Until the Day Arrives

by Ana Maria Machado

  But now all his attention was focused on the savanna. It wasn’t the time to be dreaming. He needed to follow the crouching adults. They had to get to the gazelles very slowly and silently, without being detected. If the gazelles were frightened, there was no question of chasing them. They were too fast. But the hunters were lucky — they were skilled and the herd was large. There were always one or two animals that could be hit by a spear or an arrow, providing meat for several days.

  Suddenly, with great precision, Guezo threw a spear, attacking an isolated gazelle that had strayed from the others. The other hunters’ accurate strikes followed quickly, while the rest of the herd scattered on the run. The wounded animal held back, hesitant, slow, sometimes stopping. It was quickly surrounded by the group of men, who continued to attack. Their bows stretched, emptying quivers of arrows targeted at the animal they needed for food. In a few moments, the gazelle was on the ground.

  Then they tied the legs of the animal and hung it on a long stick to carry it. Distracted by their work, they didn’t notice that they were no longer hunters, but the hunted.

  Once they realized what was happening, it was too late. Because suddenly, amid a thunderous uproar, they were attacked by a gang of heavily armed men who had surrounded them the same way they had surrounded the gazelles — silent and unnoticed.

  There were many men, far more than in their group. They were strangers, from some unknown village, shouting in a strange language.

  It was a tough, ferocious fight. But before long, Guezo, Odjidi and his uncles and cousins were bound more tightly than the gazelle. The attackers tied their hands behind their backs with strong ropes and put metal rings — shackles — around their necks. Each shackle was fastened by an iron chain to another man, and everyone was forced to follow in a line across the savanna until they got to the riverbank, where they were put into long canoes heading downstream.

  Shortly after, when they reached the curve of the river, they were joined by others in these long canoes. More prisoners. From afar, Odjidi could see people from his village, including his mother and his two older sisters.

  Guezo saw them, too. He was mad with fury. He pulled on the rope with all his strength, trying to escape and do something to free his family. It was useless. He tried again, frustrated.

  “AAAAAAhhhhhhh!” He cried out like a rabid animal, a wounded lion.

  The captors gave him a blow on the head. Not so hard that he fell, but hard enough not to spare him the pain. He was bleeding and dizzy and realized that it was futile to react. Desperate, Guezo looked around. He saw his son, his daughters, his wife, his brother, all his relatives and friends, caught and tied just as he was. He didn’t know what to do.

  They were all starting to experience very new and different things from the free life they had always lived.

  They had been enslaved.

  8

  —

  Guezo

  Lying on the hard floor that was always moving, still lashed to his companions, Guezo looked back on the past few weeks. He felt that they had all been living through a nightmare.

  First they had been brutally captured. Then they were chained and transported in canoes down the river, eventually reaching the coastal lagoons. There, the attackers beat them, jerked them ashore and put them in a dark, bolted hut without a hint of light.

  The place was packed. There were dozens of other men like them inside — although in most cases, Guezo could not understand the many different languages they spoke. Some of the men were from completely unknown tribes, others from hostile enemy ones.

  The women and children, captured under similar conditions, were confined in another hut. One had been taken while fetching water from a creek, another when she strayed from the village to gather sticks for the fire. Some had been captured in their villages, where they were attacked when the men had gone hunting.

  From the little that he managed to understand of the conversations around him, Guezo began to grasp a sense of the captors’ intentions.

  “That way they get used to …”

  Get used to what? With that huge group of people? The darkness? The dirt? The heat? The forced immobility? Why did someone have to get used to these things?

  Later, he heard some other phrases that he understood. One in particular intrigued him.

  “It’ll be worse on the ship, so it’s good they’re getting used to it now.”

  Ship? What ship?

  Guezo had heard about groups of assailants who would show up, armed with curved swords, or arrows tipped with poisonous herbs or the venomous spines of catfish. He had heard of the danger posed by these clandestine warriors, an ever-present threat. They didn’t hesitate to kill whoever fought their attempts to seize people, whether the victims were to be sold to the camel caravans crossing the desert or used to pay taxes to strong and demanding leaders in other parts of the savanna or forest. There were reports of celebrations in which the guests were seized, gagged and taken away when they were distracted and under the effects of alcohol. Guezo had heard these stories since he was a boy and repeated them to his children, warning them to be attentive and take care.

  These treacherous ambushes were threats that Guezo had worried about. But his awareness of the risk hadn’t stopped it from happening. They had been surprised by a well-organized attack. Now what was this new danger? What did it have to do with a ship?

  Guezo had heard that the enslaved prisoners could be immediately handed over to the Jula merchants, who would take them far away to the desert or deep into the forest, never to return. Or the prisoners could be led to some market closer by, where they would be put on exhibition and offered for sale alongside other goods — piles of peppers, okra and yams, gourds of palm oil, baskets, textiles and ceramics — surrounded by goats and chickens.

  A ship wasn’t needed for any of that.

  What were their captors going to do with them? What unknown fate awaited them?

