Captains of the Sands (8 page)

“In that case,” Pedro Bala answered, “we’ll have to fix a price first. How much are you going to pay us?”

“I’ll pay a hundred
milreis.
Thirty for each one and ten extra for you,” he pointed at Pedro.

Cat moved in his chair. Pedro signaled him to be silent.

“You can give us fifty apiece and then we can do business. That’s 150 clams for the three of us. If not, you won’t get your package.”

The man didn’t hesitate long. He looked at the hands on his watch:

“O.K.”

Then Cat spoke up:

“It’s not that we don’t trust you. But the whole thing might go wrong and you said yourself that it wouldn’t matter what happened to us.”

“So?”

“It’s only right for you to give us something up front.”

Big João backed up Cat with a nod. Pedro Bala repeated the other one’s last words:

“Only right, yes. In case we don’t get to you afterwards…”

“Only right,” the man repeated too. He took his wallet out. He removed a 100
milreis
note. He gave it to Pedro:

“It’s time to get going. It’s getting late.”

They went out. Pedro Bala said:

“Rest easy. An hour from now we’ll be back with the package.”

In front of the house (the street was completely deserted, in a window of the house a light was on and they saw the shadow of a woman who was walking back and forth) Big João slapped his head:

“I forgot the meat for the dog.”

Pedro Bala was looking at the window with the light on, he turned:

“Don’t worry. This whole thing smells like a love affair to me. That guy laid the missy from here and now the servant has
got the letters that the two wrote each other and wants to blow the whistle. That package is full of perfume. It’s what the other one has we’ve got to get.”

He made a sign for the two of them to wait on the other side of the street, went over to the main gate of the house. As soon as he was there a huge dog came up barking. Pedro Bala tied a rope around the lock in the gate while the dog ran back and forth barking softly. Then he called the other two:

“You,” he pointed to Cat, “stay here on the street to give the alarm if anyone comes. You, João, come in with me.”

They climbed up the bars of the fence. Pedro Bala pulled on the bolt with the rope and the gate opened. Cat had gone to the corner. The dog, when he saw the gate open, rushed into the street and rummaged in a garbage can. Pedro Bala and Big João jumped over the wall, closed the gate so the dog couldn’t get in, went on in through the trees. In the lighted window of the house the shape of the woman continued pacing. Big João said in a low voice:

“I feel sorry for her.”

“Who told her to go to bed with other men…?”

The black boy remained near the house to pass on a signal from Cat if someone was coming. They had special whistles for such cases. Pedro Bala went around the house, reached the kitchen. The door was open, the same as the one to the room over the garage. Before going up the stairs that led to the room, however, Pedro peeked into the kitchen door. There was a light in the pantry and a man playing solitaire. “It must be that servant,” Pedro thought and quickly withdrew to the garage stairway. He went up two steps at a time and entered the man’s room. There wasn’t any light. Pedro closed the door, lighted a match. There was only a bed, a trunk, and a coatrack against the wall. The match went out but Pedro was already on top of the bed, which he went over with his hands. Then he looked under the mattress. There wasn’t anything there either. He got off the bed then and without making any sound went over to the trunk. He lifted the lid, lighted a match that he held in his teeth. He went through the clothes carefully, there wasn’t anything. He spat out the match (then he
thought that maybe the man didn’t smoke and put it in his pocket) and went over to the coatrack. Nothing in the pockets of the clothes hanging there. Pedro Bala lighted another match, looked all over the room.

“The man must have them. They’ve got to be there.”

He opened the door of the room, went down the stairs. He reached the kitchen door, the man was still sitting there. Then Pedro Bala noticed that he was sitting on top of the package. A tip was showing under the man’s leg. Pedro thought that everything was lost. How was he going to get the package from under the man’s leg? He went out the kitchen door to where Big João was. Only if he and João attacked the man. But there’d be a lot of hollering and everybody would know about the robbery. And the man who’d hired them didn’t want to hear about anything like that. Suddenly he got an idea. He went over close to where he’d left João, whispered softly. Big João came right away. Pedro spoke very softly:

“Look, Big Boy, that servant there is sitting on top of the package. You go to the street door, ring the bell, and then disappear. It’s so the man will get up and I’ll snatch the package. But scram out right away so the man doesn’t see you, he’ll think he was dreaming. Give me enough time to get to the kitchen.”

He went quickly back to the kitchen door. A minute later the bell rang. The servant got up hurriedly, buttoned his jacket, and went to the front of the house through the hall, where he turned on a light. Pedro Bala went into the pantry, switched the packages, and ran off to the edge of the estate. He leaped over the fence, whistled for Cat and Big João. Cat came right away. But Big João didn’t appear. They went back and forth looking but the black boy didn’t appear. Pedro began to get nervous, thinking that the servant might have surprised Big João and was struggling with him now. But when he’d passed by that place he hadn’t heard any noise…He said:

“If he takes too long they’ll be coming.”

They whistled again, there was no answer. Pedro Bala decided:

“Let’s go back in…”

But they heard Big João’s whistle and soon he was beside them. Pedro asked:

“Where were you?”

Cat had taken the dog by the collar and pushed him inside the gate. They took the rope off the latch and disappeared along the other side of the street. There João explained:

“When I stuck my finger in the bell the lady up there got all scared. She threw open the window, it looked like she was going to jump right there. She was looking out like to scare you. She was even crying. Then I felt sorry and climbed up the drain pipe to tell her not to cry anymore because there was no reason to. That we’d swiped the papers. And since I had to explain everything to her it held me up…”

Cat asked with great curiosity:

“She was good, eh?”

“She was pretty, yes. She ran her hand over my head, then she said thank you very much, God protect you.”

“Don’t be a booby, boy. I was asking if she was good for bed. If you got a look at her hips…”

The black boy didn’t reply. A car was coming down the street. Pedro Bala patted the black boy on the shoulder and Big João knew that the leader was approving of what he’d done. Then his face opened up in satisfaction and he murmured:

“I’d like to see the Spaniard’s face when his boss opens the package and doesn’t find what he expected.”

And on another street now, the three of them gave off that broad, free, and noisy laugh of the Captains of the Sands, which was like a hymn of the people of Bahia.

The “Great Japanese Carrousel” was nothing but a small native merry-go-round that arrived after a sad pilgrimage through inland towns during those winter months when the rains are long and Christmas is still far off. So faded was the paint, paint that had once been blue and red, that the blue was a dirty white now and the red was almost pink, and so many pieces were missing on certain horses and benches that Nhôzinho França decided not to set it up in any of the main squares of the city but in Itapagipe. The families there aren’t so rich, there are a lot of streets where only workers live, and poor children would appreciate the faded old carrousel. The canvas also had a lot of holes along with an enormous gash that left the carrousel at the mercy of the rain. It had been beautiful once, it had even been the pride and joy of the children of Maceió in other days. At that time it stood alongside a Ferris wheel and a sideshow, always on the same square, and on Sundays and holidays rich children dressed in sailor suits or like little English lords, the girls in Dutch costumes or fine silk dresses, came to claim their favorite horses, the little ones sitting on the benches with their nannies. The fathers would go on the Ferris wheel, others preferred the sideshow, where they could push up against women, often touching their thighs and buttocks. Nhôzinho França’s
carnival was the joy of the city in those days. And, above all, the carrousel brought in money, tirelessly turning with its lights of all colors. Nhôzinho found life good, the women pretty, the men friendly to him, but he found that drink was good too, it made the men more friendly and the women prettier. And in that way he drank away first the sideshow and then the Ferris wheel. Then, since he didn’t wish to be separated from the carrousel, for which he had a special affection, he took it down one night with the help of some friends and began to wander through the towns in Alagoas and Sergipe. During this time his creditors cursed him with every ugly name they knew. Nhôzinho did a lot of traveling with his carrousel. After covering all the small towns in the two states, getting drunk in all their bars, he went over into the State of Bahia and even gave a performance for Lampião’s gang. He was in a poor town in the backlands and he didn’t just lack money for the transportation of his carrousel. He didn’t have any for the miserable hotel where he stayed and which was the only one in town or for a shot of cane liquor or beer that wasn’t cooled but which he liked all the same. The carrousel, set up on the grass on the square by the church, had been still for a week. Nhôzinho França was waiting for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in order to see if he could pick up a few pennies to enable him to get to a better place. But on Friday Lampião entered the town with twenty-two men and then the carrousel had to work. Like children, the big bandits, men who had twenty or thirty deaths to their credit, found the carrousel nice, found that looking at its spinning lights, listening to the very old music of its player piano, and getting on those beat-up wooden horses was the highest form of happiness. So Nhôzinho França’s carrousel saved the small town from being sacked, the girls from being deflowered, the men from being killed. Only two members of the Bahian state police who were shining their boots in front of the police station were shot by the bandits, before they saw the carrousel set up on the square by the church. Because maybe even the Bahian state policemen might have been spared by Lampião on
that night of supreme happiness for the bandit gang. Then they were like children, enjoying the happiness they had never enjoyed in their childhood as peasant children: mounting and riding a wooden horse on a carrousel, where there was music from a Pianola and where the lights were of all colors: blue, green, yellow, purple, and red, like the blood that poured out of the bodies of murder victims.

That was what Nhôzinho told Dry Gulch (who was all excited by it) and Legless on that afternoon when he found them in the Gate of the Sea and invited them to help him run the carrousel during the time it was set up in Bahia, in Itapagipe. He couldn’t promise any set wages, but there might be enough for each one to get five
milreis
a night. And when Dry Gulch showed his skills at imitating all kinds of animals, Nhôzinho França got all enthusiastic, ordering another bottle of beer and declaring that Dry Gulch would stand by the entrance calling people in while Legless would help him with the machinery and be in charge of the Pianola. He himself would sell tickets when the carrousel was stopped. When it was turning, Dry Gulch would. “And every so often,” he said, winking, “one of us can take off for a shot of something while the other does double duty.”

Dry Gulch and Legless had never picked up on an idea with such enthusiasm. They had seen carrousels many times but almost always from a distance, surrounded by mystery, their swift horses ridden by rich and whiney children. Legless had even once (on a certain day when he went into an amusement park set up on the Passeio Público) got to buy a ticket for one, but a policeman kicked him out of the place because he was dressed in rags. Then the ticket-taker refused to give him back his ticket, which led Legless to stick his hand into the change drawer that was open and he had to disappear from the Passeio Público in rapid fashion while all up and down the street cries of “Stop thief!” could be heard. There was tremendous confusion while Legless very calmly went down Gamboa de Cima, carrying in his pockets at least five times what he had paid for the ticket. But Legless doubtless would have preferred
riding on the carrousel, up on that fantastic mount with a dragon’s head that was without a doubt the strangest of all on the marvel that the carrousel was in his eyes. His hatred for policemen and love for distant carrousels grew even greater. And now, all of a sudden, a man had shown up who was paying for beer and performing the miracle of calling him to live alongside a real carrousel for a few days, moving with it, riding its horses, watching the lights of all colors going around from close by. And for Legless, Nhôzinho França wasn’t the drunkard across the poor table from him at the Gate of the Sea. In his eyes he was an extraordinary being, something like the God Lollipop prayed to, something like Xangô, who was the saint of Big João and God’s-Love. Because not Father José Pedro and not even the priestess Don’Aninha would be capable of bringing off that miracle. In the Bahian nights, on a square in Itapagipe, the lights of the carrousel would spin madly, moved by Legless. It was like a dream, a quite different dream from the ones Legless was used to having on his nights of anguish. And for the first time his eyes felt moist with tears that hadn’t been brought on by pain or rage. And his damp eyes looked on Nhôzinho França as on an idol. For him Legless would even open the throat of a man with the knife he carries between his pants and the old black vest that serves him as a jacket.

“It’s a beauty,” Pedro Bala said, looking at the old carrousel when it was set up. And Big João opened his eyes in order to see better. Hanging around it were the blue, green, yellow, and red bulbs.