Categoria: herons and scavengers… (novel)

5. The house

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz
Proofread by Izabel Arocha

    The yard was huge. I had the impression that I could easily lose myself in it. It was possible, for instance, for two soccer games be happening simultaneously, one for the little ones and another for the older ones. And, if I took a quick look at them running, it looked like scattered stars lost in the sky. The yard was huge.
The wall around it seemed to be very high to me, but it was easily climbed by some of them. There was a time that one of the older students was on duty at each corner of the wall, to prevent anyone from escaping. They watched proudly while performing this unhappy task.
I think the dorms were at the top. I have the impression that there were stairs going up. So the classrooms must have been downstairs. There was a kitchen and a cafeteria. Did we stand or sat to eat? We formed a line and I see benches alongside the table, or am I mistaking it with the bench of my house in Manhuaçu?
Next to the main house, in a row, there was a group of rooms, each containing a toilet bowl with no top and no door. It never occurred to me to feel ashamed while squatting on the toilet. Instead, one could follow the development of the games. I now wonder if all the rooms had no doors. What do I know? Most likely, some had no doors and due to the number of students, they ended up been used by the little ones.
I don’t recall if the faucets were lined up next to these rooms. It was there that faces were washed, water was drunk and feet were washed before going up to the dorms.
There was a big bathroom with a flat cement floor surrounded by many showers. We lined up outside, took off the sailcloth overalls and then went in. The overalls were kept in a waiting line. The water was cold. I don’t remember any soap. There were no bath towels. We returned and the line made of sailcloth became alive, agitated and quickly filled with the wet and laughing bodies.
I don’t want to forget to mention the columns along the main house which formed a terrace between the yard and house. And along the columns uniting them there was a long and very short cement fence that ended up being used as a bench. We all sat on those concrete benches and played there many times. It is, above all, because of my ear ache that I’ll talk about those little walls later.
At some point, remodeling was done throughout the building. The classrooms were painted and names of saints were written on top of the doorways. I don’t know if they enlarged the yard, changed the wall, crumbled something, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. The classrooms were painted and something else happened, that’s all.
I remember the work been done due to the names written on the doorways and because the newly-painted wall had a mark of a hand print. They looked for the guilty one and it was not difficult to figure out who had a hand stained with paint. I will not speak about the punishment. It’s not fair to hurt again, little by little, that little body long cut in the abandonment of death. He will suffer greatly in some other chapter; that he suffers all and surrenders himself to his eternal rest in the same chapter.
It’s time to take my people to bed.
All lined up. I remember the prayers screamed in unison. In the end, the supervisor

    Praise Our Lord
And all
    Forever be praised.
Praise Our Lord
Forever be praised.
How many times? five?, ten?
    Prais oua Lord
Foreva be prais.
Twenty times?, thirty times?
    Prais oua Lord
Forevabeprais…

