Captains of the Sands (10 page)

“It’s just that my father died, you know. But I was even in a good school…I’m telling the truth. Why should I rob something like that?” he pointed to the reliquary. “In a church besides. I’m not a pagan.”

Father José Pedro smiled again. He knew perfectly well that Good-Life was lying. For a long time he’d been waiting for an opportunity to establish relations with the abandoned children of the city. He thought that was the mission he was meant to have. He’d already made so many visits to the Reformatory for Minors but there he raised all kinds of difficulties because he didn’t espouse the ideas of the director that it’s necessary to whip a child in order to correct errors. And the director even had his own ideas about errors. Father José Pedro had heard people talk about the Captains of the Sands for some time and he had a dream of getting in contact with them, to be able to bring all those hearts to God. He had an enormous will to work with those children and help them be good. That’s why he tried the best he could with Good-Life. Who knows, maybe through him he could get in touch with the Captains of the Sands? And so it was.

Father José Pedro was not considered a great mind among the clergy. He was, indeed, one of the most humble among that legion of priests in Bahia. In truth, he’d spent five years as a factory worker before entering the seminary. The manager of the factory, on a day when the bishop visited it, decided to make a show of generosity and said that “since Your Grace was complaining about the lack of priestly vocations,” he was prepared to pay the costs of studies for a seminarian or someone who wanted to study for the priesthood. José Pedro, who
was at his loom, went over and said he wanted to be a priest. The boss and the bishop were both startled. José Pedro wasn’t young and he hadn’t had much education. But the boss didn’t want to back down in front of the bishop. And José Pedro went to the seminary. The other seminarians made fun of him. He never managed to be a good student. Good behavior, that was about it. Also among the most devout, those closest to the church. He didn’t agree with many of the things that went on in the seminary and that was why the boys persecuted him. He couldn’t manage to penetrate the mysteries of philosophy, theology, or Latin. But he was pious and wanted to catechize children or Indians. He suffered a great deal, mainly after two years, when the factory owner stopped paying his expenses and he had to work as beadle in the seminary to be able to continue. But he succeeded in being ordained and was assigned as an aide in a church in the state capital while waiting for a parish. But his great desire was to catechize the abandoned children of the city, the boys who, without father or mother, lived by theft in the midst of all vices. Father José Pedro wanted to bring all those hearts to God. So he began to visit the Reformatory for Minors, where the director received him with great courtesy at first. But when he declared himself against corporal punishment, against letting the children go without food for days on end, things changed. One day he felt the need to write a letter about the situation to the editor of a newspaper. Then he was barred from entering the Reformatory and a complaint against him was lodged with the Archdiocese. That’s why he never had a parish after that. But his greatest wish was to meet the Captains of the Sands. The problem of abandoned and delinquent children that worried almost no one in the whole city was Father José Pedro’s greatest worry. He wanted to get close to those children, not just to bring them to God, but also to see if there wasn’t some way to better their situation. Father José Pedro didn’t have much influence. He didn’t have any influence at all, nor did he know either how to go about gaining the confidence of those little thieves. But he did know that their life consisted of a lack of
comfort and all love, a life of hunger and abandonment. And if Father José Pedro didn’t have beds, food, and clothing to bring them, at least he had words of love, a lot of it, certainly, in his heart for them. Father José Pedro was mistaken about one thing in the beginning: offering them the possibility of a more comfortable life in exchange for the free abandonment they enjoyed loose on the streets. Father José Pedro knew very well that he couldn’t get the attention of those children with the Reformatory. He knew the laws of the Reformatory too well, those written and those practiced. And he knew that there was no possibility there for a child to become good and hard-working. But Father José Pedro trusted in some friends he had, saintly and religious old women. They could take charge of several of the Captains of the Sands, educating them, feeding them. But that would mean giving up completely the great things life had for them: the adventure of freedom in the streets of the most mysterious and beautiful city in the world, in the streets of Bahia de Todos os Santos, the bay of all saints. And as soon as Father José Pedro established relations with the Captains of the Sands through Good-Life, he saw that if he put forth that proposition to them he would lose all the trust they had now placed in him and they would move from the warehouse and he would never see them again. Nor did he have absolute confidence in those aged old maids who lived in the church and who took advantage of the breaks between masses to gossip about other people’s lives. He remembered that in the beginning they had been annoyed with him because when he finished celebrating mass for the first time in that place a group of church biddies came up to him with the evident aim of helping him change vestments for the office of the mass. And all around he heard gushing exclamations:

