Brazil
Page 98
“If the police catch us, gentlemen, we’re to be treated like common criminals,” the chairman declared. “We can be sent to jail for two years. I will go willingly to the Casa do Detenção, with my head held high.”
This statement was met with noisy, unanimous agreement from the others. The members of this branch of the Termite Club ranged in age from twenty to fifty-seven. Their occupations varied, too, from student to elderly bookkeeper of the Casas Pernambucanas, a dry-goods chain, to a leading actor at the Teatro Santa Isabel — the chairman himself.
The chairman had put his dramatic flair to full use as he spoke; gesturing flamboyantly with his long, thin arms. He was in his early forties, over six feet tall, exceedingly thin, with a narrow face and small chin and two enormous front incisors.
Known in the theater as Agamemnon de Andrade Melo, he was none other than the mulatto Henrique Inglez the younger, who had prowled the battlefields of Paraguay as “Padre,” robbing Guarani corpses with his compatriots, Antônio Paciência and Tipoana.
Henrique had quickly squandered the gold and silver he had brought from Paraguay upon his return in 1870. He had been reunited with his father, Henry the Englishman, who had still been eking out a living with his Teatro Grande at Itamaracá, twenty-five miles north of Recife. For a while, Henrique had regressed to his youthful dissipation, but Henry the Englishman would have none of this: “I’ll be damned if I give a penny, Henrique Inglez, for your philandering. If you want money, you’ll earn it.”
And earn it he did, on the boards of the little theater Teatro Grande, revealing a marvelous innate acting ability, especially in French farces, where he excelled in roles as a consummate fop.
After the death of his father in 1873, Henrique abandoned the Teatro Grande and made his way to Rio de Janeiro, where he had eventually surfaced as “Agamemnon de Andrade Melo,” playing on several occasions to no less a personage than His Imperial Majesty. In 1880, Henrique had returned to Recife, where his reputation as a comedy actor made him a favorite with audiences at the Teatro Santa Isabel. Henrique had been married five years ago to Joaquina, the daughter of a court official. They had two children, both boys, both distinguished by huge sloping teeth like those of their father, whom they were taught to call Senhor Agamemnon.
Though he was a master of comedy, Henrique — or Agamemnon, as his fellows in the Termite Club called him — was deadly serious about the abolitionist cause. He was personally acquainted with many of the movement’s leaders, including Nabuco and José Patrocinio, The Black Marshal, who was an advocate of revolutionary liberation methods such as were used by the Termite Club.
Now, in the house on the rua da Cruz, when the members quieted down, Henrique Inglez said, “There is a greater danger, gentlemen, than the threat to our own liberty. The slave owners held up the ingênuos for the world to see: ‘Slavery is extinct in Brazil!’ For ten years, the voices crying for abolition were muted. Today, the slave owners praise The Monster. They hope this perverted legislation will extinguish the flame of freedom.”
Several shouted “No!”
“I hear you,” Henrique called back. “So do the slaves who need our help. Gentlemen: what is the threat of two years in jail compared with a lifetime of bondage? The work of the club goes on. When the call comes, be ready.”
“Bravo, Senhor Agamemnon! Bravo! We’re with you, Agamemnon, to a man.”
It was Celso Cavalcanti, as famished-looking as Henrique, his eyes afire. Celso had met Henrique at his uncle’s house, and had been drawn into the Termite Club by Henrique himself, despite Fábio’s attempts to dissuade his nephew from membership in the club, believing the abolitionist movement better served by legal means.
During the past three months, Celso had assisted the club by raising funds among the students at the law school. He had also, on one occasion, accompanied a guide leading four slaves to the island of Itamaracá; the old Teatro Grande, now in disuse but still owned by Henrique Inglez, was used as a hiding place for runaways prior to their being taken to the north shore for embarkation to Fortaleza in Ceará.
Later that night in the house on the rua da Cruz that belonged to Henrique, the actor spoke with Celso about Senhor Rodrigo Cavalcanti.
“When do you expect your father to return?”
“I can’t say, Senhor Agamemnon. He sent a cable last week saying he was going to London.”
