Counternarratives (7 page)

In all things, save work and prayer, he reminded his brethren, their
order required modesty, chastity, renunciation, mortification, dedication to the
interior life. Less food, less wine, no chatter. At the austere morning meal and at
dinner, at which he would always pass on the stews and dried meats, they were to
read aloud from the first five books of the Bible or a similarly pious text. At the
gravesite of Padre Travassos, which Dom Gaspar had pointed out to him and which bore
no stone, he himself placed a new one, topped by the last coins from his doublet
pocket.

In this way the house settled into a new and heretofore unfelt rhythm.
Padre D'Azevedo's abiding aim, it appeared, was the sustenance of the foundation,
but he did exchange letters of greeting with its municipal officials, the judiciary,
the militia leaders, and the representatives of the wealthiest families, many of
whom were one and the same, and then rode out to meet with several of them, opening
up correspondences which he faithfully maintained. Given the constant threat of the
French, though co-religionists, and the Netherlanders, who were not, he felt he must
act to ensure a front line of defense, secured through amity and a shared belief in
the preservation of the Faith. D'Azevedo meanwhile submerged himself in the
monastery's archives, initiating the process of expanding its subscriptions and
soliciting books from the main house in Olinda, as well as from the capital at
Bahia, and from Lisbon, Coimbra and Évora, in preparation for a library that would
benefit the priests, and, perhaps down the road, the envisioned college. He read and
reread the ledger books, so as to wring out every possible
real
that might
be hidden or misentered there.

Each of his fellow monks saw him as though through a prism, each viewing
a differing facet of a carefully cut, rare stone. They all would have concurred in
calling attention to his knowledge on an array of matters; his scholarship, so
evident in his individual and group remarks with them, in the letters he drafted to
the mother house in Olinda and to a range of correspondents across the country, and
in his impromptu Scriptual tuitions at Mass; and his faithful obeisance to the rules
he himself had established and would not rewrite depending upon the circumstances.
He wrote in a clear hand; he did not equivocate in his speech; he quoted the Old
Testament in Latin from memory perfectly. None inquired about, though Dom Gaspar was
intrigued by, his private theological-philosophical project, to which he devoted a
portion of each day, and he spoke nothing of it. He did not lead by force, or
intimidation, or legerdemain, or threat of recourse to the Olinda House, which is to
say through
you
, but by example. In the main, though he knew he was dealing
with several refractory personalities, he detected no disquiet. To Gaspar, to whom
he assigned greater duties, including now serving as his secretary and novice master
when new ones arrived, and in whom he placed great confidence, his presence appeared
not just a ballast, but a blessing.

Long hours spent in the study of any text will reveal inner, unseen
contours, an abstract architecture. This is as true of sacred books as of those
poems written in the pursuit of courtly or earthly love, or even of language itself.
The ancient Mosaic law had accommodated this insight to the disadvantage of the
surface layer, of images, while the Roman Church, akin to the preliterate cultural
forms from which it in part arose, allows for the existence of a mystical
understanding and experience of these abstractions. The careful scholar cannot but
help but become aware of the conflict: when one speaks of the word, or Word, what is
one truly speaking of? Who is the architect, man, and—or—a—God? Attempts to
apprehend this new reality, these tensions, went initially by the names of
philosophy, theology, science. What is it to know, know deeply? Is knowledge not
always a form of power that, taken too far, cannot be turned against itself? The
texts continually opened these doors and subsequent ones for D'Azevedo, who conveyed
them, using ciphers, to some of his distant correspondents.