“Good little Father…Angel Gabriel…”

A skinny old woman clasped her hands in adoration:

“My sweet little Jesus Christ…”

They seemed to be adoring him and Father José Pedro revolted. He knew that in reality the great majority of priests didn’t revolt and got fine presents of chickens, turkeys, embroidered handkerchiefs, and sometimes even old gold watches
that had come down through generations in the same family. But Father José Pedro had a different idea of his mission, he thought the others were in error and it was with a sacred furor that he said:

“Haven’t you ladies anything to do? Don’t you have homes to take care of? I’m not your sweet little Jesus Christ or your Angel Gabriel…Go home and do some work, get lunch ready, sew.”

The church biddies looked at him startled. It was as if he were the anti-Christ himself. The priest finished:

“Working at home you will serve God better than staying here sniffing at priests’ cassocks…Go on, go on…”

And while they went off frightened he repeated more with dismay than rage:

“My sweet little Jesus Christ…The name of the Lord in vain.”

The church biddies went straight to Father Clóvis, who was fat, bald, and very good-humored, the favorite confessor of all of them. Amidst exclamations of surprise they told him what had just happened. Father Clóvis looked at the biddies tenderly and consoled them:

“It’ll go away…This is the beginning. Later on he’ll see that you ladies are saints, true daughters of the Lord. This will go away. Don’t be upset. Go say an Our Father and don’t forget that there’s benediction today.”

He laughed when they’d gone. And he murmured to himself:

“These newly-ordained priests will spoil everything…”

Later on the church biddies approached Father José Pedro after a while. The truth is that they never came to have a perfect intimacy with him. His serious air, his goodness that was held back for when it was needed, and his horror at intrigues in the sacristy made them respect him more than love him. Some, however, generally those who were widows or the wives of bad husbands, became more or less friends with him. Something else removed him from the church biddies: he was everything a preacher shouldn’t be. He had never succeeded in describing hell with the conviction of Father Clóvis, for example. His rhetoric was poor and wanting. But he had faith, he
was a believer. And it would have been hard to say that Father Clóvis even believed in hell.

At first Father José Pedro had thought of bringing the Captains of the Sands to the biddies. He thought that in that way he would not only save the children from a miserable life but that he would also save the church biddies from pernicious uselessness. He would manage to have them dedicate themselves to the boys with the same fervent devotion they showed the church, its fat priests. Father José Pedro guessed (more than he knew) that if they spent their days in useless chatter in church or embroidering handkerchiefs for Father Clóvis, it was because they hadn’t had, in their unfortunate existence as virgins, a son, a husband to whom they could dedicate their time and love. Now he would bring them sons. Father José Pedro pondered that project for a long time…He even went so far as to bring a boy who had run away from the Reformatory to the house of one of them. That was a long time before he met the Captains of the Sands, when he’d only heard talk about them. The experiment turned out poorly: the boy ran away from the lady’s house carrying off several silver objects, preferring the freedom of the streets, even dressed in rags and with no assurance of meals, to the good clothes and steady meals with the obligation of reciting the tierce aloud and attending several masses and benedictions every day. Then Father José Pedro understood that his experiment had failed more through the fault of the old maid than that of the boy. Because obviously—Father José Pedro thought—it’s impossible to change an abandoned and thieving child into a sexton. But it’s quite possible to change him into a working man…And when he met the Captains of the Sands he hoped to enter into an agreement with some of them and with the biddies to try a new experiment, well-directed this time. But soon after Good-Life introduced him to the gang, of whom he soon gained the confidence of most, he saw that it was completely useless to think about that project. He saw that it was absurd because freedom was the deepest feeling in the hearts of the Captains of the Sands and that he had to try other means.

