by Gayl Jones
I explained that I had been sold to another master, but that now I had free papers.
He did not ask to see them.
“I’ll bet you’re an escaped Palmarista woman,” he said, looking at me.
I took out my papers.
“I don’t want to see them,” he said. “I don’t believe in Mars or Venus. Goodbye.”
He started away.
“What happened to your foot?” I asked.
He turned. “It’s the Achilles tendon,” he said. “I severed it.”
“I’m not coming back,” I said.
“What?”
“I was looking for someone. I’m not coming back, if you want to stay here,” I said, pointing to the underground hut.
He said nothing. I untied the reins of the horse and mounted. “What would you have done to avoid conscription?” he asked.
I said I did not know about such matters. I heard him laugh as I rode off, turning the horse to the path we had taken to where the Tapuyan women had been.
A Handful of Maize
I STARTED TO RETURN TO THE OLD PALMARES, but I knew what I would find there—the fields burned, and the buildings and huts burned to the ground. Some things had been destroyed before the Portuguese had overridden us, the rest had been destroyed by them.
I turned in the direction that the Tapuyan woman had taken us.
When I came to the clearing, I dismounted, tied the horse to a tree, and going up to the long building, I called, “Maite.” There was no answer. I did not know the other woman’s name. I entered and walked among the rows of hammocks. There was no one. Under two of the hammocks there was the scattered wood of a fire that must have been lit during the night. The Tupis who lived near Entralgo’s plantation used to sleep that way. I used to wonder why they were not afraid to sleep with fires under them at night.
My grandmother suggested that they treated their hammocks with something to make them fire resistant. What it was she didn’t know or didn’t tell me. Entralgo used to tell stories to guests who came nearby from Portugal or other European countries or who lived in towns where there were no Amerindians that the Tupis would be lost without fire, because their ancestors used fire instead of clothes. And that once they had gone into a hut of one of the Tupis and had found some smoked meat—the leg of something, No one knew what it was. Entralgo had hinted that it was the leg of one of their enemies. Then he told them the story of how cannibalism had started in Brazil, that he had read about it in Magalhaes’ history of the country. That one day the son of an old woman had been murdered, and when they captured the murderer and brought him to the old woman, in her anger and grief, she had snapped at the murderer and bit him. Somehow the murderer escaped and went back to his people claiming that the other tribe had tried to eat him alive, and showed them the old woman’s tooth marks. It was then that the murderer’s tribe began to eat their enemies, and the murdered man’s tribe began to eat their enemies in earnest. It all started with an old woman’s anger and a false story.
It was then that I saw the smoked leg of a tapir hanging against the wall. On the ground below it was a plate of cold manioc cakes. I left the long building, and untying the horse, rode in the direction of the river. I dismounted and tied the horse to a tree before I reached the clearing, and seeing the two women I hid behind a bush, watching them. The “woman” stood on the bank with gold powder all over her face and body. It was some kind of ritual I had heard about where they made “gilded” men and women (when I had first heard it I had thought my grandmother had said “guilty” men and women), but I did not know its meaning nor had I seen the ritual before.
“Gold means nothing to them,” I remembered hearing. Was it Entralgo talking to the foreigners? The “woman” stood on the edge until her whole body was powdered, and then she walked into the river, ducking her head down, until all of the gold was washed away, then she emerged. Maite stood beside her talking to her cruelly, saying things about her ancestors, as if the woman’s ancestor were not her own.
“. . . They would kill each other for a handful of maize,” she was saying.
Then she said, looking at the woman, “You’re very beautiful, but very primitive. You powder yourself with gold and dive into the water, and don’t even know why you do it.”
The woman was looking at her, embarrassed and uneasy.
“You only care about what you can see and feel. You’re very childish and foolish. Here, here are your clothes,” she said, picking up a white dress and handing it to the woman. “See how you embarrass me,” she said, as the woman picked her garment up. “In front of the Jesuit. Those people across the ocean, they study everything, they are knowledgeable of everything. They came here looking for the Christian King Prester John. A man of morality and purpose. Do you think a rebellion against them will ever be successful? And your ancestors, the whole world to them was nothing but fighting, ritual, and divination. Why did you embarrass me in front of the Jesuit?”
The “woman” was silent.
“Those people across the ocean. Ideas are more important to them than gold,” said Maite.
“They came here for gold,” the “woman” said meekly. She brushed her wet hair back.
“Because they knew what to do with it,” said Maite. “I can always tell what you’re going to say. Always. You’re so predictable. You think you’re a perplexing and mysterious woman but you’re not. I can always tell. It’s not the eternal truth you’re after, but the eternal lie. They took the gold, but what would you have done with it but toss it into the lake. You’re proud of your geometric designs, but you don’t even know what they mean. You don’t understand the age we’re living in, or what is required of you. You don’t understand the intellectual, moral, and spiritual demands of the age. Why did you shame me in front of the Jesuit? Place yourself against one of them any day, and see what happens! I have to explain everything to you.
