by John Keene
D’Azevedo searched the shelves for any books that might provide guidance, but his eyes landed upon none. Instead, after a few minutes, he sat down at his desk, looking straight at João Baptista, whose return gaze induced a steady, intensifying calm, and said:
“You, João Baptista, have been accused by Padre Pero of very serious charges, do you understand?”
João Baptista, still in the process of self-cleansing, nodded.
“Can you speak?”
“Yes,” the slave said, his voice as soft and distinct as crumpling vellum.
“Very well, please speak your answers, João Baptista,” D’Azevedo said. “Padre Pero alleges that you were planning to burn down this monastery and all of us in it. He also alleges that you sent some of the slaves, the property of this monastery, like yourself, into flight. There is also the matter of your dressing in the manner and likeness of a woman, and there may be other evils and vilenesses that I shall learn about when I have further opportunity to speak with Padre Pero and Padre Barbosa Pires.”
João Baptista set the rag on the edge of D’Azevedo’s table, and smiled. “Before we proceed, I would ask that you call me Burunbana, as that is my name.”
The impudence of the black man took him aback. Not only was it not a slave’s station to challenge a white person, let alone a superior, but he had only ever heard João Baptista, like all the slaves, respond in the most basic fashion.
“João Baptista, I will not have you speak to me in that manner.” He continued: “In this house we use Christian names. I have read the record by which you came here, by acquisition via a lottery after the death of your owner, a lay brother at a now shuttered Carmelite friary at Sirinhaém, north of here on the Pernambucan coast, and there you were baptized João Baptista.”
“Your records do say such a thing occurred,” came the reply. “They may baptize me a thousand times in that faith, with water or oil, no matter. The one who died was named João Baptista dos Anjos, by his own hand, and they imposed his name upon me as a penalty because he took his life, though that is another matter. I would nevertheless ask again that you call me Burunbana, as that is my name.”
“Did you foment a plot to set fire to this monastery and kill all of us in it, and did you assist in the escape of any persons bonded to this house?”
First laughter, then: “Fire? We could have slashed your throats with daggers, we could have poisoned the stews or the wells; we have done none of these, and not just because of the threats and brutality here, which you have closed your eyes to, or because of the authorities in Alagoas or Lisbon who would hang us. Now I ask one final time that you call me Burunbana, as that is my name.”
D’Azevedo slammed his palm on the tabletop. “I am the Provost of this house, and you will not speak with me this way. When you speak with me you will use your Christian name—”
“As you use yours, Manoel Aries ben Saúl?”
The priest shot up from his seat and retreated toward his wall of books. “What did you say?”
“As you use yours, Manoel Aries? Or should I call you Joaquim D’Azevedo? Which do you prefer?”
“How do you . . . where did you hear . . . that name?”
“I would ask that you take your seat, and call me as I have asked, Burunbana, as that is my name.”
D’Azevedo returned slowly to his own stool, never removing his eyes from Burunbana. “Buranbana,” he said.
“Thank you,” Burunbana replied. “I know that you are Manoel Aries D’Azevedo, the son of Saúl, known as Paulo, and Miriam D’Azevedo Espinosa, known as Maria. I know that they fled Portugal and settled among the secret community in the city of São Luis, once belonging to the French and now under the aegis of the Portuguese—”
“But how . . .” Aries D’Azevedo said.
“—and that at the urging of your parents you assumed the last name of your mother, D’Azevedo, when you left your home and entered this order, where you took the name Joaquim, which both faiths honor. I know that you have written to her in that tongue you speak among yourselves; that you have written to others in Olinda and in the town in that tongue; that your thoughts come to you first in that tongue sometimes before they transform into the language of the Lusitanians.”
“Who are you?”
“I know that you do not peer into the water to see your reflection, though you have one; that you have never once willingly tasted the pork or shellfish served in the stews and soups the local women bring here; that your loins are cut as are all the men of the Book and as the followers of Mohammed. I know that you conceal limes for one of your holidays, and beneath a secret floor in your coffer harbor marbles for another, and special candles for a third. I know that you placed not just a stone, but coins and a ribbon at the grave of Padre Travassos, whom you had heard might be one of your own.”
Aries D’Azevedo lowered his voice while glancing at the door, which he remembered he had locked. “What evil spirit do you have familiarity with, or who has revealed all of this to you?”
“I know all this and more, such as that you are giving those boys from the town special knowledge for they, as you do, wear the Roman faith like a mask, so that you can send them out to sustain the heritage of your ancestors, just as I do mine. I also know that you are in great danger if you remain here, because you are in the presence of real evil, but that evil is not mine, nor, in your case, will it come from the Dutch.”
Aries D’Azevedo walked around his office. Although he was sure Burunbana did not turn a single degree, it was if those eyes were accompanying him from point to point.
“Why were you dressed as a woman, and what is this evil that you speak of?” He was now standing behind Burunbana, who, though physically quite small, seemed to be taking up an increasing amount of space.
