Free The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff Page A

that first outward voyage as an unknown skipper, but now his surly face bore a more cheerful expression than ever. Later he became Admiral-in-Chief and had to wear a splendid uniform or kiss ladies’ hands, bow to the King, kneel before the Cardinal; then he thought of his incompetent crew, twisted his mouth into shape, but failed to produce a smile, just a grimace of irritation. On the Cape Verde islands those incurably homesick or seasick who, finding themselves on dry land again, refused to go back on board except to return home at the first opportunity were left behind. On São Thomé the ranks were thinned yet further, and there was room to move about the deck—only then did Da Gama feelthat the ceremony of farewell had ended and the voyage had begun. At the end of his life the keen interest subsided somewhat, and people became used to the fact that gold came in and noticed that the country did not grow any richer, but if anything poorer. The nobles now knew that fame was not achieved on a pleasure cruise, but on a perilous voyage lasting years. The criminal type of nobleman was best suited to the profession of conqueror. Send-offs were no longer conducted with full pomp and ceremony. The King and court no longer attended. Nor did the Cardinal, but here and there on the half-collapsed stands sat a weeping woman. An ordinary priest in a grey cassock rattled off the prayers and from the quayside sprinkled the brown hulls, most of which would soon submerge in unblessed water, holed below the waterline, riddled with bullets or torn apart by exploding gunpowder. Within a generation the old days had returned. In his old age Da Gama aimed to regain the turbulent calm of the voyages of discovery alone.
    Then he was forced to become viceroy of the Indies and to realize before his death that the discoverers had become plunderers, that a global Portuguese empire had not been established, that they had only attacked another global empire, which tolerated the foreigners and the damage they wrought, like the elephant toleratesa troublesome itching rash that it cannot reach, but which apart from that does not disturb its ponderous existence.
    Why now, for the departure of Fernando Alvares Cabral with a fleet of five ships, of which only the São Bento rose above the edge of the quay as it sat in the water, was half the court once again present, many prelates in their regalia, the King and the Infante himself? Surely not to show the Spanish envoy they still had ships?
    No, the eagerness to set forth, the urge to do great deeds was already declining. Once the despised discoverers had paid homage to the court. Now it was the other way round. The tacit and respectful request was: “Don’t return empty-handed. It’s already becoming difficult to live in the grand style. Don’t settle in the East. Let the fatherland enjoy the riches. Come back.”
    But most of them stood indifferently on deck and did not join in the hymns that the canons struck up with trembling voices and the choirboys with shrill ones.
    Cabral had bowed to the King, the prelate had sprinkled the holy water over the few who knelt bare-headed, and at the bow they were already casting off.
    Then something happened, unexpectedly.
    A tall old man—no one knew where he had come from—forced his way through the guard, stood in theopen between the ship and the court and uttered—no one understood and everyone listened—a curse that was like a long-awaited storm that finally erupts. All felt themselves under the spell. The sun hung low in the west on a bank of cloud that blocked the mouth of the Tagus. Its shadow, together with that of the Tower of Belem, fell over all of them. The choirs fell silent, he spoke to the ships with his back to the court, so that at first they heard nothing. But the old man, who had begun in a calm and measured fashion, now yelled louder and louder. “…Is there nothing better to do than to convert and exterminate heathens living on the other