by Gayl Jones
“In some of the Spanish territories, it’s a crime for a black man to be riding a horse, unless he’s traveling on some expedition with a master.”
I said nothing.
“We’re strangers,” he said as he started off and indicated for me to follow. “We’re strangers who perform the rites of kindness of strangers. There’s nothing about me that you need to know.”
He guided me to the place where the water was shallow enough to cross. He rode across with me and pointed me in the right direction and indicated one of the trails I might follow. He touched my elbow and nodded goodbye. When I turned I saw him galloping back across the river. I wondered if things might have been different if I had not been disguised so, then I turned into the trail.
An Anaconda Keeps Her from Taking That Trail
I TIGHTENED THE MUSCLES IN MY LEGS against the sides of the horse and pulled back on the reins. I saw it before the horse could be startled and throw me. It was lying across the branch, hanging down in front of the path—olive green with black blotches. Some anacondas got to be as long as thirty feet or more, but this one was “small,” about twenty feet. I turned and galloped back toward the river. It was not a poisonous snake, it was a constrictor—it killed its prey by constricting it to death. I stood on the bank of the river breathing heavily. When I had been with Luiza, the medicine woman, I had not feared them, because she would always take control. I started to re-cross the river but pictured a huge anaconda, lying along the bottom, waiting. First entangling the legs of my horse, then me. I rode along the bank, and I took a trail that led into the mountains.
Mauritia
PATCHES OF FOREST covered the mountain. As I rode through the thickets, I kept looking from branch to branch expecting to see an anaconda coiled along one of the branches. I rode through a rocky stretch of mountain. Below were grassy plains, forest, the river. I rode through a thicket of Araucaria pine, and gathered some of the kernels for food. I met no one on the trail. I heard the water of a mountain stream and headed toward it.
Standing in the stream with her skirt tied up about her thighs was a woman, rotating a bateia, a kind of basin. Her hair was longish and wild, and she was about the shape and size and complexion of my mother, so that when I first saw her I thought it was her, or a vision of her, except she was in her middle thirties and my mother, by that time, would have been much older.
I was upon her before she looked up. Her eyes were widely spaced and shaped like almonds. She had a high forehead and cheekbones, and a solid chin. Her mouth was slightly open and what I took to be a gap in her teeth was gold. The front of her dress she had pulled between her legs and had it tied in the back, so it looked as if she were wearing a strange kind of pantaloon.
She looked up, but I did not startle her. She kept looking at me but continued rotating the bateia.
“Where are you off to, old woman?” she asked me.
“To the mines,” I said.
As the water ran off the side of the bateia, particles of gold dust settled at the bottom.
“What will you do there?” she asked. “You’re too old to lie with a Mineiro.”
I looked at her.
“Do I offend you?” she asked. “Don’t look at me so. What are you going to do there?”
I told her that I was an itinerant storyteller.
“And I’m an itinerant prospector,” she said with a laugh, her gold tooth sparkling in the sunlight. “I search for gold in the streams around here. All of the best gold washings are claimed by the Paulistas and the Portuguese, but I make enough for a day’s meal.”
“And do you lie with the Mineiros as well?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow but was silent. She circled the bateia again. “This way I make enough for a day’s meal,” she said coldly. She stopped rotating and looked at me. “But I was owned by one of them. He thought I had luck for finding gold. Luck for him, but not for me, eh? No luck for him either. But why should I tell you the story. You’re the storyteller, tell me one.”
I was silent.
“Well, that’s the worse one I’ve heard,” she said with good humor. “It’s not very good. Is that the way you always tell them?”
I said nothing, then I laughed finally.
“I’m Mauritia,” she said, coming out of the stream, holding the basin carefully, though the gold was barely visible.
“I’m Almeyda,” I said, jumping down from the horse.
She looked at me with curiosity, then said, “Come home with me. I can’t offer you anything but toucinho and beans.”
“I can eat the beans, but I can’t eat fat bacon.”
“That’s all I have. Tomorrow I’ll go buy beef from Father Guilherme.”
I apologized, saying that I had not meant to offend her—that I was grateful for her hospitality—that I had simply meant that I had made a vow not to eat meat of any kind.
“Me? I can’t live without meat,” she said. “In Minas it costs twelve drams for a chicken! Father Guilherme sells cattle to them at prices you can’t believe. That’s why he’s so rich, with that and lending money at high interest.”
“He’s a priest?” I asked.
“A secular priest. A Paulista,” she said.
“Is that who you buy meat from?”
“Yes, there’s no one else around. He has a cattle ranch on the banks of the Sao Francisco. Over that way. Tame and wild cattle too. He’s got a dairy and a place where they salt-cure hides. His house looks like a palace and everything is well-built and very sturdy. A lot of fences. I buy meat there and Mina cheese, when I have the money. The rest of the time I live on fish—which I hate—and what I can get from the woods. Miners send their slaves all over the woods looking for food.”
I was expecting a hut made of sticks and mud, but this was a small house made of timber from the Araucaria pines I had seen.
