Counternarratives (8 page)

“And, I, I am sure I glimpsed—for if not, let my eyes be struck blind by
the Lord God Himself . . .” Here he broke off, momentarily gathering himself, his
face flushing and his tongue in tremor. “My Lord, by the Blessed Father, the Son and
the Holy Ghost, and by the force of the Holy Office of the Inquisition itself, for I
only heard and now dare to repeat it, O Lord Christ strike my tongue dumb, but Padre
Barbosa Pires told me that he saw a Negro woman, and one of the slaves, he could not
make out which one it was, ordering Padre Travassos around, the elderly priest on
his hands and knees in the center of the cloister at twilight not but a week, I
believe it was, before he died, and he wore not a doublet, not a robe, not a single
stitch, and the Negro man was riding him like an ass, and driving him with a crop,
and around the white man's neck he held reins tight, for in his mouth was a bit, and
the white man was not uttering a single sound, only making the sounds of a beast,
that much he glimpsed—”

“Mercy, Brother Gaspar,” D'Azevedo said.

“—and that is not all, my Lord, for not only did the slaves come and go
but the house had received a steady stream of visitors, they were coming before I
arrived and some came after, few of them fellow monks or anchoresses or even priests
from near or distant dioceses, nor pilgrims in search of spiritual salve, nor lay
mendicants, not faithful from the nearby towns, nor even the savages that populated
the forests or runaway slaves, but men and women who brought vile thoughts and
vicious deeds in their wake, including sometimes persons whose kind one could not
discern, man or woman or some other creature, and they usually appeared just at the
fall of night, and Padres Travassos and Pero did entertain them, Padre Barbosa Pires
told me, and then I saw him enter the room and entertain them himself, and the
Negroes took part in the revelries too, the three priests did entertain them, as was
said did the former founder Padre Duran Carneiro, before his flight, for why do you
think those two boys here are mulattos—”

“Mercy of the Lord—” D'Azevedo said.

“—inviting them in, your Grace, and transforming the solemn holidays
into scenes of lasciviousness, with rituals so diabolical it would cause even the
Lord Jesus Christ to turn his face away in horror, and there was said to be
witchcraft and sorcery of a kind so powerful in this house and outside it, such that
creatures worse than those that issue forth from Mephistopheles' bowels were roaming
this estate, and I heard tell that a beast with multiple heads and another beast
that could both swim and fly, and another beast that bred with every other animal
including humans, including humans living here—”

“Brother, stop,” D'Azevedo said, “I think the spirits—”

“—and so great was that evil and so present that sometimes even though
we have all walked arm-in-arm with our Father since you, my Lord, crossed the
threshold I can still sometimes feel it, if only you knew of the rituals, in which
they defiled the chapel altar and the Host, and daily that Negro woman gave sooth,
and one told me in confession that it was one of them, our blacks, parading around
in women's garments, and that the priests sometimes did the same, sometimes even
going out as women to meet their lovers in the town, just as there were men and boys
from the town who came here during these monstrous frolics, and Padre Travassos took
eager part in them, and Padre Duran Carneiro too, I have heard said, before he fled,
driven out by that slavewoman, and Padre Pero—”

“Gaspar, please, no more of this, I command—”

“And it was only a year ago, around the time weeks from now when
the Lord's Son will rise from the dead and redeem the World, that some of the
townspeople, who are said to be of those accursed faiths, the Jews and the Muslims
and the followers of that German monk, Padre Barbosa Pires having denounced some of
them even in his childhood, and people believing in dangerous spirits and having no
beliefs at all, including the Negroes, and aboriginals who were enticed from their
forests, arrived here to participate in the most abominable revelries, and I had
begun to barricade myself in my cell, but a female visitor appeared very late one
night at the threshold of this very house, I could hear her knocking, and she was so
heavily cloaked despite the heat that I could not see her face, and out of Christian
duty and hospitality I let her in, and lo I quickly found myself thus at the
threshold of the door of the room where she was lodging, as if at her beckoning,
which had not required a single word nor even a gesture, as if by sorcery, and only
at that moment I fell to my knees, my Lord, and implored our Father for the
requisite strength to still these desires and mortify this flesh, and return me to
the sanctity of my vows, though as I did so I could hear the drums and the moans and
the most extreme and exquisite pleasures occurring only steps from me, just beyond
every surrounding wall, and that creature opened the door, though I did not go in,
and lifted her skirts, and made me promise not to utter a single word or I would be
struck dumb and deaf and blind—”

With this Dom Gaspar fell silent, his whole body shaking like the string
of a berimbau, and D'Azevedo shook too, unsure of what to say, until they both heard
the ringing of the bell, and realized it was time to go pray.

