You should visit the plantation, he said. Then you can decide if it’s better to sell it.
He gave me money to hire a boat, pay a pilot and buy food. I took Florita and the box from the Mandarim shop, with documents I’d not read. Amando’s papers.
The plantation was in the flood plain of the Uaicurapá. One night long ago, I can’t remember when, I saw Amando pointing at the sky and comparing the size of Boa Vida to the moon. The difference is that there’s a lot of water and fish here, and I’m going to harvest a lot of cocoa, he said. Florita thought he was going mad, addressing the moon and talking about planting cocoa. Pests destroyed this agricultural dream. Only the house survived, with the veranda and the parlour facing the river.
It was such a long time since I’d set foot in Boa Vida. Florita looked at the old pastures with sadness: nothing but wild grass and the burnt stumps of trees. The cocoa trees, their leaves rusted, were dead. The termites had overrun the walls and beams of the house. While Florita and the pilot were cleaning the rooms and the veranda, I looked at the old silk-cotton tree beside the river.
It’s the highest tree in the world, my father used to say. Some scumbag who worked in Boa Vida messed with your mother. He was hanged from a high branch. He was already dead when I put a bullet through the rope. The body fell into the water and was later put on a raft that the river took away with it. Two men followed the raft and had some fun aiming at the corpse’s neck. Way down the river, near the Paraná branch of the river, they stuck the scoundrel’s head on a stake. The vultures had a good time, and no one ever messed with your mother again. No one. She lived for me until the day she gave birth to you.
Amando’s rifle, hat and boots were hanging on the wall. And his portrait hung there too, between the weapon and the hat. Did Estiliano know that story? And Florita and Mother Caminal? What does one friend know about another? Or did he keep silent? I didn’t feel right in Boa Vida. A beautiful place, with scarlet ibis and jaçanãs in the sky and the trees. The dark, shimmering waters of the Uaicurapá, the island which appeared when the river was low, when I speared fish with a harpoon and played alone on the beach. Wild Muscovy duck and teal screamed in the high branches of the silk-cotton tree. The tree must still be there, shading the house that some tenant farmers had occupied since the Second World War. It wasn’t the place itself that upset me: it was my memories of it. The employees’ children came up to the veranda and stopped and stared at the house. Silent children, offspring of silent men. The only real voice was Amando’s—the voice that was to be obeyed. They say the cocoa plantation failed in a very short time. Then my father burnt the forest to make pasture. He was successful, even buying a barge to transport rubber, Brazil nuts and wood from the middle reaches of the Amazon to Belém. The Boa Vida became a country retreat. The hanged man—decapitated. Amando liked recounting this episode over and over again, and one time he addressed himself neither to the moon nor to me: he was speaking to my mother, as if she were still alive. I believed that story, and I remembered another: the one about the severed head. Different stories, but Amando’s words frightened me even more. Because he believed in what he was saying. And because he was oblivious to my fear.
That night, I tried to sleep in my parents’ bedroom; in the morning I was woken by a sound of hissing. A bat, twisting in flight, had got caught in the wire netting over the window and let out a squeal. Its fiery eyes flashed. I lit a lamp, and the figure of an armed man appeared on the wall. It wasn’t the river pilot. It was no one. Just my father’s rifle and hat. Shadows. The bat disappeared. I threw the rifle and the hat onto the ground, I wanted no shadows in the room. Outside, by the edge of the river, a woman passed by. I jumped out of the hammock, my heart in my mouth, and went up to the wire netting. The woman walked towards the window. I was about to shout Dinaura’s name.
I heard a little noise, said Florita.
It was just a dream. Go back to sleep.
I hung the hammock on the veranda and lay down. Memories of the Boa Vida kept me awake, with my eyes open: the noise of the cicadas and the toads, the smell of the fruit I pulled off the trees, the crack of the Brazil nuts falling out of the hands of monkeys. Before it grew light, I listened to the cries of the Muscovy ducks and watched the outline of the silk-cotton tree grow in the reddening sky, the sun still hidden beneath the horizon. The afternoon Amando plunged into the forest to bring back some employees who had fled. He came back with empty hands. Nearly empty: an ill-dressed barefoot girl came with him. She’d been captured by Almerindo, the one who later became caretaker in Vila Bela. Poor and courageous, she is, said Amando. She didn’t want to flee with that lazy lot, left her family to come and work and have a better life.
