The Seamstress (62 page)

The Great Western train also displayed Gomes’s photograph. He stared at Emília from above the cabin door. In this portrait he was not a smiling father but a stern-faced president in a tuxedo and sash. Emília rubbed her eyes. They stung from dust. A fine, brown layer of it filmed the train’s windows. The men’s empty drinking glasses had been collected and the car was silent except for the train’s rumbling. A waiter poked his head into the cabin and counted passengers; soon he would serve lunch. Emília was hungry but didn’t look forward to their meal. Since the drought had worsened, she felt guilty each time she ate.

The countryside had always experienced dry spells, so the drought wasn’t reported in Recife newspapers until beef became scarce and expensive. Soon afterward, refugees appeared in the city. They shuffled along Recife’s roads, walking as if it pained them to lift their feet. They’d traveled hundreds of kilometers hoping to find water, food, and work in Recife. The refugees wore tattered clothes. Their bodies were so thin and their faces so dirty that it was sometimes impossible to tell men from women. Babies hung limply in their mothers’ arms. Children’s faces were as haggard and wrinkled as old men’s. Their heads looked enormous on their bony frames, and their stomachs swelled like balloons of skin, filled with air and nothing else. The refugees’ suffering inspired newspapers to label them “flagelados.”

Each time Emília went to the atelier she saw flagelados so disoriented by hunger that they walked the city’s streets without regard for trolleys or automobiles. Emília stared at the refugees, worried that she might recognize a neighbor or a friend from Taquaritinga. Once, a woman came to the Chrysler’s open window. She wore a dirty dress, the fabric nearly transparent with wear. The skin of her face was tanned and tightly stretched across her cheekbones, as if it had been baked on. She grabbed Emília’s forearm. The woman’s hand was dry, her grip strong. When Emília looked into her eyes, she saw that the woman was young, like herself. Degas hastily forced the car into gear and sped away, ignoring the stoplight. After they’d left the flagelada woman behind, Emília hid her face in her hands. Degas, always uneasy with crying, said he would return to the Coelho house so that Emília could wash her arm. She shook her head. No washing would erase the woman’s grip; Emília still felt it upon her. Without Degas, without her rash marriage, she would have been a starving woman, a flagelada.

At the next Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting, Emília announced that she would start a clothing drive. Following Emília’s example, Auxiliary women donated fabric, thread, and their seamstresses’ time. In the flagelados’ tent cities built along Recife’s outskirts, the Ladies’ Auxiliary appeared with clothing, diapers, and blankets. Not to be outdone, Old family members of the Princess Isabel Society held garden parties and luncheons in order to raise money for doctors to treat the flagelados.

When Emília distributed food and supplies to the refugees, she did not wear gloves like the other women in the Auxiliary. She accepted the flagelados’ handshakes and hugs. She held the skeletal, almost weightless babies in her bare hands. She had the urge to kiss these children, to hug them. She sought affection wherever she could find it. At the Coelho house she pressed her fingers through the bars of the corrupião’s cage in order to pet its feathers. She slipped the jaboti turtles extra lettuce each day with the hope that they’d allow her to stroke their scaly faces. At the atelier, Emília cupped the seamstresses’ hands in her own as she taught them how to refine their stitching. She patted the girls’ backs and praised them whenever they held newly purchased measuring tapes against rulers in order to check for possible errors. “Never trust a strange tape,” Emília said. And each time she left the atelier and hugged Lindalva good-bye, Emília lingered in the embrace.

Husbands were supposed to satisfy women’s cravings for affection, but Degas was not a typical husband. After the revolution, Degas stopped his weekly visits to Emília’s bedroom. Like other revolutionary fighters, he’d been congratulated and awarded a medal, but the credibility he expected to receive after fighting never came. Dr. Duarte was busy with his job as advisor to the tenente, and he allowed Degas to manage the Coelho properties. Degas collected rents and resolved maintenance issues, proving himself a capable manager. Despite this, Dr. Duarte didn’t allow his son to buy or sell properties, or to take over the moneylending and import-export businesses. Degas wedged himself into business meetings and later, political ones. Dr. Duarte couldn’t openly rebuff his only son, so he tolerated Degas’ presence. Emília did not know whether Degas craved his father’s approval or simply wanted to annoy Dr. Duarte, or both. Either way, he refused to be ignored. Degas purchased a membership to the British Club. When Dr. Duarte and his business associates strolled in Derby Square, Degas strode to catch up with them. At dinner parties, he squeezed himself into the men’s circles of conversation. He offered his opinions even though he was never asked for them, and despite the fact that no one listened.

