Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  The solemn silence of the natives gathered in the square as the padre’s belongings were taken out of the house this December morning was indicative of the worry and confusion within the community. The men who served as aldeia officials stood in front of the crowd. Among them was Black Peter, who only recently had been appointed to the council of elders, the first black to join the group of natives who assisted in the administration of the mission.

  Some of the natives could scarcely remember the places they had come from in the sertão, but were talking of returning there; some were praying only to be left in peace at Rosário, where they had been born and from where they had never strayed more than a few miles; some, like the small group of mixed breeds, were confident that the governador at Recife was going to send a kind and just director.

  Among the twenty-seven blacks, there was little optimism. Black Peter and the heads of the two other families at Rosário were free men, but never so free as to entirely discard the badge of their former status: “Trabalho e para cachorro e negro! ” — “Work is for dogs and negroes!” — the Portuguese said, and as far as they were concerned, that went for the “free” African as well. At Rosário, Black Peter had enjoyed a good life with his family, and he was proud of his role as inspector of houses: He dreaded the possibility that this could change when the black robes were gone.

  The last of the priests’ belongings had been placed in the cart and men began to hitch up four mules. Padre Leandro and Padre Salvador moved along the row of aldeia officials to bid each one farewell.

  “Jesus be with you . . . Mary . . . Joseph,” Salvador repeated, again and again, his voice filled with emotion. When he came to Black Peter, he stopped and gazed into his eyes. “God bless you, Pedro. Tell them to fix their houses. When the director comes, he must not be disappointed.”

  “I will tell them, Padre.”

  “Strong houses, Pedro. Houses that will — ” He looked appealingly at Black Peter.

  “It will be done, Padre. I promise.”

  Padre Salvador moved on to the next man.

  Leandro Taques came along the row to Black Peter. The pitted flesh beside his eye twitched. “God be with you, Pedro Prêto,” he said, “and with your family.”

  “Thank you, Padre.” He looked kindly at the old priest. “Jesus walk with you, Padre Leandro.”

  Padre Leandro bowed his head and started toward the next man, then suddenly turned to look back at Black Peter.

  “Jesus walk with the padre!”

  The mules had been harnessed, and two men who were to drive the priests to Recife had climbed up onto the cart.

  “Let us go, Leandro,” said Salvador.

  Padre Leandro didn’t move.

  “What is wrong, my friend? We must not keep them waiting.”

  Padre Leandro turned and gently touched Salvador’s arm. “You ride ahead. I’ll follow.”

  “Leandro?”

  He smiled. “‘Jesus walk with the padre,’ Black Peter said to me. Ah, sweet Jesus, yes, let me walk!” Leandro Taques exclaimed. “Let me tramp this long road to exile!”

  All this week Leandro Taques had felt a terrible impotence. For the second time in less than five years, he was being forced to abandon his community. Again, nothing for him to do but meekly acquiesce, be transported into perpetual banishment. But wait!

  It was twenty leagues — about seventy miles — and he an old man. But oh, sweet Jesus, what a march it would be! For you, my Lord, a humble penance from an unworthy servant!

  “Please, Salvador, I mean what I say. Leave me to walk.”

  Padre Salvador knew how strong-willed his old colleague was. Still, he appealed to him to consider his age, and the weakness of his body after his long service at the Rio das Amazonas.

  But Padre Leandro could not be dissuaded. “I will drag these old bones joyfully, Salvador, over the hills and through the great valleys of Pernambuco. Tell our Superior I will be at the door of the colégio in five days . . . seven . . . God will know how long He wants this servant to wander the stony road.”

  Leandro Taques spent eleven days along the road from Rosário to Recife. He intended no more than atonement for his sins and omissions, but in this last and darkest hour for the Jesuits of Brazil, the long walk of Leandro Taques was a small triumph.

  There were hundreds of witnesses to the old priest’s march. They saw the lone black-robed figure grasping a rough-hewn bough as a staff and haltingly ascending a long pass through the range of hills southwest of Engenho Santo Tomás. Their eyes followed him as he plodded between tall canes as sheets of rain fell from the sky.

  Wives and daughters of cane workers peered from doorways and windows, making the sign of the Cross, some appealing for the Lord’s blessing on the wanderer.

  Padre Leandro averaged seven miles a day. He could not go far before he was breathless. He wore an old pair of heavy boots, and the leather left blisters that bled. The afternoon before reaching Engenho Santo Tomás, about halfway to Recife, the pain was so excruciating that he cried out, but he did not stop immediately and walked on for a thousand paces more, as he meditated upon Christ’s Passion.

  Senhor Bartolomeu Rodrigues and his family were aware of Padre Taques’s approach, and on December 28 the senhor, Paulo, and Eugénio Viana rode out to meet him, taking a spare mount with them.

  “In the letter from my Superior, Senhor Bartolomeu, I read that a man can be put to death for talking to a Jesuit,” Padre Leandro said when they sat with him.

  “Yes, Padre,” said the senhor. “And if that day ever comes, we will be no better than the early savages, with the lips of their enemies dangling like bracelets on their arms.”

  When the senhor asked Taques to ride up to the Casa Grande, the Jesuit declined. “I thank you, but I must finish this walk.”

  Bartolomeu Rodrigues held his arm. “God has witnessed your great march. Ten leagues from Rosário! It is enough.”

  Padre Leandro also declined to rest for a few days with the Cavalcantis. He was under orders from his Superior, he said. But he did consent to eat a meal with them.

  Padre Leandro was unable to climb the stairs to the dining room, and Paulo carried him there. Eugênio Viana joined them a few minutes later with a slave carrying a bowl of water and towels. Viana himself gently bathed Padre Leandro’s feet and applied a salve to the raw wounds.

  The three men accompanied him until it began to grow dark. Then Paulo and his father returned to the Casa Grande, but Eugênio Viana remained at Padre Leandro’s side through this night, and through the next day and night, until they reached the end of the valley of Santo Tomás, only six miles along the winding track.

  Viana would willingly have gone with him all the way to Recife, but he respected the Jesuit’s wish to march alone.

  After leaving Santo Tomás, Padre Leandro took five days to cover the remaining twenty-nine miles.

  On the afternoon of January 2 he entered São Antônio, the district where Count Maurits had built his capital. His bloody, blistered feet were encased in his old boots. He looked around dazedly, the spasms contorting the side of his face.

  He was no longer alone but accompanied by an immense crowd, who urged the old black robe onward with constant words of encouragement. Men as old as he was stepped up to offer him their arm; others begged to be allowed to carry him; mothers pushed their young forward to touch the mud-stained and rumpled cassock of this holy man; many sank to their knees on the cobblestones and prayed aloud for angels in heaven to behold one so worthy.

  Padre Leandro was bewildered by the commotion. Again and again he gave thanks for offers of help, but he clung to his staff and hobbled toward the colégio and the Church of Our Lady of Expectations. When he finally stood before the handsome sandstone church, he crossed himself and said a prayer of gratitude for a safe journey. The colégio was next to the church, and after a short appeal to God, Padre Leandro started toward it.

  Just then a carriage entered the square, and its driver called f
or the crowd to let him and his passenger through.

  Dom Francisco Xavier Aranha, bishop of Olinda, alighted next to Leandro Taques. Appointed Visitor and Reformer of the Jesuits in Pernambuco and responsible for the investigation of their assets and activities, the bishop had found no evidence to support the charges against the Society. This had been before the royal edict banishing the Jesuits from Brazil, but Dom Francisco Xavier continued to believe that the black robes were innocent, though he was powerless to offer anything but friendship and consolation.

  The bishop greeted Padre Leandro, and put his other arm around Padre Leandro’s shoulders.

  “Come, Leandro Taques. I will help you to the door.”

  The Jesuits sent from Pernambuco, fifty-three in all, including the fathers from neighboring captaincies, were shipped to Lisbon in a small trader. Huddled below decks like convicts, starving and stricken with thirst, five priests died before the ship entered the Tagus in June 1760.