Rodrigo Cavalcanti had sailed to France the past July to visit the works of the Compagnie de Fives-Lille, manufacturers of sugar works and distilleries, who had supplied plant and machinery for several Brazilian factories.
“Would to God that your father could see the senzala for what it is — a blight upon your valley, beside the modern usina he will build.”
“I think he realizes that,” Celso said.
“If Senhor Rodrigo takes the lead in Rosário district, the other planters will follow.”
Celso knew this. The liberation of the city of Rosário itself, despite the excitement of the launching of the Associão Libertadora, had not yet been accomplished. One-third of the town’s 116 slaves had not been freed, and hundreds of slaves continued to serve on plantations in the município. Though Celso had just that afternoon helped runaways from a plantation near Recife, it was difficult for him even to contemplate any activity that might bring direct conflict with his father or his older brother, Duarte, who lived at Santo Tomás and was there now, taking charge of the harvest in their father’s absence.
Henrique put a hand on Celso’s shoulder: “I know it’s difficult for you, Celso, a Cavalcanti of Santo Tomás, but think of the day this rotten institution ceases to exist in Brazil — the hour when men like your father are free, too. The chains of slavery bind them no less than those they hold in bondage.”
Two weeks later, Henrique Inglez sent a small black boy, the son of a freed slave woman in his employ, to the law school with a message that he urgently wanted to speak with Celso. They met at the Trapiche, the busiest section of the city, and strolled across the square in front of the warehouses as they spoke. Slave bearers of sugar sacks and cotton bales moved like ants between the warehouses and lighters moored beside the quay, while mule drivers and horsemen who had journeyed from the far west of Pernambuco streamed onto the broad quay with new deliveries from the engenhos and cotton fields. An endless parade of peddlers offered goods as varied as brilliant macaws, bundles of firewood, cakes, oranges, remedies for the pox.
Henrique told Celso that he had received a report that forty “pineapples” — the code word for fugitive slaves — were ready to run from the district of Rosário. Jorge, a caboclo laborer and agent of the Termite Club, had sent word that the slaves were preparing to desert several engenhos in two days’ time and needed guides to escort them to the coast. Jorge had given a rendezvous point along the old road to Rosário.
“Five men are being sent to escort the slaves to Itamaracá. I believe they can get there safely, but your presence would be a great help,” Henrique continued. “You know both these valleys. No one will blame you if you refuse to help, Celso. If you say no, I’ll understand.”
Celso looked at a group of beggars who bestirred themselves to besiege a prosperously attired senhor alighting from a chaise with his ocean-bound luggage. “I can’t,” Celso said, without turning to Henrique. “God help me, I can’t say no.”
Celso tramped impatiently to and fro across the open ground between rows of luxuriant canes. It was past midnight, two nights later, and he was at the runaways’ assembly point a mile below the Paso do Natal, on the old road to Rosário. Why it was called “Christmas Pass,” no one could say; the memory of the aged Jesuit Leandro Taques, who had spent Christmas Eve 1759 on the pass during his walk to Recife and exile was long forgotten.
Twenty yards behind Celso, sitting on the ground deep inside the dark walls of cane, were eighteen slaves who had fled two engenhos in this valley. The main group of twenty-two were expected at any moment. They were coming from Engenho Santo Tomás.
“Why wasn’t I told that the club had an agent at Santo Tomás? Did you think you couldn’t trust me because I was a Cavalcanti?” Celso had asked.
“If I didn’t trust you, would I appeal for your help now? You still have time to alert your family. I knew that Jorge Chinela was with the cane workers at Santo Tomás, but I didn’t expect a message so soon.”