  The overheard and poorly deciphered conversations mentioned auctions, waiting to complete loading. Gradually Guezo was putting together the sparse phrases that he and others in his group were able to understand. A cousin who had traveled farther knew a language that was spoken in a neighboring village. Thanks to this, it was possible to obtain some information from other prisoners.

  After a few days, they realized that they were being assembled and mixed up together on purpose, so they couldn’t understand one another. That way they wouldn’t try to organize themselves or create problems or plan a revolt. And they were all locked in that dark hut for two reasons.

  On the one hand, they were about to make a long sea voyage in similar conditions of close quarters and darkness. It was a matter of getting used to these conditions. On the other, they had to wait there until they knew who would buy them, in what numbers and where they would be taken.

  It all depended on who was willing to offer the best prices and terms on seeing the slaves. They would be exchanged for gold, weighed carefully on small scales, or for precious goods such as coral, cowrie shells, metal artifacts or fabrics like flax or wool.

  When the day came, it happened exactly that way. They were sold to merchants and shipped by force — they had no idea where.

  Now they were on the ship, in a horrendous cargo hold. There was the same darkness that they’d experienced in the hut, the same crowding of people, one on top of the other, with no room to move.

  Only it was worse than being in the hut. Instead of being on land they were on the sea — something that Guezo had never seen before — an amazing amount of water, noisy and moving, with a strong smell. There was absolutely no hope of escaping, of jumping over the wooden guardrail and running away.

  Everything was rocking constantly, at the mercy of the waves. Even the floor moved back and forth. People often felt sick to their stomachs, and many vomited. An unbearable stench of excrement combined with
urine, vomit, blood and sweat permeated the hold. The only food, an awful-tasting mush, was just enough to keep them alive and prevent them from getting too thin, which would devalue the merchandise. Because that was what they had become — human goods to be sold.

  To avoid the risk of becoming unmarketable, the slaves were sometimes taken, still chained, to get some exercise on deck. The exercise was necessary so their bodies would not waste away. From time to time, the slaves were even forced to dance to keep their muscles firm. Sometimes a sailor would play a flute, and someone would pound on the boards of the deck like a drum. The slaves would move to the sound of the improvised music, all but drowned out by the noise of the chains. In these moments, in the light of the sun, Guezo would try to spot a relative or acquaintance in the group.

  And always, for any reason, the whip would crack to make them all obey.

  Guezo tried not to think about what awaited them. But he couldn’t just be a prisoner of his memory, thinking back to the independent life they’d led in the village, on the grasslands, where the animals continued to run free — the way he and his family had in the past.

  He knew that his family had boarded the same ship. He had seen Odjidi from a distance, on the same side of the hold as he was. He hadn’t seen his wife and daughters. Someone said that the women and children were at the other end of that dark storeroom. A cousin assured him that they had all been bought by the same dealer, in exchange for who knew how many bags of sugar and how many cowrie shells.

  Guezo didn’t want to think, or to remember.

  He had done another dance before getting on the ship, circling the tree of forgetfulness nine times. Many of those who left — people from different tribes — did this before boarding. The captors allowed anyone to take part in this farewell dance. He wanted to, and found it good to be able to move his body. More than that, it was a way to look around, to see who else he could find and try to understand it all. He didn’t dance to forget. However, maybe it would be good to stop reliving the memory of his past life.

  But he knew it wouldn’t change anything. He would never forget who he was or where he came from.

  Nor would he ever forget this terrible journey.

  9

  —

  Crossed Paths

  Manu actually enjoyed the voyage. It was true that she worked hard. She helped in the kitchen and served as a page for Don Gaspar. And she was constantly doing errands, helping sweep the deck and carrying things.

  She continued to pretend she was a boy, dressing in boys’ clothing, as they had agreed. But now, at least, she saw Bento every day, even though they could rarely talk alone. She had given him back the pocket knife he had got from his father, which she had kept for so long. She carried her mother’s rosary in her trouser pocket, and in her jacket, readily at hand, she could stroke the ceramic dove her father had given her. She thought that these were all signs that things were getting better.

  In any event, she was more at ease. She was sure that soon, when they reached the village of Amparo, Brazil, she and her brother would live in freedom. Apparently, Brazil was much warmer than Portugal, which she could tell because the air became warmer each day they got farther from Lisbon. It was enjoyable even at night, when a mild breeze blew under a sky studded with more and more shining stars, a sky that was beginning to reveal stars different from those she was used to seeing with her parents at home — when she and her brother had parents and a home.

  After many weeks of everything being the same, more than forty days of living between the sky and the sea, between the clouds and the waves, someone suddenly shouted, “Signs of land!”

  Manu looked at the horizon and saw nothing. But someone pointed to the surface of the water.

  “Look! It’s sargasso.”

  Sargasso was a kind of seaweed that didn’t exist in the high seas, she learned. Later, there were other seaweeds, including one that the sailors called donkey’s tail — a tangle of herbs that clung to the rocks of the coast, lapped by the tides.