Inside was furniture made from the same wood.
“I thought you were ‘itinerant,’“ I said. “This looks as if you’ve settled here.”
“This is my home, but when there’s no gold washing here, I go all about,” she said.
She set the basin down on a table, and untied her dress, and let the hem fall to her ankles. She put her bare feet into a pair of leather sandals.
She went to the fireplace, and stirring the pot, brought me back a bowl of the beans, and herself the beans mixed with toucinho.
I ate and took out the Araucaria kernels. “What’s that?” she asked.
I said that they are edible.
“I see those all around everywhere.”
I handed one of them to her. She tasted it. She nodded. I gave her another kernel.
“So you never told me why you are going to Minas,” she asked, looking at me carefully.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “But I can’t tell you about that.”
“Slave or freeman?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’re not supposed to sell anyone slaves here from the coast, but they do anyway, and they work them very hard. A man of my age looks yours. A man of your age wouldn’t last very long, not unless he belonged to a tavern keeper or a gambler.”
“I didn’t say I was looking for an old man.”
“A son, or daughter?”
I was silent.
“The men they send to the mines, and the women they take to live with them. They believe that African women are lucky, that they have some intuition about where new gold deposits are. There are hardly any white women in Minas.”
“You said that you lived with a miner.”
“Yes. A cowboy, a Spaniard from Paraguay. But the Paulistas, they detest foreigners coming here. Even the Portuguese to them are foreigners, and Brazilians from the coast. There is always some little war over gold deposits and washings. Who knows that it won’t grow into a big one? It’s all jealousy and suspicion. It keeps getting worse for strangers, but they keep coming. It gets very wild. So the vaqueiro from Paraguay was disliked and was m
urdered. His murderers are still there, mining.”
“They haven’t been punished?”
“No, it happens all the time. Once a very prominent man from the coast was murdered. And his murderers are still here. They’ll be free as long as they stay away from civilization.”
“How do I get to the town?”
“Follow the trail in the direction you were going. You’ll probably find some little mining camps before you get there, but that’s where the churches and public buildings are. Some of the gold miners have houses that look like palaces, but others live in huts made of mud and sticks, spending in food whatever they get from the mines, and buying slaves on credit.”
I asked her how did one buy a slave on credit.
She was silent, then she said, “That’s Father Guilherme’s other business. He sells slaves to the miners on credit, eighty-five percent interest. They’re still paying for the slaves, even when they don’t have them anymore.
“Some of them would have been better off if they’d stayed on their sugar farms, but others are very rich and ride around in carriages . . . But if you’re looking for an old man in Minas, he’s been worked to death by now.”
I looked at her. How could she talk so easily about such matters, as if they were everyday stories? Perhaps these stories and worse, were everyday stories in Minas.
“How can you trade with that Guilherme if he’s such a bad man?”
She was silent, then she said, “Ah, I could refuse to trade with the devil, I could refuse to do that.”
I waited, thinking she would offer me some excuse, but she did not.
Why did I feel myself being drawn to her?
“You’re the storyteller and here I am doing all the talking. Tell me a story,” she said. She had finished her beans and fat bacon and set the bowl down on the table. She was watching me.
“Is it all right to bathe in that stream?” I asked. “I haven’t had a bath in a very long time.”
She said yes, that there was a part of the stream that ran behind the house that it would be safe for me to bathe in.
When I came back, she laughed at me. “I thought a young woman would return.”
“How did you know?”
“When you got down from the horse,” she said. “Though I have seen spry old women, I thought I did not know the whole story. You’d be luckier to keep your disguise if you go to Minas.”
I said that I would replace it before I left there.
“If you had not jumped down so, you would have fooled this one. Yes, replace it or someone will steal you surely . . . Who is it you are searching for?”
I felt afraid even to say his name out loud, as if that would make my finding him more difficult.
“Is it all right, Mauritia, if I don’t say?”
“Do you know he’s there?”
“No. Not for sure. Perhaps he might be. How long have you been in this territory?”
“Twelve years.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you his name, but not right now.”
“How do you expect to fool anyone, being so taciturn, so close-mouthed?”
“What?”
“You’re a storyteller.”
“So far you’re the only one who’s asked me to tell a story.” She was silent. I told her the story about Zune.
“That’s a very bad story.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t like it.”
It was very hot inside with the heat from the cooking fire. She finally doused it.
“Did their men ever return?”
“What?”
“The husbands of the Indian women.”
“No, not while I was there.”
“I wonder what else he commands of them?”
“I suppose that’s so.”
“Yes,” she said. I was silent.
“Is it a lover you’re looking for?”
“My husband. We were married in a place called Palmares.”
She showed an instant of recognition, but did not comment on the name of the place.
“It’s a very good business here to be a speculator in food supplies,” she said suddenly. “It’s better than owning a mine. You’re assured of success.”
“You haven’t had a new master after that one?” I asked.
“Yes, I’ve had several since that cowboy. They all got in fights over gold deposits. Now everyone knows Mauritia. But they don’t think I’m for luck for anyone. There’re stories about me all around Minas. Now no one will take me even on credit. So in that way I am free.”
