The Seamstress (61 page)

Antônio’s eyes were open. His crooked lips parted. Both sides of his face were calm. Luzia felt as if she’d swallowed a cactus needle. It ripped her from throat to stomach in one burning line.

The men moved closer. Luzia felt their eyes on her. She’d taken off her shawl earlier in the evening, and without it she was exposed—her poorly braided hair; her dress too tight around the belly; her thick legs; her swollen chest. The men saw everything.

Luzia placed her palms on the floor. She squatted, steadying herself on her feet. Then she took a breath and heaved herself up. Her knees creaked with the effort. Standing, Luzia saw Ponta Fina. Baby huddled near him. They’d caused this trouble, Luzia thought. So had Little Ear. In the commotion she’d forgotten about him. They’d left him outside, wounded. She had to punish him, but the thought made her dizzy. Luzia closed her eyes, steadying herself. She would manage the men around her before she dealt with Little Ear. She opened her eyes and focused on Ponta Fina.

“Give me your lambedeira,” Luzia said.

He obeyed, handing her his sharpest knife, the one he used to cut meat from bone. With her locked arm, Luzia held the knife behind her neck. With her good arm, she grasped the bottom of her braid. It was tied with stiff twine. The top of her braid, near the base of her scalp, was very thick. Luzia sliced hard.

When she faced the men, she stood tall. She kept her hands steady. She looked into each cangaceiro’s eyes, making sure not to miss one man. With her good arm, she raised the severed braid high, like a snake in her hands.

She didn’t have time to be afraid. That’s what Luzia later realized when she recalled that moment. She could have cried, mourned, whimpered as a wife was supposed to, but the men would have sniffed out her weakness and hated her for it. She would have been useless to them—no longer their blessed mãe, but a mere woman. Pregnant, at that. Seeing her with her hair shorn, her hands stained, her face stiff, had frightened them. Luzia saw it. In that instant, they feared her. They believed in her.

After cutting her braid, she felt faint. She’d gotten up too fast. The lambedeira knife fell from her hand. Luzia leaned on Baiano, who helped her to her knees. The men believed she was going to pray and they dutifully followed. Luzia uttered all of the prayers she knew—a stream of Ave Marias and Our Fathers—until she felt as if she was speaking in tongues.

All the while she watched Antônio. She waited for him to wink, to rise, to laugh at his terrible joke.

“We will light no fires,” Luzia said, interrupting her prayers. “We will put no candles in his hand. His soul stays here. With us. I am your mãe and your captain now.”

The men bowed their heads.

When they finally went outside, Little Ear was gone. Baiano offered to put together a search party, but Luzia wouldn’t allow it.

“Let him bleed,” she said. “He won’t survive out there.”

Luzia knew that some of the cangaceiros would think she was being too merciful to Little Ear. Others would think she was too cruel, letting him die of exposure instead of ending his life quickly. A captain did not have to explain his decisions to his men, so Luzia didn’t either. She couldn’t. Her reasons for letting Little Ear go had nothing to do with mercy or punishment—they had to do with the cangaceiros themselves. If Luzia ordered a search party, she couldn’t go with the men. She was too clumsy to be stealthy and too shaken to lead them through the scrub. Luzia didn’t want to admit this. She also didn’t want the men separating from her. The search party could find Little Ear and help him, possibly join him. The men had also been shaken by Antônio’s death, and their allegiance was fragile. The only way to control them was to keep them all in her sight.

Luzia spent the night awake, listening for whispers and watching for any sign of dissent. Baby planted herself next to Luzia. A few times, the girl’s head nodded with sleep. When this happened, Baby jerked upright and let out a low cough to prove she was awake.

Custom called for three days of mourning while the soul roamed around its body. Custom called for relatives to clean the corpse before it stiffened. During the bath, you had to speak to the dead, saying,
Bend your arm!
or
Lift your leg!
You could not say the dead man’s name, because that meant you were calling the spirit back. In the colonel’s house, Luzia cleaned Antônio and dressed him, all the while addressing him by his first name.
Antônio!
she said loudly, so his spirit would hear. She made the men call him
Captain
in their prayers, as they’d always done. She kept his gold rings on each of his fingers, even though the dead were not allowed to bring gold to the afterlife. She would not kiss the bottom of his foot, which would prevent him from wandering. She wanted him to wander. She did not clean the dirt from the soles of his alpercatas, as was the custom, because the soul—so attracted toward earth—would miss the land under his feet and come back. She would not close his eyes. “Close your eyes and face God,” she was supposed to say when they buried him. Instead Luzia said, “Antônio, look at me.”

