Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum [7]
I had spent some four or five years without setting foot in Vila Bela, and from the moment Amando’s wake took place in the Carmo Church I saw how beloved he was. This left me confused, for the praises for the dead man contradicted my image of the living father. I knew he liked giving alms, a vice I inherited and kept up for a long time. And I remembered how much charity he dispensed at the festivals of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But after his death I discovered he’d been a real philanthropist. He gave food and clothes to the Carmelite Orphanage, and contributed to the building of the bishop’s palace and the restoration of the town jail. He even paid the jailers’ wages, a favour he did both to the government and the locals. At the funeral, Ulisses Tupi and Joaquim Roso, river pilots Amando trusted—as well as Denísio Cão, a strange boatman from Jaguar Island—offered their condolences. Not even Amando could stand Denísio. He knelt down and crossed himself, with his long, horsy, sad face. The orphan girls from the Sacred Heart of Jesus were at the cemetery too, all wearing the same uniform: a brown skirt and a white blouse. Girls. One of them looked more grown up—like a woman with two different ages. She was wearing a white dress and was looking upwards, as if she wasn’t there, as if she wasn’t anywhere. Suddenly her look met mine, and the angular face smiled. I didn’t know the girl. I looked at her so hard that the headmistress of the Carmo School came over to me. Mother Joana Caminal came alone, offered her condolences and said dryly: Senhor Amando Cordovil was the most generous man in this town. Let us pray for his soul.
And off she went, with the girl and the other orphans in tow.
The room where he slept in the white palace was still as he had left it. All I did was move the hammock to another part of the room. During his siestas, Amando’s body used to obstruct the way to the windows. I shortened the strings and brought the hammock nearer the middle window. That way I could see the ramp up to the Market and the river, I could feel the life coming from the waters.
Florita reacted to her boss’s death with a great deal of sadness. She wore white clothes instead of full mourning, and still cooked my father’s favourite dishes. Whether because she forgot, or out of habit, sometimes she put Amando’s plate and knife and fork at the head of the table; I ate alone, not looking at the empty place.
At the beginning of the New Year, I went with Estiliano to Manaus. He gave me a box from the Mandarim with the papers Amando kept in the house. When Estiliano opened the inventory, I discovered my father had owned a plot in the Flores neighbourhood, near the asylum. He left a tidy sum to his friend, along with a house on the bank of the Francesa Lagoon. A little embarrassed, Estiliano said that the money would buy him wine for his old age. The house would be his refuge in Vila Bela.
Amando’s generosity to his beloved Stelios didn’t upset me. I asked the lawyer to be my representative in the firm; then I asked for money to live on, suggesting a monthly allowance. Estiliano spoke of a bank loan to pay Holtz, the shipbuilders: how could I ask for so much money? He couldn’t allow it.
Get another lawyer, he said firmly. There