The Marquês de Olinda was doing nine knots across the slack water, her maximum speed with her safety valves closed, and standing every risk of a boiler explosion — a catastrophe in itself enough to break her back in the middle of the Rio Paraguay, but likely to be much worse with the munitions she carried.
“O Mother of God!” Mendonça cried. “There! There! There!” Three times he jabbed his fingers in the air to indicate the ship coming out of the narrows and speeding toward them.
She was the Tacuari, the pride of Francisco Solano López’s river-borne navy. Built for peacetime use, the Tacuari had nevertheless been designed for rapid conversion to a warship; this had been done some time ago, and she now carried six guns, with a swivel cannon mounted on her poop deck.
“Mother of God!” Mendonça cried again. “What are we to do, Telles Brandão?”
“If they catch us — ”
“If? They’re upon us!”
“They have no right — ”
“Right? Guns! They have guns!”
“Calma, Sabino.”
“They can blow us out of the water,” Mendonça whimpered.
“They dare not fire upon a Brazilian vessel.”
“What if they do?”
“God help them. One shot and they’ll have all Brazil to answer!”
The Marquês de Olinda was losing headway, with a crack in a pipe carrying water to a boiler. Foot by foot the Tacuari began to overtake her quarry, keeping about one hundred yards off to port. Her uniformed crew stood smartly at their stations, with several men gathered at two of the steamer’s guns.
On the deck of the Marquês de Olinda, all was in chaos. Amid the flying embers and a rain of soot, a few defiant passengers stood shaking their fists and screaming curses at the Tacuari. Begrimed sailors emerged from the machine room, staggering up top for air after a stint of helping the Marquês de Olinda’s firemen feed the blazing furnaces. A few marinheiros hung around at her stern and looked sharp to leap the instant her boilers blew. At her pilothouse, Coronel Frederico and the captain and officers of the Marquês de Olinda watched grimly as the Tacuari overhauled them, and they hoped for a miracle.
It did not come. The Tacuari ran up signal flags ordering them to stop immediately. The Marquês de Olinda ignored the command. And then, without warning, there was a roar and a flash, and the cannon on her poop deck threw a shell across the bows of the Marquês de Olinda.
Instantaneously, aboard the Marquês de Olinda, the order was given to shut off power. Two of her officers stood beside the pilothouse waving frantically at the Tacuari, whose men greeted this act of submission with a resounding cheer.
On the first Saturday in February 1865, colored lanterns illuminated the gardens of the Fazenda de Itatinga and the moon silvered the Rio Tietê beyond. From within the mansion came the music of quadrille, waltz, and polka danced by the guests of the baron and baroness of Itatinga.
The seventy-five-year-old Ulisses Tavares da Silva, immaculate in black tailcoat and trousers with white waistcoat, shirt, cravat, and collar, moved through the figures of a quadrille with a lively step and with a twinkle in his eye for the baronesa. Teodora Rita had lost her youthful plumpness. Her slender waistline was pulled in tight above an immense oval-shaped skirt, with her corset rising high under her breasts and lifting them slightly.
The baronesa confounded those who had scoffed at Ulisses Tavares’s infatuation with a twelve-year-old, for, growing to womanhood at his side, she had become a faithful, loving wife. And a mother, too; the barão had known a virile renewal with Teodora Rita, and they had been blessed with a son five years ago and a daughter the next year.
When the quadrille ended and Ulisses Tavares bowed gracefully to Teodora Rita, spontaneous applause for the couple filled the ballroom, on this night of a grand ball, to which 140 couples had been invited to celebrate Teodora Rita’s twenty-second birthday.
Few celebrations at Itatinga had been as carefully planned as this party for Teodora Rita or so clearly marked the shift of prosperity from the engenhos of the north to the fazendas of the southern coffee growers. At Itatinga, the barão could ride for hours between endless rows of half a million coffee trees, their fragrance as strong and heady as the prospect of the fortune to be collected from branches heavy with small reddish-brown berries.
