Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  They were not accustomed to strong liquor, and there was enough cachaça in the calabash to make them drunk.

  Amador offered to assist in butchering the tapir, and climbed down to the muddy depression. As he worked, he learned that the Carijós’ malocas were one-hour’s walk toward the east. They had lived peacefully in this valley since the days of their great-grandfathers and had never ventured beyond it.

  Valentim remained seated on the soft earth, chuckling quietly to himself as he pretended to await the orders of his supposed masters.

  Abeguar had slipped away; he returned with a bundle of thin vines — for the tapir meat, he said.

  Very calmly Amador continued to hack away at the tapir, gratefully accepting the Carijós’ repeated promises of a share of the meat. Two Carijó boys stood close to him; they’d drunk the least cachaça, being more interested in the magic of the long knife. As he worked, Amador saw first one, then the other of the older warriors lie down on the marshy ground, from where they drowsily observed his progress. He glanced at Abeguar; he looked back to where Valentim sat and saw that he had his attention.

  “Now!” he cried. “Seize the beasts!”

  Amador knocked one of the boys senseless with a blow to the side of his head, and leapt at the other. The Carijó tried to run, but he slipped on the bloody tapir meat at his feet and lay there, shaking and begging for mercy.

  At the signal, Abeguar had jumped to the side of the two drunk warriors, ready to stun them with a stone ax he’d picked up. But Valentim the Demon rushed to his aid with mocking shrieks and laughter, taunting the Carijó and so terrifying them that Abeguar had only to bind them with the lianas he’d fetched.

  The three remaining Carijó boys were so frightened they simply collapsed. “We are your prisoners,” they cried. “Meat for your people!”

  “No! No! Carijó, we do not eat the flesh of men,” Amador assured them. “We take you to our people, who will offer you a good life.”

  The boys hurried their captives out of the valley and through the woods beyond at such a rapid pace that they entered the stockade before sunset. The Carijó had given them no trouble. Four of them carried poles slung with great bloody strips of tapir. The two older warriors, groggy with cachaça, and the remaining youth had their hands bound and were also secured by liana “collars,” to which vines were attached.

  Would he ever forget this moment of glory? Amador wondered, as he walked ahead of the little column entering the stockade. From every direction men roused themselves and streamed forward, pressing close to the Carijó and their captors.

  Amador did not stop until he was standing in front of his father and Captain-Major Raposo Tavares, who’d both stepped out of the officers’ hut.

  Bernardo da Silva looked from Amador to the Carijó, a smile spreading across his heavily lined face. He laughed then, joyously. “My friends,” he called out, “this is my son, Amador Flôres! I send him for a little meat from the forest and he brings me seven live Carijó!”

  There were wild cheers from the crowd in honor of the old patriarch for having fathered such a son.

  Then Captain-Major Raposo Tavares, after asking for and receiving the boys’ report on their adventure, said, “Tonight, my brave soldiers, you shall eat your tapir in the company of your officers.”

  Raposo Tavares next ordered that the Carijó be moved to the prisoners’ pen, where they would be kept until they were docile enough to roam the stockade. Men came forward and dragged away the Carijó.

  “The young ones are the best,” Bernardo da Silva said to his son. ‘Just as it is with birds — taken captive when young, they are easier to tame.”

  “Father, I thank you for not making me go home,” Amador said.

  “You’re a son of the sertão, Amador Flôres; there’s no other home for you.”

  He never forgot those words of his father, nor something else Bernardo da Silva said later that same night, after the meal with the officers. They were alone at the fire, Bernardo smoking a roll of tabak, when Amador asked him: “Why has no man found Paraupava?”

  “Paraupava” was the Tupi word for a lowlying great lake, but to the men who had been venturing from São Paulo for three decades in search of fabulous riches, it was an enchanted lake filled with gold, amid hills studded with emeralds.

