Free Counternarratives by John Keene

with the neighboring
town and villages, and with the Indians. The servant was one of eight people owned
by the monastery, several of whom had been rented or leased out to various people in
the town. D’Azevedo’s family still held bondspeople, though on the larger matter,
particularly as it related to a professed house, he was agnostic.
    When it was his turn to speak, D’Azevedo explained the threadbare plans
as you had broached them with him, augmented by others he had conceived during his
passage by sea: the proposed changes to the house, how he would take some time to
identify his second in command, how there would be a renewed effort to bring the
town and neighboring villages into doctrinal line, how eventually, with satisfactory
growth, this house might ultimately gain its independence from Olinda, how a college
might rise with it as well. He emphasized in particular nurturing whatever roots of
faith already existed here, and in the nearby region, so its residents might assist
in the House’s work, ultimately, he said, repeating your exact words, “to propagate
the Lord’s Word far and wide.”
    The brethren listened, though Padre Pero seemed at times to be looking
through him, while Padre Barbosa Pires was inspecting some point deep in his own
interior. Dom Gaspar, however, hung on every word. At one point he paused to look at
them and could not tell the three men apart; all had full black beards, all had a
hump, all were deeply tanned. He closed his eyes until he felt a finger, Dom
Gaspar’s, tap his shoulder, and when he looked again, all three men were as
different as they had been minutes before. After D’Azevedo finished, with obvious
effort, Dom Gaspar helped him to his feet, and ushered him to his office, where he
might review the various ledgers and other important documents, alternating with
rest, until the midday Mass.
    As they headed back into the building, Fr. D’Azevedo asked, “My
dear brother, whom shall I thank, in addition to our Father, for bearing me to my
room and putting me to bed? I should like to offer my especial thanks, given my
state of exhaustion last night, and, apparently, this morning.”
    Dom Gaspar turned to D’Azevedo, who was bracing himself against a wall,
again trying to orient himself in the white maze of corridors, and answered, “Then
you shall have to thank yourself, for you did so yourself, your Grace.” The provost
halted in a spot where one hallway twisted into another and, clasping the loose
fabric of D’Azevedo’s sleeve firmly, lest the unsteady man fall away from him, Dom
Gaspar continued, “I am not sure which of the Negroes bore your coffer; perhaps the
one named João Baptista, whom they call amongst themselves Kibanda, who brought you
your seat in the cloister. Maybe another. None of us heard your Grace come in
last night, though the slaves reported to us this morning that you were here.” At
this D’Azevedo paused, trying again to recall anything of the previous night, any
assistance, especially by the black who had brought the stool, whose face he could
not at all remember, but Dom Gaspar, like a horse drawing a plough across early
spring soil, tugged him forward, onward, and before he knew it he was seated in his
office, the Provost’s.
    D’Azevedo started to arrange the books on his desk, but promptly fell
into a delirium. He was borne back to his monastic cell, and stayed there, tossing
and turning for several days, attended periodically by Dom Gaspar, who was also the
infirmarian, and, he thought, the Negro João Baptista, until he recovered. As soon
as he felt fit enough to leave his room, and resume his duties, about a fortnight
after he had arrived, Dom Gaspar took him on tour of the monastery’s grounds, which
were ampler in acreage than he had imagined. There was the main house, consisting of
the main building with two wings, bracketing the cloister, which was