Captains of the Sands (25 page)

Dora looked at Pedro Bala:

“Didn’t you say that no one would hurt me?…”

Pedro Bala looked at her blond hair. The moonlight was coming into the warehouse.

Cat came over with his body swaying in that characteristic walk of his. He’d been trying to thread a needle for an exceedingly long time. Dora had put Zé Ferret to sleep, now she was getting ready to listen to the Professor read that pretty story in the book with a blue cover. Cat came slowly swaying over:

“Dora…”

“What is it, Cat?”

“Would you like to do something?”

He was looking at the needle and thread he had in his hand. He seemed to be facing a grave problem. He didn’t know how to solve it. Professor stopped reading. Cat changed the subject:

“You’re going to go blind from so much reading, Professor…If we only had electric lights…” He looked at Dora without having made his decision.

“What is it, Cat?”

“This damned thread…I never saw anything so hard. Getting it into the eye of this needle…”

“Let me have it…”

She threaded the needle, made a knot at one end. Cat said to the Professor:

“Only a woman can do something like that…”

He held out his hand to take the needle, but Dora didn’t give it back. She asked what Cat had to sew. Cat showed her his
jacket with a torn pocket. It was the cashmere item that had belonged to Legless when he’d been playing little rich boy in a house in Graça:

“Shitty piece of clothing,” Cat said.

“It’s really fine,” Dora defended it. “Take your jacket off.”

Professor and Cat watched her sew. She was no real marvel at sewing, but they’d never had anyone to mend their clothes. And only Cat and Lollipop were in the habit of mending theirs themselves. Cat because he wanted to be elegant and because he had a lover, Lollipop because he liked to be neat. The others let the rags they picked up get even more ragged, until they became useless. Then they would beg or steal another jacket and pair of pants. Dora finished the job:

“Anything else?”

Cat smoothed his slicked-down hair:

“The back of my shirt…”

He turned around. The shirt was torn from top to bottom. Dora told him to sit down, began to sew it on him. When her fingers touched him for the first time Cat had a shiver. As when Dalva would run her long manicured nails over him, scratching his back and saying:

“The pussy is scratching the tomcat…”

But Dalva didn’t mend his clothes, maybe she didn’t even know how to thread a needle. What she liked to do was fool around with him in bed, scratch his sides, but with an aim to working him up and exciting him so the love he made would be even better. Not Dora. That wasn’t her aim. Her hand (neglected and dirty nails, chewed down) didn’t mean to excite or stir up. It passed over him like the hand of a mother mending her son’s shirts. Cat’s mother had died young. She was a fragile, pretty woman. She’d had neglected hands too because a worker’s wife doesn’t have manicures. And that business of mending Cat’s shirts while he had them on was also her practice. Dora’s hand touches him again. The sensation is different now. It’s no longer a wave of desire. It’s that feeling of good affection and security that his mother’s hands gave him. Dora is behind him, he can’t see her. He imagines then that it’s his mother who’s come back. Cat is a little boy again, dressed in a
burgarian
smock
and playing on the side of the hill, getting it torn to pieces. And his mother comes, makes him sit down in front of her, and her agile hands manipulate the needle, they touch him from time to time and give him a feeling of absolute happiness. No desire. Just happiness. She’s come back, she’s sewing Cat’s shirts. A wish to lie down in Dora’s lap and let her sing him to sleep as when he was small. He remembers that he’s still a child. But only in age, because in everything else he’s the equal of a man, stealing in order to live, sleeping every night with a woman of the street, taking money from her. But tonight he’s completely a child, he forgets Dalva, her hands scratching him, lips that hold his in long kisses, sex that absorbs him. He forgets his life of a petty pickpocket, the owner of a marked deck, a gambling cheat. He forgets everything, he’s just a fourteen-year-old boy with a little mother who mends his shirts. A wish for her to sing him to sleep…One of those lullabies that talk about the bogey man. Dora bites the thread, leans over him. Her blond hair touches Cat’s shoulder. But he has no desire other than for her to keep on being his little mother. His happiness at that moment is almost absurd. It’s as if his whole life after his mother’s death didn’t exist. It’s as if he’d kept on being a child just like all other children. Because on that night his mother had come back. That’s why the unconscious brush of Dora’s blond hair doesn’t excite his desire, but increases his happiness. And her voice that says: “All set, Cat,” sounds to his ears just like the soft musical voice of his mother, who would sing lullabies with Cat’s head resting on her lap.

