Nowhere People (13 page)

Nineteen ninety-three (Luisa never returned to Rio de Janeiro).

The doctor they interviewed weeks earlier at the meeting with representatives of the National Association for Indigenist Action in Porto Alegre spoke emphatically about that Indian girl, aged seventeen or eighteen, called Maína, about how they really needed to meet her in order to understand properly what it is that modern life is doing to the current generation of Indians in Rio Grande do Sul, to people who have never before had to live with all this technology and so little space and such poor conditions. They no longer have the recipes for medicines and traditions for healing from decades past, they don’t have places where they can find leaves, roots, herbs, there is no jungle and there is no countryside, there is only this relationship of always failed rapprochements, and the distrust they feel about accepting the medicines offered to them by non-Indians. ‘You people have a translator, don’t you?’ the doctor asks. ‘You should start in the villages, but do also speak to the ones who live on the roadside, do speak to the younger women, they have a lot more to say, specially the one I mentioned. Don’t forget, write it down.’ And Luisa wrote it down. Luisa has been telling Henrique that they need to hire an Indian secretary. Henrique, who is actually Henrique Magalhães Becker, eleven years older than her and a trained geographer with two master’s degrees, in Human Geography and Statistics, and two doctorates, in Management and Geography, her professor in one of the extra modules she made herself attend during the master’s since she wasn’t getting as involved in the Porto Alegre social scene as she had planned and as a result had plenty of time left to devote to her studies; Henrique, the man of multiple allegiances, confident and practical, who, in that first semester of nineteen ninety-one (and already three seminars into the module by the time she came to give her presentation) became the love of her life. And she, Luisa Vasconcelos Lange, did not rest until she had managed to take him to bed, until she had made him fall in love with her and hold her hand in front of the other master’s students and professors on the postgraduate course and invite her, as soon as she had defended her dissertation with honours, to live with him in his house, which, as the only grandchild, Henrique had inherited from his maternal grandfather, a narrow building on a long strip of land with a great patio, a barbecue, two plum trees and a vegetable garden round the back; number eight hundred and thirty-nine Cristovão Colombo, near the corner with Ramiro Barcelos. The problem isn’t with the Indians they are going to interview. The translator is excellent, a white boy currently doing a master’s in Language and Literature at the Santa Catarina Federal University, but, hard-working as he might be, he won’t be able to help them map out the Indians’ profile in the minute detail
–
using audiovisual media to make a documentary record
–
that they have been hired by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation to provide, mapping the broadest picture they can of the status of the Kaingang and Guarani Indians in Rio Grande do Sul, an undertaking that will require three months of intensive fieldwork and a further two tackling data, recent bibliographies, press cuttings, surveys in partnership with public institutions, and the preparation of documents and reports. Luisa still has not understood why Henrique agreed to take this project on, the money is not much compared to what he is used to earning, she imagines he took the opportunity to give himself a break from the work he has been doing for big corporations; he won’t earn what he hoped to, but he will be able to travel around the state, understand the lives of a people about whom nobody ever talks (he once said to Luisa that despite his Germanic biotype he has Indian blood; his great-grandfather, a Chilean Indian, was abandoned at the entrance to a farm in the south of Chile, brought up by a family of Spaniards as though he were their biological son, and ended up on the border of Uruguay and Rio Grande do Sul, where he married an Italian widow who owned an inn and with whom he had four children, among them a daughter with very light skin, Henrique’s grandmother, who came to study in Porto Alegre, married a businessman from the Lageado neighbourhood and had just one child: his father); this was the closest he came to what could be called a break from the consultant’s routine he has devised for himself.

Henrique sent the other team, which Luisa christened the B-team, to the western part of the state, a total of five people in a diesel camper van just like this one in which they’re travelling as a foursome right now. Luisa insisted on operating the camera herself so that there would be free seats in the van: one of the interns would handle the sound and the Indian they would find and invite to join them would help the second intern with the data collection. After a while, they would meet up with the B-team in Iraí, almost on the Santa Catarina border. That’s what was agreed.

The camper van leaves Morro Santana (one of the hills that make up the so-called Porto Alegre Crest, the chain of hills comprising Morro Santana, Morro da Companhia, Morro da Polícia, Morro Pelado, Morro da Pedra Redonda, Morro Teresópolis and Morro do Osso), where the Kaingang gather
guiambê
vines for their handicraft work, a region that has been threatened by growing property speculation. They take Avenida Protásio Alves until they are beyond Porto Alegre and then drive on to the roadside encampment where the Indian girl lives about whom the doctor talked so much. There are Indians who have become civilised, accepting the rules and organisational structures of the non-Indians, but there are also those who claim to be wild, the ones who, living near the cities or even within them, consider themselves at war with the invaders. Luisa understands that there is no other way to face the facts, that there is no point marking out territories or getting help from well-meaning NGOs and government officials; the disputes over land never end. She was disgusted when she heard about the case of the chief who tried to lease out indigenous lands for his own private gain. She is besotted by this subject; Henrique has already told her that the audiovisual survey might not yield all that much if she isn’t able to separate her particular enthusiasms from the work they’ve set out to do, it’s vital to remain alert to everything and not to become attached to one particular problem or other. All the same, he has agreed to amend one day of their itinerary, since it’s easy enough to get to the encampment where this Indian girl lives.

With her hair cropped short (Luisa had never seen this on an Indian woman before), she does not seem too friendly when, after they have looked at the baskets and fans of local bamboo hanging from the improvised beams, dry sticks stuck at an angle into the earth and tied with vines close to the hard shoulder, they ask her whether her name is Maína. There is no one else to be seen in the encampment. Maína asks them what they want. Henrique introduces himself and explains the survey work they are doing, Luisa then takes over and asks whether they might film an interview with her, she explains that they heard about her from the doctor who looked after her during her pregnancy. Maína, her expression still serious, tells them to leave the camper van just where it is and come inside. As though they had been waiting for just the right moment, three children emerge from the tent, come to meet the visitors. The oldest, quite a lively girl, appears with a smile and asks whether they have brought them any gifts. Luisa tries to stroke her head, but she dodges her and runs off towards the van, the younger girl follows her, and the boy, who doesn’t look like he can be more than three years old, stays behind. Maína takes the boy in her arms and, still looking quite unfriendly, asks whether they would like a lemongrass tea. Luisa accepts and notices that round the back there are foundations supporting a wooden floor that looks as though it used to be part of a house, and now resembles a giant table. ‘What used to be there?’ she asks. Maína replies that it’s a stage for performing Russian ballet. Luisa doesn’t know how to handle that response, she walks ahead without saying any more and climbs onto the structure, gesturing to Henrique to come join her. The two girls are entertaining themselves with the interns, escorting them as they unload the tripods, the cases with the two Sony Betamax cameras, the microphones and audio recorder. Maína says to make themselves comfortable, she goes into the tent. Henrique climbs the steps and stands beside Luisa looking out towards the west. ‘What do you reckon this was? What do you think of her?’ Luisa asks. ‘Take it easy, Luisa.’ Henrique taps the floor with his foot, testing to see how firm it is. ‘Shall we record up here?’ Luisa suggests. ‘I don’t know, it does seem a bit unusual here,’ he replies. Luisa comes down, walks over to the tent, asks permission to enter, and goes in. Inside she finds Maína’s mother, who greets her saying that the tea will be ready in a few minutes, and an unclothed Maína arranging strings of beads and seeds around her neck and her waist. Luisa tells her there’s no need to do herself up, that it’s only going to be a quick chat about what she thinks about her situation, about being there on the roadside, and about what she thinks of the situation for Indians who live like them. ‘I’m an Indian girl, miss, Indians go naked … I don’t have any problem being filmed like this,’ she says, looking straight at Luisa. ‘If you could make one request that I would be able to grant you,’ Luisa says, ‘what would you ask for?’ ‘Financial support, a study scholarship with a place in a student house where I’d live as a student studying in a state university.’ Luisa is impressed at the Indian girl’s fluency. ‘Very good. It’s a nice choice, it’s a dream worth having,’ she says in a sisterly tone. ‘I don’t know how to deal with dreams, miss … Indian dreams are different from you people’s … It’s not right to play at dreaming, like it’s not right to play with promises. A few days from now I’m going to be eighteen and, however much I read and however hard I try, I still haven’t been able to understand the world you live in, I still haven’t found the door to get in … A scholarship to study would solve my problems and those of my family … I’m not going into the city to work as a maid, I’m not going to be a whore … I’d rather stay here selling my craft things, taking care of my son, of my mother, of my sisters, waiting for handouts from the government and people like you, coming here to play nice with us … ’ Luisa raises her hand in a gesture to stop. ‘Put on your clothes, there isn’t going to be an interview.’ Maína’s mother, who has had her back to the two women, turns towards them. ‘I’ll make you a proposition. Why don’t you join us for a month? We need another assistant. I think it would be quite an opportunity. We’ll give you food and lodging and we’ll even pay twice the minimum wage. We’ve got to go to a place called Fazenda da Borboleta up near the source of the Jacuí, we need to get some notes that only the researchers up there have got, that’ll take us a day, and on the way back we can come by here again to find out what you think and what you’ve decided,’ says Luisa. ‘I don’t need to think. I accept,’ is Maína’s reply. At that moment her mother asks Luisa to go outside. Seeing what this means, Luisa (barely thinking about it, and as has increasingly been her way of doing things lately) jumps in. ‘We can find someone to stay here with you and the children while Maína is with us.’ Maína’s mother thanks her with a shake of the head and, looking sidelong at the visitor, once again asks Luisa to go outside. Now Luisa does. Maína’s mother walks over, tells her to listen in silence to what she has to say. There is no room for any more adventures and if Maína wants an adventure with these people who have appeared out of nowhere she can go, but she’s taking her son with her. To each her own burden (she used an expression very like this). She would manage with her two sisters, she will always be able to rely on help from the people who live in the neighbouring encampments. Maína has never been apart from Donato, the way her mother has understood things this is going to happen for the first time; although it was not clear from the answer she gave the visitor a few minutes earlier, parting from Donato is not what Maína has in mind. She takes off her necklaces and the strings around her waist and gets dressed. Anyone who says that a person controls the things her head devises is lying; it is possible to choose what you want, but not the time nor the way in which things around you will happen. Maína has learned to be patient, but she has become bitter, too, for her this is that thing they call growing up. She thinks, and she worries: she doesn’t know what they will say when she asks for her son to go with her. She will assure them that he’s well behaved and placid (she must remember to use that word) and that he never cries or gets in the way, which is true. It’s the chance she’s been waiting for. If there are benefits, she will not be the one to get them. Children behave in a peculiar way. Children don’t remember too much. Maína does not yet know what her son needs. Maína needs to give him the chance to choose, even if this takes a while. Donato will come with her, he’s a good child (she must remember to say that he is placid). They must accept, they have to accept.