She was forcing his spirit to live a life here on earth. Hadn’t he told her once that they were all damned? That despite his prayers, he would not go to God but to another, darker place. Wouldn’t he rather be here, with her?

“If anyone asks if the Hawk is dead, he isn’t,” Luzia said to the men before they left the abandoned ranch.

Her plan worked; the cangaceiros were afraid of their captain’s spirit. Each time there was a shake in the trees or a wind, the men shivered. Even Baiano seemed frightened. Each night, when they made camp, Luzia left a small meal for Antônio in the bushes. She poured a sip of water onto the ground. She was tempting him forward. It was a great risk—souls were like people, but worse. They could turn angry and bitter at their loved ones. They could haunt them forever. But Luzia wanted to be haunted. She would rather feel Antônio’s wrath than his loss.

10

A good widow wore black. She draped her house with dark curtains. She wore two rings on her left hand and kept a portrait of her dead husband with fresh flowers underneath it. Some widows locked all of their husband possessions in a drawer, taking them out occasionally and reminiscing. It was another marriage—a morbid one—with memories as the mate. For Luzia, all of these traditions were impossible. There were no wedding rings, no flowers, and no portraits except for her newspaper clippings.

The scrub had been their house. Every tree, every hill, every lizard and rock reminded her of Antônio. The scrub was his world, not hers. She had never loved it as he had. It eluded her, frightened her, angered her. And now he had left her there, alone, with his army of men who followed her across rocky plains and up steep hills. They weren’t going to Taquaritinga; Luzia had decided she didn’t want Padre Otto looking after her child. She didn’t want him raised in a place where people could identify his mother as Victrola. The cangaceiros walked toward the São Francisco River. After Antônio’s body was safely buried, Luzia had unfolded the old surveyor’s map. She’d asked Baiano: “Do you know how to get to Dr. Eronildes’ ranch?” He’d nodded.

Luzia wrapped a cloth around her belly so that the child would not come out early. She’d taken Antônio’s hat, his punhal, his crystal rock. In the evenings, she held the rock and conducted prayers. She sealed their bodies shut.

At night, she could not sleep. She listened for the men’s snores. She watched Baby sleep curled on the blanket beside her. The stubborn girl would not leave Luzia’s side, determined to make up for her loss. On nights when the moon was out, Luzia looked out over the dry scrubland. In the moonlight, the leafless trees looked like a white forest. That land was theirs, all theirs, Antônio had often said. It was God’s land. Immense. Unbounded. He’d said this joyfully, but when Luzia looked at the scrub, she couldn’t understand Antônio’s happiness. The scrub was too large. Too empty. It frightened her with its immensity.

Many nights, she thought of the newspaper photograph of Emília cradling that jarred, malformed infant. Emília held it like she used to hold her dolls—carefully, lovingly. Her sister was always kind to her rag dolls. Not like Luzia, who broke them, cut them apart, pulled out their stuffing. Emília was gentle yet stern. She knew how to care for things without spoiling them. Beneath her sister’s loveliness lay a strong will.

When she did sleep, Luzia dreamed of a man who wasn’t Antônio, but who had his mashed nose, his small teeth, his fleshy lips, his eyes. Eyes so dark she could not see the pupils, dark like the seeds of the Maria Preta tree.

In the mornings, her bladder ached. Her back pinched, as if a punhal were stabbing her while she walked. She moved slowly. The men walked ahead, at her orders. Baiano and Ponta Fina stayed beside her. As the hills that bordered the Old Chico became clearer and larger, Luzia felt as if she were being driven toward an end she did not know. As soon as she had reached it, as soon as God deemed it over, the smallest grain of sand or the tiniest glistening umbuzeiro leaf could stop her. Until then, nothing would.

