Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  “Sometimes new circumstances demand a new code of conduct. If I were working in a factory in Moscow making cannons and bells, things wouldn’t be so. I’d have the old demands and the same tasks and I could be faithful to the woman. Sometimes I dream she’s in someone else’s arms anyway. But Kalita’s not. She’s not like that. I have to think hard about it, before they miss me. But I knew she would be better off with a new love, who could spend regular time with her and someone who has some authority over his own life and doesn’t have so many people telling him what to do. I know things would be different and better. She’ll call me a scoundrel at first, my whole family will call me a scoundrel, but then she’ll find some new love—someone who’ll protect her from dangers and difficulties because he’ll be living with her in the same city. A doctor or a professor or an engineer. Do you think that’s possible? She doesn’t look like a peasant. Sometimes I think they made a mistake and gave her parents the wrong child. And she reads a lot, everything she can get her hands on, and she knows the real meanings behind the words, so it’s in my opinion that she’ll make a good wife for any worthy man. She reads Russian poetry and Russian history.

  “She’s a kind and melancholy woman and a dreamer and she needs someone to take care of her all the time. At first when I was going away to sea she pictured it in her mind that I was going on some great romantic adventure and then when I returned to her . . . but I disappointed her. I was different, but not in the way she imagined. It’s a brutal life aboard a ship, full of confusion and uncertainty. I returned a more complex man, but she couldn’t see it. Her dreams of my adventures and heroism. I didn’t fit her ‘idea.’ I’m a man of humble beginnings, and they made some mistake with her and gave her the wrong people. I’m not a mean-spirited man. I’m very kindhearted, but I have memories and fears like any other man. They’ll all call me a scoundrel—my friends and relatives, my brothers and sisters and nephews.

  “Some professor who has any common sense will take notice of her, or some influential people will spot her melancholy and thoughtful looks.

  “That’s the expression that all the ladies of high birth and quality have.

  “Someone will see her and see her inner nature because it shines in her eyes so. She’s very intelligent, but very truthful and sometimes lets her feelings get ahead of her, and she doesn’t have any judgment.

  “I don’t know what to do. If I go back I won’t be free to choose my own life. Maybe I’ll stay here and become a rich man and not lift a finger. They say that all the rich men here never lifted a finger. There I’m nobody, but here I’ve seen common men give a wink and have work done. They say all you have to do here is get seven niggers and the government will give you a sugar plantation, and it’s not held on lease from the king but a man’s free and clear. Seven niggers aren’t too many, do you think? They say it goes all right at first but then all the niggers want to be freemen and run away, and so you have to buy more, every twelve years.

  “I can do that and then write to her and tell her that I am in a new situation in a new country, and that nobody tells me what to do. I will send her the money and if she loves me she will come. I’m suspicious and timid because it’s the kind of life I’ve had to lead, but this is a new country with new ideas and new opportunities for a common man. I’ll stay here and wink and get rich. I’ll have slaves, and honor and feel like a human being again, and smoke tobacco, and drink imported vodka from Russia, and shave my chin like the tsar does. Have you ever seen such a free man?!” he asked.

  He jumped up and ran into the stream and began scooping up water and tossing it onto his head. Then he looked despondent suddenly.

  “But maybe she won’t want to come here. She’s a woman of tradition and believes in her links to the past. Maybe she won’t leave her relatives and come to a new country,” he said standing in the stream. “They make it hard for a man to think what to do, because they tell him when to get up and when to sleep. It’s only the upper classes who can think for themselves and the high nobility. For everyone else it’s ‘take counsel, take counsel.’ Running a sugar plantation must be a complicated business. You wink, but you have to know what to wink for. You have to have knowledge behind the wink. The only thing I know how to do is on a ship. And I don’t like smoking tobacco. They say it’s not what goes into a man, but what comes out of him that befouls him.” He looked at me sharply. “They say this country’s full of Jews and Jesuits.”

  I said yes, there were a lot of Jesuits, but that Jews were not allowed, unless they were converted Jews, “New Christians,” but it was widely felt that they still practiced Jewry, but not in public—covertly and in secret. That is, I added, there must be plenty of secret Jews in the country.

  “I don’t want to cut my beard or change my faith,” he said.

  He paused and looked at me, but not so sharply this time. Was he admitting that he was a Jew? And did he know what I was the way he spoke so freely about getting seven of us and the vocabulary he used?

  “No, I won’t cut my beard and I won’t change my faith,” he repeated. “Having nothing to do bores me. I can’t sit around being patient. I can’t wink and get others to work. I need excitement and trouble, and not knowing when there’ll be calm weather or a storm, or when some captain will hit me in the head and fuss about nothing.”

  He looked suddenly happy. He ran his hand through his curly hair and fingered his beard, and then coming out of the water, and with the expression as if he were off to perform some brave deed in the world, though he did not know whether it was bad or good, he left in the direction that I had come. He walked as if he were slightly off balance, then he straightened himself and headed into the woods. I walked the horse into the stream and let him drink.

