Rosa was not just some pretty or silly girl. Not at all. She studied hard and was full of ideas; she had just earned her teaching certification and had completed a typing course like all the other girls at the time. She was full of dreams germinating in her little head full of dark-gold hair that cascaded over her shoulders like molasses slowly overrunning the edges of a spoon.
After her mother’s premature death, Rosa had been raised in her grandparents’ house. Her father, after a long and begrudged widowhood, eventually married an Italian woman who was no longer so young but who, besides being kind and caring, was also an excellent seamstress. They had no children, since Umberto—who had never forgiven himself for being unable to protect Eulália as he had promised her—managed to come to an understanding with his new wife that they would keep close watch on her monthly cycle and would take all precautions against her becoming pregnant. Together, they oversaw a considerable expansion to the tailoring business following the retirement of the elder Rancieri, transforming it into one of, if not the first, stores to sell haute couture fashion in São Paulo. They enjoyed their craft and had the instincts to guide them in making sure the texture and shapes of fabric fell perfectly over any body type—male or female, fat or thin, voluptuous or shapeless. The names of Umberto and Leda Rancieri became well known throughout São Paulo society.
After the euphoria of the Miss São Paulo contest had passed, there was a huge quarrel in the family, for while her father had permitted Rosa to compete for the title of municipal beauty queen, there was no way he was going to let her do the same for the statewide title, much less that of Miss Brazil. Deep down, he’d only consented—and against his wishes—because he thought that, however beautiful his daughter may have been, the cards were stacked in such competitions and she would probably get nowhere. His surprise and pride had both been considerable when he discovered he was wrong, but the whole thing had gone too far—so no more! Basta! Basta! Only over his dead body.
Rosa did what she could. She wanted to be Miss Brazil because it was electrifying and fun, and she liked to have fun. She was happy, uninhibited, and left all her doors wide open to embrace everything the world had to give, now that the Great War had ended in Europe and it was no longer necessary to mull over the suffering of distant countries. Faced with her father’s refusal, she cried, screamed, slammed doors. She declared that the family was interfering with her happiness, that she would never smile again because hers was not a life worth living. She systematically cycled through all the standard exaggerations. But this time her father, with the support of her grandmother, was unshakeable.
Basta! Basta! Basta!
By a happy coincidence, on the same day of crying and empty threats, Rosa received a letter from a fan, a young doctor who requested permission to introduce himself and meet her. Written in an elegant handwriting on fine white stationery, it had been delivered by a young boy who stood there waiting on her response.
On any other day, she would certainly have hesitated and almost certainly would have said no to this daring stranger—the nerve! But in her moment of rebellion against her family, she decided she had nothing better to do than to immediately meet the doctor. She told the boy to reply that her answer was yes, she would wait for the doctor at her home at five in the afternoon, and then she went off to dry her tears so as not to greet her guest with a swollen face.
For the rest of her life, she would congratulate herself a thousand times for the wise decision to meet, on that gentle May afternoon, the great love of her life. Túlio Faiad, a young man with a tan complexion, who arrived to see her with a rose in hand.
Ten years Rosa’s senior, he had graduated from the Faculdade de Medicina in Minas Gerais. The son of Lebanese immigrants who ran a small business in the countryside of Minas, he had come to São Paulo for a residency. With black hair and dark eyes, a kind and easy smile, he had seen Rosa at the contest and had dreamed ever since, night after night, of that young woman with voluptuous curves, the smile of a goddess, and hair like honey.
Rosa immediately took to Túlio. His kind and polite manners, his dream to use medicine to alleviate suffering in the world, the enthusiasm of a young man who has realized his dream to become a doctor and knows he is capable of pursuing many others, all of this together with his dark eyes and beautiful long-fingered hands made Rosa forget all of her ambitions to participate in other pageants.
Their courtship was brief, as was their engagement, since the impatient doctor and the impatient beauty queen were anxious to begin their new life together. Túlio’s plan—which met with Rosa’s unconditional agreement—was to move to the countryside, where the lack of doctors was considerable and he could be more useful than in the big city. After her father’s blessing and her grandmother’s endless sobbing, the couple moved to a small city in the countryside of Minas Gerais, at the commendation of a friend of the family, Doctor Juscelino, an older man who had graduated from the same medical school as Túlio and become something like a mentor, whom Túlio admired greatly.
Rosa Alfonsina was happy. She loved her husband and was proud of his work and his intelligence. She liked to hold his hand and discretely lift it to admire his long fingers, and the ring finger where the doctor’s emerald ring glimmered next to his gold wedding-band.
In the town where they were going to live, a small community with a penchant for gossip, Rosa was initially received with curiosity and distrust. She was the doctor’s wife, and came from the capital. She had different manners, big city manners, she would participate in the men’s conversations, had her own ideas, wanted to assist her husband, became a practicing nurse, and was a quick learner. From the very beginning she also made her own good friends, unconditional fans who would support her in slowly gaining the trust of the rest of the city.
The region’s health problems were more drastic than they had thought. The poverty of entire families left to their own devices was horrifying: they lived on plots of barren earth unfit for even enough crops to feed themselves, and stayed in mud houses infested with kissing bugs. Thyroid conditions were widespread, since iodized salt was still rare and expensive in that part of the world; the kissing bugs, carrying chagas, infected entire families with the disease. The biggest problems were endemic and required public health campaigns rather than sophisticated medical knowledge. The young doctor began to despair; he felt impotent before his task and would arrive home exhausted after spending the day on horseback beneath the strong sun as he sought to help those families out in the middle of nowhere, where the greatest ill—poverty—was neither within his reach nor ability to resolve.
He encountered so many unexpected situations, so many illnesses that should have been eradicated, so much suffering due to the same devastating cause, so much calamity, that he felt his mission had to expand: if he did not treat their social causes, he would never be able to put an end to the illnesses.
Together with some friends, the city intellectuals, a local school instructor, the pharmacist, and the dentist, Túlio began to print a monthly newspaper, O Piston. The pharmacist, Seu Matias, was a Communist sympathizer, but the others were not necessarily driven by ideology. They were merely people who saw what was happening around them, who found the poverty of the countryside unacceptable, and who wished to see their country move forward.
The newspaper’s production meetings took place at Túlio and Rosa’s home. Rosa, with great enthusiasm and energy, served coffee and biscuits, but also offered up ideas, participated in debates, and began to write short texts that were later published. She would write crônicas, short observations on everyday life, sometimes moving, sometimes playful, always with great verve. She was worried about the small town’s isolation and sought to write about events in the rest of the country, but in a style that was intuitive and personal. She was one of the few people there who subscribed to national magazines, bought books through the mail, and was aware of what was happening beyond the town limits, far away, out there where the road to the big ci
ty began.
Her articles became one of the most-read and discussed parts of the small newspaper. Always using the everyday stories of people she knew, like the stories of her grandpa Rancieri, the old anarchist sympathizer, her writings spoke mainly about events beyond that world closed off to itself.
A crônica she wrote about her grandfather in 1932 became quite well known when São Paulo once again took up arms and went to war against the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, demanding the promulgation of a constitution. Her grandmother, Nonna Sofia, had sat in the window excitedly watching the troops pass by, and behind the troops young men, behind the young men young women, and behind the young women a group of children, as though it was nothing more than one big party, and she lamented: “Dio mio, com tanta terra em questo paese, siamo fermati in quella in cui si piace di più far la guerra!” She would close the windows and doors, grab the rosary to pray, and prohibit her children from going out into the streets.
But not Grandpa Rancieri. Taking care to keep it from his wife, he helped to prepare the “matracas,” curious instruments made of iron and steel that emitted sounds like a machine gun when shaken and served to disguise the rebels’ chronic lack of ammunition and guns on the front line. He encouraged Rosa, then a girl of six, and the other neighborhood kids to parade through the streets carrying flags and banging on cans as though they were drums; he would tell them they ought to learn early to do whatever they could to make the world a more just place. As a matter of principle, Rancieri didn’t take sides; he thought that war was for rich men, an arm-wrestling match among those who had always been in power, a settling of accounts between American and British imperialism, that neither side was worth a damn and had nothing to do with them, the poor of this earth, anyway. But since he was viscerally opposed to dictatorships, he couldn’t help but root for the rebels.
Another of Rosa’s most discussed articles was one that told the story of Old Man Damasceno, who lived in her house and had become a caring and beloved figure in the town. How one day, an elderly black man in tattered clothes had knocked at Doctor Túlio’s door, his feet infested with worms and an ugly wound on his leg. Raising the man’s filthy shirt to examine him more closely, the doctor was surprised to find an enormous tattoo with the face of Christ covering the old man’s entire back. The tattoo was well done, and the face of Christ crowned with thorns seemed to leap from the black man’s ribs, his eyes full of compassion, facing forward with a steady gaze, and seemed to come alive with the movement of the old man’s shoulder blades.
Damasceno explained to the doctor that he’d lived in Rio when he was a boy and had practiced capoeira, but had suffered the heavy repression of the police as they sought to modernize the city. Capoeira had been outlawed and those who practiced it persecuted, and soldiers would beat anyone refusing to leave their homes in the city center. Many of them had gotten tattoos with sacred images covering their bodies in an attempt to limit the beatings, believing the soldiers wouldn’t dare turn their clubs on the tattooed face of Christ.
“And did it work?” the doctor asked.
“Not at all, doctor, they beat us all the same! The streets of the big city are like a poisonous beast. The only way out is to run. At that time, the police followed anyone without a job or a home, and who among us free blacks had work and a home? Nobody. They also gave a hard time to natural healers, witch doctors, and anyone practicing capoeira. They said they were cleaning up the city. With all that suffering, I ended up leaving there and found my way here. We’re just as poor here as anywhere, doctor, but here the police don’t come around to club us.”
Damascento ended up in a small bedroom at the back of the doctor’s house until his health improved. When he was better, he’d become so attached to Dona Rosa that he asked to stay. He became an adopted member of the family, a grandfather, a storyteller and guitar player, bringing joy to Túlio’s and Rosa’s children, who had recently been born.
