Orphans of Eldorado

by Milton Hatoum

  Florita’s mutterings didn’t bother me. Without realizing it, I was being as stubborn and brutish as Amando Cordovil. I wanted to be different, but there was a shadow of my father inside me, like a stone inside a rotten fruit. I was determined to be the rind, to be thrown aside, and that way I’d do no harm to anyone.

  The Hildebrand was due to dock in Vila Bela on a Saturday. On the Friday morning, I signed the documents in the registry office and handed the keys to Becassis. Then he said just what I wanted to hear most:

  When you come back from Belém, I’ll invite you to dine at home. My daughter will be pleased.

  Buoyed by this I embraced Florita, expecting her to sob because she would miss me. But no. Not a single word.

  I left everything in the house: the furniture, the crockery, the clock on the wall, even the linen sheets. The only thing I didn’t leave behind was the memory of the time I had lived there.

  The captain of the Hildebrand recognised my name. He remembered Amando’s trips to Belém. He said I would travel in my father’s favourite cabin.

  He saw the surprise, perhaps even shock, on my face.

  It’s the only one that’s not taken, he said.

  I travelled where my father had slept. And the man’s memory followed me downriver all the way to Belém. The only subject of conversation on board was disaster. It was like a boatload of survivors from a shipwreck. Near Breves I remembered the shipwreck of the Eldorado, and almost at the same moment I remembered a promise of Amando’s. It was on the day he came back from a journey to Pará. He came into the white palace with a look of pleasure and triumph, and instead of talking about the freighters and the business, he mentioned the beauties of Belém: the Old Town, the Salt Quay, the Grande Hotel, the magnificent mansions, churches and squares. And the sea. The Amazon and the Atlantic, with their mingled waters. I wanted to see the city. He promised we’d go together on the next trip, but he went on his own. When he came back, he’d already forgotten the promise.

  The Grande Hotel was a fabulous building. An old receptionist asked if I was a relative of Amando Cordovil. His son, I replied. He spoke feelingly of his guest’s goodness and his tips, and asked how he was. Dead, I said.

  Poor Doctor Cordovil, the old man said with sadness. He didn’t tell me he had a son. He used to visit the tomb of a relative in the English Cemetery.

  My grandfather’s bones were buried in Vila Bela. I knew nothing of my grandmother, nor of any other relatives. Curiosity took me to the English Cemetery. I walked around the little graveyard, reading epitaphs on Carrara marble gravestones. It was noon; hardly had I sat down on a stone seat than it began to rain. What the devil was I doing there? A face attracted my gaze. A portrait of a dead man. I went over to the stone: Cristóvão A. Cordovil, who died in a shipwreck on the coast of British Guiana. The name of the ship seemed tied to my destiny: Eldorado. The name, and the face of that Cordovil: angular, with a prominent chin and thick eyebrows. How could he be dead if he looked at me with the same look as my father? I was afraid of falling into a trap, of not getting the money from the promissory notes. I left the cemetery with this evil omen hanging over me. Amando was nowhere, but he seemed to be following my every step.

  I went to the Grande Hotel to change and wait for the rain to pass. Then, in the English bank, I handed the manager the two promissory notes. He asked for proof of identity; I also handed him a letter that Becassis had written and signed, on Estiliano’s insistence. I was relieved when I had the packet of money in my hands, and I laughed at my own forebodings. I could taste the pleasure that Amando had always refused me. And I could spend it without a father or a guardian looking over my shoulder. I let my hair down in the Café da Paz and the bars of the Old Town; I met Mestre Chico and other bohemians and musicians who sang and played tunes and modinhas to the accompaniment of flute, guitar, violin and cavaquinho. I paid for the drink for these night time revels and the tickets to go to the operettas of the Chat Noir troupe in the Modern Theatre in Nazaré Square. We saw the dawn come up on the Salt Quay. Then I rented a launch and saw the sea for the first time. In the Paris n’América shop I bought pieces of Swiss organdie and French and Italian silk. They were presents for Estrela, Becassis’s daughter, but it was as if they were for Dinaura. I cashed the second promissory note and bought clothes and shoes for myself and Florita; I went by the Alfacinha bookshop and got a box of French books for Estiliano. I was sick of so much buying, spending, carousing, eating and drinking in the best restaurants. After more than two months of living that way, it felt like the same futile wasted life I led in Manaus, in the time before I met Dinaura. I couldn’t forget her, and I had little hope of finding her.

  In the hotel, I asked the old receptionist how much my father gave as a tip. It was a pittance. I’d give him twenty times that. I changed my mind when I opened my wallet: ten times would do, but in the end I gave him five pounds sterling. And lo and behold, the old man’s face was wet with happiness. The news that I was a rich man with an open purse had the whole port in a fluster. And when the street vendors in the Ver-O-Peso Market offered me essence of Pará, I thought of the Tangier perfumery and of my meeting with Estrela. How could I marry her if I was all the time thinking of Dinaura? I went to Vila Bela with this doubt in my mind, and a little money. ‘You’ll come back with the devil in your heart.’ Florita’s words were more frightening than Estiliano’s warnings. Because my little flower knew the two men in her life: me and my father. Estiliano only knew one side of my father, and with this one side he idealised the whole man and his soul.

  Sometimes an omen is more powerful than reason, don’t you think? A porter put all my luggage in a cart when I disembarked in Vila Bela. Before paying a visit to Estiliano, I decided to give the boxes with the pieces of cloth to Becassis’s daughter. I remembered I’d bought nothing for Azário. That brat disturbed me. Something about him reminded me of my father. I decided to face Azário and accompanied the carter to the white palace. I went round the house to the end of the back yard, but there was no scent of oils and essences, no aroma. All there was was the smell of horse- and cow-shit. Where were the owners? The carter didn’t know. And Florita?

  She’s out and about somewhere.

  Go and find her.

  It was strange to see the front of the house all boarded up. The Becassises must have gone to Boa Vida, I thought. But when I saw Florita pushing a tray with wooden wheels, I realised she no longer lived in the white palace.

  She told me that the perfumery was a lie. A week after I left, Becassis sold the two properties to the Adel family. The next day Florita had to leave the house. Estiliano rented a small room for her at the Santa Clara Harbour, and Leontino Byron gave her a tray to sell beijus and curd cheese.

  Two friends of your father’s saved me from the gutter, said Florita angrily. Even in death, he still helps me. And look what they’ve done to you.

  I was on the bare earth of the street, between a cart full of boxes and a humiliated woman. I gave Florita the presents and said we could spend a few days in Estiliano’s house. She put the packets on her tray and left without saying a word.

  Stubbornness is stupid, it destroys our lives. I was flippant and stubborn to have ignored Florita’s prophecy. This is what I was thinking as I walked towards the Francesa Lagoon. Estiliano was eating his lunch halfway along the table; around his plate were open books. He chewed, drank and paused to read one of the volumes. When he saw me, he put his spoon down and invited me to lunch. I refused and put the French books on the table; he smiled with pleasure. Becassis and Adel were clowns, I said, and I wanted to know what was behind their antics.

  Why are they clowns? That’s business. You know nothing of these things. Horadour Bonplant decided not to sell the perfumery. I even went to talk to him, but the Frenchman wanted a fortune. He put the price up each week, and so Becassis got fed up and decided to sell the two properties to Genesino Adel.

  I don’t believe that, I said to Estiliano.

  G
o by the perfumery and ask Bonplant yourself . . .

  Amando, I interrupted. Where does he come into the story?

  What do you mean?

  Azário, Estrela’s son. That sour young man, just like Amando. The same big hands, the same look as my father.

  Fantasies, that’s all you’ve got in your head, Arminto. Any money left in your pockets? Nothing left over, I bet? You’ve lost the white palace and the Boa Vida. You’ve lost everything.

  He got up and walked round the table, shutting the books.

  In times of prosperity it would just be a waste, said Estiliano. But in these poverty-struck times, it’s suicide.

  I stayed in the best hotel in Belém, tried to get the longing for Dinaura out of my system, threw money away as if there was no tomorrow. My father hadn’t even mentioned me to the hotel receptionist. But I got my revenge . . .

