The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray (6 page)

“Shut up, you bastards. Let me give my little brother Sparrow a hug.”

They observed the rites of courtesy of the people of Bahia, from the poorest to those properly brought up. Mouths fell silent. Sparrow’s coattails were flapping in the breeze; the tears began to run down his painted face. Bangs Blackie and he embraced three times, their sobs mingling. Sparrow drank from the new bottle, seeking consolation in it. Bangs Blackie wasn’t finding any consolation.

“The light of the night has gone out…”

“…the light of the night…”

Sparrow proposed, “Let’s go find the others and pay him a visit.”

Corporal Martim might be in any of three or four places. Either sleeping at Carmela’s, still tired from the night before, chatting by the market docks, or playing cards in the Água dos Meninos market. Martim had dedicated himself to those three occupations only after he was discharged from the army some fifteen years earlier: love, conversation, gambling. He’d never followed any other known trade, with women and fools providing him with enough to live on. To work after having worn his glorious uniform would have been an obvious humiliation for Corporal Martim. His haughty pride of a handsome mulatto and the agility of his hands with a deck of cards brought him respect. Not to mention his skill on the guitar.

He was exhibiting his way with cards at the Água dos Meninos market. By doing it with such ease, he was contributing to the spiritual happiness of bus and truck drivers, playing a part in the education of two black urchins just beginning their practical apprenticeship in life, and helping any number of vendors to spend the profits they had made from their sales that day in the market stalls. In that way he was undertaking work of the most praiseworthy kind. It goes unexplained, then, why one of the vendors wasn’t all that enthusiastic about Martim’s virtuosity in dealing, as the man kept muttering, “Luck like that’s got a fishy smell about it.” Corporal Martim raised his eyes, brimming with blue innocence at the hasty critic, passed him the deck to deal if he wanted to and if he thought he had the necessary competence. As for himself, Corporal Martim preferred to bet against the bank, breaking it and reducing the banker to the most abject poverty. And he would not tolerate insinuations
concerning his honesty. As an old soldier he was particularly sensitive to whispers that cast doubt on his upright character. So sensitive was he that any new provocation would oblige him to bust somebody in the face. The enthusiasm of the urchins grew; the drivers rubbed their hands together, all excited. Nothing better than a good fight, spontaneous and unexpected like that. Just when everything was all set to start, Sparrow and Bangs Blackie appeared, bearing the tragic news and the bottle of cachaça, with just a tiny bit left in it. They were already shouting to the corporal from a distance.

“He died! He died!”

Corporal Martim stared at them, his good eye lingering on the bottle with quick calculations, and he commented to the group, “Something important must have happened for them to have drunk a whole bottle already. Either Bangs Blackie hit the numbers or Sparrow’s got himself engaged.”

As Sparrow was an incurable romantic, he was always getting engaged, the victim of his explosive passions. Every engagement was properly celebrated, with joy at the beginning and with philosophical sadness when it ended a short time later.

“Somebody died,” a trucker said.

Corporal Martim listened hard.

“He died! He died!”

The two of them were coming along all hunched over with the weight of the news. From Sete Portas to Água dos Meninos, passing by the skiff docks and Carmela’s house, they’d given the sad news to a lot of people. Why was it that every one of them, on learning about Quincas’s passing, immediately uncorked a bottle? It wasn’t their fault, heralds of grief and mourning, that there were so many people along the way, that Quincas had so many friends and acquaintances. Drinking in the city of Bahia began much
earlier than usual on that day. It couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t every day that a Quincas Water-Bray died.

Corporal Martim, forgetting about the fight and with the cards still in his hand, was watching them with increasing curiosity. They were crying—that was obvious. Bangs Blackie’s voice was all choked up.

“Our father, the father of the people, has died…”

“Was it Jesus Christ or the governor?” asked one of the black urchins, who had the reputation of a jokester. The black man reached out his hand and flung him to the ground.

They could all understand that it was a serious matter. Sparrow raised the bottle and said, “Water-Bray has died!”

The deck of cards dropped from Martim’s hand. The suspicious vendor saw his worst fears confirmed—aces and queens—as the dealer’s cards scattered all over. But the name of Quincas had reached his ears too. He decided not to argue. Corporal Martim asked Sparrow for the bottle, then threw it away with disdain. He stood for a long time looking at the market stalls, the trucks and buses on the street, the boats in the bay, the people coming and going. He got the feeling of a sudden emptiness, couldn’t hear the birds in the cages nearby in a vendor’s stall.

He wasn’t a man for weeping; a soldier doesn’t cry, even after he’s put aside his uniform. But his eyes grew tiny, his voice changed, he lost all his bluster. It was almost with the voice of a child that he asked, “How could it have happened?”

After picking up his cards, he joined the other two. They still had to look for Swifty. He had no certain perch, except on Thursday and Sunday afternoons when invariably he would be performing in Valdemar’s capoeira ring on the Estrada da Liberdade. Outside of that, his profession carried him off to distant places. He hunted for rats and toads to sell to laboratories for medical tests and scientific
experiments—which made Swifty a figure to be admired in the opinion of the most respected people. Wasn’t he a bit of a scientist himself? Didn’t he talk to doctors, know big words?

Only after lots of walking and drinking did they come upon him, all wrapped up in his big coat as though it were cold, mumbling to himself. He’d gotten the news through other channels, and he was also looking for his friends. When he met them he put his hand into one of his pockets. To take out a handkerchief to wipe away his tears, Sparrow thought. But out of the depths of his pocket Swifty had pulled a small green bullfrog, gleaming like an emerald.

“I was keeping it for Quincas. I never found one so pretty.”

When they appeared at the door of the room, Swifty thrust out his hand, in the extended palm of which rested the frog with its bulging eyes. They stayed there standing in the doorway, one behind the other. Bangs Blackie stuck in his big head to take a look. Swifty, embarrassed, put the creature back in his pocket.

The family halted their animated conversation. Four pairs of hostile eyes stared at the shabby group. That’s all we needed, thought Vanda. Corporal Martim, who in matters of etiquette was second only to Quincas himself, took off his filthy cap and greeted those present.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We just wanted to view him.”

He took a step inside. The others followed. The family backed away. They had been standing around the coffin. Sparrow got the thought that it was a trick, that the dead man wasn’t Quincas Water-Bray. He recognized him by only his smile. The four of them were dumbfounded. They never could have imagined Quincas so clean and elegant, so well dressed. They instantly lost their self-assurance, and their tipsiness disappeared as if by magic. The presence of the family—the women especially—left them fearful and timid, not knowing how to act, where to put their hands, how to behave before the dead man.

Sparrow, so ridiculous with his face painted red and wearing his shabby frock coat, looked at the other three, suggesting that they get away from there as fast as possible. Corporal Martim was hesitating, like a general on the eve of battle, assessing the enemy’s strength. Swifty made a step toward the door. Only Bangs Blackie, still bringing up the rear, lifting his big head up to see, didn’t hesitate for a second. Quincas was smiling at him, and the black man smiled back. There was no human force capable of dragging him away from there, from beside little Papa Quincas. He grabbed Swifty by the arm, answered Sparrow’s request with his eyes. Corporal Martim understood; a soldier doesn’t flee the field of battle. The four of them drew back from the coffin to a corner of the room.

There they all were now, in silence: on one side the family of Joaquim Soares da Cunha—daughter, son-in-law, brother, and sister—and on the other side the friends of Quincas Water-Bray. Swifty put his hand into his pocket and felt the frightened frog, as though he wanted to show it to Quincas. With a movement that looked like ballet, the friends drew back from the coffin and the relatives drew closer. Vanda cast a glance of reproach at her father. Even in death he preferred the company of those ragamuffins.

Quincas had been waiting for them. He had grown restless as the afternoon ended, because the vagabonds were late in getting there. Just when Vanda had begun to think her father had been defeated and was finally ready to surrender, to silence the foul words on his lips, defeated by the silent, dignified resistance she had put up to all his provocations, that smile was gleaming once again on the dead face, and more than ever it was the corpse of Quincas Water-Bray that lay before her. Had it not been an offense to Otacília’s memory, she would have left off her mourning and dumped the unworthy body somewhere in Tabuão, given the barely
used coffin back to the funeral parlor, and sold the new clothes to some old-clothes peddler at half price. The silence was becoming unbearable.

Leonardo turned to his wife and her aunt. “I think it’s time you two got going. It’ll be getting late pretty soon.”

