by Gayl Jones
Mauritia climbed on first as she knew the way to Minas. Slinging the musket over my shoulder, I rode behind her.
After we had traveled a league, she explained that we would have to make a detour because the streams in the forests there were full of piranha, meat-eating fish, and electric eels. I pictured us riding up to the piranha-infested streams and myself jumping off the horse and gathering obira paramacaci, feeding it to the piranha, so that they dropped dead from the poison. I pictured Mauritia looking at me with wonderment. But I did not suggest that we continue on the piranha-infested trail. Mauritia steered the horse in another direction.
“A lot of people, who don’t know the trails, perish even before they reach Minas. If it’s not from poison fish and insects or wild beasts and snakes, or attacks from hostile Indians, it’s from starvation. It’s three weeks from the coast to Minas, and some hear of the mines and start off without anything and don’t know the trails. I don’t know how you’ve managed to come this far without incident.”
“Neither do I,” I said.
Aldeia de Visita
You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Honor your father and your mother.
“You shall not kill.
“You shall not commit adultery.
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
“You shall not covet anything that is your neighbors.”
We heard the children’s voices reciting in unison, but saw no one.
“Hail, Mary, O favored one, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”
“What is the meaning of this?” I whispered to Mauritia, when the voices had silenced.
“We’re nearing an Indian village maintained by the Jesuits,” she said. “They’re going through their daily prayers.”
She stopped the horse as we listened to them recite the Lord’s Prayer, first in Portuguese and then in Tupi.
When they finished, Mauritia dismounted and so I did. We walked the horse to the edge of the village.
The children sat in rows on the ground, while two Jesuit priests conducted their prayers. She tied the horse to a tree and put one of the hide-wrapped bundles under her arm.
We walked behind the children to one of the longhouses.
The woman had her back to us, so that I only saw her straight back and the long gray and black hair. She was kneeling before a portable altar which had on it an hourglass and a bell. Spread on the floor around her was devotional literature—a bible, and some Jesuit pamphlets.
Inside the longhouse were rows of hammocks, mats on the floor, pictures of saints on the wall. Some “official,” others crudely drawn, looking more like painted birds than saints.
We waited silently until the woman finished her prayers. She kept praying and coughing and praying. Then she turned.
I thought she would be startled to see us, but she wasn’t. She quietly smiled and sat down on one of the mats to the side of the altar. She coughed.
Mauritia went to her with reverence and handed her the hide-wrapped package. The woman thanked her and, without opening it, set the package down beside her. She indicated with her eyes for both of us to be seated.
“Who have you brought with you this time?” she asked. She coughed again.
“This is Almeyda,” she told the woman. “And this, Almeyda, is Palmyra.”
The woman nodded to me and I nodded to her, but we did not speak.
Mauritia started talking to her in Tupi. Did she not know that I also knew how to speak it? Though she did not say anything that I could not have heard, or would have been offended by. She told the woman about her last visit to Father Guilherme and how he had had his eyes on me, but that she had told him that I was Tamarutaca’s woman and that he had been dissuaded. The old woman laughed, showing a set of perfect teeth. Then she told Mauritia that this Tamarutaca reminded her of a Guiacuru Indian that she knew when she was a young woman. She admitted shyly that he had been her “lover” though their respective tribes had not been on friendly terms and were still enemies, because the Guiacuru Indians were nomadic horsemen who had never accepted the white man’s presence and were always fighting them. The stories she would hear of this Tamarutaca, even though he was an African, reminded her of what the other one would have done as a young man.
“How did you meet him?” asked Mauritia.
“Eh, I found him in the woods, wounded, and I nursed him back to health. I healed him. But he was opposed to everything. The Guiacurus were always fighting white men but they were joined by the Paragua Indians and would attack them.”
“Was he killed?”
“I don’t know. If not, he’s an old man now somewhere, and I bet he’s still fighting.”
I wanted to ask the woman why and how did she “break” with the man, but I did not want to speak Tupi, letting them know that I also spoke it.
“I’m a medium,” said the woman. “Even with all these spiritual exercises I’m still a medium.”
Mauritia asked her what she meant.
“The Paragua and the Guiacuru are joined together now fighting against the white men, but when the Guiacuru disappear it won’t be the white man’s doings. The Paragua and the Guiacuru will become enemies. The Guiacuru will be defeated, not by the white man, but by other Indians.” She coughed. “Do you see what I mean? He hated me for saying that,” she said, looking at me. “But I can’t help it, it’s the truth. And all the Jesuit exercises in the world won’t keep me from knowing it.” She looked at me again, then she looked at Mauritia. “So if he’s an old man, he’s still fighting, and if he saw me now and recognized me, he’ll say, Eh Palmyra, it has happened! Not yet, I’d say, but this is only the first half of a difficult century. Oh, but wasn’t he disgusted with my prophecy. So now I flee from prophecy! I flee from it. But all the Jesuit exercises in the world won’t tell me it’s not so . . .” Then she coughed and looked at me and said in careful Portuguese, “Do you have something for my cough?”
