by John Keene
He opened the gate, which promptly tumbled from its hinges. The driver, a withered type who had passed the entire trip in a barely controlled tremor, did not help him unload his coffer, nor accompany him to the door, but as soon as D’Azevedo had done so, the man sped off into the darkness at a clip far faster than during the entire journey from the port. D’Azevedo stumbled down the path, dragging his bindle and the heavy wooden box filled with other necessities behind him, and knocked gently on the main door, so as not to wake anyone but the person who might be keeping watch. When, after a great while had passed, there was no answer, he rapped harder. Still, no one responded. He began to wonder if he had been brought to the right building, for there were no addresses in this part of the world nor was there any proof, save the lantern, that a living soul still occupied or visited this building.
Out of the corner of his eye he detected movement—a human? an animal?—in the distance, the darkness wavering as if it were trying simultaneous to conceal and reveal the perceived entity to him, and he turned, only to see nothing but the shadows of shadows. Whether it was a person, a wild creature or a mere phantasm he could not be sure, though it was common knowledge that although the Portuguese had made great strides in civilizing the wilds of this vast terrain, creatures beyond the knowledge of the wisest men in all of Europe still circulated throughout it. He called out to the area where he had spotted, or thought he spotted, someone passing, but there was no response, save a light echo of his own voice. He considered walking around the building, but was unsure of its dimensions, fearing he might get lost or plunge into a ditch once he left the lighted façade, so he seated himself at the base of the main door, his luggage on either side of him, and prayed, until even his sight, against his wishes, surrendered to the dark.
He awoke on a cot in a room just larger than a cubicle, a shuttered, unpaned window just above his head admitting thin razors of sun. The barest minimum of stones paved the floor; the rooms walls sat barren of any adornment except a table, a chair, a battered chamber pot, and a crude crucifix, carved from tulipwood, that hung above the door. Brownish-black mold engendered, he imagined, by the dampness that plagued the region, licked its tongues from the corners to the ceiling. He had been undressed—he had not undressed himself, he could not recall having done so—and placed on the cot, a thin knit blanket, fragrant with sweat and mildew draped over him. He sat up and looked around for his personal effects. The coffer, already pried open, sat in the corner, atop it his bindle, also untied. His doublet, cassock and cincture hung from a hook beside the table. Beneath them, his sandals. How had he not immediately noted them there? He felt heavy in the head, as if he had downed a potion, though he had not eaten or drunk anything, save two cups of coconut water to refresh himself, since arriving at the port. Yet he did not feel even the slightest pang of hunger.
On the desk he saw a small clay bowl, a pitcher of similar material (filled, his nose confirmed, with plain water), a second, smaller fired pitcher (filled with agua de coco), a tin cup, and a rag. He was sure when he had looked at the table just seconds ago these were not there, and this led him to pinch his hand to ensure he was not still wandering about in a dream. The flesh stung between his fingertips. He drank a bit of the coconut water, relieved and washed himself, dressed, reviewed his menagerie to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and it was. He gathered his papers then left his room to meet the men over whose lives he had been entrusted with spiritual and earthly command.
As he stepped into the hall, one of his brethren, Dom Gaspar, a short, skinny, sallow man, of the type that abound in the hinterlands, approached him, and embraced him, offering greetings and inviting him out into the cloister, open to the sky as was the tradition, where the other members of the House, having finished morning prayers, were already assembled and seated. Dom Gaspar said that he had hoped to bring the new provost to morning prayers, which took place at 4, and then provide a tour, but D’Azevedo had been so soundly asleep he did not dare wake him.
Following Dom Gaspar, D’Azevedo tried but could not get a sense of the geometry of the house; from outside, the night before, it had not appeared to be even half as large as the building in Olinda, yet they proceeded down a long hall, without hard angles or corners, and far longer than he would have imagined, until they finally reached a large wood door, which he saw faced what appeared to be the monastery’s front hall and main door.