Why always so fast? Did the same thing happen every single day? Finally, we climbed upstairs. I got a blanked on the first day. And on that same night it disappeared. A noise, a gush of cold, I woke up at a glance. A benevolent soul, maybe that blond boy that will be the character of the most striking fact that happened there, no, it wasn’t, I’m mixing everything up, someone spoke in the dark:
Did they take your blanket? I’ll get you another one.
Have I cried? Was I shivering a lot? I waited shrunken and a voice rose in the dark:
Son of a bitch! My blanket! Son of a bitch!
I felt someone putting a cover over me and the benefactor walked away, like a cat. I grabbed the blanket again, warm, I grabbed it the best I could and the next day I did like all the others next to me: they tied the four corners to the bunk bed poles and slipped below. He came to me smiling and saying that he stole the blanket for me and that I should be careful not to lose it again. I remember everything but I can not remember this blurred face.
I slept in the dorm with older beds, reserved for the youngsters. There was another one, cleaner, the one reserved for the older ones, it was never stinky there. And a third one for the boys that pissed on their beds. The supervisor slept with the older ones, they told stories until late; but in ours, as soon as Silence was shouted, everything felt silent.
I don’t know who had the idea of taking me to the dorm of the older ones, to sleep with my brother Geraldo. This happened just before my departure. There were double-decker bunks. On the first bunk bed, below, slept Antonio, the supervisor and on top somebody I didn’t know. On the second one, Geraldo slept on top, so I began to sleep there too. Below us, slept a skinny black guy, I remember that he liked me very much. There I was listening to the conversation of the big ones until I faded in my sleep. Sometimes, the supervisor gave the final word:
Well, we’ve already talked too much, let’s go to sleep.
And there was complete silent.
One night, I was awakened by Geraldo and heard screams:
Geraldo, Geraldo, your brother is peeing on me!
I got up fast, deadly ashamed.
The next night, I was afraid to climb onto the bed. I holed up in a corner and began to pray, trying not to make any noise. I was afraid of hearing another scolding, I was afraid of been taken to the other dorm, I died of shame and so I tried not to do the slightest noise. It was a terrible wait, the Hail Maries repeating itself, stumbling and drunk.
Geraldo, where’s your brother?
Huh! Did he go to the other dorm?
He’s here, shrunken.
I climbed up slowly, the black guy comforted me with a smile, Geraldo said something that flooded my soul with light so I dropped the unnecessary load of agony and exhausted fell asleep.
Did something happened later to cause the disappearance of all the blankets? Was it some kind of a punishment? During the last months we had no blankets. When that happened, here I am sleeping alone again. We all have adopted the same policy: the mattresses were then very old and from their holes fell pixie dust of crushed straw. We only had to take the bottom part and bring it well on top of the shriveled body. The arm was used as weight on the mattress. It wasn’t like the blanket but it was better then to leave the body at the mercy of chills and tremors. It was harder with a new mattress. I remember that once I kept pulling the blanket and it would go back as a spring. Fresh straw smelled good, the cloth smelled good, but the new blanket did not stick to the body as the old ones did, full of holes that gradually filled us with yellow pixie dust.
It was also difficult to scratch the bedbug bites. They walked slowly and tickling, we could follow their path feeling the tingling of their tiny paws on the body. Then a burning feeling and the hand reaching the spot making the mattress bend backwards.
The nights were endless.

to be continued on next sunday.

4. Still the inhabitants

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz
Proofread by Izabel Arocha

I was sitting on the ground, in the middle of the small group, maybe on my first or second day there, someone called:
Bucket!
Bucket came and looked at me. The nickname was very weird. I started laughing.
Bucket?, I asked.
Yes.
Shit Bucket? still laughing. I don’t know which association had led me to this.
Shit Bucket is a punch in the middle of your horns.
He was angry and I completely shrunk, ashamed and fearful. It was a new situation. I didn’t want to face it. A more aggressive reaction filled me with fear and I would have hated to have to fight. So the shame and fear. I also felt sorry when I realized I had offended him.
However, nothing happened. He grumbled a bit, looking angry at me with anger and grief, and the memory stumbles here. So from then on, we were always friends, always participating in everything, any erased memory shows me a piece of that creature.
Bucket. Would be alive today, the man that in the lost days of my childhood bore the burden of that nickname? What a small donation of destiny that didn’t give him even a name! It was not Francisco, Paulo or José. It could at least be Chico, Zé, Mané! No. Bucket. It’s Bucket that’s all. It will be Bucket until the end of my memories.
Bucket was a mulatto. The most striking feature of his face was that his jaws were up front, as if the teeth had to come first. I don’t remember any trace of his character. The only thing that occurs to me is loyalty of companionship. At the stream, in the fields, with the clay or the ball, Bucket is present. Neither bitter nor sweet, he doesn’t laugh or cry, he isn’t light as Valdemar or melancholic as Hermes. He is the companion.
The last of these small playmates from my dispersing memory was called Zé da Silva. New irony. The former had no name, this one has first and last name, and yet, first and last name that do not belong to anyone, being that in Brazil it’s the most common name of all. Were his teeth too white?, or did they seem extremely white because of the violent contrast with his absolute blackness! Did he laugh all the time?, or did the absolute whiteness of his teeth legitimized his laugh even more! I don’t know. To me, those will always be the most beautiful teeth in the world, this smiling little black boy. Owner of a fierce energy, he jumps more than all of us, plays more than all of us and moves more than all of us, like a powered ant. I cannot imagine sadness in this little creature, the one I remember now or the one I just imagine in the future. Valdemar would display later some fleeting pain in his light colored eyes, Hermes would cry, Bucket seemed fragile, he would tremble easily. But not Zé da Silva. The tiny black boy would always have that white and huge smile, a gratuitous eco of the response that the African clay gave to the black deity on the day of creation. It is easy to see him as a happy dancer in some Samba School during Rio’s Carnival. You can also easily think of him loving the most beautiful black girl, ephemeral mixture of two eternal nights.
I would need to struggle to conceive him fallen down, in the middle of the mud, bloodied, pierced by the bullets of justice. That smile didn’t light that kind of path. I do know though that this is a possible path.
I pointed out two other names, Bleached Kitty and Little Marcos. The presence of these pictures inside of me is a curious fact. Both remained thanks to two incidents that occurred during my stay there. They exist neither before nor later, only during these two quick and outstanding moments.
Bleached Kitty was white and blond; milky white as milk, blond as wires of a maize spike. He had a fine voice and each sentence would bring laughter because he was natural from that region with a hillbilly accent that made carioca’s laugh. It seemed that he had an older brother as white as himself or even more. Two pieces of white paper, released in the middle of the colors brown, copper, bronze, purple, pink and black. They were elusive and frightened and gave me the impression of being endangered animals.
One day I had a fight with Bleached Kitty. I don’t know why. The earliest memory begins with our bodies grappling. I don’t know if it lasted, I don’t know if it was fast. I know that he scratched my whole face and the scratch burned me for many days. Was that what incited his nickname? Had he fought using his nails before? I also don’t recall. I’ll be repeating this sentences a lot, I don’t remember, I don’t know, I don’t remember, my morning suns had not yet lit up all the limits of my experience and only those strongest moments left their mark; even these inaccurate and volatile. It’s not the case.
The impression that the fight left on me was for a change stronger than the actual fight. I remember the moral pain I felt for hurting him. I never fought. It was the only time during those twenty months. I was afraid, humble, gentle, a coward, many things. But above all, I felt sorry to harm, to hurt. The scratches on my face caused me a kind of comfort because I could imagine that I was not the only offender, I had also been offended.
Little Marcos was tiny. With fair skin, blond with a figure worthy of card saints. I remember him as a very unpleasant boy. Unlike Bucket, he had his teeth inwards and spoke with affected Cs which irritated me a lot. It should have been a kind of instinctive and primary jealousy because he was also protected by the older ones. I remember that he lost a lot of weight and suddenly disappeared from the Orphanage. He was on the priest’s house, they said, with TB. On a given day, looking over the wall, someone said to have seen him riding a horse and the image filled me with resentment. We mentioned the kind of delicious foods that he should be eating. Around his regrettable absence, we weaved heavens made of blankets, sweets, promenades and spaghetti. Some time later he returned. Showing colored cheeks and a little fuller, no longer the little pale skeleton that threatened to fall at every strong wind. I don’t know from where I got the impression that, after his return he seemed more sympathetic, with a friendlier smile, spoke without any diction problem. Despite this less grim picture, he was never remembered in the games we played, he seems not to belong to the group, he doesn’t return anymore.
There are other names that hurt the strings of my harp of memories. But I’m a little tired of people for now. I’ll return to this later. Now I’m in need of the environment, some room, I want to start living remembering again the memories of those days. I’ll begin reciting the rosary passages I do remember. I want the ground, classes, the night to sleep and food. This group of little ghosts of mine are sighing to bath in the stream, play ball, write their letters, what do I know? So I will describe the scene of the tragedy, the unfair battlefield of fights between such unequal forces.

to be continued on next sunday.

