“My dear brother Gaspar,” D’Azevedo said again, “perhaps some queer things may have transpired here in the past—”
“And, I, I am sure I glimpsed — for if not, let my eyes be struck blind by the Lord God Himself…” Here he broke off, momentarily gathering himself, his face flushing and his tongue in tremor. “My Lord, by the Blessed Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and by the force of the Holy Office of the Inquisition itself, for I only heard and now dare to repeat it, O Lord Christ strike my tongue dumb, but Padre Barbosa Pires told me that he saw a Negro woman, and one of the slaves, he could not make out which one it was, ordering Padre Travassos around, the elderly priest on his hands and knees in the center of the cloister at twilight not but a week, I believe it was, before he died, and he wore not a doublet, not a robe, not a single stitch, and the Negro man was riding him like an ass, and driving him with a crop, and around the white man’s neck he held reins tight, for in his mouth was a bit, and the white man was not uttering a single sound, only making the sounds of a beast, that much he glimpsed—”
“Mercy, Brother Gaspar,” D’Azevedo said.
“—and that is not all, my Lord, for not only did the slaves come and go but the house had received a steady stream of visitors, they were coming before I arrived and some came after, few of them fellow monks or anchoresses or even priests from near or distant dioceses, nor pilgrims in search of spiritual salve, nor lay mendicants, not faithful from the nearby towns, nor even the savages that populated the forests or runaway slaves, but men and women who brought vile thoughts and vicious deeds in their wake, including sometimes persons whose kind one could not discern, man or woman or some other creature, and they usually appeared just at the fall of night, and Padres Travassos and Pero did entertain them, Padre Barbosa Pires told me, and then I saw him enter the room and entertain them himself, and the Negroes took part in the revelries too, the three priests did entertain them, as was said did the former founder Padre Duran Carneiro, before his flight, for why do you think those two boys here are mulattos—”
“Mercy of the Lord—” D’Azevedo said.
“—inviting them in, your Grace, and transforming the solemn holidays into scenes of lasciviousness, with rituals so diabolical it would cause even the Lord Jesus Christ to turn his face away in horror, and there was said to be witchcraft and sorcery of a kind so powerful in this house and outside it, such that creatures worse than those that issue forth from Mephistopheles’ bowels were roaming this estate, and I heard tell that a beast with multiple heads and another beast that could both swim and fly, and another beast that bred with every other animal including humans, including humans living here—”
“Brother, stop,” D’Azevedo said, “I think the spirits—”
“—and so great was that evil and so present that sometimes even though we have all walked arm-in-arm with our Father since you, my Lord, crossed the threshold I can still sometimes feel it, if only you knew of the rituals, in which they defiled the chapel altar and the Host, and daily that Negro woman gave sooth, and one told me in confession that it was one of them, our blacks, parading around in women’s garments, and that the priests sometimes did the same, sometimes even going out as women to meet their lovers in the town, just as there were men and boys from the town who came here during these monstrous frolics, and Padre Travassos took eager part in them, and Padre Duran Carneiro too, I have heard said, before he fled, driven out by that slavewoman, and Padre Pero—”
“Gaspar, please, no more of this, I command—”
“And it was only a year ago, around the time weeks from now when the Lord’s Son will rise from the dead and redeem the World, that some of the townspeople, who are said to be of those accursed faiths, the Jews and the Muslims and the followers of that German monk, Padre Barbosa Pires having denounced some of them even in his childhood, and people believing in dangerous spirits and having no beliefs at all, including the Negroes, and aboriginals who were enticed from their forests, arrived here to participate in the most abominable revelries, and I had begun to barricade myself in my cell, but a female visitor appeared very late one night at the threshold of this very house, I could hear her knocking, and she was so heavily cloaked despite the heat that I could not see her face, and out of Christian duty and hospitality I let her in, and lo I quickly found myself thus at the threshold of the door of the room where she was lodging, as if at her beckoning, which had not required a single word nor even a gesture, as if by sorcery, and only at that moment I fell to my knees, my Lord, and implored our Father for the requisite strength to still these desires and mortify this flesh, and return me to the sanctity of my vows, though as I did so I could hear the drums and the moans and the most extreme and exquisite pleasures occurring only steps from me, just beyond every surrounding wall, and that creature opened the door, though I did not go in, and lifted her skirts, and made me promise not to utter a single word or I would be struck dumb and deaf and blind—”
With this Dom Gaspar fell silent, his whole body shaking like the string of a berimbau, and D’Azevedo shook too, unsure of what to say, until they both heard the ringing of the bell, and realized it was time to go pray.
“My dear Brother,” D’Azevedo said, barely able to summon words, “we must hurry to prayers. But we shall not speak of this again, until I have had time to investigate it further, and seek counsel from Olinda. Do you understand? Do you?”
The brother assented, and as he began to say something there was a knock on the door, and with D’Azevedo’s permission he opened it, and the slave João Baptista was there, lamp in hand, to guide them to the chapel. D’Azevedo looked at Dom Gaspar, who had calmed down, and then toward the slave, whom he could not see because of the lamp’s glow, except for the flash of his large, expressive eyes.
Throughout the prayers, D’Azevedo could not shake Dom Gaspar’s tale from his head, and kept getting lost in the words, the Latin sounding more like mere rhythms than sense. Only when they were nearly done did he calm down. What he told himself was that the cane liquor itself bore terrible spirits, so powerful he could still smell its aroma, and these had gotten to Dom Gaspar’s already nervous mind and caused the terrible flight of fantasy, the nightmare that had overtaken his waking thoughts. He nevertheless intended to put this too in a letter to you, hoping that you or someone in Olinda might advise him. He wavered between the final words of the prayer, Dom Gaspar’s account and thoughts of his tutorial with the boys tomorrow. Once the Vespers had finished he hurried to his bedroom without saying a further word to Dom Gaspar, who also went straight to his room, or to either of his fellow priests, who too duly vanished.
D’Azevedo slept fitfully; he rolled about on his pallet as if he were on the deck of a yawl in an Atlantic storm. During one stretch, he saw looming above him a creature, cloaked in a black caftan, its skin white as quicklime, with reddish horns, a beard so matted it appeared woven of copper, the napping becoming an orange flame, and coiling above its head, a tail armored with razors, and when he raised his hands to push it away it transformed into a creature as black the bottom of a pit, the face, a negro’s, sublime in its geometry, its hair alive, a writhing mangrove swamp, which began turning into snakes before D’Azevedo’s eyes, while the body, its black, black body covered with those same tentacular appendages, held D’Azevedo flat against the pallet, and as the creature neared D’Azevedo its bared pelvis sported a rod of such virility that D’Azevedo was sure it would tear his insides to pieces. He screamed out as loudly as he could, though he could not hear a single note issuing from his throat, but the apparition vanished, and he realized that he was sitting on the edge of his bed, sheathed in sweat and moonlight scattered like coins through his shutters. He opened them to admit more, which led him to spot a palm-sized folded slip of paper someone had pushed beneath his door.