Captains of the Sands (34 page)

In the warehouse, Legless laughs, telling about his adventure. But underneath he knows that the old maid had made him even worse, with her vices had increased the hate that dwelt latent in his heart. Now an unsatisfied desire fills his nights. A desire that interferes with his sleep, that brings on rage.

The ships reach Ilhéus loaded with women. Women who come from Bahia, from Aracaju, the complete womandom of Recife, the same for Rio de Janeiro. The fat plantation colonels watch the arrival of the women from the docks. Black, blond, mulatto women, they’ve come in search of them. Because the news of the rise in cacao prices has spread all over the country. The news that in a relatively small city like Ilhéus four cabarets had opened. That the colonels squandered their money in nights of gambling and champagne, five hundred thousand
reis
notes. That in the wee small hours of the morning they would go out naked into the streets of the city to form the so-called Y ox-team. The news ran through the streets of lost women. Traveling salesmen carried the news. The Brama cabaret in Aracaju was depopulated of women. They went to the El-Dorado, a cabaret in Ilhéus. The women from Recife came down on ships of the Lóide Brasileiro Line. The Pernambucans were left without women, they’d all gone to the Bataclan cabaret, nicknamed the School by students on vacation. Some had come from Rio de Janeiro, and these went to the Trianon, formerly the Vesúvio, the most luxurious of the four cabarets in the cacao city. Even Rita Tanajura, famous for her great rolling behind, left the peace of her city of Estância, where she was queen of the women of easy virtue and where she took on
everyone, and came to be the queen of the Far-West, the cabaret on the Rua do Sapo, where kisses and the pop of champagne bottles mingled with pistol shots, the noise of brawls. Because the Far-West was the cabaret of the foremen, the small landowners who were suddenly wealthy.

On Dalva’s street, in the district of lost women in Bahia, the houses were depopulated. Women had gone to the Bataclan, to the El-Dorado, mulatto women to the Far-West. A few had gone to the Trianon, where they danced with the colonels. At the Bataclan, Pernambucan and Sergipean women gave part of the money they got from the colonels to students, who gave them love in return. Travelers filled the El-Dorado. Even in the Far-West women got jewels. Sometimes they got a bullet too, like a strange red jewel on their breast. Rita Tanajura danced the Charleston on top of a table in the midst of champagne and pistol shots. All of that took place during that rise in cacao prices many years ago.

When Dalva learned that Isabel had necklaces and a diamond ring and, yet, wasn’t at the Trianon, which was the most luxurious of the cabarets, but was at the Bataclan, she couldn’t resist. She packed her bags. What couldn’t she do at the Trianon, she, who was the best of the women on her street? She decked Cat out in an elegant cashmere suit, made to order, suddenly Cat wasn’t a boy anymore, he was the youngest con man in Bahia.

On the night when, decked out in his new suit, black polished shoes, bow tie, Panama hat, he appeared at the warehouse, Big João let out an exclamation of surprise:

“Say, isn’t that Cat?”

Cat still wasn’t eighteen. He’d been making love to Dalva for four years. He turned to Big João:

“Life’s about to begin…”

He passes around cigarettes from an expensive case, smooths his slick hair. He puts his hand on Pedro Bala’s shoulder:

“Buddy, I’m going to Ilhéus. The old lady is going to try out life there. I’m going with her. I might even get rich. Where there are plantation owners, you can pull a big swindle.”

Pedro smiled. It was another one leaving. They wouldn’t be
boys all their lives…He knew quite well that they’d never seemed like children. Since very small, in the risky life on the streets, the Captains of the Sands were like men, were the equal of men. The only difference was in size. In everything else they were equal: they loved and pulled down black girls onto the sand from an early age, they stole in order to live, like the thieves of the city. When they were caught, they were beaten like men. Sometimes they made armed attacks, like the most feared bandits in Bahia. Nor did they talk like children either, they talked like men. They felt the same as men. When other children were only concerned with playing, studying books in order to learn how to read, they found themselves involved in happenings that only men knew how to resolve. They’d always been like men in their life of misery and adventure, they’d never been completely children. Because what makes a child is the environment of a home, father, mother, no responsibility. They’d never had a father or mother in the life of the street. And they’d always had to take care of themselves, had always been responsible for themselves. They’d always been the same as men. Now the oldest ones, those who’d been the leaders of the gang for years, were big boys, beginning to go off to their destinies. Professor had already gone away, he was painting pictures in Rio de Janeiro. Good-Life had broken away from the warehouse a while back, playing guitar at parties, going to
candomblés
, raising hell at fairs. He’s one more drifter in the city. His name is already well known, even in the newspapers. Like other vagabonds, he’s known to police detectives, who always keep their eyes on drifters. Lollipop is a monk in a monastery, God called him, they’ll never hear anything more from him. Now it’s Cat who’s leaving, going to squeeze money out of the colonels in Ilhéus. God’s-Love once said that Cat would get rich. Because life on the street, abandonment, had made Cat a crooked gambler, a swindler, a gigolo. It won’t be long before the others leave. Only Pedro Bala doesn’t know what to do. In a while he’ll be more than a big boy, he’ll be a man and he’ll have to turn the leadership of the Captains of the Sands over to someone else. Where will he go? He can’t be an intellectual like Professor, whose hands were
made to paint, he wasn’t born to be a drifter like Good-Life, who doesn’t feel the spectacle of men’s daily struggle, who only likes to wander around the streets, chat squatting on the docks, drink at celebrations on the hilltops. Pedro feels the spectacle of men, he doesn’t think this freedom is enough for the thirst for freedom he has inside. Nor does he feel the call of God as Lollipop felt it. For him, the preachings of Father José Pedro never said anything. He liked the priest as a good man. Only João de Adão’s words found a place in his heart. But even João de Adão knows very little. What he’s got are strong muscles and a commanding voice, and he still isn’t big enough to lead a strike. Nor does Pedro Bala want to go off like Cat to trick the colonels of Ilhéus, suck money out of them. He wants something that he still can’t figure out, and that’s why he lingers among the Captains of the Sands.

The warehouse shouts, saying goodby to Cat. He smiles, so elegant, smoothing his hair, on his finger that wine-colored ring he’d stolen once.

From the pier Pedro Bala waves goodby to Cat. Dressed in his ragged clothes, waving his cap, he feels very far away from Cat, who, alongside Dalva, looks like a full-fledged man in his well-fitting suit. Pedro feels afflicted, an urge to flee, to go anywhere, on a ship or hitching a ride on a train.

But the one who is going to hitch a ride on a train is Dry Gulch. One afternoon the police caught him when the mulatto was relieving a businessman of his wallet. Dry Gulch was sixteen at the time. He was taken to the police station, they beat him because he cursed them all, patrolmen and officers, with that immense disdain a backlands man has for the police. He didn’t utter a sound when they beat him. A week later they turned him out onto the street and he went away almost happy because now he had a mission in life: killing cops.

He spent a few days at the warehouse, his face somber, sunk in his thoughts. The backlands were calling him, the struggle of the bandits called him. One day he said to Pedro Bala:

“I’m going to spend some time with the Bandit Indians in Aracaju.”

The Bandit Indians were the Captains of the Sands of
Aracaju. They lived under bridges, stole and fought in the streets. The juvenile judge, Olímpio Mendonça was a good man, he tried to resolve conflicts as best he could, pondered the intelligence of children who were just like men, understood that it was impossible to resolve the problem. He told novelists things about the boys, deep down he loved the boys. But he felt afflicted because he couldn’t solve their problems. When somebody new appeared among the Bandit Indians, he knew that it was a Bahian who’d arrived by hitching a ride on a train. And when one disappeared, he knew that he’d gone to be with the Captains of the Sands in Bahia.

One day the train for Sergipe whistled at the Calçada station. No one came to bring Dry Gulch to the station because he was leaving to come back, he was going to spend some time with the Bandit Indians, to forget the Bahia police, who’d stamped him. Dry Gulch got into an open boxcar, hid among some bales. In a short while the train leaves the station. Then it’s the backlands route, the India Nordestina. Women and girls appear in the adobe houses. The men, half-naked, are working the land. On the animal road that runs parallel to the railroad, ox teams pass. Drovers shout, goading the animals. At the stations they sell corn sweets, manioc mush, rolled corn paste, and grated coconut-corn mix. The backlands are getting into Dry Gulch’s nose and eyes. Cheeses and raw sugar blocks pass by on trays at the small stations, the never forgotten wild countryside fills the eyes of the backland boy once more. Those many years spent in the city haven’t taken away his love for the miserable and beautiful backlands. He’d never been a city child like Pedro Bala, Good-Life, Cat. He’d always been out of place in the city, with a different way of speaking, talking about Lampião, saying “my godpa,” imitating the voices of backlands animals. Formerly, he and his mother had had a piece of land. She was a close friend of Lampião, the colonels respected her land. But when Lampião went off into the backlands of Pernambuco, the colonels took Dry Gulch’s mother’s land. She went down to the city to ask for justice. She died on the way. Dry Gulch continued the trip with his somber face. He learned many things in the city among the Captains of the
Sands. He learned that it wasn’t only in the backlands that rich men were bad to the poor. In the city, too. He learned that poor children are bad off everywhere, that the rich persecute and run things everywhere. He smiled sometimes, but never stopped hating. In the figure of José Pedro he discovered why Lampião respected priests. If he’d already thought that Lampião was a hero, his experience in the city, the hate acquired in the city, made him love the figure of his godfather above everything. Even above Pedro Bala.

Now it’s the backlands. The smell of backland flowers. Friendly fields, friendly birds, skinny dogs in the doorway of houses. Old men who look like missionaries among the Indians, black men with long rosaries around their necks. The good smell of corn and manioc cooking. Thin men who work the land in order to earn a thousand five hundred from landowners. Only the brushland belongs to everyone, because Lampião freed the brushland, drove the rich men out of the brushland, made the brushland the home of the
cangaceiro
bandits who fight against the plantation owners. Lampião, the hero, the hero of all the backlands of five States. They say he’s a criminal, a heartless bandit, murderer, rapist, thief. But for Dry Gulch, for the men, women, and children of the backlands he’s a new Zumbi of Palmares, he’s a liberator, the captain of a new army. Because freedom is like sunlight, the best thing in the world. And Lampião fights, kills, deflowers, and steals for freedom. For freedom and justice for the exploited men of the backlands of five States: Pernambuco, Paraíba, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia.

The backlands bring emotion to Dry Gulch’s eyes. The train doesn’t go fast, it goes along slowly, cutting through the backlands. Here everything is lyrical, poor, and beautiful. Only the misery of men is terrible. But these men are so strong that they’ve managed to create beauty within this misery. What won’t they do when Lampião frees all the brushland, implanting justice and freedom?

Guitarists pass, improvisors of poetry. Herdsmen pass, driving cattle, men plant manioc and corn. At the stations, colonels get off to stretch their legs. They carry large revolvers. The
blind guitarists sing, asking for alms. A black man in a short shirt and a rosary goes through the station saying strange things in an unknown tongue. He used to be a slave, now he’s a madman at the station. Everybody is afraid of him, afraid of his curses. Because he suffered a lot, the factor’s whip cut his back. The whip of the policeman, factor for the rich, had also cut Dry Gulch’s back. They’ll all be afraid of him, too, one day.

Brush of the backlands, smell of backland flowers, the slow movement of the backland train. Men in rope sandals wearing leather hats. Children who study to be
cangaceiros
in the school of misery and the exploitation of man.

The train stops in the middle of the brushland. Dry Gulch jumps out of the boxcar. The bandits are aiming their rifles, the truck that brought them is parked on the other side of the tracks, the telegraph wires have been cut. In the wild brush no one can be seen. A girl faints in one of the coaches, a traveling salesman hides his wallet with money in it. A fat colonel gets out of the coach, speaks:

“Captain Virgulino…”

The
cangaceiro
with glasses aims his rifle:

“Inside.”

Dry Gulch thinks his heart is going to burst with joy. He’s found his godfather, Virgulino Ferreira Lampião, the hero of backland children. He goes up to him, another
cangaceiro
tries to push him away, but he says:

“Godfather…”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Dry Gulch, the son of your good friend…”

Lampião recognizes him, smiles. The bandits are going into the first-class coaches, there aren’t many of the
cangaceiros
, some twelve. Dry Gulch asks:

“Godfather, let me stay with you…Give me a rifle.”

“You’re still a boy…” Lampião looks at him with his dark glasses.