Ulisses Tavares had seven surviving children from his previous marriage, two of whom lived at Itatinga with their families: a daughter, Adélia, and Eusébio Magalhães, father of Firmino Dantas. (The baron’s firstborn son, Silvestre, named for Ulisses Tavares’s own father, had drowned when the ship carrying him from Lisbon after five years’ study and travel in Europe was lost near the Azores.) Eusébio Magalhães, the second-born son, already in his fiftieth year, was a silent, tense man with pale eyes. He had a prodigious memory and a tendency toward obsequiousness in the presence of Ulisses Tavares. “The Bookkeeper,” the baron called this son, intending praise, for Eusébio Magalhães was a wizard with figures and an excellent administrator of Itatinga.
Eusébio Magalhães and his wife, Feliciana, a matronly, mild-mannered woman, had taken a long time to adjust to Teodora Rita, whose early impudence toward Dona Feliciana had moved Ulisses Tavares himself to admonish his child bride to show consideration for his daughter-in-law. But now, as she watched the baron and his young wife pick up again and glide gracefully past her, Dona Feliciana gave them a broad smile, for perplexed as she had been and still was by her fatherin-law’s romance, she did not begrudge Teodora Rita admiration for the happiness the girl had brought the old man.
Ulisses Tavares and Teodora Rita had been at the top of the line of couples for the quadrille; Firmino Dantas and his partner had been at the bottom. Twenty-five years old, Firmino Dantas da Silva held a law degree from the school at São Paulo and a baccalaureate from the University of Paris. He was scholarly and serious but not pedantic, and his gray-green eyes sometimes held a restless, dreamy look. Of medium build and slender, Firmino Dantas had long, dark lashes, a straight, perfectly shaped nose, sensual lips, and a dimpled chin, which he kept shaved. The eyes of many young ladies drifted toward Firmino Dantas this night, but he was beyond reach of all save one, to whom he had been betrothed this past December.
Firmino Dantas’s fiancée was nineteen, a lively, lovable girl, petite and dark-haired, with a strong face and a determined look that said something of her ambition to be Firmino’s wife, a cause in which she was now certain of triumph. But then, Carlinda da Cunha Mendes had had powerful support in winning the affections of Dantas da Silva: She was the sister of Teodora Rita.
Carlinda had been a regular visitor to Itatinga before Firmino Dantas left for Paris; but, upon his return eleven months ago, the baronesa energetically set about promoting a match between them, with the support of Ulisses Tavares, whose encouragement often had the ring of command behind it. As a suitor, Firmino Dantas was absentminded and reticent. With Carlinda Mendes, he had been kept on track by the baronesa and Ulisses Tavares, who continued to coax him toward this promising and sensible union. Not that he needed coaxing; he had a genuine affection for Carlinda — and she an intense passion for him.
These past eleven months, Firmino Dantas had spent most of his time at Itatinga, and appeared reluctant to follow the practice of law, for which he had studied so long and diligently. His father, Eusébio Magalhães, had spoken with him about this, urged on by an impatient Ulisses Tavares eager for his grandson to begin a career that offered so much to the bright young men of the empire. Dom Pedro Segundo esteemed cap and gown and frock coat, and regarded the senhores académicos as the new pioneers who would spread law and justice through his backward and rustic realm.
“You will be leaving for São Paulo soon?” Eusébio Magalhães had suggested to Firmino one day the previous June.
“I’ve thought about it, Pai.”
“Good.” Eusébio Magalhães had looked at his son expectantly. Father and son were not close. Eusébio Magalhães and Dona Feliciana had three daug
hters, all married. Firmino was their only son. But they had lost him, in a way, even when he was still a boy, for he had been the favorite grandchild of Ulisses Tavares, who had involved himself in every aspect of Firmino Dantas’s upbringing. The barão had never said as much, but the attention he gave this grandson was not unrelated to the loss of his own firstborn, Silvestre, for whom he had entertained high hopes.
“The barão himself is anxious to see you established.”
“I understand, Pai. I won’t disappoint Grandfather.”
“Of course — Doutor Firmino Dantas.” Lawyer, medical doctor, scientist, intellectual — all sons of the empire who had graduated from university earned the respectful address of “Doctor.”
Suddenly, Firmino had said, “Pai! Please, come outside!”
The harvesting of mature coffee trees had begun in May, the first of the cool, dry months. From dawn until dark, 220 adult slaves and 190 agregados — tenants, sanctioned squatters, sharecroppers — worked at stripping the branches of 400,000 trees, the harvest of coffee beans expected to reach six hundred tons.
