Five: Ferreira
First thing, I
caught sight of the Palácio.
Day was just
dawning. The veranda was like a stage
set where a breakfast scene was playing with Pierre Bataillon and Iphigenia
Vallarde. Young Ivete was serving. I was at the dock, carried there by the
current. Benumbed, my body almost dead,
I touched the steps of the stairs, but did not feel them. They did not see me, but I saw them. There was the king, the builder of the Amazon
empire of rubber, of land and latex, who built everything with hundreds of men,
workers and tappers. I was brought forth
upon the waters like Moses in Egypt.
Faint flashbacks appeared and disappeared. The image of my dead brother came in and out
of my mind. But it did not pain me. It was a vague, fuzzy picture.
Bataillon was a
shorter and thinner man than I had imagined.
Well dressed, erect, broad gestures, haughty and nervous behavior,
dignity, old-fashioned manners. Aquiline
nose. Fine hair. Little black mustache. His head raised, noble, he had an aura. Bow tie, jacket of white linen, wide
coattails and trousers, patent leather shoes.
His air, the gaze with which he looked upon the outside world, was
arrogant, superior, proud, like a sovereign by royal concession. He put you on edge. He made a display of his importance. In spite of his small stature, it was as if
he were looking down from on high, from an upper platform. Yes, there was elegance and dignity. I heard him speaking erudite Portuguese,
artificial, bookish, classical and correctly pronounced, but fluent. I got bits of his speech … “she gave birth to
a son named” … “it was agreed upon that” … The white three-piece suit
shone. Well tailored. Silk shirt, suspenders, collar, a solid gold
John Bull watch attached by a metal chain of double rings, heavy, platinum and
gold. He was a man in a showcase, in a
museum, on exhibit. In his belt there
was a Smith & Wesson of nickel and silver with an ivory handle. It was said that he was a good shot, like a
military man, that he collected firearms, revolvers, rifles, antique muskets
that filled the Hall of Weaponry of his shock troops.
I don't know why
Pierre Bataillon wanted me to stay, to work with him. He liked me.
But now, a
visitor is coming down the gangplank of the Comendador, a young attorney whose
professional credentials were recently publicized in the city of Manaus. The Comendador is a fine ship, a long white
boat. It belongs to the rich Commander
Gabriel Gonçalves da Cunha, father of Glorinha, or Maria de Gloria, “the Dullard”,
wife of the young lawyer who is arriving.
The Comendador, shining white, contrasts with the various shades of the
surrounding green and blue, crackle moss green, snake vines, emerald, cobalt of
the water, the blue sky vault. The
lawyer leaves the gangplank laughing.
His name is Antonio Ferreira. He
is the agent and business successor of the extremely rich Commander. He has the appearance of a child. A big white child, elegantly manicured hands,
curly black hair, falling in ringlets over the gold frames of his glasses. Cambric three-piece suit, Panama hat, black,
narrow pointed shoes. The sun beats down
and the contour under the fine fabric of his clothes is that of a strong body,
stocky legs, full buttocks. His eyes
sparkle and flash joviality; they explode
with lightheartedness and active fantasy underlined by a permanent
adolescent smile, candor and slyness inscribed on sensual lips. A needy child. Boyish face, outlaw, killer. Friendly, educated, sociable,
exhibitionist. Ferreira was the greatest
propagandist for himself. It was not
other women that he really loved, but Glorinha; and he was at her service in
various ways. His ambitions were
concentrated upon her. In spite of being
the son of a humble, middle-class family, he was elevated to the podium: he had
married “the Dullard”, or better yet the most solid fortune in the land; how
the young man knew like no one else to make himself liked by his father-in-law,
who saw in him the personification of intelligence, loyalty, merit, equal
understanding equal, and the more corrupt the more loyal to the type of
capitalism in practice there at the time; the old man loved him his whole life
like a son, even after he separated from the daughter, as we shall see. Glorinha was tall, thin, pale, skeletal, wan,
buck-toothed, big-nosed, the image of a fairy-tale witch, bony, an illustration
from a children's book. Practically an
imbecile. She fled from her groom on the
wedding night with ostentation and scandal - which betrayed her later madness –
crying, to her father's house, racked with fear, in a panic, a fit of nerves.
Even speech was
controlled in that house in which storks with enchanted babies were seen in the
dream fantasies of a shut-in little girl, benumbed, warped by a strict father,
about whom the neighbors on the same street knew nothing; any trivial event,
which was everything, had to be hidden from Glorinha, brought up as a freak,
going out in company only inside a closed carriage, puffed up in pillows and
amid the ruffles of the clean, indigo-dyed and aseptic white skirts of a legion
of old maid aunts and her proper, severe, vigilant mother Dona Martha, who saw
everything, knew everything, even what the girl was looking at. Hidden in the corners and back rooms of the
house, nervous and insecure, depressed, pallid, she never appeared, fearful of
everything, never visited anyone regularly, embedded in her fears until her sad
end. Alas! When anyone arrived, she retired saying she
had a headache. On the rare occasions
she remained in the room, she stayed seated, quiet, hunched over, saying
nothing, looking idiotically at everyone, agreeing with everything that was
said, she smiled vaguely, as is from afar.
