Where Tigers Are at Home (59 page)

The sun was burning her skin in a way that was pleasant. By association of ideas, she remembered the story of the fires and the flood, the three founding catastrophes of the Mururucu myth, that Aynoré had told her before going to sleep, though her memory of the details was somewhat confused.

Even the air was burning … That was how the few survivors of Hiroshima had put it, in those very words, without anyone learning the ultimate lesson of human folly from them; all at once she felt too hot to stay on the sand one second longer. She got up, announcing that she was going for a swim, shook off her dizziness and ran to the sea.

After having played in the waves for a while, she lay down on her front at the edge of the sea. Facing the beach, her hands under her chin, she concentrated on the bubbles of foam sizzling on the back of her neck at regular intervals. Thirty yards away from her, Aynoré had joined the others at keeping the ball in the air with shouts and acrobatic dives. Far beyond them the short cliff bordering this part of the shore—a cliff of solidified sand, the sand that was put in layers in little bottles for the tourists—was like a rampart veined with gradations of pink.

Roetgen … Moéma realized she hadn’t given a single thought to him since the moment, already distant, when she’d left the
forro da
Zefa. He must be somewhere out on the open sea and she couldn’t wait for him to get back to tell him how her life had been turned upside down in his absence. She resolved to be there to meet him when the jangadas came back the next day. Perhaps she could do a thesis on the mythology of the Mururucu or gather sufficient material before going to Amazonia. She definitely wouldn’t tell anyone of her decision, not even her parents. Later, perhaps, when she had children, a swarm of little half castes playing along the riverside … She saw herself in the pose of Iracema, motionless beside the river, her bow aimed at the shadow of an invisible fish, or prophesying beside a fire, her eyes haunted by visions. The female condition of Indian women? The evidence that proved a thousand times over that they were kept on the sidelines because of their “impurity.” The practise of “couvade,” the tragicomedy in which the Indian men, in their masculine pretension, went so far as to act out the sufferings of childbirth and, moaning in their hammocks, receive the congratulations of the whole tribe while the new mother, still unsteady on her feet, was tiring herself out cooking cakes for the guests. All these distortions, which usually modified her enthusiasm for the Indian tribes, had vanished into thin air, rather as if all her critical faculties had been disconnected. Her love—for the first time she gave that name to the euphoria she felt at the mere thought of Aynoré—would transcend all these obstacles; and, if necessary, they would bend the tradition a bit …

At the roar of an engine she turned her head toward the promontory: driven at full speed along the very edge of the shore, a gold-colored beach buggy was visibly growing bigger as it sent huge sprays of water shooting up.

WITH A GOOD
wind behind it, the jangada had been bowling along toward the shore for two hours, comfortably riding the heavy ocean swell. Cutting up a huge turtle, which they had caught right at the end of their fishing, had delayed them, so that now the sun looked like a globule of red sitting straight ahead of them on the dark line of the coast. João gave his orders for landing: “You come beside me,” he said to Roetgen, without looking at him, “and don’t get off till I tell you. One false move and we’ll capsize.”

Roetgen had understood the point of these orders; standing and symmetrically placed on either side of the trestle, which they were clinging onto, the four men had to concentrate right to the end on keeping the jangada balanced as it headed for the beach. A hundred yards from the shore, where the waves started to break in long, translucent rollers, João tensed as he clutched the steering oar. Features taut and eyes ceaselessly moving to check the trim of the boat and the hollow of the waves threatening to swamp the stern, he corrected its course with swift, precise touches on the helm. If it should get athwart the waves, or lose a little of its speed, the waves would roll them like any old log. Every time a breaker seemed about to catch them, João maneuvered so as to maintain the surf and the jangada would accelerate sufficiently to escape once more. Swept away uncontrollably by the final combers carrying it toward the shore, the vessel suddenly bumped the bottom, its headway carrying it, scrunching, up the beach. At João’s command, the four immediately leapt out and held the jangada against the pull of the ebb while other fishermen running to meet them placed log rollers under the prow and helped them push it out of reach of the waves.

