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By Root 137 0

one spoke to the woman. Why not? Fear. Something about her inhibited anything more than a word or a gesture. They were afraid, these defeated machos. They’d meet in the Travellers’ Bar in Horadour Bonplant’s perfumery or in the Market Bar, lying effortlessly about their conquests. On the afternoon Dinaura met me for the first time on Sacred Heart Square, they all saw. This happened after several attempts. She would escape without saying a word. In fact, I don’t know if she did escape: it was the silence that gave the impression that she had. I remember that for a long time I didn’t see Dinaura in the places she usually went alone, or with the other orphan girls. Florita went to check at the school door and came back with a choked smile, full of ill-disguised malice. Only my father had ever managed to speak to Mother Caminal, she said; he was the only one the Spaniard would speak to. They understood each other.

Forget that girl. Forget her before she brings misery.

Misery? I asked.

She’s not going to be your wife. Someone who belongs to nobody can never be loved.

Florita had a curious way of being jealous; and as I was always affected by everything she said, I became speechless in the presence of this woman who’d looked after me like a mother. I thought about Estiliano, and Amando’s strong bond with the Mother Superior of the Carmo. The lawyer came to spend the month of July in Vila Bela, and I went to the Francesa Lagoon with some bottles of wine for him. While we sat on the veranda, drinking together in silence, I saw he was censuring me with his eyes. It was some time since I’d set foot in Manaus, and I knew that the war in Europe was damaging rubber exports—the war, and the rubber seedlings planted in Asia. It was as if he was talking about this with his eyes, this large man drinking in silence, and me divining his thoughts, his hoarse voice just about to say: It’s absurd to ignore the business you’ve inherited from your father . . . Silently we prowled round Dinaura’s name, the two of us looking at a canoe in the water, dark, smooth and calm as a sheet of copper. I drank another glass and got my courage up.

Do you know why I came here? The girl who came from the jungle. It’s not a whim, Estiliano. Mother Caminal controls the orphans’ lives.

He went on drinking, looking at the canoe motionless in the dark water.

Can’t you give a little help to your friend’s son?

He merely looked at me as an old man looks at a youth: a look that can be affable or aloof. No pain or compassion. He picked up the glass of wine, got up and went into the sitting room. I waited for some minutes, an hour, an absurd length of time, until the sky turned red. I looked towards the room: he was sitting in front of an open book, his face bent over a sheet of paper. He was copying words from the book. His bulky body filled the room, and the man went on writing, copying. When he finished, he blew onto the page to dry the ink and reread in silence, sipping his wine. He was breathing like an animal exhausted after a hunt. He came back to the veranda, handed me two sheets of paper and said in an irritated tone: Send this to the Mother Superior with a note saying your feelings are expressed in these lines.

He went back into the room and left me alone on the veranda. I read the poem right there, in the semi-darkness. A mysterious poem, copied from some Spanish book.

Florita took the poem and the note to the Carmo School. What can a poem do? For me, it performed more than a miracle. Mother Caminal asked me to come to her office to talk. The simplicity of the setting impressed me. The room looked like an improvised, poverty-stricken museum. On the floor were bits of ceramic, ritual masks and bits of the funerary urns of indigenous tribes who no longer existed. The name of the first Carmelite to preach in these parts was engraved on the wall, between oil paintings of St Teresa and St John of the Cross.

Mother Caminal offered me a seat, took up the two sheets and read out the Spanish poem in an emphatic tone. I envied the woman’s voice. The images and