Only Captain Carlos Chevalier paid Degas attention. Emília saw them chatting amicably at Green Party events. Dr. Duarte called the pilot a braggart. Chevalier’s offer to map the roadway had been made only to newspapers; the pilot never actually contacted Tenente Higino. Other Recife men also kept their distance from Chevalier, which brought the pilot closer to Degas.

When Emília was a child in Taquaritinga, two boys were caught in an abandoned farmhouse. Caught at
what
Emília hadn’t known, though she’d pressed her aunt for details. “The devil’s in the details!” Aunt Sofia had snapped. One of the boys was later killed by his father. The other ran off, disappearing into the caatinga. Recife was more civilized than the countryside, but Emília still feared for Degas. She understood the desperate desire to be loved, and couldn’t condemn Degas for having it. There had been nights when, alone in her massive bridal bed, Emília had caressed her arms, her legs, her stomach, and below, craving a loving touch even if it was her own. Afterward she’d felt ashamed and confused. She imagined that, in some small way, this was how Degas felt.

What had begun as a trickle became a flood. By Christmas 1932, flagelados poured into Recife, increasing the city’s population by 52 percent. Newspapers warned that flagelados were stifling Tenente Higino’s projects. He’d created a Recife Planning Commission that stressed verticalization of buildings, paved roads, and city parks. The commission had passed an anti-Mocambo law, which said that the construction of shanties within the city was prohibited. The flagelados ignored this law. In Recife’s outskirts—along its rivers and within its bogs—they constructed neighborhoods of wood and tin. Tenente Higino appealed to President Gomes. Within weeks, 48,765 flagelados left on Lloyd passenger ships to the Amazon, where they would tap rubber.

“Don’t go in the spirit of making your fortunes,” Gomes said. “But to serve your country!”

Hunger made men angry and rebellious; Gomes understood this. He did not want another rebellion like the recent one in São Paulo, which had lasted two months and had cost seventy thousand government troops. To stop the influx of refugees into capital cities, he ordered seven relief camps built throughout the countryside. The camps were strategically placed in the scrub’s more populous cities, where there were usually rivers and train routes. In Recife, train cars were filled with rolls of barbed wire, food, and medical supplies. The DIP advertised the camps as safe havens where refugees could wait out the drought.

Emília received Dr. Epifano’s letter in late January. People were already planning their costumes for Carnaval. A group of Auxiliary husbands was plotting to dress as flagelados, darkening their faces with brown shoe polish and covering themselves in rags. Their wives wanted to imitate the Seamstress. The Recife women competed to make cangaceira costumes with the most embroidery, rhinestones, and false jewelry. Emília resolved not to attend any Carnaval parties.

She’d clipped the Seamstress’s photograph. It had appeared in the newspaper, after the first surveyors were killed. Luzia stood in the center of the crowd of men, her shoulders squared, her neck long. The Hawk looked stooped and small next to her. Her thick braid was slung over her shoulder and fell nearly to her waist—she’d broken her childhood promise to Saint Expedito. Her face was dark. She wore spectacles, and behind them, Emília could not see her eyes. The glare in the glasses made the woman look otherworldly. She was regal. Powerful. Like the queen of some forgotten tribe.

After the sixth surveyor’s funeral, journalists speculated that the Seamstress, not the Hawk, had ordered the decapitations. She was merciless, the papers said. She had no shame. Emília had heard this expression many times before. Back in Taquaritinga, when she wore heeled shoes, or rouged her face, or when she and Degas took unchaperoned walks during their brief courtship, Emília heard people whisper about her:
That girl has no shame!
Shame was admirable in a woman. Even in Recife it was important for ladies to have shame, though they didn’t call it that. They called it composure.

