Now the senhor barão’s grandson came over to the wagons:
“Boy!” Firmino Dantas called to Antônio Paciência. “Come with me!”
Firmino Dantas headed toward the most prosperous store in Tiberica — Silva and Sons — which belonged to José Inocêncio da Silva, Andre Vaz’s orphaned son, who had been raised by Silvestre da Silva.
Antônio Paciência hesitated when he saw Firmino Dantas at the entrance to the store.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Antônio Paciência took a few steps forward but again stopped.
“Come, child. The senhor is waiting.”
Firmino Dantas looked at him sympathetically. “This is not a punishment. No one will hurt you.”
What does the master want with me, Mãe Mônica? He shuffled forward nervously.
Twenty minutes later, as he stepped out of the store, Antônio Paciência had a partial answer to these questions, which only increased his confusion. Inside the store, he had been treated with amazing kindness. The senhor barão himself had gone across to a tall glass jar, lifted out a ball of pink candy, and popped it into Antônio Paciência’s mouth. Never had he tasted such a marvelous sweet! Then the senhor barão had given him a white blouse of soft cotton with a big collar, long gray trousers with thin red stripes down the sides, and, most impressive of all, a pair of bright red braces with which his pants were hitched up. He had not been given shoes, for those were not for slaves, and the senhor barão, amid the satisfaction he showed in having Antônio Paciência dressed so handsomely, had warned that he expected the boy to take great care with these clothes that had cost many reis. “Oh, yes, senhor! My beautiful clothes! Oh, my Master, Antônio Paciência will look after them!”
Outside the store, Antônio Paciência again hesitated momentarily at Firmino Dantas’s order to walk ahead. He was afraid that out in the open, sitting on the ground with the other slaves, he might spoil the wonderful new clothes he had been given.
There was no need for Antônio Paciência to worry about spoiling his clothes. Firmino Dantas took him to the barão’s open carriage, where he was put beside the driver for the trip to Itatinga. The carriageman was a mulatto slave, a great burly fellow called Cincinnato, who put on a friendly display of mock obeisance to the boy, bowing to him, praising his garments, and helping him up to the carriage seat.
For the first time since leaving Jurema, the boy took a delight in the journey. Six miles north of Tiberica, the carriage entered the da Silva property, the clatter of iron-shod hooves sending flocks of brilliant-feathered birds into the highest branches of the forest. The jungle was alive with sound and color and exotic plants unknown to Antônio Paciência. He gazed about him in awe and a little fear.
Three miles from the main settlement at Itatinga, the forest ended abruptly at the line of advance of the newest clearings. Majestic tree trunks still dotted the hillsides, their columns tall, black, and blasted by the inferno that had raged around them. Half a mile onward and the scene again changed, with the first rows of dark green young coffee plants waving amid a protective growth of other crops. Nearer the settlement, endless rows of older trees up to twelve feet high grew on the hillsides.
Some agregados had built their homes beside the road. Those outside when the baron’s carriage approached greeted it respectfully, men removing their hats and pressing them to their chests, women bending their bodies with a motion suggestive of a royal curtsy.
Two hours after leaving Tiberica, the carriage crested a hill beyond which the ground sloped gently to the headland at the great bend of the Rio Tieté, with the Place of White Stones — Itatinga. The old house of Benedito Bueno was still there, an ugly rammed-earth building now used as a coffee store and slave infirmary. Off to the right, amid tufted royal palms and luxuriant bushes and flowers, stood the mansion occupied by the barão de Itatinga and his family. It was a sprawling whitewashed building with two ells extending backward. There were twenty outbuildings, all neat and whitewashed, the largest group of which housed the slaves. One hundred yards in front of the main house was an immense open area of stamped earth, the terreiro, where coffee beans were dried.
Cincinnato halted the horses at the front entrance of the mansion, where a flight of stone steps led up to a small open veranda with wrought iron railings. The baron and his grandson got out of the carriage. “You, too, Antônio Paciência,” Cincinnato said. “Climb down and wait there, at the bottom of the steps.” Antônio Paciência did as he was told. “When he wants you, the barão will send for you.”
“For what?”
“Be patient, Antônio. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Antônio Paciência waited for ten minutes. Cincinnato had taken the carriage to a shed near the house, and the boy stood watching him as he unhitched the horses.