  It was said to be somewhere in the sertão above São Paulo, and should have been found after all these years, for allegedly the great rivers of Brazil flowed into it. Amador saw Brazil as an enormous island separated from the Spanish colonies by the waters of the Rios Plata, Paraná, and Paraguay in the south, and the Rio Orellano in the north. The Orellano, named for the Spaniard who’d first descended it in 1542, was said by the few at São Paulo to have seen it to be a river so vast as to resemble an inland sea. According to popular legend, Francisco de Orellano had seen the warrior women, the Amazons, on its banks; consequently, it was also called Rio das Amazonas.

  “Perhaps there is no Paraupava,” Bernardo da Silva finally said, and then recited the names of men he’d known, some dead, some still living — Domingos Grou, Antônio de Macedo, João Pereira de Sousa, Belchior Carneiro, among others — who had spent years in search of the enchanted lake, without success. “They found no gold or emeralds. Nothing. Nothing but endless sertão.”

  “But, Father, when a boy like Silvio Pizarro speaks, no matter how foolish he sounds, I wonder why it’s so. — Why does the Spaniard have Potosi and the gold of Peru and we have nothing?”

  Silvio Pizarro was one of four Spanish boys with the bandeira. Earlier in the day, he had tried to belittle the capture of the Carijó. “Seven Carijó! Not even seven hundred will equal what I, Silvio Pizarro, will find at the enchanted lake — gold, silver, emeralds, enough for the ransom of the king of Spain.”

  “You must expect to hear such things from a Spaniard,” Bernardo da Silva said, referring to the boastful fantasies of Silvio Pizarro. “When the Spaniards came to São Paulo, after the time of Dom Sebastião, they brought their legend of El Dorado with them. ‘Foolish Portuguese,’ they said, ‘why aren’t you seeking El Dorado?’”

  El Dorado — “The Gilded Man” — was believed to rule over a city hidden in the forest. Once a year this potentate would cover himself in gold dust and be immersed in a lake. His subjects would also make offerings of gold to these sacred waters.

  “Yes, there’s a little gold,” he said, “and some silver, and emeralds, too, for these have been found in the rivers and hills near São Paulo, but El Dorado? All those men who’ve gone north — those who came back, the ones not lost forever, said nothing of El Dorado.”

  Amador had heard of a man who had ventured into those lands and, some said, made a great discovery. Amador now spoke his name softly: “Marcos de Azeredo?”

  “The King of Emeralds!” Bernardo said derisively. “The year you were born, my son, he went into the sertão and came back with some green stones. Old Azeredo was no fool. ‘Make me a knight of Christ’s Order,’ he said to the governor’s men. ‘Grant me a fine pension, and I’ll tell you where I found them.’ All this he was promised, and they continued to ask him to lead them to his mountain of emeralds, and always he had an excuse. This day his wife was ill, the next his lands needed tending — always an excuse, until even God tired of listening and took Marcos de Azeredo away.”

  “There was no emerald mountain?”

  “From whom do all who seek such fortunes get their vision of El Dorado?” Amador had no answer.

  Bernardo da Silva got up slowly. “Come, let me show you,” he said, and immediately thumped off across the clearing.

  “There, Amador Flôres, are the keepers of the secrets of El Dorado.”

  He was pointing at the pen that held the Carijó prisoners.

  “It is from savages such as these that men hear of cities of gold and mountains of emeralds. Would you accept word of El Dorado from the Carijó you caught?”

  “I would not, Father . . . But men have found gold and emeralds
, and there’s the Spaniard’s silver . . .”

  “A few drams from a stream, Azeredo’s handful of stones. Not worth a man risking his life for,” his father said. “Never forget this, my son: What you see before you — slaves to be sold — has always been a safer treasure.”

  It was to have been no more than a reconnaissance of the reduction of San Antonio, but, as it turned out, Tenente Bernardo da Silva’s march into those lands in late October 1628 was a disaster.

  He left the stockade with 140 men and headed southwest toward San Antonio. He planned a circular route that would take his company around the reduction lands and also carry it to several outlying malocas reported by earlier patrols that had been too small to invade them.

  Amador was with the company, marching up front with his father. Bernardo da Silva had readily agreed to his son’s request to accompany him. In the two weeks since the capture of the Carijó, Amador had found a change in the old man. It was almost as if Bernardo da Silva was seeing him for the first time.