He gets up, looks at Dora with thankful eyes:

“You’re our little mother now…” but he remains bashful over what to say, he thinks that Dora probably doesn’t even understand because she’s laughing with her serious face of an almost little woman. But Professor understands and Cat, standing opposite Dora, speaking in a happy voice but without desire, calling her mother and she smiling with her maternal air of an almost little woman is fixed in the Professor’s head as a painting.

Cat throws the coat over his shoulder and goes out with his
swaying walk. He feels that there’s something new in the warehouse: they’ve found a mother, the love and care of a mother. Dalva finds him strange that night:

“What’s wrong with my little cat? What happened?”

But he keeps the secret. It’s something too big, finding a dead mother on earth again. Dalva wouldn’t understand.

When the Professor was just starting the story Big João arrived and sat down beside them. It was a rainy night. In the story Professor was reading the night was rainy too and the ship was in great danger. The sailors were being whipped, the captain was an evil man. The sailing ship seemed about to keel over, the officers’ whips fell on the naked backs of the sailors. Big João had an expression of pain on his face. Dry Gulch arrived with a newspaper but he didn’t interrupt the story, stood listening. Now the sailor John was being caned because he’d slipped and fallen in the midst of the storm. Dry Gulch interrupted:

“If Lampião had been there he would have blown that captain away with his rifle…”

That was what the sailor James did, a big hulk of a man. He flung himself on top of the captain, mutiny broke out on board ship. Outside it was raining. It was raining in the story too, it was the story of a storm and a mutiny. One of the officers took the side of the sailors.

“He’s all right…” Big João said.

He loved heroism. Dry Gulch was looking at Dora. Her eyes were shining, she loved heroism too. That pleased the boy from the backlands. Then the sailor James had a fierce fight. Dry Gulch was so happy that he whistled like a bird. Dora laughed too, from satisfaction. The two of them laughed together, then there was a cackling from all four, as was the custom with the Captains of the Sands. They cackled for a few minutes, others came over in time to hear the rest of the story. They looked at Dora’s serious face, the face of an almost little woman who was watching them with the affection of a mother. They smiled when the sailor James threw the captain of the ship into a lifeboat and called him “Snake without venom,”
they all laughed hard along with Dora and looked at her with love. The way children look at their beloved mother. When the story was over they went back to their corners, commenting:

“Great…”

“Tough guy…”

“He was screwed too…”

“The captain got what he had coming, eh?”

Dry Gulch held the newspaper out to Professor. Dora looked at the Halfbreed, he smiled, half-confused:

“It’s got news of Lampião…” His somber face lighted up. “Did you know that Lampião is my godfather?”

“Godfather?”

“Well, he is…It was my mother who picked him because Lampião’s a real man, he doesn’t kowtow to anybody…My mother was a brave woman, a woman who could hold a rifle. One day she chased off two cops who were acting up. She was quite a woman…As good as a man.”

Dora listened with fascination. Her serious face was looking with great sympathy at the mulatto’s somber face. Dry Gulch was silent but in the manner of someone trying to say something. Finally he spoke:

“You’re brave too…You know? My mother was a great big woman. She was a mulatto, she didn’t have blond hair, hers was the kinkiest…She wasn’t a girl anymore either, she could have been your grandmother…But you’re like her…”

He looked at Dora, but he lowered his head:

“It may seem funny, but you remind me of her. It may seem funny, but you’re like her…”

Professor looked with his myopic eyes. Dry Gulch was almost shouting, his somber face showed the joy of a discovery. “He’s discovered his mother too,” the Professor thought. Dora was serious, but her look was loving. Dry Gulch laughed, she laughed, then it became a cackle. But the Professor didn’t accompany them in their cackle. He began to read the account in the newspaper very quickly.

