The Penalty (12 page)
Authors: Mal Peet
“By about 1900 the d’Olivieras had pretty much given up on the area. It wasn’t economic. Their freed slaves had either drifted away to the city, or were trying to scrape a living fishing or sharecropping, and couldn’t afford to pay their rent most of the time. In 1961 the government bought the estates from Dr Teodoro d’Oliviera. He got a good price, considering. The fact that Teodoro was a minister in the same government may have had something to do with it. I mention this because when he died, Teodoro left all his worldly goods to his young niece, Flora.”
Faustino looked up now, and Bakula smiled.
He said, “I don’t think Dr Teodoro would have approved of his niece’s choice of husband. He’d spent most of his political career trying to eliminate people like Gilberto da Silva.”
“What the hell are you up to, Edson? What are you using me for?”
Bakula looked regretful. “I’m sorry you see it that way.”
“Oh, really? Some other way of looking at it, is there?”
“Yes. I’m not using you. I’m helping you.”
Faustino gave an incredulous laugh which Bakula ignored.
“Or, I should say, we are helping each other. After all, we are both in the business of enlightening people. In our different ways. Besides, I don’t think you are being completely honest with me. Or yourself. When we were talking in the café earlier, I felt sure that a part of you wanted to do this. Your instinct. Was I wrong?”
Faustino declined to answer. A hundred metres away, something detached itself from the darkness beneath the mangroves and entered the water, casting thick ripples that then closed over it.
Bakula resumed his lecture as though it had not been interrupted. “For many of us,” he said, “what’s important about Santo Tomas is not its glorious past, nor its wretched present. What matters is the place’s association with Paracleto.”
He paused, waiting for a response. When none came, he asked, “Does the name mean anything to you?”
Faustino noted the slight change in Bakula’s tone. And his facial expression. There was something almost beseeching in it. Faustino imagined that certain – perhaps most – women would have found it irresistible. He put on a show of reluctant interest.
“It rings a distant bell. Wasn’t he the guy that led the big slave revolt in – what was it? – 1850, or something? Or was that some other
eto
?”
“It’s rather complicated. It’s true that the rebellion began on the d’Oliviera estates. That’s what happened to the house; it was burned down. But Paracleto is a name that legends attach themselves to. It’s a sort of nickname, you might say.” Bakula faked a smile. “I’m surprised that none of your footballers have used it. Anyway, some people say that Paracleto was several different people; others believe he never existed. In fact, the first recorded use of the name dates from 1789. It’s in a letter from the Bishop of San Juan to Colonel Sebastian d’Oliviera. The Bishop wanted to know why Sebastian was apparently allowing ‘heathen African practices’ to take place on his estate. It’s a stern letter. It refers to the ‘so-called pai, or priest, Paracleto’, and to ‘lewd ceremonies conducted by him in the depths of the night in which our Lord Jesus Christ is mocked’.
“Don Sebastian’s reply has also survived. In the politest language he gives the Bishop the finger. He says that Paracleto is a man ‘possessed of a deeply religious spirit who commands the respect of all the other Negroes’. He also says that Paracleto is ‘greatly skilled in the arts of healing’. It seems that in the previous year there had been another outbreak of cholera along the river, and Paracleto had saved the lives of a good many of Sebastian’s slaves, and those of Sebastian’s two sons, Felipe and Luis. The letter talks about his ‘courageous, unsleeping and tender nursing of the sick’, and about his great knowledge of herbal remedies. And so on. At one point he uses the word ‘wise’ to describe Paracleto, which would have been a pretty provocative thing to say about an African slave back then. Especially to a bishop.”
“Good on Sebastian, then,” Faustino said. “He have anything to say about these lewd goings-on in the jungle?”
“Yes. He says that as a mark of his gratitude to Paracleto he allowed him to build what the letter calls ‘a hermitage’ outside Santo Tomas. A place where Paracleto would sometimes retreat to for the purpose of ‘prayer and contemplation’. That’s what d’Oliviera called it, I suppose because it might sound better to the Bishop. It’s more likely that Paracleto went there to do what in Veneration is called ‘remembering’.”