In the early days the boys looked at him with mistrust. They had heard on the street many times that priests were a drag, that the priest business was for women. But Father José Pedro had been a worker and he knew how to treat the boys. He treated them as men, as friends. And so he gained their confidence, became the friend of all of them, even of those who, like Pedro Bala and the Professor, didn’t like to pray. He only had great difficulty with Legless. While the Professor, Pedro Bala, and Cat were indifferent to the priest’s words (the Professor, however, liked him because he brought him books), Lollipop, Dry Gulch, and Big João, mainly the first, paid close attention to what he said, Legless put up a resistance that had been very tenacious at first. But Father José Pedro ended up winning them all over. And at least in Lollipop he discovered a priestly vocation.

But that afternoon it was with little satisfaction that they saw him arrive. Lollipop went over and kissed the priest’s hand. Dry Gulch too. The rest bowed. Father José Pedro explained:

“Today I’ve come with an invitation for all of you.”

Their ears were attentive. Legless muttered:

“He’s going to call us to benediction. I just want to see who’s for it…”

But he fell silent because Pedro Bala looked at him angrily. The priest gave him a kind smile. He sat down on a crate. Big João saw that his cassock was old and dirty. It was darned with black thread and was too big for the priest’s thinness. He nudged Pedro Bala, who noticed too. Then the Bullet said:

“People, Father José Pedro, who’s our friend, has got something for us. Hurray for Father José Pedro!”

Big João knew that it was all because of the torn cassock, too big for the priest’s thinness. The others answered with a “hurray,” the priest smiled, waving his hand. Big João couldn’t take his eyes off the cassock. He thought that Pedro Bala was a real leader, he knew everything, knew how to do everything. For Pedro Bala Big João would let himself be cut with a knife like that black man in Ilhéus when he did it for Barbosa, the big boss of the scrublands. Father José Pedro put his hand into the
pocket of his cassock, took out his black breviary. He opened it and from it drew several ten
milreis
notes:

“This is for you all to ride the carrousel today…I invite you all to take a ride today on the carrousel on the square in Itapagipe.”

He had hoped that the faces would be more animated. That an extraordinary joy would reign in the whole place. Because then he would be even more convinced that he was serving God when from those five hundred
milreis
that Dona Guilhermina Silva had given him for candles for the altar of the Virgin he had taken fifty
milreis
in order to take the Captains of the Sands to the carrousel. And since the faces didn’t suddenly become happy, he was puzzled, the notes in his hand, looking at the crowd of boys. Pedro Bala stroked his hair (which fell over his ears), he tried to speak, he couldn’t. Then he looked at the Professor and it was the latter who explained:

“Father, you’re a good man.” He felt like saying that the priest was a good man like Big João, but he thought perhaps the priest might be offended if he compared him to the black boy. “As a matter of fact Legless and Dry Gulch are both working on the carrousel. And we’ve been invited,” he paused briefly, “by the owner, who’s their friend, to ride free at night. We won’t forget your invitation…” The Professor was speaking slowly, choosing his words, thinking that it was a delicate moment, making up a lot of things and Pedro Bala backed him up with nods. “Another time. But you won’t be mad at us for not accepting, will you? It didn’t work out,” and he was looking at the priest, whose face was happy again.

“No. Another time.” He looked at the boys, smiling. “It’s even better this way. Because the money I had…” and he suddenly fell silent at the deed he was about to recount. And he thought that maybe it had been a lesson from God, a warning that he had done something bad. His look was so strange that the boys stepped closer.

They were looking at the priest without understanding. Pedro Bala scratched his head as when he had a problem to solve, the Professor tried to speak. But Big João understood everything, in spite of his being the slowest wit of all: