“What did the father say there?”
“The Mair said, ‘Ask me a question, any question.’’’
The Iguapá called to each other in their own language. The Manaos waited at the edge of the firelight, suspicious, ready for fight. Falcon caught the eye of Juripari, his Manao translator. One word and the Manaos would strike. One word and it would be more bloody anonymous death on the river sand, unseen, unheard, unmourned.
Waitacá jabbed his blowpipe at Quinn with a simultaneously stabbing question.
“He says, ‘And where was your God, O priest?’”
For too many heartbeats Falcon felt every poison dart trained on him.
Then Quinn snatched the blowpipe from Wairaea’s and smartly, impertinently, rapped him on his sloping forehead. Waitacá’s hand flew to the serrated wooden dagger slung across his chest, eyes bulging in rage. Quinn held his gaze; then his face gently creased and folded into a smile, into helpless laughter. The infection of the ridiculous: Waitacá’s wounded pride evaporated like a morning mist; shaking with barely contained mirth, he took the blowpipe back from Quinn and, with deadly pomp, tapped the Jesuit on the crown of the head. Quinn exploded into guffaws; released, every Iguapá let free their repressed laughter. Wairaea managed to bellow out a choking senntence before he doubled up. Against will, reason, and sanity, Falcon felt the clench of laughter beneath his ribs.
“What did he, what did the indio say?”
“He said, ‘Of course, where else?’”
The laughter was slow spent, the madness of fear transfigured.
“Bur my friends, my friends,” Quinn said, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his filthy black robe, “I must warn you, the other father, the Black Pai, is coming. His great church is less than a day from you, and all his thought is turned upon you.” In a breath all laughter ceased. “He intends the reduction of the Iguapá, and all your concealments and traps will not avail you, for he has as many warriors as there are stars in the sky and he would sell everyone of their lives to assimilate you into his City of God. Your gods and ancestors will wander lost; your name will be forgotten.”
A warrior called out a question. Waitacá translated. “How does the Black Pai know this?”
“Because in my madness I told him,” Quinn said.
A susurrus of dismay passed from warrior to warrior. A youth, a still-fat boy, asked, “Will the Black Pai take us?”
Quinn sat back on his barrel, turned his gaze upward to the band of stars. You know the answer to that , Falcon thought. You see them still; I think you see them always, those stars of the other skies. All the worlds you told me are open to you.
“Bring your women and your children,” Quinn said. “Your beasts and your weapons, your tools and your cooking pots. Sling your hammocks upon your backs and gather up your urocum and the bones of your ancestors. Make cages for your curupaira, as many as you can carry, male and female both. When you have done all this, burn your village to the earth and follow me. There is a place for you. I have seen it, a hidden place, a safe place, not just for the Iguapá but also for everyone who flees the slave coffle and the block. There will be no slaves. This place will be rich in fish and hunting, manioc and fruits; it will be strong and defended.” Quinn inclined his head to Zemba. “No one will be able to take this place, not the bandeirantes, not the Black Pai and his Guabirú fighters. The name of it will be Cidade Maravillhosa, the Marvelous City. Falcon, gather your supplies and what equipment you deem necessary. Burn your canoes and whatever you do not require on the journey. We leave this instant. I shall lead you.”
“Quinn, Quinn, this is insanity, what madness … ?” Falcon cried, but Luis Quinn had already disappeared into the dark of the forest. One by one the golden bodies of the Iguapá followed him and vanished.
OUR LADY OF THE GOLDEN FROG
JUNE 10-11, 2006
The book fitted the palm of the hand like a loved, kissed breviary; small, dense, bound in soft, mottled-gold leather that felt strangely warm and silky to Marcelina’s touch, as if it were still alive. Hand-sewn header tapes, a bookmark made from that same brass-and-gold leather, edged with new bright gold leaf; this was a volume that had been bound and rebound any times. The hand-painted endpapers were original watercolor sketches of a river journey, both banks represented, right at the top, left at the bottom, landmark trees, missions, churches all marked. Indios adorned with fantastical feathered headdresses and capes stood in canoes or on bamboo rafts; pink river dolphins leaped from the water. In the top of a dead tree red howler monkeys had been depicted in the oversize but minute detail of a dedicated chronicler. All was annotated with legends Marcelina could not decipher.
Mestre Ginga signaled for her to set the little book down. The cover bore only the outline of a frog, embossed in gold leaf. With gloved hands he moved it reverently to the end of the folding camp table before setting the coffee in front of Marcelina. She too wore gloves, and had been instructed under no circumstances to get the book wet. She sipped her coffee. Good, smoky, from a Flamengo mug. The walls of the little kitchen at the back of the fundação were painted yellow, the handmade cupboards and work surrfaces blue and green. A patriotic kitchen. A lizard sprang from stone motionnlessness to skim up the wall between the framed photographs of the great mestres and capoeiristas of the forties and fifties, before the joga became legal, let alone fashionable; men playing in Panama hats down in rodas down by the dock, stripped down to the singlets, pleat-top pants rolled up to the knees. The classic kicks and movement but with cigarettes in their mouths. That was true malandragem.
“So,” Mestre Ginga said. “What did you notice about the book?”
The car had taken off like a jet from the side of the street, and in the daze and confusion and the shock but above all the single, searing icon of her face, her face, her own face behind the knife, all Marcelina could think to say was, “I didn’t know you owned a car.”
“I don’t,” said Mestre Ginga, crashing gears. “I stole it.” It soon became clear that he didn’t drive either, blazing a course of grace and havoc between the taxis on Rua Barata Ribeiro, scraping paint-thin to the walls of the Tunel Novo, leaping out in a blare of horns into the lilac twilight of Botafogo. “I mean, how hard can driving be if taxi drivers do it?”
Marcelina saw the glowing blue free-form sculpture that crowned Canal Quatro appear above the build-line. It was a reassurance and a sorrowing psalm, a promised land from which she was exiled. She breathed deep, hard, the calming, powering intake of air that gave her such burning strength in the roda or the pitching room.
“I need a few things explained to me.”
Into Laranjeiras now, under the knees of the mountain.
“Yes, you do,” said Mestre Ginga, leaning back in his seat and steering one-handed. “It’s knowing where to start. We’d hoped that you wouldn’t get involved, that we could handle the admonitory before you learned anything, but when the bença was murdered, we couldn’t hold off.”
“That was you at the terreiro.”
“You always were too clever to be really smart,” Mestre Ginga said.
Familiar streets around Marcelina, they were heading up to the fundação. And you still have a Yoda complex. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since that clown Raimundo Soares sent you to Feijão. If he’d kept his mouth shut … But after the split with the bença he felt aggrieved. It should have been him got cut up; then we wouldn’t have been in this mess.”
“Wait wait, what is this mess anyway?”