Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  Amador looked across at Joana Cavalcanti. “Where’s the senhor?” Amador again asked her.

  Jorge Cavalcanti responded: “Fugitivo!” He shook his head despairingly. “A noble senhor de engenho and his son hiding in the forest with slaves. I pleaded with my brother. There is a proper time for such action, I advised him.”

  Amador laughed loudly. “Yes, yes, Senhor Cavalcanti.”

  “You think my advice amusing?”

  “Sixty years, senhor — for sixty years Portugal endured the Spanish captivity. Do you propose the same delay for these patriots?”

  “Have you not seen the engenho?” Padre Bonifácio muttered. “Everything Cavalcanti men have worked for . . . everything threatened with ruin . . . every peça gone.”

  “Where are the slaves, Padre?”

  Joana said, “Some slaves ran away. Thirty remain with my father. Most were removed from the engenho.”

  “By whom?”

  “Jan Vlok. Eighty peças were seized to be sold for the interest on my father’s debt. He borrowed money from Holland to build a new mill at the river. The interest — three percent a month.”

  “And to think it was the Spaniard we considered possessed by greed.” Amador noticed Jorge Cavalcanti’s acute displeasure at this remark, and paused for a moment. Then he asked, “What will Senhor Fernão do?”

  “What can he do?” Jorge Cavalcanti responded. “The Dutch are offering two thousand florins for his capture; more for João Fernandes. Perhaps they’ll flee across the São Francisco to the Bahia.”

  “No!”

  Jorge Cavalcanti’s eyes shifted nervously to Joana.

  “My father promised he will not leave without us.”

  “Perhaps he’ll have no choice,” Jorge replied.

  Why, Amador wondered, had the senhorita been given in marriage to this despicable man?

  “Fernão Cavalcanti will never abandon Santo Tomás. He will not run away,” Joana said.

  Soon afterward, Amador was shown to a room along a passage that led from the main reception area; but he found he was unable to sleep. Two hours of restlessness and Amador arose and padded down the passage toward the front door. He was crossing the main reception area when he suddenly stopped: Joana Cavalcanti was sitting at the table in the dining room. He stepped silently toward her.

  “Amador?”

  “Yes, senhora Joana.”

  Joana was staring at the far wall, which remained darkly shadowed. “A fine painting, isn’t it, Amador?”

  “He stopped painting,” Amador said. “The savages broke his spirit.”

  Joana Cavalcanti turned to him. “Please, Amador Flôres, tell me — everything.”

  “Now, senhora?”

  “Now, Amador. Tell me what happened to you,” she said, and in a whisper, “and to Secundus. Sit here, next to me. Talk.”

  It was difficult. Joana sat with her head lowered, her hands in her lap, waiting for his story. He began to speak slowly, omitting little from the time they left the engenho until they reached the Rio das Amazonas.

  “Oh, Secundus . . . Secundus.” She whispered the name. “He didn’t understand, Amador.”

  “No, senhora, he didn’t. Proot never should have gone to the sertão,” he added. “It’s not a place for painters.”

  “But that’s what my father wanted, wasn’t it, Amador?”

  “I don’t understand, senhora.”

  “You do, Amador,” she said. “Fernão Cavalcanti ordered you to take him away from me.”

  “But, senhora —”

  “It’s true, Amador. Would Padre Gregório lie to me?”

  “The padre?”

  “He told me all he overheard when my father summoned you to the padre’s quarters. The padre was in the chapel beyond the door.”

  “I was to take Segge only to the Tapuya of Jakob Rabbe. Segge himself wanted to go there to paint the savages. I swear it. To go farther was Proot’s decision — our decision, senhora.”

  “I loved him deeply, Amador. Three years ago, when you hadn’t returned, already I knew Secundus was gone forever.”

  “Senhor Jorge . . .” He stopped, not knowing what it was he wanted to ask or say.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You obeyed my father.” She pushed her chair back and started to get up. “I’m going to bed. What will you do?”

  “Me, senhora?” he asked uncertainly.

  “You came to my father for a reward.”

