Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [30]
With the money left over, I bought this shack. Genesino Adel didn’t even give me back the furniture and personal objects from the white palace. He hated my grandfather. Only then did I find out that Edílio Cordovil had abused a Portuguese girl, Genesino’s mother, one of the many girlfriends Edílio abandoned. Salomito Benchaya told me this when I stopped by the bar in the Market for a drink. They say your grandfather got engaged, promised to marry, left the girl and went looking for another.
Amando must have done this with Becassis’s daughter too. If Florita knew about it, she had decided to keep her mouth shut. The worst thing was her decision not to live with me any more. I had to learn to live without the flower of my infancy and childhood.
Sometimes, worried about my being on my own, Estiliano would come by for a chat. He didn’t talk about his own life; there are people who die with their secrets. But one afternoon he revealed that he’d been very shaken by my father’s death; and that the two of them had been planning a trip to Paris.
Just the two of you?
Yes.
On other visits, he commented on the books I’d bought in Belém. He said that the late afternoon inspired him and disturbed him, and at that time of the day he felt an absurd desire to suffer. He drank two bottles of red wine and, before it grew dark, he read poems by Cesário Verde and Manuel Bandeira. He left half drunk, his deep, hoarse voice intoning: ‘Life passes, life passes, and youth will end . . .’
One Saturday afternoon he dragged me to a literary soirée at the Francesa Lagoon. Estiliano didn’t let any of his books moulder on the shelves. When he moved here, he brought from Manaus a library that astonished the town. In the early mornings he walked down to the harbour of Santa Clara, returning to read. On Saturdays, he recited poems and offered wine and liqueurs to the few people in Santa Clara who read. He’d say: When I stop working, I want nothing more of laws and statutes, nothing at all. Just reading. I came out of the soirée missing Dinaura so much that I never went back. He showed me the book from which he’d copied the poem I sent to Mother Caminal, recited Brazilian and Portuguese poems, and some by a French poet, very modern, who’d written love poems while fighting in the First World War. These poems only gave more life to my desire for my beloved. When Estiliano finished reading, I said, hardly able to speak: This is torture.
That’s our life when things go wrong, he corrected me. But the poets are the only ones who can speak of it.
For some time Estiliano carried on his visits, and in our conversations we avoided talking about Amando, the freighters, the past. He left books which I took a long time to read, because I’d stop at a page to think about Dinaura, or open at any page and my beloved would be there, disguised under another name, another life. I remember at that time he began to translate a Greek poem, and even gave me the first part of the translation. Then for a long time he didn’t set foot here, after the rainy afternoon when he spoke of his beloved poets, declaiming their verses, while I looked at the river and cried while he was leafing through a book.
I’ve never seen you cry over a poem, Estiliano said.
I’m not crying for the words. I’m crying because I long for a woman you hate. The Spanish Mother Superior lied to me . . . Someone lied to me.
He put the books in the leather briefcase, got up and said I should understand one thing: passions are as mysterious as nature. When someone dies or disappears, the written word is the only thing we have to hold on to.
I was going to send Estiliano to the devil; him, the written word, and all the poetry in the world, but the man was already out in the dirt street, and I was licking the tears from my lips. I never went to see him again, not even to ask for money. Some years later, when four tourists from São Paulo came by Vila Bela, I got a little money. Three women and a man—a writer. They were elegant poseurs, dressed all in black, and soaking wet from the heat.