Orphans of Eldorado

by Milton Hatoum

  All I know is that everybody tricked me, said Florita.

  She couldn’t stand another day selling snacks for a pittance. Before, she was given bits of meat with bones in the slaughterhouse, but now, not even that. She put her hands on her back and murmured: My body’s aching, Arminto.

  I pushed the cart back here and we sat in the shade of the jatobá. We ate beiju, drank a bit of tarubá and recalled the nights of my childhood, when my father went round Manaus and Belém and Florita translated the stories we heard in the Aldeia. At the end of the afternoon, when we were walking along the bank of the Amazon, I thought about the woman: the tapuia who was going to live with her lover at the bottom of the river. I remembered the strange sky, with the rainbow that looked like a snake. Did Florita remember that afternoon?

  She went into the water and, with her back to me, she said: That wasn’t what she said.

  But she was speaking in the língua geral, and you were translating.

  I translated wrong, Arminto. It was all a lie.

  A lie?

  Was I going to tell a child that the woman wanted to die? She said that her husband and children had died of fever, and that she was going to die in the bottom of the river because she didn’t want to suffer in the town any longer. The girls from the Carmo, the Indian girls, understood and ran away.

  Only now you tell me. Why?

  Now I feel what the woman was saying. That’s why.

  She got out of the water, climbed the side of the ravine and went to the Ribanceira. She collected the flowers of the cuiarana and sat in the very spot where I had had my only night of love with Dinaura.

  You’ve had some days of happiness, she said, without looking at me. Does someone who’s never had even that deserve to live?

  Florita’s voice wasn’t recriminating, she didn’t want to blame me. Nor was it threatening. I insisted she come to live with me, stop standing on her dignity.

  And do you live alone? You live with a ghost.

  Before she left, Florita gave me a river dolphin’s eye.

  The left eye, for your desire, she said.

  I thanked her and put it in my trouser pocket.

  We met every time the Hilary docked, both of us trying to get a bit of money from the European passengers. When she saw me with Oyama, she left some beijus and left. The arrival of the Japanese brought life to the town; they built a settlement with Japanese houses at the edge of the Amazon, right at the mouth of the Ramos branch of the river. They founded other colonies on the Andirá River, on the lands of the sateré-maués, accomplished farmers. They planted rice, beans and maize, and even managed the great achievement of planting jute. Oyama stopped on the corner and, with a gesture, asked the name of the tree that gave so much shade, to which I replied jatobá. I gave him fruit from the garden and plant cuttings, and then we began to talk. That’s to say: I didn’t speak Japanese, nor did he speak Portuguese. He asked something and I said yes; I questioned him, and he laughed and shook his head. Sometimes I chattered on, and he made clicking sounds. In the end it was fine, because neither of us understood what the other was saying. Very friendly, Oyama was. He brought a fish prepared in the Japanese manner, and I stuffed myself. Then he bowed his head, said goodbye and never returned.

