Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters

by Maria José Silveira

  Belchior told anyone who asked that Damiana was being treated for her nerves, and that she had been advised by her doctors to rest and avoid visitors. To his friends, he would say that she was at the plantation in Goiás. To her uncles from Goiás, he sent false news.

  Mariano had departed on a long trip to the south of the country. It was a trip he had been planning for many years, a longstanding desire: to visit the provinces which, it was said, were practically a country unto themselves. And so the troupe of amateur artists, three musicians—all of them from wealthy families like his own, one of whom belonged to a family of dry-meat barons from Rio, a young man with a tenor’s voice and several acquaintances in the land of the pampas who acted as guide for the group—set off on a “gallant excursion.” Mariano was the oldest, the most bohemian, and the most generous among them. He ended up involved in many stories, including a wild and amorous exchange, losing his head over a country girl from the Azores whom he mooned over for quite some time. He only returned to the court more than two years later.

  He had thought it strange that his letters to Damiana remained unanswered. He even wrote directly to Inácio Belchior asking after his niece, and received a cold and formal response assuring him that everyone was doing well and that Damiana, thanks to the Good Lord, was recovering from a treatment for her nerves, and for this reason had been unable to write. But he was not to worry, as the doctors had assured him it was nothing grave and Belchior was seeing to her well-being, down to the very last detail. The brothers from Goiás also sent Mariano the same news: Inácio had written telling them that Damiana was treating her nerves and assured them that she was making a full recovery at the hands of the best doctors at court.

  The news of such a lengthy treatment began to worry Mariano, and he decided to return to Rio. His passion for the Azorian woman had subsided, leaving him once again able to exercise normal logic, and he resolved to abandon the life of a “conquistador of the South.” The very same day he arrived in Rio, he set off for Damiana’s house and, from the beginning, found himself faced with Inácio’s evasiveness and subterfuge.

  It took him some time to discover the entire shocking truth. Only then, with the influence of his cousin Ambrósio, whom he felt the need to seek out, and with the threat to break down the convent doors, did Mariano finally obtain authorization to visit Damiana.

  But it was too late.

  He found her sick in body and soul. Something—perhaps tuberculosis, perhaps some other fever—was burning up her body and lungs.

  It was difficult for Mariano to completely grasp what had happened. Damiana was no longer in any condition to coherently explain her years of captivity. She seemed confused about the facts, mixing them up, muttering absurdities that he couldn’t understand. Mariano was scared and perplexed: his niece had been so strong, so fearless, so sure of herself. What had happened? How had she fallen so low? She looked like a tattered ragdoll, light as a feather, something he could carry as though she were a tiny pillow that no longer held its form. Which is what he did. He pulled her to her feet and then, carrying her in his arms, immediately took her away, and after everything that had happened, after all those years, no one, neither the Mother Superior nor her acolytes, dared stand in the way of his resolute steps, not even to ask him what he thought he was doing. They were relieved, in a way, that someone had assumed responsibility for the cloistered woman who had only brought them problems, and who had been growing sicker by the day; they were content to send an urgent notice to her husband.

  Mariano took her to his small bachelor’s house.

  There, in her uncle’s living room, was a watercolor of her done by the painter Chamberlain, a visitor to her old house and former gatherings. Mariano spent hours staring at the portrait where Damiana appeared in all her vigor: her golden-brown skin, her full lips, her above-average height, her hair pulled back in a bun. Her vitality seemed to spill over the faint tones of the watercolor. She smiled with her entire body and eyes; she smiled with her soul.

  Mariano could not forgive himself.

  The fetid air of the convent, her refusal to eat, the tumult of her incomprehensible suffering, all of this would have been too much even for someone as strong as she was. But the fatal and decisive fact seems to have been her complete isolation. Mariano was certain that, had she been able to write him, to tell him everything from the beginning, she would have been able to overcome Belchior’s cruelty. Mariano could not forgive himself, it was inadmissible to him that he had not been there for someone he had always considered a daughter, at the precise moment she most needed him.

  Belchior arrived at Mariano’s home: tense, fearful, feigning worry but quite relieved upon seeing that Damiana’s weakness and incoherence would make it impossible to contradict his story. Instead of waiting for the moment he was to become a widower, he had since become the sole owner of all his wife’s property. He brought Açucena by the hand, the little girl with the wide eyes who, in truth, barely knew her mother.

  In his attempts to explain things to Mariano, Belchior insisted without once vacillating upon the story about Damiana’s nerves, her attacks, the danger she represented to the safety of all, especially herself and her very own daughter, Antônia Carlota, who one day . . . no, it was too painful to remember. Inácio Belchior lied without shame or remorse: she was sick and could not be accounted for, she had no control over her actions. He had felt forced to act as he had, for the good of his wife, because this was what everyone counseled him to do, from the archbishop and the prelate to the doctor who had seen her on the occasion.

  “Who was this doctor, Belchior? Give me his address.”

  “No, that won’t be possible, he’s no longer in the city. He returned with the king to Lisbon, he was the doctor to the royal family, the best around.”

