Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  “This is Salpina,” Unauá said quietly, “favorite woman of Ribeiro.” A strong note of pride came into her voice: “And my brother, Guaraci.”

  Salpina wore no clothes, but her body was lightly tinctured with urucu dye and she bore herself with un-self-conscious dignity, in contrast to the women who squatted near them or straggled about the clearing. Unauá’s brother had a magnificent full-chested physique, with muscular arms and legs, and moved with the athletic grace of an animal in the wild.

  Salpina was studying Inácio closely, with a firm gaze. “He is waiting within,” she said.

  The moment Inácio entered the maloca, its dark, dingy interior assailed him with such an overpowering fetor that he wanted to back out. He forced this weakness aside, and as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he found that many lay in their hammocks; when he moved toward them, some groaned and cried out, but most lay still, their eyes closed, apparently too feeble to move.

  Hemorrhagic dysentery was raging through these malocas, afflicting half the people who dwelt here. This debilitating sickness was aggravated by an outbreak of influenza, an alien illness to which the natives had no resistance. Some were attempting to combat the maladies with concoctions of herbs and plants and the broth of boiled parrots, but the majority lay ravaged and exhausted in their hammocks, amid their own filth, waiting for death.

  As Inácio walked slowly between the hammocks, a sudden anger possessed him. Surely Nicolau, his uncle, master of these lands and these malocas, must be aware of this hideous epidemic, this horrible suffering. Yet he had said nothing.

  Salpina had gone on ahead of him and was standing beside the hammock of Affonso Ribeiro.

  Inácio looked down and saw a big man lying on his back. A stale, dry odor rose from the man’s body, and great folds of loose flesh rolled against the netting of the hammock. Vermin crawled through the matted hair of Ribeiro’s chest. Reflected in his eyes, shadowed and sunken though remarkably bright with fever, was naked fear.

  “Thanks to our Mother, Padre,” Ribeiro said, in a voice stronger than Inácio expected, “thanks that you came.”

  “As soon as the child called me,” Inácio said.

  There was a gurgling, phlegmy sound from the hammock, and Inácio realized that Ribeiro was trying to laugh. When the sounds ceased, Ribeiro went on: “They all came for Affonso Ribeiro: the king’s soldiers, the Normans, Gomes de Pina, Nicolau Cavalcanti, Dom Duarte Coelho. Now you, Padre . . .Who comes next? Who comes to fetch Affonso Ribeiro?”

  “Fear not,” Inácio said, understanding all too well what this man on the verge of death was asking.

  “They must go back,” Ribeiro said vaguely. “This is no place for them. Take them, Padre, to their own people.”

  Inácio was briefly puzzled; then he realized that Ribeiro was referring to Salpina and to Unauá and Guaraci.

  “Salpina is a Tupiniquin, the daughter of the elder Aruanã,” Ribeiro said moments later. “She’s been at my hammock these many years, but has never forgotten the malocas of her father. They must leave this valley, Padre.” With a tremendous effort, he turned his head so that he could look at Salpina as he continued: “She hated Pernambuco from the day we arrived. Her only joy — her only love — was these two. The girl is nineteen, Padre, the boy a year younger. They must go back!” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Your uncle knows Aruanã.”

  “My uncle would not object?”

  Ribeiro ignored the question. “Take them away from this place — or surely they will be ruined like the others you see.” He was seized by another spasm of coughing that left his voice weak. “When your uncle came to this valley, he said, ‘This is Engenho Santo Tomás; there is nothing else.’ Soon the people at these malocas saw that their past was gone. Work, work, work, Nicolau Cavalcanti told them, as every planter does — work and you’ll be redeemed from your savagery. Work, work, work and you’ll come to behold a real paradise in this Terra do Brasil!” Ribeiro tried to raise his head. “I told them — Nicolau Cavalcanti, every one of them — that the natives would rather die than work at their cane fields. I, Ticuanga of the Tupiniquin, saw this.”

  And here Affonso Ribeiro began to ramble, recalling feasts and fights with the Tupiniquin, when he lived at Aruanã’s malocas. Salpina and the two young people, Unauá and Guaraci, stood near the hammock: Several times Ribeiro spoke briefly to them, telling them that this black robe would help them to return to the Tupiniquin. Finally he fell silent, except for his labored breathing.

