one or two glances they think they know your whole story, your whole spirit, your whole world. And then they share the information with you. But I should have told her that she couldn’t even see past my shadow, or even her own. A room without windows. That’s what she could call her book about the ladies of Brazil.
All the ladies stayed away from her when they learned she was a writer, except for Olinda. She came like she came to show herself to her.
I’ve been in Olinda’s house. They have that Negro slave who’s a painter to paint pictures all over the walls of their drawing room and in the halls. And the paintings are mostly of Negroes. Probably all of them want to start some type of rebellion. They all have the potential for it. They all have the hearts of renegades.
When that English woman saw him she asked his name.
“Well, I don’t know his name,” I said. “It’s enough for me to keep up with the name of my own Negroes.”
“She said he was a freedman. An artist and a doctor.”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
But I didn’t tell her that I thought there must have been something between Olinda and him. I’ll think it even if she is my cousin, because she’s the one who called him a Wonder Worker and a great artist. And then there’s that gypsy horse trader, Burlamaqui. That might as well be a Negro. Those gypsies might as well be Negroes. She has all these foolish ideas.
Olinda took me to that black woman. And I think it was intentional that she didn’t tell me. How did she know her? She probably went to her for some problem she had. She gave me some salve and something with cinnamon leaves.
I can’t get that festival out of my mind. More the festival than the man. First I caught a glimpse of the beard and mustache and then that stylish long coat and his eyes looked at me so. He spoke Portuguese like he’d learned it from a book. But still he knew the names of all those plants and flowers, more than I knew. Some he said grew only in Brazil. He talked of all the trees we had—orange, lemon, guava, mango, peach, coconut. He said he liked to eat some fruit every day, that it helped a man to keep his spirits up. Did he mean spirits? I sent one of the girls to bring him some fruit.
I like a man who has stories to tell. I must have seen some tales of adventures in his eyes.
That woman also had tales of adventures. She said something then when she was talking about her view of the sea. She kept talking about her new sense of freedom. I wanted her to talk more about that man she had mentioned. Had he left her or she left him? Why was she traveling alone here? But she wouldn’t tell me about the man, just about how the sea changed. Was she married when she met him or had she ever been? No, she wouldn’t tell me anything about her personal life except that one vision. Or maybe he was no real man and she might have gone on and told me how he himself came out of the sea. Ha. Ha. Like those legends about men rising up from the sea, and sometimes women. And those tales the slaves tell each other. But she herself comes out of the sea, in a way, to all the places she’s been.
I’d like to be that kind of woman myself, always rising out of the sea to some new place. Back to Russia with that bearded man I’d go. She said after that. After what? I was only half listening. But she said after that, it was more than the sea that changed. At first she thought it was only the sea, and then discovered that it was her own soul that had changed too. But I don’t like that kind of talk anyway, and wonder if she writes like that. All that talk of souls in her voyages and all those shadows of people she sees. Because no, I don’t have any special desire for privacy. Is that the answer to her question? It’s the custom here.
But still a woman like that could go in front of any strange man she wanted to. Yet she’s from a respected family, my husband said. But they must be glad she’s on the other side of the world and not an embarrassment to them in England.
She wanted to go to the Street of the Gypsies because she said there was something she wanted to find out there and wanted me to go along.
Needless to say I didn’t and I jokingly asked her why didn’t she take one of the Negro women with her and she did. I wondered what she wanted there. Maybe some Gypsy to tell her fortune. They’re just like the Negroes, their bright colors and strong perfumes. And the Gypsies have stories too. Have I ever heard a Gypsy’s tale? They’re lovers of bright colors . . . I’ll wear my bright shawl at festivals because everyone does . . . “Why do they have a special street?” she asked.
“Because that’s their custom,” I said, “living apart like that. And there’s a street of the Jews, and one of the fishmongers.”
“Fishmongers?”
“Yes, the fishmongers have their own street,” I said, but she didn’t get my humor and just frowned.
When I found out what she did, though, I stopped talking. All the women stopped coming except Olinda, but she’s like a stranger in her own country.
“What is malungo?” she asked.
“What?”
“I heard a Negro call another one malungo.”
I told her I didn’t know, but that’s some word they use to show respect to each other. Is it that? I don’t know what it really means. Something to do with their being in the same situation.
“What does malungo mean?” she insisted.
“Comrade,” I said.
And then she wrote it down in her little book. She’d have to get its true meaning from the Negroes, because I wasn’t saying anything else.
“From what I’ve seen of your doctors in this country, I’d put more trust in the medicines of the Indians and the Negroes.”
She kept talking that nonsense. Something about their herbs and plants. I started to tell her about that woman talking to her plants. But I didn’t dare.
“There must be a lot of Orientals here,” she mused. “Do they have their own street?”
“What?”
“There must be a lot of Orientals here. There are a lot of things Oriental. The silks and tapestries.”
Then she started listing all the things here that reminded her of the Orient and even a certain shawl I had and wore to Mass all the time.