  Mariano couldn’t say why, but he didn’t believe a thing Inácio said. Damiana’s terrified expression when she refused to see her husband confirmed his suspicions. He didn’t know what to do to repair the guilt and pain he felt wash over him.

  More than ever, the city found itself in a frenzy. On account of the events in Portugal, King João VI had returned to Lisbon, leaving his son, Pedro, as prince regent. But the tense climate had persisted, as had the conflict between the orders sent down from Lisbon and the interests of Brazilians. The only thing on everyone’s lips was the need to declare independence once and for all. Rumors flew back and forth. The country leapt headlong toward its defining moment. The city was electric.

  Damiana died two days after the declaration of independence.

  The city commemorated the declaration with enormous fanfare, every lamp was lit, the town glowing from end to end. Fireworks exploded, church bells rang, people gave speeches and danced in the street, groups of musicians played alongside them. Everyone proudly displayed ribbons of yellow and green on their arms or on their clothes, the colors of a free Brazil.

  Damiana’s was a modest funeral. A few friends. Inácio leading Antônia Carlota by the hand. Her uncle Justino, who had come days earlier from the plantation to see his niece, was also there.

  The city was overrun with joy and everyone was happy; there was no room for sorrow or private dramas.

  Back at home from the cemetery, Mariano walked directly to his bedroom closet, where he grabbed two pistols. With all the calm in the world, he crossed the city streets just as he was, the two pistols in hand, heading straight for the house of Inácio Belchior.

  He was completely at peace.

  Completely at peace with what he was about to do.

  VICIOUS MODERNITY

  AÇUCENA BRASÍLIA/ANTÔNIA CARLOTA

  (1816-1906)

  More than her four names, which didn’t even sound so strange on her, but rather had a certain ring to them, what was most notable about Açucena were her laughing eyes, her grin that seemed to leap forth from her round, brown face, and her hands, especially her hands, which had a warm touch, a quality of transmitting something vibrant and strong
that attracted other people. The touch of her hands sowed peace wherever they roamed, leaving behind a sense of well-being that was not unlike the physical relief felt after a massage.

  With those hands, she made sugared sweets that always provoked the same reaction in whoever ate them, the same near-verbatim appreciation, as though each person saw what the others had, as though they had closed their eyes in ecstasy and rolled their tongue around the corners of their mouths in an attempt to conceal an irrepressible desire to find some remainder, no matter how small, of the sweet and then let forth a sigh borne from a state of pure bliss, a twin to the frank expression that always accompanied it: “Mmmmm . . . God almighty, this is the best sweet I’ve had in my entire life.”

  She also created delicate flowers out of bird feathers, of various shades of green, blue, yellow; flowers that appeared so natural that they were often accidentally destroyed when some overzealous slave woman put them in vases full of water as though their vibrancy and texture demanded the same care as fresh flowers. These flowers were highly coveted by those who passed through the city. They were presents Açucena would give to her visitors and friends and which many—without her knowing it, though had she known it she would have found it amusing—then resold.

  Açucena Brasília was small, plump, and had a natural tendency for dressing up: she wore bright colors and a whole assortment of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings—every day, no matter where she went. And everywhere she did go she left a trail of laughter, the rustling of silk, and the jingle of jewelry. She was the most ardent fan of the sugared fruit-candies she made, and it was common to see her with tiny white grains of sugar melting in the corners of her mouth, full of satisfaction. That had been her personality as a girl, and remained once she became a woman. Exuberant, luminous, attractive, like a crystalline font of joy and affection.

  But her life, we can all agree, got off to a difficult start. She had a good-for-nothing, calculating, criminal father. She couldn’t even say she had known her mother. And having two names—no, not two, four, four names, well, just think about it, such a thing could have easily been too great a burden for anyone. But not for Açucena.

  Luckily, her life also had an easy side: her generous and level-headed great-uncle, who raised her giving her total freedom and who was—of this she had no doubt—a much better father than Inácio Belchior ever would have been. He taught her how to read, write, and see the world on its lighter side, a talent which was also in her genes—the capacity to always see the bright side of life, and if necessary, of turning it upside down to laugh at its split seams.

  It was only when he was on his deathbed that Mariano asked Açucena—herself already a mother of two children—if he had told her how he’d killed her father.

  He had not, she responded.

  And so her great-uncle told her how, as the streets throughout the capital had erupted in euphoria to celebrate the newfound independence, no one had noticed him as he walked along, two pistols in his hands.

  Not even the friends he encountered on his way to the house of Inácio Belchior noticed, all of them unable to contain their joy, all of them hugging him. They insisted that he join them in that exuberant commemoration of public joy, but not one of them took note of the guns he carried, not one of them mentioned his late niece, not one of them asked where he was going at a festive time like that.

  He told her how he knocked at Inácio’s door; Inácio, too, had gathered with friends on that historic night, important Portuguese merchants titillated with recent events, confident there was no threat posed by the heir to the Portuguese throne who would now lead the Brazilian government. On the contrary, business was certain to thrive under those new circumstances. Also present were some of Inácio’s aristocratic friends, who likewise felt safe on account of Emperor Pedro I’s royal blood, all of them drinking champagne to ring in the new era, when Mariano knocked on the door and Inácio Belchior himself answered, because most of the slaves were also in the streets celebrating.

