Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  They had walked beyond the stone paths and trees and did not cross the road in the direction of Silva & Sons but kept going up the street past the tabernas. They reached the end of the square and passed alongside the church; a short distance down a side street, they stopped at a stable where they had left their horses.

  “You’ll want an early start tomorrow,” Firmino said. “Ride straight to the train. Don’t bother to stop here.”

  “Not unless I think of something I must speak to you about.”

  They exchanged farewells then and Firmino continued down the street, his light cane rapping the stones. As Aristides waited for his horse to be saddled, he stood at the stable doors, watching Firmino disappear around a corner.

  He knew exactly where Senhor Firmino was headed, and it pleased him to think of the joy the unhappily married man now found with his great love, Jolanta.

  The twenty-nine-year-old Jolanta Pinheiro dos Santos was the daughter of Amêrico dos Santos, a white teacher and poet from Salvador, and Adelia Pinheiro, whose family were prosperous mulattoes at the Bahia.

  Firmino Dantas had first met Jolanta in 1877 at Rio de Janeiro on his way back from the United States. He had stayed at the Corte for a few weeks with Colonel Clóvis Lima da Silva and his family at their home in Flamengo. Clóvis continued to serve in the army as artillery specialist, and like other veterans, he deeply resented Dom Pedro’s neglect of the military. During Clóvis’s five-year absence in Paraguay, his wife, Maria Luisa, and two sons, Eduardo and Honório and his daughters had stayed with his brothers, the owners of Silva & Sons. After the war, Clóvis had returned with his family to Rio de Janeiro, but Eduardo da Silva was married and back at Tiberica now, filling the post of district chief of police.

  While visiting Clóvis, Firmino had attended a dinner at the house of Amêrico dos Santos, where he met Jolanta. She was nineteen at the time, a natural beauty with her auburn hair, hazel eyes, and statuesque body. She had captivated Firmino.

  When Amêrico dos Santos moved to São Paulo at the end of 1878, Firmino had renewed his acquaintance with the family, visiting their home whenever he traveled from Tiberica to the Paulista capital. Firmino Dantas was in love with the poet’s daughter, and Jolanta dos Santos adored him. In November 1880, Firmino Dantas went to Dr. Amêrico and openly announced that he had bought a house at Tiberica for Jolanta. “I have nothing against you,” dos Santos said. “And I also realize that my daughter is a woman, not a child. But I beg you to reconsider, for her sake. Jolanta needs a man who can offer her marriage and a home, not humiliation.”

  Firmino Dantas had been sympathetic to dos Santos’s appeal: “I will wait six months, Amêrico dos Santos. I will not visit your home or see Jolanta. At the end of that time, I will come back. If Jolanta still feels the same way, I will take her to Tiberica.”

  Three weeks later, Jolanta had run away to Tiberica. Firmino had gone immediately to São Paulo. “Jolanta is as precious to me as she is to you,” he had told her father. “I swear to God, Amêrico dos Santos, I will not humiliate or hurt her.” Firmino Dantas had kept his promise through the past six and a half years, fulfilling his duties as husband to Dona Carlinda Mendes at Itatinga but openly and unashamedly worshiping Jolanta.

  Thanks to Dr. Amêrico, Jolanta was well educated, an avid reader in Portuguese and French, a lover of music, a lively, forthcoming companion. Given the openness about such affairs in Brazil, the house on Tiberica’s rua Riachuelo was a venue for regular soirees attended by Firmino’s friends. At Itatinga, Dona Carlinda said nothing. Although she regarded Firmino’s carnal pleasures with the mulatta as no threat to her own position as wife and mother, intermittently she sought aid from babá Epifánia in casting spells against the enchantress.

  At the house in Tiberica this July night, Jolanta dos Santos found Firmino tense and disturbed after the planters’ meeting. They dined together, waited upon by three liveried servants, all former slaves manumitted by Firmino Dantas at Jolanta’s request. The poet Amêrico dos Santos, an abolitionist, had raised his daughter to share this sentiment; today, Dr. Amêrico was associated with the militant caiphazes of Antônio Bento at São Paulo.

  Fábio told her that he had sensed a growing panic among the planters. “Tiberica has been spared mass action by the slaves. It won’t last, though, if the slaves get wind of the disarray in our own ranks, which they surely will. They’ll begin to desert, no matter how reasonable we’ve tried to be.”

