by Will Forest
I kept looking. The clock on the wall was ticking, but I realized the time was off, and since I had not noticed what wrong time it had been displaying when I came in, I did not know how much time I had left. All I knew was that it had been enough time for my clothes to become saturated with the noxious odors of mold and ammonium inside the vault.
Desperately I started pulling drawers open as far as they would go, one by one, and scanning through them as quickly as possible. One drawer, in the back behind the upright files, had scrolls. I started unrolling them cautiously. This was it—they all started with “Testemunho de…” or “Testimony of…”
And then I found the right one. It was a parchment scroll, yellowed and musty, of some three meters in length, in which a scribe had translated into Portuguese the deposition, in Tupi, of a woman interviewed as a source for that bilingual dictionary that Anchieta had been preparing. I reached for the pencil and paper the archivist had given me,
because I’d have to read and take notes fast.
Amana toma banho na terra, no vento, no sol
assim como faz na água.
Quando come, quando dorme, quando danza,
ela move-se com o corpo inteiro.
Ela com seu corpo é uma só. Ela com sua moradia no mundo é uma só.
Amana bathes in the earth, wind, and sun
just as she bathes in water.
When she eats, when she sleeps, when she dances,
she moves with all her body.
She is one with her body. She is one with her home
in the world.
But before I could read any further, the lights went out.
What could I do, stuck in the stench in the dark? Within the first few lines I had already realized the extraordinary nature of the text—there was that word for home, moradia, that I needed to investigate. It was exactly what I had been hired to find.
So, I had no choice. I stole the scroll.
I knew that since the lights were out the camera couldn’t record my theft. I clutched the scroll loosely and groped along the wall to the door.
In absolute darkness, I retraced my steps through the underground halls to the staircase. No one responded to my shouts. I didn’t know if the lights were out because there had been a blackout, or if the archives were closed and I had been abandoned.
Because I was afraid of going too slowly, of losing a chance to find help, I just leaned along the bare walls and rushed as quickly as I could to each door. At one point I forgot a turn, and fell when the wall disappeared at a corner.
Finally I saw a glimmer of daylight coming from the stairwell. I slipped the scroll gently inside my shirt to keep it
out of sight, then rushed up the stairs, heady from the fresh air, and ran to the main entrance.
A guard was locking the doors from the outside. I waved and yelled, catching his attention just in time. He made a joke about my almost spending the night in the archives. I didn’t think it was funny, but I appreciated that while he went on and on, expressing his confusion and apology, I had a moment to think. Since the bag check attendant was gone, I stepped behind the counter to retrieve my own bookbag, confirming my suspicion that it was not quite big enough for the scroll to fit inside.
I noticed an abandoned umbrella—one of those long black ones with a hooked handle. I asked the guard for my phone, and he again apologized, walking over to a guardpost podium to retrieve it. Quickly I untucked my shirt and passed the scroll into the closed umbrella behind the counter. I remember thinking, if you’re already absconding with an ancient document, what’s one filched umbrella?
The guard returned with my phone. I had my bag, my phone, and the scroll hidden successfully. I thought I was off the hook.
But then the guard looked at the bulging umbrella and asked if it was broken. There was rain in the forecast, he said.
I was still behind the counter. I mumbled something about checking it to make sure it worked, while putting my bag down and letting the scroll fall on the floor. I stood up, opened the umbrella triumphantly, and gave a big smile. While the guard kept talking about the weather, I leaned down again to pick up my bag and slip the scroll in the folds of the umbrella.
Keeping my oddly wrapped prize pressed carefully under my arm, I thanked the guard and left as quickly as I could. I walked the few blocks to my hotel warily, and with
each step I took, I felt more strongly a criminal, but also more resolutely a zealot for bringing history to light. With
each step, I convinced myself that had it been my destiny to be caught, the guard had already lost his chance to do so.
Back in the room with the door locked and bolted, I pulled out the scroll. Unrolling it carefully over the bed, I realized I could never return it to the archive, and that I would need to leave the country immediately.
I stayed up all night reading it, less because the handwriting—though in Portuguese—was aged and unfamiliar, and more because I was simply fascinated by its story. The scroll did elucidate for me that alternate meaning for ‘home,’ but that was just one item of relevance from the compendium of wonder that the document revealed. To say that by the time I had finished reading it, I had very uncharacteristically (for me, anyway) heaved off every stitch of my still-reeking clothing, is but one small way of acknowledging the power of Amana’s story.
I considered photographing it, or copying it all out by hand, so I could destroy the evidence. I considered the logistical difficulties of bringing it with me on the plane. But I decided to keep it, consequences be damned. If the Portuguese National Archives folks ever want it back, then in lieu of prosecuting me they can thank me for bringing this remarkable piece of history to light, and we’ll call it a deal. I may have lifted a scroll, but they imprisoned it first.
