Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [18]
They celebrated your misfortune, said Florita. What are you waiting for? Get a boat to Manaus straight away.
My indecision lasted a few days; Estiliano was in Belém and I didn’t know when he was coming back. Early one morning, Florita saw me in the hammock in the parlour and sat on the floor of the room. Before dawn arrived, she said in a calm voice that I should embark for Manaus on the next boat. She said the same thing so many times over that I convinced myself she was right. Money. That’s what it was. I didn’t want to leave . . . The night of love with Dinaura, the desire to be with her, and the other nights of our life . . . But how could I live without money?
Florita got me out of the hole. She said she was going to get the house ready for the wedding to Dinaura: a month’s absence couldn’t drown a love of that sort. I embarked on the Índio do Brasil with these words in my head, and in the sleepless night I spent as I went up river, I read a novel Estiliano had lent me. I remember the words of one of the characters, a father: I don’t want you to remain here, a useless, unhappy, lacklustre son. You have to continue our name and make the business prosper. Reading this made me downhearted, worried. And that was how I got to Manaus one late afternoon. I sent a boy to tell the firm manager that I was coming to the office the next morning. But that day I was jinxed. I was more than an hour late because of a disturbance in the centre. A group of agitated people were running around and shouting on Seventh of September Avenue. I thought it was a protest, or a parade. It was in fact the lynching of a thief. I saw the fellow almost naked, tied to a cart and being pulled along by a horse. They were stoning the poor man and whipping him with his belt. The animal was whinnying, but it didn’t drown out the human suffering. Afterwards the police dragged the thief, the horse and the cart away. As they passed by me, I recognised the lad from the Saturno pension. Juvêncio couldn’t even see who I was: his red eyes, in his swollen head, looked dead already.
The manager watched the scene from his office window. For the first time he faced me, his face tense, and his hands in his trouser pockets. He didn’t even sit down as he told me that the Lloyd Brasileiro, the Amazon Navigation Company and other large businesses had lowered their freight charges. My father hadn’t renewed the insurance on the Eldorado, and the firm still owed a lot of money to the English bank.
Did Estiliano not know about this?
It was Dr Cordovil’s business. Your father wouldn’t allow any one to sign insurance documents. He was going to renew it, but he died before he could.
The manager went on: when the Eldorado went under, Adler’s lost eighty tons of rubber and Brazil nuts, and had started a lawsuit against the company; the port duties hadn’t been paid to the Manaus Harbour . . . This litany of disasters irritated me. I knew of nothing; ignorance was my weakness. The manager stopped speaking, sat down and rested his elbows on the desk and his fingers on his forehead, casting a longing look of admiration at my father’s photograph. I couldn’t face Amando, even on the wall. I murmured: The firm’s finished. I heard someone say in a low voice: Coward.
I asked the manager what he’d just said.
He remained silent, in the same position. The portrait of my father seemed to challenge me. Coward. You’re no good for anything. It was the voice of Amando Cordovil. The same words. Or was my memory repeating what I’d so often heard? So, that morning, I went with the manager to the English bank.
The loan. Just thinking about it puts me in a state. I think it’s going to rain. This heat, the humidity . . . When it gets hot like this, I have to have a drink, if not I can hardly breathe. I used only to drink wine. Now I have a few sips of tarubá, good stuff I get from the sateré-maué Indians. It relieves the wheezing. And memories