Glorinha did not speak, did not play, did not hate. All was a passive introversion of fear,
terror, obedience, silence. An example
of a Manauara education, it was said she remained a virgin her whole life and
that Ferreira did not violate her. Perhaps
he loved her. She was the living
inheritance of the immense fortune, influence, political power of her father: a
rising force, head of a political class, leader, boss, cruel murderer, corrupt,
corrupter of that age of splendor and glory of Amazon rubber gold.
This is the young
man whom we see coming off the gangplank of the Comendador onto the dock on
this Sunday morning, and Sunday mornings are different on the plantation: the
rubber collectors come on principle, of necessity, for no reason, by a string
mechanism pulling them to the headquarters, which was a large open shed, to be
sure not the Palácio, the separate residence of the Bataillon family which no
one approached; they come to deliver the balls of rubber, exchange products for
provisions (as few see actual cash), seek out a pint of cachaça on credit to go
off and drink alone. Sinister, heavily
armed, the Colonel's men go by. The air
is full of the smell of caxiri beer. The
open inlet of Hell's Bayou, an intersection of two plains, is smooth as a
mirror; there are cries from the tree tops.
Two Peruvian prostitutes arrive in a canoe. The movement of men, boats and machines give
life to the place that overflows with the agitation of the day; it is Sunday
morning after all.
In the shade of
the door I see a human figure. It is
Colonel Bataillon with a stiff collar, daring red tie, Havana suit, hands in
his pockets, appearing happy on the ridge of the marble staircase, eyes on the
fixed horizon like the king of a green sea without limits. Now he gestures with his index finger in the
air, an inaudible order given to the urchin servant Mundico, frolicking near
him, and who then disappears toward the back of the house. Ferreira, on his way up the steps, continues
to smile towards his host who awaits him.
“What brings you
here, then?” Pierre says extending his hand, slanting his head to the left, ear
towards his shoulder. “You must have had
an excellent trip in this weather...”
“How are you?”
Ferreira asks, one step lower, his hand going forward to take hold of the older
man.
“Well, I tell
you,” Pierre continues. “These last days
have been the best for travel to these parts.
I understand the courage of travelers who arrive here. Fifteen days ago we had a superb rain. A day of deluge. If you had seen …...” (his accent sounded
Frenchified). Pierre led the young man
by the arm. They walk toward the house
slowly. Halfway there, however, Pierre
stops, motionless. Then he raises his arms,
dramatically and turns around. He points
to the sky with the tip of his finger, “See those clouds. The weather is changing. Cumulus clouds are forming. Tonight the
forest will exhale its sylvan soap bar perfume.
Tomorrow the waters will be fresh and clear... we have rains par-dessus les
autres. Water washes water, not the
muddy turbidity of the Upper Amazon. Heavenly weather with the blessing...” I do not hear any more; the two enter and
disappear beyond the portal. A scarlet
macaw, red and yellow, makes its fabulous brush stroke on the sky.
When the two
reappear on the terrace in the evening, near the upper gallery, the rain had
already passed and, in front, two
children are bathing in Hell's Bayou in the line of vision of the statue
erected on the patio, “Splendor of Amazonia”, an allegory on latex extraction,
commissioned by Dona Iphigenia Vellarde in Paris in 1894.
“You have the
good fortune to live among works of art,” Ferreira says.
“Works? These?” Pierre stops short with beady snake
eyes. “The arts, my good man, corrupt
the spirit and morals. They are a heap
of impurities. Only contact, direct
relation with the natural world, the forest …”
“You don't prefer
the civilized world?”, Ferreira interrupts.
“To the
uncivilized world?”, (Pierre exults:) “The expression of wickedness accumulated
by culture, all this, isn't that entire thing uncivilized? Look: I am transplanted here, at Manixi,
Social Democracy. See my dog
Rousseau. I love him and for that he is faithful. He protects me and for that I love him and
feel protected and loved. What does that
mean? What is this dog?. What separates the two worlds meets in him,
the pure sentiments of the corrupted.
You believe in the purity of the heart, don't you?”
Ferreira looks at
him as if he were looking at a crazy person.
I can see from where I am that he is dismayed. So to calm him, he asks, “When is your son returning from Europe?”
As if he had
heard nothing, Pierre continues speaking, “Have you seen the ... bordered in
pure gold ... Cattleya edorado in the deepest recess of the forest? Do you know the famous, rare and unmatched
Cattleya superba?”
The two urchins
are visible and audible, crying like birds.
They are in the line of sight of the statue on the terrace. “Splendor of the Amazon” is an art-nouveau
lady of white marble and she is dancing with a basket over her shoulder; she
represents fertility, wealth and the abundance of latex. She is covered with earth and sprinkles of
latex. In her basket a live seedling of
a rubber tree is planted; it is already the length of a palm of the hand. Ferreira notices it. The two are on the terrace. Pierre grasps the outer edge of the parapet;
I see the glint of his signet ring. The
terrace is an old part of the construction.
Four caryatids stare at the Amazonian shades of green-yellow. The Amazona festiva parrot squawks on its
perch.