  He also stood up. He bowed his head in shame. “Why did Bonifácio tell you all this?”

  “He lay filled with cachaça.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stepped close to him. “Not as sorry as Fernão Cavalcanti — when I gave myself to that miserable pig upstairs. He hates him, Amador. But how could he refuse? His brother come back from Madrid to claim his portion of this estate — Jorge Cavalcanti, whose name was never mentioned in this house after he’d gone to serve the king of Spain.” In a quiet voice she concluded, “The senhor had Masses said for your soul, Amador Flôres. For my Secundus, whom he sent away . . . for him, my father prays every day.”

  “This is the army of patriots?”

  “Oh, yes, Tenente Paulista, here is our governor of liberty, João Fernandes Vieira, with Senhor Fernão and all who stand with them.”

  “Then Jorge Cavalcanti is correct and the task is hopeless,” Amador said.

  Affonso Ribeiro, the bawdy, boastful tenant who had befriended Amador during his first stay at Engenho Santo Tomás, shook his head. “Oh, no, Tenente Paulista, this time we will defeat the Dutch.”

  A day’s hard travel west of the engenho had brought them to the hiding place of those forced to flee when the conspiracy had been betrayed to the High Council at Recife. Ribeiro had been sent to the engenho with a message that the women were to remain there until Fernão Cavalcanti could arrange safe passage to the Bahia. Amador had marched back into the woods with him.

  The rebel camp was on the top of a sparsely wooded hill on the Borborema plateau. Here and there, a strip of canvas spread between the branches of trees provided shelter for some of the governor of liberty’s men, but most sat in the open.

  There were twenty Portuguese, twice that many mamelucos and mulattos, fifteen natives, and one hundred slaves who were clearly enjoying this relief from daily servitude. A third of the men were armed with rusty muskets retrieved from caches at João Fernandes’s engenhos; most had primitive bows and arrows and clubs.

  Amador would have approached Cavalcanti quietly, but Affonso Ribeiro sped toward one of the canvas shelters: “Senhor Fernão! Oh, senhor, a miracle! The Paulista da Silva — he’s come back!”

  Cavalcanti stepped into the sunlight, his eyes narrowing against the glare. “Amador da Silva?”

  “Yes, yes, senhor,” said Ribeiro. “Returned from the dead.”

  “Senhor Fernão,” Amador greeted Cavalcanti, who was studying da Silva’s lined face with the same puzzlement Joana had shown.

  Cavalcanti was slimmer, his hair grayer. “Dear God in heaven,” he mouthed, just above a whisper. “We gave you up for dead three years ago . . . How is it possible?”

  “A great mercy, senhor — all the providence of our Protector.”

  Cavalcanti lowered his voice: “The Hollander . . .”

  “Dead, senhor. Killed at the Rio das Amazonas.”

  “Tell the senhor of the battle with the heretics and savages!” Ribeiro interjected. Amador had described to Ribeiro the engagement at Death-Bird Island.

  But Amador was silent.

  Cavalcanti shook his head in disbelief. “You survived! You came back. You must tell me all Amador Flôres.”

  A man who’d been watching them from the canvas shelter started toward them. Ruggedly built, he wore cotton breeches and leather jerkin similar to Fernão Cavalcanti’s plain dress. His thin, upturned mustache and narrow, pointed beard were carefully groomed.

  “João Fernandes Vieira, our governador,” Cavalcanti announced. He introduce
d Amador and explained their relationship.

  João Fernandes listened quietly. When Cavalcanti finished speaking, he asked, “What brings you to our camp, Amador Flôres?”

  “Senhor Fernão has told you how the heretics massacred my comrades five years ago. Let me fight with you, Governador. I’ve been away from São Paulo so long, a few months will make no difference.”

  “A few months?” With a sweep of his hand, João Fernandes indicated the men near them. “We won’t conquer the Hollanders in a few months.”

  “All Pernambuco will rise.”

  “I pray to God that they do,” João Fernandes said. “Without support, I command no army but a bandit group in these backlands.” He nodded. “You’re welcome, Paulista.” Then he walked away to a group of Portuguese, part of a contingent of forty soldiers and officers sent from the Bahia to train the rebels.

