Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  “Tomorrow you’ll rest with your family,” Ishmael responded “But your journey will never end, Amador. You are a man of the sertão. It will call.”

  The next day, Amador was reunited with his family, his joy greatest at finding Rosa Flôres in good health. His half-brothers, Braz and Domingos, lazy, feckless, and disinterested as ever, had given him up for dead, but Rosa Flôres had not lost hope that he would return.

  “The Lord strengthened my faith,” his mother said, “but if I grew sad and worried, I had support. Maria. Maria Ramalho. If ever there was a word of doubt, she silenced it. Oh, Amador, she knew you would come back.”

  “Six years? Maria waited six years for . . . for nothing. Oh, Mother, I’m worn out, exhausted. I drag my leg like an old man. But I wouldn’t take the Ramalho woman had I been gone sixty years and she’d waited all that time.”

  “Fetch Senhorita Maria,” his mother ordered a Carijó slave.

  Rosa Flôres had not been the first to mention Maria. The night before, Ishmael Pinheiro had informed Amador of the following events: Valentim Ramalho had died, a victim of a virulent syphilis. Valentim’s father, Vasco, had involved himself in a feud between two family clans, and ended up in a ditch with his throat slit from ear to ear. Leaving Maria to bury the victim and care for Valentim’s widows and seventeen children, two surviving sons had quickly gone about squandering their personal inheritance.

  “Maria is a wealthy woman, Amador.” Observing the look of distaste on his friend’s face, he’d added, “Ugly, yes, and as round as Pinheiro, but with many bags of silver. She came to me five years ago and asked that I sell her quince marmalade. Today we send it to Rio de Janeiro, the Bahia, even to Lisbon.”

  Maria was thirty-two that November of Amador’s return. At Dona Rosa’s summons, she came riding upon a gray gelding to the da Silva house. Maria Ramalho was as hideous as Amador remembered her, with her wandering glance, oversize nostrils and tufted moles, and huge body, beneath which the gelding plodded with eyes bulging and flanks quivering.

  Slaves helped Maria dismount. She stood there in a brown sacklike garment that had three uneven holes for her head and arms. A huge smile distorted her round, fleshy face. “Amador Flôres, the Lord sent you back to me!”

  On a day in May 1672 — twenty-seven years later — Amador was alone in Ishmael Pinheiro’s storeroom, redolent with exotic aromas and the clean, fresh smell of bolts of cotton and canvas. Ishmael had stepped outside to inspect a load of hides.

  A letter lay on a wooden chest in front of Amador. He could make out some of the inscribed words, but Ishmael had read the letter to him several times.

  It was from the infante Dom Pedro, prince regent of Portugal, to his “wise, far-seeing, and discreet subject” Amador Flôres da Silva — Senhor Amador Flôres da Silva, homem bom of São Paulo de Piratininga, capitão of militia, conqueror of the sertão.

  Amador was fifty-eight years old. He still had a good physique, though when he walked, it was with an exaggerated slouch, from his limp. He had lost two fingers of his left hand when a musket exploded; his hair and untrimmed beard were silver gray; his dark, secretive eyes smoldered beneath a deeply furrowed brow.

  “Senhor Amador Flôres da Silva, homem bom,” the prince regent had addressed him, and this was true, for Amador was now a citizen of quality among the Paulistas. Yet his appearance as he sat studying his prince’s letter was more suggestive of a vagabond than a royal favorite: frayed black shortcoat and patched breeches, soiled shirt, loose stockings, and cowhide footwear.

  At São Paulo, some petty nobles of Portugal and a pretentious clique of royal officials took pains with their appearance to distinguish themselves from the rabble they saw around them. But the Paulistas did not judge a man by his boots and breeches. Nothing could be more injurious to the pride of a homem bom than the suggestion of servility — to behold a colonist reduced by circumstances to daily toil in his fields.

  By the grace of God and with a will to endure the sertão, Amador had never known this shame. Nine times since his return from Pernambuco, he had left São Paulo with bandeiras to pursue his march of glory. On four occasions there had been savages exterminated and the sertão pacified for Christian settlement.

  Three bandeiras undertaken during the past five years had been supported by Ishmael Pinheiro to search for emeralds and silver. Gold, too, though Ishmael had lost confidence in a major strike.