Abruptly,
incomprehensibly, interrupting with impetuosity and effulgence like Phoebus on
the horizon – a tall, hardy, intense, vigorous, marvelous Maacu Indian woman,
like a goddess, emerges, appears, explodes through the door with arm tattoos of
red and blue; she is almost naked, wrapped in a coat of silvery silk and in a
brilliant blaze like the sky. Spread out
in her arms, she is carrying a round tray of gilded silver, as if it were the
sun itself, incandescent, impossible to look at, thousands of megatons above
what would be bearable, the coffee and liqueur service of rose-colored Baccarat
- a shock, Ferreira closes his eyes blinded by the diamond brightness and she
places the tray in front of him, almost in his lap, on a table top of
red-streaked marble placed there on a tripod of embellished iron, feminine, in
an offering gesture of French symbolism, a banana tree branch, exotic bird of
paradise plants, of straight petals in the form of long birds with orange crests
inspired by art nouveau, vivid and above the balanced paradise between elegant
impulses, between subtle meditations of the node, of acrobatic sarugaku,
air-borne – Ferreira is dizzy and fails to understand the most beautiful of
women, Maacu Amazons, pure bronze, Diana leaving the Teatro Amazonas, a
slightly sweet vision of the delights in the sumptuousness of the panorama and
in its contagion, in the intoxicant that smells of pomegranate, inhamuí,
panquilé, which might have come out of a bath of roses, hair the fragrance of
wind, strength, passion, clean and pure love of a young being, twenty years
old, irradiating freshness, luster, energy; Ferreira sees her from his low cane
chair, the strength, the savage color of those long legs.
Maria Caxinauá,
an Indian woman who seems as old as the forest serves lunch. Still there, the
lively Maacu woman exposes her arms to the imagination of a glance. The silk accentuates and glides like runny
paste. Everything drips at this time of
day. Listless, lazy, sensual. The bayou brightens in invisible speed, in
its oily flow. Silence. Unctuous river. It is called “bayou” by geographical economy,
for its narrows, its hidden pass between two large silk cotton trees. “Hell's” means “of the Numa”, from which it comes,
of latex milk and Indians. Concentrated
wealth. Pierre Bataillon discovered that
bayou in 1876. Extraction in the Amazon
was doubling every decade. From 1821 to
1830 it was 320 tons. In the following
decade it expanded to 2,314 tons. From
'41 to '50, 4,693 tons. A big
development came from '51 to '60: 19,383 tons. From '71 to '80, 60,225
tons. After his arrival: 110,048
tons! Up to that year Pierre managed to
extract 20 thousand tons, saving up a fortune in pounds sterling, employing
almost 500 men who were spread out into an area into which several European
countries would fit. The Maacu
looks. Ferreira feels a mortal shiver
pass through him. He feels cold at the
hottest time of the day. Large mosquitos and blood-sucking flies buzz
in his ears. The buffalo gnats are
annoying. The heat is heavy, humid,
sweet with genipap and honey. He melts. Fantasies, day dreams, deliriums,
reveries. This is Ferreira's first trip
into the interior. His father-in-law and
he want the plantation; they are preparing for the complicated bidding of a
commercial chess game. Ferreira looks
tired from the voyage. Pierre puffs
smoke into the air. He is all caution
and anticipation. A surprise at any
moment. Now, Pierre starts to talk about
the Numa. Ferreira goes from desire to
apprehension. He looks with fright at
the trees, as if afraid a monster will appear.
Pierre appears calm. He suppresses his phantoms, legs crossed as in a
Parisian cafe. Why doesn't that man
liquidate his fortune and return to Paris?
Pierre, the unexpected. His
ambition is his antidote to the tedium of the Amazon. Provoking, Ivete (as the Maacu woman was
called, Ivete Romana) observes the young man from afar. She, defiance and incitement. Ferreira coughs and arranges himself in the
chair. Ivete's eyes move with serpentine
elasticity, devastating and tactile.
Ferreira recedes into his chair feeling tipsy. Beyond the stone columns of the parapet the
excessive panorama of the stylized neo-rococo Amazon panel is unveiled, interlaced
with tendrils and offshoots. The forest
tightens its embrace. But the young man
attempts to survive in the fullness of the amphitheater of the crowns of the
pre-columbian silk cotton trees. At
Juriti Velho there is a tree 200 feet high.
The whole building is like a fortified castle, a capsule of the
civilization of European humanity. It is
a place where juridical erudition does not reach. As if betrayed, Pierre sees the possibility
of neutralizing the visitor. He wants to
draw out the secret motive that brought him here. He intuits menacing cordiality. He is wary in his deliberations,
conversation, narration. The urchins
play on the moored dugout. They hold
their noses with two fingers and jump in standing. Then they run along the shore. Shrill, incessant, like a band of
parakeets. Mundico, the oldest, is the
son of Isaura, the cook at the Palácio.
She has two sons from different fathers.
The second son is not there. His
name is Benito Botelho and he is in Manaus.