Several months into the new provost's tenure, after a brief campaign
that, he believed, had successfully changed perceptions of the monastery in the
town's eyes, he began weekly tutorials for a small cohort of boys he selected from
the upper ranks of the town's citizenry. Though each of these boys had their own
personal tutors at home, D'Azevedo suggested to their parents that in the event they
did not receive training at another college, and to ensure adequate preparation for
further study in law, medicine, the classics, or the priesthood, especially should
they seek to serve at the Royal Court or in the administrative center in Bahia, he
might provide them with supplementary training. As a result, each Tuesday through
Thursday, amidst his other duties, D'Azevedo guided the sons of the Espinozas, the
Palmerias, the Cardozos, the Alonso Lopeses, the Figueirases, and the Pimentels, in
the study of the Old Testament; Latin and Greek; the natural sciences, especially
botany, and mathematics; in disputation and philosophy; and Hebrew.

The boys rode out to the monastery or arrived by coach, bunked in a room
furnished only with cots, stools, a wash basin, and woven baskets for their personal
effects, that D'Azevedo had set aside especially for that purpose, with one of the
child slaves their only attendant. Early Friday morning they rode back to resume
their own usual routines at home. In this way he was planting the seeds of a school,
and, it seemed, doing the very work you had tasked him to. He alone taught the boys,
and maintained an atmosphere of utmost rectitude. It has often been subsequently
said that this small cohort, once spread across the Empire and beyond, never lost
sight of the ethos he nurtured there.

One Wednesday evening, weeks into his courses, shortly after the turn of
the new year and the feast of Our Lady, once he had concluded Vespers and tucked in
for the night, D'Azevedo awoke to what he thought he perceived as the regular
beating of a drumhead, though so low it was almost below the level of audibility. He
rose, slipped his doublet over his nightshirt and stepped into his sandals, then
made his way through the tunnel of dark, for the monastery was kept lightless until
4, the hour of morning prayers, to where he thought the sound emanated. Perhaps, he
considered, the boys had snuck in a jug of any of the many types of liquors that
were the fruits of the abundant sugar crops, and were continuing Christmas
celebrations, frowned on though they were; but he would only chide them, gently, and
remind them of the House's rules, for though they were guests and youths, they were
expected to carry themselves in the manner expected of any who lived between these
walls, let alone boys of their station. Tracing his way to them, he opened the door,
as quietly as possible, and entered the room. All were soundly asleep. Soft snores
rose from their slumbering forms. In the slender ribbon of light the moon cast
through the half-closed shutters, the Figueiras boy, curled beneath his sheet, was
murmuring the gibberish of dreams. D'Azevedo closed the door, waited for several
minutes, then went back in. Not a body had shifted.

As he closed the door he could again hear the drumming, faint but now
accompanied, he perceived, by a low wail, like an animal caught in the crevice of a
deep shaft, or wire upon wire. He left the boys and tracked his way back, ever so
carefully through the blackness, until he reached the main entry hall. The noise was
coming, he thought, from the cloister. He passed through the large wooden door, now
so familiar to him, out into the cool air, to find not a single soul or sound
but those of the summer night, the light of the moon and the stars, the soil and
grasses and flowers and stones. Everything lay in its usual place. He stood still
and listened but the sound was gone. He strolled the open space, checking in
corners, scanning the back wall, examining the wings, with bedrooms, including his
own, that extended from the long, low main building. He saw and heard nothing. He
sat on the ground and kept vigil for a while, until he grew sleepy and felt his head
nodding. It was as he was opening the door to go back indoors that he again heard
drumbeats and, out of the corner of his eye, he spied a shape, a shadow, moving
along the rear wall, and he turned to spot something, someone, its hair fanning over
its shoulders, gliding over the stone barrier. D'Azevedo ran to the wall and leapt
up, seizing its top to wrench himself high enough to peer over it, but there was
nothing, neither drum nor cry, only the nearby barns and stables, the slave
cabins, the fields, the vast forest with its peculiar soundscape, and enveloping it
all, the dense, impermeable silence of the night.