I nodded. Mauritia looked at both of us with wonderment. I handed Palmyra some dried leaves from a pouch I carried and said that she should make tea from it.
She looked at me. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?” Now it was my turn to look at her with bewilderment.
“But I have, haven’t I?”
I nodded, though I still looked bewildered, because I did not recognize this woman. Did she recognize me behind the disguise, or with it? Then I wondered. Perhaps it was not me she recognized, but my grandmother? I looked at her.
She began talking in Tupi again, looking from Mauritia to me.
“Those priests are so silly. They never leave each other’s sight. It’s a law. They’re supposed to visit the aldeia regularly, but they’re not supposed to leave each other’s sight. What do you think they’re afraid of?”
Now we heard the children singing a religious song. “How long are they staying this time?” asked Mauritia.
“I don’t know. But the grass never grows under their feet. But what’s it to me? It’s nothing to me. When they finished the Ave Marias, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the catechism, and the Creed, they send the children out into the woods to gather cacao, cinnamon, vanilla, assia, and sarsaparilla for them to take back to the coast. Why do you think that’s so?”
We sat silently listening to the religious music.
“The two priests, they’re feeling like peacocks now,” she said.
I looked at her. It seemed strange that she had all their devotional literature, and at the same time continued to make such comments.
“They stopped me from raising young eagles,” said the woman. She coughed. “They thought I was worshiping them, but I wasn’t. I was only usi
ng their feathers to decorate myself and the children. Do I say they worship the cacao plant because they always want gatherers for it? Do I say they worship cinnamon? . . . Ah, if it had not been such an amarracao, such a tangled-up love affair?”
The woman offered us canjica, a dessert made of grated green corn, sugar, cinnamon, coconut milk, and butter. She made the tea for herself and drank it in my presence.
“Eh, they always come in pairs and are never parted. They don’t think anyone saw them, but I did. With tobacco and sugarcane brandy . . . If he’s an old man he’s still a warrior. He thinks that I betrayed him. But what did I do but talk, and tell him what I knew to be so? He’s mistaken. I’m as constant as any good woman, even if I don’t wear a European petticoat.
“But what is time but a serpent chewing his own tail?”
“Why don’t we follow the Sao Francisco?” I asked Mauritia.
“No, no,” she said. “There are too many estates all along the river. I’d rather travel through the jungle. If the wild beasts attack me for trespassing, I know they’d do the same for anyone. Besides it is a shorter distance to go this way, though one has to know the jungle.”
More Regarding Tamarutaca
THEY SAY THAT TAMARUTACA was raised by Guiacuru Indians. That’s why he has that strange name. There was a convoy of canoes coming from Porto Fez, full of gold and provisions and slaves, and when they were attacked by the Paragua Indians and the Guiacuru, everyone was killed, the black slaves and the white masters, and one of the Guiacuru found a little bundle and took the child home to his woman. The Guiacuru woman named him Tamarutaca, which means mantis shrimp. Ha, but he’s no mantis shrimp now. Others know him as . . .” The horse gave a jolt over the rough ground and she steadied him, and so did not finish.
“As who?” I asked.
“Some know him as Aguiar and others Jaguarete, but in these parts we call him Tamarutaca. Perhaps he’s no real man and whenever any slave escapes or any cattle is lost, they say it’s Tamarutaca who’s responsible.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
“People always know much about legends. I wish I could discover he’s a true man.”
I told her about King Zumbi and Palmares.
“Yes, I have heard of that one, but he was executed, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, to prove to us he was not immortal. But some feel that he only disappeared and will return again.”
“They always think that.”
“What do you mean?”
“That such men will return and return and return. Eh, it’s the old serpent chewing his tail again.”
I frowned.
“And this one you’re looking for, is he of the same sort?”
“No,” I replied, but did not make any other remarks.
“What does that woman know of you? She recognized you. Where have you known her before?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps she knows someone who looks like me.”
“You’re very secretive. I wonder how many secrets you are carrying, but I like you.”
I smiled, but said nothing.
A Cloud of Mosquitoes
MAURITIA DISMOUNTED and gathered huge palm leaves and tied several of them together with vines. She gave one of these to me and kept the other.
“What’s this for?” I asked, as she mounted the horse again.
“The mosquitoes are denser here. Sometimes there are clouds of them. This will fan them away. I have some mosquito fans made of thin pieces of wood, but I forgot to bring them.”
Again I did not tell her of the special remedy—an oil one could use for that purpose. I thanked her for the fan made of palm leaves.
We rode on, swishing the mosquitoes. Another time she stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We can’t go this way.”
“Why?”