Benito was the greatest intellectual in the Amazons. As a boy, he was stricken with smallpox;
Benito was taken away by Frei Lothar who was fond of him. He ended being brought up at the Vassourinha,
the orphanage of Padre Pereira, as Frei Lothar never remained long in Manaus. Flies buzz about malignantly in the silence
of the afternoon. The bayou weaves
dizzily between the trees. There is no
one about. The trees at a
standstill. Profound. Immersed in green ecstasy, in the heat, in
eternity, in the fecundation of the late afternoon. The young jurist's spirit is with the Indian
woman. A macaw, the national bird,
breaks the silence of space and flits toward the other shore. It repeats its screeching, proud of itself,
its clamor and ostentation. A silent
rower appears at the bend of the river, salutes the Palácio and touches the
liquid lamina of the water's surface lightly with his oar. In the progression of new incidents, a very
handsome lion monkey appears. A very
small one. In the papaya tree, near the
terrace. It begins to come down. It jumps on the parapet. Looks at the motionless men seated. Turns toward the trunk. Stops.
Looks up, fearful of the sky.
Looks down, fearful of the ducks.
Looks at me. The monkey looks
with its entire head, not only with the eyes.
Then he descends, very quickly hazarding the air, disappearing in the
duck yard. Now there is the odor of a
matrinchão fish, smell of pepper and tucupi seasoning. The air is so oxygenated that I become
dizzy. Calmness falls. It penetrates the pores. Vaporous, tranquilizing flavor. Stasis, impassibility. A dark god is sleeping, in the unnamed, in
the universal, immersed, incomplete, prehistoric of a million years ago, when
this was a sea. We are almost 2,000
miles from Manaus. Gabriel Gonçalves da
Cunha had bought the Rio Jordão and the whole left bank of the Bom Jardim bayou
up to the São João bayou and an inlet of the Cruzeiro do Sul bayou. He has isolated the Manixi Plantation. The price of Amazon rubber is rising on the
London stock exchange. Production of
tires is increasing. The Amazon, only
producer of latex in the world. Rich
Manaus copies Paris. Businessmen get
rich. The Teatro Amazonas show off its
crystal mirrors. Millionaires play cards
with fingers weighed down in diamonds, risking fortunes at the Hotel Cassina,
at the Alcazar, the Eden, the Casino Julieta.
Tiles from Marseilles in the moonlight on the Rua dos Remédios, on the
Rua da Glória. Art nouveau architecture
of the Ernest Scholtz palace – then the Palácio Rio Negro, seat of the
government. Wall brackets, transoms,
rain spouts. Intercolumniation. Corner, lambrequim, scroll, capital, cornice. Architrave.
Cleric's cap, lattice, balcony, loft, jade, ringbase, wing, stipe. Enxalso, cinammon pediment. Galilé.
Little Manaus, big Paris! Shops,
stores, tobacconists, book stores, tailors, jewelers. Bissoc.
Pastry. Sugar, fruit, cream.
A la Ville de
Paris, Au bon marché, Quartier du temple, Villeroy's Closet for Women, Casa
Louvre, Palais Royal Bookstore (in the Rua Municipal, No. 85, the newest
books), Universal Bookstore, Freitas Agency, Casa Sorbonne (inside the
Grand Hotel), the Bijou Confectioners,
the Progresso Bakery. Lanterns of morona
stone and puraquequara. The beautiful Villa Fany, total luxury. The Barés Wharf, the Provincial Library (that
was set on fire fraudulently to destroy Public Files in the back rooms). The
Student Craftsmen's building that gave its name to the neighborhood. Amazon Steamship Navigation Co. A building imported piece by piece from
England: the Customs House set up there.
Another, a project of Gustavo Eiffel, of iron: the Municipal
Market. Serviço Telefônico serves the
city. Electricity illuminates the
streets of Manaus at the beginning of the century, perhaps the first Brazilian
city to have this service. Sidewalks of
the Praça São Sebastião of black and white Portuguese stones in a wave design
that allegorizes the “meeting of the waters” of the Rio Negro and Upper Amazon
(later imitated on the beach of Copacabana).
Electric Trolleys of the Manaus Tramways. People consume Veuve Clicquot, truffles,
champagne. Huntley & Palmers, Cross
& Blackwell. Cork, Pilsen, Bordeaux,
cold cuts, Estrella Sierra Cheese.
Lobsters, Crystalized Guava Jam. Charteuse, Anisette. Champagne Duc of Reims. Vermouth. Vichy Water.
Milk from the Swiss Alps. English
coats and tails, H. J., pongee, tulle. Canes with gold knobs. Top-hats, gloves, French perfumes, silk
handkerchiefs. Silver pistols and ivory
handles. Victor Gramophones. Double-sided phonograph records of Caruso. Wholesalers.
The State of Amazonas participates in the St. Louis Commercial
Exhibition, in Missouri, and later in the Universal Exhibition of Brussels,
where it wins 32 gold medals, 39 silver, 70 bronze, 6 Diplomas of Honor and the
13 Grand Prizes. Manaus-Harbour. Chessboard.
Operas, operas, operas. Daily. Imported prostitutes. The Miranda Correia
Brewery.
Praça da
Saudade. The Roadway, the Quay. Syphilis.
Malaria. Glasses of Labarraque quinine. Cod-liver oil. Silva Araújo wine. Fermentation regulator. Rose-colored pills. Coffee Beirão. Winchesters with butt of waxed mahogany. Beggar's Asylum (built by the
Commander). The Empress Bridge, Big
Waterfall Bayou. The Sawmill on Holy Spirit Bayou. Baths of the Seven Pools. Buritizal.
Games in the Parque Amazonense. Departure at Barcelos. Night in Jirau. Wall of the Aleixo Leprosary. In the recess - the Chalet. View of the Bomba d'Água. Travel.