  When Affonso Ribeiro had reported on his trip to the engenho, he left the two men alone together.

  “How did Proot die?” Cavalcanti asked.

  “There was a battle in which he took the side of the savages.”

  “What does it matter?” Cavalcanti said, to himself. “I’m responsible . . . But how could I permit the marriage of my daughter and a heretic?”

  “You had no choice, senhor.”

  “Then, why — why, Amador Flôres — have I lost Joana’s love and respect? Why did the Lord send Jorge Cavalcanti back to Engenho Santo Tomás?”

  Amador couldn’t bear the look of pain in Cavalcanti’s eyes and glanced away. “These are questions I can’t answer, senhor.”

  On June 13, 1645, João Fernandes Viera ordered his men to break camp. Most of the 180 insurgents were to penetrate the valleys behind Recife to begin a campaign of terror against the Dutch, but Fernão Cavalcanti, Amador, Affonso Ribeiro, and seven others were being sent on a secret mission in the south of the captaincy.

  “I’d go myself,” João Fernandes said, “but I must organize the men in the field so that we’re ready when Dias and Camarão arrive.” For four weeks now, three hundred men with Henrique Dias and the pursuing force of Dom Felipe Camarão had been advancing through the sertão north of the Bahia; these corps were expected to join the governador’s contingent in a fortnight, a rendezvous that would signal a full-scale rebellion.

  Amador was present when João Fernandes discussed Fernão Cavalcanti’s mission to the south.

  “They’ve proved themselves in battle with the Hollanders,” João Fernandes said. “Offer them freedom; promise anything that will get them to fight the Dutch with us.”

  The governador was referring to runaway black slaves who were in hiding at a place the Portuguese knew as Palmares, 140 miles southwest of Recife in the foothills of the Serra do Barriga. The first blacks had fled to the area fifteen years ago; the Hollanders had sent several expeditions to destroy the slave stronghold, and all of them had failed.

  Two of João Fernandes’s own slaves, who knew blacks living at Palmares, were to march with Cavalcanti and approach the runaways for a safe conduct for the rest of the party.

  “A safe conduct?” Amador had queried. “To a hideout of fugitive peças? Surely, Governador, we need no more than the formality of a loaded musket?”

  “No one enters the lands of Ganga Zumba without permission,” João Fernandes said. “The name means ‘Lord of the Devil.’ I led a Dutch patrol to Palmares two years ago. A full army and we may have had a chance.” He looked at Fernão Cavalcanti. “Convince Ganga Zumba to join us and we’ll sweep the Hollanders into the sea, not within months but in weeks.”

  Ten days later, on an unusually bright, sunny morning in late June, Nhungaza, a tall, stately African in a white cotton robe, stood beside a beaten clay area used for ceremonies and dances of his village. Greatly admired by his fellows, Nhungaza was a visitor this day, for he now lived at the capital of the kingdom where he commanded the Royal Regiment.

  Nhungaza also was greatly feared. As representative of lord of the kingdom, the captain of the royal regiment was empowered to punish anyone who displeased him. The previous day Nhungaza had ordered the execution of two villagers for defying a decree against leaving the kingdom.

  This morning Nhungaza was attending the ceremonial ground for a happier occasion. He was here to select men who would be taken to join the royal regiment. The candidates were to be presented to Nhungaza in pairs, and he would call on them to demonstrate their ability in mock combat.

  At a signal from the first two warrior candidates, a group of musicians set up a rhythm with berimbau, bowlike stringed instruments with resonant half-gourds at the lower end. Wielding short sticks, the contestants leapt toward each other, seeking to gain points by the ingenuity with which they avoided the opponent’s blows and kicks. This ritual was performed with cartwheels, somersaults, and lightning-quick evasive tactics.

  As the sparring intensified, the rhythm of the berimbau increased, and so, too, the excitement of the spectators. Almost all 280 people of the village were present. The headman and his elders had cotton robes similar to Nhungaza’s; other men wore loinskins of monkey fur. The women had cloth skirts; boys and girls, aprons of bark cloth. Both sexes of all ages wore necklaces with small pouches of charms, copper bracelets, beads, armbands of fur or shells.