Lampião had been taken by surprise going into a village. A truck driver who’d seen him on the road with his gang had set
out for the village to warn it. There’d been time to ask for reinforcements from neighboring towns and the flying column had come too. When Lampião entered the town he ran into a lot of shooting, shooting he hadn’t expected. There was a big fire fight, Lampião was only able to take off into the scrubland, which is his home. One of the gang members was laid out with a bullet in his chest. They cut off his head, which they sent to Bahia in triumph. The picture was in the paper. Mouth open, eyes staring, a man holding it by the thin hair. They’d cut the throat with a knife. Dora commented:

“Poor thing…How cruel!”

Dry Gulch looked at her with thanks. His eyes were blazing, his face even more somber. Painfully somber.

“Son of a bitch…” he said in a low voice. “Son of a bitch of a truck driver…If I ever catch him someday…”

The word was out that Lampião must have had other men wounded because the retreat of the gang was too quick. Dry Gulch muttered. It was as though he were talking to himself:

“It’s time I was going…”

“Where to?” Dora asked.

“To join up with my godfather. He needs me…”

She looked at him sadly:

“Are you really going, Dry Gulch?”

“I am, yes.”

“What if the police kill you, cut off your head?”

“I swear they won’t take me alive. I’ll take one of them with me, but they won’t take me alive…Don’t be afraid, don’t…”

He swore by his mother, a strong and brave mulatto woman of the backlands, capable of fighting with the police, a comrade of Lampião, mistress of a
cangaceiro
, that she could trust in him, they wouldn’t take him alive, he’d fight to the death…Dora listened with pride.

Professor closed his eyes and also saw in place of Dora a strong backlands woman defending her piece of land against plantation colonels with the friendly help of the bandits. He saw Dry Gulch’s mother. And that was what the mulatto saw. The blond hair was thin and kinky, the soft eyes were the oriental ones of a backlands woman, the serious face was the
somber face of an exploited peasant woman. And the smile was the same proud smile of a mother for her son.

Lollipop had viewed her arrival with mistrust. For him Dora was sin. It had been some time since he’d lingered with little black girls on the sands, lost in the warmth of their bodies rolling on the ground. He’d got rid of his sins some time back in order to appear pure in the eyes of God and be able to merit the grace of putting on a priest’s vestments. He even thought of getting work as a newsboy in order to get away from the daily sin of stealing.

He looked upon Dora with mistrust: woman was sin. In reality she was only a child, an abandoned child like them. She didn’t smile like the little black girls on the sand, an insolent inviting smile, a smile of teeth tight with desire. Her face was serious, it looked like the face of a very proper little woman. But the small breasts that were taking shape pointed out under her dress, the bit of thigh that showed as white and rounded. Lollipop was afraid. Not so much of Dora’s temptation. She didn’t seem to be the kind that tempted, she was a child, it was too early for that. But he was afraid of the temptation that would come from within him, which the devil had put inside him. And he tried praying in a low voice when she approached.

Dora stood looking at the holy pictures. Professor stopped behind her, looking too. There were flowers under the image of the Christ Child that Lollipop had stolen one day. Dora came closer:

“It’s so pretty…”

The fear began to disappear from Lollipop’s heart. She was interested in his saints, saints that nobody in the warehouse paid any attention to. Dora asked:

“Are they all yours?”

Lollipop nodded and smiled. He went on to show her everything he owned. The pictures, the catechism, the rosary, everything. She looked on with satisfaction. She also smiled while the Professor looked on with myopic eyes. Lollipop told the story of Saint Anthony, who’d been in two places, at the same time. In order to save his father from the gallows, to which he’d been unjustly condemned. He told it in the same way that Professor
told the heroic stories of courageous and mutineering sailors. Dora listened with the same sympathy. The two of them chatted, the Professor silent, listening. Lollipop told things about his religion, miracles of the saints, the goodness of Father José Pedro:

“When you meet him, you’ll like him…”

He said that with certainty. He’d already forgotten that she might bring temptation with her girl’s breasts, her chubby thighs, her blond hair, now he was speaking as to an older woman who was listening to him with affection. Like a mother. Only then did he understand. Because at that moment a wish came over him to tell her that he wanted to be a priest, that he wanted to follow that vocation, that he felt the call of God. He would only have had the courage to tell his mother that. And she’s standing before him. He speaks: