Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [36]
Is she alive? Where is this island?
Estiliano opened a sheet of paper and showed me a map with two words on it: Manaus and Eldorado.
I read the words out loud and looked at Estiliano.
Once they were synonyms, he said. The colonisers confused Manaus or Manoa with Eldorado. They were looking for the gold of the New World in a submerged city called Manoa. That was the real enchanted city.
And the map? Is Dinaura in Manaus or on the island?
She went to live in the village on the island, Eldorado, said Estiliano. Someone, mistakenly or out of malice, told Mother Caminal that Dinaura was seriously ill. No, it wasn’t your father. She might have got it into her own head that she was ill. She wouldn’t tell me. I think only your father could drag any words out of that woman. Mother Caminal agreed to her leaving. And she went away. The island is a few hours away from Manaus. Dinaura must be in Eldorado. Alive or dead. I don’t know. But I didn’t want to die with that secret. That’s why I’ve come here. Out of friendship for your father too.
My father. At that moment I thought: poor Estiliano, a senile old man. I told him I hadn’t a penny to my name but I was determined to sell this shack to go to Manaus and the island.
He took a sheaf of notes from his pocket and put them on my knee. Good heavens: how long was it since I’d seen money! Then he said he was in a hurry, very busy with his own death. He smiled, without any warmth, and explained:
I have to go to the registrar’s office to sign over my house and my books. I want to give everything to Vila Bela and realise one of my friend’s dreams. Your father wanted to build a library in this poor town. He didn’t live to do it.
He got up and embraced me. So that was the last time I saw Estiliano, wearing his white jacket, trousers with braces and old shoes.
Destiny is the most imponderable thing in life, he used to say. Stelios da Cunha Apóstolo. He died when I was on my way to Eldorado. He was buried in the Cordovils’ tomb. I kept the Spanish poem, and to this day I have the map of the island.
I went in an old vessel: a steamship from the Mississippi, the last one to ply the Amazon. I hung round my neck the dolphin’s eye Florita had given me and put my mother Angelina’s photograph into my trouser pocket. I slept in a hammock in third class, on the deck level with the water. Lots of noise, birds and pigs tied up, a sour smell of sweat and dirt. The food was filthy. None of this mattered, because this could be the journey of my life, to the elusive heart of the woman I loved.
Very early in the morning, as the boat was nearing Manaus, I went up to the bridge to see the towers of the cathedral and the dome of the Opera House. I remembered the house in the Ingleses, the Pension Saturno and the Cosmopolitan Grocery, my jobs in the store run by the Portuguese and in the Manaus Harbour. In the Escadaria Harbour, a barge was unloading rubber. The smell made me nauseous, the balls piled up like a lot of dead vultures. An ugly vision, only a few blocks from the business I had inherited and lost. On the quay, I was surrounded by people selling objects left behind by the Americans during the Second World War. I bought nothing. No one recognised a Cordovil from the past. I might as well have been in the skin of one of the peddlers: the difference was our stories. But isn’t that everything anyway? For vengeance or puerile pleasure I’d thrown away a fortune. But I’m not sorry.
I showed the map to an experienced pilot and told him I was looking for a village on the island of Eldorado.
I know there’s a leper town on one of the islands of the Anavilhanas, he said. Sick people who fled from the colony of Paricatuba.
Was that the sickness Dinaura was hiding? I imagined her beauty destroyed, and thought about the silence of our meetings. The pilot saw I was upset and asked if I felt dizzy. Angry was what I was. The question whether Dinaura was Amando’s daughter or had been his lover was something that concerned only the two