“My dear Brother,” D'Azevedo said, barely able to summon words, “we must
hurry to prayers. But we shall not speak of this again, until I have had time to
investigate it further, and seek counsel from Olinda. Do you understand? Do
you?”

The brother assented, and as he began to say something there was a knock
on the door, and with D'Azevedo's permission he opened it, and the slave João
Baptista was there, lamp in hand, to guide them to the chapel. D'Azevedo looked at
Dom Gaspar, who had calmed down, and then toward the slave, whom he could not see
because of the lamp's glow, except for the flash of his large, expressive eyes.

Throughout the prayers, D'Azevedo could not shake Dom Gaspar's tale from
his head, and kept getting lost in the words, the Latin sounding more like mere
rhythms than sense. Only when they were nearly done did he calm down. What he told
himself was that the cane liquor itself bore terrible spirits, so powerful he could
still smell its aroma, and these had gotten to Dom Gaspar's already nervous mind and
caused the terrible flight of fantasy, the nightmare that had overtaken his waking
thoughts. He nevertheless intended to put this too in a letter to you, hoping that
you or someone in Olinda might advise him. He wavered between the final words of the
prayer, Dom Gaspar's account and thoughts of his tutorial with the boys tomorrow.
Once the Vespers had finished he hurried to his bedroom without saying a further
word to Dom Gaspar, who also went straight to his room, or to either of his fellow
priests, who too duly vanished.

D'Azevedo slept fitfully; he rolled about on his pallet as if he
were on the deck of a yawl in an Atlantic storm. During one stretch, he saw looming
above him a creature, cloaked in a black caftan, its skin white as quicklime, with
reddish horns, a beard so matted it appeared woven of copper, the napping becoming
an orange flame, and coiling above its head, a tail armored with razors, and when he
raised his hands to push it away it transformed into a creature as black the bottom
of a pit, the face, a negro's, sublime in its geometry, its hair alive, a writhing
mangrove swamp, which began turning into snakes before D'Azevedo's eyes, while the
body, its black, black body covered with those same tentacular appendages, held
D'Azevedo flat against the pallet, and as the creature neared D'Azevedo its bared
pelvis sported a rod of such virility that D'Azevedo was sure it would tear his
insides to pieces. He screamed out as loudly as he could, though he could not hear a
single note issuing from his throat, but the apparition vanished, and he realized
that he was sitting on the edge of his bed, sheathed in sweat and moonlight
scattered like coins through his shutters. He opened them to admit more, which led
him to spot a palm-sized folded slip of paper someone had pushed beneath his
door.

Because it was still night and he did not want to wake anyone, as
quietly as he could he fished a flint and firestone from his trunk, and lighted a
candle, taking care to place it near but not in the window so that the tallow smell
would carry into the open air without the light waking anyone. The paper was blank.
He held it closer to the candle to make sure he was not missing print too tiny to
view in the darkness, and like magic, the tiny, elaborate script, definitely
Portuguese, umbered before his eyes as if being written right there on the paper:
“
Th
ey are coming lest you fear watch and listen trust the
seer
.” The message startled him so he dropped the page into the flame, leaving
only ashes on the sill. He returned to his pallet and tried, using the tools of
reason, to understand what was going on, from the message, to the nightmare, to the
tales Gaspar had told him, all the way back to the unusual circumstances by which he
had ended up in this very room the very first night he arrived here. When he made no
headway he knelt on the stone floor, his Bible before him, and prayed, remaining
there, until exhaustion conquered his efforts, and he did not wake until the final
ring of the next morning's bell.