My father took the girl to the white palace and bought her clothes and sandals. In Vila Bela she studied and got a name, with a Christian baptism and a party to celebrate. Amando said she was a trustworthy little girl, and he respected and even rewarded such trustworthiness. This girl brought me up; she was the first woman I had a memory of—Florita. One afternoon in Vila Bela, years later, when she was asleep in the hammock, I went into the room and stood looking at her naked body. I was shocked when she got up, removed my clothes and took me into the hammock. Almerindo and Talita heard and told my father everything. Florita didn’t apologise, nor did the boss punish her. Months later, Amando forced me to go and live in the Pension Saturno, in Manaus.
These memories woke me early. And, since I couldn’t get to sleep, I searched through the documents kept in the Mandarim box. I read letters sent by church dignitaries, charity houses and the Vicar-General of the Middle Amazon. They were thanking Amando for his donations. I found messages from customs officers, mayors, deputies. And, at the bottom of the box, a letter signed by a top civil servant, and another by the governor of the state of Amazonas. They mentioned competition for the transport of goods to England, and that ‘everything should be planned in secret’. I was thinking about this when I heard Florita ask what day we were to go back to Vila Bela.
Today, I said.
I dug two holes between the silk-cotton tree and the river, and in one of them I buried the boxes with the pile of papers; in the other, the hat, the rifle and the boots. I was going to bury Amando’s photograph too, with his face down, next to the earth. But Florita wanted to keep it.
Why, if you don’t visit his grave any more?
Vila Bela Cemetery’s just an overgrown wilderness, she said.
She lied, looking at Amando’s image. She went to the cemetery and left bromelias on her boss’s grave. She even planted a cashew-tree beside the tomb of the Cordovils. One morning when I went to visit my mother’s grave, Florita was there, on her knees, praying and watering the tree. I hadn’t forgotten what she told me straight after Amando’s funeral: Your father was greedy as a tapir, but I learned to like him.
She learned to like him, in spite of his meanness. The whole of Amazonia learned too. I gave the photograph to Florita and looked at Boa Vida as you look at a place that shouldn’t be remembered any more. On the journey back to Vila Bela, I thought about the mother I’d never known. I wondered if she’d died to get away from my father. Amando and my grandfather had enemies. Amando recounted the heroic deeds of Edílio: the courage with which he and six soldiers defeated more than 300 rebels in the Battle of Uaicurapá. But other voices questioned this heroism, saying that in the 1839 Cabanos Revolt Edílio had presided over a massacre of unarmed caboclos and Indians. After this slaughter, he took possession of an immense area on the right bank of the Uaicurapá. One survivor must have carved the crimes of Lieutenant-Colonel Edílio Cordovil on the trunk of an ancient tree. Amando wanted to write a book, The Deeds of a Bringer of Civilisation, as an elegy to his father, one of the leaders of the counter-revolt. But he never wrote anything, as the freighters sapped all his energy and time.
I was left with very little money in Vila Bela, after paying for the pilot and the rental of the boat. The only way out was to sell the white palace, my las
t valuable property. I went into the Benchayas’ pension and said: Salomito, I want to sell my palace, if you know of anyone interested . . .
Salomito thought this was just idle talk, or a sudden whim: words with no thought to back them up. But I insisted I was serious. He pointed his patriarch’s beard at the table and said that Becassis was looking for a place to live and set up a little perfumery in Vila Bela. He was a courageous old man, determined to sell aromatic oils at a time when everywhere reeked of hunger and destruction, here and in Europe.