  Four months ago Ishmael had suggested that Amador offer his services to Lisbon and had drafted a letter to the prince regent. Only today there had been a reply, in which Dom Pedro stated: “It would be to the good of the kingdom, Senhor Amador Flôres, and all its subjects if you were to discover the emeralds of Marcos de Azeredo and the silver deposits in the vicinity.”

  Amador remembered his father’s warning that the natives had misled De Azeredo, and he did not dismiss the experience of his abortive search for El Dorado. But prospectors had drifted back to São Paulo with small finds of good emeralds and silver.

  “What they show or talk about openly isn’t important,” Ishmael had often observed. “What matters is what they conceal from the Crown.”

  As a Jew who lived under the guise of a New Christian, Ishmael was scrupulous in dealing with royal officials and had always delivered the fifth of any finds by his bandeiras. Most Paulista prospectors joked about a royal fiftieth given to the Crown.

  Ishmael, being obese and slow, loathed even the shortest journey, but he marched with the bandeiras in spirit, for he saw their wanderings as a continuation of the voyages of Portugal’s great discoverers: Those captains had found their treasure in the halls of the sultans and maharajahs, and Ishmael was convinced that these voyages across the sertão would have an equally splendid and glittering outcome.

  “The Carijó were a treasure for our fathers. Today that mine is worked out,” he said. “We have to find silver and emeralds, even some gold. If we don’t, São Paulo is ruined. All Brazil is ruined!”

  At first, Amador had challenged Ishmael’s statement: “But we’re rid of our greatest enemies, Spain and Holland. How can you say that ruin is inevitable?”

  “The cost of our triumph, my friend. The cost! I’m not a great conqueror but a merchant and I tell you it will take a mountain of silver to pay Portugal’s debts!”

  There was a reason for Ishmael’s pessimism: The wars against the Dutch in northeast Brazil and the Spanish in Europe had exhausted the treasury. At Pernambuco in April 1648, the patriots had defeated five thousand Hollanders and their native troops at the Guararapes, a series of hillocks outside Recife. The next year had seen a second defeat at the same Guararapes. Despite these victories, five years passed before Recife was occupied in January 1654 by the Portuguese commander-in-chief Francisco Barreto and the patriot leaders João Fernandes Vieira and Fernão Cavalcanti.

  Amador had sponsored a festa to mark the collapse of New Holland, but few Paulistas had shared his enthusiasm. Before the fall of Recife, they had experienced a setback. In 1648, a force sent from Rio de Janeiro had re-conquered from the Dutch the port of Loanda in Angola; the export of slaves from those lands to the Bahia and Rio de Janeiro was restored and the planters had lost interest in Carijó, whom they regarded as unproductive workers. This was the final blow to the Paulistas’ lucrative slave trade.

  The Portuguese at Lisbon had greeted the Pernambucan victory cautiously, for they feared Dutch retaliatory attacks on the homeland and further devastation of their dwindling Asian outposts by the East India Company. To appease the Netherlanders, they had agreed to pay four million cruzados for Dutch losses in New Holland and to grant the Hollanders liberal trading rights in all their possessions.

  “With what can we pay these debts? Parrots? Monkeys? Dyewood? Even before our grandfathers’ day, Europe tired of those treasures. Cotton? Tabak? Others grow better cotton and tabak,” Ishmael said. “Well, then, it must be sugar . . .There was a time when I could swear this came from Brazil. Not today. English, French . . . D
utch chased out of Pernambuco — all grow canes on the islands of the Antilles. Today our senhores de engenho are no longer the great lords of sugar.”

  Amador heard a noise behind him.

  “It is Trajano, Father.”

  Amador snatched up the letter and waved it in the air. “Ishmael has told you?”

  “A commission from Lisbon.”

  “A letter to Amador Flôres da Silva of São Paulo! A commission to find emeralds and silver. The prince of Portugal himself has written to your father to ask his help.”

  Trajano da Silva, Amador’s son by a Tupiniquin woman, had been eight when Amador marched off to Pernambuco. Amador had returned, to find the boy on the verge of manhood and bearing a marked resemblance to himself — stumpy, thickset build; dark, secretive eyes; small, fleshy mouth. But the resemblance had gone far beyond physical appearance.

