Inácio glared up at the planter, his right eye twitching above the deep cut on his cheek. “Take me to him,” he said.
Guaraci was confined in stocks outside da Silva’s slave quarters, lying naked upon his back, his legs pulled apart and thrust through two of six holes in the boards. Two slaves occupied the other openings. When Guaraci was released, he was too weak to get to his feet.
“Oh, Cristovão,” Inácio gasped, using his baptismal name, “what have they done to you?” He was aghast at Guaraci’s emaciated body and the ridges raised on the flesh of his back and buttocks.
The padre and the Tupiniquin carried him to the canoe they’d paddled upstream. Guaraci tried to say something, but his words caught deep in his throat. He opened his mouth wider and his tongue, Inácio saw, was raw and blistered — from the embers Marcos da Silva had pressed against it to punish Guaraci for his lies.
When Guaraci was able to speak, he was invited to tell his story before the men of the clan.
When the others banged their beer gourds on the ground or signaled their impatience by whistling through their lip holes, Aruanã supported the young man, hissing for silence. “Who is there able to remember, on one night alone,” he challenged, “everything witnessed on a journey where the stars change their place in the sky?”
Padre Inácio, seated on the ground near the elders, would also on occasion move to calm those impatient with Guaraci, and the men acknowledging his gestures would be silent for a while.
Inácio’s relationship with the clan had changed since his return from Porto Seguro five weeks ago. The Tupiniquin had seen Guaraci and had listened to the reports of the three warriors who had been with the black robe. The elders had approached the priest’s hut to get a closer look at the wound that marked his face — a rough, purplish scar that curved down from the side of his right eye almost to the corner of his mouth. They’d been impressed with this evidence of the priest’s eagerness for their friendship. “He talks of love for the Tupiniquin and shows it is true,” Aruanã said.
Great as Inácio’s joy had been at a growing acceptance of him by the elders and men, his annoyance with Pium had been greater. The pagé had been summoning more and more men and women to the hut of the sacred rattles, there to examine their consciences and expel the evils he found possessing them. And he energetically harried into his presence those who appeared too friendly to the priest: a woman lingering too long with her child at the priest’s house of chants, or the parents of a boy too eager to don the white robe offered by the father.
This night Pium stood back in the shadows, devoting most of his attention to Padre Inácio. He knew that many of the warriors were pointing to the mark on the priest’s face and declaring that he must be the same as this “Jesus” he was always praising, for he had been willing to be whipped and to suffer for the Tupiniquin. To Pium’s distress, the warriors also were beginning to show an interest in knowing more of this spirit, Jesus.
Inácio was aware of this, too, and it filled him with hope as he sat at the fires of the Tupiniquin.
Guaraci had managed, if haltingly, to cover the details of his journey from the Bahia, telling how he’d crossed the territory of the Tupinambá and evaded bands of Cariri, only to fall into the hands of the da Silvas.
When he came to the events of his rescue, his face grew animated as he described how he had been taken out of the stocks and carried to the canoe. Then the young man cried, “He saved me!”
Many warriors turned their heads toward Padre Inácio, and praises were shouted for him.
“He saved me!” Guaraci said again. “I prayed and prayed to Him, the Lord, and God sent Padre Inácio. When this tongue could not move, and I saw those men would kill me, perhaps, I said, if I ask the God whose Son died for me, He would hear me. ‘Help me, free me!’ I begged Him.” Guaraci fell silent, and then stepped near to where Inácio sat. “And He did. Without the summons of smoke or the rattles but from within Guaraci, He heard. He sent Padre Inácio.”
One ancient Tupiniquin was confused: “This black robe,” he asked, raising a hand toward Inácio, “is Son of God?”
“No! No!” Inácio cried, pushing himself up to stand next to Guaraci. “No, I am but one of His servants on earth, an ordinary man seeking to share what I know of His love for all men.” He placed a hand on Guaraci’s shoulder. “This son of a Tupiniquin warrior has found Him and the strength of His power.”
