All the traditions of the earth must be seen as deriving from a fundamental mother-tradition that, from the beginning, was entrusted to sinful man and to his first offspring.
—Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, De l’esprit des choses, Paris, Laran, 1800, II, “De l’esprit des traditions en général”
And I saw Salvador: Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, the “black Rome,” with three hundred and sixty-five churches, which stand out against the line of hills or nestle along the bay, churches where the gods of the African pantheon are honored.
Amparo knew a primitive artist who painted big wooden panels crammed with Biblical and apocalyptic visions, dazzling as a medieval miniature, with Coptic and Byzantine elements. Naturally he was a Marxist; he talked about the coming revolution, but he spent his days dreaming in the sacristies of the sanctuary of Nosso Senhor do Bomfim: a triumph of horror vacui, scaly with ex-votos that hung from the ceiling and encrusted the walls, a mystical assemblage of silver hearts, wooden arms and legs, images of wondrous rescues from glittering storms, waterspouts, maelstroms. He took us to the sacristy of another church, which was full of great furnishings redolent of jacaranda. “Who is that a painting of?” Amparo asked the sacristan. “Saint George?”
The sacristan gave us a knowing look. “They call him Saint George,” he said, “and if you don’t call him that, the pastor gets angry. But he’s Oxossi.”
For two days the painter led us through naves and cloisters hidden behind decorated façades like silver plates now blackened and worn. Wrinkled, limping famuli accompanied us. The sacristies were sick with gold and pewter, heavy chests, precious frames. Along the walls, in crystal cases, life-size images of saints towered, dripping blood, their open wounds spattered with ruby droplets; Christs writhed in pain, their legs red. In a glow of late-Baroque gold, I saw angels with Etruscan faces, Romanesque griffins, and Oriental sirens peeping out from the capitals.
I moved along ancient streets, enchanted by names that sounded like songs: Rua da Agonia, Avenida dos Amores, Travessa de Chico Diabo. Our visit to Salvador took place during a period when the local government, or someone acting in its name, was trying to renew the old city, and was closing down the thousands of brothels. But the project was only at midpoint. At the feet of those deserted and leprous churches embarrassed by their own evil-smelling alleys, fifteen-year-old black prostitutes still swarmed, ancient women selling African sweets crouched along the sidewalks with their steaming pots, and hordes of pimps danced amid trickles of sewage to the sound of transistor radios in nearby bars. The ancient palaces of the Portuguese settlers, surmounted by coats of arms now illegible, had become houses of ill-repute.
On the third day, our guide took us to the bar of a hotel in a renovated part of the upper city, on a street full of luxury antique shops. He was to meet an Italian gentleman, he told us, who wanted to buy—and for the asking price—a painting of his, three meters by two, in which teeming angelic hosts waged the final battle against the opposing legions.
And so we met Signor Agliè. Impeccably dressed in a double-breasted pin-striped suit despite the heat, he wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses and had a rosy complexion, silver hair. He kissed Amparo’s hand as if he knew of no other way to greet a lady, and he ordered champagne. When the painter had to leave, Agliè handed him a pack of traveler’s checks and said to send the picture to his hotel. We stayed on to chat.
Agliè spoke Portuguese correctly, but it sounded as if he had learned it in Lisbon. This accent made him seem even more like a gentleman of bygone days. He asked about us, commented on the possible Genevan origin of my name, and expressed curiosity about Amparo’s family history, though somehow he had already guessed that the main branch was from Recife. About his own origins he was vague. “I’m like many people here,” he said. “Countless races are represented in my genes…. The name is Italian, from the ancient estate of an ancestor. Perhaps a nobleman, but who cares these days? It was curiosity that brought me to Brazil. All forms of tradition fascinate me.”
He told us he had a fine library of religious sciences in Milan, where he had been living for some years. “Come and see me when you get back. I have a number of interesting things, from Afro-Brazilian rites to the Isis cults of the late Roman Empire.”
“I adore the Isis cults,” Amparo said, who often, out of pride, pretended to be silly. “You must know everything there is to know about them.”