Just a few moments before, all Vanda wanted to do was go home and get some rest. She gritted her teeth. She wasn’t a woman to give in, and she replied, “In a little while.”

Bangs Blackie sat down on the floor and leaned his head against the wall. Swifty nudged him with his foot. It wasn’t right to settle down like that in the presence of the dead man’s family. Corporal Martim showed his admonishment by staring at the black man. Bangs lifted his hand and pushed his friend’s annoying foot away as he sobbed, “He was our father! Papa Quincas…”

It was like a punch in the belly for Vanda, a slap in the face for Leonardo, a spit in the eye for Eduardo. Only Aunt Marocas laughed, her fat quivering as she sat in the only, and disputed, chair.

“How amusing!”

Bangs Blackie went from tears to laughter, taken with Marocas. Even more startling than his sobs was the black man’s hearty laugh. It was like a thunderclap in the room, and Vanda heard another laugh behind Blackie’s: Quincas was enjoying himself enormously.

“What sort of disrespect is that?” Her dry voice put an end to that beginning of cordiality.

With the reprimand, Aunt Marocas got up, took a few steps about the room, followed always by the admiration of Bangs Blackie as he looked her over from head to toe, finding her to be a woman to his taste: a bit old, that’s true, but big and fat, the way he liked them. He didn’t like those skinny little ones whose waists you couldn’t even pinch. If Bangs Blackie could have run into that madame on the
beach, the two of them would have had a ball; all you had to do was take one look at her and you’d see her virtues right off. Aunt Marocas began to mention her wish to leave. She felt tired and nervous. Vanda, having taken back her place on the chair by the coffin, made no reply. She had the look of a guard watching over a treasure.

“We’re all tired,” Eduardo said.

“It would be best if they left.” Leonardo had his fears about the Tabuão neighborhood at night, when all commercial activity ceased and the prostitutes and street people took over.

Well-mannered, as was his way, and wishing to cooperate, Corporal Martim proposed, “If you good people would like to go get some rest and a little shut-eye, we’ll stay on here and watch over him.”

Eduardo knew that wouldn’t be right: They shouldn’t leave the corpse alone with those people, with no family member present. But he would like to accept the proposal—oh, how he would: All day at the store, going back and forth, taking care of customers, giving orders to the help—it dragged a man down. Eduardo went to bed early and got up with the dawn, a strict timetable. When he got home from the store, after a bath and dinner, he would sit down in a chaise longue, stretch out his legs, and immediately fall asleep. That brother of his, Quincas, knew only how to be a nuisance. For ten years that’s all he’d been. That night he was obliging him to stay on his feet, having nothing but a couple sandwiches to eat. Why not leave him with his friends, that gang of tramps, the people he’d been hanging out with for ten years? What were he and Marocas, Vanda, and Leonardo doing there in that filthy hole, that rat’s nest? He didn’t have the courage to express his thoughts: Vanda was spoiled; she was quite capable of reminding him of the many times that he, Eduardo, starting
out in life, had had recourse to Quincas’s wallet. He looked at Corporal Martim with a certain benevolence.

Swifty, defeated in his attempts to get Bangs Blackie to stand up, sat down too. He had the urge to put the frog in the palm of his hand and play with it. He’d never seen one that beautiful. Sparrow, who’d spent part of his childhood in a children’s home run by priests, searched his dull memory for a complete prayer. He’d always heard it said that the dead stood in need of prayers. And priests…Had the priest been there already, or was he coming only on the next day? The question was tickling his throat. He couldn’t resist.

“Has the priest come already?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Marocas replied.

Vanda scolded her with her eyes: Why start a conversation with that riffraff? But having gained her respect, Vanda felt better. She exiled the vagabonds to a corner of the room, made them keep quiet. However, it would be impossible for her to spend the night there. Neither she nor Aunt Marocas. She had the vague hope at first that Quincas’s indecent friends wouldn’t stay long, as there was neither food nor drink. She didn’t know why they were still there in the room. It couldn’t have been out of friendship for the dead man; those people don’t maintain friendships with anyone. In any case, even the disagreeable presence of friends like that was of no importance, because they wouldn’t be at the burial the next day. She, Vanda, would take charge of the events, and the family would be alone with the corpse once more. They would bury Joaquim Soares da Cunha with modesty and dignity.