  An Honest Woman

  WHEN THE HORSE HAD FINISHED drinking, I crossed the stream and continued. I remembered that one of the plantations we had visited, Luiza and I, was not very far, so I headed in that direction. I saw an old woman coming toward me with a basket of clothes on her head. I did not recognize her at first, but then I realized that she was one of the “nurses” that Luiza and I had visited. She set the small basket down on the side of the path and held up her hands. I stopped the horse and got down. She did not call me by name, but spoke of me as Luiza’s friend. She asked me where I was going. I told her that I was on my way to—Minas Gerais, I said with surprise.

  “Why isn’t Madam Moraze along?”

  “I’m going on my own,” I said.

  “You must come and stay with me awhile,” she said. “I like your company. They won’t notice a new face. Tie your horse up in the woods and let him eat grass, and come along with me. I’ve got to wash these clothes first. No, they won’t notice a new face. And there’s a strange fellow there and the mistress has given us all a holiday so we can hear him.

  “Some traveling preaching man. The Father doesn’t want him there and thinks he’s misguiding everyone, but the mistress does. Want him there, I mean. Last night him and the Jesuit got into a row. He calls the man a wizard and a fortune-teller—maybe even a fortune-hunter—but the mistress wants him to stay.”

  “If it’s a holiday, why are you washing clothes?” I asked.

  “These are my own and my niece’s,” she said.

  I went with her to the stream and helped her wash and rinse the clothes, then we walked back together over a path covered with thick vines. I checked the horse again who was content eating sape grass. I walked with the woman back to her hut, which was on the edge of the plantation, near the forest. There was a crowd around the porch of the big house. We left the clothes in her cabin.

  “Are you sure it’s all right?” I asked.

  “Yes, today they won’t notice a new face, the mistress is so taken with this new visitor.”

  “Does the mistress run the plantation?” I asked.

  “Well, she might as well,” said the woman, as we stood at the back of the crowd, looking up at the veranda. “She’s married to a French
man and he lets her have her way . . . He’s not as charmed by this visitor as she is, folks say, because he’s from Europe and is used to every kind of new idea. But me? I don’t know. I don’t trust anyone, but I’ll listen. The priest is the only one who detests him, so he stays in the chapel whenever that one’s talking, and won’t even let him go in there to pray, in spite of the woman.

  “He’s a French Jesuit. They’re supposed to be the strictest kind. He calls this man a wizard and a fortune-teller or a fortune-hunter, a voyante and a chasseur de fortune he called him; I’ve learned a few of the Frenchman’s words myself with him as the master—and not a holy man. I don’t know, because I don’t trust anyone.”

  She stopped talking and I stared at the woman sitting on the veranda, her black hair piled up on top of her head in an elaborate hairdo. She was wearing a blue sundress, and there was a sunbonnet in her lap. She was the same young woman who had come into the shop—Madam Froger.

  I watched her as she sat slightly forward, looking engrossed, almost as if she were mesmerized.

  I finally looked at the man who was wearing a long robe like a monk’s robe; his hair and eyes were very dark, like a Turk’s. He was very handsome. He talked very smoothly, and looked about the crowd as well as at Madam Froger. He had that kind of expression and the kind of voice that made it seem as if he were talking to each person particularly. I heard him say something about “Quietism” and his field of vision being larger.

  “You’re not a part of history,” I heard him say. “But do you want to be a part of history? What is history, but the story of devils and demons? It is only devils and demons that play the leading roles in the Devil’s plays.

  “Me? I do not want to be on the stage of the world. It is the sinners who are permitted. You should feel grateful that you have not been given any roles, that you are outside history, as another man shall reveal someday, and that you don’t have to swim in the sea of blood.”

  He paused for a moment, looking at everyone gently, caressing them with his gaze.

  “You are fortunate souls and should be happy souls. Now let’s everyone quietly experience the love of God and the love of love, the love of each other. Friends, listen. Do good deeds today and tomorrow. Don’t contemplate the good deeds, but let them take hold of your soul joyfully unpremeditated and by surprise.”

  He asked if there were any Tupi among the crowd and then he tried to say the words “Friends, listen” in the Tupi language.

  He looked at everyone with supreme kindness, and then turned to the woman, went over, and kissed her hands.

  “Since he’s been here, every morning has been a holiday,” said the woman, as we walked back to her hut.

  I wanted to glance back to see what the man was doing, but dared not, as I did not want to be noticed now that the crowd was dispersing.

  “Me?” she was saying, as we got back to her hut. “I don’t trust anybody. No, I don’t let anybody take my soul by surprise.”

  She laughed. We went inside and she sat in her hammock, while I sat on one of the mats on the floor. She had taken a long pipe from out of the corner, the kind my mother and grandmother smoked, and was smoking it. She offered smoke to me, but I said that I didn’t.

  “Are you on your own now?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Have you won your independence? Sua liberdade?” I looked at her not knowing what she meant.

  “Are you ready to cure by yourself?” she asked.

  “Oh,” I said. Then I said, “Yes,” not telling her that I had left prematurely.