“Ah, if only my ancestors! Why do you behave so? Sure, they made slaves out of the Caete, but didn’t the Caete kill the bishop? But some of them sold themselves into slavery too. For what? For a handful of maize!”
The “woman” picked up a machete and began to dance in a very aggressive and hostile manner around Maite. Then she stood very still as if she were in a trance, reminding me of some African ritual—as if she were being possessed by some god. I stood waiting, as it seemed Maite was waiting for some god to speak through the “woman” but one never spoke. Then the “woman” was kneeling making geometric designs on the ground.
“Look at you,” said Maite. “I’ll bet you don’t even know what the symbols mean. Something one of the old ones taught you. What good is passing something down if you don’t pass the meaning down with it? Look at how seriously and with what dignity you do that.”
“Perhaps I know the meaning and won’t say,” said the “woman.” “You think he’s a holy man.” She looked at Maite in a strange way. Was she speaking or was some god speaking through her? “But he’s a very immoral man. I’ve seen him, and after he has molested the women, people gather around her and think something holy has been done to her and that she is sacred. They have the people fooled.”
She continued making the geometric designs.
“Look at you,” scolded Maite. “Those signs are meaningless to you, no matter what you say. You learn nothing from them. What good are they?”
The “woman” stood up, looking very confused.
“What good is your mysticism if no knowledge comes from it?”
Then the “woman” began running and rushing about, as if she were trying to escape from something.
“I’ll bet you don’t even know what you’re trying to escape from,” said Maite.
The “woman” dropped the machete but continued to move around in a circle trying to escape.
“You don’t understand me,” said Maite. “You don’t know what I’m trying to say. It’s some kind of little drama, but it’s all meaningless, and what do you learn from it? Nothing
. Nothing that is useful in the world today. Nothing that’s any use in the modern world. And you will never handle their world.”
The “woman” stood still and silent.
“And handful of maize, and they’d kill a man,” said Maite with disgust then she walked rapidly away.
I ducked down, but kept watching. The “woman” stood very still and silent, and then she walked away, her long wet hair hanging, with flecks of gold.
A Sword and a Rosary and a Warrior’s Tale
AFTER VIEWING THE STRANGE CEREMONY, I started to go on my way, but perhaps the woman Maite had seen Anninho? Why had she spoken to her “woman” so? I walked with the horse and tied him to a tree at the edge of the clearing. From where I stood I saw the “woman” sitting out in front of the longhouse, combing her jet black wet hair and making two braids along the sides. I watched her until she finished, and simply sat there, staring about her. Had it been only a ritual scolding and not a real one?
I approached the woman. She looked surprised and frightened at first and then she rubbed her hands in her hair until it was disheveled and then she began making lamentations. Maite, hearing the lamentations, came out and stood watching me, while the “woman” continued the lamentations. Then I began to realize that it was the same ritual I had seen when Anninho had been there, and then Maite began to ask me all the places I had been and what hardships had I traveled through since she last saw me?
Not knowing whether I was to answer in the same manner that Anninho had done, saying that I had been luckier than most I told her the truth—of how Portuguese (I did not add “Tapuya” or the black one I had seen) soldiers had found us, and how one of them without motivation had amputated my breasts, and how I “woke up” to discover Anninho gone, and myself being transported to a place in the mountains where friends had taken care of me and brought me back to health. I said I did not know what had happened to Anninho, whether they had captured him and taken him prisoner, made him a slave? Had he been killed in some act of defiance?
She looked at me for a long time. Had I been wrong to give her an account of what had happened since I last saw her? Should I have said simply as Anninho had done, that I had been luckier than most? She kept looking at me, while the “woman” wrung her hands and lamented, her long hair falling about her face.
“Come in,” said Maite, finally. She was wearing a cloth about her loins and the bow strapped across her shoulders. She said something to the woman in Tapuyan, and the woman quickly stopped lamenting and brushed her hair back and went into the house. Then Maite and I entered and sat down on mats. The woman brought us something to drink, in the shells of some large nut, and then she returned to her corner, to prepare something else. I glanced back and saw her in the corner, slicing pieces of the tapir’s leg. Thinking of what Entralgo had told the foreigners, I grimaced, and drank some of the manioc juice.
The woman served the slices of tapir, which was cooked very well and tasted like beef and she served manioc cakes and pineapple.
“I have not seen your husband, Anninho, since I last saw you,” Maite said, looking at me carefully. “What will you do?”
“Continue my search for him,” I said.
I wanted to ask her where she had first met Anninho, and how they had come to know each other. Instead I asked her what Jesuit priest did she know. Instantly I realized that in order to know that, I would have had to have been eavesdropping on them at the river. And she would know it! I stared at my food.
