Captains of the Sands (17 page)

“Before serving lunch, Dona Ester?”

“Before lunch, yes. He hasn’t eaten for two days, poor thing.”

Legless didn’t say anything, he only dried his fake tears with the back of his hand.

“Don’t cry…” the lady said, stroking the child’s face.

“You’re so good, ma’am. God will repay you…”

Then she asked what his name was and Legless gave the first name that came into his head:

“Augusto…” and as he repeated the name to himself so he wouldn’t forget that his name was Augusto, at first he didn’t see the emotion produced in the lady as she murmured:

“Augusto, the same name…”

As Legless was looking at her face now, she said aloud with emotion:

“My son’s name was Augusto too…He died when he was just your size…But come in, son, go wash up for lunch.”

Dona Ester went with him, deeply moved. She saw to it that the servant showed Legless the bathroom, gave him a robe, and went to the room over the garage to clean it up (the chauffeur had quit, the room was empty). Dona Ester came closer, said to Legless, who had stopped at the door of the bathroom:

“You can throw those clothes away. Maria José will bring you some clothes later…”

Legless watched the lady as she went away now and he was angry, but he didn’t know whether at her or at himself.

Dona Ester sat down at her dressing-table, her eyes staring, anyone who saw her would have thought she was looking through the window at the sky. She really wasn’t looking at anything, however, she didn’t see anything. She was looking, yes, inside herself, at her memories of years ago and she saw a boy of Legless’s age dressed in a sailor suit running in the garden of the other house, which they had moved out of after he died. He was a boy full of life and happiness, he liked to laugh and play. When he was tired of running with the cat, climbing on the seesaw in the garden, throwing the rubber ball in the yard for the German shepherd to catch, he would come and put his arms around Dona Ester’s neck, kiss her cheek, and stay with her, looking at picture books, learning how to read and write the letters. In order to have him close to them for the longest time possible, Dona Ester and her husband had decided to teach their son his first lessons at home. One day (and Dona Ester’s eyes filled with tears) the fever came. Then the small coffin went out the door and she watched it with eyes of horror, unable to comprehend that her son had died. His picture, an enlargement, is in her room but still covered by a cloth because she doesn’t like looking at her son’s face again so as not to revive her anguish. The clothes he wore are also all put away in his small trunk and they’ll never be touched again. But now Dona Ester takes the keys out of her jewel box.

And slowly, very slowly, she goes to where the trunk is. She pulls over a chair and sits down in it. With trembling hands
she opens the trunk, looks at the trousers and shirts, the sailor suit, the pajamas and nightshirts that he used to sleep in. She hugs the sailor suit to her breast as if she were embracing her son. Her tears pour forth.

Now a poor orphan boy had come knocking on her door. After the death of her son she hadn’t wanted to have another, she didn’t even like to see children playing so as not to renew the pain of her memories. But a poor orphan, crippled and sad, who said his name was Augusto, like her son’s, had knocked at her door asking for food, shelter, and love. That’s why she got up the courage to open the trunk where she kept the clothes her son had worn. Because for Dona Ester her son had come back today in the figure of this ragged, crippled child without father or mother. Her son had come back and her tears weren’t only of grief. Her son had come back thin and hungry, with a crippled leg and dressed in rags. But in a short time he’ll be the jolly, happy Augusto of those past years again, and once more he’ll come and put his arms about her neck and read the big letters in his primer. Dona Ester gets up. She takes the blue sailor suit with her. And wearing it Legless eats the best lunch of his life.

