Translation by Christopher Schindler 2020
Four: Paxiúba
Someone said,”Hey!”. (The voice, like what?)
It was
that big strapling caboclo
Paxiúba who is entering this story and talking - at this time about
nineteen years old, but already endowed with size, reputation, status, at a
height of six foot three. (Ah yes, I remember him
all too well. We get old but before
dying, memory revives us and we live in it until the tamp of time snuffs us out; a glossy, big tomcat
swipes his tongue in the forgotten stillness, nothingness, so that we
disappear; it will be as if we never existed, not even as a fictional character
which is what we are.) But his bestial
eye sees everything, and registers it – his voice like a fly on the blood rose
and void of conversation. It was said
Paxiúba was the son of a black man from Madeira-Mamoré, Barbados, and a Caxinauá Indian woman, whom I did not know,
and became legendary and eternal - it was he himself approaching, rowing,
silent and menacing in the height of the morning towards the lush growth in
front of Laurie Costas's door, located on the left bank of Hell's Bayou which
was subsumed and meandered through the renowned plain.
So he came saying only: “Hey!” addressing
himself to a certain Zilda, the wife of Laurie Costa, a washerwoman, squatting,
crouching over a smooth, leached itaúba board, a soapy scrubbing board, - she
had not even seen him nor could she foresee him covering her entirely like an
gigantic caiman - Paxiúba in his dugout,
a handsome spectacle to see (in a literary sense), an enormous tetrapod, as I
thus later came to know, a dark caboclo and tiger, huge, wanton, with
snake eyes, bold, intensely savage, fierce, shining in the yellow eye of the
sun, ferocious, his noble musculature would make the statues in the Louvre
envious, head raised on a thick neck, solid, alert, belligerent, murderous,
frightening subjectivity - it was thus he was coming, cynical, predatory,
sparing or tolerating no one, not even a judge, as if he were saying to
himself: “I know you: I know who you are” - the certainty of guilt, the
indecent and menacing look enough to frighten a policeman – his power came from
the the smell of the tonka bean tree that extracted from his easy victim the
expected confession, indeed, he weakened and anesthetized people, putting them
to sleep under his power (it was known he was never to be trusted) - imposing
his bulk which backed up his bloody designs and commands, acquisitions and
pleasures, which he found in the depths of ourselves, wrenched out and
submitted to his access, ah, the brute, but primordial: from the fleeting
impression to the exact and guilty certainty that, in the logic of our dark
innocent region, coerces and presses to reveal itself, impelled outward by a
hypnotic force toward new submissions, smiles infiltrating into the cracks of
power from which he rules, cunning and intimate, in the empty intersection and
prohibition of response, in the inversion of retrograde forces, unmasked
roguery, his sole nobility, any left-over dignity: “Speak his truth” was the
language of an order from his eyes in the perfidy of his sensual and perverse
smile, underscored by an outline of sin that photographed us, that spoke to us,
in the considered mirror of indignities.
It would not be good to meet Paxiúba suddenly on a deserted road. He demanded caution; fear and mute
experience of a dim familiarity with sensitivity was seen in the transmission
of his secret. In one word:
obvious. When he left, people crossed
themselves. Because he came off as a
warrior of irregular seasons, of inverse time, of the most remote, crafty
mechanisms, of corporeal possibilities that were his prerogative, out of the
ordinary and capable of much accomplshiment, forming an alert and ready muscle. Paxiúba, emblem of overgrown and brutal
Amazonia, shadowy, unknown, pernicious.
And the dugout, having traversed areas requiring caution, gently
collided into the plank of the dock where Zilda was washing clothes, white and
clean, shining, suds rising and going forth in soapy and glassy bubbles
scattering on the white edge of the river's surface reflected by the sun and in
religious purification of the water.
With her back to him, (she didn't know
that would be the day) Zilda attentive to her work, concentrated, absorbed -
and plop - she beat the wash against the heavy soap board to scatter the
accumulated heaps of flying and colored bubbles into the air, vaporized,
elevated, exploding into little panics.
And the fixed urgency of his look frightened her and made her feel ill,
like the coming of a sickness, of death, in a quickly developing turnabout into
hatred, nausea, loathing and congested phlegm.
The voice she heard in its flight of sounds, native sounding, diction of
a conniving phenomenon, curiously sharp, metallic, like a needle in its
vibratory height, plucking and peeling of arpeggios and aggressive trumpets,
and undertones of violin and harpsichord, a continuous ensemble behind the
domination of the whinny of an excited horse with a black and shiny mane, a
voice that she didn't know where it came from, as from all sides but not from
his mouth, and yet it reverberated in the opposite direction, outside of the
surrounding space, like it immediately came out strong from his abdomen, and
generating, to the extent that it existed in lax and heavy modulations, an
entreating and irresistable appeal, a low and earthy blow, but attentive, like
a snake that makes itself known as a queen, propagating, gradual, delayed,
primal, intrinsic, in the glands of an established and fecund operation, the
nervous schemes of his body's musculature and primary clinical urges and needs,
awakened and abounding, hard, such “ssss” vibrations inclined to weaken a
woman's supports and defenses.
