Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [27]
You’re only half a step from poverty. I don’t want to see a Cordovil living on the streets.
Then I decided to touch on a subject that I knew would cut him to the quick. I told him that in Boa Vida, after I’d rummaged through the papers in the Mandarim box, I discovered that Amando Cordovil had been a smuggler and tax-evader. Was Estiliano aware of this?
He got up, and before he got to the door, I went on: it was the meat and Brazil nuts that Amando exported to Manaus. He took the cargo to other areas so as not to pay taxes in Vila Bela; then he unloaded everything on an island near Manaus and played the same trick. He bribed the customs official; he’d have bribed the devil himself.
The politicians blackmailed your father, said Estiliano.
They were his allies, his partners, I said. My father avoided duties and then shared the profits with them; then he helped the mayor’s office, donated carts to collect the rubbish, gave the horses and oxen that pulled the carts, paid for the repairs at the slaughterhouse and the jail, even the jailers’ wages. Then he did the same thing with the cargos for the barges and the Eldorado: he wrote to the governor of Amazonas, and to a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Transport. He died because he lost the competition for a big contract, just before the First World War: rubber and mahogany to Europe. His heart gave way, his greed was bigger than his life.
It wasn’t greed, Estiliano burst out.
His loud voice gave Florita a fright. Even I was shocked by his outburst. Amando’s sudden death had made him feel vulnerable. He’d had no time to burn the past away.
It wasn’t greed, Estiliano repeated.
His red, sweaty face was shining; he couldn’t move, suffering as he was from this episode of intemperance. The sweat ran off his chin and dripped to the floor. Amando was an ambitious man, he said, but an upright one. Florita knew that, everybody did. The farmers only thought about exporting meat to Manaus. Amando was the first one to sell cheap meat in Vila Bela. He wanted the people to eat, he wanted meat for everyone, but even for that he had to grease the politicians’ palms. He wanted the jail to be clean, with food and bunkbeds. It wasn’t greed. It must have been something else. Some people can die of greed, but not . . .
I never knew that man, I said brusquely. I read all the correspondence he received.
He never mentioned those letters to me, said Estiliano contemptuously.
Estiliano’s blind loyalty to my father was getting on my nerves. Before he left, he warned me: Don’t spend all the money, don’t spend all that money in Belém.
Florita muttered that I shouldn’t have sold the white palace; that I’d be sorry for the rest of my life.
Florita’s mutterings didn’t bother me. Without realizing it, I was being as stubborn and brutish as Amando Cordovil. I wanted to be different, but there was a shadow of my father inside me, like a stone inside a rotten fruit. I was determined to be the rind, to be thrown aside, and that way I’d do no harm to anyone.
The Hildebrand was due to dock in Vila Bela on a Saturday. On the Friday morning, I signed the documents in the registry office and handed the keys to Becassis. Then he said just what I wanted to hear most:
When you come back from Belém, I’ll invite you to dine at home. My daughter will be pleased.
Buoyed by this I embraced Florita, expecting her to sob because she would miss me. But no. Not a single word.
I left everything in the house: the furniture, the crockery, the clock on the wall, even the linen sheets. The only thing I didn’t leave behind was the memory of the time I had lived there.
The captain of the Hildebrand recognised my name. He remembered Amando’s trips to Belém. He said I would travel in my father’s favourite cabin.
He saw the surprise, perhaps even shock, on my face.
It’s the only one that’s not taken, he said.
I travelled where