I looked at her with fascination.
A Quiet and Conservative Man
IT WAS A LARGE RANCH, with many buildings, fenced in grassy plains with cattle grazing about a thousand head.
“He’s a very quiet and conservative man,” she said, as we walked up the long road. “If you didn’t know about his business, you’d think he had some quiet ‘flock’ somewhere. There’s a rumor that he’s got Aimore blood in his veins, but who knows?”
He was sitting on the porch of the mansion wearing a large, flat, black hat and a cassock. He had very thick black straight hair worn in bangs sticking out of his hat. There were dark shadows around his eyes, his nose was blunt, his lips full, his chin broad and wide.
Mauritia handed him the basin. He emptied the dust into his palm, and seemed to be weighing it, then he put it in a bag he carried around his waist.
“This will only buy chaque,” he said.
Mauritia frowned and complained of the “dried meat.” He said the Minieros had already cleared out the “smoked” and that he had not yet had any more slaughtered.
The priest kept staring at me, but didn’t say anything. He spoke rapidly to an Indian woman who was standing in the doorway. She disappeared and came back with a small bundle, which she gave to Mauritia. The chaque was wrapped in cured hide.
The priest kept staring at me. Suddenly I wondered if she’d brought me to “trade.”
“A lot can be done with that one,” he said. “We’re very low in that product.”
“She’s one of Tamarutaca’s women,” she said.
He looked away from me and folded his hands in his lap. Mauritia bid him good day.
“Who’s Tamarutaca?” I asked when we were back on the trail.
“Someone he fears. A man whom he fears.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s very courageous. Guilherme believes he’s the one who steals the slaves and frees them, and that he raids the cattle. Perhaps I should not have used his name. But if he thinks you’re Tamarutaca’s woman he’ll let you come and go as you please.”
“Have you seen this man?”
“No, no one has. But every time a slave or cattle is missing he thinks it’s Tamarutaca. Perhaps he thinks I’m Tamarutaca’s woman too.”
“I thought you said they thought you weren’t luck for anyone.”
“For one of them.” She laughed. “But I’ve not seen this Tamarutaca. How could I be his woman?”
Mauritia’s Search for Tamarutaca
MAURITIA ATE THE CHAQUE FOR DINNER, while I ate greens and a small fish I’d caught. I knew the good fish now from the poisonous ones. We sat in wooden chairs at a wooden table.
“Did one of your murdered masters build this little house?” I asked. She nodded, but was silent.
“That Tamarutaca,” she said. “Perhaps Father Guilherme made him up. Who knows? Perhaps hostile Indians in the territory raid his cattle and let the slaves go, and he’s made up this man. But if there is such a man I’d like to find him and know him. I’d like to search for him in the same way that you’re searching for your mystery.”
I said nothing, then I said, “But I know of his existence. I knew of it.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to search for more streams. The streams I wash aren’t very lucrative but there’s no trouble, no danger—no quarrels over them.”
“I need to talk to some miners whom he might have contacted.”
/> “Slaves or masters?”
“Slaves,” I said.
“Sometimes I meet with those who are hunting for game with their masters. Tell me his name.”
I still would not.
“You’ll have to trust someone to know it, if you’re hunting for him.” I said nothing.
“Well, it’s good to be cautious,” she said. “One should be cautious of strangers. How do you know I’m not Father Guilherme’s woman, waiting to entrap you?”
“Because he would have given you more than chaque,” I said with a laugh.
She was silent.
“I know a woman in Minas, who works for a tavern keeper,” she said suddenly. “She knows everyone. She would know who to talk to. We’ll work our way there and go see Mariana.”
“Mariana?” I asked.
“What? Do you know her?”
“No, no,” I said. “I’ve never been to Minas.” She took a bite of the tough, dried meat.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t have a horse, but I suppose we can double up on that one.”
I nodded.
“And you should disguise yourself again. I’m known in this territory, but I can’t protect a handsome woman everywhere with the name of Tamarutaca . . . Let’s catch and salt some fish before we go.” I thought she would say for our meal on the way there, but she said, “It sells for seven or eight drams of gold in the city. We’ll take beans and maize and salt too. The last time I was there someone traded a slave for maize and gave a pound of gold for a flask of salt.”
“It seems as if one gets gold easier being a street vendor in Minas than a prospector.”
“But it’s dangerous, too. Imagine being murdered over a flask of salt?”
“Or a handful of maize?”
“None of it makes any sense. Sometimes miners will hear of a better hole and desert one mining camp for another. I go to the streams that have been deserted.”
We fished and salted the fish and prepared bundles of maize, salt, beans. Then we slept, and in the morning bathed in the stream, and I put on my “old storyteller’s” disguise. Mauritia wrapped the bundles in hide, and we tied them along the back of the horse. Mauritia went back inside and came out with a bow and arrow strapped across her chest and carrying a musket. She was wearing trousers. She handed me the musket, which also had a leather strap.