Acaju

Author's Note

The cashew, now grown and eaten all around the world, is native to Brazil. The Tupi people called it acaju. Portuguese traders spread it to India, Asia, and Africa. The name evolved to caju, and then cashew. Thus, the fruit of a jungle tree spread and changed cultures, just as tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, spices, tobacco, religions, and slaves were bought, transported, sold, and caused cultures to meld and evolve. There are countless stories to be told about explorers, and exploiters. This is one of them.

Acaju is a work of fiction. I have borrowed the names of the characters Manuel da Nobrega and Jorge Velho from actual historical figures. Nobrega indeed was a Jesuit priest in Brazil, while Velho was a bandeirante slave raider. The flesh and bones of these characters have been harvested entirely from my imagination.

Welcome to Brazil of the 1700s. To help guide you, you will find a glossary in the back of the book.

- Douglas Beye Lorie

Chatham County, North Carolina

May 2014

Regarding the spelling of the stimulant tea yerba mate in my story, I chose to use a phonetic rendering (yerba mahtay) so that English-speaking readers would not confuse the Spanish mate, meaning gourd, with the English definition of mate.

Table of Contents

Author's Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Glossary

People of Acaju

Places of Acaju

Acknowledgements

A glossary and guides to the people and places of Acaju can be found at the back of the book.

~1~

Aponi brushed her fingers over the small scalp that had sprouted between her thighs. The fluid felt thick with her body's blood. It seemed to her that leaves and thorns had filled the deepest places in her lungs. All the air in the forest was not enough to quiet the force that moved through the valleys of her body. With the last breath of a violent push she gave the forest a jaguar's scream. During the quiet space between the pushing pains she took a strand of the baby's hair. It was wet. It stuck to her fingers like spider's silk. She held it for a time until the roar inside her belly sent her arms flying back against the leaves. Her dreams had given her a hundred desires. This was not one of them. She did not want this child.

She had gone to Doula when the weight of a silent voice pressed like a stone on her breath. I have not seen the stain of my bleeding for a time of sixty suns. Take this out of me.

And Doula knew the way of forest medicine. She had received the knowing that was given to her by the women who came before, the knowing given only to women. There were things that could be done. A pungent ocean weed could be dried and mixed with watered clay. When spread over the entrance of a woman's swelling bulb, the flesh inside would flatten and release. Scrapings from inside the bark of elm, when mixed with cohosh root, would send their powers into a steeping water. If enough of this tea flowed through the body of a woman, her bleeding would feel to her like a pushing tide. There were times when her power must not be given for the birth of children. It was understood among all the women of the forest.

This time the girl spoke with the screech of a diving hawk. I cannot have this inside of me, Doula. Take it out!

And in her mind and in the heart of her wanting, she did take it out. Inside her dreams and during the motion of sun across the sky it was all that she wanted. A picture rose up behind her eyes and she saw the stick that would reach inside of her. It was like a waking dream and it moved inside her thought. She held the stick and pulled it up inside of her body, ripping through the flesh of her flower. All of this happened inside of her dream. And then it went somewhere beyond a dream. It was almost like a remembered feeling. She felt the roughness of bark and heard the sound of a cracking skull. She felt her hand's grip upon the stick and the sinews in her arms were tight with the pulling. A gush of blood, pieces of skull, and even the vision of small crushed arms took over her dream. She saw the wet pool of blood, the bone and tissue as a mound on the floor of the forest. In her dream, the ants and roaches and termites came to feed. She saw flies swarming so thick they were like a dim wall across the sky. She heard this inside her waking dream, the hum of flies swarming from the scent of her blood. The big cats of the forest, drawn by the smells of her own flesh, fought for a chance to feast on the mound that had poured from her body. And they were coming to take it all away. She saw this inside of the dream that moved through her heart and mind. But this she did not do. She did not do any of these things.