Then the senhor barão himself appeared in the doorway: “Come up here, Antônio Paciência.”
He climbed the steps quickly, but paused opposite the entrance to the house.
The baron stepped across the veranda to him. “Antônio, you must learn to keep your clothes neat.” The baron tugged at the tail of the boy’s shirt. “Tuck it in!” When Antônio Paciência tried unsuccessfully to comply, Ulisses Tavares helped him. “There!” he said. He straightened the collar of the boy’s blouse. “Good,” he said, stepping back. “Good!”
At that moment, Antônio Paciência saw the young Senhor Firmino Dantas in the doorway, and with him, a little mistress in a blue dress whom the boy took to be the sister of Senhor Firmino. The sinhazinha was much younger, short and with dimpled cheeks; she moved her pink hands excitedly and kept her fiery black eyes on Antônio Paciência.
“Well?” the barão asked. “What do you think?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, Senhor Barão!” the girl exclaimed.
“He’s called Antônio Paciência.”
The girl giggled with delight.
Her name was Teodora Rita Mendes da Silva, and in a week’s time she would celebrate her thirteenth birthday. She was tempestuous, with the fire seldom absent from her small black eyes and with a sharp tongue, but she was a lively, enchanting creature, especially when others gave her their undivided attention. This she had no difficulty at all commanding, for Teodora Rita Mendes da Silva was the wife of Ulisses Tavares, baron of Itatinga.
Two years ago, the barão, a widower for eleven years, had met the child at the house of her father, Emilio Mendes, a wealthy fazendeiro of Tiberica county and dear friend of Ulisses Tavares. The fresh bloom in Teodora Rita’s rosy cheeks and her blazing eyes had warmed the heart of the then sixty-five-year-old baron. Eight months ago, an emboldened hero of Bussaco and the Banda Oriental had strapped himself into his corset and had donned his black suit for a long interview with Senhor Emilio and a request for this little flower to brighten the days of an aging barão. Senhor Emilio, an observant man, had shown no surprise, for Ulisses Tavares’s visits to his house had been frequent and his doting upon the girl quite open. Senhor Emilio had no objection to the betrothal of Teodora Rita, though he wondered how long the senhor barão’s ardor would last. So had many others, but not Ulisses Tavares, who after these first seven months with his child bride remained as happy and charmed as when he had first set eyes upon his little baronesa.
“Oh, yes, Senhor Barão!” Teodora Rita repeated. “What a lovely little boy!”
Antônio Paciência saw the somber-faced Senhor Firmino Dantas smile for the first time.
The baron of Itatinga’s features broke into a broad grin, so pleased was he with his wife’s reaction.
“Antônio Paciência is yours, my sweet angel,” he said. “A gift for your birthday.”
XVIII
November 1864 - June 1865
On November 12, 1864,after the midday meal, life aboard the packet Marquês de Olinda came to a standstill. The privileged among the passengers and crew retired to bunks and hammocks and wicker chairs; others sought a shaded patch of deck as the Marquês de Olinda steamed up the Rio Paraguay
at a steady six knots. The first officer and helmsman were alert; the pilot, who they had taken on at Asunción, was gazing forward intently. Engineer’s mate Manuel Pacheco was stripped to the waist standing watch over engines and steam gauges. Three firemen worked like automatons as they shoveled coal into the glowing innards of red-hot iron furnaces.
The five-hundred-ton Marquês de Olinda, a Brazilian merchantman, made eight round trips a year between Rio de Janeiro and Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso province, which remained inaccessible by overland trails.
Two days earlier, the Marquês de Olinda had dropped anchor at Asunción to take on coal. In this dry season, the capital of Paraguay lay thick with red dust that swirled up against one-storied houses, mud huts, and lean-tos. But construction gangs were busy at work throughout the city. Presidential palace, opera house, cathedral; shipyard, arsenal, iron foundry, telegraph office, railway — after centuries of colonial slumber, Paraguay was in the midst of an industrial revolution, attracting hundreds of skilled European engineers and craftsmen.
