I am at the port when a Dutch slaver is unloading its stock. Four captives catch my eye. I see them from afar as they shuffle down the gangplank in shackles & chains. What poor souls are these? They walk with a listless gait, their backs bent, their will broken. I know how they feel. My exhaustion & theirs is the same. The fever is upon me again. Jesus reached out to all, Romans, Samaritans, Syrophoenicians, and others. So must I. I want to get closer but am too weak, the sun too bright. A sailor from the ship is passing by. I beckon to him. I point & ask & he tells me that the captives come from deep within the Congo River basin & were captured in a raid, not traded by a tribe. Three females & a child. My Dutch is poor & I don’t fully understand the sailor. I believe he uses the word “minstrel”. They are to be entertainers of some sort. He gives no sense of impropriety to the term. What? I say to him. Straight from the jungles of the Congo to amusing the white man after his dinner in the New World? He laughs.
I have learned that the four are now jailed on García’s plantation. The mother of the child attacked an overseer & was severely beaten for the offence. They were unwilling to put on clothes & it seemed they provided poor entertainment. Their fate will be decided shortly.
Though I am so feeble I cannot stay long on my feet, I went to García’s today & slipped in to see his captives in their dark, hot cell. The rebellious female has died of her injuries. Her body was still there, her child at her side, listless, nearly unconscious. Fruit lay rotting on the ground. Are the two females that remain starving themselves to death? I spoke to them, knowing they would not understand me. They did not respond or even seem to hear me. I blessed them.
I have gone again. The stench! The child is most certainly dead. At first I had no greater success with the two survivors than yesterday. I read to them from the Gospel of Mark. I chose Mark because it is the most humble Gospel, revealing a messiah at his most human, racked by doubt & anxiety while still shining with loving kindness. I read until fatigue, the heat & the stench nearly overcame me. Thereafter I sat in silence. I was about to leave when one of the captives, the youngest, an adolescent female, stirred. She crawled & settled against the wall on the other side of the bars from me. I whispered to her, “Filha, o Senhor ama-te. De onde vens tu? Conta-me sobre o Jardim do Éden. Conta-me a tua história. O que fizemos de errado?” She did not react in any way. A time passed. Then she turned her head & looked me in the eyes. She looked only briefly before moving away. She guessed that she had nothing to gain from my nearness or interest. I said not a word. My tongue was stilled of any priestly cant. I am transformed. I saw. I have seen. I see. That short gaze made me see a wretchedness that until then had never echoed in my heart. I entered that cell thinking I was a Christian man. I walked out knowing I was a Roman soldier. We are no better than animals.
When I returned this day, they were dead, their bodies taken away and burned. They are free now, as they should have been all along.
The next entry in Father Ulisses’ diary is fierce and accusatory, outlining the final rift between him and the island’s civil and religious authorities. He made a scene at the cathedral, interrupting the Mass with his shouts and protests. The consequence was swift.
I was summoned by the Bishop today. I told him that I had met the unequal & in meeting them found them equal. We are no better than they, I told him. In fact, we are worse. He yelled at me that as there are hierarchies of angels in heaven and of the damned in hell, so there are hierarchies here on earth. The boundaries are not to be blurred. I was sent off, struck by his harshest thunderbolt, excommunication. In his eyes I am no longer a man of the cloth. But I yet feel the Lord’s hand holding me up.
Tomás is amazed, as he is every time he reads this passage. To exclude French and English pirates, or Dutch sailors, little more than mercenaries, from the communion of God is one thing — but an ordained Portuguese priest? That seems an extreme measure, even by the standards of São Tomé. But a place that made its living off slavery would think poorly of a fevered emancipator.
It is then that Father Ulisses mentioned the gift for the first time. Tomás always reads the sentence with trepidation.
I know my mission now. I will make this gift to God before death takes me. I thank God that I drew a sketch while I was at García’s, visiting her in her hellish confinement. Her eyes have opened mine. I will bear witness to the wreckage we have wrought. How great is our fall from the Garden!
Tomás turns the page and stares for the thousandth time at the sketch in question. It is this sketch, with its haunting eyes, that set him on his search.
Night has settled on the land and the time has come to drive through Castelo Branco. He lights the remaining sidelight and adjusts its broad wick. The flame that dances up sheds a circle of warm light. The brilliantly white flame of the surviving headlight hisses like an angry snake. Its illumination is focused forward by a crystal-glass encasement. If only the light cast by the headlight weren’t so lopsided. His Cyclops looks rather sorry.
He reviews the route he will take. He has a series of markers in his head. At each point where a decision needs to be made, he has taken note of a detail — a house, a shop, a building, a tree. Because there will be no throngs of people at this time of night, he will have more leisure to guide himself correctly.
Whatever illusion he has that he’s riding a firefly of sorts — and when he moves away from the vehicle’s lit side, its radiance gives that image some credibility — is shattered when he starts up the machine. Its juddering roar rather brings to mind a dragon, although one with puny flames shooting from its mouth.
Not only puny: wholly ineffective. The lights, bright to his eyes close up, are mere pinpricks in the impenetrable night. All the headlight does, and poorly at that, is bring out the rough features of the road immediately under the automobile’s nose. What lies beyond — every rut, every turn — comes as a frightening, ever-changing surprise.
His only recourse — wholly illogical, he knows, but he can’t help himself and does it over and over — is to squeeze the horn, as if the night were a black cow obstructing the road that will jump out of the way with a few honks.
He does not move beyond first gear as he gropes his way towards Castelo Branco.
In Portugal the sunshine is often pearly, lambent, tickling, neighbourly. So too, in its own way, is the dark. There are dense, rich, and nourishing pockets of gloom to be found in the shadows of houses, in the courtyards of modest restaurants, on the hidden sides of large trees. During the night, these pockets spread, taking to the air like birds. The night, in Portugal, is a friend. These are the days and nights that he has mostly known. Only in his distant childhood was the night ever a breeder of terrors. Then he quaked and cried out. His father came to his rescue each time, stumbling half-asleep to his bed, where he would take him in his arms. He would fall asleep against his father’s big, warm chest.
Castelo Branco does not have the streetlights that light up Lisbon’s nights. Every marker on his route, so clear during the day, is now shrouded. Streets rear up like the tentacles of a giant squid. He never finds the road that skirts the city on its northwest. Instead, Castelo Branco is a breeder of terrors. He tries to hold a course in one direction until he reaches the city’s edge, any edge, but every street he takes ends in a T-junction, either way plunging him back into the depths of the city. Worse are the people. Like the houses and buildings that surround him, they appear abruptly out of the darkness, their faces suddenly fixed by the white light of the one-eyed machine. Some shout in fright, spreading their fright to him, and stand frozen, while others turn and run. It’s true that in the silence of the night the automobile is very loud, and he continues to honk the horn incessantly — but only to alert. At first there is hardly anyone about, but as he moves through the city like a blind creature scuttling at the bottom of the ocean, more and more people throw their shutters open, more and more people fling themselves into the streets, dishevelled but sharp-eyed. He moves into second gear and outpaces them. A short while later, on another circuit through the city, he encounters more groups. He sees them, they see him. They run towards him, he turns down another street. He moves into third gear.