Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  “You’ll make them worse,” I said. He led the horse in and I followed.

  When we entered the village, there were several longhouses like the one that Maite lived in. Sitting in the doors of them were women, weaving something.

  “What are they making?” I asked the boy.

  “Coxonilhos,” he said.

  Horse blankets.

  “Why are they making horse blankets if they have no horses?”

  “They are making them for Zune. Zune has told them to.”

  “Is he the chief?”

  The boy laughed and said, “No.”

  “Where are the men?”

  “They’re hunting.”

  “For Zune?” I asked.

  “Yes, and for the rest of us.”

  “Where’s your mother?” I was asking when one of the women saw us and got up and ran to the boy, took his shoulder, and pulled him away. She stared at the horse and then at me.

  “Mother, she has a horse,” said the boy. “She wants to cure my eyes.”

  She told him to go bring his grandmother. He walked toward one of the long huts. The woman was very young, not yet twenty. Her breasts were bare, and she too was wearing only a cloth about her loins.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Almeyda. I was troubled by your son’s eye infection. I have seen that before, and I have cured it. I wanted to offer my help.”

  “If my mother has not been able to help him, you cannot,” she said. “But I’ll wait for her to come.”

  She was a very beautiful woman, but she did not look at me directly now. She stood with her shoulders hunched and rounded, and narrowed her eyes and stared at the ground. She stayed standing that way and remained silent until the boy came back with his grandmother.

  The older Tupi woman looked at me straight in the eyes. I had expected a very old woman, but this one was in her late thirties, her hair was long and black as the girl’s, her face as smooth, but tighter and firmer. She kept her steady gaze, then her eyes fell to my waist. She touched the whistle and the gourd that was tied there. She looked at them with surprise and recognition. When she finished examining them, she looked up at me.

  I told her in Tupi that I was a friend, and that I only wanted to be of help to the boy. I saw him rubbing his eyes again, but I did not move his hands away. I looked at the woman waiting for her to speak. For a long time she said nothing, then she said, “You’re wearing the same thing he wore. Come on, let’s see what you do.”

  Tying the horse to a nearby tree, I followed her into the long hut. The boy and his mother came behind us. The grandmother and I placed mats on the floor for the boy to lie on. I asked the grandmother if she would go into the forest with me. She said yes.

  “Do you have a moringa?”

  “Moringa?” asked the woman.

  “A water pot,” said the boy in Tupi.

  “Yes,” said the woman, getting it from the corner.

  She was silent, but she watched me carefully as I gathered the herbs I would need—some herbs to make tea, others to bathe his eyes in. Every time I got something she would ask me what it was for and what it was called. “That one I don’t know,” she would say of some things. Others she would have her own names for and tell me which ailments she would procure them for.

  “Copaiba. I have known copaiba for a long long time.”

  “Oh, for that I give strong tea and oak bark, and keep the limbs warm. A very dangerous plant . . . Oh, that plant, just touching it can be fatal.” She showed me a plant that ate insects and some small animals.

  “I’ve heard of such carnivorous plants,” I said.

  “There are some that eat men,” she said. “But each time we see one we cut it down.”

  When we finished gathering the herbs, we went to a nearby stream and filled the pot with clear, cold water.

  When we returned the boy was still lying on the mats. His mother was kneeling beside him. She smiled when we entered, and moved aside, but remained sitting and kept her head lowered.

  The grandmother made tea from the roots I gave her. She gathered the materials that I would need, another jug and a basin, and a mortar and pestle. I washed my hands with water, cacao pod ash, and carap oil. I put a mat under the child’s head to lift it more. I cleansed the area around his eyes with a damp cloth. I tilted his head to the side and held the empty jug under his head. Then I raised the eyelids and slowly put drops of the solution I had made into his eyes. The excess water ran into the jug. I told him to close his eyes while I dried them. For several days I cleansed his eyes and his grandmother gave him the strong tea to drink. After the first few days I placed a certain oil on the linings of his eyelids so that he would coat his eyes with it.

  During the nights, I slept in the hut with his mother and grandmother.

  After a week his eyes cleared and were very bright. I scrubbed his hands with the solution I had scrubbed my own with and explained to him that he should not rub his eyes. If they itched or bothered him I showed him how to close them and touch the eyelids in certain places to avoid infecting them. I showed him eye exercises and pressure points around the eyes.

  After the boy was cured, another woman brought a child to me, one who was having fits of convulsion. She explained that the child was always restless and unable to sit still. That whenever she was asked to perform any simple task, to pick up something or carry water or even to feed herself, that she would start making jerky movements, she would be silent at times, other times laugh or cry about nothing. The only time that she would stop behaving so was when she was asleep. But even then sometimes she would wake up, squinting her eyes, and twitching.