Then she started talking about a mulatto actor she knew.
“He’s very intelligent,” she said. “He takes his acting very seriously, but he’s so obsessed by his complexion. He’s the son of a Portuguese father and a Negro-Indian mother, and he feels doomed because he’s not the right complexion. Such a brilliant man, and so handsome. When he’s on stage, he creates his own private world. Even for me, when I watch him on stage, everything seems forgotten except the world he creates there. He thinks he merely amuses others and wonders why I should want to come and talk to him.”
“Yes, why should you,” I said.
She ignored me and went on talking.
“He calls himself a mere clown and acrobat, even though it was a very serious play he was doing. He thought the people watching thought it was the antics of a clown. It must be awful to carry such anxiety. An interesting man, though.”
I said nothing. I thought of that peacock he brought me. Still it was a beauty. But all those tales I heard.
“He thinks he’s a failure as an actor, but I think he’s brilliant.” If he hadn’t brought the woman, I was thinking.
“They played everything in blackface except the ghost was painted white and looked deformed among the others.”
Go to the devil, I said. I could see him kissing her feet, her fingers, her eyes. Her eyes especially. Because they think mulatto women have suc
h beautiful eyes. But that one’s not a true mulatto, darker, it’s only her hair that makes her . . .
That first time I asked her to do the head rubbing and get the lice out I was surprised at myself, but still it was her I called.
Madriaga.
But I couldn’t take the name back and call one of the others. I handed her that pomade from Portugal to rub in afterwards.
Black beans and pineapples she brought me that first time. The way she withdrew then, her shy little way. I almost liked her, but I think she does that trying to please him.
When I was a girl, though, I used to like coal-black St. Benedicto. But that was when I didn’t know. I thought that he was special then with his curly hair and beard, before I knew what he was. Still he’s there with all the other saints, and those dark-skinned Madonnas you sometimes see, because the priests want everyone to love Christ, and sometimes he’s dark skinned too. But if St. Benedicto is their color, it’s not the same spirit. It’s who he is in the eyes of God.
I liked him too because he seemed so isolated in his color, so alone there, as though I felt some kinship with that one and not the others. When I was sleeping in my room without windows I’d think of him too. That was before I knew anything.
Then I asked her why she spoke to him. A whore and a public woman I was thinking.
“I write travel books and articles for the English newspapers,” she said. “Of course on a lot of them I don’t say it’s a woman who wrote them, because they might not publish them then.”
I said nothing. I maintained my silence. She was wearing a hat that looked as if it had been made of peacock feathers.
When I was talking to that woman Olinda introduced me to, I felt as if new energy were flowing throughout my whole body. Moraze? Is that what she called her? Then I just wanted to get out. Have it done and be out of there. Makers of angels they call them.
“But one feels it more in the tropics, don’t you think?” I hadn’t been listening to her again, so I said nothing.
“Why are you so taciturn and morose?” she asked. “I wish you’d wear that red dress you were wearing when I first saw you. So Brazilian, I was thinking. You seemed the essence of Brazil. You looked just like a Brazilian bird.”
The feathers on her hat flopping down. Go talk to Olinda, I was thinking. She could tell you the whole history of the country. Some tale of love and desire.
“Why aren’t you talking? Never mind, I’m off to have my fortune told . . .”
A trumpet shell necklace and gold earrings she was wearing, like she didn’t know a Negro woman wasn’t supposed to wear gold.
Olinda told me what I could do to get him to come to my bed again.
Something she probably learned from that woman He knows where I sleep, I said. But still she told me what she learned, probably from that woman. She told me anyway as if I wanted to hear it. Very strong coffee and much sugar and a clot of menstrual blood I was to give him. He wouldn’t taste the menstrual blood, because the coffee would be so strong. I told her again I didn’t want to hear it. And what kind of strange man would that make him? Some sexual magic she learned from that woman.
Something to enchant him.
That time she cooked fish in coconut milk, that was my best dish.
And that English woman looking around at the walls like she saw windows that I didn’t see.
“Was it the Dutch who built those wide streets?” she asked. “I mean, before the Portuguese came?”
How was I supposed to know that history? My father fought the Dutch and my grandfather the French, but how was I supposed to know that history?
My grandfather, they said, had a passion for horses and Negro women. I didn’t know what it was then, but on St. John’s Eve when they had those dances . . . Silver and glass I remember them polishing the whole day. The white people dancing inside and the blacks outside, their wild dances and my grandfather asked me which ones I wanted to watch, and I said the Negroes for whatever reason it was I liked St. Benedicto then. So we stood out on the veranda; he was holding my hand.
“See Old Luiza,” he kept saying over and over again. An old woman out there with the others, who kept turning and showing her broad back like all she wanted to be seen was her broad back. And he kept saying her name over and over again. “See Old Luiza,” he kept saying and squeezing my hand tighter. Then saying something about wishing he could still ride as well as she could still dance, for her old age, and something else about horses and women that I didn’t understand. And she kept turning so that we could only see her broad back. And dancing like she wasn’t an old woman at all.