  On the second morning of their march, two miles from the reduction of San Antonio, Bernardo da Silva’s force began to swarm out of the forest into a clearing abounding in manioc and beans, which they intended to steal as provision for their march. But hundreds of Carijó came pouring out of the trees.

  Da Silva roared orders for the men with muskets to maintain a line at the forest’s edge. He could see that his force was heavily outnumbered and would need an avenue of retreat. “Bugler!” he commanded a young mameluco. “Your eye on me! Every moment! If I go down, by God, blow the retreat!”

  Then, to his son, he cried, “So, Amador Flôres, you’re a man, are you?” He drew his sword. “Stay at my side!”

  It was hopeless. At least twenty of the reduction natives were armed with muskets, and their fire was deadly. The bulk of the attackers wielded clubs, and beyond the main body of assailants, archers sniped at the ambushed Paulistas.

  As Amador rushed into battle against the seething mobs of Carijó and heard the screams of the mortally wounded, he realized for the first time that he might die this morning, and he was terrified. He concentrated his attention on his father, whose rallying cries to his troops tore the air. This drove him on: He knew that if he weakened and ran away, the old warrior would surely kill him for his cowardice.

  Then, suddenly, they were in the midst of a pack of Carijó. Bernardo da Silva never ceased cursing as he swung his two-handed sword, slashing at chests and arms. But, for every Carijó who fell, there were ten more to take his place. Without an order from Tenente da Silva, the Paulistas soon began to back off, fighting their way toward the trees, where their musketeers stood reloading as fast as they could.

  Most of the Carijó remained at the site of the ambush, now littered with the bodies of dead and dying Paulistas. Exultant, the Carijó screamed insults and taunts at the retreating slavers.

  Forty paces separated the last group of Paulistas from the line of musketeers, who were carefully directing their fire against the flanks of the savages.

  At that very moment, Amador saw his father stumble and almost fall. They had just beaten off the last group of Carijó, and there were no enemy between them and the musketeers. “Father!” he cried, and leapt to his side.

  The old man thrust out an arm and grabbed at Amador’s shoulder for support. “Nothing!” he growled.

  Amador saw a red patch blossoming below his father’s right shoulder, where a ball had pierced the great cotton-armored jacket he wore. Two mamelucos near them quickly came to help the tenente to the safety of the trees. There Amador watched as others helped remove the jacket. The ball had passed through his father’s shoulder.

  An old Tupiniquin dressed the tenente’s wound and bound it with strips of cloth. Bernardo trusted this man, who had accumulated a knowledge of the medicines of the forest as pagé at his clan’s malocas.

  Bernardo learned that one Portuguese and forty mamelucos and native soldiers were slain, almost one-third of the company. The Carijó showed no indication of returning to the attack; some held a position at the opposite end of the clearing, and others were beginning to drift away.

  Within the hour, the tenente announced that he was ready to leave. He was helped to his feet, and Amador brought him the sword that Bernardo had dropped when wounded and that Amador had retrieved from the battlefield.

  “How many Carijó, Amador Flôres?” Bernardo da Silva asked him.

  “Three, I think.”

  “Enough for a boy who has just become a man.” He smiled, but he was noticeably weak from the pain of the wound in his shoulder. “Today we go back to the stockade in defeat,” he said to those around him. “Let those Carijó dogs return to their holy masters and boast of their victory. Let them sing their Aves and Hallelujahs. But it won’t be long before we come this way again.”

  When Bernardo da Silva’s battered detachment had returned to the stockade, the officers of Raposo Tavares’s company wanted to march immediately against San Antonio, but the captain-major had called for restraint. “The Jesuits will expect us to strike back. They’ll be waiting with their Carijó. There are four thousand natives at San Antonio. If they are armed and prepared, we’ll need the other companies.”

  This had been greeted with a murmur of disappointment, and one or two officers had openly begged the captain-major to lead an attack. But Raposo Tavares was adamant, proposing instead that he take a small band of men and visit San Antonio. “I have a question for the padres: By what right do they send their Christian savages on bloody missions against a Christian force?”