  And Inácio asked the question that had been nagging at him from the start: “The woman at the stockade — Jandaia — is she your daughter?” Ribeiro, in his delirium, had boasted of so many children and concubines that Inácio was not sure of the exact relationship of the girl or her brother to Ribeiro.

  “Yes,” Ribeiro said, following it with a weak laugh. “The one I gave to Senhor Cavalcanti.”

  Inácio did not grasp the implication of what Ribeiro had said. “Unauá and the boy would leave the place of their mother?”

  “Mother? She’s been no mother to them — not since she moved to Senhor Cavalcanti’s house.”

  “Merciful Jesus,” Inácio said quietly. “I did not see.”

  “What was there to see, Padre? Your uncle is no different from the others. He’s not a bad man. Since the days at Porto Seguro, his life has been tied to this land. And this land, Padre, is the conqueror of men and their souls.”

  Inácio saw that he had been blind to the sins of Nicolau Cavalcanti because he had not wanted to recognize them.

  And now Ribeiro was saying, “I, too, have sinned, Padre.” Then he ordered Salpina, Unauá, and Guaraci away from the hammock.

  “When did you last talk with a priest?” Inácio asked gently.

  Affonso Ribeiro began to tremble violently and made a strong effort to control his limbs. His eyes filled with terror and he cried, “O sinner, sinner, Padre — see what I became! Ticuanga! Prince of the Tupiniquin! Ticuanga . . .” Ribeiro’s voice trailed off, only to rise again, with one desperate appeal: “Absolve me! O dear God!”

  An hour passed before Inácio had heard Affonso Ribeiro’s full confession. Then he left the degredado’s side and hurried away from the malocas. Unauá had been waiting to escort him back to the stockade, but he indicated that he’d make his way alone.

  It was about half a mile to the stockade, and he soon came to the edge of the trees. There he fell to his knees and sobbed openly, cries torn from the very depths of his slender frame.

  For hours, Inácio begged that the penances of this great sinner be heard. And only when it began to grow dark did he finally rise to make his way to the stockade.

  Inácio stood at the end of the bench in the big room, his bony frame gaunt and diminished in the wavering light from the tallow wick.

  Inácio remembered entering this damp building only moments ago and looking at the women in the room with new eyes, wondering who were servants and who the harlots of Nicolau Cavalcanti. He’d seen their young, some at Nicolau’s feet, a group somewhat older sitting with Tomás, and this living evidence of Nicolau’s lust shocked him afresh. Slowly he had approached the bench, where Nicolau and Jacob de Noronha were sitting alone.

  Staring at some point beyond Inácio, his hands clasped together on top of the table, Nicolau Cavalcanti began to speak:

  “‘And Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to be his concubine, and when she was alone and pregnant, the Lord heard her cry of distress. You will have a son, He told her, and you shall call him Ishmael. Go back to your mistress and be her slave.’”

  Nicolau spoke in the direction of Papagaio, who sat leaning back as far as he could, obviously unwilling to have any part in this exchange. “Lord, how I fear for this priest,” Nicolau said, as if Inácio were not present. “How I wish he could be spared the ache of discovery.”

  “May I be spared nothing,” Inácio said with force. “May every agony be mine! May I vomit up all the corruption brought to thi
s land!”

  Nicolau continued to speak as if his nephew were not there. “There were men, friend Papagaio, who sought a nirvana in the East. Sailors, soldiers, all with their visions of heaven’s gate open to them if they smote the Infidel. We sailed out to the East as soldiers of Christ’s Order and we were corrupted by greed, by every vice known to men. What, I ask, makes this nephew of mine think that it should be so different here — that veterans of the Indies should come to be angels on these shores?”

  “We are all sinners,” Inácio said. “But, Uncle . . . that glorious Easter, when Admiral Cabral discovered Santa Cruz — what have we done with this holy promise?”

  Nicolau turned angrily on him. “For God’s sake, Padre, open your eyes — and truly see this Santa Cruz you’ve come to!”