Rio Branco Relief Camp

January–February 1933

1

January 2, 1933

 

Mrs. Degas Coelho
722 Rua Real da Torre
Bairro Madalena, Recife, PE

 

Dear Senhora Coelho,

 

Happy New Year. You will not remember me by name but I hope the conversation we shared in the Saint Isabel Theater isn’t completely forgotten. I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance in the lobby during the Green Party’s celebration. We spoke briefly but did not exchange names. Thankfully, I have a keen memory for faces.

I never read the
Diário’
s Society Section until recently, when someone showed me your photograph. I was surprised to discover that the lady in the Society Section was the same one I’d met in Recife. It reminded me of a saying my ranch hands live by: Always ask a stranger’s name because he may be a lost brother. I have lived in the Northeast all of my life and am still astonished that, despite the vastness of the land, our spheres of acquaintance are as small and as intricately woven as a bit of renda lace.

I’ve read of your charity work with the flagelados who have escaped to Recife during these dry times. I admire your efforts. It is far easier to condemn your neighbors than to help them.

Like you, I have decided to assist the flagelados. If you recall, I am a medical man. I’ve given up ranching to supervise a modest hospital in the Rio Branco internment camp. There are many ills here. Many of my colleagues say that backlanders are a hardy race, able to withstand any misery. I say this is a foolish belief. As you know, Mrs. Coelho, and as my own medical training has shown me, backlanders are as mortal and as flawed as the rest of us. Backlanders are, however, more closely tied to the land, which has abandoned them during this drought. They are like motherless children.

I came to Rio Branco to save those orphaned by the drought. I’m not a religious man, but recently I’ve prayed. I’ve asked for a kind and loving hand to lift at least one child from misery and change its destiny.

We’ve finally come to the meaning of my letter, Mrs. Coelho. I thank you for your patience. I am a man of science, not words, so I will be frank. I need your assistance. Clothing, food, water, and medicines are greatly appreciated in the Rio Branco camp but, as you may already know, such charitable shipments from the capitals are easily diverted by corrupt merchants or stolen by cangaceiros. Donated supplies would be safer if accompanied by a delegation. Such a delegation would receive great attention in the press, giving the camp’s residents the publicity they desperately need. The flagelados are starving people and not, as some journalists have dubbed them, freeloaders. This delegation cannot be composed of only government representatives or reporters, neither of which will inspire the camp’s residents. You, Mrs. Coelho, bring favorable attention to every cause you support. You and your Ladies’ Auxiliary can bring hope and warmth to our desolate home.

I am asking you to travel to a place most people wish to escape. I assure you, I do not ask this lightly. I’ve chosen my words carefully because I do not know you well. I have heard, however, that you are a woman with a fine heart and a strong will. I hope that my request isn’t impossible and that if it is, I pray Santo Expedito will intervene and make it possible.

Atenciosamente,
Sr. Eronildes Epifano, M.D.

 

 

2

The first-class cabin’s table trays were strewn with empty glasses. They shuddered and clinked against one another, moved by the train’s vibrations. A waiter, the back of his serving coat darkened with sweat, tried to remove the glasses without waking passengers. Government men slept with their heads back and legs splayed. Their foreheads shone with sweat. Reporters and photographers accompanying the delegation had returned to their press car, so the government men had removed their suit jackets and loosened their ties. A collection of fedoras and straw panamas was scattered on table trays and empty seats. Degas’ hat sat on his lap like a prized pet. He was awake. So was Emília.

The car’s thermometer read 38 degrees Celsius. Flowers set in a hanging wall vase were limp, their petals scattered on the floor. Above Emília, ceiling fans groaned. Their blades whirled but could not force out the heat. It was dry and oppressive; it made Emília’s cheeks prickle. The car’s windows were open, its curtains pulled back. The sun shone so intensely it hurt Emília’s eyes to look out the window. Minutes passed before her vision adjusted to the brightness. The view was always the same. Scrub plants were gray and brittle, as if they’d been scorched in an oven. Camouflaged among the trees Emília saw abandoned clay houses, their facades cracked and their doors left open. Except for the train and the clink of glasses—like ghostly echoes of the morning’s toasts—there was no sound. Not even insects buzzed. It was enough to drive a person mad.