  I stopped going to the harbour because lots of young people from Vila Bela were now boatmen and canoeists. They made a terrific racket to attract attention; then, by mimicry, they amused the passengers of the Hilary with their begging faces, and took the tourists off on canoe trips. I was getting too old and was redundant. So I withdrew from the world. I wanted silence. The only voice I wanted to hear was my own. That way, I could think of Dinaura’s silence. Did the silence hide something obscure? Not a word, not a sound, this silence grew and seemed like a knife threatening me, cutting into my peace. Early in the morning, when the sun was still weak, I went out for a walk to the Ribanceira and leant on the tree trunk, the same cuiarana that sheltered us that night of rain and pleasure. Cuiarana: a tree with lovely flowers, thick petals, not in the least pale: yellow, pink, almost red. The scent of the flower is strong, as strong as a rose. And the fruit is large and heavy like a man’s head. When it falls and lies forgotten on the ground, it smells like something rotten, something spoiled. Not even the pigs will eat it. One late afternoon, during a downpour, I lay down on the flowers and remembered that night. And every year, in July, 16 July, the night of the Patron Saint’s Festival, I remembered the dance, Dinaura’s body whirling beside the dancer from the Silêncio do Matá quilombo. Something had changed. The festival ended at midnight, or even later. I heard the voice of the penitents, the sounds made by the musicians, other musicians, the laughter of women piercing the darkness; I heard the noise of hurried, furtive footsteps, I saw a moored boat rock back and forth, then I heard other laughter with whispers of pleasure. The delicious rapture of climax. I shook with so much longing. On the morning of 17 July I thought of talking to Mother Caminal, and on an impulse left here and crossed Sacred Heart of Jesus Square, where I saw the streamers from the festivities on the bandstand, bottles of guaraná and beer on the ground, the stage empty, the ashes of the bonfire; luckily, I didn’t see Iro, the harbinger of bad omens. And that gave me hope. For a second I thought that I wasn’t going to meet the headmistress, but Dinaura. I opened the door and saw a group of girls playing with a shuttlecock in the garden; something had changed, for these orphans were not working in the morning. I saw two nuns, the younger of them a novice. They were surprised by the presence of a man with sad eyes in his pale face, and dressed in old clothes. A middle-aged man who wanted to see the headmistress. Mother Caminal, I said. Our reverend Joana Caminal? She’s in Spain, sir, said the novice. She left us six years ago. Our Reverend Mother wanted to die in Catalonia, but she is still alive. She didn’t even say goodbye to me, I said resentfully. They looked at me uncomprehendingly. Then they moved away, took the orphans’ hands, made a circle, sang and skipped. How lively they were. How much happiness in the house of God. Not a sign of my beloved. I came back here eaten up with a hellish longing. I dozed off after lunch, and woke to hear a voice asking me if it was really me in the rain, laughing or crying, with my hands full of flowers. A musician from the island even composed a tune, forgotten now: ‘The Enchanted Woman’. The song told the story of Dinaura, and of her life as an unhappy queen at the bottom of the river. This was years ago, when I last walked through the town.

  The sadness I felt that afternoon began mid-morning. I was picking pink jambo fruit when a man appeared. He was pushing Florita’s tray very slowly, and stopped there at the side of the street. I went to see what he wanted and saw my Florita, my flower, lying on the tray.

  Sleeping in the sun? I asked.

  The man took his hat off and said: She died in the night.

  He was a neighbour of Florita’s.

  She died quite suddenly, just like Amando. The wake was in the chapel of the Carmo, out of respect for my father. I wept as if I were in front of my family’s tomb. They were the last tears I ever shed. Florita’s death broke the links with the past. I and I alone was the past and the present of the Cordovils. And I wanted no future for men of my kind. Everything will end in this old man’s body.

  On Sundays, Ulisses Tupi or Joaquim Roso left a fish there at the door. I salted and dried the steaks; that was my lunch, with lots of manioc flour to fill my belly, and a banana I picked in the garden. Is that the way I ended my life? Only that there was one more twist, which left me reeling. The Second World War reached this place. And for the first time a President of the Republic visited Vila Bela. The whole town went to applaud the man in Sacred Heart Square. Even the dead were there. I, who only lived for Dinaura, and could die for her, didn’t leave this shack. President Vargas said that the allies needed our rubber, and that he and every Brazilian would do all they could to defeat the countries of the Axis. Then thousands of people from the Northeast went to work extracting rubber. Rubber soldiers. The freighters sailed the rivers of Amazonia
again; they carried rubber to Manaus and Belém, and then flying boats took the cargo to the United States. The dreams and promises came back too. Paradise was here, in the Amazon region; that was what was said. What did exist, and I never forgot, was the ship Paradise. It moored just down there, at the edge of the ravine. It brought more than a hundred men from the rubber stands of the Madeira, almost all of them blinded by the smoke-curing of the rubber. There, where Aldeia was, the mayor ordered the forest to be knocked down so that shacks could be built. And another neighbourhood appeared: Cegos do Paraíso, the Blind Men of Paradise. Other rubber-tappers occupied the edge of the Francesa Lagoon and the River Macurany, and founded Palmares. And I didn’t budge from here, still living under the same roof. I thought of the orphan when the flying boats flew over Vila Bela; I thought of life with Dinaura, in another place. I talked to her, imagining her by my side. And I announced out loud that I was going to meet her, and the two of us would leave this place. My imagination ran down the river as far as the sea, and that enlivened me. You see: a body still, with the imagination running loose, ideas full of excitement . . . That body survives. I copied the Greek poem translated by Estiliano, and read that poem so many times that I even memorised some lines: ‘I’ll go to another land, I’ll go to another sea. I’ll find a city better than this one. Wherever I cast my eyes, wherever I look, I see my life in black ruins here.’ I said these words looking at the river and the forest, thinking of the request I made to my mother, Angelina. Who else did I know? Cordovil was just a name with no memory attached. The older people of the town were dead and buried. Ulisses Tupi and Joaquim Roso were merely generous hands that left fish for my sustenance and went away. In the early morning I couldn’t sleep. I heard the noise of the boats and jumped out of my hammock. They went by like ghosts in the night. I looked at the useless twinkle of the stars, drank, and sometimes slept right here, in the damp of the night air. And how many nightmares: endless shipwrecks. I awoke with images of boats colliding and crashing noises; I awoke with the image of Juvêncio’s face, swollen and disfigured, with no eyes, his hands spread out, asking for alms. I spent the day fleeing from these things—unreal, absurd, they were, but they seemed so alive they frightened me. I didn’t know what to do when I was awake, so I talked to myself to forget the nightmares. The fishermen and boatmen said I was off my head. And that rumour brought a visitor, my last and only friend.