“Ah, there was an old Jesuit traveling through the woods, trying to convert everything he saw,” she said with casualness. “From a Jesuit college somewhere in Bahia. My wife does not know how to act around strangers. But me,” she said proudly, “I have had a Jesuit education in a Jesuit mission village.”
Did she mean her “wife” or did she not know the Portuguese word for her companion?
“Oh, you do not understand,” she said, catching my look. “It is a custom among my people for certain women who have taken vows . . .”
I told her that Anninho had explained to me that she had taken vows of chastity.
“Our ‘serving women,’“ she explained, “we call our ‘wives.’“
“Oh,” I said.
She laughed. I wondered if she knew what I was thinking. I did not ask her the same question I had asked Anninho.
We sat in silence.
“I was one of their lookouts,” said Maite.
“What?” I asked, chewing a bit of tapir meat.
She was strapping her quiver of arrows across her shoulder.
“I was one of the spies for Palmares. That’s how I came to know your husband.”
I nodded. She kept looking at me.
“Such women as myself vow to have nothing to do with a man. I used to see such women when I was a child, hunting and going to war along with the men. Being active in the way the women were not. That’s the kind of life I wanted. Not to be a serving woman like that one. If it meant to take such a vow, I would take it. Except now, in this district, there are no more such wars, and the Portuguese recruit the young Tapuyas to fight on their behalf. But me, I hunt and fish for the woman and spy for the Palmaristas, when they were there.”
She motioned toward the forest in the direction of the Old Palmares. “Do you have any idea where Anninho might have gone?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have heard that some have gone to a new place in Parahyba.”
On the ground she drew a map for me of how I could get there. But still I resolved to go there only after I had hunted for him in other places.
I studied the map and then she erased it.
“That’s what I wanted,” she said. “To be a warrior for the Palmaristas, but Anninho said that I would be more useful as a spy for them.”
Why did she keep looking at me so? I looked away from her and stared around the long hut. On one wall was a sword, on another a rosary. When I looked back at her, she was still staring at me, the same intense look. I chewed on a piece of tapir and bit the inside of my cheek.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said, touching my jaw.
“You shouldn’t wander about the country looking like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you should travel as an old woman and not as a young one. It would be easier. To disguise as an old woman and travel as one of those itinerant Negro storytellers I’ve seen. Otherwise there are many cruelties and dangers and bushwhackers everywhere. Be a curious old woman.”
I remembered one such itinerant storyteller who had come to the Entralgo plantation when I was quite small. I also remembered something that my grandmother had said about an itinerant storyteller. Too naughty for a child to hear and for me to repeat.
“How can I make myself look like an old woman?” I asked.
“I’ll fix you,” she said.
She went outside and came back with a handful of leaves that she burned in a basin. She made a paste out of the white ash which she rubbed into my hair. She rubbed charcoal into the corners of my eyes. I stared into a mirror at a woman who looked twenty years older. She explained to me the plants that could be used for dyes.
“That will be better,” she said, looking at me.
She touched the edges of my hair again. I wore my hair long and standing tall all about my head, as my mother wore hers.
“Now you can travel everywhere,” she said. “Anywhere. I used to dream of it. Afterwards. I’d go about telling my warrior’s tales, but there are no more wars, as I have said, in this district, and that one would be lost without me.”
She looked back at the woman, who was in the corner, brushing her clean hair, and who did not look up.
Sword and Sorcery and the Man Who Disappears and Is Thought Immortal
I BID MAITE GOODBYE, while the woman lamented and kissed my hands again.
“I have not seen Anninho but I have seen the Muslim,” said Maite. I did not know whom she meant.
“Anninho’s father, the one they call the Mohammed of Bahia,” said the woman.
Why had she not told me this before? “Where is he?” I asked.
“Perhaps in Bahia again. He is looking for his son as well. He’s had no luck with his holy war.”
Yes, I would go to Bahia after I had seen Luiza. “Good luck to you,” she said.
I said goodbye to her and thanked her for her kindness. I untied the horse and waving to them, rode in the direction of the river, and crossing a wide flat valley, I tried to find the place where the “castle” had been and the strange man Anninho had met with and whom he called “Mualim” or teacher. I rode all along the base of the low hills but could not locate it.
“Sword and sorcery,” I was thinking. Where had I heard that phrase?
She had claimed it was a dream, but I had seen her conversing with a man—a man who had scars on his forehead in a certain design that looked familiar, but that I don’t remember seeing before.
“Sword and sorcery,” she had said.
She had been standing in the hut conversing with him, a tall, slender but broad-shouldered man with thick black hair.
“That was over forty years ago,” he had said.
She said something about knowing when they met again, there would be no power that could stop them.
He said something about her beauty and mystery being still the same as then.
“It’s our last hope,” she said. Then she complained of his cynicism, why did he always ridicule their efforts.