Doula had used her hand as she reached into the center of the girl and felt the flush of blood rising into a swollen bulb. The swelling of her bulb was a clear sign. She spoke to her and tried to calm her spirit: I have felt the dance of another heart. Borrow the wind that blows through your hair. Take it deeply into your flesh. Your breath is more precious now than emerald stones from the earth. You breathe now for the soul of a new one. Soon your name will be Mother. We must not stop the birth of this one. This one must be born.

Doula had brushed her hand over the girl's head, hoping to bring ease to an angry spirit. She let her fingers rest on the bottom curve of the girl's neck, on the thorn painting given to her, on the day of her first bleeding time. Driven by the fury in the girl's heart and the pulsing of blood between the sinews of her neck, the blue wings seemed to flutter. The butterfly had seemed to Doula like it would fly off the skin.

Take this out of me!

The hand of the woman gave comfort and warmth. Aponi, you cannot know this now, but one day you will dance for the birth of this child.

———

His cries after the first breath filled the forest with a new sound. Aponi moved him out from under her crouch to make room for the next thing. She had helped women during the ending moments of their pushing time. She knew what would come. The deep blue flesh that gave life to the feeding cord would now spill out from her body. She had helped others to take pieces of this flesh into their mouths. It was needed. Even the restful quiet of a deep sleep was not enough to fire the body after the pushing time. And now she was on her side taking that same flesh into her mouth. This she knew from her own learning. The pieces must be small. They must move under the motion of her teeth until they become like water. And as she swallowed the liquid of her body's meat she saw him in a way that was new.

He was now on his back lying on the bed of plantain leaves. She had gathered these during the spaces of her body's silence. His feeding cord was becoming soft with the ending of the flow. She bit through the cord and wrapped a length of the bush vine to stop the blood. His cries now rocked the birds from their branches.

He is crying like a strong boy, she thought. This one must live, but he cannot be with me.

There was a flurry of bats feeding on the wall of mosquitoes rising up from the wet of rotting leaves. Perhaps they were moved more by the light of the moon than the first cries of a Tupi boy. She was moved by another kind of light. The glow was faint through the thick branches and bush that covered the ground of the forest. But the light was enough to move her body toward that one last thing, a fired torch above a gate in a wall of stone.

I will take him there.

~2~

On the morning that Jasy arrived at Mission Santo Corazon, the forest was still dark with the sounds of night. Using his thumb and finger Padre Manuel extinguished the last of his prayer candles. After pulling on his sleeping robe he lay for a time in his cot and listened. Cicadas and tree frogs spread a blanket of continuous chords that vibrated through the jacaranda. When he first arrived he did not find it to be a pleasant music. The assault to his ears was deafening and raucous, causing him to venture into his mornings exhausted. But the preferences of a life can change and for Padre Manuel they did change. The sounds of night had become a salve for his sleep. In time he found himself being unable to rest without the song of the cicada.

He knew the scream of the jaguar as she hunted in the night, but the sounds rising from the forest on that morning were different. Yes, there was something like an angry growl that started deep and increased in volume like the big cat. But then the voice climbed higher and shattered into a kind of crying. Minutes went by with only the high pitch scratching of cicadas and the natural silence of a forest night. It began again, first the growl that grew into a chilling scream followed by what sounded to him like a flow of breath. The breath moaned with force as though it were being pushed hard from a body. This time he thought he heard something like a sigh, even a whimper. But unlike the jaguar whose movements through the trees could be traced with sound, this creature was resting still on one patch of ground. Surely this animal must be injured, he thought. Then he knew. He was positive that he was right. It could be nothing else. He was hearing the cries of a woman.

Angel was the first to arrive at his door rattling the hinges and pounding with his fist. Padre, you must come quickly.

Manuel had just tied his cassock and was preparing for his first morning prayers. What is it, Angel?

He spoke in the way of a forest people whose language had merged with the tongues of others. Tupa rembiapo milagre, Padre!

Manuel recognized the mixture of Guarani and Portuguese. What miracle are you talking about, Angel?

The metal smith had already begun running toward the main gate when he turned around and spoke again, this time in the pure language of Spain. Es un milagro, Padre!