“I am a Jinbada, or as one says in your language, Quibanda. I can read the past and the future. I can speak to the living, as now, and to the dead. I can feel the weather before it turns and the night before it falls. Every creature that walks this earth converses with me. I am such a one who is both. Sometimes the spirits fill and mount me as one and the other. Truly I was not familiar with your evil until I arrived on these shores. From the time I landed here the devils bade me serve them, forcing me to lie with them when I did not want to, and commanding all the women, men and children to do the same.”
“Burunbana,” Aries D’Azevedo began, but the illogic of what he was hearing, coupled with the revelations already uttered scattered his thoughts, like his secreted marbles, about the room.
“Those two have put all the Africans to wickedness and grief, from the sun’s rise till it sets. When the brother Gaspar first arrived they took care to cloak their malevolence, as your Satan often wears a cape when he strolls in the sun. I read you when you first passed through that gate, and believed you could assist in our and your own liberation. Padre Pero slew Travassos, drowning him in the lagoon, because that one tried to prevent him from using me for nefarious purposes, and Barbosa Pires drove away Duran Carneiro by denouncing him, as one of your people, to the civil officials here and to the representatives of the Holy Office in Bahia.”
“By any of the laws, of nature or state,” Aries D’Azevedo started, but before he could complete his sentence, Burunbana whispered, “They are coming lest you fear . . .” rendering the priest silent.
“Is it now the hour when you are to meet them? Go straightaway to collect Dom Gaspar, as he will be departing with us. Do not go anywhere but to the chapel, and do not inquire of those two, and bring the head of hair that he brought there, and come straight back.”
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br /> Aries D’Azevedo stared at Burunbana, trying his best to decode the person before him, but could only register how empty his own mind was, more so than it had ever been. At first he could not move, but somehow did and, since it was already past nine and the house was darkening despite the summer sun’s long tail, he took a lamp and went directly to the chapel. The hallway narrowed as he walked, and felt so cool that for a second he wondered if he had somehow entered a secret passage taking him underground; moreover he felt the impulse to visit his room and pack up a few of his things, at least a sack’s worth, but every time he began to turn around he rebuked himself and kept forward. Soon he found himself in the chapel. Dom Gaspar was kneeling, saying a rosary, weeping.
Aries D’Azevedo lifted his fellow monk from his knees, and pulled him toward the door. He started to ask where Padres Pero and Barbosa Pires were, but remembered Burunbana’s warning. He also thought to tell Dom Gaspar about the servant, then thought better of it. Instead, he had Gaspar hand over the wig and they left the chapel, arm-in-arm, bearing swiftly back to the office, relocking the door carefully behind them.
Burunbana was standing at the windowsill, peering into a bowl and muttering something barely audible. He had splashed the water from the urn in various places on the floor, a pattern Aries D’Azevedo could not discern, then annointed himself with with a bit more. Another bowl sat to the side, and Burunbana drank from it, then traced symbols on his forehead and crown, and chest, and shoulders, and stomach, and loins. Aries D’Azevedo did not, dared not interrupt him.
“You must give him the list you wrote and the hair to me,” Burunbana said without turning around. The priest complied. “Now we must make haste. Extinguish the lamp. We will depart through this portal.”
“Where are we going?” Aries D’Azevedo asked.
Burunbana didn’t answer, but cracked one of the shutters and peered out into the lightless cloister. From somewhere erupted three consecutive cannon booms. Aries D’Azevedo began to examine various papers on his desk, trying to figure out which he ought to grab, and scanned his shelves and walls to identify any books or documents he ought bring with him.
“Extinguish the lamp,” Burunbana repeated, his voice a feather splitting stone. Aries D’Azevedo complied, and Gaspar filed behind him. Burunbana opened the shutters completely, and tossed the water out into the black cloister, hoisting himself up through the window and out into the warm air. The line the water left, a long diagonal across the stone walkway, into the yard’s center, and towards the rear gate, glimmered as if studded with flecks of phosphorus, or miniature stars. Aries D’Azevedo could not believe his eyes, but he kept up, and soon he and Dom Gaspar were up over the back wall, then the gate at the rear of the estate and into the curtain of trees, moving along a path that glowed only when Burunbana trod on it.
They continued in this way, through dense brush, in a tunnel of blackness in which only the ground offered light, for what felt like hours, until finally, they reached a clearing, and there stood the two boys, Zé Pequenhinho holding a dim candle, and two of the three remaining Africans. Burunbana did not ask where the other one was, and none of them spoke. It was only as Burunbana blew out the candle and they resumed their trek that Aries D’Azevedo registered that both of the former adult workers wore priests’ white doublets.
