The Sound of the Bells and the Crack of the Whip in old Salvador

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 10

The Journey: Salvador, Bahia  July 8 - July 11

July 8 I'm determined to keep this journal daily so though it's late, after a delightfully exhausting six hours with the best contact I've made in three months, I'll scribble a few lines.

 

Prayerful as I was last night, today started at 9 a.m. at Henriques' office. 9.10: “There is a problem.” - “Urgently called to accompany the director to a distant town to discuss plans for centenary etc.” - “Please come to Sally's office and we will find somebody.” Temper rising but nothing I can do about it!! Patience. Sally makes phone call to "Antonietta" at the Archives. She can meet me at the Cathedral at 4.30. (Today, all Bahia life grinds to a halt because of Brazil vs. Spain soccer game.)
 



Cathedral at Salvador, Bahia

Kill time noon to 4.30 including bumping into exuberant Germans who were in taxi with me Tuesday a.m. They've “seen it all” - three hour tour and night of folklore and are leaving for Rio at 2.30! At 4.30 find  Antonietta (de Aguiar Nunes) waiting in the doorway of the Cathedral. Go through my routine "introduction" again but this time find a perfect gem. A history professor mastering in social work, Antonietta “knows it all,” genuinely.

 

Plunge into a three conversation, then to dinner at Pelourinho Square (restored by UNESCO) at "hotel school" that offers forty kinds of Bahia cuisine = African modified by spices of East (as per fleets from India.) Tomorrow we're to meet at nine to continue the “researches.” The Good Lord be praised! Despite the Henry hitch, all augers well for the Brazilian adventure.
 

July 9 — A brilliant day! Won't attempt to repeat what's in my working notebooks. (Besides my journal, I filled a pile of notebooks as I went along.) Antonietta's contacts are stupendous, her enthusiasm unlimited. Now to bed, for I'm exhausted but in these early days of the journal, determined to make some entry, no matter how insignificant.
 

July 10-11 — Missed two nights' entries. Not through “sloth” but time! July 10 occupied with “re-creation” of 18th century Bahia. How the Portuguese must've loved this city! With its narrow, hilly cobbled streets, it is strong reminiscent of Lisbon and Coimbra. Most impressive is the Pelourinho - Pillory Square - with the old townhouses of the wealthy. The Pillory was moved here at the request of the Jesuits - it had previously been near the Cathedral - the lash and the bell/choir aren't compatible.
 

Salvador, Bahia, Brasil

 

I am slowly conditioning myself to life as lived here. On Thursday evening Professor Antonietta and I are invited to plantation 70 kilometers north with loan of car. On Friday evening the invite falls through. "A's" sister has arrived. "A" needs car and so on. Change plans. I wander streets by myself.
 

Among many sights is a carpenter's shop. Men at lunch round table surrounded by wood shavings, playing dominoes etc. One-eyed carpenter. Easily 18th century!
 

In evening we go to sound and light show at 17/18th century seafront fazenda that includes tobacco warehouse/slave quarters. Can't follow libretto and am somewhat irritated by excessive use of colored lights but get the ambiance.
 

Nothing impresses so much as the voices of the prayerful from the small chapel rising alongside crack of a whip wielded against the slaves. Can see why the Jesuits asked that this scourge be moved from their holy place.
 

Earlier in the day visited convent with foundling wheel — larger than I expected — Some said it was an excuse for the nun's own progeny. Convent built by a wealthy man with five daughters. All the girls consigned to the building for life. Nice pater!

A Novelist and the Shock of History

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 4

 

My library forays in New York over three months provided the background for my initial plotting and book proposal. With the outline complete and broad themes of the novel well in mind, it was essential to have firsthand experience of Portugal and Brazil. I couldn't go back five hundred years, but I could make a sincere and honest attempt to know the land and its people.

 

I was writing a novel not a history but was committed to offering as authentic and historically accurate account as possible. In April 1981, I headed for Lisbon and three months later began my journey in Brazil.

 

I based myself outside Lisbon at Sintra, living in a quinta on a hillside below Moorish battlements that overlooked Sintra Palace. I would use this setting for the family seat of the first Cavalcantis to go to Brazil:

 

Sintra Palace



Through his marriage to Inez Gonçalves, Cavalcanti's father had come to possess lands on those serene vales before the Serra de Sintra. Here between jagged rocks of antiquity crowned with fallen battlement of Moor and the distant azure expanse of the Atlantic, here was past and future, and whether Nicolau climbed through the thick woods to the lee of the old Infidel redoubt or stood on the windy headland at Cabo da Roça, he felt an intimacy with both. - (from Brazil)

Errol Lincoln Uys at Serra de Sintra

 I divided my time between the Gulbenkian Foundation, British Institute and Portuguese historic and geographic libraries and visits to sites like Jeronimos Monastery, Belem Tower, Mafra, and traveling to Coimbra, Belmont and Evora, all of which have a place in my novel. Besides 16th century Portugal, I was also interested in the mid-18th century and events surrounding the Lisbon Earthquake of November 1755, one of my Cavalcantis studying law in Portugal at the time.

 

Ten seconds later, there was a devastating shock. The houses opposite Paulo began to sway; the floor beneath him vibrated so violently that he struggled to keep his balance. Chimneys crumbled, loose tiles fell to the ground, crockery in Dona Clara's house shattered. Screams and the pitiful cries of animals rose. But Paulo's perception of these noises was dulled by a thundering in the earth. Terremoto! The word crashed through Paulo's senses. “Earthquake!”

 

Paulo was mesmerized by the houses opposite, rocking on their foundations, walls cracking and splitting, upper stories leaning toward the street, chunks of masonry falling. Terror numbed him. He stood frozen at the window, expecting death.

Three houses suddenly burst open and collapsed, burying the family of four and the servant girls. The old man did not cease his struggle to open his front door, even as the convulsions rocked the street; he, too, was entombed by an avalanche of masonry. Paulo looked beyond the opening opposite him: The city was rising and falling in waves as if upon a storm-tossed sea; landslides swept down the hillsides hurling houses toward the lower ground; distant steeples and towers whipped about wildly; clouds of dirt and dust hung in the air. The thunder of the earth, the sound of breaking timbers, the rain of roof tiles — the inconceivable noises came together in one deafening roar of destruction. - (from Brazil)

Lisbon Earthquake 1755