Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [24]
I heard a little noise, said Florita.
It was just a dream. Go back to sleep.
I hung the hammock on the veranda and lay down. Memories of the Boa Vida kept me awake, with my eyes open: the noise of the cicadas and the toads, the smell of the fruit I pulled off the trees, the crack of the Brazil nuts falling out of the hands of monkeys. Before it grew light, I listened to the cries of the Muscovy ducks and watched the outline of the silk-cotton tree grow in the reddening sky, the sun still hidden beneath the horizon. The afternoon Amando plunged into the forest to bring back some employees who had fled. He came back with empty hands. Nearly empty: an ill-dressed barefoot girl came with him. She’d been captured by Almerindo, the one who later became caretaker in Vila Bela. Poor and courageous, she is, said Amando. She didn’t want to flee with that lazy lot, left her family to come and work and have a better life.
My father took the girl to the white palace and bought her clothes and sandals. In Vila Bela she studied and got a name, with a Christian baptism and a party to celebrate. Amando said she was a trustworthy little girl, and he respected and even rewarded such trustworthiness. This girl brought me up; she was the first woman I had a memory of—Florita. One afternoon in Vila Bela, years later, when she was asleep in the hammock, I went into the room and stood looking at her naked body. I was shocked when she got up, removed my clothes and took me into the hammock. Almerindo and Talita heard and told my father everything. Florita didn’t apologise, nor did the boss punish her. Months later, Amando forced me to go and live in the Pension Saturno, in Manaus.
These memories woke me early. And, since I couldn’t get to sleep, I searched through the documents kept in the Mandarim box. I read letters sent by church dignitaries, charity houses and the Vicar-General of the Middle Amazon. They were thanking Amando for his donations. I found messages from customs officers, mayors, deputies. And, at the bottom of the box, a letter signed by a top civil servant, and another by the governor of the state of Amazonas. They mentioned competition for the transport of goods to England, and that ‘everything should be planned in secret’. I was thinking about this when I heard Florita ask what day we were to go back to Vila Bela.
Today, I said.
I dug two holes between the silk-cotton tree and the river, and in one of them I buried the boxes with the pile of papers; in the other, the hat, the rifle and the boots. I was going to bury Amando’s photograph too, with his face down, next to the earth. But Florita wanted to keep it.
Why, if you don’t visit his grave any more?
Vila Bela Cemetery’s just an overgrown wilderness, she said.
She lied, looking at Amando’s image. She went to the cemetery and left bromelias on her boss’s grave. She even planted a cashew-tree beside the tomb of the Cordovils. One morning when I went to visit my mother’s grave, Florita was there, on her knees, praying and watering the tree. I hadn’t forgotten what she told me straight after Amando’s funeral: Your father was greedy as a tapir, but I learned to like him.
She learned to like him, in spite of his meanness. The whole of Amazonia learned too. I gave the photograph to Florita and looked at Boa Vida as you look at a place that shouldn’t be remembered any more. On the journey back to Vila Bela, I thought about the mother I’d never known. I wondered if she’d died to get away from my father. Amando and my grandfather had enemies. Amando