The doctor’s letter was curious. Emília read it seven times. The stationery was bent and stained. In one section, the ink was smudged. Emília sensed desperation in the doctor’s words. Also tenderness. She remembered the man from the lobby as considerate, intelligent, and slightly tipsy. The letter revealed different aspects of his personality. He was a strange person: what man knew of renda lace? And why did he proclaim
not
to be religious in one section, and later refute that by ending the letter with a plea to Santo Expedito? He’d written about her “fine heart” and “strong will.” Emília wondered who’d told him this. Despite the letter’s peculiarities, Emília believed him. Something the doctor had said in the theater lobby had stayed with Emília all of those years: “A life in the city is fine, but it’s an effortless life.” After opening her atelier, Emília thought she would finally be content, but this hadn’t happened. Her life still felt bare, her accomplishments small. After receiving the doctor’s letter, Emília saw an opportunity to enlarge her life.

She’d become an expert at dropping ideas into Dr. Duarte’s head and making him believe they were his own. A charitable delegation would give Tenente Higino and President Gomes positive publicity and generate loyalty among “the masses.” For Dr. Duarte, the Rio Branco camp presented vast opportunities for cranial measurement. Within weeks, the government commissioned a Great Western train and filled its cargo cars with food, medicine, and hygiene kits containing soap, dental powder, and combs. Each kit also carried a photograph of President Gomes, the “Father of the Poor.”

Before their departure, Emília and Mrs. Coimbra posed for photographs. The pictures would be printed in newspapers across the Northeast, as well as those as far away as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Emília and Mrs. Coimbra were called “brave souls,” willing to face danger for the sake of charity. There had been attacks throughout the caatinga. After decapitating the second set of government surveyors, the Hawk had disappeared from the papers. There were rumors that his group had fractured because of the drought. Upon arriving in Recife, some refugees claimed that the famous cangaceiro had been stabbed and killed by one of his own men. This rumor made headlines but was quickly refuted. The Hawk’s group attacked several trains carrying supplies for Gomes’s relief camps. The cangaceiros distributed the stolen food to the hungry and, afterward, some flagelados said they’d seen the Hawk doling out farinha and meat. Others said they hadn’t seen him; there were too many cangaceiros to distinguish one man from the other. Most were certain that they’d seen the Seamstress—that tall, lone woman with a crooked arm—attacking the trains and commanding the men.

By Christmas 1932, Tenente Higino had dispatched newly trained troops to guard the relief camps. Any soldier who killed a cangaceiro received two stripes on his uniform. By then, the Hawk had multiplied into two men. There were rival cangaceiro groups claiming his leadership: one group had the Seamstress; the other, more violent group had a man who branded women’s faces as punishment for short hair or indecent dress. Emília saw one of the victims pictured in the newspaper. The girl had an oozing scar on her cheek. The brand burned onto her had the initials “L.E.” The girl testified that the man who’d held the iron to her face was short, with very large ears. Emília vaguely recalled the cangaceiro—he was the one who’d come to Aunt Sofia’s house and ordered them to carry their sewing equipment to the colonel’s. He was not the Hawk, at least not the one Emília remembered.

Stories circulated about the Seamstress. There were rumors that she’d been pregnant; several flagelados in Recife said they’d seen the Seamstress with a large belly. When Dr. Duarte heard this, he added several contos of his own money to the reward fund. The offspring of two infamous criminals would be a valuable specimen. If the rumor was true, if the Seamstress was expecting, Dr. Duarte wanted the child as much as he wanted its mother—dead or alive.

The most scandalous rumor about the Seamstress involved her army of cangaceiros; people said her group included women. People said she’d kidnapped young girls—victims of the drought—and forced them to marry her men.

Emília lifted her purse into her lap. Inside her bag, she’d stowed the Communion portrait. Worried that her seatmate, Mrs. Coimbra, would ask to see the photo, Emília didn’t remove it from its hiding place. Instead, she opened the mouth of her purse wide and stared at the two girls in the photograph.
Just in case
—this was what she’d thought when she’d packed the Communion portrait. In case the train was stopped, in case the delegation was attacked. Emília felt a strong, secret thrill each time she looked out the train’s window and believed she saw movement in the scrub’s gray tangle of trees. She wondered if the cangaceiros could stop a moving train, or if they would wait until it reached the Rio Branco station under the cover of night. The train was filled with supplies, the delegation’s trip widely advertised. Perhaps the Hawk’s group would wait and attack the relief camp, even though there were soldiers protecting it. Emília felt fear and excitement at the possibility of an attack. Secretly, she hoped for one. Though she could never admit it, her primary reason for taking this trip was not charity or adventure, but the chance of meeting the Seamstress.