Firmino Dantas had taken his father toward the fazenda’s smithy and workshops, past the terreiro, an acre-sized terrace of slate where picked berries were spread out to dry in the sun. When the skins of the fleshy berries were shriveled, hard, almost black, they were ready for processing in a water-driven mill near the terreiro.
Firmino Dantas had stopped at the mill. “Maravilhoso!” he had shouted sardonically above the stamp of four huge metal-shod pestles. “We live in the age of steam and invention, and here — a medieval monstrosity!”
They had watched as slave women expertly tossed the pounded berries on screens to separate them from the broken outer covering. The two beans in each berry were still sealed in a double membrane: The pounding process had to be repeated, with hand-driven ventiladores blowing away the chaff, and the blasts of fine dust swirling around the coughing, spitting workers.
“Six hundred tons to be fed to this monster!” Firmino Dantas had exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “Father! There has to be a better way!” And he had moved off, beckoning Eusébio Magalhães to follow him as he crossed to the fazenda’s workshops.
Eusébio Magalhães and Ulisses Tavares had become aware, from Firmino Dantas’s letters from Paris, that the philosophical studies intended to broaden the young lawyer’s horizons had taken second place to a fascination with science and technology. They had not expected, however, that upon his return to Itatinga, after a month of brooding over the “monster” the barão regarded as one of the finest mills for a hundred miles, Firmino Dantas would suddenly be seized with the idea of building a machine to shell and clean the harvest. Ulisses Tavares had initially been indulgent, and had even encouraged the scheme by approving the purchase of a small steam engine from Rio de Janeiro, believing that Doutor Firmino Dantas’s flirtation with the role of mechanic would pass quickly and was but a healthy diversion after eight long years of study.
But Firmino Dantas had remained dedicated to “The Invention,” as the family called it. Repeatedly the contraption had rattled and shaken itself apart, and it lay dismantled in a sad heap, like a cast-off suit of armor. Firmino Dantas had reassembled it patiently, piece by piece, and though his invention continued to break down and spew coffee beans in every direction, he had shown no sign of abandoning the project.
The senhor barão had become impatient and not a little vexed to see his grandson laboring beside tradesmen. On this night of the ball, several times already, Ulisses Tavares had steered his grandson into the company of a district judge and a lawyer — the latter, the present incumbent of the seat Ulisses Tavares had held in the provincial assembly — in the hope that contact with these homems bons would remind Firmino Dantas of the high calling for which he had been trained.
The quadrille had been followed by a long interval during which several couples hovered impatiently beside the dance floor before the orchestra signaled they were ready to play a waltz. Three skilled musicians had been engaged from São Paulo and nine local bandsmen belonging to the Guarda Nacional of Tiberica; four Itatinga slaves, three who played fiddles, one a flute, joined them. This disparate group had been brought into harmony in only two days of practice led by M. Armand Beauchamp, master of music and dance.
Seated at an English grand piano, Professor Beauchamp played a few opening bars to alert the dancers and then paused for some moments, casting a sidelong glance at the couples and smoothing down his thick black mustache. M. Armand took pains with the upkeep of his mustache; he believed that a good mustache improved the tone of the voice, acting as a resonator and helping to conceal any distortion of the mouth in singing.
Firmino Dantas and Carlinda were first on the floor for the waltz, followed by Teodora Rita on the arm of a lieutenant of the Guarda Nacional. Ulisses Tavares stood with a smile at the sight of his bride swept along by the young officer. But after a while the barão said wistfully to a man next to him, “Oh, Clóvis, God grant that I were ten years younger this night.”
Clóvis Lima da Silva was the third son of the Tiberica merchant José Inocêncio da Silva and the grandson of André Vaz, who had perished in exile in Africa. Together, Clóvis’s dark eyes and slightly coppery skin hinted at his native ancestry: Through the family of André Vaz, the thirty-six-year-old Clóvis was descended from Trajano, the bastard son whom Amador Flôres da Silva had executed on his seven-year odyssey in search of emeralds. At nineteen, Clóvis had gone to the Escola Militar at Rio de Janeiro, where he had trained as an artilleryman. He had served with the army ever since and now held the rank of captain.
