Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [14]
“This praça is called Sainted Remains of St. Jill,” Rita said.
“Why?”
Rita pointed to the obelisk with her glass. “That’s her. She’s here.”
“What do you mean ‘here’? Her corpse is in that—that thing?”
“Certainly. Go look. You can see her. In the glass window up at the top.”
I circled the obelisk with trepidation, unsure if I wanted to see the remains—did that mean bones, bits of parched skin and hair?—of some woman who was probably mutilated to death if she had ascended to martyr status.
I needn’t have worried. The window was so fogged over with pollution that no one had seen our sainted lady for probably a hundred years. I walked back to the table.
“It’s all—” I waved my hands around trying to mime the word corroded. Rita nodded and shrugged.
“That’s Bahia,” she said.
three
agnaldo and candomblé
“Look!” Jorge nudged me. We were sitting in the circle of our weekly capoeira roda, chanting as we watched Gato and Fernando play. “It’s Agnaldo!”
Agnaldo danced across the room, snapping his fingers as he came. About five feet eleven, Agnaldo was fairly tall for Salvador, with tufts of black-gray hair that stuck out in short, spiky dreadlocks. He had lost a few teeth along the way, and his smile, always generous, was gapped. His face was deeply lined. Now in his mid-thirties, he seldom came to practice; when he did, he arrived sometimes drunk, sometimes stoned. Now he pranced, performing impossible moves while wearing open-toed leather sandals.
“I thought our teacher said we always had to wear sneakers,” I said to Jorge.
Jorge shrugged. “I think he’s been drinking too, but are you going to say anything?” Agnaldo slid past us and our teacher shot us a stern look. We shut up.
Agnaldo moved to enter the play, and those sitting on the floor wiggled aside to make room for him. He glanced at our teacher who nodded that he could enter. He did, cutting Fernando out and turning to face Gato. He began making ridiculous faces at Gato while sneaking in truly devilish moves, spinning like a top, then sliding inches above the ground. His joy infected us all and we began to chant with more force. Our teacher, who was leading the chants, began improvising clever stanzas about Agnaldo, teasing him, harassing him about wearing sandals. If any of us had tried to enter play wearing sandals, he would have expelled us from the room. Seeing the kind of skill and effortless grace Agnaldo possessed, I figured he must have started playing when he was about two.
After Agnaldo played for a time, he went over to our teacher, who passed him the lead berimbau, teasing and poking him at the same time. Our teacher was a superb berimbau player, but from his first note, Agnaldo was electric. He brought to his playing a different intelligence, the hot winds of Africa, the pain of Brazilian inequality, a music that endured in the silence after he finished. He knew and could improvise indefinitely upon the traditional rhythms of capoeira and his gods, the orixás. When Agnaldo played the berimbau, I finally understood why it was considered a sacred instrument.
After the roda, our teacher corralled us all to join him and Agnaldo for drinks.
“I think Agnaldo makes our teacher happy,” I said to Fernando as we watched them laughing on the rainy street.
Fernando nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think if our teacher loves anyone in this world, he loves Agnaldo.”
At some point soon after I first met him, Agnaldo decided to teach me about his gods. I was not sure why; perhaps because he knew I loved his music so much. He told me that orixás were both saints and gods in his African-Brazilian religion of Candomblé. He taught me their names, male and female, their colors, their different personalities, and the protections they offered. He said I should learn their dances.
Agnaldo talked about the women, the Mothers of the Saints, who led his Candomblé community, his terreiro. The Mothers and initiates, the Daughters of the Saints, tended to