D'Azevedo rose from the floor, where he had passed out after his
mental exertions, washed himself, and threw on his cassock and doublet, then rushed
to Matins. Padres Pero, Barbosa Pires, and Dom Gaspar were all aleady there; in
their faces and gestures he did not detect even the slightest disquiet. They
proceeded through the Breviary without halt; D'Azevedo found himself struggling to
concentrate on the words, as his mind was again cycling. It was only when Dom Gaspar
extended his hand to help him up from his knees that he grasped the prayers had
ended. They exchanged greetings, though the other two priests left the chapel
straightaway. D'Azevedo went directly to his office, where the materials for the
day's lessons sat in neat piles on his desk. As he perfunctorily penned a plan to
explain several refined points in Biblical interpretation, he would periodically
feel a tingle in his cheeks or thighs when the images of the night before flashed in
his head.

Not long before he was to head to the scriptorium, where he held the
classes, D'Azevedo could hear voices rising like a choir tuning itself, and
suddenly, hammering on his door. He went to open it and Dom Gaspar, as red-faced as
he had been during his possessed reverie, ran in, crying out:

“They've sent a messager, along with coaches from the town, calling all
of your boys back. There's news that the Dutch have laid successful siege to Olinda,
and the boys may be needed to participate in a local defense until the Crown's
forces arrive from Bahia and elsewhere.”

“Have they reached our port,” D'Azevedo asked, pulling the stool out for
Gaspar, who did not sit, “at Alagoas?”

“Not yet, my Lord, but they say it is only a matter of time before the
heathens begin their drive to seize everything and raise the Orange standard above
us all.”

D'Azevedo, with Dom Gaspar behind him, went straight to the room where
the boys lodged. All were collecting their personal items to prepare home.

“Lusitania has successfully defended her territories from worse threats
than this,” D'Azevedo said to the boys, who paused momentarily to turn to him, “and
the Netherlanders, like the French, will not triumph. You can be certain we shall
reconvene in a fortnight or less, no matter what the threat. In the interim,
continue with your lessons on your own, when you can, and if it is possible, send me
word of your progress and of what is happening in the town.” When they had finished,
he, Gaspar, Zé Pequeninho, who was assigned to serve them and carried as many sacks
as he could, and João Baptista, always present, who carried the rest, accompanied
them to the stables, where their horses and the coaches to fetch the rest of them
awaited. D'Azevedo watched each depart, then returned with Dom Gaspar to his office
to formulate a plan in the event that the Dutch did make headway inland.

D'Azevedo asked his charge to notify the other monks that he would like
to meet that evening, just before Vespers, to discuss the crisis. Before then, he
would examine the house's inventories to find out what weapons and munition they,
lacking a cannon, possessed. From what he could tell there were but a few: several
very old swords, a hatchet, perhaps a pike and mace (at least that was what someone
had noted down before), and all the agricultural tools, like flails, hoes, and
scythes, that could be put to use if necessary. Also listed was a firearm he had
never seen, some shot, and a small amount of gunpowder. Nearly all save the pike and
farm implements were kept under lock and chain in a vault that he had never entered
but knew was accessible via the chapel's nave.

He followed this with inventories of all other aspects of the house: its
finances, the food stocks, the state of the crops, the animals, the slaves. He had
heard throughout his time in school on that the Dutch, unlike Lisbon's ancient
allies the English, were especially brutal to adherents of the Roman faith, even
though he had also heard the Dutch Church had survived the pox spreading outward
from Saxony and that seductive false prophet of Eisleben. If the local forces
retreated here in their march toward the interior, the monastery would be able to
provide sustenance and shelter; if the Dutch managed to vanquish them, D'Azevedo
reasoned it would be beneficial to have at hand every means to ensure their
magnimity. In the event of a siege he tried to figure how long he and the monks
could hold out. On the back of a letter from the municipal authorities, concerning
rules that had been implemented as of the turn of the year, he designated which
bottles of cane liquor and wine, casks of English beer, horses, sacred implements,
including the gold-plated chalice and the patin, gifts of the Albuquerque family,
that were the pride of the Sacristy, as well as slaves, could be used to curry
favor. He wrote two versions of this, one which he would entrust with Dom Gaspar,
and one which he would keep on his person, to be presented personally to the Dutch
commander if necessary.