  Revenge? What is there after death? he asked. Now we’re going to look for a house, the last place you’ll live in.

  With the money left over, I bought this shack. Genesino Adel didn’t even give me back the furniture and personal objects from the white palace. He hated my grandfather. Only then did I find out that Edílio Cordovil had abused a Portuguese girl, Genesino’s mother, one of the many girlfriends Edílio abandoned. Salomito Benchaya told me this when I stopped by the bar in the Market for a drink. They say your grandfather got engaged, promised to marry, left the girl and went looking for another.

  Amando must have done this with Becassis’s daughter too. If Florita knew about it, she had decided to keep her mouth shut. The worst thing was her decision not to live with me any more. I had to learn to live without the flower of my infancy and childhood.

  Sometimes, worried about my being on my own, Estiliano would come by for a chat. He didn’t talk about his own life; there are people who die with their secrets. But one afternoon he revealed that he’d been very shaken by my father’s death; and that the two of them had been planning a trip to Paris.

  Just the two of you?

  Yes.

  On other visits, he commented on the books I’d bought in Belém. He said that the late afternoon inspired him and disturbed him, and at that time of the day he felt an absurd desire to suffer. He drank two bottles of red wine and, before it grew dark, he read poems by Cesário Verde and Manuel Bandeira. He left half drunk, his deep, hoarse voice intoning: ‘Life passes, life passes, and youth will end . . .’

  One Saturday afternoon he dragged me to a literary soirée at the Francesa Lagoon. Estiliano didn’t let any of his books moulder on the shelves. When he moved here, he brought from Manaus a library that astonished the town. In the early mornings he walked down to the harbour of Santa Clara, returning to read. On Saturdays, he recited poems and offered wine and liqueurs to the few people in Santa Clara who read. He’d say: When I stop working, I want nothing more of laws and statutes, nothing at all. Just reading. I came out of the soirée missing Dinaura so much that I never went back. He showed me the book from which he’d copied the poem I sent to Mother Caminal, recited Brazilian and Portuguese poems, and some by a French poet, very modern, who’d written love poems while fighting in the First World War. These poems only gave more life to my desire for my beloved. When Estiliano finished reading, I said, hardly able to speak: This is torture.

  That’s our life when things go wrong, he corrected me. But the poets are the only ones who can speak of it.

  For some time Estiliano carried on his visits, and in our conversations we avoided talking about Amando, the freighters, the past. He left books which I took a long time to read, because I’d stop at a page to think about Dinaura, or open at any page and my beloved would be there, disguised under another name, another life. I remember at that time he began to translate a Greek poem, and even gave me the first part of the translation. Then for a long time he didn’t set foot here, after the rainy afternoon when he spoke of his beloved poets, declaiming their verses, while I looked at the river and cried while he was leafing through a book.

  I’ve never seen you cry over a poem, Estiliano said.

  I’m not crying for the words. I’m crying because I long for a woman you hate. The Spanish Mother Superior lied to me . . . Someone lied to me.

  He put the books in the leather briefcase, got up and said I should understand one thing: passions are as mysterious as nature. When someone dies or disappears, the written word is the only thing we have to hold on to.

  I was going to send Estiliano to the devil; him, the written word, and all the poetry in the world, but the man was already out in the dirt street, and I was licking the tears from my lips. I never went to see him again, not even to ask for money. Some years later, when four tourists from São Paulo came by Vila Bela, I got a little money. Three women and a man—a writer. They were elegant poseurs, dressed all in black, and soaking wet from the heat. There was great excitement, and the men couldn’t keep away from the socialites. The writer was striking up conversations with everyone: Indians, caboclos, artisans and popular composers. He never tired of recording the names of plants and animals. He ate everything, even fried piranha. The four of them were received by the mayor and honoured by the local council. In the dinner given by Genesino Adel, Estiliano was the only guest who knew something about the writer. The women were so impressed with the white palace that Estiliano told them about me and the Cordovils. The next day the paulistas came to visit me. So many people had gathered around the door, and even Florita came to see the tourists. I told them I’d inherited the white palace and now lived here. They asked to see the shack and left horrified by so much poverty. Then I showed them pieces of organdie and silk from the Paris n’América haberdashery. I wanted to sell everything, whatever the price. They bought it. One of them, the oldest, wanted to know who I was going to give such marvellous cloth to.

