Counternarratives (6 page)

Out of the corner of his eye he detected movement—a human? an
animal?—in the distance, the darkness wavering as if it were trying simultaneous to
conceal and reveal the perceived entity to him, and he turned, only to see nothing
but the shadows of shadows. Whether it was a person, a wild creature or a mere
phantasm he could not be sure, though it was common knowledge that although the
Portuguese had made great strides in civilizing the wilds of this vast terrain,
creatures beyond the knowledge of the wisest men in all of Europe still circulated
throughout it. He called out to the area where he had spotted, or thought he
spotted, someone passing, but there was no response, save a light echo of his own
voice. He considered walking around the building, but was unsure of its dimensions,
fearing he might get lost or plunge into a ditch once he left the lighted façade, so
he seated himself at the base of the main door, his luggage on either side of him,
and prayed, until even his sight, against his wishes, surrendered to the dark.

He awoke on a cot in a room just larger than a cubicle, a
shuttered, unpaned window just above his head admitting thin razors of sun. The
barest minimum of stones paved the floor; the rooms walls sat barren of any
adornment except a table, a chair, a battered chamber pot, and a crude crucifix,
carved from tulipwood, that hung above the door. Brownish-black mold engendered, he
imagined, by the dampness that plagued the region, licked its tongues from the
corners to the ceiling. He had been undressed—he had not undressed himself, he could
not recall having done so—and placed on the cot, a thin knit blanket, fragrant with
sweat and mildew draped over him. He sat up and looked around for his personal
effects. The coffer, already pried open, sat in the corner, atop it his bindle, also
untied. His doublet, cassock and cincture hung from a hook beside the table. Beneath
them, his sandals. How had he not immediately noted them there? He felt heavy in the
head, as if he had downed a potion, though he had not eaten or drunk anything, save
two cups of coconut water to refresh himself, since arriving at the port. Yet he did
not feel even the slightest pang of hunger.

On the desk he saw a small clay bowl, a pitcher of similar material
(filled, his nose confirmed, with plain water), a second, smaller fired pitcher
(filled with agua de coco), a tin cup, and a rag. He was sure when he had looked at
the table just seconds ago these were not there, and this led him to pinch his hand
to ensure he was not still wandering about in a dream. The flesh stung between his
fingertips. He drank a bit of the coconut water, relieved and washed himself,
dressed, reviewed his menagerie to make sure everything was where it was supposed to
be, and it was. He gathered his papers then left his room to meet the men over whose
lives he had been entrusted with spiritual and earthly command.

As he stepped into the hall, one of his brethren, Dom Gaspar, a short,
skinny, sallow man, of the type that abound in the hinterlands, approached him, and
embraced him, offering greetings and inviting him out into the cloister, open to the
sky as was the tradition, where the other members of the House, having finished
morning prayers, were already assembled and seated. Dom Gaspar said that he had
hoped to bring the new provost to morning prayers, which took place at 4, and then
provide a tour, but D'Azevedo had been so soundly asleep he did not dare wake
him.

Following Dom Gaspar, D'Azevedo tried but could not get a sense of the
geometry of the house; from outside, the night before, it had not appeared to be
even half as large as the building in Olinda, yet they proceeded down a long hall,
without hard angles or corners, and far longer than he would have imagined, until
they finally reached a large wood door, which he saw faced what appeared to be the
monastery's front hall and main door.

“This leads to the cloister?” D'Azevedo, trying to get his bearings,
asked the brother who, he realized, was only a year or two older than him.

“Why of course, my Lord, Padre Joaquim,” Dom Gaspar responded, in tones
that sounded as if they were meant as much to reassure himself as D'Azevedo. He
clasped D'Azevedo's ample sleeve, and led him outside.

It was summer, and morning, so the sunlight at first blinded D'Azevedo.
Squinting, he saw standing side by side the two other members of the House. Dom
Gaspar guided him to them, and made introductions. Here stood the chalky-faced
Barbosa Pires, his beard a coal apron suspended from his lower lip, a richer black
than his thinning tonsure. He had, D'Azevedo noted to himself, a humped back, and a
severe stutter. Beside him towered Padre Pero, a robust man of middle age, deeply
tanned, his mouth framed by full voluptuous lips that drew the eyes to them, a
laborer in build, worldly in the manner of someone who had been reared near
Portugal's European capital. Dom Gaspar, the hospitaller, expressed the gratitude of
his fellow monks for D'Azevedo's presence, but said that they had not known when to
expect him. Padre Pero, to whom you had written a letter announcing the decision,
said he had never received it: Padre Barbosa Pires, in his torturous manner,
seconded his elder.

Resuming his comments about the monastery, Dom Gaspar could see that
D'Azevedo was growing unsteady on his feet, and with a gesture summoned a stool,
which a tiny man, dark as the soil they stood on, his florid eyes fluttering,
brought out with dispatch. They continued on in this manner, Dom Gaspar
speaking—Padre Pero very rarely interjecting a thought, Padre Barbosa Pires mostly
nodding or staring, with a gaze so intense it could polish marbles, at
D'Azevedo—detailing a few of the House's particulars: its schedule, its routines,
its finances, its properties and holdings, its relationship with the neighboring
town and villages, and with the Indians. The servant was one of eight people owned
by the monastery, several of whom had been rented or leased out to various people in
the town. D'Azevedo's family still held bondspeople, though on the larger matter,
particularly as it related to a professed house, he was agnostic.

When it was his turn to speak, D'Azevedo explained the threadbare plans
as you had broached them with him, augmented by others he had conceived during his
passage by sea: the proposed changes to the house, how he would take some time to
identify his second in command, how there would be a renewed effort to bring the
town and neighboring villages into doctrinal line, how eventually, with satisfactory
growth, this house might ultimately gain its independence from Olinda, how a college
might rise with it as well. He emphasized in particular nurturing whatever roots of
faith already existed here, and in the nearby region, so its residents might assist
in the House's work, ultimately, he said, repeating your exact words, “to propagate
the Lord's Word far and wide.”

The brethren listened, though Padre Pero seemed at times to be looking
through him, while Padre Barbosa Pires was inspecting some point deep in his own
interior. Dom Gaspar, however, hung on every word. At one point he paused to look at
them and could not tell the three men apart; all had full black beards, all had a
hump, all were deeply tanned. He closed his eyes until he felt a finger, Dom
Gaspar's, tap his shoulder, and when he looked again, all three men were as
different as they had been minutes before. After D'Azevedo finished, with obvious
effort, Dom Gaspar helped him to his feet, and ushered him to his office, where he
might review the various ledgers and other important documents, alternating with
rest, until the midday Mass.

As they headed back into the building, Fr. D'Azevedo asked, “My
dear brother, whom shall I thank, in addition to our Father, for bearing me to my
room and putting me to bed? I should like to offer my especial thanks, given my
state of exhaustion last night, and, apparently, this morning.”

Dom Gaspar turned to D'Azevedo, who was bracing himself against a wall,
again trying to orient himself in the white maze of corridors, and answered, “Then
you shall have to thank yourself, for you did so yourself, your Grace.” The provost
halted in a spot where one hallway twisted into another and, clasping the loose
fabric of D'Azevedo's sleeve firmly, lest the unsteady man fall away from him, Dom
Gaspar continued, “I am not sure which of the Negroes bore your coffer; perhaps the
one named João Baptista, whom they call amongst themselves Kibanda, who brought you
your seat in the cloister. Maybe another. None of us heard your Grace come in
last night, though the slaves reported to us this morning that you were here.” At
this D'Azevedo paused, trying again to recall anything of the previous night, any
assistance, especially by the black who had brought the stool, whose face he could
not at all remember, but Dom Gaspar, like a horse drawing a plough across early
spring soil, tugged him forward, onward, and before he knew it he was seated in his
office, the Provost's.

D'Azevedo started to arrange the books on his desk, but promptly fell
into a delirium. He was borne back to his monastic cell, and stayed there, tossing
and turning for several days, attended periodically by Dom Gaspar, who was also the
infirmarian, and, he thought, the Negro João Baptista, until he recovered. As soon
as he felt fit enough to leave his room, and resume his duties, about a fortnight
after he had arrived, Dom Gaspar took him on tour of the monastery's grounds, which
were ampler in acreage than he had imagined. There was the main house, consisting of
the main building with two wings, bracketing the cloister, which was enclosed on its
back side by a stone wall. Several other buildings dotted the grounds to the north:
the stable, the slave quarters, a coop, a work-shed, a privy. The monks kept several
horses, a dairy cow, and chickens; grew maize and tobacco; maintained a garden,
despite the poor soil, with European and American vegetables and herbs; and
husbanded a small nursery of trees: avocados, papayas, acerolas, tangerines, limes,
mangoes. Palms bearing coconuts formed a towering ridge beyond the gate. What they
could not consume the house had contracted, under patent with the governor of the
captaincy, to sell in the market near the port, as well as at one held monthly in
town.