“This leads to the cloister?” D’Azevedo, trying to get his bearings, asked the brother who, he realized, was only a year or two older than him.
“Why of course, my Lord, Padre Joaquim,” Dom Gaspar responded, in tones that sounded as if they were meant as much to reassure himself as D’Azevedo. He clasped D’Azevedo’s ample sleeve, and led him outside.
It was summer, and morning, so the sunlight at first blinded D’Azevedo. Squinting, he saw standing side by side the two other members of the House. Dom Gaspar guided him to them, and made introductions. Here stood the chalky-faced Barbosa Pires, his beard a coal apron suspended from his lower lip, a richer black than his thinning tonsure. He had, D’Azevedo noted to himself, a humped back, and a severe stutter. Beside him towered Padre Pero, a robust man of middle age, deeply tanned, his mouth framed by full voluptuous lips that drew the eyes to them, a laborer in build, worldly in the manner of someone who had been reared near Portugal’s European capital. Dom Gaspar, the hospitaller, expressed the gratitude of his fellow monks for D’Azevedo’s presence, but said that they had not known when to expect him. Padre Pero, to whom you had written a letter announcing the decision, said he had never received it: Padre Barbosa Pires, in his torturous manner, seconded his elder.
Resuming his comments about the monastery, Dom Gaspar could see that D’Azevedo was growing unsteady on his feet, and with a gesture summoned a stool, which a tiny man, dark as the soil they stood on, his florid eyes fluttering, brought out with dispatch. They continued on in this manner, Dom Gaspar speaking—Padre Pero very rarely interjecting a thought, Padre Barbosa Pires mostly nodding or staring, with a gaze so intense it could polish marbles, at D’Azevedo—detailing a few of the House’s particulars: its schedule, its routines, its finances, its properties and holdings, its relationship with the neighboring town and villages, and with the Indians. The servant was one of eight people owned by the monastery, several of whom had been rented or leased out to various people in the town. D’Azevedo’s family still held bondspeople, though on the larger matter, particularly as it related to a professed house, he was agnostic.
When it was his turn to speak, D’Azevedo explained the threadbare plans as you had broached them with him, augmented by others he had conceived during his passage by sea: the proposed changes to the house, how he would take some time to identify his second in command, how there would be a renewed effort to bring the town and neighboring villages into doctrinal line, how eventually, with satisfactory growth, this house might ultimately gain its independence from Olinda, how a college might rise with it as well. He emphasized in particular nurturing whatever roots of faith already existed here, and in the nearby region, so its residents might assist in the House’s work, ultimately, he said, repeating your exact words, “to propagate the Lord’s Word far and wide.”
The brethren listened, though Padre Pero seemed at times to be looking through him, while Padre Barbosa Pires was inspecting some point deep in his own interior. Dom Gaspar, however, hung on every word. At one point he paused to look at them and could not tell the three men apart; all had full black beards, all had a hump, all were deeply tanned. He closed his eyes until he felt a finger, Dom Gaspar�
��s, tap his shoulder, and when he looked again, all three men were as different as they had been minutes before. After D’Azevedo finished, with obvious effort, Dom Gaspar helped him to his feet, and ushered him to his office, where he might review the various ledgers and other important documents, alternating with rest, until the midday Mass.
As they headed back into the building, Fr. D’Azevedo asked, “My dear brother, whom shall I thank, in addition to our Father, for bearing me to my room and putting me to bed? I should like to offer my especial thanks, given my state of exhaustion last night, and, apparently, this morning.”