Here I have translated it yet again to help the truth of its message shine forth for the world, including for you, dear reader. Know that if I have altered anything in the text, it has been only to add, from time to time, the acoustic embellishments of a frustrated poet. The plot, the imagery—though removed from their original Tupi through Portuguese to English—are in essence the same.
We finished reading, and the first thing I said was, “I can see why he doesn’t what this, you know, ‘out there.’”
Zé’s mouth hung open. “Nelson found something that motivated him to throw his clothes off! Then he started visiting Abricó Beach, like he told us... Interessantíssimo!”
I nodded. “So interesting, in fact, that he stole it. Sound familiar?”
“You’re right! But… it’s not stealing. It’s rescuing, remember? He rescued the scroll from that… tomb, just like we rescued the codex. And he justified it very well, yes? But, Marisol, why do we have to keep rescuing these documents?”
“Because they keep getting hidden. One by a viceroy, another by someone who saved it from a pope’s order to burn it… These are powerful testimonies.”
Zé shrugged. “Nudity shouldn’t scare anybody.”
I flipped back a page. “And this brief introduction of Amana, whoever she is, makes her seem just as dangerous as Sun Prince.”
Zé laughed. “Perigosa?”
“Yes, dangerous. This is why these documents threatened popes and kings. Any kind of expression of unorthodox lifestyles jeopardized the imposition of ecclesiastical and governmental dogmas.”
Zé gave me a sigh. “You sound like such a graduate student.”
He drew closer, to kiss me, and I decided to let him. Thinking about that moment now, I probably worried about it too much. The passionate kiss he gave me was more than I could muster in return, only because I didn’t want to seem overly passionate.
In other words, Zé was right. I was too much of a cerebral graduate student about it.
He made no comment, but led me to my guest bedroom, where he merely said “Boa noite.”
Chapter 17: Amana
March 29, 2012
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
From Zé’s family’
s home there was a spectacular view of the ocean, but also a panorama of plenty of other buildings, streets, and a poorer area I knew was called a favela. After breakfast on the terrace, Zé told me he thought his family’s house was “uma opulência monstruosa.”
“Your place in Dallas is rather ostentatious, too, you know. Are you being a hypocrite?”
He smiled and reached for my hand. “The difference, Marisol querida, is that my home has taste.”
I laughed and had to agree as we walked back into the sparse, overly sleek home that was too much like a cave, its windows all on the ocean side. We retired to a room that Zé used as a study, and there we read the pages Nelson had given me of his translation of the stolen scroll, “Testimony of an Indian Woman, São Paulo, 1555.” True to the custom of this sort of document, there’s an introduction by the church official, one José de Anchieta. Zé immediately recognized the name.
“Anchieta! Ele foi fundador… He was one of the founders of São Paulo and Rio. Nossa! He was a major figure in early colonial Brazil. And he was the one who compiled the dictionary Nelson was using.”
Anchieta’s introduction was brief and, as it turned out, either incredibly understated or deliberately vague:
Friday, 12 of February, MDLIV. São Paulo. Testimony of an Indian woman from the far northern interior of these lands, near the great river, as questioned by Padre Nataniel Souza Osório under my supervision, and copied by scribe Fernando Magalhães Preto with help from Daniel da Silva de Albuquerque, who translated from Tupi on the instant. This particular testimony demonstrates the vivid native imagination and the passion with which the Indians cling to their beliefs.
Then the testimony starts abruptly:
The cry of a baby rent the rainforest night. Soon there were two babies crying. Barely had Amana finished cleaning them and attending to their exhausted mother, barely had she severed their twin cords, when she felt herself lifted, bound, and muzzled as the babies cried on.
Amana kicked forcefully against the arms of the men, but it was no use. She heard one of them speak in an unknown language, and the other two, who were tying her ankles together, loosened the knot a bit. The terrified mother clutched her newborns to her breasts.
Soon all Amana could see were treetops, here and there a star through the leaves. Her head rolled back and forth as the men carried her stretched out over their shoulders. Then she heard water. She was lifted into a canoe and taken upstream.
She knew the direction, Your Grace, from the exertion of the rowers and their speed measured against the passing trees. Also she could see the stars unobstructed over the river.
No, she did not scream, Your Grace, because she used the same breathing rhythm she had just showed the woman in labor, and was able to calm herself, and to consider her situation. Though she had spent years practicing her skills as a midwife, she was still of an age to be made a mother herself. She knew she was healthy, tall and taut, and pleasing to look upon. She had a reputation as a healer... and so she knew, with greater certainty as each hour passed—long before the end of the sweaty trek in which she was carried up into the western mountains—she knew that she had been kidnapped to attend to the birth of royal Inca twins.
She knew this, Your Grace, because only for that reason would these soldiers have sought her from so far away and delivered her without the slightest harm to her person. Like all peoples living in this area, she had heard of the Inca. She knew the name of the Inca king, Huayna Capac. And soon enough, she arrived at his palace. It was on a bluff overlooking a river; it was perched as if the nest of the condor were made into a fortress. It had been a long journey up into the mountains you call the Andes. The men delivered Amana to the chambers of the women servants, who immediately wanted to dress her.
