Free Counternarratives by John Keene Page A

enclosed on its
back side by a stone wall. Several other buildings dotted the grounds to the north:
the stable, the slave quarters, a coop, a work-shed, a privy. The monks kept several
horses, a dairy cow, and chickens; grew maize and tobacco; maintained a garden,
despite the poor soil, with European and American vegetables and herbs; and
husbanded a small nursery of trees: avocados, papayas, acerolas, tangerines, limes,
mangoes. Palms bearing coconuts formed a towering ridge beyond the gate. What they
could not consume the house had contracted, under patent with the governor of the
captaincy, to sell in the market near the port, as well as at one held monthly in
town.
    Tending to all of this, as well as all of the domestic tasks the monks
did not undertake themselves, Dom Gaspar said, were the bondsmen, several of whom
had arrived with the monk postulants themselves, one of whom was a gift of the
leading local landowner, another a bequest, and two of whom were the result of
natural increase by women on neighboring plantations; these two boys had been
returned to the monastery when they reached working age. The last of the men had
been won in a lottery. Three had been lent or rented out to planters in the
neighboring towns, but were now back until the fall harvest arrived. None were
women, as the presence of that sex would, as other houses of the Lord had witnessed,
have posed an insurmountable threat to the monks’ oaths. Dom Gaspar recited the
slaves’ names, and D’Azevedo had them written down: Aparecido, Benedito (commonly
known as Bem-Boi), Jorginho (who they called Zuzi), Miguel (Muéné, who was
frequently called Negão), and Zé (José Africano), and the children Filhinho (either
Fela or Falodun) and Zé Pequeninho (sometimes called Ayoola). It was only after he
finished that D’Azevedo told him his count was off, and Dom Gaspar remembered he had
forgotten João Baptista, whom, he added, they sometimes called Jibada. D’Azevedo
requested that Dom Gaspar show him where all the records, of the slaves and every
other aspect of their property, were kept, so that he might have the clearest sense
possible of the monastery’s holdings.
    As with the house and estate themselves, so with his brethren: with each
day their personalities came ever clearer into scope. Most senior among them, Padre
Pero, having been present at the monastery since its founding, might have served as
a fount of knowledge about its history and development, as well as that of the
region, but was by his very nature, D’Azevedo learned, ill-tempered, and taciturn.
After a career in the military, he had exchanged the sword for the Word, preaching
the Gospel in the countryside, evangelizing among white and native alike, later
serving as a liaison and spiritual counsel to the municipal administration. He among
the monks also kept a close watch over the bondspeople, with much the same intensity
as he oversaw the livestock. Next, Padre Barbosa Pires, with that jet beard, who
scuttled from task to task. He rang the bell in the morning and evening, called
everyone to prayer and dinner, prepared vestments for Mass, oversaw the kitchen. He
too was laconic, and appeared always to be trying to decipher something in D’Azevedo
that the new priest kept scrambled. Ever at Barbosa Pires’s side was the
honey-cheeked child Filhinho, whom he referred to playfully, but without humor in
his eyes or voice, as his “punchbag.” And then there was Dom Gaspar, sent but a year
before, as D’Azevedo had been sailing back from Europe, diligent, eager to help, so
gentle in manner, the person best equipped to welcome visitors and now watch the
monastery’s books.
    With his sense of his brethren firm and the slaves fully at his command,
D’Azevedo commenced his restorative work. He had the monastery’s entire exterior
washed and whitewashed. He had the gate, from one end to the other, repaired and
restiled. He