Agliè replied modestly: “Only what little I’ve seen of them.
” Amparo tried again: “But wasn’t it two thousand years ago?”
“I’m not as young as you are.” Agliè smiled.
“Like Cagliostro,” I joked. “Wasn’t he the one who was heard to murmur to his attendant as they passed a crucifix, ‘I told that Jew to be careful that evening, but he just wouldn’t listen’?”
Agliè stiffened. Afraid I had offended him, I started to apologize, but our host stopped me with an indulgent smile. “Cagliostro was a humbug. It’s common knowledge when and where he was born, and he didn’t even manage to live very long. A braggart.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Cagliostro was a humbug,” Agliè repeated, “but that does not mean that there have not been—and still are—privileged persons who have lived many lives. Modern science knows so little about the aging process. It’s quite possible that mortality is simply the result of poor education. Cagliostro was a humbug, but the Comte de Saint-Germain was not. He may not have been boasting when he claimed to have learned some of his chemical secrets from the ancient Egyptians. Nobody believed him, so out of politeness to his listeners he pretended to be joking.”
“And now you pretend to be joking in order to convince us you’re telling the truth,” Amparo said.
“You are not only beautiful, but extraordinarily perceptive too,” Agliè said. “But I beseech you, do not believe me. Were I to appear before you in the dusty splendor of my many centuries, your own beauty would wither, and I could never forgive myself.”
Amparo was conquered, and I felt a twinge of jealousy. I changed the subject to churches, and to the Saint George-Oxossi we had seen. Agliè said we absolutely had to attend a candomblé. “Not one where they charge admission. They let you into the real ones without asking anything of you. You don’t even have to be a believer. You must observe respectfully, of course, showing the same tolerance of all faiths as they do in accepting your unbelief. At first sight a pai or mãe-de-santo might seem to be straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but they have as much culture as a Vatican theologian.”
Amparo put her hand on his. “Take us!” she said. “I went to one many years ago, in a tenda de umbanda, but I can’t recall much about it. All I remember is great turmoil.”
The physical contact embarrassed Agliè, but he didn’t take his hand away. He did something I later saw him do in moments of reflection: reaching into his vest with his other hand, he took out a little gold-and-silver box with an agate on the lid.
It looked like a snuffbox or a pillbox. There was a small wax light burning on the table, and Agliè, as if by chance, held the box near it. When exposed to heat, the agate’s color could no longer be discerned, and in its place appeared a miniature, very fine, in green, blue, and gold, depicting a shepherdess with a basket of flowers. He turned it in his fingers with absent-minded devotion, as if telling a rosary. When he noticed my interest, he smiled and put the object away.
“Turmoil? I hope, my sweet lady, that, although you are so perceptive, you are not excessively sensitive. An exquisite quality, of course, when it accompanies grace and intelligence, but dangerous if you go to certain places without knowing what to look for or what you will find. Moreover, the umbanda must not be confused with the candomblé. The latter is completely indigenous—Afro-Brazilian, as they say—whereas the former is a much later development born of a fusion of native rites and esoteric European culture, and with a mystique I would call Templar….”
The Templars had found me again. I told Agliè I had studied them. He regarded me with interest. “A most curious circumstance, my young friend, to find a young Templar here, under the Southern Cross.”
“I wouldn’t want you to consider me an adept—”
“Please, Signor Casaubon. If you knew how much nonsense there is in this field.”
“I do know.”
“Good. But we’ll see one another soon.” In fact, we arranged to meet the next day: all of us wanted to explore the little covered market along the port.
We met there the next morning, and it was a fish market, an Arab souk, a saint’s-day fair that had proliferated with cancerous virulence, like a Lourdes overrun by the forces of evil, wizard rainmakers side by side with ecstatic and stigmatized Capuchins.
There were little propitiatory sacks with prayers sewn into the lining, little hands in semiprecious stones, the middle finger extended, coral horns, crucifixes, Stars of David, sexual symbols of pre-Judaic religions, hammocks, rugs, purses, sphinxes, sacred hearts, Bororo quivers, shell necklaces. The degenerate mystique of the European conquistadors was