  It was some time since we’d seen each other. Neither of us ever went out. Estiliano sat right there, on that little bench given me by a sateré-maué. He was very old but still robust. And a little hunchbacked, his head inclined to the earth. He wore the same white jacket, with the emblem of the scales of Justice on the lapel. He believed.

  We were silent for some time, until he said these words:

  I’m going to die.

  So are we all.

  I’m going to die before you, he went on. What is it you’re going around saying in town?

  I no longer go to town, Estiliano. I say the same things without moving an inch. The Greek poem. Your translation of the Greek poet, the translation you never finished.

  I repeated the words, looking at the Amazon and the islands.

  He shook his head and sighed:

  Useless words, Arminto.

  Why useless?

  Because, if you go away, you’ll not find another town to live in. Even if you do, your own town will go after you. You’ll roam the same streets until you come back here. Your life has been wasted in this corner of the world. And now it’s too late, no boat will take you anywhere else. There is nowhere else.

  Estiliano took from his jacket pocket an envelope with guaraná powder in it, the colour of blood. He put a little of the powder in his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  A life with Dinaura, I said. That’s the only thing that gives me courage. Dinaura had a secret to tell. She believed . . .

  In this time of war, hunger and abandonment people believe in everything, said Estiliano. But Dinaura’s secret . . .

  He put the envelope into his pocket, slowly looking up at me with a tenderness I found embarrassing. Because it wasn’t just tenderness—it was as if he was looking at my father. Then he said in a low voice: Dinaura came back to the island.

  I got up and went towards him: Island? What do you mean?

  He asked me to sit down and not get excited. He said he wanted to tell me before he died. It was a secret between him and my father. But he didn’t know everything.

  I know that Amando depended on connections with politicians, said Estiliano. He wagered everything on the bidding in 1912, and lost to a big shipping company. But that wasn’t why he died. It’s a long time ago, and you were still living in the Pension Saturno, and studying to get into the law faculty. Your father wanted to speak to me in the house in the Ingleses neighbourhood. He was nervous, worried. I hardly recognised the man. He said he was supporting an orphan girl. Out of pure charity. Then he said it wasn’t just charity. And he asked me not to tell anyone. He didn’t tell me if she was his daughter or his lover. At her age, she could have been either. At first, I thought she was his daughter, but then I changed my mind. I was never certain. It was the only time your father left me confused and hurt. He brought the girl here, said to Mother Caminal that she was his goddaughter and that she was to live with the Carmelites. She asked the headmistress to keep that secret. I know that Dinaura lived alone in a wooden house Amando built behind the church. She lived with privileges, good food, and I sent books because she liked reading. It was a mistake on Amando’s part. A moral error. But he wanted to live here and be near her.

  Dinaura, my sister? I said, choking.