  “I do see it, Uncle,” Inácio said calmly. “There at your malocas, I see the people you crucify so that cane may flourish upon these lands. I see them worn and wasting upon lands that once were their people’s —”

  “Their lands?” Nicolau exploded. “Their lands? Take care, Padre. You may see only sinners among us, but we’re Christians, and we may beg a return to His grace. You weep for pagans.”

  “I weep for His children who lie dying even as you speak.”

  “They die as they live — like beasts.”

  From the hammocks came the sound of a woman quietly weeping. Papagaio rose and walked to where Helena lay to comfort her.

  Nicolau gestured fiercely at Inácio. “Go! Go to your pagans! Speak meekly when they cry out for the limbs of their enemies. Embrace them when they raise their bloodstained hands to mock you. Go!”

  Plunging into the night, Inácio made his way out of the stockade and strode fearlessly through the trees, back to the malocas.

  He stayed there four days, and was with Affonso Ribeiro when he died on the second night.

  Ribeiro was buried the next morning, just beyond the clearing. Inácio saw that Salpina showed no interest in the service; but it pleased him that the girl Unauá followed the ritual with curiosity and that her brother, Guaraci, too, seemed interested.

  All those days he was in the malocas, Inácio labored without food or rest, passing from one hammock to the next. He washed every wasted, soiled body with his own hands.

  On the fourth day, a messenger came to tell him that Papagaio was returning to Olinda. It pained him to leave the many who lay so desperately ill, but he could not stay: Nóbrega had expected him back from Pernambuco a month ago.

  He left the malocas the next morning with the guides who’d accompanied him and Papagaio from Olinda. And with Salpina, Unauá, and Guaraci: Honoring his solemn promise to Affonso Ribeiro, he planned to take the trio by sea to the Bahia. Once there, he would seek a way to return them to their malocas at Porto Seguro.

  Salpina strode irritably ahead of him, clutching resentfully at the robe Inácio had persuaded her to wear. Unauá had on the same yellow garment she’d worn the day Inácio met her. Her brother, Guaraci, marched ahead of the group wearing only a ragged pair of breeches, a definite eagerness in his step. His mother might be Jandaia, daughter of Affonso Ribeiro, but the woman who had raised him as her own was Salpina — Salpina, daughter of Aruanã of the Tupiniquin, with whom his father had been a warrior.

  Nicolau Cavalcanti was not at the stockade. He had gone off alone earlier that morning, no one knew where. Tomás, whom Inácio had wanted to see, was also away, playing with the sons of Jandaia. But Helena was there, and she asked that Inácio hear her confession.

  Afterward they walked together into the clearing. Papagaio and the rest of the party bound for Olinda were waiting near the opening in the stockade. Inácio glanced toward the ugly main house and noticed Jandaia in the doorway.

  “She has no sorrow at losing this son and daughter. For years she’s shown them no love,” Helena said. “Only toward the others

  ...”

  Inácio’s expression grew pained, as he looked at Helena in her humble black dress and bare feet.

  “Padre, do not judge him by this alone. My Nicolau has given fifteen years of his life to the conquest of this wilderness.” She turned her head to look at Jandaia. “I’ve shared those years, and I understand. . . .” Inácio was going to say something, but she stopped him. “I understand — and I forgive him,” she said.

  VIII

  January 1552 - December 1553

  On January 6, 1552, sixteen months after his return from Pernambuco, Padre Inácio Cavalcanti was present with a company of men gathered on the heights of a bluff overlooking the Bahia de Todos os Santos to witness a demonstration of justice as conceived by Governor Tomé de Sousa.

  The soldiers who formed an escort for the governor carried themselves as if on parade for King João, their helmets and breastplates glittering in the sun, their pikes held uniformly upright. The bareheaded gunners stood at ease by the two cannon and the smoldering fire buckets; they wore leather cuirasses, light breeches, and clean, dark buskins.

  Governor Tomé, his chief officers, and the town council of São Salvador placed themselves one hundred feet behind the cannon. Their escort moved off to the left and dressed in strict order, for the governor demanded the most punctilious observance of any ceremony. Padre Nóbrega, attached to the governor’s party, was accompanied by four white-robed choirboys — two the sons of colonists, the others young Tupinambá — who carried aloft a shining gilded cross.

