Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  The officer shook his head. “The commander is on duty in Lisbon.” He was Lieutenant Mathias Carneiro, he said, and waving the pass in front of Paulo, he asked, “Why do you seek this thief? Has he stolen something from you, Senhor Cavalcanti?”

  “Is Luis Fialho Soares here?”

  “I don’t know.” The lieutenant proceeded to bemoan the fact that common villains had invaded the tower, normally reserved for offenders of good rank. “What do I know of such miscreants?” he asked.

  “But a record is kept?”

  “The governador has a list. Mustering scum is not my duty.”

  “Perhaps inquiries could be made.”

  “What is your interest in this man?”

  “Luis Fialho Soares is my friend. He’s not a criminal. We were to sail home to Brazil.”

  A soldier came noisily up the steps and hovered in the doorway. “Yes, Almeida?”

  “There is one, Tenente, gives the name of Soares.”

  “Merciful God!” Paulo cried. “Luis Fialho Soares?” Carneiro nodded at the soldier. “Bring him to us.”

  It was Luis Fialho. He had lost weight; his cheekbones were more pronounced, his skin jaundiced. One eye was swollen; his hair was matted and filthy; his clothes were torn and his feet bare, the skin above them raw from the chafing of leg irons.

  “Luis!”

  Luis Fialho leaned forward unsteadily. “Paulo? How, in God’s name, is it possible?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Tell me — why are you here?”

  The lieutenant started to move forward, but Paulo said fiercely, “Let him speak!” Carneiro glared but said nothing. “Luis . . . how did you come to be arrested?”

  “A thief? A looter? It is I who have been robbed, the very shoes off my feet. ‘Professor,’ they mocked me when they tore them off. Murderers, thieves. ‘A man needs no boots, Professor, when he dances below the gibbet!’”

  “But how . . . what—”

  “The day after the earthquake, and the next, I looked for you,” Luis Fialho broke in. “I went down to the river.”

  “The master of the Estréla—”

  “Yes. After I saw him, I started for the rua Século, walking toward Carmo hill. It was almost night, the fires that burned lighting the sky. It was then that I met the conde de Junqueira.”

  “A strange name.”

  “Wait, my friend. Hear my story. There was the conde, gray-haired and in every way a fidalgo. There was the conde’s brother, in the habit of St. Francis, using a staff to limp along, for he had been injured by a fall of stones; and the conde’s wife, Dona Maria Madelena, so help me God; and his mother, whose name I never learned. When I came upon them, they were struggling to move a cart across the dirt.

  “ ‘You’re a strong young man,’ said the conde. ‘Please, for the love of humanity, help us.’ And laying a hand on my shoulder, he added, ‘My son, I am the conde de Junqueira, and these — my wife, my mother, my brother who serves the Lord.’ And he looked at his cart laden to the sky. ‘We’ve lost everything but these few possessions.’ He pleaded that I help them move the cart to the riverside, where they had a boat to carry them across the Tagus. ‘To my estate beyond Barreiro,’ he said.

  “I told him it was impossible to get the cart to the Tagus. ‘You’re wrong, son . . . Brother Egidio has found a passage through the ruins. Will you help us?’

  “Maria Madelena began to strain against the cart, and the old matron, too, bent her back to it. What could I do but seize the shaft and drag their possessions along? ‘God will reward you, my son,’ ” said Brother Egidio.

  Luis ran a hand through his dirty hair, scratching furiously. “It took two hours to move the cart along the circuitous route found by Brother Egidio. At the river, there was another monk, Zacarias, who stood guard over a longboat. ‘Now, if you’ll help us load, my son, we’ll ask no more of you,’ said the conde. Maria Madelena and the old mother were already stepping into the boat.

  “Without the slightest warning, the conde and the monks suddenly leapt up and ran for the craft. I was facing the river. I spun around and there, advancing toward us, were His Majesty’s soldiers. I stood where I was, having nothing to fear as men dashed past toward the waterfront. Soldiers tore off the sailcloth covering the cart. It was laden with plunder — gold, silver, altarpieces. ‘It belongs to the conde de Junqueira,’ I said. For this, I received a mighty blow with the butt of a musket.”

  “The conde or whoever he was — were they pursued by the soldiers?”