“That would be getting in touch with the ancestors, at a guess.”
“More or less. Sebastian says that on certain feast days – he doesn’t say which – his Negroes have his permission to attend religious ceremonies at Paracleto’s hermitage. He denies that these are ‘heathen rituals’. He says that he had himself attended two of these ceremonies, and on both occasions they were conducted ‘in a seemly, sober and dignified manner’.”
“How very disappointing,” Faustino said regretfully.
Bakula ignored him. “D’Oliviera also says that while it is true that at these ceremonies the slaves would speak in their ‘barbarous African tongues’, they devoutly worshipped the Blessed Virgin Mary and other saints venerated by the Holy Catholic Church. He ends the letter by saying, in a very elaborate way, that he doesn’t give a toss what the Bishop thinks anyway, because since his slaves started going to Paracleto’s hermitage they’d been much easier to manage.”
“This doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d start a revolt,” Faustino said.
“If it had been the same Paracleto, he’d have been at least a hundred years old by 1850.”
“A bit long in the tooth for massacring and pillaging.”
“A bit, perhaps,” Bakula agreed. “Although when the army crushed the uprising, they captured a very old man who called himself Paracleto and brought him back to San Juan. They couldn’t decide whether to hang him or burn him, so they did both. They lit a bonfire beneath the gallows, put a rope around his neck, and dropped him into it. It attracted a big crowd. The story goes, though, that it wasn’t Paracleto but one of his followers, who allowed himself to be martyred so that the real Paracleto could escape. It may be so. There were reports of appearances in Santo Tomas and elsewhere soon after the execution. I have seen a photograph of a pai called Paracleto taken in 1924, and another taken in 1958. I am quite sure that both were taken at the site of the original hermitage near Santo Tomas.”
It was the arithmetic of lunacy, but before Faustino could say anything Bakula said, “There have been impostors, of course. Liars, opportunists, con men, thieves, politicians, blasphemers. Those who think masks are to hide behind, not see through. But they are like leeches – greedy and ugly but not difficult to remove.”
There was no mistaking the suppressed anger in his voice.
Faustino flicked his cigarette butt into the river.
“You know what?” he said. “I’m beginning to think you’re as crazy as a bottled wasp.”
P
RIMA KNEELED AT
the prow of the boat. Lucas held the engine at quarter speed, watching her signals. In the east, the sky was deepening into indigo; to the west it was a lurid orange smear printed over with the flat black shapes of the highest trees. The thought struck Faustino – and he wished it hadn’t – that it looked like one of Max Salez’s shirts. The river had taken on a peculiar bronze colour. The wall of mangroves was now broken by densely shadowed creeks and sudden upthrusts of rock. It was just beyond one of these that Lucas spun the wheel hard and put the engine into reverse.
El Peregrino
swung, straightened, eased forward again, and slipped into a narrow inlet. It was not much more than twice the length of the boat, and ended in dense vegetation crowding onto a small silt beach. The air smelled of decay.
Lucas cut the engine. Mateo, at the stern, lobbed the anchor into the water and hauled on the rope until the boat was motionless. Prima leaped onto the little beach and lashed the prow rope to a gnarled protruding root.
Faustino said, “What now?”
“We wait for night and the moon,” Bakula said. “And while we’re waiting, we’ll eat. We missed lunch, remember?” Something in his tone suggested he held Faustino responsible for this misfortune.
Juan went to the locker and lifted out the cool box. He brought it over to where Faustino was sitting, and sat down.
“Good food,” he said. “Mama make it herself. You got any complaints, you speak to her ’bout it.”
“I’m sure it will be first class. Any chance of a gin and tonic before dinner?”
“Is bad for you,” Juan said.
The food was, in fact, as good as anything Faustino had tasted since leaving the capital. While they ate, darkness filled the inlet. Looking up, he was entranced, despite himself. He could not remember when he had last seen a sky so softly black, or stars so close; they looked near enough to gather by the handful.