Steam Lines. Manaus-Belém,
Manaus-Santa Isabel, Manaus-Iquitos, Manaus-Marari, Manaus-Santo Antônio do
Madeira, Manaus-Belém-Baião. Gonçalves
Dias in the Hotel Cassina. Coelho Neto
in the small palace of Epaminondas Street.
Euclides of Cunha in the chalet of the Villa Municipal. Amazonas Comercial, O Impartial, Rio Negro,
Jornal do Comércio. 126 ships operate
within Amazonia. Two-stack steamboats,
small river steamers and barges. In 1896 the Teatro Amazonas was inaugurated at
a cost of 3.3 million dollars, the most expensive and useless Pharaonic public
work in the History of Brazil, no expense spared and everything imported, with
paneling, hundreds of Venetian crystal chandeliers, columns of variegated
marble, bronze statues signed by great masters, beveled crystal mirrors,
porcelain vases the height of a man, Persian rugs – all of which disappeared in
1912 when the theater was emptied in order to turn it into a rubber storage
depot for an American company. At that
point, the treasury was buried in a debt of 10 million milréis: the Teatro
Amazonas cost the price of 5 thousand luxury homes. The dollar to three milréis. For 300 thousand
dollars the courthouse was built. And
for 525 thousand dollars the Government's Palace was built, never
finished. The Theater cost 10 thousand
lives. Yes: In 1919, 150 thousand
immigrants had already arrived in the Amazon.
Rubber in those years was as important as coffee. Amazonia exported 66 million dollars in
rubber against 100 million dollars coffee from São Paulo state in the same
period. In 1908 the oldest university of
Brazil was founded in Manaus, with courses in Law (the only to survive),
Engineering, Obstetrics, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Agronomy, Sciences and
Letters. At that time 12 million French
francs disappeared, robbed during Constantino Nery's government. Manaos Improvements was fraudulently and
unnecessarily expropiated for 3.3 million dollars – the price of the Teatro Amazons. Accumulation of corrupt extravagance is the
history of the Amazon.
That evening
Antonio Ferreira was snoring in the hammock and dreaming of large expanses of
empty land, forests, secret places where no civilized man had been – rivers,
waterfalls, rocks, mountains, beyond, beyond the horizon, undefinable, out
there, beyond the emerald curtain and the shade of the left bank of Hell's
Bayou – Aurora, Itamaracá, bends of the Rio Jordão, to the southeast, even to
borderlands of Peru towards the Rio Pique Yaco and fantastic, dazzling El
Dorados...
He awoke. A light pressure on his left leg, something
alighted there like a feather in the middle of the splendor of his sleep; it
brushed his body with velvet. He saw the
spider, furry and red, about 6 inches in diameter, lethal, coming up his thigh,
but then the Maacu woman removed it with a piece of cloth, venomous – rare and
menacing – a type of tarantula, the
acanthoscurria atrox! - it jumped onto the parapet, turned on itself raised its
front legs in an aggressive, protective attitude, bristled and disappeared. To comfort him, the Maacu woman sat on the
edge of the hammock. She looked at him
and laughed, stooping over his chest.
Ferreira took a hold of her head firmly and drew it towards him. She neared with a muffled, wild moan. From the edge of the roof an eagle took
flight reaching the blue spaces. It was
an uiraçu, a harpy eagle.
“In '94 my son
acquired the nanny Maria Caxinauá, an Indian girl a little older than he, who
was four years old at the time. They
grew up together. When the boy did
anything naughty the girl was punished for it instead.
Iphigenia hit hard but the Indian girl didn't whine; she
didn't cry. She didn't seem to feel
pain. I don't trust Indians. They are treacherous, cruel, vindictive, capable
of revenge, even after years. But
Iphigenia would not listen to me, would not believe me.”
Pierre puffed out
smoke before continuing, “Every three years her parents came to get her on the
pretext that she not forget her tribe.
She remained a month at their encampment and returned, skinny and sick –
her parents said she did not like being away from Zequinha...”
They were silent
for a long while during which the four chords of a night hawk were heard,
coming out the darkness and silence of the night. Antonio Ferreira inhaled some snuff. He had smooth, combed hair parted in the
middle connecting with long side whiskers which he was caressing.
The music room
was empty. There was little furniture
there, the baby grand Pleyel, a table, four chairs and the armoire for the
violins, closed. Pierre offered a cigar
and said: “Until the year the Numa showed up...”. That room was situated apart from the
Palácio. No one could enter, especially
when Pierre was playing. The two men
stared at the table separating them.
There was a carafe on the table and two goblets. Pierre sighed. His aged eyes looked troubled by his
reflection on the remote past. His face
was elongated. He lifted his arms on
high, remained silent and looked at the other man in a vacant manner:
“The stories I am going to tell you are absurd; they don't
deal with human problems but with a different realm than ours.”
Ferreira made an
effort to get a hold of the goblet and drink.