Perhaps this was why the government men had chosen to sleep. They’d been animated when the train left Recife’s Central Station. There was a celebratory toast. Emília and Degas had held up their glasses, posing alongside Dr. Duarte and the group of government representatives while the delegation’s official photographer snapped their picture. Afterward, there were several lengthy toasts in honor of President Gomes, Tenente Higino, and Dr. Duarte. The men’s glasses were filled and refilled with cane liquor and lime juice. Degas stood on the group’s outskirts, bending to listen to their toasts. He shoved his drink into their circle in order to clink glasses. Emília, along with the handful of women in the delegation, sat at the opposite end of the car. She wasn’t included in the extended toasts. She drank only water.

When the toasts had waned, journalists packed the car and conducted interviews. The reporters worked for newspapers in Recife as well as some based in the states of Paraíba, Bahia, and Alagoas. All had been approved by Gomes’s Department of Information and Propaganda, or DIP. The government men were Recife representatives for all of President Gomes’s provisional ministries: Industry, Labor, Education, Transportation, and Health. All of the officials were eager to be quoted, but their talk of weather patterns, vaccinations, workers’ identification cards, and food distribution were dull statistics memorized from DIP handouts, which the reporters already had. Only Dr. Duarte spoke candidly. Reporters and officials gathered around him as he held court from his cushioned train seat.

“This delegation is, first and foremost, a charitable endeavor,” Dr. Duarte said as the train eased past sugarcane fields. “But it won’t take away from our government’s generosity and goodwill to say that this is also a scientific endeavor. Measuring the sertanejos—as the men and women of the caatinga are called—is an invaluable opportunity. We must gauge differences, if there are any, between our peoples. Not to isolate them! The Brasilidade movement we are so proud of is about our country’s diverse groups coming together to form a nation! Within all groups, there are well-meaning citizens. There are also criminals—Communists, degenerates, thieves, sexual deviants—who have to be defined. Depending on their degree of criminality, they must be either contained, controlled, or cured. This is the only way to purify Brazil and heal its social ailments.”

While his father spoke, Degas sat apart from the group. He seemed uninterested in his father’s speech and focused instead on smoothing dents from his fedora. As the sun strengthened and the day warmed, the men’s cheeks flushed. They fanned their faces with their hats. Their early morning drinks combined with the heat to make them woozy and tired. The reporters and photographers returned to their press car. As the train pushed past the cane fields of the Zona da Mata and entered into the drought-stricken scrub, the government men slowly fell asleep.

On the women’s side of the car, five nuns from the Nossa Senhora das Dores Convent sat primly in dark brown suits. A young nun fingered her rosary. An older one occasionally glanced at Emília and gave her a tight-lipped smile. No one from the Ladies’ Auxiliary had joined the delegation. Lindalva and the baroness were in Europe. The other Auxiliary members gave grave excuses, most dealing with a child’s or a husband’s illness. It seemed that a flu epidemic had struck Recife’s elite and left everyone else alone. Only the nuns had accepted Emília’s call to service. Oddly enough, an Old family woman named Mrs. Coimbra had also joined the delegation. She’d appeared at the Coelho house and informed Emília that she would represent the Princess Isabel Society.

Mrs. Coimbra sat across from Emília. She was a big-boned, square-bodied woman who was rumored to be in her sixties, though her hair was the color of coal. She wore a dark blue dress cut in a blocklike fashion with no waistline, just a decorative sash tied loosely at the hips. Such flapper-style dresses had been popular when Emília first arrived in Recife four years earlier, but now they were unfashionable. In Recife, the “nipped waistline” had become de rigueur, thanks, in part, to Emília and Lindalva’s dress business.

Emília wore one of their designs—a flowered dress belted at the natural waist and accentuated with a cape-style collar. Because of the heat, she’d removed her linen bolero jacket, but only after the reporters and photographers had left the car. Her straw hat had a wider brim than her old cloches and was pinned in place, cocked jauntily to one side of her head. The pins tugged at Emília’s hair. The hatband made her forehead sweat. Emília unpinned the hat and flung it on the seat beside her. It was too hot to be jaunty. Mrs. Coimbra nodded, praising Emília’s good sense.

