The Seamstress (38 page)

“Your leg is infected,” he said, hunching near the Hawk’s face. “I’m going to clean it and take out whatever is lodged inside.”

The Hawk stared around the room. When he caught sight of Luzia, he relaxed. The doctor uncorked a bottle of sugarcane liquor and propped up the Hawk’s head.

“Drink this,” he ordered.

The left side of the Hawk’s mouth fell in a frown. “You drink first,” he said, his voice raspy and weak.

The doctor moved the bottle closer to the Hawk’s mouth. “There’s no advantage in poisoning you. I could do nothing and you’d die just the same. Now drink.”

The Hawk stared at the man, then at Luzia. He gulped the cane liquor until it dribbled down the edges of his mouth. Then he coughed and lay back.

“I’m going to turn you over,” the doctor said. “We’ll have to tie down your legs and arms.”

He motioned to Luzia and the two of them rolled the Hawk onto his stomach. The elderly maid quickly knotted kitchen towels together and handed them to the doctor, who tied the Hawk’s ankles and wrists firmly to the legs of the table.

“You,” the doctor said, addressing Luzia for the first time since they’d entered the kitchen, “hold down his shoulders and his head. I can’t have him bucking.”

The maid collected ten lanterns from the rest of the house and placed them in the kitchen. They hissed and sputtered. The room glowed with light. Luzia leaned over the Hawk’s head. His face was turned sideways, scarred side down. His eyes were open. On account of her locked arm, Luzia leaned forward and placed her forearms firmly on his shoulder blades. The Hawk took shallow, ragged breaths. Each time he exhaled, Luzia smelled cane liquor.

The doctor poured iodine on his hands, then cleaned the Hawk’s leg. When he took up his instruments, Luzia looked down. She stared at the Hawk’s stained tunic, at his matted hair. Around them, the lanterns quickly heated the kitchen. Luzia felt as if she was back in the scrub at midday. Sweat stung her eyes. The smell of kerosene made her dizzy. Beneath her, the Hawk’s body stiffened. His torso reared up. His arms pulled at their cloth ties.

“Distract him!” the doctor snapped. His face was flushed, his eyes huge. His shirt stuck to his chest.

Luzia leaned in farther, pressing more weight on his back. She bowed her head, her mouth nearly touching his hair. She did not know what to say or how to speak to him. She could only think of his pain, and how, to a small degree, she understood it.

“When I was a girl,” she began, “I fell from a tree…”

The doctor resumed his probing. The Hawk stiffened again. Luzia raised her voice. She told him about the mango tree, about the silence after her fall, about the encanadeira’s butter balm and the sour smell it left on her. She told him about Emília, about the saints’ closet in Aunt Sofia’s kitchen, about the promise she’d made to Saint Expedito and the dents she’d left in the dirt floor. The Hawk’s body relaxed.

There was the sound of metal clinking against a porcelain bowl. Then there was the pop of a cork, the hiss of carbolic acid cauterizing the wound, and the smell of burnt hair. The doctor sighed. Beneath her, the Hawk shuddered and went limp.

9

Dr. Eronildes Epifano was from the capital city of Salvador, on the coast of Bahia. He’d been trained in medicine at the Federal University but he’d abandoned his practice and bought a vast plot of land along the São Francisco River.

“He was heartsick,” Eronildes’ maid whispered. She smoked a corncob pipe and shifted it from side to side between her dark gums. Dr. Eronildes had had a fiancée in Salvador, the elderly maid continued, but the girl caught dengue fever and he could not cure her. After she died he left the city, disgusted with life. He still kept a large portrait of the girl on his mantel. Luzia had seen it when they’d entered the house. The girl was long necked and exceptionally pale.

“White!” the old maid laughed. “Like a tapuru!”

Luzia shuddered. She wasn’t fond of insects, especially those translucent white worms that burrowed into guava fruits. The maid handed Luzia a perfumed cake of soap and a washcloth. There was a metal washtub in the center of Dr. Eronildes’ guest room. The maid had filled it with steaming water. The room was spare, with only a sturdy wooden bed and a dressing stand with a mirror. That night, after the Hawk’s operation, they’d moved him to a small room beside the kitchen. He slept on a vaqueiro cot, made of cowhide stretched across four wooden poles. Luzia had slept on the ground beside him. She hadn’t realized how tired she was until she lay down. Every muscle seemed to pulse beneath her skin. She’d slept past sunrise, when the maid shook her and told her she had to bathe. Dr. Eronildes insisted on it.