  Trajano had been seventeen when he marched with a bandeira in 1648, an exploration that Amador had been asked to accompany but that he’d declined to join despite the appeals of its leader, Captain-Major Antônio Raposo Tavares.

  Raposo Tavares had explained that his bandeira was not a slave-raiding party but a mission to investigate ways to launch a future invasion against the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru. Amador had stuck by his words to Ishmael — only once does a man tempt Fate with such a journey — but when his son asked to accompany Raposo Tavares, Amador had agreed: “Go to the sertão, Trajano. March with the captain-major, as I did at your age!”

  In May 1648, Raposo Tavares had set out, leading a company of men to the foothills of the Andes; from there to the headwaters of the Rio Madeira; and then along the route Amador and Segge had taken to Belém do Pará, a journey of 9,000 miles over three years. When Amador and Trajano saw the old bandeirante for the last time, before his death in October 1658, Raposo Tavares had raised himself from his cot. He looked out a window, his blue eyes sparkling and alive, and cried: “We have seen Brazil!”

  Raposo Tavares had repeatedly predicted that every league of sertão his last bandeira crossed would one day be the domain of Portugal.

  In Ishmael’s store, Trajano appreciated how much a commission from the infante meant to his father. “It will be your greatest bandeira!” Trajano said. “By God’s grace we’ll soon find the emeralds, the silver. We’ll return to São Paulo. You’ll go to Santos, Father, and sail to Lisbon to present the jewels to the infante Pedro!”

  “Whatever the reward, Trajano, you’ll share it!” How he loved Trajano! He had many surviving children, but not one was the equal of this young man who had shared his successes and tribulations these many years.

  Ishmael Pinheiro, finished with inspecting the load of hides, joined them, and for a while Amador continued to talk animatedly about the royal letter.

  When Amador’s excitement abated, Ishmael asked, “When will you leave?”

  “Today, were it possible, but we must prepare for this search as never before. I won’t return without the infante’s emeralds.”

  “Yours, too, Amador,” Ishmael reminded him. “One in five for Dom Pedro, the rest for those who find them. They’ll be needed, for thousands of cruzados will go toward equipping such a bandeira.”

  “Everything I possess — everything, Ishmael — for this quest.”

  Ishmael studied his friend thoughtfully. He understood the mamelucos. They despised their native heritage, which put them on a level with the savages they enslaved and exterminated. For a prince of Portugal to offer them honors was the ultimate liberation.

  Trajano laughed, and both men looked at him. “What will the dona say?” he asked.

  Ishmael eased himself off a crate he had been sitting on. “Go to Maria, Amador Flôres, and promise her an emerald fit for the queen she is!”

  Amador stood in an open doorway on the front porch of the da Silva house; he was bareheaded, his hands holding the worn brim of his hat, as he peered into the chapel. It was many years since Rosa Flôres had moved Braz da Silva out of this room and made it a place of worship. They were dead now, Braz and Domingos, and Rosa Flôres too, who had lived for three years after Amador’s return from Pernambuco. In this chapel, Rosa Flôres had watched contentedly as Maria Ramalho and her son were married in January 1647.

  Maria was kneeling with her back toward Amador; her loose black dress fell in big folds around her; her head was covered with a dark shawl. Maria was fifty-nine and had grown larger over the years. Motionless in the light from a votive candle, she seemed to occupy a good portion of the small chapel.

  Good Jesus, what strength there was in her huge presence. What tenacity and patience! For years he had fled from Maria Ramalho and made himself deaf to Dona Rosa, who knew what a worthy wife Maria would make. His alarm at finding Maria waiting for him upon his return from the north could not have been greater.

  He had been polite to the mad, ugly thing so as not to ruin his mother’s happiness at his homecoming. But that day when she’d come riding up on her gray gelding, Maria had given him his first understanding of the depth of her devotion to him.

  He had seen her talking with Dona Rosa in the front room, and when she left, fifteen minutes later his mother called him and sent him to the back porch.

  Maria was out there, alone.

  “What do you want?” he’d asked curtly.

  “Oh, Amador . . .”

  Then Maria beckoned to a boy who stood beyond Amador’s view at the back of the house. When he stepped onto the porch, she smiled at him. To Amador, she said, “Your son, Amador — from the Tupiniquin.”

