Though we’ve bid farewell to the land,
all the pain sails with us on board…*
and could get no further with that either.
He went back on deck, which was empty and shiny with moisture in the moonlight; the coasts that he knew slid past deathly pale in the distance. Occasionally a sailor went past without a greeting, pushing him aside if he was in the way. He saw the other ships small, black and deserted on the sea. It was as if these were outcasts like himself, the only silent friends he had left.
Then he realized that they were ships too, where it was even worse than here. Sleep seemed to him all he could still manage to do, but that proved equally difficult.
* Quoted in Schneider, p. 107.
II
THE NEXT MORNING he was back on deck, and the sea was empty. The São Bento was the only ship with a proper complement of sails; the others were not much more than decked-out hulks. Off Mozambique those that were left would rejoin them. So those distant friends too were lost.
Actually he had nothing to complain about: he was sailing on the biggest ship, where the food, for the time being at least, was good, and enjoyed all the rights pertaining to his rank. He sat at the captain’s right hand at table, inspected his standard, which was raised along the railings twice a day, and occupied an airy starboard cabin on the poop deck, in which he spent a great deal of time thinking constantly of the life he had left behind and often regretting it. His longing for the East diminished the closer he got to it.
The rigging of the mizzen mast ran over the railings just in front of his cabin. The twenty parallel taut cables and the thin ratlines between them formed an Aeolian harp. Camões liked listening to their swelling and subsiding song, growling or whistling but unceasing.
The movement of the ship — the large São Bento too was tossed about on the waves — fighting the ever-stronger ocean swell, did not make him seasick, as his fellow-officers secretly hoped. He did dream a lot, though, being unaccustomed to the narrow berth beneath the low ceiling of his cabin.
One morning the Cape Verde islands lay before them — the first landfall that was found on the tentative medieval voyages of discovery, without a compass or a sextant. Now they were the first mooring place on a voyage taking them a hundred times farther. Camões, however, viewed them as if he were already infinitely far removed from the fatherland and here had a last chance to return and escape an impending disaster. He had the same impulse as a few months ago when they had sailed from Lisbon down the Tagus: to let the ship leave without him and jump ashore. Now it was to let the fleet sail without him and disappear into the interior.
They moored for a day at Fogo. He went ashore alone. The town was next to the jetty. He walked straight up a burning-hot slope of rubble, impelled by the desire to see what was behind it. In this way he climbed over a further two ridges and was then able to follow a fold in the terrain, a strip of shade, and finally arrived in a valley, in a rose garden more luxuriant than those in Algarve. He spent the afternoon in this scented solitude, in grottoes of intertwined buds and flowers, thinking the whole time: “It would be best if I killed myself right here.” And when in spite of this he left: “This is the last charming thing I shall see in my life.” He hastily climbed the ridge, and in the falling dusk descended the slope of rubble, hurting his feet.
He half hoped that he would sprain his ankle, and leapt hazardously over the stones. Then he slowly climbed the last ridge, sat down and tried to fall asleep, so that the ship might sail without him. Then he heard voices and two men crept past, Juromena and Margado, both of whom had lived lavishly on board, with a change of costume every day, three lackeys… Camões fled back on board, afraid of his own cowardice.
The ship was far from ready to depart. The heat of the day persisted in the cabin, and the whole night was filled with a rattling din.
He had a dream:
My dignity is diminished; I am a lowly figure among men and have to work and obey for a paltry wage. Yet I am more powerful than when I laboriously assemble words and ordered them on paper. Now I hurl my words into space; they travel infinite distances, driven by a vibration that I nonchalantly produce with my hand. They circle the globe, they fall where I wish — like seed from heaven. So why don’t I feel like a God, but like someone lost and humiliated among the people I must obey?
He woke up. The din of the loading had stopped. He went back to sleep.
The dream kept returning. Sometimes he had a tight-fitting hood on his head, sometimes he felt that the ship was no longer made of wood but of blistering iron and manned by beings he had never seen on earth, white, but speaking different languages, and wearing strange, close-fitting robes.
He woke up. Loading was continuing more intensively. Morning was approaching, and they were not yet ready.
Again that dream… Now a host of yellow-skinned people forced their way into the cramped cabin, which was already filling with strange objects, more and more of them, until it was ready to burst. That did not happen, but it was being more and more compressed. Suddenly it was alone on a great empty plateau, and it was as if it were about to explode.
He woke up. The anchor chain was being raised; the men on the capstan sang. Now he fell into dreamless sleep and did not wake up until the ship was out at sea. The rose garden was over there, beyond the grey mountains, scarcely visible any longer above the sea.
The following day the sealed orders were opened in the Admiral’s quarters. First came the regular orders: call in at Mozambique, take fruit on board, and slaves if possible, leave the sick behind. Then there were letters for the Governor of Calico and for the Viceroy in Goa. That was usually all. But now a couple of other documents emerged from the chest. Cabral and the Captain looked displeased, since neither of them liked reading, especially orders. The Admiral read the document, and then gave it to the Captain, but the latter preferred not to strain too much and asked what was in it.
“Things haven’t yet been resolved in Goa, so we’ve got to sail on to Malacca; the stragglers will have to head straight for there from Mozambique.”
“There’s more profit to be made in Malacca than in Goa, where we’ve been for fifty years: Malacca is rich and the population is weak.”
“We’re not staying in Malacca either, we have to move straight on from there to Macao.”
“That’s unheard of, a ship having to sail straight from Lisbon to Macao in one go. Anyway, it’s impossible: we’re fouling too much. In Malacca we’ll have to spend at least a month in dry dock to scrape the hull.”
“Those are the orders. We mustn’t stop for more than a week in Malacca.”
“There’s something behind this; let’s read the last letter, and perhaps that will explain things.” It was an order bearing the royal seal. Cabral appeared to be moved as he read it. He ran his hand over his head, gave it to the Captain and said, “Read it for yourself.”
The Captain laughed and said, “I suspected as much.” But suddenly his laughter dried up. “Of course they want him as far away as possible; that’s why we have made for that godforsaken outpost instead of staying in the right neck of the woods. If we’re not caught in a typhoon, we’ll have to surrender all we’ve got; they’re short of everything there. Then on to Japan empty, back fully laden, and by that time we’ll have been at sea for a year, and none the better for it, except for a bit of freight commission. And all for that outcast. If I were you, I’d leave him behind in Mozambique.”