  “Then when they come tonight, you can tell me what to do,” she said. “There is one poor child I want you to see. I don’t know how to help. It’s not the body. It’s a thing in her head that’s all wrong. I think she’ll go mad.”

  I told her that I couldn’t stay till that night, that I had to be going before midday.

  “They won’t know that you’re here,” she said. “Nobody bothers me.” I was silent.

  “Madam Moraze will have to help you, I’m not allowed to,” I said. She looked at me with surprise, then curiosity, then anger.

  “I have never known a cure doctor to refuse to cure anyone. I’m an honest woman. I don’t understand all the mysteries of this new world, but I think you lie. I think you are a menteuse. I don’t want you to stay with me. Go on.”

  “But I . . .”

  “Go on away. Allez-y,” she said with anger. “That’s why you’re leaving, because Madam Moraze discovered some falsehood and sent you away. I’ll send for her and have her get rid of the evil that you’ve brought. I don’t trust you. Menteuse. I don’t want you to stay here.”

  I got up. I turned back and started to explain that I had left prematurely on my own, that I was not sure of my powers and that I might do more harm than good, especially if it was not a physical healing. I did not know how to drive devils away. I knew the rituals, but for me they were empty. I did not know what they meant or how they worked.

  I started to explain but she started calling me horrible names in both Portuguese and French and some African language I didn’t understand.

  “Menteuse. Menteuse. Allez-y. Allez-y. Mwongo wa kike. Mentirosa. Get on with you!”

  It seemed like she was calling me names in every language. As she started up from the hammock, I ran out the door and into the forest.

  Herbs and Long Nails

  I UNTIED THE HORSE AND MOUNTED. Keeping the sun at my back when I was in the clearings and examining on which side of the trees the moss grew when I was in the forest, I continued westward, though I had no idea how far or how long I would have to go to reach the Sao Francisco River. I ate herbs, berries, and oils. I slept on the hammock that Luiza had rolled up and thrown across the back of the horse, tying it to the trees the way Luiza had done, scraping the grass away, and lighting a small fire underneath.

  There were special herbs that Luiza had taught me to burn in these fires to keep strange animals away during the night. One night I found a spider crawling on my belly. The next night I rubbed my body with a certain oil which I had forgotten about—an oil that was odorless to me, but that Luiza said was unbearable to all kinds of insects. I rubbed it on my body and into my hair. I rubbed it on my face and eyelids. I noticed that my fingernails had grown very long since the time I had been living with Luiza. I smiled, because when I was a girl, I remembered my mother would cut my nails whenever they got too long. I would complain because the mistress and her daughters’ nails were long and I wanted mine so. She explained that it was a fashion with them, how they displayed their social standing. I laughed, and tying the hammock securely, and the horse nearby, I climbed into it and went to sleep. I did not know how many leagues I had traveled in the several days. I did not know why I had made up my mind to go to Minas Gerais, rather than traveling along the coast, or going to Parahyba, to the New Palmares. But hadn’t someone said—hadn’t Luiza said—that Anninho had made contacts with the Africans who worked in the mines? I vaguely remembered her saying that.

  Turiri

  I TIED UP THE HAMMOCK and lay it across the back of my horse and was about to continue my journey, when a young Indian of about eight or nine confronted me, asking partly in Portuguese and partly in Tupi and partly in Spanish what I was doing there. He stood across the path I was about to travel. He was wearing only a white cloth about his loins and holding a spear he had shaped from the branch of a tree.

  I told him that I was on my way to Minas Gerais, to the mines there. “You’re going the wrong way,” he said. “You’re on the road to my village.”

  I noticed that he was not holding the spear as if to challenge me, but that it pointed to the ground. He kept his arms folded and his legs spread across the path. From a distance it looked as if his eyes were swollen and they slanted downward, but as I drew nearer, the liquid that I took to be sweat or recent tears, was a kind of pus coming for the eyes. He had an eye infection.

  I asked him if I could come closer.r />
  “You don’t need to come closer. All you need to do is to turn around and leave my town.”

  I too spoke in part Tupi and part Portuguese telling him that I wanted to come closer because there was something wrong with his eyes and I wanted to examine them.

  “My eyes are good,” he said. “I can see you are Anhanguera.”

  He was telling me that I was an “evil spirit” or an “old devil” and that I would trick him.

  “Will you take me to your mother or your father and let me explain to them why you can’t see as well as you should, and that perhaps I have the medicine that will cure your eyes.”

  “You’ll make them worse,” he said. “Turn back. I’ll tell them that I saw Anhanguera and forced him back.”

  “I’m not a man, I’m a woman,” I said.

  “Evil can come in the form of a man or a woman,” said he.

  I was silent. Then I asked, “If I let you lead the horse into your village, may I follow you?”

  “You have a horse,” he exclaimed. “Only gods ride horses!”

  “Hold your hand out and I’ll give you the reins.”

  He held his hand out and as I placed the reins in his hands, I stooped down and looked at his eyes. They were badly inflamed, as if someone had thrown Malagueta pepper into them. Pus was running from the corners of them. When I was close to him he started to rub his eyes, but I took his hand away.