Captains of the Sands (13 page)

“Are you telling the truth?” and he kept on stroking her.

“I am, I swear. Let me go, my mother’s waiting for me.”

She was crying and Pedro Bala felt sorry but desire was loose
in him. Then he proposed in the girl’s ear (and tickled her with his tongue):

“I’ll only do it in the rear.”

“No. No.”

“You’ll still be a virgin. It’s nothing.”

“No. It’ll hurt.”

But he was caressing her, a shiver ran up her body. She began to understand that if she didn’t satisfy him the way he wanted her virginity would be left behind there. And when he promised (his tongue excited her in the ear again):

“If it hurts I’ll withdraw…” she consented.

“You swear you won’t do it in front?”

“I swear.”

But after, when he’d satisfied himself for the first time (and she’d cried out and bitten her hands), seeing that he still had desire, he tried to deflower her. But she felt it and leaped up like a madwoman:

“Aren’t you satisfied with what you did to me, you bastard? Do you want to ruin me?”

And she was sobbing loudly, waving her arms like a crazy woman, her whole defense was her shouts, her tears, her curses against the leader of the Captains of the Sands. But for Pedro Bala the black girl’s best defense was her terror-filled eyes, the eyes of a weaker animal who doesn’t have the strength to defend itself. And since his greatest desire had already been satisfied and since that anguish from earlier in the evening was coming back over him, he said:

“If I let you go, will you come back tomorrow?”

“Yes, I’ll come back.”

“I’ll only do what I did today. I’ll let you stay a virgin…”

She nodded yes. Her eyes were like those of a crazy person and at that moment she only felt pain and fear, the urge to flee. Now that Pedro’s hands, lips, sex were no longer touching her flesh, her desire had disappeared and she was only thinking about defending her virginity. She breathed deeply when he said:

“Then you can go. But if you don’t come back tomorrow…When I catch you you’ll find out how many boards it takes to make a bed…”

She began to walk without answering anything. But the boy went along with her:

“I’ll take you so some hoodlum doesn’t grab you.”

The two of them went along and she was weeping. He tried to put his hand on her, she wouldn’t let him and moved away. He tried again, again she put his hand away. Then he said:

“What the devil is that about?”

And they walked holding hands. She was weeping and the crying bothered Pedro Bala, it was bringing back his upset from earlier in the evening, the vision of his father dying in the struggle, the vision of Omolu announcing vengeance. He began to curse to himself about meeting the girl and he picked up the pace in order to get to the start of the street as soon as possible. She was weeping and he spoke angrily:

“What’s the matter with you? Nothing happened to you…”

She only looked into his eyes. In spite of still going along with him and in spite of being terrified they were full of hatred and contempt. Pedro lowered his head, he didn’t know what to say, he had no more desire or rage, only sadness in his heart. They heard the music of a samba that a man was singing on the street. She sobbed louder, he was kicking the sand. Now he felt weaker than she, the girl’s hand was heavy as lead in his. He let go of her hand, she moved away from him, Pedro didn’t protest. He wanted not to have met her, not to have met João de Adão either or to have gone to Gantóis. They reached the street, he said:

“Now you can go, nobody will hurt you.”

She looked at him again with hate and started to run. But at the next corner she stopped, turned toward him (as he kept looking at her) and rained curses on him in a voice that filled him with fear:

“I hope plague and hunger and war fall down on you, you bastard. God will punish you, you bastard. Son of a bitch, bastard, bastard,” her solitary voice crossed the street, struck Pedro Bala.

Before she disappeared around the corner she spat on the ground with supreme contempt and kept repeating:

“Bastard…Bastard…”

First he stood there, then he started running across the sands as if the wind were lashing him, as if he were fleeing from the black girl’s curses. And he felt like leaping into the sea to wash away all that upset, the urge to avenge himself on the men who’d killed his father, the hatred he felt for the rich city that stretched out across the water, Barra, Vitória, Graça, the despair of his life of an abandoned and persecuted child, the sorrow he felt for the poor little black girl, a child too.

