The Seamstress (58 page)

“You don’t have a gate,” Luzia said numbly. “There’s nothing that’s ours.”

Antônio closed his eyes. The foggy eye took longer to shut; it stared at her accusingly for seconds after the good eye had disappeared behind its lid.

“We’ve got names,” Antônio said. “We’ve got the stories people tell. With these portraits, we’ll have faces. We’ll make an impression. That’s worth more than a house or a gate.”

“We should let them go,” Luzia said.

Antônio opened his eyes. He gripped her shoulders tightly. His thumbs dug into the space above her collarbone.

“You think those mapmakers would respect you if you didn’t have a gun? If you weren’t the Seamstress?”

Luzia shook her head. Mucus thickened in her throat.

“My Saint,” he said, loosening his grip on her. “This life isn’t a set of clothes. You can’t put it on one day and take it off the next. Even if we had land, people wouldn’t call us ranchers. We’d still be cangaceiros. Worse—we’d be cangaceiros who ran away. Gomes would still want our heads. There’d always be some colonel wanting to fight us because he couldn’t step on our necks, and some other colonel wanting to claim us as friends, inviting us to eat at his table and then hating us for being there. There’s no escape for us.”

“I’m not worried about us,” Luzia said.

Antônio pressed his hand to her belly. “He’ll be born. You have my word.”

“And after?”

“Do you recall what Colonel Clóvis said about his goats? If he wanted to trap the mother, he kept her cabrito.”

Luzia felt dizzy. She leaned slightly forward, pushing into Antônio’s hand. He held her steady.

“People, they take advantage of weakness,” Antônio continued. “We can’t keep him. We’ll trust him to a friend—that priest, the one in Taquaritinga you always talk about.”

“I’ll be big soon,” Luzia argued. “I won’t be able to keep up. Or to fight.”

“You will,” Antônio said, hooking a hand around her neck. He tugged her gently downward until they were eye to eye. “For me you will. I need your vision, my Saint. I need your aim.”

His fingers stroked her neck. Luzia stared at the glazed center of his poor eye. It was tinged with blue and glinted in the sunlight, like a round pool of water. What did he see from it? How did the world look through such a cloudy lens? Was it filled with shadows? Were all sharp edges made dull, so he did not know what was dangerous and what was not, so that everything became a mystery and a threat? Luzia felt sympathy for him, even though she’d heard Antônio coax his men this way before. He used his flaws to make others feel vital. He inspired loyalty by confiding his limitations, and fear by overcoming them. Luzia was angry at her susceptibility and at Antônio’s perceptiveness. He was right: in the scrub, even animals exploited frailty. Fondness itself was a weakness; Antônio had taught her that, too. Because of this, their child would always be at risk. It would be better off somewhere else, far away from Luzia and the life she’d chosen. That’s what made her most angry—it had been her choice. She’d left behind Victrola, and instead of freeing herself, she’d traded that name for a new one. She’d made the choice to become the Seamstress without understanding all she’d be forced to give up. Things she hadn’t valued before—a house, a tame family life—were now barred from her reach. Luzia loosened her neck from Antônio’s grip.

“They’ll build that road,” she said.

Antônio blinked. “You think they’ll beat me?”

The wrong answer would hurt him. Luzia knew this, but could not stop herself.

“Yes,” she said.

Antônio walked away. He called Little Ear to join him in front of the camera. He ordered the photographer to prepare to shoot, to hold up the flashbulbs. Antônio took hold of the surveyors’ collars and pulled the men up from their cross-legged position. He told them to kneel, to bend their heads and pray. Little Ear unsheathed a machete. Antônio borrowed Ponta Fina’s. Luzia turned away but could not shut her ears. The blades whistled on their way down. When they struck she heard heavy thuds, like two full water gourds falling to the dirt. The flashbulbs popped and smoked.

7

Diário de Pernambuco / May 1, 1932 Despite More Surveyors’ Deaths, Trans-Nordestino Lives On

By Joaquim Cardoso

The situation in the backlands remains a grave one. Three additional surveyors from the National Roadway Institute have been killed by cangaceiros led by the notorious “Hawk.” A fourth surveyor, João Almeida, was kept alive in order to report the killings. Shaken and fatigued, the brave Senhor Almeida arrived at a loosely populated povoado and related the devastating story of his comrades’ deaths. Captured on the notoriously unsafe cattle trail, the surveyors were stripped of their supplies and decapitated. Senhor Almeida was spared and ordered to deliver a note to our esteemed president. The audacious message (printed below) was written on an embossed calling card.