  Inácio stood with a fellow Jesuit priest and two lay brothers, to the right of the cannon and the governor’s party. He noticed that Governor Tomé wore a dark velvet cap, and a black cape with the simplest ornamentation. But this somber apparel belied the inner exuberance of João III’s appointee. In less than three years, Governor Tomé had raised the settlement at the Bahia de Todos os Santos from the desperate retreat of a handful of men surviving a failed captaincy to a secure, thriving base. He had moved the town from its poorly defensible site to these commanding heights overlooking the great bay.

  Governor Tomé had a keen sense of concern for all who served with him. He might be called a “knighted bastard” by men such as Dom Duarte Coelho, who resented his presence (he was indeed the bastard of a court fidalgo), but he was also a man of boundless energy, sworn to bring order and progress to this lawless colony.

  Governor Tomé was aware that beyond the Bahia — where several clans lived peacefully with the Portuguese — in the forests of the hinterland were thousands of savage Tupinambá. “So many savages that they would never lack,” the governor reported to Lisbon, “even if we were to cut them up in slaughterhouses.” He did not balk at punishing those who dared interfere with his plans, and he took such action not for his sake alone but for the glory that should be promised King João in this land. “The Pious,” as the king now was called, had made it clear that this time he would tolerate no nonsense from his native subjects.

  “If the Tupinambá around the Bahia trouble you, Tomé de Sousa,” Dom João had said, “punish them until they cry for mercy. After they have come to beg you for peace, it would be a good idea if you took a few of the chiefs responsible back to their clearings and hanged them in front of their malocas.”

  During the past fourteen months, Inácio had been present at several meetings between Governor Tomé and Padre Nóbrega. He had found the governor attentive to every suggestion made by the Jesuits, for whom he showed great love and whom he considered comrades in his struggle to reestablish João III’s colony.

  “By all means, Padre Inácio,” Governor Tomé had told him at the most recent of these meetings, “show the natives a Christian’s gentle mercy and forgiveness, always where possible, but let them know, too, the most divine justice.”

  It was for just such an exhibition of justice that the governor had ordered this day’s gathering. He spoke briefly:

  “Our Most Catholic Majesty has commanded me to do everything possible to win the friendship of those tribes friendly to us and to secure their aid against our enemies. But I am not to trus
t them blindly, the king said in his wisdom, as if he had witnessed the crime which brings us here this day.”

  Two old men, both Tupinambá were presented to Governor Tomé. They were uncles of a chief who’d earned the governor’s wrath as a result of the murder of four degredados who had wandered off into the forest seeking to contact and trade with one of the native clans, and had been slain and eaten by men from the malocas of the two uncles.

  Governor Tomé had sent out a punitive expedition, but it had captured only these two old men, who’d dallied at their hammocks while the rest of the clan fled to a valley far beyond the Bahia.

  An aide now instructed the prisoners, through an interpreter, to go on their knees before Governor Tomé, and each was forced to kiss the governor’s shiny boots.

  The two uncles were ordered to rise, and now Padre Nóbrega and the boys carrying the cross made their way to the Tupinambá. A hush fell over the crowd as Nóbrega prayed: “May God have mercy upon you! May the Lord’s mercy be with you this day.”

  Inácio noticed that the Tupinambá observed Padre Nóbrega and the cross held aloft before them almost worshipfully, and he added his own quiet prayers to those of his superior.

  Then, after a long glance at Governor Tomé, signifying that this work was done, Nóbrega led his reverent escort away.

  The colonists jostled one another for the best positions from which to view the proceedings, and several of the pikemen with the governor’s escort were sent to restore order.

  The gunners stood ready. Soldiers bound the condemned men to the cannon. The Tupinambá were secured to the squat nine-foot guns, arms and legs roped along the barrel, chest and midriff pressed against the muzzle. One began to shriek for mercy, calling upon his ancestors to witness that there was but one true lord of this land — Governor Tomé. But the other was silent, a curiously placid expression on his face.

  “Fire!” the chief gunner shouted.

  Padre Inácio’s eyes were firmly shut when the guns roared almost simultaneously. The earth trembled beneath his feet as the Tupinambá were torn apart and blasted into the air.