Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [20]
You never sent any money for the upkeep of the house, she said.
That’s not why you’ve got that face on you.
She stopped, searching for words, and I didn’t feel like waiting.
What’s happened?
Seeing how edgy I was, she backed up to the wall. Once Florita chose to dig her heels in, she would do everything short of swallowing her own tongue. I could read nothing in her eyes. I ran to the Carmelite School, crossed the patio and ran up the stairs of the orphans’ building. The girls were sitting in a circle. They were sewing in silence. When they saw me, they got up and hid in the hammock. Only one of them stood up, stiffly, her hands gripping the scapular of the Virgin of Mount Carmel. We looked at each other as if we were crazy. I asked after Dinaura.
She doesn’t live here. She never slept . . .
Never slept?
I heard whispering, muttering. Suddenly, they all went quiet. The woman gradually appeared, slowly ascending the stairs: her green, observant eyes in her dark face, the silver crucifix, her thin body covered by a brown habit. Her body was almost as tall as mine. She walked alongside Mother Caminal, the ruling sister. She was the sister who had asked me to leave the dormitory. I wanted no trouble or scandal. In the doorway, Mother Caminal gave me the news:
Dinaura’s out there somewhere.
In Vila Bela?
No one knows.
I looked at the nun and asked her in a very loud voice why she was lying to me.
You didn’t deserve that girl. How can you be the son of Amando Cordovil?
My father’s name threw me into confusion. His name, and the question accompanying it. The church bell seemed a shadow hidden in the yellow tower. Iro, the beggar who’d been there on that rainy night, was sitting on a bench in the square, his useless umbrella stuck under his arm. He stretched out his bony hand; I carried on walking as he threw the umbrella towards me shouting: You’re going to die of drowning.
I turned to face him.
Drowning, you tight-fisted son of a bitch.
I kicked the umbrella, and on the Ribanceira I stopped under the cuiarana tree and pondered Dinaura’s destiny. I avoided looking at the bench in the square, not wanting to remember Iro’s words. But something tempted me. I went to look for him, but the bench was empty. The fear overtook the longing I felt for Dinaura. The fear of not finding her, the fear of the beggar’s words.
At home, Florita told me I had the face of a suffering soul. Did she know that Dinaura had fled? That she no longer slept in the orphanage? She wouldn’t answer; she just gave me the envelope with the letter I’d sent to Dinaura. Still sealed. Iro left it here, Florita said. An unread love-letter is a bad omen.
Then I told her what the beggar had said to me.
Die of drowning? We’re going to live in misery, that’s the truth of it.
I was still the owner of the plantation and the white palace. It wasn’t just a whim, wanting to keep the house. The white palace was where I’d spent my childhood, but I couldn’t look after the property. Almerindo and Talita planted manioc and bananas, kept pigs and chickens. That was their food; they exchanged any that was left over for fish. But I gave them rice, beans, sugar, coffee and soap. They hardly spoke to me; they came in and out of the back of the house as if they owned the garden. For them, I was a despised weakling of a son, lacking the heavy hand of the Cordovils. Almerindo let his relatives from the interior into the garden. They sang and talked in loud voices, making an insolent racket. My father, I remember, used to put up with the noise. Sometimes, he gave a guitar to the caretaker and a pair of shoes to Talita; before the elections he went to the garden to ask for votes for one of the candidates. This intimacy irritated me, because it was born of self-interest, calculated. At bottom, they were only servants. I asked Florita when I should put the couple out in the street.
Today, this minute. Talita hates me because she thinks I’m your lover. And he hates me because I caught him stealing your old clothes.
Why did you let him?