Luisa knows that Henrique doesn’t like that she decided about the Indian girl and the child on her own, which is why since yesterday he hasn’t addressed a word to her beyond the essential. It isn’t just a tantrum, that’s not what he’s like, she knows that; he’s like this because he feels his authority was undermined in front of the rest of the team. The equipment had already been all set up when she appeared saying that there wouldn’t be any interviews. Perhaps he’d been wrong when he said it would be a project for them to undertake together, a test of how much ‘professional affinity’ there is between them. She wants to be with him, basically, that’s the only thing she is sure of. She runs her hand through his hair while he is driving. It is the truce that he must agree to. She puts her hand on his knee, strokes it, she kisses his cheek. They are leaving the Botucaraí mountains, they will go through the Centro de Soledade, because Henrique needs to copy on a photocopier all the documents and maps he got hold of from a Kaingang leader, they’re from the end of the nineteenth century, things that were obtained in some fight or were left over from some usurpation (not forgetting that there were Indians who settled there in the eighteenth century, fleeing the attacks on the Jesuit Missions). They entered the city. Without warning, Henrique stops outside a chemist, asks Maína to come in with him. He buys jars of baby food and disposable nappies for the child. They return to the camper van, they drive on as far as a stationer’s offering ‘Copying Service’. Luisa gets ready to make the copies, she asks Maína to come in with her and learn something that she might have to do herself one of these days, takes the child from her lap, hands him to Henrique, who holds him with the vulnerability of someone who is infertile. Luisa will not have his children, the children they always talked about until they discovered that there was nothing to be done about his condition. Luisa looks at him before going into the stationer’s and is glad to see that the man she so loves might have in his arms an even better reason for spending the next few days driving around for kilometres and kilometres on the highways of Rio Grande do
Sul.