The two-wheeled collection cart, pulled by a mule, came to meet them. While João was arguing over the catch with Bolinha, the driver, Roetgen took a minute to catch his breath. He was
exhausted, but with that mellow weariness that comes from the completion of a task that everything had suggested would be beyond his ability. His sailor’s pride was now joined by the sweeter sense of having been accepted by the fishermen as one of them, of belonging as of right to their brotherhood. It was at that moment that he saw Moéma … The first thing that outraged him was her new hair style, so ridiculously loaded with meaning, the second to see the Indian kiss her on the neck as they came toward him. That smug complacency of a pregnant woman, Thaïs nowhere to be seen … Moéma hadn’t even spoken to him and already Roetgen was ruminating on the sour secretions of his self-esteem.

Without being insulting, he replied curtly to her questions with the slightly disdainful distance of someone who doesn’t really have the time to talk to idlers. Then, apologizing to her, he helped João and the others to carry the fish to the cart. When the time came to distribute their shares, he told Bolinha to take the one due to him to the fisherman he’d replaced and to see that he was credited with his usual amount with the cooperative.

With a weary smile, João slapped him on the shoulder: they were going to drink a
cachaça
or two together, perhaps even three, assuming they didn’t collapse first. With a little wave to Moéma, the two men picked up their things and left, staggering with fatigue, against the light in the red of twilight.

For a few seconds Moéma watched them go as they climbed the dune. Roetgen’s looks had made her feel ugly and she had to hold back the tears.

When Thaïs found him, late in the evening, Roetgen was asleep on the billiard table, a nasty gash on his forehead, dried blood over his face. The barman told her he’d had to smash a bottle over his head, he was a decent guy and there was no real harm done, neither to his skull—just a bit of a cut on his scalp, nothing serious—nor in the damage he’d caused. João had been forcibly taken home a little earlier, griping about his wife at the top of his voice.

Nelson had been filing down his iron bar for hours. His mind released by the repetitive nature of the work, he was once more reliving the death of Lampião. There was something that bothered him
about the way it had happened, his end was too prosaic, at odds with the qualities of cunning and intelligence attributed to his hero. Angicos, 1938 … The tragic end of the famous
cangaceiro
was well known: proud of their deed, the men of the flying squad commanded by Lieutenant João Bezerra had reported every last detail.

When the pale light of dawn rose over that part of Brazil on July 28, 1938, the police were so close to the
cangaceiros
that they could hear them talking or watch those already stretching in the doorway of their shack. Dressed in the only uniform the
caatinga
allowed, the men on both sides looked disconcertingly similar: a leather jerkin held tight over the chest by the crossed cartridge belts, gaiters, leggings jointed at the knees, a wide cocked hat in fawn leather, stuck with stars and gilded rosettes—a bit like the hats of the dandies of the Directoire period but with a headband and chin strap. Designed to resist the thorny vegetation, this bronze armor united hunters and hunted like knights and their reflection. Dull sounds emerged from time to time beneath the patter of the driving rain: the clatter of mess tins, a horse snorting, a dry cough … They were only to open fire on Bezerra’s command, but the lieutenant’s jaws were welded so tightly together by fear that his pulse was visible on his cheek; far from being ready to pounce, he was trying to disappear into the puddle where he was crouching. The sudden rattle of a sewing machine sent the coward’s face plunging into the mud … A sudden movement in the scrub? The metallic glint of a carbine? An unusually deep silence round the encampment? Without anyone being able to say why, one of the
cangaceiros
gave the alarm. A second later Maria Bonita thought she saw her sewing machine spitting bullets.

Rushing out when his companion called, Lampião was one of the first to fall under the hail of machine-gun fire. While a good number of the
cangaceiros
scattered into the hills, Maria Bonita, Luís Pedro and the most faithful of the outlaws entrenched
themselves in the huts. The attack only lasted about twenty minutes, but long after the last rifle facing them had fallen silent, the machine guns continued to pepper the shelters of canvas and branches.