  “I don’t know. They dragged me away and flung me into the wreck of a ship that was aground, where hundreds were kept. I was beaten and robbed. Only when the hulk started to break up were we moved, some to Junqueira’s dungeons. I was brought here.”

  “You were fortunate,” Carneiro said. “Had you been caught a few days later, you would have been marched directly to the gallows.”

  “He’s innocent!” Paulo declared angrily.

  “Of course,” Carneiro said. Then he shook with laughter. “Who would ever dream up a story like this to escape the rope?”

  Paulo seized Luis Fialho’s hands. “You’re alive, thank God! Patience, now, Luis Fialho. I’m going to Dom António for help.”

  Luis Fialho was released within seventy-two hours. Dom António approached Carvalho e Melo, who had ordered an immediate investigation of the case. Though these two powerful men set in motion an official inquiry that brought Luis Fialho’s freedom, what assured his exoneration was the discovery — in the dungeons of Junqueira — of one Orlando Freitas, alias the conde de Junqueira.

  XV

  June 1756 - November 1766

  A warship had been dispatched from Lisbon to Brazil in January 1756, with an official account of the earthquake, but not until Paulo landed at Recife in May and sent a messenger ahead to Engenho Santo Tomás did the Cavalcantis learn of his survival.

  Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues Cavalcanti’s relief was matched by his pride in his son’s achievement at Coimbra, and he arranged a joyous thanksgiving for Paulo’s safe homecoming. The festa lasted for five days, with so many relatives and friends — neighboring planters, officials, and merchants — that they had to be accommodated under canvas beside the Casa Grande.

  The mansion stood on the high ground that six generations of Cavalcantis had occupied since Nicolau and Helena built that first forlorn and forbidding blockhouse, with its walls of stone and mud and its gunport-like windows. Even the handsome two-storied dwelling of Fernão Cavalcanti’s day could not be compared to the Casa Grande, which had been completed five years ago. The house of Senhor Fernão, Bartolomeu Rodrigues’s great-grandfather, had not been demolished; its roof and covered veranda had been removed, and its outer walls formed the central section of the Casa Grande. The chapel and sacristy were in the new wing to the left; to the right was an extension with living and sleeping quarters, and, to the rear, kitchens, laundry, and wine cellar. The two-storied U-shaped building was enclosed by a high wall at the back and contained an ornamental garden.

  There were thirty rooms in the house. On the ground floor were a reception hall and guest chambers. A carved staircase led to the second floor, where there were three parlors; a dining room that held a rosewood table eight yards long and capable of seating twenty-four guests; and seven bedrooms for the family. From a small library, access was gained to the upper galleries of the chapel, the choir loft, and the priest’s quarters.

  A deep verandah extended 115 feet along the front of the house and chapel. Beyond the raised verandah the ground sloped gradually toward a river, beside which were located the sugar works, the distillery, and the senzala, the main slave quarters.

  It was not only its imposing size that gave the Casa Grande distinction but also the harmony with which it blended into the landscape. It appeared so peaceful and secure between slender tufted palms and spreading tamarinds, its gardens and patios filled with elegant shrubs and scented trees and shaded ponds. Tranquil as it was, there were bursts of colo
r and sound: Caged songsters, brilliant macaws, huge-billed toucans, tens of squawking, warbling pets were distributed not only on the veranda but also in the parlors and corridors. The more daring of a troop of tiny monkeys scooted along the veranda, jabbering fiendishly; sometimes they would invade the reception hall, from where they were swiftly evicted by broom-wielding slaves.

  The eleven household slaves and their families lived in quarters next to the Casa Grande, several of them able to count many generations of forebears who had served the Cavalcantis in the same capacity. The intimate relationship between the slaves of the house and the sinhá and sinhazinhas, as the slaves called Senhora Cavalcanti and her daughters, was sometimes subtle and secretive, with confidences no Cavalcanti male was ever likely to hear.

  Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues’s control of Santo Tomás was firm but benign. He was sixty-eight years old, with dark, hooded eyes, a small nose and mouth, and sparse, near-white beard. His lips were often parted, as if he was on the point of saying something. Bartolomeu Rodrigues had had his war with the peddlers of Recife, but, for the most part, he had led a peaceful life at Engenho Santo Tomás. Nothing exemplified the comfort of his world as much as the sight of the patriarch at ease on his veranda in a simple cotton shirt and breeches, sometimes in stockings, with his boots or slippers next to him, moving gently in his rocking chair as he gazed contentedly in the direction of his sugar works.

  Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues’s five daughters had been raised in seclusion, their father convinced that exposure of a wife or a daughter was a prelude to certain adultery or defloration. Good husbands had been found for three of the girls; the senhor had been unable to find satisfactory beaus for the other two and had provided dowries for their admission to a convent at Salvador.

  Of his three sons, Geraldo at nineteen was the youngest — a pleasant, lazy young man with a grand disinterest in most things. Graciliano was twenty-one and quite the opposite of Geraldo. He was physically the largest and strongest of the brothers and had frequently demonstrated this in brawls with them. Restless and impatient, he possessed a violent temper, and had once beaten Paulo senseless for taking more than half of a sweet potato offered to them at the senzala; but it was Geraldo he had teased and bullied mercilessly.

  The senhor de engenho spent a small fortune on the festa for Paulo, a banquet the Cavalcantis themselves were unlikely to see more than once or twice a year. From the great kitchen — filled with aromas and flavors of Africa — came dishes of spicy feijoada, vatapá, caruru, and varieties of sweets and sugared candies that the slaves prepared under the watchful eye of Dona Catarina.

  There were entertainments by slave musicians, and a parade by the district militia regiment, which Bartolomeu Rodrigues had commanded for the past twenty-two years. On two successive nights, the slope below the Casa Grande thundered and sparkled with fireworks, and rockets lit the sky above. The 140 slaves who worked in the fields, at the engenho, and in the plantation’s workshops were generously supplied with meat and drink; after Mass on the last day of the celebrations, they were mustered in front of the Casa Grande. The senhor de engenho granted two old men their freedom, a gesture he made with a tremor in his voice and tears in his eyes, such was Bartolomeu Rodrigues’s gratitude for the Lord’s having spared his son at Lisbon.

  What a strong face he has, Paulo Cavalcanti thought, as he looked at Padre Eugênio Viana. They were sitting opposite each other at an oval table in the library the night after the last guests had left.

  Viana’s face was shadowed in the candlelight, but the firm set of his jaw and the steel blue eyes reflected the sense of purpose recognized by Paulo. The priest was thirty-three, broad-shouldered and firm-bodied, similar in build to Paulo and showing the same confidence.

  During the past weeks, Paulo had answered endless questions about the earthquake and his meeting with His Excellency Carvalho e Melo, but with Padre Eugênio, his friend and confessor, he could speak more frankly than with others, and as they sat in the library this night, he mentioned his concern regarding the minister’s strong prejudices against the Society of Jesus:

  “His Excellency is convinced that the Jesuits seek nothing less than a conquest of Brazil and the Maranhão. I told him about Rosário, but he dismissed the aldeia as the exception to the Society’s great plantations and properties.”

  “A conquest?” Viana asked. “Of what? Of the evils the Portuguese have practiced in this land? The immorality? The enslavement of the natives? A conquest of ignorance, Paulo? Does Carvalho e Melo consider the debt owed the Jesuits for educating thousands at the colégios?”

  “He spoke of their neglect in teaching the natives to speak Portuguese.”

  “Dear God in heaven, what makes Minister Carvalho e Melo an expert in instructing the heathen?”

  “His Excellency says they must be freed and admitted as equals into Portuguese society.”

  “Freed? From what? From the sanctuary provided for them by the Jesuits? This will not happen. Minister Carvalho e Melo will come to realize what a tragic error it would be.”

  “The war in the south continues,” Paulo remarked, referring to the Portuguese-Spanish campaign to dislodge the Guarani from the seven missions east of the Rio Uruguay. “Carvalho e Melo expects victory.”

  “The Jesuits of Brazil aren’t implicated in the Guarani rebellion.”

  “The way the minister sees it, whether in Paraguay, Pernambuco, or Portugal, the Society of Jesus is a threat.”

  “To whom?” Viana asked. “To those of other Orders who resent their success? To the ambition of Minister Carvalho e Melo?”

  Paulo began to talk then of Luis Fialho Soares, telling Viana how his friend had been deceived by the looters.