Luzia had no parasites. The cangaceiros had a remedy for lice: a paste made of crushed pinha seeds and pequi oil that they slathered on their heads and exposed to the sun. Still, Luzia did not object to Eronildes’ orders; it had been months since she’d had a real bath. In the scrub, she’d become accustomed to washing quickly and stealthily, rolling up her pants legs as far as they would go and splashing water on herself, then squatting, untying her trousers, and doing the same. When it came to her upper body she kept her tunic on and maneuvered beneath it, whisking water onto her underarms, her chest, her back. When water was scarce, she had not bathed at all.

Eronildes’ elderly maid did not leave the guest room. She sat on a small stool with her back to the tub and talked while Luzia bathed. The maid was eager to speak to another woman, even if it was a cangaceira in trousers. Occasionally, the old woman peeked over her shoulder. When Luzia spied her, the maid quickly turned around. Luzia wasn’t angry about the old woman’s curiosity. She, too, was curious about herself. On the wall before her, the dressing table’s mirror hung large and round. Luzia saw herself in its glass. The mirror revealed that she looked like a poorly made rag doll—her hands and feet and face one color, the rest of her another. A red rash ran along the insides of her thighs, where her trousers chafed her. Her hair was tangled and light at the tips. Her cheeks and nose were freckled in the places where the skin had burned and peeled. Her eyes looked greener now that her face had darkened. Her breasts were small, the nipples the same tan color as her hands. There were calluses on her shoulders, small ones, from the bornais and the water gourds. Her hip bones jutted from beneath her skin, reminding her of the mother goats she’d seen, their hides stretched thinly over their hips from the weight of their udders. Below her darkened neckline, her collarbones formed a deep V.

When Luzia finished, the maid handed her a flowered bundle.

“It’s a dress,” the old woman said. “It’s not right for a woman to wear trousers. It’s not the Lord’s intention.”

Luzia’s trousers were dirty and stained with blood. The dress was big around the waist and short at the hem, but it would have to do. Afterward, Luzia and the maid carried a basin of hot water to the Hawk’s bedside. The maid propped him up. He moaned but did not wake. Blood crusted his hands. A smear of dirt ran down his neck. The maid tried to remove his soiled tunic but she could not hold him up alone.

“No time for shyness, girl,” the old woman snapped, her pipe still bobbing in her mouth. “Help me.”

Luzia pulled off his tunic. His skin was hot with fever. The maid took a sharp peixeira and cut off what remained of his stained trousers. Beneath them, he wore small canvas shorts. The maid handed Luzia a bundle of rags and a cake of soap.

“You have to tend to him,” she said. “I have my own work to do.”

The old woman scooped up his soiled clothes and left. Luzia stared at the doorway, then at the steaming basin. The water would grow cold if she didn’t start soon. He would catch a chill. She took a deep breath. She would wash him as she had measured the dead in Taquaritinga: quickly and efficiently, looking at pieces and not the whole. She began with his saints’ medallions, untangling the red strings and gold chains. The Hawk stirred but did not wake. Luzia moved a wet cloth around his eyes, down the mashed bridge of his nose, around his white scar, along his tanned neck.

Luzia held tightly to the washrag. She did not let it slip from her fingers. There were parts of him that were dark: his hands, his fat fingers, his ankles and feet. The skin was thick and ridged, like the peel of an orange. There were other parts that had not been exposed to the sun and thorns of the scrub. The small of his back, the insides of his legs, the undersides of his arms were all pale and soft, like the skin of a child. His nipples were small and round, with a purplish tinge, as if two berries had been placed on his chest. There were hairs, some golden and downy, others black and thick, like thread. Around his waist, at the place where his cartridge belt usually sat, the skin was darker and calloused. The belt had rubbed the skin raw, making a ring around him. There were other scars, too. Some were shining and round, like coins. Others were star shaped and ragged edged, like macambira plants. And many were tiny and misshapen—insect bites that had been scratched too many times. Or perhaps they were the bee stings he’d received as a child.

Luzia pushed aside the washrag. She pressed her fingertip to one of those round bites.

