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Brazil

Page 60

by Errol Lincoln Uys


  Ten seconds later, there was a devastating shock. The houses opposite Paulo began to sway; the floor beneath him vibrated so violently that he struggled to keep his balance. Chimneys crumbled, loose tiles fell to the ground, crockery in Dona Clara’s house shattered. Screams and the pitiful cries of animals rose. But a thundering in the earth dulled Paulo’s perception of these noises. Terremoto! The word crashed through Paulo’s senses. “Earthquake!”

  Paulo was mesmerized by the houses opposite, rocking on their foundations, walls cracking and splitting, upper stories leaning toward the street, chunks of masonry falling. Terror numbed him. He stood frozen at the window, expecting death.

  Three houses suddenly burst open and collapsed, burying the family of four and the servant girls. The old man did not cease his struggle to open his front door, even as the convulsions rocked the street; he, too, was entombed by an avalanche of masonry. Paulo looked beyond the opening opposite him: The city was rising and falling in waves as if upon a storm tossed sea; landslides swept down the hillsides hurling houses toward the lower ground; distant steeples and towers whipped about wildly. The thunder of the earth, the sound of breaking timbers, the rain of roof tiles — the inconceivable noises came together in one deafening roar of destruction.

  Paulo cursed as a jalousie slammed against his fingers, but he did not release his hold on the windowsill. He swung around as a side wall began to split open in several places. Ceiling beams were shifting, floorboards were snapping upward; furniture was sliding across the tilting, swaying floor. The house lurched sideways and Paulo was thrown backward.

  Paulo lay motionless as the debris fell around him. “O Santo Tomás, help me,” he sobbed.

  Paulo opened his eyes and saw a gaping hole opposite him. He clung to the splintered floorboards, with a terror of being pitched over the edge of the opening.

  The shocks stopped. The grinding, crashing noises continued, but from somewhere below him, Paulo heard a cry.

  “Clara! Manuela!” he shouted.

  The door to the room was torn off its hinges. He started toward it, scuttling like a crab, testing loose boards with his hands before entrusting his weight to them.

  A second wave of shocks rose, and again the house began to vibrate.

  Paulo kept moving. He reached the door and crawled beyond it to the stairway. It had been shoved sideways, the first flight intact, though at a precarious angle. As he scrambled down the steps, between the second and first floors the stairway collapsed and he fell twenty feet onto a pile of splintered wood and plaster, where he lay silent and stunned.

  Three minutes later the tremors stopped and the noise abated. Paulo sat up shakily and moved his limbs, one by one; his shoulder ached and one arm was gashed. The screams were close to him now, and he realized that they had not ceased since he’d first heard them. He started to pick his way through the debris, along a passage that led from the front door.

  It was 10:00 a.m.; and in just fifteen minutes one-third of Lisbon had been reduced to rubble.

  Paulo found the girl Manuela and her baby under the stairwell.

  “The world is ending!” Manuela wailed, over and over.

  “For God’s sake, girl . . . quiet!”

  Paulo called out repeatedly for Dona Clara but got no reply. Timbers groaned and broke, masonry continued to crash down.

  “Take your child!” he said gruffly. “Out! Out! The house will fall!”

  He made his way ten feet to the front door, but, finding that he could open it no more than two inches, went back along the passage for a piece of timber, which he used as a lever to pry an opening large enough for them to squeeze through.

  Paulo stepped outside. It was dark as night. The immense ruin of the city was silhouetted against the Stygian gloom. Lamentations filled the false night as tormented souls began to stir among the wreckage.

  “To the river!” Paulo said. “We’ll be safe on the waterfront.”

  Manuela did not respond but mumbled pleas to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and every saint whose name occurred to her. She was a strong girl with a solid build, and kept up with Paulo, clutching her baby to her breast.

  Far down the hill, they came to a pile of masonry that rose twenty-five feet and sealed the narrow passage. Paulo told Manuela to wait while he sought a safe way over the rubble. He was climbing near the top when he heard a rending sound.

  “Manuela!”

  A section of the upper story of a house fell with a crash upon the spot where mother and child stood, crushing them.

  “Manuela,” Paulo said weakly. “Manuela . . . ”

  He started down the pile, frantic now to reach the open quays and wharves along the Tagus, and thinking of his friend Luis Fialho. He considered trying to reach the area of the basilica but dismissed this; his only thought now that of self-preservation.

  Paulo passed a demolished parish church; survivors were attacking the rubble where relatives and friends were buried, a priest in dust-covered vestments weeping as he rallied them. Two hundred feet away, a gang of armed rogues leapt and danced over the cobblestones, waving their loot in the air. Lone men and women frantically probed the edge of mountains of masonry, calling out the names of those they sought.

  And there was a new cry now upon the lips of those fleeing the center of the city: “Fire!” Dozens of tapers had been lit upon the altars, and votive candles set to burn brightly for the saints. The conflagrations started in the destroyed churches and spread rapidly, the flames fanned by a stiffening northeaster.

  Just before eleven, Paulo reached the Terreiro do Paço. The wounded and dying who had been carried here lay on the cobblestones, with priests moving among them to give absolution. Some survivors were almost naked, bleeding from wounds, stumbling along with incoherent exhortations. Four carpideiras, professional mourning women, weaved through the crowd, wailing without surcease. Two nobles, their wigs and ribbons in place, their dress immaculate, wandered along with two slaves at their heels, each shouldering a chest with his master’s valuables.

  Paulo was three-quarters of the way down the Terreiro do Paço when he was pushed up against the side of a coach. Peering through the window above the door, he saw three men sheltering within.

  There was an outcry from the waterfront. Paulo swung his head in that direction: A wall of water was rushing toward the Terreiro do Paço.

  The force of the earthquake produced monstrous tidal waves that raced into the mouth of the Tagus from the southwest. Ships were torn from their moorings and splintered against wharves and quays. Small craft laden with refugees crossing to the south bank were swallowed up in the whirlpools. Smashing through the anchorage, the waters reached the lowlying areas of Lisbon and roared inland.

  As Paulo clung to the coach, beams ripped from a wharf hurtled through the water and smashed into it, flinging it onto its side. Paulo was swept forward in the churning water, toward the shaft and crosspieces. He grabbed the harness straps and held on.

  There was a tremendous explosion as the customs building, which had been damaged during the earlier shocks, was battered by the wave. The royal palace and other waterfront structures were swamped.

  The wave receded. Paulo gasped then when he leaned forward and peered inside the coach: Trapped by a beam that had rocketed through the thin woodwork, the three occupants had drowned.

  “Mother of mercy!” An anguished cry escaped Paulo’s lips as he saw a second wave crashing inland. He struggled for air when the water cascaded over him; but this torrent lacked the force of the first wave, and Paulo, sputtering, was soon able to stand upright. Still a greater horror greeted his eyes: Undermined by the earlier shocks, the Cais de Pedra, the magnificent marble-faced quay, and the hundreds who had sought safety there, had been carried away by the first wave.

  Paulo started away from the river and joined a crowd that seethed toward Rossio Square. It was less than half a mile from the Terreiro do Paço to Rossio, but it took an hour to cover the distance, with hundreds converging on t
he upper square as fires spread through blocks to the east and west.

  At Rossio, priests and a few soldiers who had not deserted the central area struggled to bring order to the agitated horde. Paulo stood with a group listening to a Jesuit who was already offering an explanation for these tribulations:

  “God has made the earth quake, the waters rise; God is the instrument of Divine chastisement.” The tall black robe raised his arm to indicate flames leaping from the huge Carmo convent on a hill to the west. “Temples raised in His honor are not spared, so grievous have been the sins of our city.

  “Why has God struck our capital?” the Jesuit asked, lowering his arm. “Against the Spaniard, He showed His anger at Lima in distant Peru. Are the sins of the Portuguese so monstrous that Lisbon herself is made a mound of ruins, with thousands of unconfessed a harvest for hell?” The reference had been to an earthquake that had leveled Lima in 1746. “Dear God, be merciful! Spare us! Grant time for penance!”

  Bystanders prostrated themselves on the cobblestones and sobbed with repeated calls for salvation.

