Bahía is a freed mulatto woman from the Mississippi, a dervish dancer with the scimitar and member of the revolutionary circle in North American Antiterra around the Civil War. She wears the iron of her former slavery as a declared emblem.
| Type | Character |
| Relatives | Andura (sister, also mulatto) |
| Spanish entry | Bahía |
She introduced herself: «Mi nombre es Bahía, vengo del Missisipi.» (“My name is Bahía, I come from the Mississippi.“) On crossing the threshold she “really feels at home”.
Description
She is very tall (“a meter ninety”), with very long legs, slightly long arms and slightly elongated ears. Her skin is “like a crucible of stripes”; the stripes are her mark. Huge mouth, very white teeth, very large hands. She wears a red turban tied as in “those Caribbean films”, decorated with fruit designs, plus earrings, an amulet and a scimitar at her belt. Heavy iron on both arms shows that she was a slave and is now free.
Fighting
She fights dancing. Her scimitar is an enchanted weapon of very rare property: it cuts and pierces in one movement and, when the blow falls perfectly, beheads. Her only defense is the plates in her jacket. She can settle a whole encounter with one stroke.
Role
She “prepared a list of devils and evils to be cleansed from the world”, which the circle approved; it sets targets for the whole group. Someone greeted her: “Bahía, maybe you don’t know me”.
Conflicting accounts
- Clothing: “a dress, just like a slave woman’s”, with fruit and seed motifs of little pieces of wood, not jade; or trousers, coat and “a jacket that looks half Chinese” with metal plates sewn under the lining.
- Iron: “her broken chains… two little pieces of chain that she broke”; or “two iron bracelets… those bracelets never have a chain”.
Open questions
- Who enslaved her and how she broke her chains.
- What the list contains; what her amulet is and does; what her stripes are.
- Where the Chinese cut of the jacket comes from.
- Andura’s relation to the circle, and whether she was present.
- Where this Mississippi lies, and why she feels at home here.