CHAPTER SIX
A light breeze stirred the bedroom's jalousie shutters, sending strands of the midnight moon dancing across the curves of her naked, almond skin. As always when she slept she was back in Pernambuco, in the whitewashed room of long ago, perfumed with frangipani, with moonlight and soft shadows that pirouetted against the clay walls.
. . . Slowly, silently, the moon at the window darkens, as a shadow blossoms through the airless space, and in her dream the form becomes the ancient babalawo of Pernambuco, hovering above her. Then something passes across her face, a reverent caress, and there is softness and scent in its touch, like a linen kerchief that hints of wild berries. The taste of its honeyed sweetness enters the dream, and she finds herself drifting deeper into sleep as his arms encircle her, drawing her up against him with soft Yoruba words.
Her body seems to float, the dream deepening, its world of light and shadow absorbing her, beckoning, the softness of the bed gliding away.
Now she feels the touch of her soft cotton shift against her breasts and senses the hands that lower it about her. Soon she is buoyed upward, toward the waiting moon, past the jalousies at the window, noiselessly across the rooftop. . . .
She awoke as the man carrying her in his arms dropped abruptly to the yard of the compound. She looked to see the face, and for an instant she thought it truly was the old priest in Brazil ... the same three clan marks, the same burning eyes. Then she realized the face was younger, that of another man, one she knew from more recent dreams. She struggled to escape, but the drugged cloth came again, its pungent, cloying sweetness sending her thoughts drifting back toward the void of the dream.
. . . Now the wall of the compound floats past, vaulted by the figure who holds her draped in his arms. His Yoruba words are telling her she has the beauty of Oshun, beloved wife of Shango. That tonight they will live among the Orisa, the powerful gods that dwell in the forest and the sky. For a moment the cool night air purges away the sweetness of the drug, the potion this babalawo had used to numb her senses, and she is aware of the hard flex of his muscle against her body. Without thinking she clings to him, her fear and confusion mingled with the ancient comfort of his warmth, till her mind merges once more with the dark. . . .
Atiba pointed down toward the wide sea that lay before them, a sparkling expanse spreading out from the shoreline at the bottom of the hill, faintly tinged with moonlight. "I brought you here tonight to make you understand something. In Ife we say: 'The darkness of night is deeper than the shadow of the forest.' Do you understand the chains on your heart can be stronger than the chains on your body?''
He turned back to look at Serina, his gaze lingering over the sparkling highlights the moon now sprinkled in her hair. He found himself suddenly remembering a Yoruba woman he had loved once, not one of his wives, but a tall woman who served the royal compound at Ife. He had met with her secretly, after his wives were killed in the wars, and he still thought of her often. Something in the elegant face of this mulata brought back those memories even more strongly. She too had been strong-willed, like this one. Was this woman also sacred to Shango, as that one had been . . . ?
"You only become a slave when you give up your people. '' His voice grew gentle, almost a whisper. "What is your Yoruba name?"
"I'm not Yoruba." She spoke quickly and curtly, forcing the words past her anger as she huddled for warmth, legs drawn up, arms encircling her knees. Then she reached to pull her shift tighter about her and tried to clear her thoughts. The path on which hed carried her, through forests and fields, was a blurred memory. Only slowly had she realized they were on a hillside now, overlooking the sea. He was beside her, wearing only a blue shirt and loincloth, his profile outlined in the moonlight.
"Don't say that. The first thing you must know is who you are. Unless you understand that, you will always be a slave."
"I know who I am. I'm mulata. Portugues. I'm not African." She glanced down at the grass beside her bare feet and suddenly wished her skin were whiter. I'm the color of dead leaves, she thought shamefully, of the barren earth. Then she gripped the hem of her shift and summoned back her pride. "I'm not a preto. Why would I have an African name?"
She felt her anger rising up once more, purging her feelings of helplessness. To be stolen from her bed by this ignorant preto, brought to some desolate spot with nothing but the distant sound of the sea. That he would dare to steal her away, a highborn mulata. She did not consort with blacks. She was almost . . . white.
The wind laced suddenly through her hair, splaying it across her cheeks, and she realized the night air was perfumed now, almost as the cloth had been, a wild fragrance that seemed to dispel a portion of her anger, her humiliation. For a moment she found herself thinking of the forbidden things possible in the night, those hidden hours when the rules of day can be sacrificed to need. And she became aware of the warmth of his body next to hers as he crouched, waiting, motionless as the trees at the bottom of the hill.
If she were his captive, then nothing he did to her would be of her own willing. How could she prevent him? Yet he made no move to take her. Why was he waiting?
"But to have a Yoruba name means to possess something the branco can never own." He caressed her again with his glance. Even though she was pale, he had wanted her from the first moment he saw her. And he had recognized the same want in her eyes, only held in check by her pride.
Why was she so proud, he wondered. If anything, she should feel shame, that her skin was so wan and pale. In Ife the women in the compounds would laugh at her, saying the moons would come and go and she would only wet her feet, barren. No man would take some frail albino to share his mat.
Even more—for all her fine Ingles clothes and her soft bed she was ten times more slave than he would ever be. How to make her understand that?
"You only become a slave when you give up the ways of your people. Even if your father was a branco, you were born of a Yoruba woman. You still can be Yoruba. And then you will be something, have something." The powerful hands that had carried her to this remote hilltop were now toying idly with the grass. "You are not the property of a branco unless you consent to be. To be a slave you must first submit, give him your spirit. If you refuse, if you remember your own people, he can never truly enslave you. He will have only your body, the work of your hands. The day you understand that, you are human again."
"You are wrong." She straightened. "Here in the Americas you are whatever the branco says. You will never be a man unless he says you are." She noticed a tiny race in her heartbeat and told herself again she did not want to feel desire for this preto, now or ever. "Do you want to know why? Because your skin is black. And to the Ingles black is the color of evil. They have books of learning that say the Christian God made Africans black because they are born of evil; they are less than human. They say your blackness outside comes from your darkness within." She looked away, shamed once more by the shade of her own skin, her unmistakable kinship with this preto next to her. Then she continued, bitterly repeating the things she’d heard that the Puritan divines were now saying in the island's parish churches. "The Ingles claim Africans are not men but savages, something between man and beast. And because of that, their priests declare it is the will of their God that you be slaves. . . ."
She had intended to goad him more, to pour out the abusive scorn she had so often endured herself, but the softness of the Yoruba words against her tongue sounded more musical than she had wanted. He was quietly smiling as she continued. "And now I order you to take me back before Master Briggs discovers I'm gone."
"The sun is many hours away. So for a while yet you won't have to see how black I am." He laughed and a pale glimmer of moonlight played across the three clan marks on his cheek. "I thought you had more understanding than is expected of a woman. Perhaps I was wrong. We say 'The thread follows the needle; it does not make its own way.' For you the Portugues, and now this branco Briggs, have been the needle; you me
rely the thread." He grasped her shoulder and pulled her around. "Why do you let some branco tell you who you are? I say they are the savages. They are not my color; they are sickly pale. They don't worship my gods; they pray to some cruel God who has no power over the earth. Their language is ugly and harsh; mine is melodic, rich with verses and ancient wisdom." He smiled again at the irony of it. "But tonight you have told me something very important about the mind of these Ingles. You have explained why they want so much to make me submit. If they think we are evil, then they must also think us powerful."
Suddenly he leaped to his feet and joyously whirled in a circle, entoning a deep, eerie chant toward the stars. It was like a song of triumph.
She sat watching till he finished, then listened to the medley of frightened night birds from the dark down the hill. How could this preto understand so well her own secret shame, see so clearly the lies she told herself in order to live?
Abruptly he reached down and slipped his hands under her arms, lifting her up to him. "The first thing I want to do tonight is give you back a Yoruba name. A name that has meaning." He paused. "What was your mother called?"
"Her name was Dara."
"Our word for 'beautiful.' " He studied her angular face gravely. "It would suit you as well, for truly you are beautiful too. If you took that name, it would always remind you that your mother was a woman of our people."
She found herself wishing she had the strength to push his warm body away, to shout out to him one final time that he was a preto, that his father was a preto and her own a branco, that she had no desire to so much as touch him. . . . But suddenly she was ashamed to say the word "white," and that shame brought a wave of anger. At him, at herself. All her life she had been proud to be mulata. What right did this illiterate preto have to make her feel ashamed now? "And what are you? You are a preto slave. Who brings me to a hilltop in the dark of night and brags about freedom. Tomorrow you will be a slave again, just like yesterday."
"What am I?" Angrily he gripped her arms and pulled her face next to his. The fierceness of his eyes again recalled the old babalawo in Brazil; he had had the same pride in himself, his people. "I am more than the Ingles here are. Ask of them, and you will discover half once were criminals, or men with no lands of their own, no lineage. In my veins there is royal blood, a line hundreds of generations old. My own father was nearest the throne of the ruling Oba in Ife. He was a babalawo, as I am, but he was also a warrior. Before he was betrayed in battle, he was the second most powerful man in Ife. That's who I am, my father's son."
"What happened? Was he killed?" Impulsively she took his hand and was surprised by its warmth.
"He disappeared one day. Many markets later I learned he was betrayed by some of our own people. Because he was too powerful in Ife. He was captured and taken down to the sea, sold to the Portugues. I was young then. I had only known twelve rainy seasons. But I was not too young to hunt down the traitors who made him slave. They all died by my sword." He clenched his fist, then slowly it relaxed. "But enough. Tonight I want just one thing. To teach you that you still can be free. That you can be Yoruba again."
