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By Root 103 0

as I used to be, but I didn’t have the perspicacity or cunning to suspect a father’s trap to catch his son. What I did was to throw myself into the nightlife around the port. With the clothes I was given by the passengers, it wasn’t hard to win over women from the famous cabarets. I drank for free on board the La Plata and worked as a porter and tourist guide. In the Adolpho Lisboa Market, Zé Braseiro’s show attracted the tourists at the same time as it appalled them. He was a lad who only had arms and hands—his legs were two stumps of meat. He went around in a little cart pushed by an assistant. On Saturdays, this assistant set up a trapeze in the storehouse by the fish stalls. Zé Braseiro would climb up a rope and swing round the trapeze, put on his display up above, and was greeted with applause. The tourists wept for pity and left money on the cart. Sometimes he repeated the display in São Sebastião Square, in front of the Opera House.

I’d have lived that way for a long time, but the meeting with Amando changed my life. The city had grown unsettled. The traffic in the port had decreased. It wasn’t the war in Europe, the First World War. Not yet. I could see people were irritated, indignant. Everything seemed strange and violent. I read my father’s outburst in the papers: he complained about absurd taxes, customs dues, the inefficiency of the port, the ballyhoo of our politics.

That’s not the only reason Amando’s angry, said Estiliano. He’s found out you’ve abandoned your studies and are wandering around, sleeping in the city brothels.

How did he find out?

He knows everything. He’ll tell you about it when we meet him.

Isn’t it too late for reconciliation?

It’s the chance of a lifetime for you. He’s getting old, and you’re his only son. You must take a boat to Vila Bela before Christmas.

At the beginning of December I went to the house to see Florita. A neighbour told me she and my father had left for Vila Bela. I went into the garden and peered into the parlour through the gaps in the blinds, but I couldn’t see my mother’s picture on the wall, though the black piano was still in the same place.

While I was looking at the room, I recalled a recital at the house by the pianist Tarazibula Boanerges, to celebrate Amando Cordovil’s purchase of the company’s second barge. I was about sixteen at the time. During the dinner, Amando embraced a young guest and said: You’ve got a vocation for politics; you should be a candidate for Mayor of Vila Bela.

The young man, Leontino Byron, asked which party he should stand for.

That’s not important, my father answered. Winning’s all that matters.

That was one of the few times I saw Amando enthusiastic, and I was even happy when he introduced me to the guests at dinner. One of them, a director of the Manaus Tramway, wanted me to meet his daughter. He pointed at a young girl next to the piano. She was smiling at the keyboard: she had good teeth, beautiful eyes and features, everything was good and beautiful in fact, only she was too pale; her skin was white as paper. I was still looking at her almost transparent whiteness when Amando said to his friend:

There’s no point. My son’s crazy about little Indian girls.

He went back to talking about the barge and freight prices. I remember I left the room and went with Florita into the garden. I told her I didn’t want to live with Amando, either in the white palace or the house in Manaus.

Since your mother died, seu Amando’s never loved anyone—only his damned barges.

She kissed me on the mouth, the first kiss, and asked me to be patient. Crazy about little Indian girls. I repeated those words with the taste of Florita’s kiss on my lips.

With these memories, I came away from the empty house, and decided to leave work and travel to Vila Bela. I told the owner of the Cosmopolitan I was going to give up the room.

Working in the harbour was no job for a Cordovil. Your father’s freighters have got a future.

I had the impression everyone knew my movements, and was surprised when the owner of the grocery store gave me a ticket to Vila Bela