As he followed Angel around the perimeter of the courtyard he sensed a charge in the air. Children ran past him laughing and pulling each other as though on their way to a feast.

He found several families gathered in the Garden of La Virgin. He heard it again. Milagre and Milagre de Mãe. He knew this phrase as Miracle of the Mother. Mãe da Floresta was the one closest to his heart. Mother of the Forest. He had been warned by members of the order about the Tupi and their soiling of the true faith. He had been instructed to guard against the influences of a primitive forest religion. Yet even in his native Spanish, Madre De Los Arboles, he found the words beautiful. Mother of the Trees, Mother of the Forest, Mother of Christ, Mother of God. In the silence of his deepest private moments he saw no distinction. There was no separation. Who could look out upon the green expanse of this land and deny its promise? Who could survey this magnificent canopy brushing against the sky and not feel the power? The forest provided. It was The Mother. The forest and all the lives it sustained were ... a miracle.

The moon had dropped lower in the sky not yet shielded by branches and leaves. The soft light of a full moon lit the trail of feet running toward the gate. He passed a garden worker spreading resin on cloth and wrapping the material on the ends of cut poles. Several torches had already been fired and planted in the ground.

Take one, Padre, he shouted. You must see him!

Manuel gripped the flaming stick, holding it above his head. When he arrived at the mission entrance he saw at once that the gate had been thrown open. His anger flared. Didn't they know the bandeirantes could come at any moment? Had they not witnessed their fathers and brothers tied with long ropes to the saddles of horses? Had they not witnessed their fathers and brothers driven down forest trails by whips? The words were screaming through his mind: This gate should never be opened at night! Do you understand?

Before his thoughts could find their way into voice he heard it. He knew he was not mistaken. They were the gasping cries of a newborn child. Just outside the entrance a group of women huddled in a circle. He recognized at once the birthwife, Chela, the busy motions of her arms tending something just out of the range of his sight. Chela was the one who always came to the sides of sweating women during the last hours of a contracting belly. She had sliced into the wombs of dead women to untangle the cords from choking necks. She was able to reach inside the passage of a woman with her hands to change the direction of a baby's head.

Padre Manuel peered over the edge of the circle of women. He saw first the long umbilical, its jagged end secured with a length of vine. The baby was wrapped in the long green leaves of the plantain.

It is a boy, Padre. A gift from The Mother.

Chela took a short reed into her mouth and drew out the thick juice from both sides of the boy's nose. In a motion that reflected the command of a hundred births, the woman inserted the tube into the child's throat. She sucked and she spit until the infant's throat was clear. Another woman followed with a wet cloth wiping away traces of blood and the hardened dust of the eyes. Manuel watched as coconut jelly was rubbed into the skin over legs, arms, sack, and bottom. The plantain leaves were replaced with cloth that was folded over and around. Soon only the child's head lay open to the growing light of morning. The flames of the torches were smothered out. The baby's eyes were open now. The padre leaned closer to examine the child's face. The eyes were unmistakably blue. The skin and structure of the boy's face were Guarani, but the eyes were something different. Silent now, the boy rested content in his cloth. Held in the arms of the midwife, he seemed to breathe in his surroundings with curiosity.

A branch fell in the forest. Behind that first sound came the crash-thud of a fallen tree dead with rot. Manuel wondered if he were imagining something as he saw the boy's head turn toward the forest. And then he heard her in the distance. It was no longer the labored breathing and whimpering that he had heard earlier in the morning. This was a sound, erupting deep within the heart of a body, that shook leaves and reverberated off the stone walls of the mission. It felt to him like a howl-scream of triumph. And there was something else. If it were ever possible for an animal to speak with a wounded soul this would be that sound. He recognized it as the sound of loss.

There is a way that women understand and speak among themselves that is unknown to men. Moema was called forward because her body gave milk. Holding the boy in one arm, Chela reached her hand inside the woman's shoulder cloth. There was a moment when the women held each other's gaze. Moema spoke. The milk flowed when I heard him cry. My breasts are full.