Zilda was stirred inwardly under that
pressure, troubled, and in a panic, with loathing and odious horror, feeling
herself affected by the hospitable penetration of the killing and bestial head
of that voice, native of the tonka bean tree, fructifying earth – autonomous
and sibilant timbre of a serpent, not aggressive but insistent, of a demonic
audacity that said: “I know you”. And
which was saying: “You can't hide from me”.
Now she knew. She knew in her whole being the outcome of
that voracity, what his body wanted. She
knew what he expected of her. Sickness:
her guard dropped, apprehensive, hidden, cowering, squatting, exposed to the
intimacies of that sound. What happened
then? She could have secured the gun
that was always kept behind the shrine of Saint Rita. But she was afraid of the paralysis of her
will. Her husband far away. The nascent aggressive figure. Confrontation. Her wet clothing leaving bare the solid,
concrete, white corpulence of her large breasts and her mature woman's body,
ripe for fecundation, skirt between plump legs attainable in the amplitude of
morality.
Due to the Morgados, her husband was the
only rubber tapper on the Manixi plantation who was able to bring along a
wife. Laurie Costa was a favorite;
Bataillon liked him and approved, though provisionally. Zilda became the personal laundress of the
Palácio's linens, except those laundered in Lisbon, as the dross of the river
water, beggars' water as it was called, soiled some of the laundry. The Morgados, having sold the plantation of
the Riachuelo Bayou upon the direct order of Dona Isabel Morgado who was afraid
of the fevers, had become rich enough to move to Lisbon, where they settled in
the Amoreiras district. Laurie and Zilda
said good-bye to their friends, the Indian Iurimão and his young Indian wife
Ianu, who went to Rio Ji-paraná, where they were never heard from again.
Now then,
Paxiúba was walking dangerously near on the dock, his glance fixed on
his prey and near the lurking malice of an odious and arrogant false friend;
alert, she drew back instantly, polarized, armed in the preservation of the
defense of her integrity against the straight aim of that corruptor's
look. She hoped that Paxiúba would not
come nearer, that he would exclude her from any harm ever since the time he was
a person of the Palácio, head of the police apparatus of the plantation, body
guard of Zequinha Bataillon (they said a friend who slept with the boy), a man
of primary importance. Paxiúba, armed
assassin, eagle and snake, eliminated whoever needed to be in his function of
coercing and killing. Thus, the cynical
face, perverse and damp, glued on her, possessing something that pulsated in
him, in delight. Oh, this was happening when
she was alone in the hours of her solitary drudgery. The king's gunman, Paxiúba, police
soldier. A look was enough to know he
would exact something, examine, humiliate her, corner her, surreptitious,
excessive, cynical, obsessive, dominating, provocative, pornographic, hypnotic. Greater danger: he was looking at her! It meant that he saw her, was aware of her,
powerless against that devastating, forced, psychologically invasive and
debauched knowledge. Would she tell her
husband? No, she would say nothing to
prevent the death of Laurie Costa, her only darling. She loved him, the most kind of men. But she didn't have children, she
couldn't. And what's more: she never
felt anything with him. She served her husband. Only a loose woman should have an
orgasm. Laurie would kill her if she
moaned, experience pleasure. Trying to
impregnate her Laurie regularly got on top of her with his clothes on and not
touching her. A child would be the
cement for a happy family. She married
quite young, guided by her godmother Rita, from one of the best families of
Vila da Serra da Mernoca, in Ceará; then had come a prolonged, approved
courtship. They went to Roçado de
Dentro, but godmother Rita died, the crisis came and, banished, they had to
come to the Amazon. Laurie always
reliable, proper. Now peace infiltrated
by the tonka bean tree. In the last few
days she was troubled, becoming sick just being seen by that brute. The situation got worse with the weekly
solicitations. Paxiúba showed a certain
affection, courtesies, in a choking voice that indicated that he was still a
child after all. And Zilda, disliking it
because he was a bully, read in those eyes what he wanted, expected, begged for
and which said: “I will wait for you.
You will be with me one of these days”.
Zilda's house was a one-room thatched hut
with a floor of beaten clay, walls and doors of rasp palm, with two doors: one
opened over the bayou passing below; the other opened onto the forest ahead
where there was a garden box on four poles.