  Half-sister, Estiliano corrected me. Or stepmother. That’s what I’m not sure about. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I promised your father I’d look after her, if he died before me. To this day I don’t know who she is. I discovered that her mother was born on an island in the Rio Negro. Dinaura wrote me a letter, asking to live there. She wanted to leave Vila Bela. When I came back from Belém, I spent two days here. You were in Manaus. It was at the time of the wreck of the Eldorado. I spoke to Mother Caminal and helped Dinaura.

  We had one night of love, I said.

  That’s why she wanted to go away. In the same letter she said that your story only existed in novels.

  Is she alive? Where is this island?

  Estiliano opened a sheet of paper and showed me a map with two words on it: Manaus and Eldorado.

  I read the words out loud and looked at Estiliano.

  Once they were synonyms, he said. The colonisers confused Manaus or Manoa with Eldorado. They were looking for the gold of the New World in a submerged city called Manoa. That was the real enchanted city.

  And the map? Is Dinaura in Manaus or on the island?

  She went to live in the village on the island, Eldorado, said Estiliano. Someone, mistakenly or out of malice, told Mother Caminal that Dinaura was seriously ill. No, it wasn’t your father. She might have got it into her own head that she was ill. She wouldn’t tell me. I think only your father could drag any words out of that woman. Mother Caminal agreed to her leaving. And she went away. The island is a few hours away from Manaus. Dinaura must be in Eldorado. Alive or dead. I don’t know. But I didn’t want to die with that secret. That’s why I’ve come here. Out of friendship for your father too.

  My father. At that moment I thought: poor Estiliano, a senile old man. I told him I hadn’t a penny to my name but I was determined to sell this shack to go to Manaus and the island.

  He took a sheaf of notes from his pocket and put them on my knee. Good heavens: how long was it since I’d seen money! Then he said he was in a hurry, very busy with his own death. He smiled, without any warmth, and explained:

  I have to go to the registrar’s office to sign over my house and my books. I want to give everything to Vila Bela and realise one of my friend’s dreams. Your father wanted to build a library in this poor town. He didn’t live to do it.


  He got up and embraced me. So that was the last time I saw Estiliano, wearing his white jacket, trousers with braces and old shoes.

  Destiny is the most imponderable thing in life, he used to say. Stelios da Cunha Apóstolo. He died when I was on my way to Eldorado. He was buried in the Cordovils’ tomb. I kept the Spanish poem, and to this day I have the map of the island.

  I went in an old vessel: a steamship from the Mississippi, the last one to ply the Amazon. I hung round my neck the dolphin’s eye Florita had given me and put my mother Angelina’s photograph into my trouser pocket. I slept in a hammock in third class, on the deck level with the water. Lots of noise, birds and pigs tied up, a sour smell of sweat and dirt. The food was filthy. None of this mattered, because this could be the journey of my life, to the elusive heart of the woman I loved.

  Very early in the morning, as the boat was nearing Manaus, I went up to the bridge to see the towers of the cathedral and the dome of the Opera House. I remembered the house in the Ingleses, the Pension Saturno and the Cosmopolitan Grocery, my jobs in the store run by the Portuguese and in the Manaus Harbour. In the Escadaria Harbour, a barge was unloading rubber. The smell made me nauseous, the balls piled up like a lot of dead vultures. An ugly vision, only a few blocks from the business I had inherited and lost. On the quay, I was surrounded by people selling objects left behind by the Americans during the Second World War. I bought nothing. No one recognised a Cordovil from the past. I might as well have been in the skin of one of the peddlers: the difference was our stories. But isn’t that everything anyway? For vengeance or puerile pleasure I’d thrown away a fortune. But I’m not sorry.

  I showed the map to an experienced pilot and told him I was looking for a village on the island of Eldorado.

  I know there’s a leper town on one of the islands of the Anavilhanas, he said. Sick people who fled from the colony of Paricatuba.

  Was that the sickness Dinaura was hiding? I imagined her beauty destroyed, and thought about the silence of our meetings. The pilot saw I was upset and asked if I felt dizzy. Angry was what I was. The question whether Dinaura was Amando’s daughter or had been his lover was something that concerned only the two of them. And it would always remain a mystery. But wasn’t I a part of this story too?