Dom Gaspar turned to D’Azevedo, who was bracing himself against a wall, again trying to orient himself in the white maze of corridors, and answered, “Then you shall have to thank yourself, for you did so yourself, your Grace.” The provost halted in a spot where one hallway twisted into another and, clasping the loose fabric of D’Azevedo’s sleeve firmly, lest the unsteady man fall away from him, Dom Gaspar continued, “I am not sure which of the Negroes bore your coffer; perhaps the one named João Baptista, whom they call amongst themselves Kibanda, who brought you your seat in the cloister. Maybe another. None of us heard your Grace come in last night, though the slaves reported to us this morning that you were here.” At this D’Azevedo paused, trying again to recall anything of the previous night, any assistance, especially by the black who had brought the stool, whose face he could not at all remember, but Dom Gaspar, like a horse drawing a plough across early spring soil, tugged him forward, onward, and before he knew it he was seated in his office, the Provost’s.
D’Azevedo started to arrange the books on his desk, but promptly fell into a delirium. He was borne back to his monastic cell, and stayed there, tossing and turning for several days, attended periodically by Dom Gaspar, who was also the infirmarian, and, he thought, the Negro João Baptista, until he recovered. As soon as he felt fit enough to leave his room, and resume his duties, about a fortnight after he had arrived, Dom Gaspar took him on tour of the monastery’s grounds, which were ampler in acreage than he had imagined. There was the main house, consisting of the main building with two wings, bracketing the cloister, which was enclosed on its back side by a stone wall. Several other buildings dotted the grounds to the north: the stable, the slave quarters, a coop, a work-shed, a privy. The monks kept several horses, a dairy cow, and chickens; grew maize and tobacco; maintained a garden, despite the poor soil, with European and American vegetables and herbs; and husbanded a small nursery of trees: avocados, papayas, acerolas, tangerines, limes, mangoes. Palms bearing coconuts formed a towering ridge beyond the gate. What they could not consume the house had contracted, under patent with the governor of the captaincy, to sell in the market near the port, as well as at one held monthly in town.
Tending to all of this, as well as all of the domestic tasks the monks did not undertake themselves, Dom Gaspar said, were the bondsmen, several of whom had arrived with the monk postulants themselves, one of whom was a gift of the leading local landowner, another a bequest, and two of whom were the result of natural increase by women on neighboring plantations; these two boys had been returned to the monastery when they reached working age. The last of the men had been won in a lottery. Three had been lent or rented out to planters in the neighboring towns, but were now back until the fall harvest arrived. None were women, as the presence of that sex would, as other houses of the Lord had witnessed, have posed an insurmountable threat to the monks’ oaths. Dom Gaspar recited the slaves’ names, and D’Azevedo had them written down: Aparecido, Benedito (commonly known as Bem-Boi), Jorginho (who they called Zuzi), Miguel (Muéné, who was frequently called Negão), and Zé (José Africano), and the children Filhinho (either Fela or Falodun) and Zé Pequeninho (sometimes called Ayoola). It was only after he finished that D’Azevedo told him his count was off, and Dom Gaspar remembered he had forgotten João Baptista, whom, he added, they sometimes called Jibada. D’Azevedo requested that Dom Gaspar show him where all the records, of the slaves and every other aspect of their property, were kept, so that he might have the clearest sense possible of the monastery’s holdings.
As with the house and estate themselves, so with his brethren: with each day their personalities came ever clearer into scope. Most senior among them, Padre Pero, having been present at the monastery since its founding, might have served as a fount of knowledge about its history and development, as well as that of the region, but was by his very nature, D’Azevedo learned, ill-tempered, and taciturn. After a career in the military, he had exchanged the sword for the Word, preaching the Gospel in the countryside, evangelizing among white and native alike, later serving as a liaison and spiritual counsel to the municipal administration. He among the monks also kept a close watch over the bondspeople, with much the same intensity as he oversaw the livestock. Next, Padre Barbosa Pires, with that jet beard, who scuttled from task to task. He rang the bell in the morning and evening, called everyone to prayer and dinner, prepared vestments for Mass, oversaw the kitchen. He too was laconic, and appeared always to be trying to decipher something in D’Azevedo that the new priest kept scrambled. Ever at Barbosa Pires’s side was the honey-cheeked child Filhinho, whom he referred to playfully, but without humor in his eyes or voice, as his “punchbag.” And then there was Dom Gaspar, sent but a year before, as D’Azevedo had been sailing back from Europe, diligent, eager to help, so gentle in manner, the person best equipped to welcome visitors and now watch the monastery’s books.
