Orphans of Eldorado. Milton Hatoum
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to work with him. He didn’t need me any more.
I never knew for certain if I’d been dismissed on my father’s orders, but I still hoped to talk to him. I told the owner of the Cosmopolitan that I was out of work, and that the rent would be late. As he had friends in the harbour, I began to work helping passengers embark and disembark. I spent the whole day at the port and had no time for study. I got no pay, just tips; I was given clothes, hats and second-hand books. I got to know the captain of the Atahualpa, the Re Umberto, the Anselm, the Rio Amazonas. I became friendly with Wolf Nickels, of the La Plata. These captains worked for Lamport and Holt, the Ligure Brasiliana, the Lloyd Brasileiro, the Booth Line and the Hamburg–South America. Sometimes I accompanied foreign passengers on a canoe trip to the lakes near Manaus; I took them round the centre of the city—they were mad keen to see the Opera House, and couldn’t understand how such a grand work of architecture could exist in the middle of the jungle.
I saw the German freighter close to only once, at dawn, after I’d spent the night at a cheap cabaret in the Rua da Independência. I sat on the floating quay and read the word painted in white on the prow: Eldorado. So much greed and illusion! Looking at the freighter, I remembered that Amando hated seeing his son consort with the children in Aldeia. We would catch fish with bows and arrows, bathe in the river and run on the beach. When he appeared at the top of the Fishermen’s Steps, I would return to the white palace. I remembered the contempt and the silence too. That hurt more than the stories he told me in the Boa Vida plantation.
At that time the memories came slowly, like drops of sweat. I struggled to forget, but I couldn’t. Even without knowing it, I wanted to get close to my father. Nowadays, the memories return intensely. And they’re clearer.
I was getting used to the work on the harbour. I talked to young people who were going to study in Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. Others were going to Europe. People arrived from many countries, and from every corner of Brazil. The problem was the poor; the government didn’t know what to do with them. At dawn, the squares were littered with families sleeping on old newspapers, and that’s where I read news items about my father, in those crumpled, dirty pages; the most important news being the competition for a freight line from Manaus to Liverpool. If Amando won the franchise he would get assistance from the government to buy another freighter. Estiliano confirmed this, saying my father would need me. He wanted me to talk to Amando in Vila Bela.
I asked why we shouldn’t meet in Manaus.
In Vila Bela your father’s far away from his problems. He’s in his own house.
Florita’s never been back to see me, I said.
That’s my friend bearing a grudge. Jealousy. But that’ll come to an end soon.
I didn’t know if Amando had already fixed something with Estiliano. I wasn’t as young 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 in the La Plata, along with a typed note: Meeting at the lawyer Stelios’s house at 5 in the afternoon on 24 December. AC. Amando had everything worked out: the date of departure, the ship, the time and the meeting place. Years later I had suspicions about the authorship of the note. It might have been written by Estiliano. But the fact is I went in the expectation of talking to my father. I disembarked at Vila Bela at two in the afternoon of 24 December, and when I caught sight of the white palace, I felt the emotion and sense of oppression you feel when you return home. Here I was someone else. That is, I was myself: Arminto, the son of Amando Cordovil, grandson of Edílio Cordovil, sons of Vila Bela and the River Amazon.
I discovered my father wasn’t at home when Florita, dressed only in a nightgown, gave me a tight, long embrace. I felt her strong hands moving over my back, lowered my head and whispered: Servants can sniff things out. Look what happened when we had fun that afternoon.
She loosened her grip and looked at me with a guiltless smile: Don’t you want some more? Was it just that afternoon?
That afternoon produced a lifetime’s jealousy. I asked if she’d known I was coming.
Neither