Becassis was sitting between Estrela and Azário, a strange boy. Estrela was a haughty woman, her long, curly hair touching the table edge. I observed her stiff body, her delicate hands, her shapely face, the glimmer behind her grey eyes. How I admired the foreigner’s eyes. It was the second time I’d seen this woman; the first time I’d only seen her from a distance. She lived like a recluse, not wanting to flaunt her beauty. The old man noted that I was hypnotised by Estrela. I didn’t yet know she was his daughter; Moroccan Jews and Arabs were reputed to be womanisers, and the older ones often married girls. This wasn’t a husband’s jealousy, but a father’s. Becassis got up and asked about the house. I said, without exaggeration: It’s the white mansion on Beira-Rio Avenue.
He introduced me to his daughter and grandson, and wanted to see the house straight away. The woman smiled, while the lad looked at me sideways, crossing his arms. I don’t know if he mistrusted me. Or was it something I felt that distanced me from him? He didn’t even say hello, and I paid no attention. That is, I registered Azário’s impertinence in my memory and went with Becassis to the house.
The floor waxed by Florita was shining. What wasn’t shining was the look in her eye. But my little flower kept her mouth shut. Becassis was impressed by the tall windows with their pointed arches, the large parlour, bedrooms and kitchen; he stopped to admire the crockery and the Portuguese tiles in the bathroom. Then we went round the garden, and I said that this was one of the few houses in Vila Bela with a decent cesspit. He looked at everything: the fruit trees, the stone fountain from my mother’s time, the wooden pergola covered by a passion fruit vine. He tore a leaf from the climbing plant, rubbed it in his hands and smelt it. His voice faltered, as if it was someone else speaking, as he asked about the price.
Dr Estiliano, my lawyer, deals with that.
Even the price? asked Becassis.
The price above all.
Have you any other properties?
An area of the flood plain of the River Uaicurupá, I replied. The Boa Vida plantation.
Has it got plants with aromatic roots? The white resin tree, the black resin tree?
It’s got everything, I lied. Then I said something true and of interest to me: It’s even got a properly drawn-up contract.
Becassis’s dry, hard face remained motionless. On the pavement, I gave him Estiliano’s address and we parted.
Two weeks later, Estiliano informed me of Becassis’s offer. Very strange. The buyer must have known I was going around with a begging bowl, for the price included the Boa Vida.
How did Becassis know it was for sale?
He found out from me, said Estiliano. You also mentioned the plantation and led him to understand that you were going to sell it.
It’s a very low price for the two properties, I protested.
Becassis is the only one who can pay. He wants to sign two promissory notes that can be cashed in Belém. And he even agreed to pay your fare.
Without the two properties, I would have nothing left. There was Florita, whom I was supporting. I thought of a plan, and told no one. I couldn’t . . . I agreed to Becassis’s offer, and told the lawyer I would only sell the properties if Florita stayed in the white palace.
Do you want to sell the house and abandon Florita? asked Estiliano.
Abandon Florita? How could I abandon the interpreter of my dreams, the hands that prepared my food and washed, ironed, starched and perfumed my clothes? I’d been fond of her from the first moment I saw her in my room: the girl with the round face, full lips and smooth bowl-cut hair, the tender and sad look which acquired cunning and toughness living with Amando. Florita was jealous of me because I’d only slept with her once in the hammock: the game she’d taught me, saying: Do this, touch me here, squeeze my bum, don’t do that, put your tongue here and lick me now: the game that was my farewell to my virgin youth, and which led to my punishment in the Saturno pension and the four or five years of Amando’s contempt. I thought about all this and asked Estiliano:
Wasn’t it my father, your friend, who brought Florita to work in the house?
In Amando Cordovil’s house, not in a house of strangers.
I tried to convince Florita that when I came back from Belém I’d buy a house in the Santa Clara neighbourhood, where we’d live together. Becassis said that an employee from Salomito’s pension was going to work in the house.
You’ll have a family until I come back, I said to Florita.
She came up to me with a friendly look and tenderness in her eyes, brushed her lips across the back of my neck and licked my ear till I shivered. Then she whispered, with hatred:
You’ll come back from Belém with the devil in your heart.
Becassis didn’t hear the whispered words, but he saw my face yellow with fear. And my fear increased when I saw the stamp of an English bank on the promissory notes. I remembered the loan, the firm going bankrupt; my hands turned cold at the bad memory. Becassis questioned me apprehensively, as if I wasn’t going to go through with the deal.