He was appreciating the luxury of the Baccarat when he heard the
following:
“In November of
1905, the Numa appeared and started to hunt down the Caxinauá. They came every day. That had never happened before, not the Numa,
so close and aggressive. There was a
drought, low water. I had to take
forceful measures. I gathered the
Caxinauá together at Quati and brought in armed men. Since becoming docile, the Caxinauá were
defenseless. They came and hid their
belongings. They are masters of this, in
the art of safekeeping, of hiding, of camouflage. They can make entire canoes disappear,
burying them under water that they disinter years later, even. Each Caxinauá always has a hidden treasure.
Pierre nipped the
end of his cigar. He propped himself on
the cushions of the Voltaire chair. Two
candlesticks of five movable bobeches each illuminated the paneling of the
walls and softened the glare of ivory silk in which the panels were
painted. In a scene from the 18th
century, a mythological figure was preparing to shoot an arrow. Pierre sank into reflection.
“Do you know what
happened then?” - the older man asked.
He remained
silent.
“A robbery,” he
replied. “A small box was stolen”.
He got up, stood
up, got on his feet and walked, solemnly to a chiffonier placed against the
curtains. From there he showed him a
metal strongbox. “Like this one.” It was a medium size travel chest. About 30 cubic centimeters and made with iron
coating separated by non-combustible substances. It was opened by an artistically realized,
filigree key.
“Were there
jewels?”
“No,” the older
man intercepted. “Iphigenia kept money
in there - pounds sterling and coins of 0.900 fine gold. It was the only thing robbed that I was
unable to find. After this I keep all
valuables in the big safe. I never got
to the bottom of it; Iphigenia always said Maria Caxinauá was at fault. They tied her to an anthill and she almost
died. But she confessed nothing. When my son found out, he came to her
defense. Even if I had continued the
investigations and ordered her to be tortured to death, she would have died
without confessing anything. Frightening!”
He coughed. He took the cup, leaned back straight against
the chair and straightened his neck with a jerk. Ferreira, troubled, stirred and asked:
“Some
servant? Someone could have become rich,
a spendthrift, showed signs of good fortune...”
It was as if the
old man was at a megaparsec:
“No one. I couldn't have been any servant … it was
hardly a Caxinauá … the chest is here, it's been here all along, I'm certain.”
“How do you
know?” Ferreira asked, clutching the string of his tie.
“Simply because
of that. No one seemed to be rich and
the Caxinauá do not know the value of money.
Besides, it is impossible for a Caxinauá to live outside the tribe. They make up a simbiotic people, a single
organism, living, unique. They are not
individual beings. The individual is the
people, the race. Because of that it was
só easy to pacify them. One Indian alone
could not have stolen the chest and fled to Manaus or Belem. Not a Caxinauá.”
Slowly the big
door opened and the Caxinauá appeared.
“Come here, my
girl,” Pierre said to her. And as the
Indian girl come near, the old man frowned, looked straight into the face of
the girl and asked: “Do you know Maria Caxinauá? Did you see her before?”
Her coarse long
hair darkened her face like a mask of death.
Her pupils were bestowed with an incomprehensible white aura, a
frightful horror. Aquline nose, cunning. Dark, burnt and tarnished, bronze skin
crushed like paper. Dirty, long blue
garment, torn on one side, without a belt, creeping along the ground like a
madwoman in an asylum. Observed at a
distance, she was the concentration of hatred.
Close up, she was fear, uncontrollable dread, eyes wide open. Her wizened face indicated that she had lost
all her teeth; her eyebrows were thin.
But that woman was not old!
Suddenly she revealed herself!
“There is arrogance, contempt, defiance, a dangerous look, venom in her
face,” Ferreira thought, gripping the string of his tie. Hostile, that silent and animal existence was
concentrated in her, reflected in her, like a snake. From that night on Ferreira feared her. He saw an enemy, Because the Caxinauá was accumulated,
petrified revenge. All the innumerable
multitude of Indians massacred found their territory in her body. All those tortured, expelled, exterminated by
European humanity, plundered, deprived of their culture were mapped there, in
the physical and individual person of Maria Caxinauá. Entire races were deprived, traumatized,
dispossessed of their gods and their wealth built up over centuries, consumed
in hecatombs, liquidated forever.
Comtaminated with diseases, enslaved and corrupted, submitted to slave
labor that consumed millions of persons deprived of their subsistence economy,
tragically tranformed into proletarian masses – twenty million indigenous
people massacred in Brazil embodied there in the blind gesture of Maria
Caxinauá.
With tense hands,
the Numa warrior turned around abruptly and yelled a feline-like cry; the loud
call was heard throughout the forest on the arid ground; there was commotion of
his blood-red eyes under locks of hair and warlike shiver of his skin. His entire strength increased and seemed to
hurl itself with the fire he threw out and strewed into the palm hut. His weapon of long shadow extended into the
air and opened the skull of a young Caxinauá who appeared on the side, hurling
him to the ground – his eyeball left the socket spit out on the ground like a
rolling boiled egg, a ball in the dust of the earth. He hurled a heavy rock on the enemy who
jumped up like a wounded and hunted tiger and he howled with torn flesh, the
voice of a thundering wretch. His face
distorted with hatred, his shoulders
apart, he raised his arm with the heavy weapon and advanced to kill like a
winch raised aloft, the hull of an enormous ship pulled from the bottom of the
water, water dripping like the dribble of dark and rotten mucus. Others screamed and ran. The fire spread wide, high, tears and
overcame the night air with its wings of fire like the opening of
butterflies. Great and inexplicable fear
took possession of the Caxinauá frightened by some God and death descended on
every one and scattered them into the
fatal night of paralyzing ire, all strength and courage absent,
neutralized. Oh! She was completely
burned, enveloped in flames, naked, but she did not feel pain or fear. She disappeared toward the shade expecting
with empty hands the adversary pursuing her.
