Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [2]
I must have been about twenty when Amando took me to Manaus. My father didn’t say a word throughout the journey; only when we got off the boat did he utter these two sentences: You’re going to live in the Pension Saturno. And you know why.
It was a small, old pension in Instalação da Província Street. I lived in one of the rooms on the ground floor, and used the bathroom next to the basement, where some lads who’d fled from the Young Apprentices’ Institute lived. They did odd jobs, working in bakeries and the German brewery; one of them, Juvêncio, jobless and without qualifications, walked around with a machete, and no one meddled with him. When my father was in his office, Florita would escape to the pension to chat with me and do my washing. She didn’t like Juvêncio; she was afraid of being stabbed by him. She detested my room at the Saturno too. She’d say: With that prison cell window, you’re sure to die of suffocation. Florita was accustomed to the comfort of the house in the Manaus suburbs, and the white palace in Vila Bela. I asked about Amando, but she didn’t tell me everything. She said nothing about the firm’s new freighter. I had read in the paper that the vessel was in Manaus Harbour. A steamship with wheels on its sides, built by Holtz, the German shipyard. It was a real freighter; the other two were just lighters or barges. I was proud, and showed Florita the paper.
I was going to do a dinner for him, she said. Your father didn’t want me to. He’s worried about paying for the boat. Or something else.
Florita wanted me to live with her and Amando: the three of us, in the Manaus house. I wanted that too, and she knew it. Here in Vila Bela they told Florita that my father had been happy with my mother at his side. When she died, Amando didn’t know what to do with me. To this day I remember the words that destroyed me: Your mother gave birth to you and died. Florita heard these words, hugged me and took me to the bedroom.
A tapuia breastfed me. An Indian’s milk, or the milky gum of the amapá tree. I don’t remember the face of that nurse, or of any other, for that matter. It’s a dark time; I’ve no memory of it. Until the day Amando came into my room with a girl and said: She’s going to look after you. Florita never left my side, and that’s why I missed her so when I was living in the Saturno.
In Manaus I did nothing—just read in the dining room, then dozed off in the afternoon heat and woke in a sweat, thinking of my father. I was waiting for something, without knowing what it was. My greatest worry at that time was knowing if the silent hostility between my father and myself was my fault or his. I was still young, and thought the punishment for having abused Florita was deserved, and that I ought to bear the burden of the guilt. I went to the Ingleses neighbourhood and hung round the house in the hope of speaking to my father or being seen by him. I watched the dining-room windows and imagined Amando looking passionately at my mother’s portrait. I didn’t have the courage to knock at the door, and carried on down the tree-lined street, looking at the bungalows and chalets with their immense gardens. Once, at night, I saw a man very like Amando on the Boulevard Amazonas. The same gait, the same height, arms by his side and fists clenched. He was walking alongside a woman, and they stopped in front of the Castelhana water tank. I doubted it could be my father when I saw his hands stroke the woman’s hair. As I recall it, I think of the legend of the severed head. The man escaped like a rat: he ran into a dark street, pulling the girl along by her arms. The next day I went to the house. I wanted to know if it was really him I’d seen with a woman on the pavement of the Castelhana. He wouldn’t let me in or say a word about it. In the doorway, he said: