Dr. Falcon acknowledged the dona with a nod. His lips had barely touched his glass; wine did poorly in this morbid heat, and it was wretched Portuguese stuff. But it was pleasant, uncommon pleasant, to dine in the company of women. Unheard-of at home; not even in Cayenne were such liberties taken. As everyone insisted on reminding him, the Amazon was another country, where affairs of commerce kept the senhores and the Portuguese merchants from their city houses months at a time.
“Yes yes. Forgive me, Doctor — I must be very stupid — this is all fine and mathematical and scientific, I have no doubt, but what it does not explain to me is what holds it up.”
“Holds what up?” Falcon peered over his rounds of green glass, perplexed. “The lemon. Or the orange. Now I can easily see how it is we whirl around the sun, how this gravitational force of yours tethers us to it; it is no different from the bolas our vaqueiros use on our fazenda. But what I cannot understand is what holds it all up, what keeps us from plummeting endlessly through the void.”
Falcon set down the fruit. A breath of small exasperation left his lips. “Madam, nothing holds it up. Nothing needs to hold it up. Gravity draws us to the center of the Earth, as it draws our Earth to the center of the sun, but at the same time, the sun is drawn-infinitesimally, yes, but drawn nonetheless-to the center of our Earth. Everything attracts everything else; everything is in motion, all together.”
“I must confess I find the old way much simpler and more satisfying.” The dona skillfully quartered and peeled the orange with a sharp little curved knife. “The mind naturally rebels against a round Earth with everything drawn to the dark, infernal center. It is not only against nature, it is un-Christian; surely if we are attracted to anything, it should be upwards, to heaven, our hope and home?”
Falcon bit back the riposte. This was not the Paris Academy, nor even the Lunar Society meeting in some bourgeois salon. He contented himself to watch the sensuous deftness with which she slipped a lith of naked orange between her reddened lips. And you presume to call heaven your hope and home? Dona da Maia da Garna turned with relief from lemons and hell to the conversation at the far end of the table. Her chaperone, a tall preta woman with an eye patch, once handsome, now run to fat, leaned forward from her posiition behind the dona’s seat to study the pendulum. Falcon saw her press her thumb against her wrist to measure it against her pulse. Even in undeclared house arrest, Falcon had been close enough to Belém society to understand the meaning of the eye patch. Jealous wives often revenged themselves on their husbands’ slave lovers by blinding them with scissors.
“Forgive me, Father, I missed what you were saying there?” Dona Maria said to Luis Quinn.
Even in his priestly black, Quinn was a massive presence, drawing all attention and conversation as if he himself exerted a human gravitation. He held Dona da Maia da Garna’s gaze steadily, with none of the simpering humility of the religious that so incensed Falcon. The dona herself did not flinch from his look. Like a man , Falcon observed.
“I was merely relating one of the interesting linguistic characteristics of my native language — that is Irish,” Quinn said. “In Irish we have no words for yes or no. If you are asked a question, all you can do is confirm or deny the questioner. Thus, in reply to the question ‘Are you going to Galway?’ the answer ‘I am indeed going.’”
“That must make conversation very trying,” the dona said.
“Not at all,” Quinn answered. “It just makes it very hard for an Irishman to say no to you.” Women’s laughter chimed around the table. Falcon felt a needle-prick of envy at Quinn’s casual flirtatiousness. To those who use it least it is given greatest. He had always relished the company of women and thought himself adept in it, a sharp conversationalist and silver wit, but Quinn captivated the table, leaning to their conversations, listening, making each one feel the sole recipient of his attention. The skill of a linguist, or a libertine? Falcon thought. Now Quinn was enchanting all with a rolling, rhythmic monologue that he said was a great poem in his native tongue.
“And is it a love poem?” asked the dona.
“What other kind is worth reciting, madam?” Applause now. Falcon idly stabbed his discarded and forgotten lemon with the paring knife. He interjected, “But my dear Father Luis, to not be able to say yes or no, does that not demonstrate a direct linkage between language and thought? The word is the thought itself, and conversely, what cannot be said cannot be thought.”
The conversation died; the guests wore puzzled frowns. Father Quinn tapped a forefinger on the table and leaned forward.
“My colleague the doctor makes an interesting point here. One of the fasscinations of the Amazon — to a linguist like myself, I suspect, rather than general society — is its richness of tongues. I understand there are Indians among the far-flung tributaries who have no word for the color blue, or for any relation outside son and daughter, or for past or present. It would be a pleasantly diverting conversation to speculate on how that affects their perceptions of the world. If they cannot say blue, can they see blue?”
“Or indeed, the effect upon their spiritual faculties,” Falcon replied. “If you have no concept of a past or a future, what meaning does the doctrine of original sin then hold? Could they even entertain the concept of future promise, a life of the world to come? No heaven, no hell, just the eternal present? But then is that not eternity; a place beyond time? Do they already live in heaven, in sinless innocence? Perhaps ignorance truly is bliss.”
Several of the ladies were fanning themselves, uncomfortable at the baiting radical-talk at their table. No one alive could remember the Holy Office’s visit to Recife, but the trauma of the autos-da-fe in the Praça there was still sharp enough in folk memory for the Bishop Vasco’s jeremiads against the vices of Belém to alarm. The hostess said decorously, “I have heard that there are peças fresh arrived from someplace so backward that they can only express one idea at a time. It seems that each sentence is but a single thought. We can understand their tongue, with some difficulty, but they can never understand ours. It is as Dr. Falcon conjectured: if you cannot say it, you cannot think it. Who ever thought of descending these creatures? Quite useeless for work.”
Dr. Falcon was poised to reply again, but the house steward Anundio entered, rattled a small wooden clapper to attract the party’s attention, and announced that the musical piece would follow with coffee.
“Oh, I had quite forgotten!” the dona said, clapping her hands in delight.
“Father, dear Father, you will so much enjoy this. The most charming little cteature, truly the voice of an angel.” The chaperones poured coffee from silver pots, wiping drips from the cups with soft cotton cloths. Anundio led in a tiny indio child, thin as want, dressed in a rough white shift. Falcon was unable to tell if it was boy or girl. The child knelt and kissed the stone flagging. “Picked it up for nothing at the Port House Tavern auction. Poor thing was hours from death. Obviously from some reducione raid: only the Jesuits, your pardon, Father, train the voice so. Go on, child.”
The child stood arms at side, a distant animal look in its eyes. The voice when it came was so small, so distant, it hardly seemed to issue from the open mouth but from a hidden place beyond Earth and heaven. Falcon had given his wig to the house slaves early on account of the dreadful close heat and now felt the close-shaved nape of his neck prickle. The little voice climbed to a pure, spearing perfection: an Ave, but not by any composer known to Falcon; its rhythms were skewed, its time signature shifting and mercurial, its inner implied harmonies disquieting, discordant. Yet Falcon felt the tears run freely down his face. When he glanced up the table, he saw that Quinn was similarly moved. The women of Belém were stone, unmoving stone. The eyes of the chaperones, each behind her lady, were averted from the white race. Despite the dona’s declaration, this was not the voice of an angel. This came from a deeper, older place; this was the voice of the far forest, the deep river, the voice a child might find if it had followed those waters down to the slave markets of Belém do Para.