  Firmino had little to say about the 370 slaves at Fazenda da Itatinga itself. Since the beginning of the year, there had been nine runaways, two of whom had been caught by the police chief, Eduardo da Silva, who had returned them after a savage flogging. Firmino found his cousin an ill-tempered young man, as brutish in nature as in appearance, and totally the opposite of his father, Clóvis Lima.

  “By God’s mercy, Itatinga will survive this storm,” he said to Jolanta.

  “Yes, ’Nhor. Dr. Amêrico says five years from now, slavery will be a bad memory.”

  “Perhaps. We need time, Jolanta — the owners and the slaves. Freedom is more than a pair of shoes and a new hat. It will be a new way of life. The slaves must be prepared for it.”

  “Yes, ‘Nhor.”

  “Enough.” His expression brightened. “Play, my little mulatta,” he said affectionately.

  Jolanta laughed as she stood up. “What does ‘Nhor want to hear?”

  “Anything, my dear girl.”

  The poet’s daughter had a rare talent Dr. Amêrico had encouraged ever since he found her, at a tender age, playing in his library with a simple bamboo flute.

  For Firmino, it was bewitching. A medley of sensitive improvisations, now taking him far, far back, deep into a green and enchanted glade of the primeval forest, deep into the sertão of the past; now rising evocatively with the rhythms of the Bahia, a city with its heart close to Africa.

  When Jolanta stopped playing, Firmino remained sitting, his own eyes closed. He did not open them when he heard the rustle of her dress as she crossed the room.

  “‘Nhor?” she said softly. He reached out and drew her to him.

  Babá Epifánia, a big, square-faced woman in her early fifties, had come to Brazil from the lands of the BaKongo in 1847, transported illegally after the abolition of the slave trade. Bought by Ulisses Tavares, Epifánia had served as wet nurse at Itatinga, suckling numerous da Silva infants, Aristides and his sister, Carmen, among them. When the barão died, babá Epifánia had been among ten favorite slaves manumitted according to the terms of Ulisses Tavares’s will. That same year, babá Epifánia had set up house with Basilio Pedrosa, a mulatto potter in charge of Itatinga’s kilns. She had also developed her practice in the arts of magic.

  Babá Epifánia professed to be a curandeira, a specialist in herbal cures, always invoking “God and Christ” to bless her patients. But Itatinga’s community, including Dona Carlinda Mendes, well knew that babá Epifánia also practiced black magic. Babá Epifánia could cure the bite of any serpent or she could kill with the vipers that were said to obey her commands, the deadly long-fanged jararaca.

  From time to time, babá Epifánia disappeared from Itatinga. Her absences gave rise to speculation that she was off consulting with her mentor, Lucifer, but in fact her journeys were to a settlement eighty miles northwest of Tiberica inhabited by semi-wild Tupi, caboclos, and descendants of runaway slaves. “Tamanduatei-mirim,” the place was called — “Little River of the Tamanduá,” the anteater. Babá Epifánia regarded the tamanduá as a helper sent her by the spirits, for where it tore up the earth for insects, there it also turned up magical roots Epifánia used for her potions and remedies.

  In the first week of October 1887, Epifánia journeyed to Tamanduatei-mirim, with two young boys as her escorts.

  On this trip, babá Epifánia’s mission was not only to procure supplies but also to plot the flight of more than one hundred slaves from Fazenda da Itatinga. Since the beginning of the year, Tamanduatei-mirim had become a re
fuge for runaways and the operating base of a nest of caiphazes. A messenger from the caiphazes had contacted babá Epifánia at Itatinga, where he had worked during the coffee harvest. At first, Epifánia had been reluctant to betray the trust of the da Silvas, particularly that of her client, Dona Carlinda, but the persuasive caiphaze, who was called “Nô,” had reminded her of her own slavery and had convinced her to use the great prestige she enjoyed among the slaves to get them to flee Itatinga.