"Why do you want so much to change me?"
"Because, Dara"—his eyes were locked on hers—"I would have you be my wife. Here. I will not buy you with a bride price; instead I will kill the man who owns you."
She felt a surge of confusion, entwined with want. But again her disdain of everything preto caught in her breast. Why, she wondered, was she even bothering to listen?
"After you make me 'Yoruba,' I will still be a slave to the Ingles."
"Only for a few more days." His face hardened, a tenseness that spread upward through his high cheeks and into his eyes. "Wait another moon and you will see my warriors seize this island away from them."
"I'll not be one of your Yoruba wives." She drew back and clasped her arms close to her breasts, listening to the night, alive now with the sounds of whistling frogs and crickets.
"Rather than be wife to a Yoruba, you would be whore to an Ingles." He spat out the words. "Which means to be nothing."
"But if you take this island, you can have as many wives as you like. Just as you surely have now in Ife." She drew away, still not trusting the pounding in her chest. "What does one more mean to you?"
"Both my wives in Ife are dead." His hand reached and stroked her hair. "They were killed by the Fulani, years ago. I never chose more, though many families offered me their young women."
"Now you want war again. And death. Here."
"I raised my sword against my enemies in Yorubaland. I will fight against them here. No Yoruba will ever bow to others, black or white." He gently touched her cheek and smoothed her pale skin with his warm fingers. "You can stand with us when we rise up against the Ingles."
His touch tingled unexpectedly, like a bridge to some faraway time she dreamed about and still belonged to. For an instant she almost gave in to the impulse to circle her arms around him, pull him next to her.
He stroked her cheek again, lovingly, before continuing. "Perhaps if I kill all the Ingles chiefs, then you will believe you are free. That your name is Dara, and not what some Portugues once decided to call you." He looked at her again and his eyes had softened now. "Will you help me?"
She watched as the moonlight glistened against the ebony of his skin. This preto slave was opening his life to her, something no other man had ever done. The branco despised his blackness even more than they did hers, but he bore their contempt with pride, with strength, more strength than she had ever before sensed in a man.
And he needed her. Someone finally needed her. She saw it in his eyes, a need he was still too proud to fully admit, a hunger for her to be with him, to share the days ahead when . . .
Yes
. . . when she would stand with him to destroy the branco.
"Together." Softly she reached up and circled her arms around his broad neck. Suddenly his blackness was exquisite and beautiful. "Tonight I will be wife to you. Will you hold me now?"
The wind whipped her long black hair across his shoulder, and before she could think she found herself raising her lips to his. He tasted of the forest, of a lost world across the sea she had never known. His scent was sharp, and male.
She felt his thumb brush across her cheek and sensed the wetness of her own tears. What had brought this strange welling to her eyes, here on this desolate hillside. Was it part of love? Was that what she felt now, this equal giving and accepting of each other?
She shoved back his open shirt, to pass her hands across the hard muscles of his chest. Scars were there, deep, the signs of the warrior he once had been. Then she slipped the rough cotton over his back, feeling the open cuts of the lashes, the marks of the slave he was now. Suddenly she realized he wore them as proudly as sword cuts from battle. They were the emblem of his manhood, his Defiance of the Ingles, just as his cheek marks were the insignia of his clan. They were proof to all that his spirit still lived.
She felt his hands touch her shift, and she reached gently to stop him.
Over the years in Brazil so many men had used her. She had been given to any white visitor at the plantation who wanted her: first it was Portuguese traders, ship captains, even priests. Then conquering Hollanders, officers of the Dutch forces who had taken Brazil. A hundred men, all born in Europe, all unbathed and rank, all white. She had sensed their branco contempt for her with anger and shame. To this black Yoruba, this strong, proud man of Africa, she would give herself freely and with love.
She met his gaze, then in a single motion pulled the shift over her head and tossed it away, shaking out the dark hair that fell across her shoulders. As she stood naked before him in the moonlight, the wind against her body seemed like a foretaste of the freedom, the love, he had promised.
He studied her for a moment, the shadows of her firm breasts casting dark ellipses downward across her body. She was dara.
Slowly he grasped her waist and lifted her
next to him. As she entwined her legs about his waist, he buried his face against her and together they laughed for joy.
Later she recalled the touch of his body, the soft grass, the sounds of the night in her ears as she cried out in completeness. The first she had ever known. And at last, a perfect quiet had seemed to enfold them as she held him in her arms, his strength tame as a child's.
In the mists of dawn he brought her back, through the forest, serenaded by its invisible choir of egrets and whistling frogs. He carried her home across the rooftop, to her bed, to a world no longer real.