I shall conclude this letter by noting that the final destinations, much like their destinies, differed for the Africans and for your two men, Aries D’Azevedo and Gaspar Leite, for, as Burunbana assured them, under the Netherlanders each would be able to fulfill his liberty, which included practicing his faith and profession, whatever those might be, while no such freedom was guaranteed to the Africans unless they claimed it themselves. Aries D’Azevedo and Gaspar initially asked to remain with them, as brothers, in that place of refuge to which they initially went, and the provost assured the enslaved ones of their emancipation there on the spot, but Burunbana countered that they were already free and neither writ nor oath, from the Church, Dutch or Portuguese, could trump that. In any case, he provided the priests with a guide, who would connect them to a network of guides providing safe passage and the necessities for survival, leading them along the eastern base of the mountains north, all the way to Olinda, which you, and other members of the House, fearing persecution after Corneliszoon Loncq had raised the flag of Nassau, had already fled.
As for Aries D’Azevedo, who now once again goes by the name of Manoel, he has abandoned the cloth and practices the faith of his ancestors without worry, repeating the motto of that Greek philosopher: “When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and withdrew from the wickedness of the times.” Yet in his writings and study he pursues a thread of thought that steadily brings him into conflict both with the training his schooling, in Coimbra and elsewhere, imposed on him, and also with that of his people, for whenever one looks too deeply beyond the surface of this world of men, one may find truths submerged that not even the most long-held beliefs and traditions can withstand. As for Dom Gaspar, he will alert you, in case you did not think to examine the martyrology’s binding, to the presence of this history. He suffered a crisis of the soul upon his return to his native city, but clove ultimately to your faith and thus returns to you.
As for the Africans, they now live in such a place as does not exist on your map, though you will eventually find it, even if you can never lay claim to it. There is no leader, only a community, with elders who consult and concur amongst themselves about our habits and practices. Many from the town also come here, and from other towns, including your people too, the sugar plantations having bled so that they appear likely to die for lack of cultivation, though we can be sure that the Dutch will show as much industry as the Portuguese, and will install new gears to insure the smooth running of their machine. As for that Burunbana, who is a Jinbada and was known as João Baptista, that one continues spirit work among the people, who is their agent and their instrument, their conduit and gift, that one is I who write you this letter, for as my sister will write in the distant future, “it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive,” I who know what I am meant to know and am where I am meant to be, writing in tribute to my dear brother Manoel Aries with whom I maintain a correspondence, it is thus that I close this letter with the proper date, Elul 5390, signed, as you will see when you have raised this page to the candlelight,
N’Golo BURUNBANA Zumbi
GLOSS ON A HISTORY
OF ROMAN CATHOLICS IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1790- 1825;
OR THE STRANGE HISTORY
OF OUR LADY OF THE SORROWS
A History of Roman Catholics in the Early American Republic: 1790–1825, Jos. N. O. de L’Écart-Francis and Ambrose Carroll Meyer (Boston: Flaherty & Smith, 1895)
The status of the ancient Faith differed on the eastern shores of the Mississippi and its southerly tributaries. A convent and school, established at the turn of the nineteenth century, are referred to indirectly in the records of His Holiness Bishop John Carroll of the Diocese of Baltimore, whose curacy extended at that time to the far western frontiers of the virgin Republic’s lands. A specific reference may be found, however, in the personal papers of Fr. Auguste-Marie Malesvaux, a native of Saint-Domingue, whose evangelistic labors encompassed the Spanish and later French territories from Louisiana as far north as the Great Lakes. Malesvaux offers brief notations on the convent and school, which he asserts were the first in this region. Flemish Nuns of the Order of the Most Precious Charity of Our Lady of the Sorrows established both near the village of New Hurttstown, in this front
ier region of western Kentucky, in 1800. Because the convent and school suddenly vanished without a trace, and within several years the order itself disappeared as well, and as the nearby non-Catholic settlement suffered through a series of calamities before dwindling to near-extinction until its reestablishment in 1812, no other definitive records of this foundation remain.* It was not until the Reverend Father Charles Nerinckx, the native of Herfe-
* Carmel was the lone child among the handful of bondspeople remaining at Valdoré, the coffee plantation to which Olivier de L’Écart returned in late July 1803. The estate, over which his elder brother Nicolas had presided for more than two decades, clung like a forget-me-not to the cliffs high above the coastal city of Jérémie, west of the Rivière Grand’Anse, in the southern district of the colony of Saint-Domingue. Nearly all of Valdoré’s able-bodied bondswomen and men, who at the height of the estate’s prosperity numbered more than one hundred and twenty-five souls, had fled or been slain during the successive waves of liberation, revolt and retribution that had convulsed the colony since the first flash of rebellion in France. By edict of the Revolution, they had already been freed, first across the sea and on these shores again by Sonthonax’s pen, against Nicolas de L’Écart’s and the other plantation owners’ wishes. Then under the threat of Napoleon’s guns they had been captured or forced to return to Valdoré, and just as soon, many had swiftly escaped—parents, children, all—into the surrounding green maze of forests, hills and mountains, eventually joining or merging into the various rebel fronts, including those led by the leaders Plymouth and Macaya, that coursed throughout the long dagger of peninsula upwards into the Artibonite Valley. Others nevertheless had pledged their futures and future freedom to the Tricolor’s military in its repeated campaigns to reclaim what had for years been France’s Caribbean mint.