“There’s quicksand.”
I was silent. Suppose I had ridden on alone? I wondered how many people had disappeared on that trail.
“How do you know the trails so well?” I asked. “But I suppose you’ve traveled it often.”
“Yes,” she said.
After traveling a while, she said, “Get our mosquito fan ready, there’s a cloud of them here.”
We reached a deserted mining camp—cloth tents and huts made of wood and straw.
Mauritia said that we could spend the night in one of the deserted buildings.
“How do you know there’s no one here?” I asked her, as we had stopped in front of and entered the first building we’d come to.
“They’d be lined up in the stream washing for gold,” she said.
That was just what she did after she had tied up the horse. She took the basin. I walked down to the steam with her, as she rolled up the legs of her trousers and entered the stream. I stood on the bank while she dipped and rotated the basin. Gold powder settled at the bottom.
“This is a perfectly good stream,” she said. “But that’s how they do. Just a rumor of a better one and they’re off. Let’s stay here and work this one for a while. I’ll teach you how to pan for gold.”
“All right,” I said.
The Mining Camp
WHEN MAURITIA WOULD TIRE I would rotate the basin, watching the gold powder settle to the bottom. We stayed in the camp for several days collecting the dust, which Mauritia divided with me. Perhaps Mauritia would have stayed there longer, but I was impatient to get to Minas, and after the third day she said that we would leave in the morning. We stayed in the first hut that we had found, the one at the edge of the forest.
“You’re very nervous and impatient,” said Mauritia.
“Am I?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said as we lay in hammocks on opposite sides of the hut.
In some of the cabins’ hammocks, cooking utensils and other items had been left behind, and we had gathered what we needed together in this hut.
In the morning I woke with chills and fever. Mauritia was bending over me.
“What’s wrong?”
She fussed at herself for letting me stand in the water so long, thinking that I had a delicate constitution.
“No,” I whispered, it wasn’t that. I knew what it was, it was a recurrence of malarial fever that had followed me for so long.
She looked troubled, then she said she would ride into the town and return with some medicines from there, that there was a physician there who had a new drug from Europe that cured malarial fever, as they had had a malarial fever epidemic there not very long ago.
I told her that I knew what to do to cure myself of the fever.
She looked at me with doubt, and said that she would bring enough provisions with me into the hut, so that I would not want for anything—that as she had the horse and knew the trails so well, she would be back very quickly.
I argued with her softly about this matter, explaining to her that I had seen the tree that had the bark I would need for the purpose of curing myself—that it was not very far from the camp, that I had noticed it when we passed it, but had not stopped because I did not expect the fever to plague me anymore, and besides I did not want her to think I was a crazy and foolish woman, any more than she did already.
She placed a horsehair blanket over me.
“I never thought you were crazy or foolish,” she said. “If I expected to find Tamarutaca in Minas, I would be just as crazy. But this? How do you know it will work? I don’t believe in magic or supernatural trees. Should I waste time here bringing you something that we don’t know will do you any good, and may possibly do you harm? I know the European medicine will work, as I have seen it.”
“And I have seen this work, and felt it work. And I know it to be so. It’s not a supernatural tree, but a very natural one, that has power over this ailment. Surely it’s more natural than that medicine you will bring. How do I know that won’t poison me? This I know.”
She looked at me.
“Believe me, Mauritia.”
> “Fine,” she said. “Tell me where I should go for it, and how I should gather it. Should I go when the moon is full?”
“No,” I said, twisting my mouth to the side. “Go now.” I explained to her how the tree would look and how its leaves would be shaped.
“I know that one,” she said. “I see that one all the time.”
“Yes,” I said.
I told her how much of the bark to scrape away, and I gave her a sharp flat stone that looked like the head of an arrow.
When she returned with the bark, I was too weak to prepare it, and so spoke to her how she should prepare it for me. She did, giving it to me to drink. By the next morning, I was ready to ride into Minas.
She did not express her amazement at what I had done. In fact, she did not even mention it. She seemed even to be “against” the measures I had taken to cure myself.
We rode in silence while Mauritia directed us around quicksand, piranha streams, and places that were especially thick with mosquitoes. She was even capable of spotting the tracks and signs of certain wild beasts, that we avoided, though once she had said very quietly, “Hand me your musket.” I started to question her, but she said, “Hush.” She had pointed and fired before I had even seen the jaguar. Together, we dragged the white, brown, and black jaguar against the side of the trail, though Mauritia complained that if we’d had some way to transport it, that in town it would go for surely at least a pound of gold—that they were paying as much as ten drams for house cats.
“They eat house cats?” I asked.
“When other meat is scarce,” she said as we continued on the trail.
“Give me Araucaria kernels any day!” said I.
She laughed.
Seeing her good mood, I started to say how we made a good “team”—my knowledge of medicines and hers of the trails. But I kept silent.