With his sense of his brethren firm and the slaves fully at his command, D’Azevedo commenced his restorative work. He had the monastery’s entire exterior washed and whitewashed. He had the gate, from one end to the other, repaired and restiled. He had lanterns placed at regular paces about the front and rear of the grounds, so that a night traveler would not find himself in darkness so utter, and took care to prevent that any of them should lead to a conflagration. He had signs carved and mounted throughout the corridors, so that anyone could, by reading them, reorient himself. He had markers placed in even rods amidst the fields to identify and segregate the differing crops. He had a visitors’ book placed in the front hall. He had new rules written and distributed to his brethren, and had Brother Gaspar, as D’Azevedo looked on, recite them to the slaves. He requested a periodic audience with each of the three monks, and a regular gathering of them all, outside of daily prayers and Masses, once a month. From Padre Pero he asked for a short, written census of the town’s residents, and an oral report of the status of the Faith in the town and surrounding villages. Also once every several months one of the fathers would have to offer the divine sacrament of Mass to the slaves, and although he did not want them to read the Holy Scripture, or anything else for that matter, as much of it as that they could understand would be told to them, and they must confess their sins too.
In all things, save work and prayer, he reminded his brethren, their order required modesty, chastity, renunciation, mortification, dedication to the interior life. Less food, less wine, no chatter. At the austere morning meal and at dinner, at which he would always pass on the stews and dried meats, they were to read aloud from the first five books of the Bible or a similarly pious text. At the gravesite of Padre Travassos, which Dom Gaspar had pointed out to him and which bore no stone, he himself placed a new one, topped by the last coins from his doublet pocket.
In this way the house settled into a new and heretofore unfelt rhythm. Padre D’Azevedo’s abiding aim, it appeared, was the sustenance of the foundation, but he did exchange letters of greeting with its municipal officials, the judiciary, the militia leaders, and the
representatives of the wealthiest families, many of whom were one and the same, and then rode out to meet with several of them, opening up correspondences which he faithfully maintained. Given the constant threat of the French, though co-religionists, and the Netherlanders, who were not, he felt he must act to ensure a front line of defense, secured through amity and a shared belief in the preservation of the Faith. D’Azevedo meanwhile submerged himself in the monastery’s archives, initiating the process of expanding its subscriptions and soliciting books from the main house in Olinda, as well as from the capital at Bahia, and from Lisbon, Coimbra and Évora, in preparation for a library that would benefit the priests, and, perhaps down the road, the envisioned college. He read and reread the ledger books, so as to wring out every possible real that might be hidden or misentered there.
Each of his fellow monks saw him as though through a prism, each viewing a differing facet of a carefully cut, rare stone. They all would have concurred in calling attention to his knowledge on an array of matters; his scholarship, so evident in his individual and group remarks with them, in the letters he drafted to the mother house in Olinda and to a range of correspondents across the country, and in his impromptu Scriptual tuitions at Mass; and his faithful obeisance to the rules he himself had established and would not rewrite depending upon the circumstances. He wrote in a clear hand; he did not equivocate in his speech; he quoted the Old Testament in Latin from memory perfectly. None inquired about, though Dom Gaspar was intrigued by, his private theological-philosophical project, to which he devoted a portion of each day, and he spoke nothing of it. He did not lead by force, or intimidation, or legerdemain, or threat of recourse to the Olinda House, which is to say through you, but by example. In the main, though he knew he was dealing with several refractory personalities, he detected no disquiet. To Gaspar, to whom he assigned greater duties, including now serving as his secretary and novice master when new ones arrived, and in whom he placed great confidence, his presence appeared not just a ballast, but a blessing.