3. The residents

Translated by Angela Telles-Vaz
Proofread by Izabel Arocha

I spoke about herons and claws and beaks. Herons fly, it’s true. But claws and beaks are a literary exaggeration. Now, I don’t remember a fact that pains me, that frightens me, that panics me. Something must have been terrible at the time, but today it doesn’t make any difference.
I think that these memories could be just herons. On that occasion, it’s true, it must have been tragic, fatal, deformed and monstrous birds, there are a few similar, no more herons, but terrifying creatures in the almost hidden corners of Hieronymus Bosch. But after so long, now, these memories of mine show themselves soft and delicate, white flying herons in a Japanese painting.
And if I ask myself if this marked the paths through which wonders my experience, I say I do not know. It is possible. It is very possible. The halo which I thread for myself, the protective armor of shyness, the future scares, the longing I felt. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s possible. It’s very possible.
It’s almost certainly yes.
The following scene that comes to my mind shows me already sitting on the floor among some boys. No, they were not boys, they were lads or kids. The Orphanage was in Campo do Meio, State of Minas Gerais. Searching later in books on municipalities, from IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), I found out it was called: Saint Joseph’s Professional and Agricultural Institute. We were in Minas, but the environment was more like the carioca people from Rio de Janeiro. Most of us had been herded, assembled at the city which was at the time the country’s capital: white, blacks and mulattos. Pretty soon, I found out that I was one of the youngest. This would help me terribly, making things much easier for me, to the detriment of the older ones. I don’t know the age limits of that small population and, even less, the number of its inhabitants. I imagine that the age would vary between six and fourteen years old. (weren’t they supposed to take another path later?). I never get an accurate idea on the number of children and adolescents. What pettiness our memory depends on! A fly can allow it to raise empires, compose immense panels. Well…
The little ones formed their small groups just like the bigger ones. I would like to remember about the closest, the more intimate ones: Valdemar, Hermes, Bucket, Zé da Silva, Bleached Kitty, Little Marcos… I must have forgotten someone… Maybe forever.
Valdemar was fair skin, had a hoarse voice. Curly hair, green, grey, blue kind of eyes, his eyes changed colors with each memory. He would sit on the ground and would draw a mermaid profile. Inevitably, he would draw a mermaid profile. With him I learned how to draw female profiles that haunt me until today. Is that the reason why the women of Piero della Francesca impress me so much? those huge foreheads, eyes a little puffy, slightly primitive traits…Valdemar is there to accompany me during all the memories. When I say “we”, without referring to the entire student body, I will be talking about him and a few other friends.
I think he was older than me. I don’t remember him in the classroom. Or would it be many of the same age?, as to be spread over the same class. I don’t know. Valdemar is with me when we draw on the ground, play with clay or sing.
Hermes was a mulatto, tall and thin. One day I learned that the first Brazilian president was called Marshal Hermes and from then on I always tried to imagine my little friend dressed as a marshal holding a sword or something that the president usually handles. I never could. His looks were laughable, unbalanced with that confused and imprecise load, medals, horse, perhaps a crown, uniform, cape and many more important things! He was Hermes again, soft mulatto, thin, tall. His voice was sharp. His eyes remind me of transparent honey. It seems as I could pass through him when looking into his eyes. His skin was beautiful like burned bronze and later when in middle school I studied that the Egyptians skin were like bronze or copper, and so are the Hindus, I thought immediately about my distant friend, he would certainly be Egyptian or Hindu for he had straight hair and was tall and thin. I remember more: sometime after my departure, he said that all of us were all very thin. I could see the painful truth. And I remembered how he was strong and looked beautiful to me, the first time I saw him.
Was Hermes or Valdemar who taught the rest of the group the little song about St. Peter?

    My father tied my eyes
So St. Peter could untie them.
The girl who takes pity on me
Come here and untie my eyes…   

I cannot remember. However I remember that it was him, for sure the one who renovated the wheels of the little cars made of clay and we were all marveled with the invention of the carburetor bars. I will return to this in another chapter.
The last image I have of this sad and skinny boy, with the transparent look like an angel is from the night before my departure. He was deeply sad, head down and discouraged. I think he was crying. I said I would rather not go. I didn’t want to leave him there. He said that I had no right to be sad. I had a mother, I was leaving and it was a beautiful dream. They would remain suffering, eating misery, being kicked in the ass, getting thinner… He put his little arms next to mine and, seeing those bones under the skin, my whole body trembled and I felt as if a knife was moving inside my heart. It really hurt to see him with arms so skinny, so weak and melancholic.
I said no more claws or vultures beaks on me. But what kind of mystery feels my eyes with tears and make my hands shake? Where did the benevolent ghost of this little mulatto angel hide, he who didn’t grow up, didn’t accompany me through life, who is planted within me as an undying boy?

to be continued on next sunday.