Captains of the Sands (28 page)

He cries out with pain. But not a word comes from his lips. It’s getting to be night for him. Now he doesn’t feel the pain anymore, he doesn’t feel anything. But the policemen are still beating him, the detective punching him. But he doesn’t feel anything else.

“He’s fainted,” the detective says.

“Leave him to me,” the director of the Reformatory explains. “I’ll take him to the Reformatory, he’ll open his mouth there. I guarantee it. I’ll let you know.”

The detective agrees. With the promise that the next day he’d come for Pedro Bala, the director left.

In the pre-dawn, when Pedro came to, the prisoners were singing. It was a sad
moda
. It spoke of the sunlight there was on the streets, how great and beautiful freedom is.

Ranulfo, the beadle, who’d gone to pick him up at Police Headquarters, brought him into the presence of the director. Pedro felt his body aching all over from the beating of the day before. But he was satisfied because he hadn’t said anything, because he hadn’t revealed the place where the Captains of the Sands lived. He remembered the song the prisoners were singing at daybreak. It said that freedom is the best thing in the world. That there was sunlight on the streets and there was eternal darkness in the cells, because freedom was unknown there. Freedom. João de Adão, who was on the street, in the sunlight, talked about it too. He said that it wasn’t just for pay that they went on those strikes on the docks and would go on others. It was for freedom, because the dockworkers didn’t have much of it. Pedro Bala’s father had died for freedom. For freedom—Pedro was thinking—for his friends, he’d taken a
beating from the police. Now his body was soft and painful, his ears full of the
moda
the prisoners were singing. Outside there, the old song said, is sunlight, freedom, life. Pedro Bala sees the sun through the window. The street goes right in front of the main gate of the Reformatory. Inside here it’s like eternal darkness. Outside it’s freedom and life. And revenge—Pedro Bala thinks.

The director comes in. Beadle Ranulfo greets him and shows him the Bullet. The director smiles, rubs his hands, sits down in front of a tall cabinet. He looks at Pedro Bala for a few minutes:

“At last…I’ve been waiting a long time for this pigeon, Ranulfo.”

The beadle smiles approval of the director’s words.

“He’s the leader of those so-called Captains of the Sands. Look at him…The born criminal type. It’s true you haven’t read Lombroso…But if you’d read him, you’d understand. He has all the marks of the criminal on his face. At his age he has a scar already. Look at his eyes…He can’t be treated like an ordinary person. We’re going to give him special honors…”

Pedro Bala is looking at him with his sunken eyes. He feels a weariness, a mad urge to sleep. Beadle Ranulfo essays a question:

“Shall I put him with the others?”

“What? No. Put him in the hole to start. Let’s see if he comes out of there a little reformed…”

The beadle bows and goes out with Pedro Bala. The director then orders:

“Diet number 3.”

“Black beans and water…” Ranulfo mutters. He sneaks a look at Pedro Bala, shakes his head. “You’re going to come out a lot thinner.”

Outside there is freedom and sunlight. Jail, the prisoners in jail, the beating had taught Pedro Bala that freedom is the greatest thing in the world. Now he knows that it wasn’t just for his story to be told on the waterfront, in the Market, at the Gate of the Sea, but that his father had died for freedom. Freedom is like the sun. It’s the greatest thing in the world.