Their dog had died, bitten by a snake, leaving her even more alone. The smell of beans cooking on the fire came
from the kitchen located by the door into the bush. But,
Paxiúba was coming towards her, the smell of tonka bean tree upon
her. He had a present, a big cichlid
spread out on a plam leaf, barely alive.
Paxiúba was the best fisherman of the Amazon, as if by magic, with his
eye of a snake of the hypnotic and horrifying type. Almost happy with the fish, Zilda felt her
hatred increase in a brutal rush. It was
the first time she hated somone; remoseful, she crossed herself. She felt nauseated near the fellow, her mouth
contracted from disgust, from repugnance of something repulsive, phlgem, thick
gum like latex, her mouth filled with saliva that she spit out when he came to
her, which seemed strangely satisfying for the brute, as if she were spitting
out of love. She never looked at him
directly, however; gathered into his desire by her timid look, she was afraid
to glance at him, so as not to take in directly and see something
menacing. But there came to her in the
last few days such a foolish, silly idiocy, a dizziness of enchantment, a jinx
in the smile from the lips of the fellow; she became paralysed without
strength, anesthetized without power, useless in spite of his ugly face and a
smirk that came to have an energy, an excitement (as it was insane) that
crazed, she plunged against herself in a vain reflex awakening a certain
irresponsibility and attraction in the weight of an unknown madness and the
strange fragrance that emanated from her body such that everything that boy
represented to her, might contaminate her; it was the force of the Manixi
Palace's power, the splendor of the rubber plantation, in its orgy of
charismatic luxury - Paxiúba, the
brother of Zequinha (son of Dona Iphigenia, her mistress) - all that resounded
in her contradictory dreams, in everything wrong and other in her life, ingrate
and destroyed, without discretion and now without a future, here, unlucky,
lost, idle in the Amazon, the most far away of worlds, and she knew well that the
body of that brute, mainly the broad chest and handsome shoulders, exuded the
heat of power of the Bataillons as if he were the firm and strong iron of the
authority and glory of the estate, imbued with that fragrance of tonka bean,
oily, contaminated; she also felt it within her as the odor of love, honey from
the body of unknown love in the midst of soapy sweat on the skin.
Then what happened was the following:
Zilda unable to refuse him, she picked up the fish from the palm of that hand,
without touching it and no thank you's, rose decisivley from her work leaving
the laundry there in its soap suds and went stright and quickly; in the house
she took the lid off of the jug and drank a mug of well water that made her
choke – but it was when she saw in a panic that man displaying himself there in
her house, without being able to react that she became ill, twisted inside,
struck dumb; he seized her firmly by the wrists with those enormous hot hands
and she yielded completely, so that when she decided to scream the scream did
not come; she collapsed at the moment of being bound with him, defenceless,
drunk, silly, washed out and nauseated, suffocating... Oh! grief of
griefs! Oh! defeat of defeats! Oh, woe, the weakness of the human
condition. “Quiet, little one!” he was
saying in a gentle voice... “Be a good little girl”, he begged, whispering very
softly in her ear, adding: “Keep still, my love”. Demons!, how soothing was that soft and
docile voice, for the victim horrifyingly docile!, she bleeding inside,
irregular, against a monster of so many initiatives and resources that she
encountered within her a treacherous demon, allied with an enemy, hidden in
darkness, seeing how helpless it was to react, to struggle, disengaged, the
impregnating enemy in the contraction of disconnected forces. The cry was fast and terrifying. It could have been heard at the Manixi Palace
if it had been heard there. It was as if
she was being swallowed alive. It was
the cry of the oppressed, of despair, of horror in the encounter with inimical
forces...
On the next day Zilda's husband was dead,
his liver pierced by an arrow.
But the day before, after Paxiúba left
saying to her “thank you, my love”, she remained stretched out on the floor and
realized she was not going to die while her husband was on his way bringing her
a stalk of bananas gathered from the road beyond the risky limits of the Numa
and their signs marked in the shadows of the edges of Hell's Bayou; at home he
found the cichlid cooked and fragrant, prepared in sauces with fine herbs, a
beautiful fish, king of Amazonia.
What more? How? Unexpectedly the day after, as he had not seen
where he was tearing the veil, he had departed from the boundary and broke the
law; he was suddenly killed at the limit where Amazonia determined the
directions to the right and to the left, boundaries of the Numa which were
there and were advancing, finding their origin in everything and everywhere
realizing the course of their weave of nodes that reveal nothing of themselves
and upholding themselves, in blood veins that cover it in Amazonia, in its
permutation, in its alteration, in all its unknown grandeur. The corpse was
thrown in front of the Palácio as a warning. And in those same days there
occurred important events in other places and times, historical and decisive
for this fiction and which I will relate at the opportune moment, but for now,
I have some surprises of many other occurrences