 

Sir,

 

It’s a shame. Men lose their heads these days. Keep yours on the coast. I’ll keep mine in the caatinga. Respectfully,

Governor Antônio Teixeira vulgo, the Hawk

 

 

Three weeks ago, this newspaper printed photographs of Osvaldo Cunha and Henrique Andrade, the first government surveyors executed by cangaceiros. The group photograph (reprinted below) shows the surveyors alive, kneeling before their captors. The other photograph—deemed unfit to print by this newspaper’s standards of taste and decency, particularly with regard to our lady readers—shows “the Hawk” and a mestiço counterpart standing behind the surveyors, holding the victims’ severed heads.

The photographs, though deplorable, illustrate the ridiculousness of the cangaceiros. The bandits are so grossly ornamented they appear dressed for a Carnaval ball. Their “Hawk” leader resembles a simple matuto. Dr. Duarte Coelho analyzed the facial physiology of “the Seamstress,” the Hawk’s consort, and determined her to be “plainly a dangerous and irredeemable criminal type.” The escaped surveyor, João Almeida, told officials that during his encounter with the cangaceiros, he saw that the Seamstress appeared to be expecting a child. The cangaceira’s insistence on fighting even while pregnant proves that, to these criminal types, not even motherhood is sacred.

Tenente Higino Ribeiro has vowed to end the lawlessness in our farmlands. He cannot do this, however, without troops. Due to the recent rebellion in São Paulo, our esteemed President Gomes is forced to keep the bulk of federal troops in that unpatriotic metropolis. São Paulo’s opposition to the revolution comes at a great cost to the rest of Brazil! The São Paulo rebellion is a dramatic illustration of how radical groups can damage our nation’s stability. Prominent newspapers in both Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais published the Hawk’s gruesome photographs accompanied by derisive articles. Southerners may mock our cangaceiros but, in truth, The Hawk’s “dark-skinned army” is no different from the Communist scourge in the South, or São Paulo’s supporters of the old republic. None can be ignored.

Despite a lack of troops, Tenente Higino has established a plan to break the cangaceiro network. His proposal is two-pronged: first, find all “coiteiros”—allies and family members of cangaceiros—and encourage them to be patriots. Second, provide cash incentives for the cangaceiros’ capture, dead or alive. Dr. Duarte Coelho has increased his already generous reward: any patriotic citizens who bring him the Seamstress’s skull paired with that of her child will receive 50:000$00 (50 contos). As the craniums will be used for scientific study, proof of identity must be presented in order to receive the reward.

The slain surveyors’ bodies will be transported to Recife. Victims of sinister and needless violence, the surveyors died for a noble cause. The Trans-Nordestino, part of the National Roadway Project set to unite the country over the next fifteen years, will be a great artery connecting the Northeast not only to the rest of Brazil but also to prosperity. Oxcarts and donkey caravans are archaic when compared to the automobile. The São Francisco River—also known as “Old Chico”—is an unreliable conduit for our agricultural goods. How can our textile mills produce fine cloth when the river level is too low for barges to transport cotton? How can the Northeast compete with our neighbors in the South when our growth depends on an ornery “Old Chico”?

The Trans-Nordestino is our best solution. Due to extremely dry conditions in the backlands and continued threats to surveyors, the National Roadway Institute is considering a radical solution to surveying the region: aerial mapping. The honorary “Captain,” Carlos Chevalier, has offered to pilot his aeroplane over the region, accompanied by a cartographer and a photographer.

Currently, the roadway institute is making generous offers to landowners along the road’s projected route. Landowners are encouraged to act as patriots. Their livelihoods will not be adversely affected. Plots beside the future roadway will be more valuable than any cotton crop or cattle pasture. Roadway travelers will need inns and rest stops, and petroleum companies will pay generously to set up posts. But financial rewards are not the only incentives. As President Gomes says, “Patriots will not only help build a roadway. They will build a nation.”

 

8

On Palm Sunday, there were no leafy greens for caatinga residents to collect and present to their priests. Good Friday’s procession of the Senhor Morto was more solemn than usual, without flowers or fruits to decorate the wooden Christ’s deathbed. There were, however, plenty of dried grasses and dead leaves to fill Judas dolls. On Easter morning across the caatinga, adults grabbed sticks and joined children in beating the traitor figure. In such dry times, resurrection was hard to imagine but judgment was not. Residents condemned the Old Chico for growing shallow and making its tributaries—the Moxotó and Mandantes—turn into narrow trickles. People condemned their shriveled crops. Mothers berated themselves for nibbling the last pieces of dried beef they’d saved for their children. Vaqueiros cursed the thick thorns of the mandacaru cactus that, even after being seared in fire pits, clung to the plant’s charred pulp and cut the mouths of hungry goats and cattle. The vaqueiros cursed the flies that feasted on the animals’ bloody mouths. They cursed themselves for envying those flies.

Antônio experienced the same impotent rage as other residents but did not blame nature for his troubles. He blamed Celestino Gomes.

“He’ll dig a road but not wells!” Antônio said each night after prayers. “He’ll send mapmakers but not food! Spend good money on roadways but none on dams!”

For the first time, Antônio had a cause. He’d found a purpose. Before, his mission was simply to live as he pleased, without a colonel to boss him. He and the colonels had lived within a complicated web of favors and protections. The roadway, however, was uncomplicated. It would split the scrub into messy sections, like a sliced jackfruit. Antônio owed it no loyalty or respect. When Gomes declared that everything in the Trans-Nordestino’s path would have to yield, Antônio resolved that he would not.

Most cangaceiros agreed. Antônio was their leader, their captain, and if he proclaimed a snake venomous or a plant dangerous, the men believed him. The threat of the Trans-Nordestino was no different. But the roadway was not real, not yet. Its construction sites were still far away, near the coast, so there were no engineers or construction crews or oxen teams for the cangaceiros to attack. The Trans-Nordestino’s threat was in the future, and the cangaceiros had been conditioned to think of only the present. A few of the men—Little Ear in particular—wanted a tangible enemy, one they could fight immediately. The surveyor decapitations had satisfied Little Ear, but they didn’t last long. After the Hawk’s group had caught and executed six government surveyors, no more appeared on the cattle trail.

By June 1932, the only people on the trail were the drought’s first escapees—women and children balancing large bundles on their heads—leaving for the coast before conditions got worse. People jeered at them, calling the escapees “quitters,” and “traitors.” No one spoke to the colonels this way. The land barons were also wary of the impending drought, and many collected their families and left the caatinga by passenger train. The colonels fled to vacation homes in Campina Grande, or Recife, or in the capital city of Paraíba, recently renamed “José Bandeira” after its fallen hero and Gomes’s old running mate. It was easy for the colonels to mistrust the new president because he was a stranger. With most of them taking refuge on the coast, however, it would be convenient for Gomes to meet them. Luzia worried that the longer the colonels stayed away from the caatinga, the more Gomes would court them.

The National Roadway Institute began to offer vast sums in exchange for properties on and around the Trans-Nordestino’s route. Like most of the land in the caatinga, those properties belonged to the colonels. Luzia didn’t like the fact that they stood to profit from the roadway. Antônio also suspected the colonels’ betrayal. So did Little Ear.

“We should’ve killed them when we had the chance,” Little Ear said. “Taken over their land.”

Antônio stared. Shadows from the firelight darkened his face, making the furrows of concern or disapproval—Luzia could not tell which—that gathered across the good side of his brow look deeper, more exaggerated. His scarred side hung slack. Since Antônio’s right eye had clouded over, the injured side of his face no longer looked calm, it looked expressionless, like the dead-eyed stares of the surubim fish the cangaceiros hooked in the river.

“Then what?” Ponta Fina hissed. “If we’d killed them off, who’d get us bullets? You?”

The subcaptains and Luzia sat slightly removed from camp. They spoke softly so the other cangaceiros wouldn’t hear their plans or arguments. Antônio allowed debate among his subcaptains, as long as they spoke respectfully and returned to camp as a united front. He’d given his subcaptains red handkerchiefs to knot around their necks, to distinguish their status. As captain, Antônio wore a green one. Luzia had only a ratty blue bandanna, like the other cangaceiros, but as their mãe she was allowed into the captains’ meetings. Little Ear never looked at her when she spoke. Each time Little Ear offered his opinion, Luzia saw the shiny brown skin of Baiano’s chin crinkle. When Baiano spoke—his voice quiet and unhurried—Little Ear tapped his foot. Ponta Fina complained about this. He and Little Ear often bickered.