As was to be expected, O Piston was big news in the region, where changes arrived at a snail’s pace.
The farmers in the region enjoyed the apparent tranquility of a well-established power that was rarely questioned. After a quick pass from one end of their lands to the other to ensure everything was in order, they would bark out an order or two to their foremen before going back home to lie down in their hammocks and rest. When the sun cooled down a bit, they would stop off at each other’s homes to have a hot coffee, eat cookies, and talk away the afternoon. A bit later, it would be time for the liquor and card games, hard-earned forms of relaxation.
Life brought few worries in that town: inertia had left the scenery the same for decades. The world had its natural laws, and one of them was the continued power of those already in its possession.
If anyone had any worries, they were with the natural world, which always sins, either by excess or by scarcity. Rare were the years when the sun and rain got along to the farmers’ satisfaction and the crops grew as expected or the cattle grew as fat as they ought to. Either the sun was too strong and the rain scarce, or the contrary. Either the sun bore down, the water dried up, cracks began to appear in the earth like awful, dry scars, or suddenly it was all torrential rain, thunderstorms, rivers overrunning their banks and flooding the animals up to their necks.
They also enjoyed discussing the weather that year and in years past, and could spend hours talking about how nature had once been more reliable and predictable. For them, a change in climate was the most palpable sign that the end times were near. It was practically the only thing that changed, even if it had only become noticeable over the course of decades and centuries.
The wealthy landowners viewed the newspaper with unease and feigned disinterest. They pretended they had no desire to read such communist drivel, but deep down they were worried. Though not very much; there was nothing that caused anyone to lose any sleep. But the newspaper was a kick in the pants for each one of them. And also for the village priest. According to the priest it was all drivel from that group of scoundrels led by Seu Matias, an atheist who hated the clergy, everyone knew it. The priest would have to take a copy of the newspaper to the bishop to see what ought to be done.
But that was not the time to take any of that so seriously. Of course, there was an article or two that made them stomp angrily into the town saloon, ordering up a cachaça and practically yelling so everyone heard them when they declared that the band of no-good communists was in need of a lesson.
This happened especially when the articles Túlio wrote associated the region’s poverty with the system of concentrated land ownership. He also blamed the wealthy landowners for evicting farmworkers from their small plots of land so as to leave them no choice but to work on the larger farms. Those articles made Rosa think about the cousins she’d met only a short time before.
She knew where her relatives lived because her father had told her that her mother’s brother, Gaspar Botelho, owner of a casino in Rio de Janeiro, had once visited them in São Paulo. On that occasion, Gaspar had told family stories and mentioned that his mother, Diva Felícia, Rosa’s grandmother, had a half-brother no one had ever met. Gaspar, however, knew that this brother, whose name was Dionísio Augusto, had been raised by his grandmother Açucena, a landowner in the Minas countryside whose land, as far as he knew, had long been sold. Umberto committed the name of the city to memory and told it to his daughter who, many years later on a trip through that state, where she had since moved with Túlio, passed through the area and tried to find out more about her relatives.
What she found was an old house in ruins at the foot of gorgeous emerald-green mountain, whose slopes began to rise at the edge of the city.
She also found out that, of Dionísio Augusto’s twelve children, only three grandchildren still lived on a small piece of what had been the great plantation of Açucena Brasília, the family matriarch. Rosa went to visit them. Two of them weren’t home, but the third was.
The tiny house with its beaten-earth floor was s
potless, and the aluminum pans gleamed as they hung on the kitchen wall near the wood-fire stove. It was the house of poor people, the home of honest folk. It was one of the grandsons of her great-uncle Dionísio Augusto who lived there.
He welcomed her affectionately and amiably, and as they drank the coffee promptly prepared by the man’s wife for their visitor, he told her how the children had been forced to partition the land and then sell it, eventually leaving their heirs with that tiny plot of land, and even so he could see they too would soon have to sell everything because no crops would grow there. Herds of cattle belonging to rich farmers had overrun the crop fields, and as a result the people in those parts found themselves forced to move. The man’s sons had gone to try their luck in the capital; his daughters had married men from the same town, all of them working on someone else’s land, and the only child who still lived with him worked at the local butter and cheese factory.
At the end of her visit, when Rosa stood up to leave, he told her that he wanted to show her something: it was a grimy little box that looked as if it had once been a jewelry case. It had belonged to the matriarch, Açucena Brasília, but there it was, abandoned, and if Rosa wished to take it, he couldn’t find any use for the old thing, though he also couldn’t bring himself to get rid of a family heirloom.
Inside the box there was a pencil stub and a timeworn silk camellia.
When she opened the box, Rosa was overcome with a strange emotion, intense but fleeting, a gust carrying spirits from centuries past. She thanked him profusely for the present and took the box with her. She had it carefully cleaned, fixed the leather straps, and gently placed it on her cedarwood vanity. The man was right: it wasn’t pretty. But she found it difficult to put her finger on the curious sensation of inner abundance she felt each time she opened it.
Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters Page 28