If the sailor suit had been made to order for him it couldn’t have been a better fit. It was perfect for Legless and when he saw himself in the hall mirror he didn’t recognize himself. He’d washed, the maid had put lotion on his hair and perfume on his face. The sailor suit was great. Legless looked at himself in the mirror. He ran his hand over his head, then down his chest, smoothing the clothes, he smiled thinking about Cat. He would have given a million for Cat to have seen him looking so elegant. He had new shoes on too, but the truth is that he was a little put off by the shoes because they were tied with a ribbon and they looked a little like women’s shoes. Legless found it strange to be dressed like a sailor wearing women’s shoes. He went out into the garden because he wanted to have a smoke, he’d never given up having his puff after eating. Sometimes there hadn’t been anything to eat but there’d always been a cigarette or cigar butt. He had to be careful there, he
couldn’t smoke openly. If they’d left him in the kitchen with the servants as they had in other houses he’d got into in order to rob them afterwards, he could have smoked, talked straight out in the language of the Captains of the Sands. But this time they’d washed him, dressed him up again, put lotion on his hair and perfume on his face. Then they’d fed him in the dining room. And during lunch the lady of the house had talked to him as if he’d been a properly brought up boy. Now she’d told him to go out into the garden and play where the yellow cat called Trinket was warming himself in the sun. Legless goes over to a bench, takes the packet of cheap cigarettes out of his pocket. When he’d changed clothes he hadn’t forgotten the cigarettes. He lights one up and begins to savor a puff, thinking about his new life. He’d done that many times: going into a proper house as a poor, orphaned, crippled child and with those credentials spending the days needed to make a thorough inventory of the house, the places where valuables were kept, the easy exits for a getaway. Then the Captains of the Sands would raid the house one night, carry off the objects of value through the getaway exits and in the warehouse Legless would enjoy himself, overcome by a great joy, the joy of vengeance. Because in those houses even if they took him in, if they gave him food and a place to sleep, it was as though they were fulfilling a delicate duty. The owners of the house avoided coming close to him and left him in his filth, never had a good word for him. They would always look at him as if wondering when he was going to leave. And many times the lady of the house, who had been moved by his story told at the door in a weepy voice and who had taken him in, showed obvious signs of regret. Legless felt they were taking him in out of remorse. Because Legless thought that they were all to blame for the situation of all poor children. And he hated them all, with a deep hatred. His great and almost only joy was to calculate the despair of the family after the robbery, thinking that the hungry boy they had fed had been the one who had staked out the house for other hungry children to find its valuables.

But this time it was becoming different. This time they hadn’t left him in the kitchen in his rags, they hadn’t sent him out to
sleep in the shed. They’d given him clothing, a room, fed him in the dining room. He was like a guest, like a beloved guest. And smoking his hidden cigarette (Legless was wondering why he was hiding to smoke), Legless is thinking and not understanding. He doesn’t understand anything that’s going on. His brow is wrinkled. He remembers the days in jail, the beating they gave him, the dreams that had never stopped pursuing him. And suddenly he has the fear that they’ll be good to him in this house. He doesn’t really know why, but he’s afraid. And he gets up, comes out of his hiding place, and goes to smoke under the lady’s window. In that way they’ll see that he’s a lost child, that he doesn’t deserve a room, new clothes, food in the dining room. In that way they’ll send him to the kitchen, he’ll be able to carry out his work of vengeance, preserve the hatred in his heart. Because if that hatred disappears he’ll die, he’ll have no reason to live. And before his eyes passes the picture of the man in the vest who watches the policemen beat Legless and gives off a brutal laugh. That has to stop Legless from ever seeing Dona Ester’s kind face, the protective gesture of Father José Pedro’s hands, the solidness of the striker’s muscles on João de Adão the stevedore. He will be all alone and his hatred will reach them all, black and white, men and women, rich and poor. That’s why he’s afraid for them to be good to him.

In the afternoon the master of the house, Raul, arrived home from his office. He was a well-known lawyer, he’d become wealthy in his profession, he was a professor at the Law School, but above all he was a collector. He had a fine gallery of paintings and he had some old coins, rare works of art. Legless saw him when he came in. At that moment Legless was looking at the picture in a children’s book and laughing to himself at a silly elephant the monkey was tricking. Raul didn’t see him, went upstairs. But then the maid came and called Legless and took him to Dona Ester’s room, Raul was there in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette, and he looked at the boy with an amused smile, now that Legless was putting on such a hang-dog look on the threshold:

“Come in…”

Legless limped in, he didn’t know where to put his hands. Dona Ester spoke in a kindly voice:

“Sit down, son, don’t be afraid…”

Legless sat down on the edge of a chair and waited. The lawyer was studying him, looking at his face, but it was with sympathy and Legless was preparing his answers to the inevitable questions. He repeated the story he’d invented that morning, but when he began to weep abundant tears the lawyer ordered him to stop and got up, going over to the window. Legless saw that he’d been moved and the result of his art made him proud. He smiled to himself. But now the lawyer went over to Dona Ester and kissed her on the head and then on the lips. Legless lowered his eyes. Raul went over to him, laid his hand on his shoulder, and spoke:

“Stop it, you’re not going to be hungry anymore. Go on…Go play, go look at your books. Tonight we’re going to the movies. Do you like the movies?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

The lawyer sent him off with a wave. Legless went out but he still saw Raul go over to Dona Ester and say:

“You’re a saint. We’ll make a proper man of him…”

It was dusk, the lights were going on, and Legless thought that at that time the Captains of the Sands were running about the city looking for something to eat.

Too bad he couldn’t cheer at the movies when the hero was beating the villain, the way he’d done the times he’d sneaked into the balcony at the Olímpia or at the movies in Itapagipe. There, at the Guarani, in the fine seats, he had to watch the film in silence and once, when he couldn’t hold back a hiss, Raul looked at him. It’s true that he was smiling, but it’s also true that he gestured to Legless not to hiss anymore.