  Trajano’s mother had died with an attack of measles two months after Amador marched off to join the conde da Torre’s armada. Maria had asked, and been granted, Dona Rosa’s permission to care for the boy. And so lovingly had she done this that Trajano came to give Maria every regard and affection a son could offer a mother.

  It had been Trajano more than anyone else who had opened Amador’s eyes to Maria’s goodness.

  When Valentim died, Maria had assumed responsibility for his native women and a wild bunch of mameluco bastards he had bred with them. The making of quince marmalade provided an income and, as Ishmael had indicated, enough profit for Maria to have set aside close to a thousand Portuguese crowns.

  Amador had kept his Carijó women and enjoyed sex with many others, but Maria had been installed as his wife and as patroness of his progeny. Maria had given him seven children, four of whom survived: three girls and a boy, Olímpio, their firstborn and now twenty-four years old. In addition, there were Trajano and seven acknowledged bastard sons and daughters, and also attached to the household were a group of Ramalhos from Valentim’s couplings.

  Maria had slaves to assist her with this small tribe, and the house was one of the best at Piratininga, but her life was relentlessly harsh and without any of the comforts lavished on a dona of Pernambuco. Yet, at the same time, Maria enjoyed far greater independence than a senhor de engenho’s wife could ever know.

  On nine occasions since their marriage, Amador had been away with bandeiras, sometimes for as long as two years. When he was absent, Maria controlled his house and lands — after compensation to Vasco’s wastrel sons, the smaller Ramalho property had been incorporated with the da Silva holding — and Maria took responsibility for everything from the management of slaves to preparations for sowing and harvest. Except for salt and gunpowder, the settlement was self-sufficient; wheat, corn, manioc, tapioca, sugar, castor oil, cotton-seed oil — all the community’s needs were produced here. Flourhouse, millhouse, sugarhouse — a primitive mill with one cauldron for rapadura, hard brown sugar, for their own use — manioc presses and roasting ovens; Maria saw that these functioned smoothly. She kept the women and girls occupied at combing wool and cotton, spinning, weaving, and sewing in a large, airy room in the house. She supervised the Carijó in the quince orchards and directed every stage of the marmalade production.

  In the chapel, Maria had finished praying and slowly got to her feet. To her left was a
door that led to their bedroom. Maria exited through it now. Amador followed, and found her sitting on the edge of their bed.

  “Maria! Maria!” He spoke so fervently that she looked up with alarm, her head at an angle, for she was now blind in the eye that had been afflicted since birth. Amador took out the royal letter and waved it in the air. “The prince regent has replied. The infante asks me to lead a bandeira for Marcos de Azeredo’s emeralds. I’m to be a captain-major . . . governador . . . more if I succeed!”

  Amador unfolded the letter and handed it to her. “Everything is written here” — the lines on his face deepened as he smiled — “in royal Portuguese!” Most Paulistas spoke the lingua geral, the language of the backlands, and could neither read nor write.

  Maria’s eye roved across the letter, not a word of which she could decipher.

  “Here,” Amador said, and indicated the bottom of the letter. “Dom Pedro’s signature.”

  Maria’s expression was almost reverential as she put out a stubby finger and touched the royal mark. “Amador . . . my husband . . . I’m proud of you.”

  “The infante acknowledges a most trusted subject. He knows this soldier will not rest until Marcos de Azeredo’s secret is uncovered . . . until we lift our eyes to the slopes of silver Sabarabuçu.”

  “What wonderful news,” she said now. “God be thanked that it was you the prince chose!”

  Amador knew that similar prizes and honors were offered to any Paulista who volunteered to organize a prospecting bandeira, but he did not qualify Maria’s interpretation. Earlier treasure hunters had failed, said Amador, because they had been hasty and unmethodical and had often abandoned their search in favor of capturing slaves. Before he left São Paulo, he would send men in advance of his main party to establish camps and plant crops.

  After his conversation with Maria in the bedroom, Amador returned to the porch, where Trajano joined him. They sat together on a high-backed wooden bench and talked about their plans until the Carijó and Tupi slaves began to drift toward the open area opposite the porch for evening prayers. Here, too, Amador would administer justice for the eighty-five Carijó and Tupi and three ’Ngola peças, and would issue work orders and attend to their grievances and disputes.