Orphans of Eldorado. Milton Hatoum
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That’s what she said; then she went to get my bath ready. I noted that Amando’s hammock was slung in the same place in the parlour. My room was cleaned and ready, with the mosquito net hung over the bed as if I’d never left home. In the back garden, I spoke to the caretaker and his wife. Almerindo and Talita came to live in the back of the white palace when Amando abandoned the Boa Vida plantation to dedicate himself to his freighters. Florita, out of spite or jealousy, treated the couple as if they were strangers. They hadn’t lost the subservient habit of calling me ‘Doctor’, as they did when I was a boy. Almerindo did repairs in the house, whitewashing the façade after the winter rains. Talita looked after the garden and cleaned the stone centrepiece of the fountain. It was in the shape of my mother’s head; Amando had had it made after she died. From a very young age, I used to look at the young face, the grey stone eyes which seemed to question me. I was on my knees in front of the head when I smelled the waft of scent from the Bonplant perfumery. Florita informed me that the bath was full. After the bath she served lunch: beans with pumpkin and maxixe, grilled fish and farofa with turtle eggs.
Your father’s completely stuffed with food. He didn’t even have a siesta.
Where is he?
In the Carmelite School. He went to see the headmistress. Then he was going to Dr Estiliano’s house.
Our meeting’s at five, I said, knowing Florita already knew. But I want to see the old man first.
Be careful not to turn Christmas sour, she warned me.
Is he in a good mood?
When he’s in Vila Bela he’s only short of hugging the moon.
I went to Ribanceira and waited in the shade of the cuiarana tree. Vila Bela was hiding from the hot sun. Everything was still in the afternoon heat. I remember the noise of a boat, the sounds of a river that never sleeps. The school gardener opened the gate and this tall, burly man appeared, in dark jacket and trousers. He wasn’t wearing a hat. I thought this might be the moment to talk. Between us there was the shadow of my mother: the suffering he’d borne since her death. For Amando, I had put a brutal end to a love story. I was afraid of the confrontation, and hesitated. He took quick steps, his hands clenched as if the fingers had been amputated, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere in front of him. His well-combed hair looked like a helmet. My father was walking towards the white palace. As I emerged from the shade, he lifted his head towards the bell in the tower, swung round and walked towards Matadouro Street. I think he’d decided to go to Estiliano’s house straight away. At the end of the square he stopped, and his crossed arms grabbed his shoulders as if he was hugging his own body. He slowly bent his legs and fell to his knees. His head was shining in the corner of the square. The man was going to collapse forwards, but he twisted and sank backwards instead. I shouted out his name and ran towards him. On his back, he lay staring at me, his face contorted in pain. I was floundering, trying to massage his chest. Then there was a single embrace, for my dead father. The man I most feared was in my arms. He was still. I hadn’t the strength to carry him on my own. In a short time the town awoke and curious bystanders surrounded his body. Somebody pointlessly said that Vila Bela’s only doctor had gone to Nhamundá. Florita arrived in such a state of despair that she pushed me away, screaming, and fell weeping to her knees. Estiliano appeared a few minutes later. The bystanders moved back while the big man leant over Amando, kissed his face and delicately closed his eyes.
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 are lots in Manaus.
But only one Stelios, I said.
We reached an agreement on how much I could take out. And he himself suggested that the money should be sent by Lloyd’s internal post. I tried to insist that he should run the firm, but he refused: he wouldn’t be coming to live in Vila Bela for a few years. I was the heir, I should take over . . .
I have neither the experience nor the desire, I interrupted.
Amando trusted the manager. You could live in Vila Bela and spend a few days in Manaus. And look after the Boa Vida plantation.
I came to live here, but I couldn’t go two months without a visit to Manaus. I spent them in the office, looking at the pile of papers on the desk and getting irritated with problems of all kinds: parts for machines, the dismissal or hiring of employees, missing merchandise, customs dues, taxes. The manager responded to my doubts with few words, or with a haughty silence. I was the boss before time, which confounded him. When he cornered me to make a decision, I asked Estiliano for help. The lawyer sat in my father’s chair, looked at the documents I was to sign and questioned the price of transporting goods. With the voice of a croaking dog he would complain: If Amando was here . . . Sometimes he criticised me because I was sharp with the manager. I couldn’t divine his thoughts, and I didn’t have the serenity of Estiliano to withstand the cold look that sought out my father’s portrait on the office wall. Why did he look at his dead boss so often? In Vila Bela, I only thought about the manager and the firm when I saw the Eldorado some hundred yards from the white palace, and then I thought my life depended on that cargo-boat plying the Amazon. But I forgot the ship on the day I encountered the girl I’d seen at Amando’s funeral. The woman with two ages. Dinaura. I couldn’t remember her face in detail; her eyes, yes, the look