The midwife pulled and stroked the flesh and when she lifted her hand from Moema's breast, a thin white liquid ran across her wrist trickling onto the ground. Chela brought her hand above her lips and allowed some of the warm milk to fall into her mouth.

You are full and sweet, she said.

Chela called for the boy to be handed back. She raised the bundled child above her head and slowly turned her body around until all had seen him.

The naming must happen now. It cannot wait.

She put the baby into Moema's arms, his small lips soon discovering the dripping breast. With her eyes closed Chela spoke again. He was given to us from the heart of our Forest Mother in the brightness of a rounded moon. The light of the moon helps us see and walk. This boy has told us what his name must be. He is moon. He is Jasy!

~3~

The trail leading to Ñandeva village had been worn bare by the feet of Padre Manuel da Nobrega. He went in search of the brightest Tupi boys. How many hours and days and weeks had he sat with the elders drinking mahtay and listening to the sounds of their language? At first he found the language harsh and displeasing, many of the words short and simple, echoing somehow from the chamber of the nose. It was certainly not the sacred Latin of his childhood nor did it sing like the soft sensual chords of Spanish or Portuguese. He tried to imitate and send his breath out in the same manner. The Tupi elders laughed when he spoke. The women also laughed at him from inside their homes of fronds. He let the children copy him in play as they mouthed in unison the broken words of this strange priest. He brought an assistant with him down the trail and together they listened to the words of the Tupi world. He did not know when the time arrived, but perhaps it came when he awoke having spoken their language in a dream. He was not sure when the moment arrived, but there came a time when he found himself living inside a new cadence and speaking in the rhythms of a Tupi forest. Each sound had been matched to a Roman letter as the padre compiled the Jesuits' first Guarani grammar. For those sounds that were new and unfamiliar he assigned double letters or accent marks. And then something changed inside his mind and traveled along his tongue. He began to hear the music of this forest language and to his ear the sounds were beautiful.

———

It was a day that was unlike all the days that had come before. On this day Padre Manuel decided not to venture into the village. This surprised him. He became aware of some distant note that called for him to walk a different way. He did not analyze or try to understand. Had he been called upon to explain the feeling, he might have described it as a memory of something that had never happened. How does one remember the future? This made no sense to him so he chose instead to give himself to the day without thinking. He left his grammar behind, bound inside its leather case. This was the first thing he remembered from that day, a grammar book tucked inside of a trunk in his room.

Some memories fade with time and cannot be retrieved. Others linger as faint impressions. There are some that grow on the body like a second skin. Strong memories are like anchors for the soul. This day would enter his heart and remain forever in the mind of Padre Manuel da Nobrega. It was the day that Jasy came to Mission Santo Corazon.

The priest woke early that day as the mist of first light was rising from the floor of the forest. The cries of macaws and flycatchers were beginning to compete with the stirrings of Tupi families housed in connected huts along the plaza green. For Padre Manuel, morning was a special time of spirit when the attention of the mind had not yet entered the outer world. His prayers were simple. He asked for protection, not for himself but for the hundreds of forest people who were living inside the walls of Santo Corazon. The stone walls he knew were a kind of false security.

The farmers from Portugal were reciting another kind of prayer: Give me the free labor of los Indios so that my cane can become sugar, so that my family can become rich.

From Nazaré, Aveiro, and Lisboa these farmers came. From Peniche, Cascais, Setubal, and from all the ports of Portugal they sailed on the wind of a prayer: Give me the wood of the pau-brasil tree to dye the velvets of Europe so that I can become rich.

The padre's prayer was simpler. Let Christ who lives in my heart be received by all those I touch today. Give me only your love and your grace. With these I will be rich enough and will desire nothing more.