“A child too,” he heard in the voice of the wind, in the samba they were singing, a voice saying it inside him.

Another night, a dark winter night in which the sloops didn’t venture out to sea, a night of the wrath of Iemanjá and Xangô where the flashes of lightning were the only light in a sky loaded with dark and heavy clouds, Pedro Bala, Legless, and Big João were taking the
mãe-de-santo
priestess Don’Aninha to her distant house. She had come to the warehouse in the afternoon, she needed a favor from them, and while she was explaining night fell, fearsome and terrible.

“Ogun is angry…” the priestess Don’Aninha explained.

That was the business that had brought her there. In a raid on a
candomblé
(which even though it wasn’t hers, no policeman would dare raid Aninha’s
candomblé
, was under her protection) the police had carried off Ogun, who had been resting on the altar. Don’Aninha had used all her power with a policeman to get the return of the saint. She’d even gone to the house of a professor from the Faculty of Medicine, her friend, who came to study black religion at her
candomblé
, to ask him to have the God returned. The professor was really thinking that the police ought to give him back the idol. But to add to his collection of black idols and not to put back on its altar in the distant
candomblé
. That’s why, because Ogun was in a police detention room, Xangô was unleashing his lightning that night.

Finally Don’Aninha had come to the Captains of the Sands,
her friends for a long time, because all blacks and all poor people in Bahia are friends of the great
mãe-de-santo
. She had a friendly and maternal word for each one of them. She cured illnesses, brought lovers together, her fetishes killed evil men. She explained to Pedro Bala what had happened. The leader of the Captains of the Sands didn’t get to
candomblés
very often, just as he didn’t listen to Father José Pedro’s lessons very much. But he was a friend of the priest as well as of the priestess and among the Captains of the Sands when one is a friend he acts like a friend.

Now they were taking Aninha home. The night all around was stormy and angry. The rain made them huddle under the
mãe-de-santo
’s big white umbrella. There was drumming in the
candomblés
to ease the anger of Ogun and perhaps in one or in many of them Omolu was announcing the poor people’s vengeance. Don’Aninha said to the boys in a bitter voice:

“They won’t let poor people live in peace…They don’t even leave the poor people’s God alone. Poor people can’t dance, can’t sing to their God, can’t ask a favor of their God.” Her voice was bitter, a voice that didn’t seem to be that of the priestess Don’Aninha. “They’re not content with killing poor people with hunger…Now they take away poor people’s saints…” and she raised her fists.

Pedro Bala felt a wave inside himself. Poor people had nothing. Father José Pedro said that the poor would go to heaven one day, where God would be the same for everybody. But Pedro Bala’s young reasoning didn’t see justice in that. In the kingdom of heaven they would be equal. But they were unequal on earth now, the scale always tilted to one side.

The imprecations of the
mãe-de-santo
filled the night more than the sound of the different drums that were soothing Ogun. Don’Aninha was tall and thin, an aristocratic type of black woman and, like no other black woman in the city, she knew how to wear her traditional Bahian dress. She had a pleasant face, but just a look from her was enough to bring on absolute respect. In that she was like Father José Pedro. But now she was in a terrible mood and her curses against the rich and the police were filling the Bahia night and Pedro Bala’s heart.

When they left her, surrounded by her
filha-de-santo
sisterhood who were kissing her hand, Pedro Bala promised:

“Don’t worry, Mother Aninha, I’ll bring you Ogun tomorrow.”

She patted his blond head, smiled. Big João and Legless kissed the black woman’s hand, they went down the slope. The
agogô
bells and the
atabaque
drums resounded, soothing Ogun.

Legless didn’t believe in anything, but he owed Don’Aninha favors. He asked:

“What are we going to do? The police have got the dingus…”

Big João spat, he was a bit fearful:

“Don’t call Ogun a dingus, Legless. He’ll punish you…”

“He’s in jail, he can’t do anything,” Legless laughed.

Big João shut up because he knew that Ogun was ever so great, even in jail he could punish Legless. Pedro Bala scratched his head, asked for a cigarette:

“Let me think about it. Remember, we promised Aninha. Now we’ve got to come through.”

They went down to the warehouse. The rain was coming in through the holes in the roof, most of the boys were huddled together in corners where there were still tiles. The Professor had tried to light his candle but the wind seemed to be playing a game with him, blowing it out from one minute to the next. Finally he gave up reading for the night and was kibitzing a game of blackjack that Cat was running in a corner assisted by Good-Life. Coins on the floor, but no sound made Lollipop deviate from his prayers before the Virgin and Saint Anthony.

On rainy nights like that they couldn’t sleep. From time to time a flash of lightning would light up the warehouse and then the thin and dirty faces of the Captains of the Sands could be seen. Many of them were children who were still afraid of dragons and legendary monsters. They would get closer to the older ones, who only felt cold and sleepy. Others, the black ones, heard the voice of Xangô in the thunder. Rainy nights like that were terrible for all of them. Even for Cat, who had a woman in whose breast he could hide his young head, stormy nights were bad nights. Because on nights like that men who didn’t have a place to lay their fearful heads down in the city, who
didn’t even have a bachelor’s cot, and want to hide their fear by a woman’s breast, pay to sleep with Dalva and pay well. So Cat would stay at the warehouse, running games with his marked deck, aided in his larceny by Good-Life. They were all together, restless, all the more alone, feeling that they lacked something, not just a warm bed with a roof over it but also the tender words of a mother or sister that made the fear go away. They were all huddled together and some were shivering with cold under their tattered shirts and pants. Others had jackets, stolen or picked out of trash barrels, jackets they used as overcoats. The Professor even had an overcoat, so long that it dragged on the ground.

Once upon a time, and it was summer, a man wearing a thick overcoat had stopped to have a drink at one of the stands in the city. He looked like a foreigner. It was in the middle of the afternoon and the heat ate away at a person’s skin. But the man didn’t seem to feel it, wearing his new overcoat. The Professor thought he was funny and had the face of someone with money and he began to make a sketch of him (with the enormous overcoat, larger than the man, the overcoat was the man himself) in chalk on the pavement. And he was laughing with satisfaction because the man would probably give him a two
milreis
silver piece. The man turned in his chair and looked at the almost finished picture. The Professor laughed, he found the sketch good, the overcoat dominating the man, it was more than the man. But the man didn’t like it at all, he let himself be taken by a great rage, got up from his seat and gave the Professor a couple of kicks. One caught the boy in the kidneys and he rolled on the sidewalk moaning. The man then put his foot on his face, choking him, and he said before going away:

“Take that and mind your own business, that’ll teach you not to make fun of a man.”

And he went off, tossing some coins in his hand, after half rubbing out the picture with his foot. The waitress came over and helped the Professor get up. She looked with pity at the boy, who was feeling the place where his kidneys hurt, looked at the sketch, and said:

“What a brute! The picture even looked like him…Stupid!”

She put her hand in her pocket where she kept her tips, took out a one
milreis
silver piece, tried to give it to the Professor. But he refused with his hand, he knew she was going to need it. He looked at the half-obliterated design, went on his way still holding his kidneys. He was going along almost without thinking, with a lump in his throat. He’d wanted to please the man, earn a silver piece from him. He’d got three kicks and some brutal words. He didn’t understand. Why were they hated like that in the city? They were poor children with no father or mother. Why did those well-dressed men hate them so much? He went along with his pain. But it so happened that on the way to the warehouse, on the deserted sands beneath the sun, he again met the man in the overcoat minutes later. It looked as though he was heading toward one of the two ships moored at the docks and now he was carrying the overcoat on his arm because the sun was scorching. Professor took out his switchblade (he didn’t use it very much) and went over to the man. The heat had driven all the people off the sands and the man with the overcoat was taking a shortcut to the docks across them. The Professor followed silently behind the man, when he caught up to him he confronted him with the knife in his hand. The sight of the man had transformed the confusion of his feelings into one single feeling: revenge. The man looked at him in terror. The Professor loomed up in front of him with the knife open. He muttered:

“Get away, you guttersnipe.”