But there on the porch of her own house, her great big dark eyes became even rounder as she attempted to rescue some resonance from inside herself that could explain the attention and the emotions being directed her way.
Alencar told her who their parents had been and how, from a young age, he had sworn to find her some day. But he couldn’t provide what might have been the only motivation and interest on Jacira’s part to return to the mysteries of the past: the motive for her tragic abandonment, what reasons her father had for leaving her, so small and fragile, to the care of complete strangers. Alencar did not have an answer for this. Alencar wasn’t even sure how their mother had died: his father had told him it was of natural causes; with time, however, he heard vague, foggy rumors of a revenge killing. But he had made no attempt to verify this; he had no interest in stirring up that mystery. What was done was done, he thought, and there was no way to change history now.
Unfortunately, what he did not know is that there is never a way to change history, whether in its entirety or in part.
The story had already been lived. It was over, completed. More impossible to change than the most immovable of mountains since, if there is something that is absolutely unalterable in this world, it’s the past.
Suddenly feeling as helpless as when her father had left her on Corporal Jesuíno’s doorstep, and even more so than when her husband had died thirty-four years earlier, Jacira closed her eyes and asked herself, as she hadn’t done for nearly a lifetime: “Dagoberto, what should I do? What does this man want of me?”
No, Jacira had not liked learning this part of her first three years of life, years that had been closed off in a heavy and unbreachable darkness.
She did not like knowing that, along with her father, her mother, and her former life, she had lost a brother, too. She wanted that old man with his white hair and imposing figure to leave her in peace. Seventy years is an irrecoverable mountain of time. She did not wish to relive what had never been, she had no desire to nurture memories of an impossibility.
The sooner that man went away the better it would be for everyone.
Justino and Damiana understood perfectly their mother and grandmother’s desire to avoid rummaging through the past. What’s more, they were young people who, due to the influence of Feliciano and Mariano, detested the slave-trading vessels, ships whose fame for unthinkable horrors had already spread across the country. Especially Damiana, who maintained a frequent correspondence with her uncle Mariano and considered herself widow to one José Batista, a young teacher whom she would later meet through her uncle and who had died two years earlier. The three of them were enthusiastic abolitionists who, together, would do what they could to bring slavery to an end.
They didn’t like this relative standing here before them, nor his air as though he owned the world.
Alencar and his son gave them a card with their address and left the plantation, disappointed with the cold reception, frustrated at the chilly façade they encountered, and the impossibility of reinventing the past. But since Alencar was not a man to give up on his plans, much less this one, which he had obsessed over his entire life, he left convinced that with time it would be possible to overcome the indifference of his sister and her children and reaffirm the family ties he had always valued so much.
In Jacira’s case, meanwhile, this encounter did irreparable harm, reopening a wound she thought she had put behind her.
The overwhelming effort to remember her past, provoked by her brother’s visit, seemed to have drained her of her strength. Worse yet, it was as if she had been abandoned all over again, on that doorstep where the terror and panic induced by the episode were once again visited upon her after so many years, after an entire lifetime.
“My god, seventy years later and I’ve still not erased these things from my memory?”
Her brother’s visit brought back the tramping of the hooves galloping away, a single deafening sound in her head, sweeping across the dark night, rousing her from sleep, leaving her weak, panicked, entirely alone.
Jacira’s strength slowly seeped away through those terror-filled nights when she was transformed once again into the trembling little girl left on a dark doorstep, watching her father gallop away.
Panicked and entirely alone.
Until the inevitable morning not long thereafter when a slave woman found her cold and stiff in her twin bed, the muscles of her mouth slack in death’s hollow silence, her body on its side facing the left half of the bed, the place belonging to Captain Dagoberto, empty for so long.
DAMIANA
(1789-1822)
In a tiny, dark, humid cell, barely able to breathe the thick air, enveloped by the sickening smell of sweat and rot, her ears flooded by the sound of the clubs beating one more body down into the earth, Damiana asked herself why. Why had her life always been filled with misfortune, and why had she not perceived from the beginning that there could be no other end but this? Even before her birth, her fate had been riddled with a continuum of tragedies, which had brief interruptions, small respites filled with joy, but these were only respites, soon followed by more sadness and suffering.
She was loved, this was impossible to deny; from a young age, she had always known the company of an almost excessive tenderness and the watchfulness of a grandmother who sought to spare her the least bit of suffering. Then there were the uncles, all of them, who treated her like a precious stone, each one of them protecting her as they could, above all Uncle Mariano, who had been like the father she never knew.
But what good had all that love and protection been? Had it prevented the murder of her father?
Had it prevented the misfortune that marked her life?
Had it prevented the melancholy desperation that resulted in the death of her mother, whom, as a result, she never came to know?
No. It had prevented nothing, nothing at all.
In her pestilent little cell, Damiana could not explain or understand how or why everything around her seemed to end in terrible suffering.
Just look at her mother and father.
Just look at João Batista.
A young school instructor, a professor of mathematics and literature, and a friend of her Uncle Mariano, she had barely turned sixteen when he first showed up one day at the plantation with a letter from Mariano in his hands. He had long hair tied back and dark eyes, and a mind brimming with courageous ideas, enthusiasm, and desire, those vigorous gifts of youth. He was there to spend some time on the plantation at the request of Mariano, who wanted live reports of his niece.
From her cell, Damiana arrived at the conclusion that she had loved him at first sight, and that he had also loved her as soon as he set eyes on her. João, with his new ideas, his eloquence, and his ardor; she with her curious spirit, her rapt ears hungry for his words; he with the books he brought and a knowledge that his body seemed unable to contain; she with the desire to learn and understand the world; he with his twenty-two years, his charm, and his savoir faire; she all of sixteen, with her golden-brown skin with its scent of wildflowers.
João Batista had been received with full honors at the plantation and there he stayed for two entire months. On days with blue skies and golden afternoons, they rode horses together through the fields, strolled through the woods, sat side by side at the edge of a waterfall, identifying each little sound—the water, the leaves, the birds, and the small forest creatures. João Batista would pull paper and a pen from his pocket and begin to write. He wrote short texts about liberty, equality, and justice. Texts that spoke of Brazil, of independence, of the common humanity shared by all men, including slaves. João Batista read French writers, translated the works of Enlightenment philosophers, and was an abolitionist. In Rio de Janeiro, together with Mariano, he was part of groups that met to read censured books and discuss follies committed by the Crown. He also took part in the city’s nightlife, with its music and drinking, and alongside Mariano, an incorrigible bohemian, he sang, played, wr
ote his own songs, and was a bit of a celebrity in Rio.
Damiana was the most ardent listener the young man had ever encountered. She developed a passionate interest in everything, she wanted to understand, to learn more. When João Batista proposed, Grandma Jacira gave her blessing, tamed by remorse. They made plans to live in the capital, where life seemed so rich and full of possibilities. He would go before her to make preparations and would come back for her when everything was ready.
Two months later, however, Mariano returned in João Batista’s place. Somber, exasperated, in mourning. He would not set foot on the plantation—where he had sworn never again to tread as long as his mother still lived—so he sent someone to fetch Damiana and bring her to the neighboring town where he was staying, so he could give her the news that João Batista had been killed in a street fight. It had been a fight over nothing, an argument over a gambling debt, pure stupidity and pent-up frustration that boiled over, mindless violence. A knife raised to the sky and then a purposeful blow. A fallen body and, suddenly, right there, almost without time to realize the immense consequences of the events, a heart that stopped beating.
Another death in Damiana’s path.
Back on the plantation with her letters from João Batista, she would try to face her fate without losing hope. She was like that, she had an ability to accept life no matter what it brought her way; a gift for not transforming the past into a burden, but rather a locked safe where she forever guarded the treasure of her inextinguishable light. She understood that it was a privilege to have known the love she had known, and so she took up the ideals of João Batista; she wanted to write as he had. At that point in this story, her interest in modern ideas appeared to multiply by two. She had her Uncle Mariano to guide her, to send her the books that João Batista read, to tell her about everything that was happening in the capital, to help her become a person with the ability to make her life mean something. She seemed to possess a source of invincible, internal vitality.
Ever since the death of his twin sister and Jacinto, Mariano had felt responsible for his niece: she was the daughter tragedy had placed in his hands. His plan had always been to remove her from under Jacira’s influence, but he knew that he would never be able to simply send for her. Neither he nor Feliciano, his oldest brother, had married; for different reasons, the two had opted for the life of two court bachelors. If they had married or if Feliciano hadn’t died so young of a heart ailment like their father, perhaps they could have both looked after their niece in the capital. But alone, with his penchant for the nightlife and free love, he felt unfit to care for a young girl. He traveled often and rarely stayed put. He had a passion for visiting the different regions of the enormous country and falling in love with its women, staying as long as he could wherever fate smiled upon him.
Following Jacira’s death, Mariano began to visit the plantation again, but nothing about the rural life interested him. He found it too limited, as well, for his niece’s restless mind, and the plan to take her away from the farm became a sort of obsession. To accomplish this, the only solution he saw was to find another husband for Damiana, another friend who could bring her to Rio as a wife, established, protected.
To this end, then, Mariano once again sent a friend to the plantation: Inácio Belchior, a Portuguese businessman from Porto.
It was strange that Mariano, so experienced, so urbane, would have let himself be deceived so easily. Especially since Mariano wasn’t exactly enamored of the Portuguese and knew of his niece’s nationalist ideals.
But that’s how the human race carries on, stumbling, taking wrong turns and false steps. Inácio—a big talker, flatterer, false to the core, eager for adulation—had the gift of recognizing at first glance just how to please his interlocutor. From the outset he insisted on affirming to Mariano that, in fact, he was nothing more than a legitimate Brazilian born in Portugal by mistake. He adored the new land that, deep in his heart, he felt was his true country, and said all the things Mariano wished to hear, and at length. He did so with even greater persistence after he became aware of his friend’s origins, the stories of the powerful Dona Jacira and her young granddaughter, her only one, and principal heir to her grandmother’s lands. It was just such land—splendid and sublime land, with its prestige and unique ability to confer upon its owner, whoever he was, the status of an important and eminent person in the viceroyalty—that was practically the Portuguese man’s sole secret ambition.
Damiana welcomed Mariano’s friend out of curiosity, and accepted his courting with interest, though without passion. With kindness and goodwill, so to say, but without butterflies, without anxiety, without any of the great emotions that had come with the love she felt for João Batista. Her wish, which was no secret and had been openly declared to anyone within earshot, was to live in the capital, to behold the marvels of the big city, to make friends, participate in reading groups, go to the theater. And write.
The two were soon married. Damiana’s dowry was generous: namely, the extensive lands Belchior so coveted. In formal arrangements, Justino, Damiana’s youngest uncle, would continue to oversee the couple’s lands as he was already doing, since Inácio only wanted the lands for the prestige they lent and had no desire to take on the life of a plantation owner, which would certainly have resulted in his dying of boredom.
Damiana was twenty-six when she finally made it to Rio. Predictably, she fell in love with the city, its bustle, the constant sounds, the impeccably dressed women, their elegance, the city life so different from the malaise of life on the plantation. Her Uncle Mariano served as her guide and mentor. He introduced her to the city and to his friends. He took her to the theater, to the operas that the queen, Carlota Joaquina, had ordered to be brought from Europe. He was right to sense that Damiana’s true place was in the city; during her first year there, it was as though she were discovering a new world. She fell in love with it, a laugh never far from her lips, happy at her uncle’s side.
The teeming capital was a sight to behold. The ports were open and busy, dozens of ships were always anchored at the docks, the activity never-ending. Merchandise was unloaded and shipped out. Visitors were constantly arriving in Rio; scientists and artists from abroad came in search of the tropical wonders that were the talk of Europe. There was nearly always a party, or joyful and elegant reception, the city’s social scene at fever pitch.
Damiana’s friends were Mariano’s friends: young artists and intellectuals, Brazilians who sought changes suited to the country, which is beginning to see itself as a nation. Meetings mixing literature, politics, and music swept the nights in the imposing house where Damiana went to live with Belchior. They recited poetry, discussed philosophy, and began to talk of raising the funds needed to continue publication of a newspaper that defended the cause of Brazilian independence, as the Correio Brasiliense did. Printed in London and smuggled into the country, it was to cease publication due to a lack of funds. They discussed the events in Recife, the disputes between Brazilian manufacturers and Portuguese merchants, the movement for separation from Portugal; revolts had begun to sprout up everywhere. They followed each incident as it unfolded, ecstatic when news reached them that a republican government had been established in Pernambuco; they grew worried when they learn that João VI had sent his entire army to quelch the rebellion. They wore armbands to express their mourning when the principal leaders of the rebellion were hanged in the public square and their bodies mutilated with excessive cruelty, as had happened before with Tiradentes. They helped to circulate an underground manifesto against Portuguese tyranny.
At these gatherings, Inácio Belchior maintained his façade of charm and friendliness for a time, but he slowly grew weary of these meetings. Worse still, he began to worry about what sort of influence his wife’s friendships might have on his ambitions to become a member of the royal court.
Damiana couldn’t be sure of the exact moment when things began to truly deteriorate, but their dispute over what to
name their daughter was perhaps the first of many she remembered with clarity. Even before they had married, she had come to an agreement with her husband that when they had children, he would pick the name in the case of a boy, and she in the case of a girl. As soon as she learned she was pregnant, Damiana was certain she would give birth to a girl, and told her husband that she would give her the name Açucena Brasília, the name of a flower, a Brazilian name, a name for a true daughter of that country. It was also the name she had chosen with João Batista for the first of many children they intended to have, but she left this part out, not in the spirit of keeping secrets, for this was not in her nature, but out of discretion, as she considered that her history with the professor was hers alone, a history she did not wish to share with anyone.
Inácio hadn’t complained about the unusual name; either because he didn’t believe that their child would be a girl, or on account of his habit of flattery and falseness, he pretended he liked the name, too. When Damiana, full of enthusiasm, would speak of her daughter, already referring to her by name, he feigned an agreeing smile. So it came as a great surprise when, after Damiana gave birth and the doctors confirmed it was a girl, he told her that their daughter would be called Antônia Carlota. Outraged, Damiana argued they had already agreed that she would be the one to name any daughters, that he had never expressed any opposition to the name over the previous nine months, and that he knew she did not want their children to have Portuguese names—their daughter had been born in a country that was rich, new, magnificent, and ought to have a name characteristic of that country. Belchior, for the first time ever, ordered her to stay quiet. He screamed that, in his house, he was the one who gave the orders and that their daughter would be called by the name he chose and there would be no more discussion on the matter.
To the consternation of Damiana, who had believed in the story he had always repeated about being nothing but a true Brazilian born overseas by mistake, Inácio registered and baptized his daughter with the Portuguese name. While it’s true that their marriage began to come to an end at that moment, their dispute did not: the girl’s mother and her friends continued calling her Açucena Brasília, and her father and his friends called her Antônia Carlota.
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