  I went into the child’s hut. She was quiet, but behaved as if she didn’t see or hear me and kept her hands clenched tightly together. Whenever she would begin to cry I would place a cool cloth on her head. I asked the mother what kind of food the child had been eating. She told me, and I told her from now on only to feed the child a certain list of items which I named for her. I gave the child a special emetic. I waited with the girl until the fever was gone. Suddenly she recognized my presence, looked at me with bewilderment and fell immediately to sleep. All I could tell the mother was to give the child the foods I had prescribed, to boil the root of a certain plant, to cool the “tea,” and whenever the convulsions occurred to rub the child’s body with the cool solution and to keep a cloth soaked in it on her forehead. After a few days, whenever she would do this, the convulsions would stop immediately and the child would sleep. After a week, the convulsions did not recur.

  Her mother was very grateful to me and others began to come, bringing their children and themselves.

  I had been there for a month when I met the one they called Zune.

  When the women had finished making the horse blankets, they gathered them together and took them somewhere. Each time they finished the blankets were gathered and taken away. At first I did not notice it, but then I noticed the gold strands that were interwoven with some sort of bark or plant fiber.

  “Where are they taking the blankets?” I asked the mother of Turiri, the young boy I had first cured.

  “To Zune,” she said.

  “Who is Zune?”

  “The white one who came and gave us our religion.”

  I asked the woman to explain to me but she would not say more than that to me.

  “May I go along with them?” I asked. “The next time they visit Zune.”

  She was silent. Whenever she spoke with me she still kept her head lowered, and there seemed to be a perpetual melancholy look in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “They’ll have to ask him. My mother will have to ask him.”

  The next time the grandmother told me that I could come along, that perhaps I would not be able to see him, only if he chose to reveal himself to me.

  All of the women entered the cave taking the coxonilhos.

  I remained outside, standing with the grandmother, whose name was
Itacolomi. (Her daughter’s name was Itambe.)

  I could not see inside the cave, but there was someone or something there in the darkness.

  When the women delivered the blankets, they came out and stood beside Itacolomi. She went inside, stayed a moment and came out. She came up to me and said that I might enter.

  I could not make out his features in the darkness of the cave, only the paleness of his skin and hair.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “They call you Zune.”

  “I’m the founder of their religion,” he said.

  “I’ve heard of their myth of Zune.”

  “Then I’m their myth made flesh.”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “You’re the one who’s been healing them.”

  “Or they’ve been healing themselves,” I said.

  “How long do you plan to remain here?”

  “Where do you send the blankets?” I asked.

  “I don’t send them anywhere.”

  “Do you send them to the coast, where someone takes the gold threads out?”

  “They’re my blankets. Why should I send them anywhere?”

  “Because you’re not Zune.”

  “If I tell them to send you away, they’ll do it. If I tell them to destroy you, they’ll do it. If I tell them to take your certificates and sell you back into slavery when the next bush captain comes, they’ll do that. They follow my commands as they would Zune’s. So am I not Zune?”

  “You’re some vagabond who’s decided it’s easier to rob these people than to go to Minas Gerais and get your own gold.”

  “I’ve been to Minas Gerais. There’s nothing but quarrels and fights and murders . . . Is it true that you can live on herbs and oils?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Any word from me that you’re Anhanguera, the evil one, and you won’t escape alive,” he said.

  “I’ve cured many of them,” I said. “What have you done?”

  “I’m their spiritual ancestor. They have faith in me. No matter what you were to tell them about me, they wouldn’t believe you. They’d continue making their horse blankets and their esteiros and bring them to me.”

  “Do they make their esteiros with straw and gold?” I asked. He said nothing.

  “You’re nothing but a pirate,” I said.

  He began to laugh. “That’s what I was, before. Well, first I was in the Spanish fleet, and we were captured and I was forced to work in the galley of a Turkish ship. A pirate ship defeated them and I managed to convince them to let me join them. So you see I know all about robbery and abduction, and I’ll bet you do too. But I was at Minas. I found a gold mine. I turned in the dust and collected certificates for it. And then when I went to claim my gold, they refused to give it to me, pretending that the certificates were forgeries. So you see, I know everything about robbery. You know. But tell them, and what do you think they’ll do if you tell evil lies against their Zune?” He laughed. “Or even have the slightest suspicion that you disapprove of me? Anyway, gold means nothing to these people. It has no meaning for them. They don’t know what to do with it.”

  “They’re good human beings, who think you’re really Zune,” I said. “Gold has no meaning for them. They don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Why shouldn’t they bring it to their Zune, who gives them his blessings and protection? You’d better go, and don’t let them even slightly suspect your heresy!”

  I left the cave. When I came out all of the women gathered about with many exclamations, telling me of the honor that I had just had having come into the presence of Zune, that I was the only “stranger” that he had allowed in his presence, and that from that moment, they would trust me completely with any ailment that they might have.

  When I got back to the grandmother’s hut, I asked her in what way might I go to Minas Gerais—what was the best direction.

  “Are you going to leave us?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the only stranger Zune has allowed to stay here.” I was silent.

  “I don’t know the way to Minas,” she said. “But I will ask Itambe’s husband when he returns.”