Yes, he was coming. And coming
with the intent to kill in the darkness.
In the ominous bed of Hell's Bayou she searched for a stone, but she
only bumped into rotten cadavers of her Caxinauá brothers that the quantity of
dark blood buried. The Numa was coming
to look for and seek her out in the water.
She had difficulty cleaning the caked blood in her eyes, which made her
vulnerable to the near and audible enemy searching for her weapon in hand. For the enemy, his was the hour. Blood burnt her eyes and she was
unarmed. Silence. The enemy listened and waited for an
effective reaction, but did not know where she was, did not sense her and
proceeded in the dark. Then there was an
interception by a Caxinauá warrior who rushed in, cowardly fleeing, and was
attacked. It was time to get out of
there as the two were arm and arm in combat to be killed and be carried away by
Hell's Bayou. Was she farther away than
she thought? Three hundred of her
tribe's people exterminated. The fire
illuminated the forest and was seen from the Palácio. Wasn't she fit for the sacrifice? Frei Lothar, who appeared suddenly, took her
in. She no longer looked at her face in
a mirror. No one wanted her anymore, as
a woman
Pierre looked at
the young man and coughed. Sleep still
permeated the thoughts of Antonio Ferreira.
“Do you know Padre Pereira?”
“Yes,” he said.
Pierre Bataillon
had the Amazonas Commercial in his hands, the newspaper of Abraham Gadelha, the
political adversay of Ferreira's father-in-law.
The young man, adjusting his tie, felt this as an agression.
The older man,
calmly, cordially, as if he did not know that on the previous page the
Commander was toasted with adjectives such as “low life” and “thief”, said:
“Fund-raising banquet of Padre Pereira for the Vassourinha Orphanage and
birthday party of my friend Juca de Neves.
I'll ask you for two favors: represent me at these symposia … the Events
column says of Ricardo Soares, Jr. ...”
“But look!”,
Pierre interrupted himself, changing his dry, dull tone, as if he were
submerged, stuffed, cadaverized. The
young man looked at him – he looked pale, suddenly aged and seemed even
smaller.
“The wreck of the
Bitar! I didn't know. I hadn't read about it. Oh, mon Dieu!”
Since the
disaster of the steamboat Izidoro Antunes, he was preocupied with the frequent
shipwrecks on the Amazon. He knew them
by heart: the Izidoro Antunes had made only a single voyage, it had just come
from England. Modern, comfortable, equipped with electric lighting,
it was full of merchandise when it sank.
After this the Otero, the Perseverance, the Prompto, the Macau, the
Etna, the Colomy, the Julio de Roque, the Waltin, the Mazaltob, the Ajudante
(collided), the Manauense (rolled over), the … - all under water, dragging with
them people who disappeared into those muddy and dark waters, ripe and with
funereal murmurs, vague and indifferent, covered with a veil of mud, dense and
compact in the dissolution of life's liquids, in the horizontality of those
endless rivers stretched out in the slow movement of time – elemental cadavers
decomposed in the marshes of water lilies, eaten by fish, listless, sunken in
the dissolved material of the briny surface.
Pierre was
frightened to travel in those waters full of sticks, logs, sandbanks, hardened
clay blocks, rocks, hidden riverbank ledges and whirlpools, eddies, beaches,
overflow lakes, turbulence, ponds, shoals, dead heads, depressions, ship
skeletons, two-headed beaches, bends – all obstacles and dangers of ordinary
navigation, for ships of large and small draft, motor boats, canoes, dugouts
and wide sailing canoes, everything, the whole mass of an infernal theory of
dangers to avoid, bypass, be on the alert for, defy, fear.
Suddenly the
silence of death fell upon the whole space of the Palácio, static as if the
entire Amazon was immobilized over the Marseilles tiles. The night hawk emitted its four octaves. In the distance a fisherman shook his fishing
rod in the water.
“One day,” Pierre
said, “an official from Santarem asked Bates on which side of the Amazon River
the city of Paris was located. He
imagined that the entire universe was intersected by that great river and all
the cities had arisen on one bank or the other.”
“Are you
expecting to return?” Ferreira asked.
“I don't know,”
the older man replied. “I think that I
should some day.” And turning toward the
young man with his shoulders: “Do you know why I came here?”
“No,” Ferreira
replied.
“For my
health. I have to live in a warm
climate.”
The cry of the
screech owl tore through the night; it heralded death. Ferreira looked at the little man sitting
there, while rubber latex was at 308 pounds per ton. The year before it was at 374 pounds per
ton. Modification of the price, however,
would give it a jump to 655 pounds per ton!
But the fall would be abrupt; in 1921 it fell to 72 pounds per ton. Ten years later, in 1931, it would fall even
more, it went to 32 pounds per ton, less than half the price 109 years earlier,
even discounting the evolvement of prices and slight inflation. It was Death.