  Paulo wandered toward the north end of the square. Seeing smoke rise from the southern slopes of the castle hill, Paulo thought of Luis Fialho. If his friend had survived, what ordeal was he enduring?

  Paulo heard an elderly man, for forty-five years a clerk at India House, weep as he told that the headquarters of the Overseas Council was in ruins, its great archives and administrative offices that represented three centuries of conquest and commerce all destroyed. The clerk shuffled after Paulo as he wandered the square. Paulo stopped opposite a tremendous heap of toppled walls and columns. “The work of God?” he queried, gazing at the Inquisition’s palace.

  The clerk looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

  “God destroys the house of the most militant defenders of the faith?”

  In his sixty-six years, the clerk had witnessed Jews, heretics, and not a few professed witches immolated in Rossio Square. He had never questioned the punishment of enemies of the true faith. He shook his head now, and said with grave perturbation, “Perhaps you should ask if our Grand Inquisitor has been too lenient. Had we burned a thousand Jews and heretics, would the saints have abandoned us this day?”

  At this moment, as the India clerk was bemoaning the leniency toward foes of the true faith, a group of survivors at another square near Rossio were giving more practical consideration to the disaster. Minister Carvalho e Melo had just come from a brief audience with Dom José, who had also been unharmed. The nobles and city officials with the minister said little about Divine wrath, as they faced innumerable demands for help: the royal mint survived but, deserted by its garrison, needed to be guarded; prisoners from wrecked jails were looting and murdering. It was obvious that tens of thousands were injured, and God knew how many were dead. Already, there was a fear of plague.

  One of the men with the minister, the marquis of Alorna, suggested that they begin by finding the simplest approach to every problem.

  “Yes, Marquis,” Carvalho e Melo agreed. “We must bury the dead . . . care for the living . . . close the ports.”

  A fidalgo suggested that they prepare to move the capital to Coimbra or Oporto.

  Gazing toward a district where the fires were intense, Carvalho e Melo asked, “When London burned, did the Englishmen abandon it?”

  “No, Excellency.”

  “I will rebuild Lisbon,” Carvalho e Melo said.

  Dom António and Marcelino Augusto had been in Oporto and returned to Lisbon two days after the earthquake. The Fonsecas’ town house on the rua Século west of Rossio was undamaged, and when Paulo arrived there, they gave him shelter. Paulo had hoped to find Luis Fialho at the Fonsecas’, but there was no sign of him. Many times Paulo set out on searches for his friend amid the ash-strewn ruins of Lisbon, where fifteen thousand lay dead and three times that number injured. The Estréla do Mar had been destroyed at her anchorage, and Paulo was resigned to staying in Lisbon, there being no immediate prospect of a passage to Pernambuco.

  Three weeks after the earthquake, Paulo was at the site of a warehouse owned by Dom António in a district above the Terreiro do Paço. The building had been severely damaged but not burned, and inspection had shown that a considerable portion of its goods was salvageable. Paulo had offered to help superintend the receipt of goods carried from the warehouse to a wooden shed erected on the palace square, which was covered with temporary stores and the huts of small merchants and food sellers. Toward noon that late November day, Paulo left another man in charge and wandered down to a wooden shack near the waterfront. He was carrying a small package, and before he reached the shack, the proprietor saw him and came running to meet him.

  “Senhor Paulo! Good day!” he called out. “God’s blessing and protection, Senhor Paulo!”

  Paulo smiled as he returned the greeting.

  “Oh, senhor, today” — the man’s eyes widened — “today my Oligarinha’s stew! Fish, tomatoes . . . The tastiest dish, Senhor Cavalcanti.” His eyes flew to the package, but he made no mention of it.

  Next to the shack, a woman labored over an iron pot with the steaming stew. She stepped back, greeted Paulo, and stood expectantly.

  “Here, Oligarinha Pintado,” Paulo said, and gave her the package.

  Her husband, Nestor Pintado, said eagerly, “Open it. Go on!” She started to tear back a corner. “Careful! Careful!” he said. When Nestor saw it was open, he poked a wet finger inside, withdrew it, and stuck it into the corner of his mouth, his expression like that of a delighted child.

  Paulo roared with laughter. “Oh, Nestor Pintado, what you would give for a day at Engenho Santo Tomás!”

  Nestor was passionately fond of sugar, and with Dom António’s permission, Paulo gave him this package in exchange for meals — excellent food, for before November 1, Senhor Nestor Pintado and his wife had kept a popular tavern on the rua Sapateiros. Today, they had nothing but two stout iron pots, tin plates and spoons, and a mighty faith in the future.

  As Paulo ate the stew, Nestor sat with a mound of sugar in one hand. Two men were approaching his shack from the direction of the damaged wharves east of the Terreiro do Paço. They were still a distance away when Nestor gestured toward them with his sticky fingers. “There, Senhor Paulo, are two men with faith!” he said. “Their ship was riding broadside to the great wave. It broke her back and sent her to the bottom. The one on the left, he was the master; the other a marinheiro. Down they went and suddenly the bed of the Tagus was dry! When the second wave came, they were lifted up and deposited ashore.”

  “What ship was she?”

  “A Brazil trader — Estréla do Mar.”

  “Good God! The ship Luis Fialho and I were to take!” He had glanced casually at the two men; now he studied them closely. “Luis Fialho and I went aboard her a week before the earthquake to arrange our passages. I spoke with him, the one on the left, Capitão Alvaro Lacerda.” Paulo had told Nestor Pintado of the search for his friend.

  “Give thanks, Senhor Paulo, that you weren’t aboard this Estréla. Today, Capitão Lacerda and his men who walked the floor of the Tagus are working on the broken quays.” He shrugged. “They have to eat, no?”

  “I haven’t seen them here before.”

  “Yesterday they came for the first time.”

  Nestor greeted Lacerda and the marinheiro and shouted for Oligarinha Pintado to serve them bowls of stew.

  “I’m Paulo Cavalcanti,” Paulo introduced himself. “Do you remember me,

  Capitão? My friend and I came to the Estréla.”

  “Yes, senhor, I remember,” Lacerda said. “Your friend was looking for you.”

  “Luis? Luis Fialho?”

  “The same. Said he had searched the ruins and feared you were dead.”

  “I’m alive!” Paulo shouted joyously. “And so is Luis Fialho. Alive!”

  “When did you see Luis Fialho?”

  “Two days after the earthquake. Perhaps three. I met him nea
r the ruin of the customs house. He said if I saw you . . . he was going to the rua Século.”

  “The house of our friend,” Paulo said. “Why, then, didn’t he arrive?”

  The marinheiro with Lacerda said, “Streets filled with assassins . . . so many dangers. Perhaps your friend was injured on his way.”

  “I’ve been to many infirmaries. I didn’t find him.”

  “Is it possible he was taken by the soldiers?” the marinheiro, suggested.

  “Why would they take him?”

  “The jails are full,” the marinheiro, said flatly.

  With the knowledge that Luis Fialho had survived the terrors of November 1, Paulo renewed his search for his friend, but after a week, he still had not found him. Remembering the marinheiro’s words, Paulo wondered whether by some ghastly circumstance Luis Fialho had been arrested. Seeking Dom António’s help, he got a pass to enter the prisons, and tramped to two makeshift penitentiaries that had replaced destroyed jails, and to five fortresses, from the mouth of the Tagus to Belém.

  The hundreds arrested since the earthquake were starving. Even the rats that swarmed at their feet rejected the slops cast toward them; their bodies crawled with vermin, they groaned and cursed, and not a few wailed about wrongful detention when they saw Paulo, whom they took to be a representative of authority. Few were innocent; the quakes that had leveled Lisbon seemed to have cast up from the depths an assembly of assassins, cutthroats, robbers and thieves.

  On December 8, 1755, the sixth day of this grim exercise, Paulo was rowed across to the Tower of Belém on a group of rocks beyond the riverbank at Restelo. The boat carrying Paulo across to the fortress grated against a small quay beside the tower; he stepped out and crossed a drawbridge. His pass was taken inside; after ten minutes, he was to an upper floor where an arrogant-looking officer in a splendid uniform awaited him.

  “Governador,” Paulo began, after introducing himself.

 

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