That’s money, he said, pointing to the promissory notes.
The same bank, I said, thinking aloud.
But this time they’re not going to take your money; this time they’ll pay you, said Estiliano.
By chance I looked at Azário and grew irritated. Becassis reprimanded his grandson, who was pulling a devilish face. Estrela’s face cheered me up. That woman’s beauty didn’t diminish my longing for Dinaura, but the idea of losing the white palace was disorienting me. Becassis seemed enthusiastic about buying the property. The matter-of-factness of our first encounter had gone. I’ll not say the old man melted like butter, but he’d warmed up a bit; he was an honest buyer, and a vocal one. He even revealed the name of the perfumery: Tangier. He was going to buy the Bonplant perfumery and gather leaves and roots from the jungle at Boa Vida. He wanted to sell the scent of the forest to the whole of Brazil. If it worked, he’d export to Europe.
I put the notes in my pocket, imagining the flasks of aromatic oil at the back of the white palace. As I said goodbye to Estrela, I touched her delicate hand, then squeezed it, lingering, conveying infinite promise. And I forgot the widow’s son, a strange boy, with a rigid body and hands too big for his age.
Estiliano and Florita couldn’t understand my mood: I had just sold the last two properties and I wasn’t depressed. Estiliano wanted to know what I was going to do afterwards.
Afterwards?
You’ve no longer got a floor or a roof for shelter.
I’ve got Florita. And a friend, who was my father’s only friend.
He guessed that I was scheming something, and came to visit me in the last week I slept in the white palace, before I gave the keys to Becassis and embarked for Belém. He suggested that with the money from the sale I should buy two houses: one to live in and one to rent.
You’re only half a step from poverty. I don’t want to see a Cordovil living on the streets.
Then I decided to touch on a subject that I knew would cut him to the quick. I told him that in Boa Vida, after I’d rummaged through the papers in the Mandarim box, I discovered that Amando Cordovil had been a smuggler and tax-evader. Was Estiliano aware of this?
He got up, and before he got to the door, I went on: it was the meat and Brazil nuts that Amando exported to Manaus. He took the cargo to other areas so as not to pay taxes in Vila Bela; then he unloaded everything on an island near Manaus and played the same trick. He bribed the customs offic
ial; he’d have bribed the devil himself.
The politicians blackmailed your father, said Estiliano.
They were his allies, his partners, I said. My father avoided duties and then shared the profits with them; then he helped the mayor’s office, donated carts to collect the rubbish, gave the horses and oxen that pulled the carts, paid for the repairs at the slaughterhouse and the jail, even the jailers’ wages. Then he did the same thing with the cargos for the barges and the Eldorado: he wrote to the governor of Amazonas, and to a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Transport. He died because he lost the competition for a big contract, just before the First World War: rubber and mahogany to Europe. His heart gave way, his greed was bigger than his life.
It wasn’t greed, Estiliano burst out.
His loud voice gave Florita a fright. Even I was shocked by his outburst. Amando’s sudden death had made him feel vulnerable. He’d had no time to burn the past away.
It wasn’t greed, Estiliano repeated.
His red, sweaty face was shining; he couldn’t move, suffering as he was from this episode of intemperance. The sweat ran off his chin and dripped to the floor. Amando was an ambitious man, he said, but an upright one. Florita knew that, everybody did. The farmers only thought about exporting meat to Manaus. Amando was the first one to sell cheap meat in Vila Bela. He wanted the people to eat, he wanted meat for everyone, but even for that he had to grease the politicians’ palms. He wanted the jail to be clean, with food and bunkbeds. It wasn’t greed. It must have been something else. Some people can die of greed, but not . . .
I never knew that man, I said brusquely. I read all the correspondence he received.
He never mentioned those letters to me, said Estiliano contemptuously.
Estiliano’s blind loyalty to my father was getting on my nerves. Before he left, he warned me: Don’t spend all the money, don’t spend all that money in Belém.
Florita muttered that I shouldn’t have sold the white palace; that I’d be sorry for the rest of my life.
Orphans of Eldorado Page 6