Tending to all of this, as well as all of the domestic tasks the monks
did not undertake themselves, Dom Gaspar said, were the bondsmen, several of whom
had arrived with the monk postulants themselves, one of whom was a gift of the
leading local landowner, another a bequest, and two of whom were the result of
natural increase by women on neighboring plantations; these two boys had been
returned to the monastery when they reached working age. The last of the men had
been won in a lottery. Three had been lent or rented out to planters in the
neighboring towns, but were now back until the fall harvest arrived. None were
women, as the presence of that sex would, as other houses of the Lord had witnessed,
have posed an insurmountable threat to the monks' oaths. Dom Gaspar recited the
slaves' names, and D'Azevedo had them written down: Aparecido, Benedito (commonly
known as Bem-Boi), Jorginho (who they called Zuzi), Miguel (Muéné, who was
frequently called Negão), and Zé (José Africano), and the children Filhinho (either
Fela or Falodun) and Zé Pequeninho (sometimes called Ayoola). It was only after he
finished that D'Azevedo told him his count was off, and Dom Gaspar remembered he had
forgotten João Baptista, whom, he added, they sometimes called Jibada. D'Azevedo
requested that Dom Gaspar show him where all the records, of the slaves and every
other aspect of their property, were kept, so that he might have the clearest sense
possible of the monastery's holdings.

As with the house and estate themselves, so with his brethren: with each
day their personalities came ever clearer into scope. Most senior among them, Padre
Pero, having been present at the monastery since its founding, might have served as
a fount of knowledge about its history and development, as well as that of the
region, but was by his very nature, D'Azevedo learned, ill-tempered, and taciturn.
After a career in the military, he had exchanged the sword for the Word, preaching
the Gospel in the countryside, evangelizing among white and native alike, later
serving as a liaison and spiritual counsel to the municipal administration. He among
the monks also kept a close watch over the bondspeople, with much the same intensity
as he oversaw the livestock. Next, Padre Barbosa Pires, with that jet beard, who
scuttled from task to task. He rang the bell in the morning and evening, called
everyone to prayer and dinner, prepared vestments for Mass, oversaw the kitchen. He
too was laconic, and appeared always to be trying to decipher something in D'Azevedo
that the new priest kept scrambled. Ever at Barbosa Pires's side was the
honey-cheeked child Filhinho, whom he referred to playfully, but without humor in
his eyes or voice, as his “punchbag.” And then there was Dom Gaspar, sent but a year
before, as D'Azevedo had been sailing back from Europe, diligent, eager to help, so
gentle in manner, the person best equipped to welcome visitors and now watch the
monastery's books.

With his sense of his brethren firm and the slaves fully at his command,
D'Azevedo commenced his restorative work. He had the monastery's entire exterior
washed and whitewashed. He had the gate, from one end to the other, repaired and
restiled. He had lanterns placed at regular paces about the front and rear of the
grounds, so that a night traveler would not find himself in darkness so utter, and
took care to prevent that any of them should lead to a conflagration. He had signs
carved and mounted throughout the corridors, so that anyone could, by reading them,
reorient himself. He had markers placed in even rods amidst the fields to identify
and segregate the differing crops. He had a visitors' book placed in the front hall.
He had new rules written and distributed to his brethren, and had Brother Gaspar, as
D'Azevedo looked on, recite them to the slaves. He requested a periodic audience
with each of the three monks, and a regular gathering of them all, outside of daily
prayers and Masses, once a month. From Padre Pero he asked for a short, written
census of the town's residents, and an oral report of the status of the Faith in the
town and surrounding villages. Also once every several months one of the fathers
would have to offer the divine sacrament of Mass to the slaves, and although he did
not want them to read the Holy Scripture, or anything else for that matter, as much
of it as that they could understand would be told to them, and they must confess
their sins too.