  I was silent.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “How long will it be before he returns?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I laughed. “So you would keep me here till a time you don’t know?” She said yes.

  “I’ll stay till tomorrow,” I said.

  She tossed her head to the side, but was silent. I sat down on the mat and watched her grandson Turiri carving a miniature fishing boat.

  “Does your father make large ones?” I asked.

  “Yes, he makes very big ones,” said the boy, looking at me with his large bright eyes. “Sometimes he ties two or three of them together.”

  “Is there a river near here?”

  “Yes, that way,” he said pointing. “I’ve walked there with my father.”

  I said nothing. I had been near the Sao Francisco for nearly a month and had not known it. I looked at the grandmother, but she did not speak. I wondered what would happen if I told her about the imposter in their sacred cave.

  “Are there any here who do not believe in Zune?” I asked the woman.

  “No,” she said.

  “What would happen to such a one?”

  “I don’t know. We would ask Zune and Zune would decide.”

  I watched Turiri carve onto the side of the little boat—Almeyda, my friend. He fixed it so that I could tie it around my waist with the medicine gourd and the magic whistle.

  ALMEYDA CONTINTES HSR JOURNEY, OR THE NEW PALMARES

  The Stranger

  WHEN I CAME TO MY SENSES I was sitting in a clearing in the forest. I remembered saying goodbye to Turiri and his mother and grandmother, and the others in the Tupi village. The horse was some distance from me, untied, eating sape grass. I was sitting on the ground, but on a mat of sape grass. In the near distance, though I could not see it, I could hear the violent rushing of a river. I looked around me in bewilderment, reminding myself of one of the children I had cured. Who had I not seen or heard? I remembered Moraze, the medicine woman, had told me of a certain plant that enabled one to change one’s location suddenly. She had never shown the plant to me, nor did I ever see her making use of it anywhere in my presence. What had happened and why was I sitting here now? Had I fallen from the horse and struck my head?

  “You mustn’t eat very much of it,” he said suddenly, from behind me. “It’s like poison if you eat too much at one time.”

  He had a basketful of a long yellow fruit. He was a black man, dressed in a dark shirt and trousers, a quiver of arrows and a bow strapped across his chest. He knelt down in front of me and offered me the fruit. He looked to be about my age or a few years older. His forehead was very high and he wore his hair brushed back. I smiled at him and then realized that he saw not the young woman I was, but the “old one” I had disguised myself as. I took the fruit and thanked him, but looked at him cautiously.

  No, if he were a bushwhacking captain hunting fugitives, I was thinking he would not reckon an old woman to bring much profit.

  I was going to bite into the whole fruit, but he showed me how to peel the skin away. I took a bite. It was very delicious.

  “What happened to me?” I asked.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No. It’s as if I just woke up a few seconds ago.”

  “I don’t know. When I found you, you were here. I thought perhaps you had fallen, but there were no bruises. Your eyes were open, but I don’t think you saw or heard me.”

  I ate the fruit and looked at him. “That’s a fine horse,” he said.

  Would he steal my horse, I wondered. I kept watching him. “Where are you on your way to?” he asked.

  “Minas Gerais,” I said. He laughed.

  “What?”

  He didn’t reply.

 
“The gold fever,” he said with another laugh. “Are you a newly emancipated slave gone to seek your fortune?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, but did not tell him my purpose for going there.

  “Why else does one go to a mining town?” I said nothing.

  “This is very good but very harmful if you eat too much of it,” he said.

  “What does it do?” I asked, thinking about the fruit Luiza had given me and not wanting to repeat its effects.

  “Sometimes it causes fever, if you eat a lot. Though one is very good for the health.”

  I ate it cautiously.

  “You’ll have to eat very fast in Minas Gerais,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone eats fast in Minas. They eat fast and they don’t talk. I suppose it’s because the food is so expensive and so scarce.”

  I ate slowly.

  “How do you plan to go there?” he asked. I told him.

  “As simply as that?” he asked. I told him how far I’d come.

  “How do you expect to cross the river?”

  I said I did not know. He said that there were barges going across at certain points, that charged heavily, but besides that it was not the best way for an African, as many of them were also man-sellers.

  “How do you suggest I cross?” I asked.

  He smiled. He got up and disappeared in the woods. Should I get away from him now? I did not. I waited. He came back leading a chestnut-colored horse.

  “I’ve got my own pony, why should I steal yours?” he said, as if he’d read my thoughts.

  I was silent. I stood up.

  “Are you okay? Are you dizzy or anything?” he asked, touching my forehead.

  “No,” I said, backing slightly away from him. But wasn’t it an old woman he saw?

  “I’ll take you to a place where you can cross the river,” he said, “if it’s true Minas Gerais is where you want to go. After you get across, things should be easier. Now that gold has been discovered there, there are many trails leading that way. It’s not like it was in the days when I first came to this country.”

  I asked him who he was.

  “I haven’t asked you who you are, now have I?” he said, as he helped me to mount my horse, then he mounted his.