On the few occasions when Mrs. Coimbra spoke, she was polite yet brisk, the way most Old family women addressed Emília. Each time Mrs. Coimbra took this tone, Emília smiled and focused on the ugliness of the woman’s dress. Such thoughts were vain and petty; Emília knew this. She also knew that Recife women—Old and New alike—judged her by things inconsequential to her character: her hint of a country accent, her inability or unwillingness to have children, her husband and his unmentionable predilection. Ever since the dinner at the Saint Isabel Theater, Emília sensed that Recife women believed she was below them in every way—except for stylishness. Realizing this had made Emília bold.

She dressed as she pleased, wearing bolero jackets, mermaid skirts inspired by Claudette Colbert, and, during the summer on Boa Viagem Beach, a broadcloth shirt tucked into a pair of checkered trousers. The more confident Emília became, the more the Recife women complimented her. As long as Emília didn’t commit any flagrant violations—having a love affair, riding the trolley late at night, fraternizing with criminals or blacks—most Recife women admired her fashions and wanted to purchase them.

Emília took her inspiration from fashion magazines printed in France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Dr. Duarte helped her order the magazines; they arrived in the same shipments as her father-in-law’s phrenology journals. She changed some styles, replacing heavy fabrics with lighter ones in order to suit Recife’s climate. Once she’d made an accurate pattern and discovered the perfect cloth to complement it, she presented the design to Lindalva. If they both liked the garment, they took it to their atelier.

Dr. Duarte had given Emília and Lindalva the use of one of his many properties. Emília insisted on paying rent. The atelier had a prime location on Rua Nova, the fashionable street connected to the steel-framed Boa Vista Bridge. People crossed the bridge to go shopping. Rua Nova was home to several fine shops: Casa Massilon sold school uniforms and military attire; Primavera was a Portuguese-owned department store for household goods; the Vitória pharmacy sold medications and housed doctors’ offices above it; Parlophon sold Philco radios, Odeon records, iceboxes, and other modern luxuries. Nestled between Recife’s best shops was the atelier, E & L Designs. There was no outdoor sign; public advertisement indicated a need for profit, which was gauche. Emília and Lindalva were respectable women and the atelier was their hobby, not their business. From the outside, the atelier looked like an austere home, with white curtains and a brass buzzer beside the front door. When patrons rang, a serving girl answered and escorted them inside. Sometimes Emília or Lindalva was present, sometimes not. When they were in the atelier, they didn’t act as salespeople but sat and chatted like fellow shoppers. No one handled money; payments were mailed or delivered later. There was no bargaining or bill collecting because no Recife woman, New or Old, wanted to be dubbed a cheapskate or a thief.

Emília and Lindalva offered a limited number of prêt-à-porter outfits. There were no long fittings or custom-made gowns. There was no exact pattern for all women, so Emília employed a seamstress to tailor the premade outfits after they’d been purchased, bringing up a hem for a shorter woman or nipping a dress’s waist for a skinnier one. Emília manufactured only five items of each style. This compelled Recife women to buy the garments immediately. Emília’s designs were inevitably imitated, but styles changed so quickly that, by the time another seamstress had learned to make the garments, they were already obsolete; Emília and Lindalva already had new creations in their shop.

When they first opened the atelier, they’d hired seven seamstresses. By then, President Gomes had required a minimum wage, mandatory employee bathrooms, and an eight-hour workday. Each laborer was issued a “Worker’s Identification Card,” which employers had to sign. The card admitted workers into Gomes’s national union. All other unions were disbanded and strikes were outlawed. Gomes decreed that in order to receive the rights he’d bestowed, workers had to be loyal to the provisional government. Emília followed Gomes’s laws and went beyond them: the atelier’s sewing room had windows, several fans, and a radio for the seamstresses to listen to during their lunch hour. And Emília didn’t complain when the seamstresses nailed an official photograph of Gomes, with the inscription “Father of the Poor” printed above his smiling face, on the sewing room’s wall.