Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [21]
Because Amando let Almerindo get his hands on his worn shirts. Your father used to say: He thinks he’s robbing them, I think I’m giving them away.
So I told the caretakers to go and live at the plantation. But they refused; they’d only budge if I found a house and jobs for them. The solution was to talk to Leontino Byron, the politician Amando had favoured. Byron dreamed of great things. A deputy, that was what he wanted to be. I asked him to help my late father’s caretakers. The politico greeted me with effusive embraces. He said these words: My friend, who doesn’t owe favours to Amando? Then he got them a little wooden house at the edge of town. And some hard work: cleaning the cemetery. At the back of the house they had food and a basement; in the cemetery, a miserable salary. Not much of a choice, but I did get rid of the couple who worshipped Amando.
I began to look around town for Dinaura. I went from door to door, where people still remembered Amando’s presents and favours: a job in the civil service, a wedding dress, a toy, a hammock, a ticket for the boat, even money. I was looking for my lover, and all I heard was Amando’s name. Florita swore she wasn’t in Vila Bela.
How do you know?
When you dream of another world, you can’t stay here. Much less if you’re a lover having second thoughts.
She waited for my questioning look and added: Dinaura’s gone to live in the enchanted city.
Florita wasn’t being serious, but she did manage to convince me that Dinaura wasn’t in Vila Bela. Then I called Joaquim Roso and Ulisses Tupi. And, against my will, Denísio Cão. These pilots knew out-of-the-way places, backwaters and little creeks, and having lived so long with the Indians and river dwellers, understood the língua geral. When Florita saw the three boats in the middle of the Amazon, she said: All this for a woman who’s left you?
Florita’s jealousy wasn’t as strange as Estiliano’s silence, which was terrible. In my mind, he didn’t like Dinaura. Was it just the spite of an old bachelor? Or anger at the woman who’d kept me away from the business and from Manaus?
I anxiously awaited news of the boatmen. The first to appear was Denísio Cão. I found him leaning on the boat-rail, smoking. Where was she?
With his lips, Denísio gestured to a hammock on deck. I approached, peered in and saw the frightened face of a girl. He didn’t wait for my question, put out his cigarette and said the little Indian was just like my girlfriend. And she was a virgin, nobody had interfered with her, not even the river dolphins. She was a girl from the Caldeirão branch of the river, a village below the Parintins hills.
She lost her mother, said the boatman. Her father offered her to me.
I felt my blood rising—the bad blood of the Cordovils. I knew that Denísio didn’t carry a knife in his belt. I slapped the liar’s face.
How much did you pay for this poor creature?
He confessed: he’d given some odd change to the girl’s father, and on the way to Vila Bela he’d abused the unfortunate girl. Almost a child, her eyes were shut with fear and shame. I took her to the white palace and went to tell the police. But walking into the public jail, I gave up any idea of justice. The building was a pigsty; and the jailers, poor devils—they looked more like prisoners than the prisoners themselves. I contracted an old pilot I trusted and sent the girl back to the Caldeirão. The worst of it was that Denísio jumped off his boat and went round town laughing about it, full of himself, the author of so much cruelty.
Joaquim Roso came back some days later with another nightmare: a nameless girl from a village on the Uaicurapá, the river where the Boa Vida plantation is. The girl made me dizzy: a sad angel with a dark little face, full of pain and silence. She’d lost her mother and been deflowered by her father. When Joaquim Roso found out, he decided to free the girl from her animal of a father.
I didn’t find Dinaura, but I did perform this act of charity, he said.
It disturbed me: this was the destiny of so many impoverished daughters in Amazonia. I asked myself