  “Thanks to God you found him. You were very close?”

  “Yes and no. He was different. A Paulista. One of the first descendants of mamelucos admitted to Coimbra. And I? Mazombo! It made me miserable to think that Portuguese, our own people, who owe so much to Brazil, think so little of good men like my father. Dear heaven, I look at our new house, the lands, the engenho. How can those Portuguese lords who sit in decaying palaces on their tiny estates believe that they are privileged simply by birth in Portugal?”

  “You didn’t speak like this before you left for Coimbra.”

  “But it’s true, Padre. I feel it so strongly now that I’m back with my people. The Cavalcantis are a noble family of Pernambuco. They deserve recognition.”

  “What did your friend, the Paulista, have to say about this?”

  “Luis Fialho is a poet. The Portugal of Camöes stirred him; the grand monuments of the past were an inspiration; but when he thought of the present, he saw only Brazil. His verse flowed with passion for the great valleys and open spaces.”

  “I would like to meet this young poet with quill in hand dreaming of the far sertão! And his forbears, Paulo?” Suddenly, Viana pushed back his chair, took a candle from the table, and moved to one side of the room. “There!” he said, and laughed. “The young scoundrel, whoever he was!”

  Secundus Proot’s Bandeirante hung on the wall, in all its vulgar glory, stocky Amador festooned with weapons and his Paulista troop blazing away with their muskets, a dead savage at their feet, a second native threatening them with his bow. Viana studied the painting so intensely that Paulo was finally moved to ask:

  “What is it that fascinates you so, Padre?”

  Padre Eugênio, startled out of his reverie, moved back to his chair and sat down. “I was just thinking. The two of you — one, the son of a senhor de engenho; the other, from the sertão.”

  “The Soares family is wealthy. They own gold mines, a fazenda, properties at Vila Rica.”

  “More important, Paulo, is the harmony you and Luis Fialho found at Coimbra. Brazil is so big — there are so many Portugals here — most men live and die in their captaincies without knowing what lies beyond. You must not forget the understanding you found with Luis Fialho in Portugal.”

  “I could
not forget, Padre. Luis Fialho and I shared so much together.”

  Paulo felt a great love for Padre Eugênio. He sometimes wondered why Viana had accepted the post at Engenho Santo Tomás, for he certainly possessed the talent to serve the Society of Jesus or to attain a high position in the Church. When he’d asked Viana about this, the padre had laughed, saying that he had work enough with the parish of Santo Tomás. Which was true, for there were some eight hundred men, women, and children attached to the Cavalcanti estate.

  “We are all subjects of the king of Portugal,” Viana said. “Yet, from Maranhão and Grão Pará in the north to Rio Grande in the south, we’re torn by envy, greed, dissension. Paulista against Emboaba, planter against peddler, colonist against Jesuit, white man against savage. Minister Carvalho e Melo predicts a great Portuguese nation here. This will never be, Paulo, until we find unity and understanding.”

  Bending low over his pony’s neck, one hand on the single rein, the other gripping an iron-tipped goad that he held at the horizontal, the vaqueiro flew at breakneck speed through the caatinga, his horse’s hoofs clattering over the stony ground and tossing up puffs of dust where the surface lay brittle and pink. He swept through a stand of cacti; he flung himself flat on the pony’s back to pass below a gnarled branch.

  A slender black steer with short horns crashed through the caatinga forty yards ahead of the vaqueiro. The cattleman gave a lusty yell and plunged deeper into tangled growth. But then he gave a curse, too, for the point of his lancelike guiada became impaled in a tree trunk, and the goad was wrenched from his hand with a terrible jolt, but the vaqueiro hung on, never taking his eye from the dark shape of his quarry. He saw the steer bolt to the right toward an opening beyond the thick scrub.

  The vaqueiro spurred his fiery pony. At full charge, bending low in the saddle, his weight on one stirrup, he held the pony’s mane; with his other hand, he seized the steer’s tail. A powerful twist, a jerk, and he dumped the animal on its side. With dust swirling around him, the vaqueiro leapt from his mount, grabbing the fetters that hung from his saddle. The steer was thrashing on its side, but before it could recover, the vaqueiro slipped on the restraint, fettering its hind legs.