Once, long ago, she’d flipped though Emília’s
Fon Fon
magazines. She’d read the silly prayers, the recipes and magic tricks. All were designed to win a man’s heart. The heart, they said, was the instrument of love. Luzia did not believe any of it. She’d seen plenty of hearts; she’d held them in her hands. A cow’s was as big as a newborn baby’s head. A chicken’s was tear shaped and rubbery, the size of a cajá fruit. A goat’s was in between, like a miniature mango. No matter what their size, they were all thick and muscular. They were built for work, for efficiency, not love.

When she was a girl, Aunt Sofia had taught her how to gut chickens. Her aunt had always warned Luzia about a small organ, the size of a fingernail, attached to the kidneys. It was green and slick. Aunt Sofia did not know what it was called or why it existed. If you left it in the animal or if you punctured it, the meat was ruined. It soured everything. Luzia had always wondered if such an organ existed in men and women. Now, she knew it must. That organ—frail, glistening, dangerous—was the opposite of a heart. It, Luzia believed, was the instrument of love.

“He has an amazing wound.”

Dr. Eronildes stood in the doorway. Luzia yanked her finger from the Hawk’s leg and took up the washcloth. The doctor stepped closer. He wore perfume, but not the strong scent of the cangacieros’ Fleur d’Amour. Eronildes smelled soapy and crisp, like a starched shirt.

“Do you know how he acquired it?” the doctor asked, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose.

“He was shot,” Luzia replied. “You saw the bullet.”

His interruption had flustered her and she accidentally addressed him as “you,” and not as “senhor” or even “doctor.”

“I don’t mean his leg,” Eronildes continued, unfazed. “I mean his face. The scar.” Eronildes leaned closer. The Hawk shifted in his feverish sleep. “It goes near his ear. I think they partially severed the facial nerve, but not entirely. That’s why he still has limited movement in his right brow and mouth. If they’d severed it completely, he wouldn’t speak normally.”

Luzia wrung out the washcloth. The water in the washbasin was brown. She would have to heat more—she hadn’t even washed the Hawk’s hair. Dr. Eronildes stepped back from the bed. He wore knee-high leather boots, like a colonel.

“He’s a famous man, this Hawk. I subscribe to
A Tarde
, the Bahian daily, and the
Diário de Pernambuco.
The riverboat delivers them. They had a blurb on him recently. Now my farmhands tell me there was a skirmish over in São Tomé, on Colonel Clóvis’s land. It seems that there are troops looking for him. And you, too?”

Luzia nodded. Dr. Eronildes fidgeted with a loose thread on his trouser pocket.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re in Bahia now. I don’t want Pernambucan troops snooping around here. Our governors aren’t friendly, you know. Ours is a fan of Gomes.”

He looked away from Luzia and placed a pale hand on the Hawk’s throat, then his forehead.

“He has a fever. He’s fortunate though—the bullet didn’t go clean through. Those shots make a small entrance but they tear up everything when they exit. He could have lost his leg. We’ll have to keep it clean. I’ll tell my maid, Honorata, to feed him quixabeira tea every hour, to flush out the infection.” Eronildes looked at Luzia. His large eyes settled briefly on her wet hair, her new dress. He cleared his throat. “I’ll also tell Honorata to set another place for lunch. I rarely have visitors. I’d appreciate the company.”

Before Luzia could object, the doctor strode out, his boots clicking upon the wooden floor.

10

For lunch, the old servant cooked a freshly caught surubim, its fins sharp and its body striped like a wildcat. Luzia had never eaten fresh fish, only dried cod on Easter. She wasn’t accustomed to plates, either. At Aunt Sofia’s house they’d eaten their beans and cornmeal in bowls. A plate was too flat, too slick. Everything placed on it was hard to scoop. Luzia had forgotten to bring the Hawk’s silver spoon and stared warily at the steaming white mass on her plate. Even the toasted manioc flour and brown beans looked sinister. Dr. Eronildes stared at her, waiting for his guest to take a bite before he began. Luzia took up her fork. She stabbed at the fish, but it was slimy with butter and would not stick to the prongs. Eating with a gentleman was exasperating. She’d never been at a gentleman’s table and wondered why Dr. Eronildes had invited her. It was clear she was no lady. She should be in the kitchen with the maid, or sitting beside the Hawk’s bed waiting for him to wake. Luzia heard Emília’s voice, clear and haughty, in her mind: the doctor was gracious and cultured and Luzia should appreciate his gesture. Luzia shifted her feet, as if kicking her sister’s presence away. Perhaps it was gracious, but she would rather be in the smoky kitchen than trapped behind that long, linen-covered table.