Pium gave a long, chilling cackle. “The black robe boasts of a power greater than any we know, and claims that this boy has been given this strength. Why is it that one who has not honored Voice of the Spirits with feathers of Macaw, who has fought no battles and brought no enemy to the clearing — why does such a creature have this power?” Inácio was about to interrupt, but Pium raced on: “How can it be so when the noblest ancestors of the Tupiniquin were not offered what this boy claims to have?”
Inácio addressed the question: “Know God, accept Him, and He may also hear your appeal for the ancestors. They are gone from the clearing, but their spirit lives. If you open your hearts to the Lord, He will see them, too.”
“In Land of the Grandfather,” Pium said, “our bravest warriors find all the honor and glory promised.”
“Yes! Yes, Pium. The ancestors are there — all their souls together.”
Pium stood with a look of satisfaction on his face.
“But, beyond Land of the Grandfather is a greater paradise,” Inácio went on enthusiastically, “where God waits to welcome them.”
“There is nothing beyond Land of the Grandfather,” the pagé declared.
“No, Pium, there is more.” He could see, from many expressions around him, that he had planted a powerful idea — a seed of doubt that could grow, for whom among them would risk denying the forefathers a passage toward greater glory? “You have seen the things brought by the Portuguese, the great canoes and powerful weapons, the marvelous tools of iron. See, too, my friends, the God we know, the Great Spirit of love and peace among men.”
Pium shifted agitatedly before the elders, hopping from one spot to another and waving his tiny hands in the air. “Don’t be deceived by the utterances of a Long Hair, a people who slash open the backs and burn the tongues of others.”
Guaraci called out, “Padre Inácio is not the same!”
“You know nothing, boy.” Pium turned back toward the elders and glared at them. “If you listen to his lies, the long rest of our ancestors will be broken. O, Tupiniquin, hear Pium: Follow this black robe’s chants and Voice of the Spirits will not hear you!” Abruptly he turned on his heel and walked off, continuing to shout out dire predictions.
Before Inácio could say anything, Aruanã spoke: “Pium is right. My father, Pojucan, denied the ancestors’ ways and he was killed.”
“Tupiniquin, deny God who rules all men and you will surely be taken by the master of death,” Inácio said, in a suddenly aggressive voice. “But then, I see you already know this great slayer of souls, one we call the devil. He is Jurupari! O my friends, Jurupari waits for every man, woman, and child who fails to receive the Holy Spirit. This we Portuguese have always known — that God, in His mercy, shows us how we may be saved from the devil, Jurupari. O Tupiniquin, let me lead you to this great salvation!”
Then, intentionally, he left as dramatically as had the pagé. “Come,” he called to Guaraci, “there is work to be done!” And he prayed aloud: “O Jesus Christ, my Lord, be with us. Guide us against the legions of Jurupari.”
The elders were thrown into confusion. The black robe not only accepted Jurupari, forest demon; he showed no fear of him. Nor did he quarrel with Tupiniquin belief in Land of the Grandfather. But he firmly rejected the “power” of the sacred rattles. As they watched the black robe leave, Aruanã said aloud, “O Voice of the Spirits protect him. Save him, for he is our friend.”
When the children gathered for their lessons the next day, it was Unauá and Guaraci who led them in their singing and prayers, not Padr
e Inácio. “My dear friends,” he’d told the two of them early that morning, “I must stay in my hut. I do battle with Jurupari.”
Again the elders put their heads together, and Pium sat with them, fueling their fears about the consequences of offending Jurupari.
All that day and into the next, Padre Inácio remained in his hut. The elders finally grew so concerned about the dangers of provoking the demon Jurupari that they crossed the clearing to the hut, wearing their strongest charms, their bodies black and crimson with dye, and carrying their clubs.
Unauá and Guaraci sat on the ground just beyond the entrance, and greeted the elders respectfully, if apprehensively.
Aruanã walked ahead. He pulled back the mat that hung at the doorway and gave a small cry. “Who did this?”
Guaraci was on his feet and beside the elder immediately. “Nobody. It is his desire.”
“His desire?” Aruanã said. “He welcomes this?”