  To my beloved Dinaura.

  Has she died?

  No, she’s somewhere around, in some enchanted city. But one day she’ll come back. If you hear that name, it’s her, she’s the only one in the world.

  The three women looked at me as if I was a madman, and I got used to being looked at like that.

  I gave part of the money to Florita and kept a little in case there was worse to come. Then I grew confused and lost count of the days, waiting for a miracle. My moods shifted: hope one day, despair the next. Those trees were planted by Florita. From time to time she’d bring some meat stew with maxixe and rice with jambu leaves soaked in tucupi sauce, delicacies she used to make in the white palace. She said I was crazy to think so much about Dinaura: she couldn’t bear seeing me like this, gormless, with a face on me like a sad toad. She served my lunch, picked fruit from the garden, and when the bell rang five times, stayed close to me, to feel my anguish and see me so upset. Then she grumbled: So long ago, and you’re still dreaming of that thankless woman. Then she went away, jealous and proud, pushing her tray. I never again gave her small change, nor did I ask for a penny. Now we were equals.

  One morning when she was here, a boy came to deliver a roll of paper. Genesino Adel sent it, he said.

  I unrolled it, and saw a photo of my parents, just married. I tore the paper down the middle, gave Florita Amando’s face, and put the picture of Angelina, my mother, on the wall of the only room in this shack. I waited two more years to enter the white palace. That was when Genesino Adel sold the building to the Justice Tribunal. I didn’t visit the house; I went in by the back just to see the sculpted head of my mother in the middle of the fountain. I kissed the stone eyes, the face warmed by the sun, and asked the judge to authorise me to take the head to my room. He refused. Then I swore that never again would I set foot in the white palace. I looked at the stone head for the last time and asked my deceased mother to help me find Dinaura.

  I bought a big canoe and moored in the harbour, offering trips to the passengers from the Booth Line. Then, when the Hilary opened the route between Liverpool and Manaus, I got fat tips. It was a huge ship, much bigger than those of the
Hamburg–South America line. On the canoe trips we saw egrets on the backs of buffalo, and sometimes a harpy eagle flying over a lake of black waters. I remember a group of tourists who wanted to see Indians. I said: All you need to do is look at the inhabitants of the town. But one of the tourists insisted: Pure Indians, naked ones. Then I took them to the Aldeia of my childhood and showed them the last survivors of a tribe. If you want to talk to them, I know an interpreter, I said, thinking of Florita. They didn’t want to talk, just take photos. Then I asked them if they wanted to see the lepers on the island of Espírito Santo, and one of the tourists said no, a dry, definitive no. At the end of the trip I showed them the façade of the white palace, saying the house had belonged to my family. Then I recounted Dinaura’s disappearance, but I think they didn’t believe me, they thought I was mad. I was prevented from going into the restaurant and the public rooms of the Hilary, and the luxury of a whole era ended in a bitter memory.

  One day, among the crowds getting off the boat, while trying to convince an English couple to take a trip with me to the Macurany, I heard a high-pitched lament: Fresh beiju . . . Florita was shouting, as if the English understood Portuguese. She sold nothing. The English couple chose another boatman, and I lost my tip. As the Hilary whistled, the passengers waved goodbye and threw coins into the Indians’ dugouts.

  If I was younger, I’d leave this place, said Florita.

  Where would you go?

  To another world.

  The ship’s engines gave a roar, the smoke clouded the sky, and the canoes disappeared. The deserted harbour, the silent quays, left me feeling low. I looked at the ground and saw Florita’s feet. Swollen, caked with dirt, her legs swollen too. I put my hands on her head and told her that my plan had been to marry Estrela only so as not to lose the white palace—a plan that wouldn’t have worked because I loved Dinaura. But I hadn’t suspected Becassis and Adel. Had she really thought they were going to trick me?