  Padre Leandro Taques’s name appeared on a list of black robes who had given special provocation to His Majesty’s officials. Padre Leandro was flung into a dungeon in the Junqueira, where on January 10, 1761, he died peacefully in his sleep.

  A ceremony at Nossa Senhora do Rosário on April 11, 1760, lasted less than an hour but was of great significance, and except for two Tapuya families and five mixed breeds who had deserted the aldeia, the inhabitants were all assembled in the square, the elders standing together as on the day the Jesuits departed.

  Bartolomeu Rodrigues and Paulo Cavalcanti were present, the senhor de engenho in his capacity as colonel of the district militia. Thirty men who had accompanied the Cavalcantis were lined up in two rows to one side of the square wearing dark blue uniforms that had been supplied by the senhor himself.

  The man in charge of the ceremony stood with the Cavalcantis. He was Elias Souza Vanderley, the director of the settlement. Vanderley’s bright blue eyes, ruddy complexion, and ginger hair at once distinguished him from his companions. He was descended from a Dutchman, Jaspar van der Lei, a gentleman-in-waiting to Johan Maurits of Nassau. Van der Lei had been married to a Portuguese woman and turned traitor against the Dutch, fighting alongside the Pernambucans. When the Hollanders had been expelled, Jaspar settled in the south of the captaincy, where his descendants prospered as planters and ranchers.

  Elias Souza Vanderley was in his mid-thirties, large and robust, with an imperious bearing. He had been at Nossa Senhora do Rosário for two months now, having left his wife and three children at Recife, where he had been a petty official at the governor’s palace.

  “I am here to end the wretched and debased conditions you suffered under the black robes,” he announced to the elders upon his arrival at the aldeia, waving a document in front of them: “These instructions from the king’s men at Lisbon will be my guide.”

  The director’s regulations went into minute detail: Separate classrooms were to be built for boys and girls, both sexes to be taught to read and write Portuguese. The director was never to use the words “peça” or “Negro” to describe a native. The natives were to be lectured on the effects of strong drink. The director was to encourage whites to join the settlement, but the newcomers must cultivate their own lands as an example to the natives.

  One of Director Vanderley’s first duties had been to enter the names of males between the ages of thirteen and sixty in two registers, one of which was to be sent to the governor at Recife, the other to a Crown magistrate with jurisdiction over the settlement. “The black robes kept you as children,” the director explained to the 140 men and boys whose names were listed in the books. “You are now registered as men.” At all times, half of the men were to work in the fields of Rosário, the other half to be wage earners on the lands of colonists. “Those who demonstrate that they are most eager to reform the indolence encouraged by the Jesuits will be preferred when the governor’s officials distribute offices and privileges,” said Vanderley.

  Black Peter had had a brief and unpleasant interview with the director soon after Vanderley’s arrival. “I am Black Peter,” he had said, introducing himself. “I am inspector of houses.”

  Vanderley had laughed so uproariously that his pink face had turned crimson. “Inspector? Of these hovels and pigsties?”

  “There has been no time to improve them.”

  “The black robes were here for forty years! That was time enough.”

  “The padres were pleased with the work I did at my house.”

  “And I, too, Black Peter, will show gratitude. Tomorrow, Black Peter, come to my house.” This was the former quarters of the Jesuits.

  “For what, Senhor Director?”

  Again the color in Vanderley’s face deepened, but he was not laughing. “I don’t like your tone, Black Peter.”

  “No, Senhor Director.”

  “You were a peça liberated through an act of great Christian charity,” the director said. “Be humble and grateful. Show that you can earn a place as a free subject.”

  Elias Vanderley had given Black Peter the job of remodeling the priests’ quarters. He made no mention of payment for the many tasks he set, but hinted that if the alterations were satisfactory, the carpenter might retain his post as inspector of houses.

  Black Peter and six helpers had worked on the director’s abode for a month, installing wooden floors, a new thatched roof, and a covered porch. Vanderley was particularly pleased with the veranda, where he was able to sit in the shade as he directed the affairs of the community.