Aboard the Marquês de Olinda, as she now puffed along the Rio Paraguay, three passengers, taking their sesta in wicker chairs placed beneath an awning toward the ship’s stern, spoke of the small republic’s progress. They were Pedro Telles Brandão, a miner and rancher from Cuiabá; Coronel Frederico Carneiro de Campos, president-designate of Mato Grosso; and Sabino do Nascimento Pereira de Mendonça, a revenue inspector being sent to survey tax collection in Mato Grosso.
“I don’t like it at all,” Telles Brandão said. “I first made this passage nine years ago. Beyond Tres Bocas, there was nothing but Guarani and mosquitoes. At Asunción, wharves were sinking into the mud; plazas and houses looked as if they would follow, and good riddance, too. A rusty cannon here and there — not batteries of rifled pieces set to blow intruders to kingdom come! Soldiers were fewer than market women. Today the streets are filled with Guarani in uniform. I don’t like the look of it.”
“I agree,” Mendonça said, his small brown eyes darting about. “War steamers, fortresses, guns . . .” He leaned forward in his chair, peering at Carneiro de Campos. “What for, Coronel?”
“The Paraguayans see enemies everywhere,” Carneiro de Campos replied.
“For defense?” Telles Brandão queried, tugging at his full black beard. “Or aggression?”
“Against whom?” Mendonça made an expressive whistling sound. “Brazil?” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Never! El Presidente will not be foolish enough to ignore the lessons of history: Time and again, the Guarani have been soundly defeated by our armies.”
Telles Brandão was staring off to port, where crimson flamingos, rosy spoonbills, dark-colored ibis, and white storks stood motionless on the mud flats as the ship passed them; caiman lay like logs on the sandbars, felled by the heat of early afternoon.
As Telles Brandão looked out toward the riverbank, he thought of a reception he had attended in the French Embassy at Asunción six years ago. He’d met several members of the most powerful family in Paraguay, from whose ranks had come two of three presidents since independence: Don Antonio López, known popularly as “The Citizen,” whose dictatorial rule lasted eighteen years; and his son Francisco Solano López, who had taken over the reins in 1862. The young López had been at the reception, a stocky man with an attractive openness about him; but Telles Brandão remembered, he had felt uncomfortable in the presence of the future president.
“Perhaps Solano López has a purpose in building his war machine,” Telles Brandão said, thinking aloud.
Mendonça looked up expectantly. Coronel Frederico’s eyes were half open.
“Emperor López, the Napoleon of the Plata!” Telles Brandão added, with marked scorn.
“And a crown for his Irish princess?” Mendonça said, a glint in his beady eyes.
Telles Brandão smiled at this reference to Eliza Alicia Lynch, mistress of Solano López. “You jest, Sabino. There’s talk at Buenos Aires that López has crown and scepter on order from Europe.”
“An old story,” interjected Coronel Frederico. “It originated at Rio de Janeiro, not Buenos Aires. López was said to have made an approach to the Braganças for a marriage with one of Pedro Segundo’s daughters.”
“The gall of it!” Telles Brandão exclaimed. “Europe’s noblest sons beg an audience with our princesses!” At Rio de Janeiro, where he’d been on a visit, Telles Brandão had witnessed the celebrations to mark the October wedding of Princess Isabel and Prince Louis Gaston d’Orleans, comte d’Eu, and the marriage planned for December between Princess Leopoldina and Prince Louis Augustus, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
“Emperor López and La Lynch!” Mendonça said. “A royal pair on the throne of Paraguay!”
Telles Brandão had met Madame Lynch at the reception in Asunción:
“What a beauty! Her skin is alabaster; her eyes are blue-green. La Lynch is tall, with a seductive figure. When she crosses a room, from her crown of reddish hair to her small feet — a goddess!”
Telles Brandão shared what he knew of Eliza Lynch’s background: “She was nine when her father, a poor merchant from County Cork, fled Ireland for France in the great famine of 1845. At fifteen, she was given to Quatrefages, a French officer, who took her to Algiers. There’s some question about whether or not they married, but within the year she was back in Paris. Some say she left him for a Russian noble; some, that Quatrefages deserted her. Whatever the truth, when López met her in Paris, Eliza Lynch was nineteen and rid of Quatrefages. La Lynch has given López five sons; but the word is he’ll never marry her, not while he’s so eager to infuse his line with royal blood.”