The pulsing electronic warble of frogs paused then swelled again when Lucas restarted
El Peregrino
’s engine and eased the boat out into the main stream. Faustino was puzzled to see a track of light running upriver; he knew Lucas had not switched on the boat’s lamp. Then he turned and saw the rising moon, a yellow dome above the ragged fringe of trees.
Twenty long minutes later, lights glimmered ahead and to the right. They disappeared, and then were there again, closer.
“Santo Tomas,” Prima said, suddenly beside him. She was now wearing some dark garment over her T-shirt.
The lights formed themselves into strings and clusters; Faustino could just make out a clutter of roofs and paler walls below the low hump of a hill. Then two brighter lamps illuminated a dock, a jumble of masts, a long stone building with a sagging roof. Human shapes and a wisp of music.
Faustino was surprised when the dock drifted past them. “Aren’t we stopping?”
“Not here,” Prima said. “We land here, the whole place know our business in two minutes. We goin on a little way.”
She left him and went to the wheelhouse. A minute or two later, the boat swung towards the bank, Lucas revving the engine in quick bursts then reversing it.
El Peregrino
drifted, then juddered against something solid. The engine died; someone moved at the prow. Then Mateo, his face bluish in the moonlight, was standing beside the boat, looping rope around a wooden bollard.
From somewhere close to Faustino, Edson Bakula softly said, “This is what the locals call Dead Man’s Landing. It’s where they brought the bodies of people who died further along the river. The graveyard is through these trees. That’s why we’re tying up here. People tend to avoid it at night. The power of superstition, as you might say. Now, I’d like you to sit quietly while we get a couple of things organized. You okay?”
Faustino stared incredulously at Bakula’s black silhouette, then said, “Well, let me see. I’ve been kidnapped by a deranged tour guide, a teenage girl and a bunch of bodybuilders. I’ve been taken on a river trip more tedious than anything I’ve ever known, and believe me, coming from a sports writer that’s saying something. I’ve ended up at a graveyard at the arse end of nowhere in the pitch dark. I’ve got three cigarettes left. On the down side, the fried chicken could have done with a little less chilli. But on the whole, pretty much the perfect holiday experience. How could I not be
okay
?”
Bakula said nothing for a couple of seconds. Then his arm moved and something blacker than the darkness fell onto Faustino’s lap. A jacket of some sort, made of slithery synthetic material.
“Put this on.”
“Thanks, but I’m not cold.”
“No, but that shirt of yours is more or less luminous in moonlight. You could be seen a mile away. Lucas wanted to black up your face with used engine oil, but I decided that wouldn’t be necessary so long as you wear the hood up.”
“You’re too kind.”
The three brothers were silently busy at the locker. Faustino saw that they too were now wearing dark hooded jackets. Something heavy clunked onto the deck: the sports bag, its Nike logo palely visible. Faustino heard it being unzipped. A disc of torchlight appeared briefly on the boards. Mateo murmured something, passing things round. Then the sound of oiled metal sliding against metal, a sharp click. Then another. Moonlight reflected dully from something long and flat-sided protruding from Juan’s hand.
Faustino stood up.
“Jesus Christ, Bakula. Are those guns? They’re guns. What the hell is this?”
T
HE YEARS PASSED
. Time unfolded, but I could not see its pattern yet.
I woke with a start one night because something like a fever had flashed through me, beneath my skin, then vanished. I sat up and saw that the cabin was dimly lit by four small yellow flames. They burned like candles at the tips of Maco’s fingers. With his other hand he was lifting our tattered bed sheet, peeping up Blessing’s legs.
I was glad to see him. At nightfall I had made a veneration, but he had not come.
When he saw me looking at him he smiled his triangular pointed teeth at me and winked the eye in the red half of his face. He lowered the sheet, going
Hmm-hmmm
.
He said, “What did you want?”
I told him again of the troubles I was having with those of our people who would not submit to me because they wanted to believe in the white man’s religion. That some of them were afraid to do Worship.
“You’ve done as I told you? Taught your people that the white religion is only a disguise for true Worship? That those white saints are bleached ancestors? That the Dreamer of Visions, San Juan, is really Oxufa, and that what’s-her-name, Teresa, is Ochandja, and so on?”
“Yes,” I said, “I have taught them so.”
Maco’s eyes glittered. “And you have told them that the white priests’ hocus-pocus with the bread and the wine is really a veneration to me?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I think some of them are looking through the mirror from the other side.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maco said, snappish. “Don’t use your pai riddles on me, man.”
So I quickly covered my face with my hands and bowed my head; then I said, “I mean that some of our people are hiding their white religion behind Worship, not the other way round.”
“So punish them,” Maco said, scratching an armpit with his burning fingers.
I asked him, “How can I punish people who see their lives as punishment?”
He sucked his teeth. “Yes,” he said, “that is always a tricky problem.”
He closed his eyes. “I see that you are thinking about a sign.”
I nodded. Maco pressed the tips of his candle fingers together and a bolt of bright fire shot from them, up to the timber and leaf thatch of the cabin. A small green and yellow lizard shut down its eyes and scuttled to safety along a beam. The roof flamed and crackled. Maco clenched his hand and drew the fire back to himself.
“One like that?”
“Yes,” I said. “That is what I was thinking.”
Maco closed his eyes again. “I see the towers of your colonel’s church are almost finished.”
“Yes. A boat brought the bells up from San Juan yesterday.”
He stood and stretched, yawning. “Very well,” he said. “When those bells are up, I’ll smite the church. I tell you what: I’ll smite it twice. I’ll wait till they start rebuilding and do it again. There shouldn’t be any shilly-shallying after that. As long as you do your work.”
I thanked him in the proper way. He waved his glowing hand, as if to say, It’s nothing.
He said, “I must be going. I can’t stand this place, anyway. Everywhere stinks like it’s been sprayed by a tomcat, have you noticed?”
He leaned over the bed. “Nice wife. She’ll never get fat like some of them. Pretty child too. Girl, is it?”
“My daughter, Achasha.”
“Good name,” Maco said, then glowed his eyes at me. “You owe me.”
“I am your servant always,” I said, fearful.
“Damn right,” he said. “And you have no idea what ‘always’ means.”
Smiling, he turned and walked through the wall. I saw that the face on the back of his head was weeping: a red tear ran down the black cheek; a black tear ran down the red.
What an end-of-world sound they made, those towers, when they fell. What a clamour of crashing brick and bell! And Maco’s strike on them was like a fiery split in the dark sky. My vision burned green long after. And because when all came running I was already there, standing at the edge of the rolling dust, there were murmurs; and doubters slid their eyes at me.
I thought that Maco had toppled the colonel too. For five days he kept himself in his rooms and spoke to no one, not even me. But he was stubborn. A month later, he brought a priest upriver to hold a Mass in the wreck of the church. This was a feast day the whites call the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, who is the impossible mother of their god. Which I had taught my people was the ancestor day of Amalu, who watches over births. The priest was the same fat sweating one who had married me to Blessing. The colonel made all his slaves except the ones in the faraway cane fields be there. We filled the space around the church like blackflies round a corpse. He did not see, as I did, that most had yellow threads around their wrists or ankles, or tiny smears of yellow pollen on their hands or feet. Amalu’s colour. I rejoiced; and later, when under the cover of the night I made a blood veneration to Maco, many watched me, silently.
It was the fire next time.
Maco smote the scaffolding round the new towers and blew on the flames until they seized the roof. Lead went molten and wept down the walls. He put his signature on his work; that church was a heart of red fire inside black ribs. And like he had said, there was no shilly-shallying after that. No question of pai or not pai. No looking wrongways through mirrors. I had brought my people back to themselves.
Or so I thought.
Fool.
Nothing is ever finished.