  Bernardo da Silva, lying on an oxhide in the officers’ hut, overheard Raposo Tavares, who’d been standing just beyond the entrance. When the captain-major stepped back inside, da Silva asked, “What have we to fear from the black robes? Savages with muskets caught us unaware. If we’d been prepared, they wouldn’t have beaten us.” He turned on his side as he spoke, grimacing with pain as he twisted his wounded shoulder. “Muskets,” he repeated, “which the law forbids them. Surely the governor of Asunción wouldn’t permit them to have muskets?”

  Raposo Tavares shook his head. “Don Luis would do nothing that might jeopardize those who could provide him with slaves for Dona Victoria’s lands. The Jesuits gave them those weapons. They’re ambitious men, these black robes. Isn’t it said that if they succeed here, they’ll extend their control over every savage between this colony and the Rio das Amazonas? A vast Jesuit province open only to those who serve and obey them.”

  “What king — even a Philip of Castile — would permit this?”

  “But, my friend . . . Madrid is far from Brazil, and at Madrid there are Jesuits who sing sweetly at court. Suppose they promise Don Philip that Rome will bestow the greatest honor upon anyone who supports their holy conquest of Brazil? We’ll have a vast empire of savages, led by the Jesuits, and we can forget the bandeiras.”

  “If only I were fit enough to go with you to San Antonio.”

  “I go in peace — to judge how serious a threat they really are. God knows, there’s reason enough to punish them for the attack on your company. But I’m in no hurry: When the time is right, I’ll remove those savages the black robes shamelessly prefer above true Christians.”

  Bernardo slowly turned and lay on his back, probing his beard. “Captain-Major, take my son with you,” he said. “Amador Flôres fought at my side on that bloody field. It will be good for him to see the camp of the enemy of his father and his grandfather.”

  In this way, Amador came to accompany the captain-major and the dozen men who went to the reduction of San Antonio four days later. Amador knew the aldeias beyond São Paulo, but compared with this great settlement, they were insignificant.

  São Paulo itself did not have a population as large as that which existed behind the twenty-foot-high palisade surrounding this Jesuit town. The Carijó lived in houses ninety feet long, partitioned into separate family quarters. Walking with the Paulistas toward the reduction square, Ama
dor counted nine rows of houses on either side of the main thoroughfare. Straight lanes ran between the rows. Facing the open side of the mission square was the church, flanked by a cemetery on the right, a school and “widows’ house” on the left.

  Wherever he looked, Amador saw Carijó, the men in shirts and short, loose breeches and white ponchos, the women in ankle-length cotton gowns. He saw a multitude of children, the girls dressed the same as their mothers, the boys bare-chested and wearing the simplest breeches.

  Padre Pedro Mola was waiting for them at the entrance to the church. He was a small man with piercing eyes beneath thin brows that angled sharply upward, close-cropped hair, and a firm mouth. He greeted Captain-Major Raposo Tavares politely, commenting that it had been two months since he’d seen another Portuguese or Spaniard.

  Raposo Tavares quietly stated that only a few days ago a group of Christians had been on their way to visit him but were hardly welcomed graciously. “These were the men, Padre Mola, whom the savages you shelter murdered,” he added.

  The Jesuit crossed his arms over his chest and looked toward a group of Carijó —the appointed officials of the reduction, former chiefs and elders of the Guarani — standing ten paces away. “These men remember past years, Captain-Major, when the bandeiras came. They are Christians now, not slaves.”

  “Christians?” Raposo Tavares said.

  “Every Guarani here has been received into the Lord’s protection.”

  “Christans?” Raposo Tavares persisted.

  “The Lord has granted our company a merciful entry into these lands, where a multitude wait to be saved.”

  “And what, Padre Mola, does the Lord grant my men? The promise that they’ll be cut down by savages in white breeches?”

  “A fear arose in this land, Captain-Major, when your bandeira began its march. Thousands have been led away in the past. That is why your men were attacked.”