He heard the beadle Ranulfo snap the padlock outside. He’d been thrown into the hole. It was a small room underneath the stairway, where he couldn’t stand because it wasn’t high enough, nor could he lie down fully because it wasn’t long enough. He could either sit or lie with his legs up in a very uncomfortable position. That was precisely how Pedro Bala lay. His body gave a turn and his first thought was that the hole was only good for the snake-man he’d seen in the circus once. The room was shut up tight, the darkness was complete. The air came in through the thin, rare cracks in the steps of the staircase. Pedro Bala, lying as he was, couldn’t make the slightest movement. The walls stopped him on all sides. His limbs ached, he had a mad urge to stretch his legs. His face was full of bruises from the beating at the police station and this time Dora wasn’t there to bring him a cool cloth and take care of his wounded face. Freedom was Dora too. It wasn’t just sunlight, walking freely in the streets, laughing on the waterfront with the great guffaw of the Captains of the Sands. It was also feeling Dora’s blond hair next to him, listening to her tell stories about up on the hilltop, feeling her lips on his wounded lips. Sweetheart. She was without freedom too. Pedro Bala’s limbs are aching and now his head aches too. Dora is with him, without sunlight, without freedom. She was taken to an orphanage. Sweetheart. Before she appeared, he’d never thought about that word: sweetheart. He liked to pull little black girls down onto the sand. Lie chest to chest, head to head, legs to legs, sex to sex. But he’d never thought of lying on the sand beside a girl, a girl like him, and talking about foolish things and playing hide-and-seek the same as other children, without pulling her down to make love. He’d always thought that love was the pleasant moment when a black or mulatto girl moaned under his body on the waterfront sand. He learned that early, when he wasn’t thirteen years old yet. All the Captains of the Sands knew that, even the smallest ones, the ones who still weren’t strong enough to pull a halfbreed girl down. But they already knew it and thought joyfully about the day when they could. Pedro Bala’s limbs and head
hurt. He’s thirsty, he still hasn’t drunk or eaten that day. With Dora it was different. As soon as she arrived, he, just like all of them in the warehouse, thought about pulling her down, possessing her, using her, because she was pretty, for the only kind of love they knew. But since she was just a girl, they’d respected her. Then she became like a mother to all of them. And like a sister, Big João said that was for sure. But for him it was different from the first moment. She’d been a playmate, the same as for the others, a beloved sister too. But it had been a different joy from what a sister gives. Sweetheart. He’d like to, yes. Even when he tries to deny it to himself he can’t. It’s true that that’s why he doesn’t do anything, content to chat with her, listen to her voice, timidly take her hand. But he’d like to possess her too, see her moan with love. Not, though, just for a night. For every night of a whole lifetime. The way other people have a wife, a wife who’s mother, sister, and friend. She was mother, sister, and friend to the Captains of the Sands. For Pedro Bala she’s a sweetheart, one day she’ll be his wife. They can’t keep her in an orphanage like a girl who hasn’t got anybody. She has a boyfriend, a legion of brothers and children she takes care of. The weariness leaves Pedro Bala’s limbs. He needs movement, walking, running, to be able to think up a plan to free Dora. There in that darkness, he can’t. He’s of no use, thinking that maybe she’s in a hole too. But he’s too used to rats to be bothered. But Dora is probably afraid of that continuous noise. It’s maddening for anyone who isn’t the leader of the Captains of the Sands. All the more so for a girl…It’s true that Dora is the bravest of all women born in Bahia, which is the land of brave women. Braver than even Rosa Palmeirão, who took on six policemen, than Maria Cabaçu, who respected no guy, than Lampião’s companion, who can handle a rifle just like a
cangaceiro
. Braver because she’s just a girl, she’s just beginning to live. Pedro Bala smiles with pride in spite of his aches, his weariness, the thirst that’s almost squeezing him. How nice a glass of water would be! Beyond the sand by the warehouse is the sea, never-ending water. A sea that God’s-Love, the great
capoeira
fighter, cuts with his sloop when he goes fishing in the southern sea. God’s-Love is a good
fellow. If Pedro Bala hadn’t learned Angola
capoeira
from him, the prettiest fighting in the world because it’s also a dance, he wouldn’t have been able to help Big João, Cat, and Legless get away. Now, there in the hole, unable to move,
capoeira
would be of no use to him. He’d like to have a drink of water. Can Dora be thirsty right now too? She must be in a hole too, Pedro Bala imagines the Orphanage as just like the Reformatory. Thirst is worse than a rattlesnake. It’s scarier than smallpox. Because it starts tightening your throat, mixing up your thoughts. A little water. A little light too. Because if there’s a little light maybe he’ll see Dora’s smiling face. In the darkness like that he sees it full of suffering, full of pain. A dull, impotent rage grows inside him. He rises up a little, his head resting against the steps of the stairway that serves as a ceiling. He pounds on the door of the dungeon. But it seems there’s no one to hear him out there. He sees the director’s evil face. He’ll bury his knife in the director’s heart up to the hilt. Without any trembling of his hand, without any remorse, enjoying it. His knife was at the police station. But Dry Gulch would give him his, he has a pistol. Dry Gulch wants to go join the band of Lampião, who’s his godfather. Lampião kills policemen, kills bad men. Pedro Bala at this moment loves Lampião as his hero, as his avenger. He’s the armed hand of poor people in the backlands. Someday he’ll be able to join Lampião’s gang too. And, who knows, maybe they’ll be able to invade the city of Bahia, split open the head of the director of the Reformatory. What a face he’d put on seeing Pedro Bala coming into the Reformatory at the head of some
cangaceiros
…He’d let go of the bottle of liquor, the present from a friend in Santo Amaro, and Pedro Bala would open his head. No. First he’d leave him in that same hole, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Thirst…Thirst is mistreating him. It makes him see Dora’s sad and mournful face on the darkness of the wall. The certainty that she’s suffering…He closes his eyes. He tries to think about Professor, Dry Gulch, Big João, Cat, Legless, Good-Life, all of them at the warehouse except Dora. But he can’t. Even with his eyes closed he sees her face, embittered by thirst. He pounds on the door again.

He shouts, curses names. No one comes, no one sees him, no one hears him. That must be what hell is like. Lollipop is right to be afraid of hell. It’s too terrible. Suffering with thirst and darkness. The prisoner’s song said that outside there’s freedom and sunlight. And water too, nice clear rivers running over stones, cascades falling, the great mysterious sea. Professor, who knows a lot of things, because he reads stolen books at night (he’s ruining his eyes…), told him once that there’s more water in the world than land. He’d read it in a book. But not even a drop of water in his hole. There mustn’t be any in Dora’s either. Why pound on the door the way he is at that moment? No one hears him, his hands hurt already. The night before the police had beaten. His sides are black and blue, his chest hurts, his face is swollen. That’s why the director said he had the face of a criminal. He doesn’t. What he wants is freedom. One day an old man said you can’t change anyone’s destiny. João de Adão said it could be changed, he’d believed João de Adão. His father had died to change the destiny of the dockworkers. When he got out he’d be a dockworker too, fight for freedom, for sunlight, for water and food for everyone. He spits a big wad. Thirst is tightening around his throat. Lollipop wants to be a priest in order to get away from that hell. Father José Pedro knew that the Reformatory was like that, he spoke out against putting children there. But what can a poor priest without a parish do against them all? Because they all hate poor boys, Pedro Bala thinks. When he gets out he’ll ask the priestess Don’Aninha to make a strong fetish to kill the director. She has power with Ogun, and once he got Ogun away from the police. He’d done a lot for someone his age. Dora had done a lot in those few months with them too. Now they were thirsty, Pedro Bala pounds uselessly on the door. Thirst is gnawing inside him like a legion of rats. He falls kneeling onto the floor and weariness overcomes him. In spite of the thirst, he sleeps. But he has terrible dreams, rats gnawing at Dora’s beautiful face.