Celso was direly apprehensive. That Senhor Rodrigo Cavalcanti was half a world away in London scarcely alleviated his fear of being caught on this mission. I shouldn’t be here, he told himself repeatedly, even as he had ridden from Recife with two of the five men who were to escort the slaves. They were big, brawny, silent fellows, heavily bearded, and their fearsome countenances had increased the uneasiness of Celso, who was so pale and slender and who seemed almost comical in a pair of black trousers, shabby plaid jacket, and old silk hat. His leather riding boots were new, however, a gift from Uncle Fábio for his twentieth birthday a week ago. Celso had left the house in Boa Vista at noon, when his uncle was visiting a patient at the Hospital Portuguez, and Aunt Renata was gone to the girls’ school where she gave lectures on nursing once a week. He had written a note saying only he would be away several days and they were not to worry, though he knew Fábio Cavalcanti would realize what this meant.
As much as Celso felt that he shouldn’t be here, as he’d told Henrique, he was incapable of refusing his help. He had been with Joaquim Nabuco’s guard of honor. He had marched through the streets singing the anthems of abolition. He had given his pledge. He could not betray the cause, or himself. More than this, there was his longing to serve the Church: If he turned a deaf ear to the call for help from the slaves, could he ever hope to hear the summons of the Lord?
The safe delivery of forty “pineapples” seventy-five miles along a roundabout route northeast to Itamaracá Island wouldn’t be easy. There was a march of fourteen miles from the point below Paso do Natal out of this valley beyond Santo Tomás. Then north across the tracks of the Great Western Railway to an engenho owned by an abolitionist lawyer at Recife and staffed by a manager under orders to provide shelter for fugitives. And finally, the trek to a second hideaway at a stone quarry, from where, if all went well, the last group would cross to Itamaracá Island late on the fourth night.
Suddenly Celso stopped and spun around.
“Olá, senhor.” The speaker was a man who had crept up on him with amazing stealth.
“Jorge Chinela?”
“I am Chinela.”
“Where the blazes did you come from?”
“Across there, senhor.” He pointed toward some trees.
“I didn’t hear you approach.”
“None do, senhor.” He grinned. “None hear Jorge Chinela.”
He was tall, well knit, sinewy. He wore cotton trousers and shirt, but his vest and an odd helmetlike hat were leather, hinting at a connection with the tawny knights of the caatingas. He wore soft leather shoes; these, and his manner of treading ever so lightly, had earned him his nickname, “Slipper George.”
“Senhor Agamemnon got a message to me to expect a senhor who knew the valley.”
“I am a Cavalcanti.”
“The son of a senhor in the district?”
“The son of Rodrigo Cavalcanti.”
Slipper George just whistled.
“I’m with the Termite Club, Jorge Chinela. Our objective is to help slaves to safety.”
“Yes, senhor, but . . . ”
“What?”
“The slaves from Santo Tomás will know you.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Not if we get them north without trouble.”
“Then let’s start, Jorge Chinela. The sooner we’re away from these valleys, the better.”
“Yes, senhor. Yes.” Slipper George padded along beside him. “Yes,” Jorge said a third time, glancing sideways at the young Cavalcanti. Louco, he thought. A crazy young man. The saints help him if the brother, Duarte Cavalcanti, comes after them. Six weeks ago, Jorge had got work as a cart driver at Santo Tomás. They had better be far away when the bell rang at the senzala for roll call, Jorge thought, if this pale young thing beside him was to be spared the rage of Senhor Duarte.
Slipper George had brought thirty-two slaves, ten more than the number expected. Among the fugitives were nine children. Celso Cavalcanti stood to one side as Jorge and the five escorts divided the runaways into six groups. When the blacks from Santo Tomás recognized the senhor de engenho’s son, they expressed alarm, but Slipper George silenced them with the assurance that the nhonhô - the slaves’ word for “senhorzinho” (“little master”) — was their ally. Three of Santo Tomás’s slaves were included in the seven blacks who would go with him and Celso. The slave Verna had worked in the Casa Grande when Celso was a child.
Verna approached Celso with one hand covering her mouth. “Ai, it is my little master,” she said through her fingers. “Nhonhô, why are you here? Your place is not with these Negroes.”
“I came to help, ama. Verna.”
Verna shifted her hand from her mouth to the side of her scarf-covered head. “Leave, nhonhô. Go home.”
“No, ama Verna. I’m taking you to Itamaracá. You will reach free Ceará.”
Slipper George interrupted them: “We’re ready, Senhor Celso.”