  As Black Peter labored on Elias Vanderley’s house, he had seen the director make frequent visits to a back room where he kept two barrels of cachaça. But cachaça wasn’t his only weakness, Black Peter had also observed; the director held a special affection for the daughter of another black family, and as soon as his house was ready, he began to take the girl into his rooms.

  On this day of the ceremony, Black Peter and twenty natives stood in the middle of the square, facing the great Cross and the church. With ropes and timber supports, they were ready to raise a sixteen-foot wooden column that had been made by Black Peter according to the director’s specifications.

  Eighteen inches in diameter, straight and smoothly hewn mahogany, the column was surmounted by a small cross and bore a heraldic shield carved with the arms of the king of Portugal. Two iron bars were driven through the column, two feet from the top and at right angles to each other; the four iron sections each protruded for four feet and ended in a curved hook. The lower third of the column was to be embedded in mortar and stone in a hole that had been dug one hundred feet away from the base of the aldeia Cross, a distance paced out by the director himself.

  To the natives who had asked what was the purpose of the column, Director Vanderley, pointing solemnly to the great Cross, had replied, “That is the holy symbol of Christ’s suffering and love for His children.” They had nodded understandingly, and crossed themselves. “This column represents the authority of the king of Portugal. His Majesty loves his subjects and asks that this symbol be raised in every town and village as a reminder of his affection and authority. It also stands as a warning of the king’s terrible anger against any who break his laws.” The iron hooks were for suspending felons deserving death; the base of the pillory was to be embraced by malefactors deserving a lashing.

  Elias Vanderley saw that all was ready, and he raised a hand to signal to the militia. Two men stepped forward to blow a fanfare; when the trumpet blasts died away, two drummers began to tap out a steady beat.

  The director signaled to Black Peter, who ordered his assistants to heave on the ropes attached to the pillory. Vanderley grew animated as the natives pulled the ropes and sang out a cadence in time with the drumbeats. His look of satisfaction increased as the mahogany pillar rose without a hitch and Black Peter and the others propped it up with the supports.

  “Witness, senhores, how easy it is to establish a town!” Director Elias Souza Vanderley declared. He laughed happily. “M
y honored guests, I welcome you to the vila of Rosário!”

  As Paulo Cavalcanti stood at an upstairs window overlooking the garden at the rear of the Casa Grande and watched his daughters playing near their mother, he felt an outpouring of love toward Luciana.

  Paulo’s happiness on this July day in 1766 was owing not only to his love for Luciana but also to his great good fortune at having a son, Carlos Maria. Their oldest child, Lúcia, was eight; the younger girl, Francisca, four; two sons had died, one from lung disease before the end of his first year, the other at birth. But now there was Carlos Maria, who was six months old and strong and healthy.

  It was just past 11:00 A.M. and two slaves came for the girls to ready them for the main meal of the day. Paulo and Luciana went to their bedroom, opening the door quietly so as not to disturb Carlos Maria. As they entered, a slave on the floor next to the crib started to get up. This was Rachel, a Yoruba woman who was in her sixties and had nursed Paulo when he was an infant.

  Rachel shuffled past Paulo. “Jesus Christ be praised,” she whispered.

  “Forever,” he replied.

  Carlos Maria Santos Cavalcanti was asleep in the blue lace-trimmed bassinet, with his head resting on a pillow embroidered with religious motifs. Paulo looked down at his son with tender pride. He touched a small cotton bag tied to the end of the bassinet, then sniffed his fingers. “Sleep . . . sleep, my little one,” he whispered. “God and His saints watch over you . . . Ama Rachel, with her weeds and wishes, she protects you, too, Carlos Maria.”

  The nursemaid Rachel had another gift for Senhor Paulo’s child: a string of blue beads, tied to the bag of pungent herbs and roots. And there were offerings Paulo and Luciana had not seen: a sprinkling of ash from the burnt bones of a castrated goat — the blue beads were woven with the sinews of this animal — and, secreted behind an oratory table, three small white shells.