Clóvis da Silva knew that Ulisses Tavares’s remark had nothing to do with envy of Teodora Rita’s dancing partner. “Senhor Barão, in your day few served their king with as much valor,” he said.
“I did my duty, Clóvis.”
“Much more, Senhor Ulisses. Much more. The barão’s deeds are remembered.”
“Today, Clóvis . . . if only I could ride with the army today! To triumph, as in King João’s day, in lands that were ours until Pedro I surrendered them.” His voice rose sharply: “How many times, Clóvis, must the cost of that defeat be borne by Brazil — and paid for with the blood of our nation’s sons?”
Ulisses Tavares’s anguished appeal caused several heads to turn in their direction and seemed out of place in that romantic setting. But half the men waltzing their sweethearts round the ballroom were in the dress uniforms of the imperial army and Guarda Nacional, for amid the music and laughter, there was talk of war — three conflicts, in fact: one drawing to a close, one of uncertain outcome, and one that had begun four months ago and to which the barão de Itatinga but for his age would have marched posthaste.
Reports from North America suggested the imminent collapse of the Confederacy. Brazil had maintained an official policy of neutrality throughout the Civil War, though her recognition of the South’s belligerent position had been the cause of acrimonious exchanges between Dom Pedro’s officials and envoys of the Lincoln government at Rio de Janeiro, especially when raiders like the Alabama and the Florida put in for provisions in Brazilian ports.
The second conflict exciting interest among the guests at Itatinga this night was in Mexico, where more than 35,000 soldiers of Napoleon III had secured the Crown for Ferdinand Maximilian, brother of Franz Josef of Austria.
The third conflict involved Brazil on two far-flung fronts. After firing her shot across the bow of the Marquês de Olinda, the Paraguayan steamer Tacuari had escorted the Brazilian packet back to Asunción, where her cargo of munitions and strongboxes were seized and all Brazilians aboard, including Mato Grosso’s president-designate, Carneiro de Campos, interned. Rio de Janeiro’s minister at Asunción, Viana de Lima, had been handed his passports and ordered out of Paraguay. When news of these events reached Rio de Janeiro in late November 1864, war fervor had quickly spread.
The bulk of Brazil’s sixteen-thousand-man army was already engaged in Uruguay, fig
hting in support of the Colorado faction against the Blancos in power at Montevideo. The Guarda Nacional was prohibited from foreign service, a law for which numerous colonels and their local militia showed a sudden respect: It was one thing to parade around the local square and maintain the peace of the colonel’s district; quite another to go up against the Guarani horde of Paraguay. To meet this contingency, the imperial government had issued a decree for volunteers for battalions of 830 men between the ages of eighteen and fifty.
Response to the call for voluntários da patria was brisk, for the decree had immediately followed reports of a Brazilian victory in Uruguay. On January 2, 1865, after a month’s blockade and a fifty-two-hour bombardment by ships of the imperial navy, the Blanco port of Paysandu on the Rio Uruguay, one of the Blancos’ last strongholds outside Montevideo, had surrendered to the Brazilians and Colorados. But there was much more than this to spur the Brazilians to act against their newer foe, Paraguay.
“Thousands of Paraguayans defiling Brazilian soil! Our brave defenders slaughtered!” Ulisses Tavares said to Clóvis. “Men, women, and children driven into captivity. Others cast into the sertão upon the mercy of savages. Oh, dear God, Clóvis: Mato Grosso invaded by López!”
On December 27, 1864, a Paraguayan naval squadron with three thousand troops and a land force of 2,500 cavalry and infantry had attacked Fort Coimbra, southernmost defense works of Mato Grosso, which had surrendered after a thirty-six-hour resistance.
The barão and Captain Clóvis da Silva left the dance floor and went outside, walking slowly across the paving between the two ells.
“What terrors they must be enduring there,” Ulisses Tavares said, looking up at the sky. “Beneath these stars.”
“López struck where we’re weakest, Senhor Ulisses. He — ”
“Rejoices!” Ulisses Tavares interrupted. “López pirates our Marquês de Olinda. He violates a frontier where the forts are few and falling to pieces. These are his victories over Brazil, this despot who dreams of being emperor and stirs his Guarani regiments with talk of glory.”
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