  When the babá arrived at Tamanduatei-mirim, a crowd was there to greet her. Babá Epifánia responded with all the majesty of a visiting regent, promising audiences at her convenience. She sat on a chair in front of the most substantial mud-and-wattle hovel in the settlement, with her long skirt crimped between her legs, one of the boys holding the parasol against the fierce sun. She armed herself with a two-foot flywhisk — made from the long hairs of a cow’s tail — which she used to thrash the insects pestering her, but this was also babá Epifánia’s wand protecting her and possessing power to ward off evil influences. The crowd was dispersed except for six men, the caiphaze, Nô Gonzaga among them.

  “What’s the news, babá Epifánia?” asked Nô, a middle-aged mulatto who had been with Antônio Bento’s caiphazes from the start of their campaign.

  “It is good.”

  “Yes?”

  Babá Epifánia was in no hurry to reveal her information. Slashing the air with her wand, pausing to make the boy shift position with the parasol, gazing off mysteriously toward the forest, she first launched into a long account of contacts with Itatinga’s slaves, naming many, often remarking on an evil afflicting the particular individual and her course of treatment.

  This took time, but Nô Gonzaga knew better than to interrupt the babá.

  At last, babá Epifánia declared, “I have them ready. Name the day, Nô Gonzaga, and they will vanish from Itatinga.”

  Nô laughed. “Like magic, babá Epifánia?”

  She glared at him. Her silver charms rattled as she shook the flywhisk angrily. “It was a great risk. If one of them told the senhor . . . ”

  “Sorry, babá.” Nô watched the path of the fly whisk nervously. Since recruiting the former slave to help the caiphazes, he had had many meetings with her, at each of which she demonstrated an increasing tendency to assume command of the dangerous enterprise.

  She confirmed this now: “I expect one hundred forty to desert. Do you think they would follow you, Nô Gonzaga?” She answered the question herself, with a derisive snort: “Never!”

  “No, babá Epifánia. You have the power.”

  She breathed heavily, and triumphantly surveyed those around her.

  Nô scratched his bullet-shaped head. “We’ll come in two weeks. First I must go to São Paulo to fix the train.” The caiphazes had collaborators working on the railway. “Itatinga’s slaves must go directly to Santos. The night of October eighteenth.”

  Babá Epifánia shook her head.

  “It’s too soon?”

  “Not at night,” she said. “They must leave by day.”

  “Impossible, babá.”

  She gave him a withering look. “The slaves are locked up every night. The overseers have doubled the guards since reports of many runaways in other municípios. There are men and dogs everywhere from dusk till dawn. If a slave sticks his head out of a window, the dogs are there howling at him. To run at night is impossible.”

  “But in broad daylight?”

  “The slaves who will desert are clearing the forest five miles from the mansion. When they are served their meal on the eighteenth Nô Gonzaga, be there with your men. There are ten overseers. They all carry guns.”

  Another man said, “Perhaps we should go to another fazenda?”

  “The slaves are not expected back at the fazenda until sunset,” babá Epifánia said, ignoring the speaker. “In six hours, they can be at the railway. They will have all night to get away.”

  “But the overseers, babá?” Nô Gonzaga asked worriedly.

  “Ai, Jeesssuus!” Babá Epifánia said, exasperated. “Are you a man or an insect?” Babá Epifánia towered above him. “Insect!” she called him. “The overseers stop work at eleven, for their coffee and cachaça, not so?”

  “Yes, babá.”

  She gave a hearty laugh. “I’ll prepare a potion for them, Nô Gonzaga. A most powerful remedy!”

  Nô Gonzaga and eleven men entered the da Silva fazenda after midnight on October 17, 1887. At dawn, they were concealed in the trees on a hill less than a mile from where the jungle was being cleared. The slave gangs began to arrive at 7:00 A.M.

  An advance gang moving up along a hillside with axes and machetes struck at the virgin forest, slashing the undergrowth. Behind this area lay a tract of black, smoldering earth where the forest had gone up in a conflagration a week ago. The slaves moved among the charred trunks, using hoes and digging sticks to turn over the ash-strewn dirt, probing for the rich purple earth, preparing it for the coffee seedlings.

  Nô Gonzaga used a small brass telescope to observe the slaves and their overseers. Gonzaga had been to São Paulo, where Antônio Bento himself had assisted him in planning the flight of Itatinga’s slaves. Gonzaga was to lead the fugitives along back trails through the forests to a point six miles beyond Tiberica.