After eating one slice of bread and a piece of cheese he began his walk around the interior walls of the mission. This was his habit, a kind of strolling contemplation before the busyness of the day pulled his mind and body into motion. He ate lightly in the morning knowing that more awaited him along the widows' wall. He walked every morning. The body needed to move. He walked past the windows of houses taking in the fragrant whiffs of the morning's first cook-fires. Sometimes he would share the thickly sweet cassava and corn porridge with the old Tupi woman. Iara had lived in Santo Corazon for ten years. She had come from the forest when her husband died of fever and boils. For the Tupi this sickness from across the great water was more poisonous than the venom of a viper. She leaned her head out the window as Padre Manuel passed by. Pointing to the shelter home that adjoined her house she spoke through a girlish laughter, Padre, you know I am a better cook than she!

Sister Iara, you are trying to fatten me up! the priest would say as he laughed and strolled past the row of houses. Do you want my belly to grow to the size of those hogs, so heavy that all they can do is wallow in the mud?

This was their morning game and both of them shared in a kind of affection reserved for a brother and sister. They both would laugh and the spell would break. The other women would tease her and he would try to balance his attention to the others.

He passed by the home of Moema, whose husband had been taken by the bandeirantes to work sugar in Bahia. Her tunic was pulled aside as she nursed the baby Jasy. On her sill was a plate of smoked turtle eggs, dried fish, and cassava cake. She smiled and gestured an offering with her hand saying, Padre. He nibbled at the edges of an egg feeling the weight in his stomach stretch into the bands of his robe. He finished the meal as pieces of egg flesh dropped to the ground from between his teeth. Moema, this will not do!

With Moema he played a kind of game that was painted by something distant and unspoken, a game with limits colored with the stricture of vows. There were moments when their glances met and their bodies were still and the veil of playful banter was lifted for a time. There were moments when a kind of yearning was ignited and both saw within the other something they had perhaps lost or wanted. Padre Manuel would look down, straightening the folds of his robe, scratching his neck, or look up at the sky. He would not tell her that sometimes the sound of her name replaced the rhythms of his morning prayers. Moema. He would not tell her, but she knew.

On this morning Abequa and Fala waved from their windows as Padre Manuel Nobrega picked up his pace and headed toward the mission fields. Their plates of smoked meat with cassava meal would have to be for another day. Liseli with her cacao seed drink, Maka with her plates of coconut jelly, Bena with her rice and fava beans and peppers, all would have to wait for another morning when the priest of Mission Santo Corazon walked the widows' wall.

There were younger Guarani women with children who rose early that day and went to the river with bundles of clothes and the sweat-soaked shirts of their husbands. At a bend in the river where the water was gentle they pounded and rubbed the garments on large smooth stones. They washed their bodies too in the secluded privacy of the river's cove. As the sun began to cut through the mist of early day, they stuffed the clothes into large sacks. The padre arrived on the mission green as the women were spreading their wash on the ground for drying. The children helped their mothers by throwing sticks at the sheep, keeping them a good distance from the drying clothes.

A mother called out in Guarani for a blessing. The padre understood most of what she said. There was something about a son who needed help, but when she placed her hand on her lower stomach the meaning seemed to change. He thought to himself that he should return to his grammar and dedicate more time to learning their words. He touched the top of her head and brought his hands through the air in the sign of the cross. Her name was Maria. She had wanted to take that name after seeing a statue of La Virgin in the tile garden. Often he would see her sitting on a flat tile slab at the feet of La Virgin alone with her thoughts. She had been the one who brought the blossoms of bougainvillea from the forest to plant in the Mother's Garden. The vines grew well, being fed by the air's moisture and light. A pink flower grew first in the garden. Maria added other plants, until blossoms of purple-red curved up the stucco wall clinging into every crack. For her, flowers and devotion could not be separated.

Once he found her standing close to the Stone Mother with her eyes closed and gently tracing the outlines of the marbled face with her fingers as if she were a blind woman. Her movements across the face were like a caress as she brushed the forehead and eyes. With slow affection she moved her hands over the nose, across the cheeks, resting finally on the lips. And then he noticed a single tear fall from the lashes of a closed eye. It moved down her face followed by a stream of others. In the way that one can never truly understand what lies in the heart of another, he knew in that moment that he would never know why.

Padre Manuel continued his stroll and paused in front of the college building. It was empty now, but later in the morning Tupi teachers, trained by Jesuit instructors, would be gathering up their students to begin reading class. Forest boys with the brightest promise would stay behind while the others headed to tend their gardens. Others would scrape the hides of cattle, preparing the skins for market. There were metal workers and carpenters whose skill and love for their crafts equaled those of seasoned Europeans. These were men of the high lush forest who only a year before had spent their days hunting for game or digging up manioc for their families. Women wove cloth from the fiber that arrived at the mission on the back of a trader's horse.

He surveyed the community that had sprouted from the chaos of an untamed land. The mission was organized, efficient, and productive. Markets had been established for produce and hides. Certainly this was better, he thought, than all that was here before.

At the opposite end of the courtyard green stood the chapel where mass was held each morning. The chapel had been constructed simply with wood, stone, and several glass windows that looked out upon a large jacaranda tree. A small mural of the Genesis story had been painted on the wall above the altar. Outside of the church the land was still, with the only sounds being those of forest birds vying for territory. Soon the bell would chime and the children would run and laugh across the yard for morning hymns. The children always sang with a knowing enthusiasm, anticipating the breakfast bread and cacao tea that awaited them.

The padre held baptisms in front of the chapel altar and asked himself, where would those babies be if their mothers and fathers had not been brought inside the mission walls? He knew the answer to that question. He imagined the lost souls foraging in the forest with a kind of spiritual blindness. In the eye of his mind he could see the bloodied fingers of stolen men stripping leaves off the reeds of sugar, the ravaged bodies of their women violated and shamed. It was better for them to live within the walls of the mission. His work was good and necessary. There was no doubt.

~4~

It was the day that Jasy came to Mission Santo Corazon. Padre Manuel increased his pace as he passed through the center of the mission green. A large wooden cross fashioned from the trunk of a pau-brasil tree rose out of the ground in the exact center of the mission. This was a reminder for all who passed by that metal spikes had once been pounded through the flesh of the Savior.

The padre was walking faster now. He passed through the gated arch of the west mission wall and by this time he was almost running. There before him lay the yerba mahtay fields of Santo Corazon. This was a project of the priest's heart, the work that would bring coin into the mission. Already the bushes were taller than a man, the shiny leaves sprouting from gnarled branches. They would never become trees the size of copaiba or as tall as the coconut palm, but they would be the gold of the mission. Padre Manuel was sure of that. From Argentina to Peru the flush and pleasure of this tea was spreading. The bushes were thriving at last. The mahtay tender, Ubirajara, had made this happen. Ubi, as he was called, had fled east out of Paraguay running from bandeirantes. They said he ran like the clouds pushed through the sky by a rain storm. He carried with him mahtay seeds that had passed through the bodies of birds, brought to vitality in the burning juices of feathered stomachs. Ubi could not explain how this happened, but there was something in the acids of bird stomachs that was magic. No longer would the drinkers of mahtay have to spend days in the swamps gathering the leaves of tea. In Paraguay many were gone for weeks at a time in search of wild yerba plants. There were deaths from snakes and thirst and sickness. The time was different now. Now yerba mahtay grew in cultivated soil. The leaf could be harvested and traded in great quantities.

When Ubi saw the priest he waved his calabash gourd high above his head. He spoke in a voice that was safe and familiar. Share a bowl with me, hermano?

Padre Manuel returned the greeting to Ubi and it was the same way each morning. I will share a bowl with you, hermano.

The two friends passed the calabash from hand to hand between them. Each of the men took his turn sipping the steaming liquid until the grounds lay spent in the bottom of the gourd. A pot was lifted from a morning fire and hot water was added again to the top of the rim. It took several steepings to release the last of mahtay's gift. Ubi then emptied the gourd's contents onto the base of a young plant. And this too was the same every morning. The packed wet remnants of exhausted tea would then become the soil that would feed the trunk of yerba.

From the earth, returning to earth, Ubi would say. And before other workers arrived to pick leaves, dry the yerba, and bundle the herb for transport, Padre Manuel would repeat the words of his friend: "From the earth, returning