Inácio lay on the floor of the small hut, his legs and arms bound tightly with cords, his body twisted in the most grotesque position. The ground was strewn with small thorned branches. He wore a simple loincloth and his exposed flesh was torn and bloody.
He looked up at Aruanã, and spoke in a dry, weak voice: “I seek to understand the suffering of God’s son, Jesus, who fought man’s greatest battle against evil. I beseech the dear Lord for His mercy and forgiveness — for the skulls broken, the flesh corrupted. I struggle against Jurupari, who vomits with pleasure at these evils.”
Aruanã began to back away. “Please, Father, stop this,” he begged, “this terrible . . .” He did not know what to call it.
“Never,” Inácio said. “If my poor penance can move one heart —”
But Aruanã did not hear him, for he’d already fled.
The clearing was soon in tumult at the news of what had befallen Padre Inácio. Rattles sounded from within Pium’s hut, but no one dared go near him. And then, when the Tupiniquin were approaching a state of panic, Padre Inácio staggered into daylight. Guaraci and some of the converts now carried a Cross of heavy timbers to Inácio and helped him lift it to his shoulders. He first collapsed beneath its weight; then slowly, he forced himself up until he managed to support the burden.
As Inácio began to drag the Cross along the clearing, Unauá came from the direction of a maloca, leading the children and the few older converts, all singing the hymns Inácio had taught them. They formed a procession behind him as he labored forward.
The Tupiniquin stood back, silent and awed, as the procession wound its way through the clearing, and noticed that many of their children were weeping. Again and again the weak, bleeding black robe stumbled and had to be helped to his feet by Guaraci, but the Tupiniquin saw that beyond his pain and exhaustion, there was a radiance — the same look as with a warrior of warriors when the enemy lay dead at his feet.
Seven months after his great procession of penance, Inácio wrote a report on his labors through the year he had been at the malocas to his superior at the Bahia in March 1553:
*
Oh, Padre Nóbrega, I feel so weak and helpless when I see the daily miracles our Lord works among these Tupiniquin. After I offered my penance, they pressed me continuously with questions: “What does it matter to a dead man whether you eat him or not?” “You see us naked as Adam, when the Lord sent him out of Paradise — what, Padre, was our sin?” “Why do we need God’s Word when our ancestors lived well without it?” These people have been filled with so many lies and superstitions that they have the greatest difficulty accepting the simplest truth.
The senior elder, Aruanã, a proud savage of even disposition, will sit for hours hearing about Jesus, Mother Mary, and the wondrous powers of God, but when he begins to discuss them, it is with such confusion and misunderstanding that I beg the Lord to clear this man’s mind.
Apart from the elders, so rooted in evil, more come each day to beg for the cleansing water of baptism, truly fearing the sorrows of damnation, which I am assiduously keeping before their minds.
Some I have baptized and married on the same day, for they are loving and faithful toward each other, and most have only one wife. Again, it is my intractable friends, the elders, who take up to four women. They will not abandon this practice, nor can I encourage them to forsake these great straw halls, where all are thrown together, for separate little dwellings where individual families may live in privacy.
But the children who remain Christ’s fierce little angels wholly compensate for the constant anguish I feel at my failure in uprooting such practices. Some have grown so worshipful that they will come to me with sorrowful tales of the iniquities and transgressions of their parents. “Please, Padre, ask Jesus to forgive them,” they plead, so fearful are they of the tyranny of the devil. And it was the children who did most to discredit their great sorcerer, Pium.
Pium, with his retinue of demons and dark spirits, I told the converts, was nothing but a superstitious old man who had taught their fathers to believe in his diabolical arts and lies, invocations against our Lord’s goodness and truth. When I felt the moment right, I encouraged my little army to crusade against this master of evil.
Pium was crossing the clearing when six small boys danced up to him, telling him that as children of the Lord Jesus they rightly feared their fathers, who were great warriors and hunters, and their grandfathers, if those still lived, but, since Pium neither warred nor hunted, what did they have to fear from him? Following him all the way to his hut — dogging his heels, noisy little hounds snapping at the tail of Lucifer — they kept up a steady chorus: “Tell us! Tell us, Pium, what we must fear from you. We fear Jurupari, but Jesus gave His life to save us from him! Tell us, Pium — will you hurt and suffer for us? Tell us, Pium, that you are an old man and nothing more!”