  One of fourteen smaller settlements of the kingdom and its northeastern border outpost, the village was a day’s march from the capital, which was called Shoko — “Monkey,” in the language of its founders, a name celebrating the Shoko clan of the ruling dynasty. Nhungaza’s village had much in common with Shoko. Each family occupied a dome-shaped hut of thin branches thatched with long grass. There was a hut for young girls, whose activities were strictly controlled by their parents and who had special duties in the village: carriers of water, collectors of kindling for cooking fires, harvesters of wild fruits. Boys of marriageable age also lived away from home, in bachelors’ quarters.

  An area was set aside for potters and weavers, and there were huts for artisans who carved in wood and made articles from bark string and vines. The two village blacksmiths, whose clay furnace stood near a low stonewalled meeting place, enjoyed the most prestige. The furnace and men’s enclosure were mostly off-limits to women; only those past childbearing age could witness the smelting of iron, and women required the headman’s permission to attend the meeting place.

  There were two village witch doctors, a man who practiced divination and a female herbalist, who occupied huts beyond the clay furnace.

  Nhungaza had been at the village for three days. His first exchange with the headman, after their greetings, had been heated. Nhungaza ordered the man to accompany him to the edge of the settlement, where, with the iron staff of office of the captain of the royal regiment, he pointed to a section of the village stockade.

  “Is this how you protect your people?” Nhungaza had demanded.

  The headman stood speechless as he stared at a gaping hole in the pole-and-thorn barrier.

  Nhungaza prodded the headman’s chest with his staff. “Perhaps, old man, you must march back with us to Shoko. We will find work for you in the fields with the slaves.”

  “Hau, Nhungaza! Please! The wall will be repaired!”

  Nhungaza said quietly, “Old Father, I am a son of your village. I have no wish to see you disgraced at the capital. This is not the earth of our ancestors. Here we are without protection from the old chiefs. A broken stockade . . .”

  At mention of the ancestors, the headman’s countenance brightened. “We have a gift for Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe,” he said.

  “What is it?” the captain of the royal regiment asked. “Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe” (“High Priest at the Place of Stones”) was one of the titles of lord of the kingdom.

  “Come, my son,” the headman said. “Let me show you.”

  The headman led his visitor to a hut where the village’s musical instruments were stored — the berimbau, rattles, whistles, and three sacred drums.

  “Here is the gift
of our village,” said the headman. He stood back to await Nhungaza’s reaction.

  A large black bird with bright yellow plumage on its cheeks and throat was confined in a wooden cage. Its most distinctive feature was a huge bill, which curved downward and was nine inches long and three inches high at the base.

  Nhungaza examined the bird closely. “Who trapped it?”

  The headman gave the names of two men.

  “Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe will be pleased,” Nhungaza said.

  “And our village will be protected?”

  Nhungaza had straightened up. “Not if your stockade is broken.”

  The headman showed renewed alarm at this admonition by the captain of the royal regiment, who was standing with him in the sacred hut, not in Africa as the village and customs of its people suggested but one hundred forty miles southwest of Recife.

  When Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe was nineteen, a Franciscan had baptized him with the name João. This ceremony at the port of Loanda on the west coast of Africa was followed by a secondary observance: A branding iron pressed against João’s right breast seared a small crown into the flesh. This mark was proof of the anointing of João and the payment of taxes due to the royal coffers for the export of this peça to Brazil. In the lands of his people, the Karanga, a nation of southeast Africa, João had been known as Nayamunyaka, the son of the high priest, the Nganga, at Dzimba we Bahwe — Zimbabwe in the kingdom of the Mwene-Mutapa.

  After a thirty-five-day voyage to Pernambuco, João arrived at Olinda’s slave market, where he received a second name, recorded in the register of transactions: “10 May 1620, João Angola, sold by Heitor dos Santos to José Borges de Menezes of Engenho Formosa, fifty-five milreis.”