D'Azevedo crept back to bed, but could not sleep. Despite no sounds
beyond the usual ones of the house, his entire body, like a sentinel, kept vigil. He
went early to the chapel, before the bell, and as soon as he had mouthed the last
syllable of the Latin imprecations, he turned to his fellow monks and told them that
he would like to meet with them straightaway in his office. They walked there
together in silence, and it was not until he closed the door that D'Azevedo noticed
the slave João Baptista sweeping his office. He promptly ushered him out. The
provost opened the gathering by noting its irregular nature, and apologized for
calling his brethren from their appointed duties. He recounted the strange incidents
of the prior night, and made clear that he had not merely dreamt them. He had heard
drumming, and had observed someone vaulting over the wall. With barely suppressed
shock he noted it might even have been a woman, given that none of the monks—and he
surveyed them as he spoke—nor the slaves, had long hair.

Had any of them heard anything? Seen any odd characters traipsing about
the monastery's buildings or grounds? All said no, they had heard nothing last
night, seen no one. Padre Pero noted that sometimes the blacks consorted with women
in the town, without permission, but that in any case, this would occur in their
quarters and never within the cloister or main building. He promised to conduct an
inquiry and severely punish anyone found to be violating the rules. Padre Barbosa
Pires asked whether D'Azevedo was certain it was none of the students he had brought
into the house; there were forces at work in the town that the Holy Office might
well need to address. D'Azevedo dismissed this comment, noting that the students'
behavior had been unimpeachable, and awaited Dom Gaspar's thoughts, but he expressed
none. With that, D'Azevedo thanked them all and sent them on their way. He wrote out
a letter asking you for guidance, and prepared it for posting, though, he noted to
himself, he had not heard from you or anyone in or around Olinda for some time.
Finished, he felt lightheaded. Before he could call for assistance, João Baptista
knocked to enter his office, with an urn of fresh coconut water, and a bowl of
cashews, which are said to be good for the nerves, and the remedy set him right for
the rest of the day.

Things proceeded without account, until, several weeks later, after a
private meeting and dinner at the monastery with several members of the powerful
Pimentel family, local plantation owners and brewers who were considering becoming
patrons of the future school they hoped their younger sons might someday attend, at
which alcoholic spirits from a newly gifted cask had flowed, though the abstemious
provost had not drunk more than a cup, D'Azevedo invited Dom Gaspar into his office
to record the leader's thoughts on the event. Once Dom Gaspar had done so, and
drafted a letter of thanks to the Pimentels, which D'Azevedo signed, the provost,
calmed by the sweet and potent liquor, the fellowship, and the knowledge that they
had roughly a half hour or so before evening prayers and bedtime, asked his charge
to remained seated, and said, “My dear brother, I am so grateful for your assistance
here. I do not know how I would have gotten this house into the shape it is in
without you by my side.”

The brother, his lips and mind also loosened by wine, unbuttoned the top
of his doublet and replied, “And I am so thankful to you, my Lord, for the changes
you have wrought here. How different it was before you arrived! In the absence of a
firm tribune of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost this House was approaching the
precipice. There was not just a laxity of practice but of the Faith, of spirit. That
wickedness, either preached by the devil's handservant Luther or by Satan and his
agents themselves, when they are not one and the same, was rising like a fever
through these walls. I shall not call out any names, but I must testify to you, as I
have not yet dared even in Holy Confession, that I did not always appear for prayers
and on Sundays I did not always rise from my bed before midday. I hoarded food and
ate eggs raw rather than let them be cooked. I raised my voice to the Negroes and
even once took the Lord's name in vain. I—”

“My dear brother,” D'Azevedo started, his face crimsoning at Dom
Gaspar's torrent of words, but the charge continued:

“I tell you, my Lord, the slaves themselves often forgot their places;
they refused to work, they talked back, some vanished for days on end and cavorted
with the Indians, they even dared to order the monks around. The one called Damásio,
who was sold off shortly after I was sent here, threatened to murder Padre Pero in
his sleep, I heard him say it with these two ears. Padre Pero beat him, then had him
bound and sold at the market at the port, and sold off another that same day who
planned to murder us all as well and have the other slaves rise up in revolt.”

“My dear brother Gaspar,” D'Azevedo said again, “perhaps some queer
things may have transpired here in the past—”