  By the time night fell, Manu still had not seen land. But the next morning, she woke very early with the noisy honking of birds flying between the masts and sails.

  “They’re petrels,” Don Gaspar explained. “These seabirds don’t fly far from the coast. We’re almost there.”

  A few hours later, she heard, “Land ahoy!”

  Manu could hardly believe that this whole adventure would soon come to an end.

  It was not just a matter of completing the voyage. It was much more than that. She and Bento were closing a door on a period of danger and suffering. She felt happy and full of hope. They were going to start a new life in a new land. She gave thanks to God.

  All those on board rushed to the guardrail. At first they saw nothing. Only the sailor in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast had seen land. But after a few hours, they began to make it out. First they saw just a line, then a range of dark-bluish hills. A little later, everything turned into a dense green vastness formed by the treetops, which from far away looked like soft velvet.

  It was already getting dark when they arrived. They would have to wait until the next day to disembark. They brought in the sails, dropped anchor and went to bed, lulled by the creaking of the rigging and the plop-plop of ripples on the ship’s hull. Manu had an unsettled sleep, full of confused dreams.

  At early dawn, when all on board were preparing to lower the boats and start landing, Don Gaspar called Bento aside. He asked Manu to come as well.

  “After I say goodbye, I want to be able to take good news about you both back to my sister,” he said. “I don’t just want to say that I left you safe and sound, as she asked me to do. I want to assure Dona Ines that I gave you good counsel and left you in good hands. I suggest that you use your judgment and don’t get into trouble. When we disembark, I am going to turn you over to some priests who will be waiting on the beach. They are Jesuits. They give us letters to be taken to their superiors in Portugal and we bring them back their correspondence. I will give them the money that my brother-in-law entrusted to me for your initial expenses in this new land. And I will explain to them that you are orphans and siblings in need of protection. They will know what to do.”

  “I know exactly what I’ll do as soon as we get off this ship,” Manu said, almost skipping. “I’ll stop pretending that I’m a page and barely know Bento. I’ll jump onto his lap and give him a hug and lots of kisses …”

  Her brother smiled.

  “Yes, and I’ll throw away that boy’s cap and muss my little sister’s hair. We’ll celebrate — sing, dance and have a party — and give thanks to Our Lady of Amparo and to Captain Don Gaspar. Let’s go!”

  “No, none of that,” advised Don Gaspar. “Best to be very discreet at first. You mustn’t reveal Manu’s true identity. You can do that after a few days, once the ship is loaded and on its way back to Portugal. The crew is very superstitious. Sailors often think that a woman on board brings bad luck. If they find out they were at sea in the company of a woman for the best part of two months, they may feel that they’ve been deceived and get angry. I might have problems on the return trip.”

  “If that’s the way it is, don’t worry,” said Bento. “We’ll keep it a secret.”

  Manu was sorry. She would have liked to have embraced the captain and given him a kiss of gratitude for helping them and reuniting her with her brother. But if she had to continue to behave like a boy, she couldn’t be soft. She stood firm, thought of her father and said, almost solemnly, “Thank you, Don Gaspar. God protect you on your journey home and always. We don’t have words enough to thank you.”

  A little while later, a small boat took them to shore in the company of the captain and some of the other sailors. And as Don Gaspar predicted, there was a priest in the midst of the small crowd that awaited them on the beach. The people were so different and so interesting that the girl bare
ly paid attention to the information the captain gave the Jesuit about the two orphaned brothers, or the guarantees that the priest gave him to take care of them.

  So this was Brazil!

  Manu was fascinated by all the movement, especially by a huge red, blue and yellow macaw that was beating its wings and making a tremendous din. It rested on the arm of a man who was offering it to the sailors in exchange for some sort of tool. Just ahead, a lively and clever-looking little monkey perched on a boy’s shoulder seemed to be making faces at her as it eyed her intently.

  The scene was noisy and colorful. Even the people seemed to be different colors. Not just appeared to be, but were! The whites were sunburned, much pinker than they were in Portugal. And there were people with skin of all shades of brown, from reddish-colored, with straight hair, to very dark — almost black — with corkscrew-like hair, full of tiny curls. Some bodies were almost naked and were painted and covered with ornaments made of feathers. It was very different from Lisbon.

  And the ways they carried things! There were baskets of all kinds, shapes and weaves, many with different geometric designs. There were boxes big and small, chests and stuffed cloth bags. Bundles. Bunches of bananas, huge watermelons. Rolls and rolls of straw mats. Large ceramic pots filled with water, carefully balanced on people’s heads and so full that they were dripping along the way.

  The noises also attracted the girl’s attention. There were seagulls squawking overhead, whistles and chirps of birds in cages, parrots of all types and colors — they were right to call Brazil the land of parrots. Everywhere vendors screamed and yelled. There was a chaotic and cheerful din, with everyone talking at once, often in languages that Manu was sure she had never heard before. And even when the words were in Portuguese, they were spoken in a different way — more slowly, more openly. Everything was strange, but it was an attractive and festive strangeness that made you want to join the celebration.