  When he saw Mariano, Inácio was overcome with fear. He became even more so when Mariano handed him one of the pistols and calmly asked him to come out into the street so he could kill him. But he wouldn’t kill him like the mouse of a man he was; he was granting Inácio the right to die like the man he had never been.

  Mariano recounted to Açucena how he had been calmer at that moment than he had ever felt in his life. He was certain that he had never been calmer, the day his blood ran as cold as it ever would.

  Inácio, caught by surprise in the presence of his friends, didn’t have so much as the time to think of a way out of the situation. His standing and his honor had been summoned, there on the front step, elegantly invoked by the words Mariano made a point to pronounce with complete levelheadedness so that everyone heard him. Under everyone’s gaze, there on his own doorstep, Inácio could not simply turn and run, as he surely wished to his very core he could do.

  “The duel, right there in front of his house, was quick and painless for me,” Mariano said. “No effort or emotions were wasted on my part when I shot your father. As I have already said, I had never been calmer my entire life. I’ve always been a good shot, and it’s important to recognize that the option Inácio had was to die as a man; that of escaping my bullet was not up for discussion.”

  His composure still intact, Mariano continued to say he then walked into the house bathed in lamplight and went straight to the girl’s room; he lifted her from her bed and carried her away in his arms. He was certain that he would be able to do for her what he had failed to do for his sister and his niece.

  “And you did, Uncle,” she said to him, squeezing his hand. “You most certainly did.”

  In the midst of the festive chaos that had overrun the city that day, Mariano knew he had some time, but not much, since Inácio’s friends, once recovered from their initial surprise, would certainly seek to have him jailed. In reality, he had already prepared a place to flee to, a place where he would not be found, a plantation that was at his disposal as he needed it. It was one of the plantations of the famous Ambrósio cousins (and there, at Mariano’s deathbed, the two of them—great-uncle and niece—had to laugh).

  The famous Ambrósio twins.

  That was how they jokingly referred to the cousins. There could be no doubt: the two sides of the family couldn’t stand one another. And the Ambrósios, mind you, had even done quite a bit, done all they could to help, had practically saved Mariano from prison, had seen to all the papers so that Antônia Carlota—their side of the family referred to her by her Portuguese name because they considered it more aristocratic, more fitting than Açucena Brasília—would receive the entire inheritance that rightly belonged to her. They continued running her father’s business on her behalf. The cousins had made the plantation available to them until the law forgot all about Mariano and his crime, after which she and her uncle then moved to a tiny village near the border between Minas Gerais and São Paulo.

  But, notwithstanding their generosity and all their elegance and pomp, the Ambrósios had been slave traffickers, owners of fleets of slave ships—and they still were then, clandestinely, even after it had been outlawed. They marred the name of a great young nation, and Mariano and Açucena could not accept that. They felt a great debt to their cousins for the favors they had done them, but they could not accept their activities.

  Of course, Mariano and Açucena had always had slaves, just like any other family of their standing. And just like any other family of their standing, they also had never done any hard labor. The difference between them and the others was to be found in the way they treated their slaves, and above all in their views of slavery, in their understanding that it was intrinsically wrong, that it ought not exist. But to demand that they release their slaves would have been to demand that they live beyond their time. They freed a great many slaves, it’s true, and after some time—and well before any law was passed—they began to free the elderly and the newborns, they gave
refuge to runaway slaves, all of it. But it’s also true that they still kept slaves at work and at home, though they truly believed they were treating them as equals. Was such thinking contradictory? Without a doubt. But, without the contradictory consciousness of these early abolitionists, it’s likely abolition would have taken longer than it did to come about.

  In the tiny village where they went to live after they left the plantation, Açucena arrived having barely emerged from adolescence. There, her lovers were numerous and her affairs made her notorious. Like her great-uncle Mariano, she too gave no thought to marriage, but had, as far as anyone could tell, all the men she wanted. She gave birth to five children, of which only three survived.

  Her first love was a widower nearly twenty years her senior, a comendador from a family of barons from Ouro Preto. Entirely besotted with her, the comendador was her instructor in the art of love-making and some choice Latin phrases that, like many Brazilian men of his time, he had incorporated into the daily lexicon when he studied in Portugal at the University of Coimbra. He and Açucena lived in different cities, and for three years she refused all nine of his marriage proposals, made yearly every Easter, Advent, and Christmas, until one day she not only refused his proposal, but informed him that he should not bother coming to see her anymore. The one thing Açucena took from him was the habit of inserting Latin into her conversations, which she did out of pure irony, to add a bit more wit to her already clever remarks and biting commentaries. Now and then, off she’d go with her sine qua non, her modus vivendi, her quantum satis, and her dura lex sed lex—in the living room, the kitchen, the church, past a ring of people dancing the lundu, making everyone laugh, even those who had no idea it was Latin.

  She loved to joke around with her friends, and would do anything to surround herself with the sound of laughter.