“Come, ama, it’s a long walk.”
“Ai, Jesus Christ,” she said, as she fell in behind her husband, Isaac. “My nhonhô . . . my nhonhô.” They moved off.
With Slipper George’s group in the lead, at 12:30 A.M. the runaways began to walk in a northerly direction, keeping to the rugged track of the old road from Rosário. At 3:00 A.M., Slipper George and Celso had led their group off the road and were moving up the side of one of the low tree-covered hills dotting the two valleys when, from the east, along the road, came the sound of horsemen riding furiously.
There were noises, too, in the underbrush below them as other groups climbed the hill. Celso and Slipper George moved through the trees to a point overlooking the road, but they could make out little in the dark. The sound of approaching hooves grew louder.
“From Santo Tomás, do you think?” Celso whispered.
“Perhaps.”
“From where else? So many riders?”
“I led them away quietly, senhor, one by one to the trees behind the senzala. None saw.”
“Six hours ago, Jorge Chinela. Plenty of time for this.”
“Perhaps one of the other slaves? A capanga hungry for his black puta?”
“No matter. My brother knows. We’re in trouble, Jorge Chinela.”
“Much trouble, senhor.” Then he vanished, moving noiselessly back down the hill to check on the groups making their way up toward them.
But the rear groups of fugitives were well off the road, undetected by the riders who came racing along in the direction of the Paso do Natal.
“They’ll be back this way, senhor,” Slipper George said. He had hurried the rear groups up the hill and returned to Celso’s side. “And they’ll alert all the engenhos and call out the guarda.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Three hours, perhaps four to the railway. Damn it, senhor, it will soon be daylight. It’s too risky with the capangas riding all over the valley. We must hide the slaves. When it’s night, we can move again.”
Celso agreed. “I know just the place, Jorge Chinela.”
They were half a mile from the abandoned engenho central. Rodrigo Cavalcanti and his partners had already put men to work on the usina project, but only to restore the railroad from the mill yard to its junction with the Great Western, twelve miles away. Celso, Slipper George, the slave Isaac, and two of the guides approached the wooden bridge at the Rio Jacuribe. The rest of the slaves and their escorts hid in the trees behind the riverbank. Across the bri
dge, the massive iron building stood darkly beyond the deserted mill yard. Off to the right, at the caretaker’s compound, a dog barked.
Slipper George beckoned Isaac and one of the guides. “We’ll pay a visit to the caretaker. Wait for our signal.” He drew a long, thin knife.
“There’s no need to kill him.”
“Senhor?”
“Don’t harm the caretaker.”
“No, Senhor Celso.”
But, as Slipper George crossed to the caretaker’s house, he whispered to the men with him, “If he does as he’s told, all right. If not — the young senhor is too kind.” Slipper George had been amazed to discover, when they started the march, that Celso Cavalcanti was unarmed. No revolver, no knife, nothing! The ama, Verna, was right, Slipper George thought: Her nhonhô didn’t belong here.
The mongrel at the caretaker’s compound stopped barking and came over to greet the intruders, wagging its tail enthusiastically. Two minutes later the dog was whining impatiently outside its master’s shack as Slipper George held the blade of his knife against the caretaker’s throat. “Listen, friend, to every word, if you want to see the dawn.”
Minutes later from the bridge, Celso Cavalcanti saw several shadowy figures emerge from the house. He heard Slipper George whistle. “Get them across,” Celso said to the man beside him. “Quick! Hurry them over!” As the first slaves came down to the bridge, Celso joined them, running to meet Slipper George in the mill yard. Celso and Slipper George sent the slaves, along with the caretaker’s wife and children, into the cavernous building, and took up position here also for the long wait until the next night. A mulatto guide stayed with the caretaker in case searchers came this way. Slipper George, afraid the caretaker’s dog would betray their hiding place, slit its throat.
At 9:00 A.M., as the sun began to bake the iron roof of the engenho central, and with the wall of forest behind the clearing hissing with the sibilance of insects, the capangas came, twenty of them, riding over the small bridge into the mill yard.