She knew not clothing, nor to think of it with shame. Like all of her people on the rainy river, she knew no reason to cover any...
A sin against nature? In Amana’s land, Your Grace, nature does not favor dress. But in the colder Inca land, these women covered her, and at first she let them, because she had felt the mountain chill that was new to her. But she found that she could not walk properly. She felt almost as bound as when the men had taken her.
So she removed the clothes, and the women tried to dress her again. They spoke to her sternly, but Amana understood not their speech. The women desisted, and she walked away, but some guards saw her, and detained her with force, pinching her breasts and buttocks. When the Inca women saw this, they protested and told the guards of Amana’s refusal to stay covered. So the guards pushed her into a prison cell.
No. They were not wise, Your Grace, but cruel. They left the cell open to the night wind, and they taunted her, that since she would not cover herself, they would not give her even a single one of their warm wool blankets. Amana knew that she would suffer in the cell until the Inca twins were ready to be born.
On the first night in the cell, she had an unwelcome visitor. He removed his clothes, planning to force himself into her. But she knew from experience what to do. She pointed at his penis and laughed.
It is a method widely taught, Your Grace, by mothers who warn their daughters. The man’s intentions were thwarted, and he made to hit her, but she roared like a jaguar, standing up and baring her teeth. Another guard heard and came running. This guard, a kinder man, scolded the first guard and shoved him away from that place. Then he fetched a blanket for Amana, that she could stay warm at night.
It was fortunate for her that the suffering amounted to only three days, which was the longest she had ever gone without bathing.
For Your Grace, it is nothing. My nose tells me I agree with you. But for Amana it was a disgust, as it would certainly be for me. Still, she used the three days to plan how to escape after her work would be done.
When the Inca king’s favorite wife went into labor, Amana was escorted to the woman’s chamber. They covered Amana with a long woolen shawl and she did not resist.
Patience, and all shall be revealed. The labor was difficult—the mother was young and thin, and Amana could not speak to her in her language. Through signs and movements she was able to show her how to calm her breathing.
Soon the first was born: a girl. Then a boy followed. Amana cut their cords and prepared to burn them, as was her custom, but another who was there snatched the cords from her. Amana learned, after many angry shouts and gesticulations, that she was being accused of trying to destroy sacred objects. And she was also being accused of having contrived to bring the girl first into the world, before the boy.
Does Your Grace know of childbirth?
This kind of birth order is not possible to control. But what Amana quickly understood was that she was going to have to act with more haste than she had anticipated. She meekly hung her head and offered her hands to one of the guards who had come at the shouting. It was the man who had tried to force himself into her in her cell. Amana’s actions were meant to show her resignation to return to the cell.
In a manner of speaking, yes, it was a trick. Since she did not show anger, only the one guard escorted her to the cell, without even binding her. And because she looked at him as if begging his pardon for the earlier incident, she knew her power over him. As they walked along, she smiled at him and tossed her long hair playfully.
As soon as they were alone, nearing the cell, Amana suddenly freed her hand from his, and pulled her long shawl up and off her body, over her head, and then pushed it over on top of him. In his confusion she pinned his arms under the heavy cloth and brought him to the ground.
She was tall and strong. Does Your Grace remember? And she surprised him. She did something that a woman was not expected to do. And by the time he uncovered his head, she had disappeared.
She was close by, below him, hanging from a root over the edge of a cliff. He could not see her there, nor thought to look for her there.
Your Grace is not the only one who seems surprised by what a woman can do. When she heard him run away, she pulle
d herself up and ran in the other direction. She escaped the fortress city because she found a place to scale down the cliff to the river, where she swam as far as she could. The Inca may have pursued her, but she never saw them. She kept moving downstream, fishing or hunting and gathering food in the ways she had learned growing up.
An Amazon? What is that, Your Grace?
Why would she have cut off one of her breasts?
This is not something I would believe. Has Your Grace ever shot an arrow? I am someone who not only knows how to shoot an arrow, but also, I have breasts.
Icamiaba? That may have been a name she used, Your Grace. But Amana would no more have cut men from her life than a breast from her chest. Perhaps she would have considered herself fierce, or a warrior, but no more so than the other women and men among whom she had been raised. What was certainly true was that she had many skills, more than most men, and more than most women as well. It was well said of her:
Amana bathes in the earth, wind, and sun
just as she bathes in water.
When she eats, when she sleeps, when she dances,
she moves with all her body.
She is one with her body. She is one with her home
in the world.
In many rains there was no knowledge of her. She may have lived for some time with the Xavante. But after a few years she appeared among the Muisca. These are a people that, like the Inca, live high in the mountains, but further to the left… I mean, not the left—what is it you say? The north, not far from the northern sea.