The decadence and death of the Amazon empire. From sole producer, Brazil came to produce
only one percent of world consumption. A
figure disappeared out the door vanishing in the arcade of the corridors. High stucco walls, heavy decoration, baroque,
fantastic, surreal luxury. A trumpeter
cried out in the duck garden. Those
rooms interconnected in an area of fifty-four hundred square feet. There were fifteen apartments with painted
baseboards, column balustrades and ceiling of gilded friezes, floors of
Brazilian teak and boxwood. The building's entrance opened into a spacious
hall at the end of which was the office of the colonel. At the left, the door to the isolated music
room. At the right was the alcove and the
circular gallery which wound around the back of the building and toward the
back of the music room, as well as the terrace which opened up from there at a
right angle. An iron grating closed off
the duck garden. Pierre invited me for
coffee in an adjacent room served by a Caxinauá boy. We sat on a pair of Voltaire chairs. A lost false viper shook the leaves of roots
where it curled up like a toad. It was
the strong coffee with which Pierre would stay awake all night, wandering like
a ghost through those large rooms semi-lit by candles and firefly lamps. Pierre would play the piano in the middle of
the night, read, walk around inside the house at the end of the world. Nights were gloomy, lugubrious; they
enveloped the Palácio in demons that came out of the darkness. Pierre, indifferent, walked and his steps
were heard along the arcade of doors and windows. He would look at paintings, follow the row of
windows with double shutters down to the ground, heavy, padded, transoms
furnished with tulle pleated drapery. In
the shed was a pen for ducks who protected the Palácio from snakes, spiders and
scorpions. The steely surface of the
water attempted to hinder an invasion of ants.
But still you could encounter a furry spider on top of a bed, be
surprised by a scorpion crossing below the dining table or come upon a snake
slithering along the empty space of a hallway.
The doors and windows were closed as night fell. They would start burning a mixture of cow
dung and tapir oil in censers scattered throughout the house to repel insects;
the odor permeated and marked the palace.
Even so the building was besieged at night by clouds of flying insects
that wanted to enter attracted by the lights.
Ferreira felt dread. All the
people, servants, balata gum gatherers, wild rubber collectors, fishermen,
drovers, hunters and Indians seemed like demons. The house was frightful, supernatural. The eyes of Paxiúba and Maria Caxinauá. The curtained off halls, like in a theater,
the sculptured furniture – demons and lions – gloomy luxury. Pierre opened the doors of the armoire and
took out a carafe of Black Velvet.
Ferreira drank keeping in view the Caxinauá urchin standing up right in
front of him. Pierre's fortune had its
source in the slave labor of the entire
Caxinauá nation that produced the food which Pierre exchanged for the harvest
of the rubber tappers who seldom received any money. The small figure of the man seemed painted at
last on its true facade.
Worn thin on the
carpet, the embroidery plays with the shadow and light coming from the
door. Lights reverberate on the surface
of the mirror, fire from tapers in the iron candlesticks and large candles that
sing a lyrical moment. When the colonel
plays they seem to dance. Family remembrances
bring me to a shore of the imagination.
My mother liked to go barefoot.
Since leaving Patos on Christmas of 1897, I had not thought of her with
such tenderness. I've been here a long
time. My brother and uncle, dead,
intrude along with disturbing stains on the ground, with the death of everyone,
everyone from Laurie Costa to Maria burnt in the attack of the Numa, to the
Caxinauá encampment. The solitude of the
empty room was veiled. An enigmatic
sensation that the doors were not closed tightly, that the horn-shaped hinges
were open – the incised parts of the stop in the door jamb on the double rabbet
rubbing out the oblong of the rims. I
entered very cautiously. I crossed the
empty space on tiptoes. On the facing
wall I discovered a door unknown to me, somehow concealed in the
decoration. I touched it with my finger,
probing it. I tried the hidden doorknob,
the edge gave way and sounded like an squeaky wheel. Chairs of dark wicker were scattered here and
there; bats sounded like wind, nervous, their strident squeaks shattered the
night air, tiny ones. I was on the
threshold of the room. Someone was
sleeping in the torpor of the penumbra, half-illuminated by a lamp that was
going out. Startled, I saw there the
figure of fallen twisted metal, the variegated, disperse figure of a man
sleeping, powerful, submerged, big, legs extended and open on the easy
chair. It was Paxiúba, frightening body,
his large, bronze, strange, curved member visible. Yes, he was sleeping the bloody sleep of his
dead victims.
“And where is
Ribamar?” - I heard the voice of Dona Iphigenia looking for me. I closed the door and followed to attend to
her. I was on call during the night.
“I am very
lonely,” Pierre said taking leave of his guest, “but my son will be
returning. He is lonesome for Caxinauá
and Paxiúba,” he added with some irony.
“They're friends, Paxiúba is his bodyguard. Maria a second mother and lover. José wanted to take them to Paris, but I
managed to dissuade him from it. Good
night, my friend. Sleep well. Ivete should arrange a good bed for you,” he
concluded, serious, dignified, natural, extending a sincere hand to him.
The Juruá is a
river of deceptive waters, yellow, muddy; when leached they deposit three
inches of thick sediment in the bottom of a drinking glass. In these waters Pierre Bataillon and
Iphigenia Vellarde disappeared in 1910 when the launch Angelina wrecked.
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