Coronel Federico looked up suddenly. “My friends, there’s more to Paraguay than gossip about El Presidente and La Lynch,” he said. “Fourteen thousand Guarani are training at the main camp at Cerro León; tens of thousands more have already been drilled and posted to other bases. Today, El Presidente addresses his barefoot regiments and speaks of defending Paraguayan soil. Tomorrow? He’ll tell them no country on this continent is so powerful or has such happy citizens. He’ll say, ‘If only it weren’t for the macacos . . .’ ”
Inspector Mendonça scowled fiercely at Coronel Frederico’s use of “monkeys” as an epithet for Brazilians, but he did not interrupt him.
“López lies to them. He says Brazil and Argentina are plotting to destroy Paraguayan independence. It’s all nonsense, but if El Presidente orders them to battle, they’ll follow him, to the last man and boy.” He gazed upriver as if searching for something on the far bank. “Mato Grosso has a few hundred soldiers and some run-down forts along hundreds of miles of borderlands that Asunción and Rio de Janeiro were arguing over when my grandfather was alive. We are at López’s mercy.”
“Mato Grosso?” Mendonça said in a squeaky voice. “You expect an invasion, Coronel Frederico?”
“With Solano López, I would not discount it.”
“A few hundred soldiers?”
“Yes, Sabino.” Coronel Frederico saw the inspector’s crestfallen look. “We carry a cargo of new weapons,” he reminded Mendonça. “Let the Paraguayan devils come! They’ll be met with fire!”
“Ai, Jesus, pray not. Our ambassador considers it possible?”
“He doesn’t like the mood of the Paraguayans. Since he got to Asunción in August, he’s been living on a powder keg.”
“Dear God, the news we brought with the Marquês de Olinda,” Telles Brandão said. “It may be all that’s needed to light the powder.”
“Exactly what Ambassador Viana de Lima feared most.”
The news the Marquês de Olinda carried was explosive. In mid-October, the Brazilian imperial army had invaded Uruguay, independent ever since Brazil lost control of the old Banda Oriental in 1828. Two parties had dominated Uruguayan politics since independence — Blancos (“Whites”) and Colorados (“Reds”). The latest bloodletting had started in April 1863, when a Colorado exile, General Venancio Flores, landed on Uruguayan soil from Arge
ntina in rebellion against a Blanco government in power at the capital, Montevideo.
For a year, as the Uruguayan civil war raged, Dom Pedro Segundo and his ministers at Rio de Janeiro followed a policy of strict neutrality. But there were forty thousand Brazilian citizens in Uruguay, many of them descendants of settlers who’d stayed behind after Brazil surrendered the Banda Oriental. These expatriates had close ties with their countrymen in Rio Grande do Sul. By May 1864, the clamor from Rio Grande do Sul about murders and cattle rustling across its border with Uruguay, and the threat to the lives of Brazilians in Uruguay itself, prompted Rio de Janeiro to send one of its ablest diplomats, José Antônio Saraiva, to seek redress from the Blanco government at Montevideo. Imperial regiments were also concentrated in Rio Grande do Sul and a naval squadron sent to cruise the Rio de la Plata.
The Blancos had rejected Saraiva’s ultimatum. In October 1864, advance guards of the imperial army had crossed into Uruguay. The Brazilian naval squadron had been ordered to steam up the Rio Uruguay from the Plata to blockade the Blanco-held port of Paysandu.
As the crisis worsened, however, Francisco Solano López offered his services as mediator between Uruguay’s factions, but his offer had been rejected. Thereafter, Asunción’s emissaries had warned that Paraguay would regard a threat to the sovereignty of Uruguay as imperiling the stability of all nations of the Plata basin.
Aboard the Marquês de Olinda, Telles Brandão took a sanguine view: “How many threats and counterthreats by Paraguay and Brazil have there been in the past? How many times did tempers cool before we came to blows? López’s father, Don Carlos Antonio, saw that no argument over the limits of our territories — no patch of jungle or uncharted stream — was worth the sacrifice of their small nation’s blood. Solano López will also accept this.”
“López gazes far beyond a contested riverbank,” Coronel Frederico interjected. “He sees himself as arbiter of the Plata. Peacemaker, he tells the world. But month-by-month his army grows. And so, I believe, does the ambition of Francisco Solano López.”
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