“Why do they have all the fires?” I asked him.
“To chase the devil away,” he answered.
Then my father came outside and said something about knowing that my grandfather loved horses and Negroes, but he should bring me back inside. Then I dreamed about Negroes building a bonfire to chase the devil away. And then when I saw the devil it was my own grandfather, dancing naked and holding a basket of fruit. When the Negroes saw him, he kept saying, “I’m St. John.”
“No, you’re the devil,” they said.
“I’m St. John and it’s my eve,” he insisted.
“No, you’re the devil,” they kept saying, and building the fire higher so they could chase him away.
When I built a fire to chase the devil away they found it in time. “What do you think you’re doing? You could have burned the whole mansion down.”
“To chase the devil away,” I said.
Someone said they believe, the Indians or the Negroes I can’t remember, it’s white men who have webbed feet like devils. When I was older I had that dream again and he had dropped the basket of fruit. An Indian woman and a Negro woman were standing on each side of him with flowers in their hair, then they began to light the fire to chase him away.
They truly looked like the birds of Brazil.
“You can’t beg it, you’ll have to produce it,” I heard him say. Why he said that and what he meant I don’t know.
“You can’t beg it, you’ll have to produce it,” he repeated, the basket on the ground.
I kept looking, trying to see his webbed feet, but somehow couldn’t.
The other part of him was quivering.
One of the women, the Indian or the Negro, was holding an iron harpoon.
I remember hearing some woman say she saw one of her slaves toss something in her bath. She got out of it quickly because she didn’t want to take some kind of strange wicked bath. She said you have to watch them all the time. She wasn’t superstitious about things like that she said, but when the priests sprinkle you, that’s a special bath, a holy bath.
Anyway, I’d like to read what that English woman would say about our country. If I’d known she was a writer, I wouldn’t have talked to her at all from the beginning.
I’ll have her bring me some heavenly bacon. Why do they call it that?
It’s easily made. I watched her. Almond paste and eggs and butter and sugar. A spoonful or two of flour. I tried to make some, but it didn’t come out right. The children refused to eat it. They said they wanted Madriaga to make it. Well, let Madriaga make it then, I said. That’s what’s wrong with this country. A black hand is the first hand they see. I should never have had those black wet nurses, or I should have gotten white ones. It’s a black tit they all want. And their father too. But he made sure that the wet nurse was a clean woman, and she had papers saying she was clean. But. What was I thinking then?
Heavenly bacon. The nuns make it too. Maybe that’s how it got its name. I told him to buy some heavenly bacon and nun’s bellies. Divine pastries. Anyone can make heavenly bacon. At the nunnery they sell heavenly bacon and nun’s bellies and little wooden images of the saints, even St. Benedicto. But I remember that time they took those jewels off of him because they said that even a black who was a saint shouldn’t wear expensive jewels.
They sell little wooden saints, Our Lady of Solitude, Our Lady
of the Roses . . . But when I was a little girl I’d ask for St. Benedicto right out, and kept him on my pillow and slept with him at night but I can’t remember what became of him. Now I don’t dare ask for St. Benedicto.
That first hammock we lay in had bird’s feathers and tassels and palm and cinnamon leaves, and that’s what we were eating then, heavenly bacon and nun’s bellies, the sweetest pastries. It was like there wasn’t any time, but when he was on those expeditions against the fugitives it was like time came back again and time’s back now. It wasn’t an easy journey to Palmares, he said, because they weren’t used to the forests. They had the Indians with them though, he said, some tribes they recruited. And some Negroes. I wonder what’s in their minds when they’re going after their own kind. Well, maybe it’s like when the Dutch are fighting the French or the French fighting the Portuguese. Because they’re different tribes? No different than fighting each other in Africa where they have tribal wars and sell each other into slavery. But over here aren’t they all the same?
They’re all thrown together, so they’re the same. Except the Mohammedans—they don’t like to be called that; they say it’s offensive to them—but the Mohammedan Negroes seem to carry themselves with more dignity. I said I didn’t want him to buy any Mohammedan Negroes because they’re too prideful and they think they’re superior even to Europeans.
They act as if they have freedom when they don’t.
Still a dark woman has more freedom to walk about the streets than I do, because it doesn’t matter to them about respectability. They don’t dishonor their family. They don’t scandalize everyone. The only white woman I know to do that is Aranha Gracas. On Fishmongers Street buying salt fish. “There’s that devil. There’s that Aranha Gracas,” someone said of her.
“Yes,” the women riding in their carriages said of her. “But she’s a scandal. She’s not a respectable woman.”
She’s a beauty, but no respectable man would have her. But maybe she doesn’t care. Still, a woman’s respectability is the most important thing, I feel. But it was the festival putting those other feelings in me. I told him my name was Lauradia. I didn’t tell him my true name. We ate coconut candy and drank beer.