And, the Lord be praised, the pagé cried that this he was — a tired old man, who wanted to be left alone.
He is still here, at his hut, and he is approached by the older ones and the grandmothers, but the Voices with which he terrified the clan are silent, his pagan festivals neglected — all thanks to the Redeemer, who leads us to the light in this vast forest of souls!
*
Padre Nóbrega had wanted to send him an assistant, but such were the demands upon the small group of Jesuits in Santa Cruz that this had not been possible, and Inácio labored on alone with the Tupiniquin. The report to Nóbrega had marked the high point of Inácio’s mission to the Tupiniquin. Five months later a ship carrying Nóbrega’s pleased response to his fellow missioner’s progress reached Porto Seguro and a messenger brought the dispatch. But whatever joy Inácio might have had in his superior’s satisfaction was crushed by other news in the correspondence.
Tomé de Sousa, great supporter of the Company of Jesus, exhausted by his exertions in this vast land, had begged King João to be relieved of his governorship. He had been replaced by Dom Duarte da Costa, whom Nóbrega cautiously described as a man of honor and determination, who had served the king in his chambers — a hint at the fact that da Costa had had no experience in civil or military matters. And with Dom da Costa’s fleet had come the first bishop of Brazil, Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, former vicar-general of India, a man who had just celebrated his sixtieth birthday at the Bahia. Nóbrega wrote: “Of fixed ideas and strong will, Bishop Sardinha desires to raise all the splendors of a great See in this colony. He expresses some pleasure with our work and offers prayers for our converts, but he shows the deepest concern for the souls of those from Europe.”
Inácio found these guarded remarks of his friend disturbing; but another item in Nóbrega’s letter brought him the most profound sadness. Francis Xavier had died the previous December, on an island in the Bay of Canton, where he’d been readying himself for a great march into China.
He was sitting at the table in his hut, his head in his hands, his eyes closed, and he did not immediately sense her presence.
Then he looked up and saw Unauá framed in the doorway
, the light from beyond enhancing the rich chestnut color of her hair. Her cheeks were shadowed; there was a softness in her hazel eyes and in her round, open face. But there was also the faintest hint of excitement in her presence, revealed in a slight parting of her lips and in the nervous manner in which she placed an index finger on her chin.
“The saddest news from Padre Nóbrega,” he said. “He writes that one of our most beloved Apostles, Francis Xavier, has died.”
“He will be with Jesus.”
“Oh, yes, my child,” he said. He still called her a child, even though she was now almost twenty years old.
“Then, there should be great joy.”
“Yes, but we will miss his wonderful example — especially those of us who do not have his mighty courage.”
“You have courage.”
“I am a weak man, so unworthy.” He turned his head away from her, and the light fell upon his cheek, illuminating the long scar.
“I cannot bear to see you so sad,” she said. “You have given my brother and me such precious gifts,” she said, and moved to the side of the table. “Oh, Padre Inácio, please do not be so sad.” She reached a hand toward him.
He looked at her then, and saw the tears in her eyes. “I thank our Lord every day for your support. Child, you are a blessing in this strange place.”
“Padre Inácio, I have such love for Jesus and the Holy Father and Mother.” In the quietest voice, she added: “There is the same for you.”
He dared say her name. “Oh, Unauá.”
“Padre Inácio, you are such a good man. How can it be wrong for you to take Unauá?”
He looked at her and saw all the longing and affection in her.
“Dear, sweet child, I have made a choice that I must live by.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “You wear the robe of the church.”
“I gave my vow to serve Him alone, with soul and body.”
Inácio had never been with a woman. There had been daughters of family friends, and one he’d loved and remembered with affection. But when he’d sworn his vow of chastity, he’d been a virgin. So filled had he been with his mission that he’d seldom had to do more than pray for constant strength against all temptations of the flesh. Now this lovely girl was offering him a most precious gift, and he felt a thrill at the tremendous strength and the grace God gave him to resist the temptation.
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