  Just before eleven, Gonzaga saw the slaves in the burnt clearing start toward a clump of trees where slave women had their cooking pots. The first slave gang had no sooner started to drift toward the trees than other gangs began to follow them, with mounted overseers riding among them.

  “Now we’ll see if the babá’s medicine works,” Nô Gonzaga said to a black man beside him, a runaway slave, Anselmo, who had served with the caiphazes since being given sanctuary by Antônio Bento. Bento had paraded Anselmo through São Paulo’s streets exhibiting his wounds; his palms still bore deep scars from the knife blade driven through them by an overseer.

  “We should move forward, Nô?” Anselmo was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, a rifle in his lap.

  Gonzaga looked around at the other caiphazes. “Camaradas,” he called to them, “start down between the trees. Slowly. Keep out of sight.”

  With Nô and Anselmo leading, the caiphazes began to work their way between the trees, passing noisily through the undergrowth until they were about a quarter-mile from the scorched clearing. Nô signaled for the men behind to stop; he moved forward to the edge of the forest with Anselmo.

  The overseers had got their food and drink and were sitting in the shade of some trees, from where they could keep an eye on the slaves. Two had finished eating and were lying on their backs; one of them got up and turned in the direction of Nô and Anselmo, looking directly at the spot where they were as he urinated.

  “That dog seems lively enough,” Anselmo whispered.

  Nô looked at the other overseer, lying flat on his back, his mouth wide open. “Not that one!”

  The man facing them buttoned up his pants; he turned and started back toward the others.

  “See how he walks!” Nô said in a fierce whisper. Like a man roaming in his sleep.” The overseer got to the shade, where the other man lay, and shouted something, but got no response. Then he too lay down, pushing his hat over his face.

  Suddenly a third overseer collapsed. Another overseer, Cesar, a son of the notorious Setenta, stood up, showing no sign of drowsiness. He shouted for the two men already on their backs to get up and gave one of them a kick in the ribs, with no effect.

  In the trees, Nô Gonzaga signaled his men to move forward. “Now! Take them!” he commanded. He himself leapt from the trees, with Anselmo at his side.

  “Caiphazes!” the overseer Cesar shouted. “Up! Up!” he screamed at the others. Four got to their feet.

  “Throw down your weapons!” Nô Gonzaga hollered. “You won’t be harmed.”

  But Cesar fired, two shots in rapid succession. Anselmo was struck in the arm; he cursed, and fired back, a blast from an old Enfield that caugh
t Cesar in the shoulder.

  “Give up!” Nô shouted. “Surrender!”

  There were 128 slaves out here this day, all of them prepared to flee, but only the ringleaders had been told of babá Epifánia’s scheme to drug the overseers. When the slaves saw Nô Gonzaga and his men rushing from the trees, many of them leapt to their feet, advancing toward the overseers with axes and machetes.

  “Mercy! Mary Mother, mercy!” Cesar cried. He had dropped his rifle and was clutching his shoulder. He glanced wildly from side to side, first at the caiphazes, then at the slaves. “Mercy . . .”

  Another overseer was clinging groggily to a branch jutting from a charred tree trunk. Slowly he began to sink to the ground, succumbing to Epifánia’s potion.

  “Halt!” Nô Gonzaga ordered, gesticulating at the slaves. “Stop there!”

  The front row of slaves continued to edge forward. Others shouted for the blood of the overseers.

  “We kill only if we have to,” Nô said. “It’s a long way to Santos. If we leave a trail of dead men, we’ll be hunted by an army of capangas out to avenge them.”

  Gonzaga’s men stood guard over Cesar and the other overseers.

  “Bastards!” Cesar said. “You’ll be caught before you’re a mile from Itatinga.”

  Nô ignored him. “Collect your things,” he told the slaves. “We march immediately. When they come seeking us, we’ll be far from Itatinga. . . . You?” He looked at Cesar. He laughed. “Take your rest, overseer. There’ll be no peace for you when you return to your master, da Silva.” Nô gestured toward the slaves. “Some of you help us carry these sleeping beauties into the trees. My men will show you what to do with them.”

  Twenty minutes later, the slaves began to move off. Many were laughing now, and admiring the weapons and clothes acquired by ten of their fellows: The overseers had been stripped naked, gagged, and roped securely to trees. Cesar and two men were still fighting the effects of the potion and making incoherent noises as fire ants swarmed over their flesh.