The Seamstress (43 page)

Beneath the women’s politeness was anger. Emília learned that the papers their husbands carried into Dr. Duarte’s office were deeds: titles to houses along Rosa e Silva Street, claims to beach property in Boa Viagem and empty warehouses near the port. They gave Dr. Duarte all they owned in Recife so as not to default on their loans and lose their imported machines, and in turn, their plantations.

Because of his loans, Dr. Duarte knew each Recife family’s “podres,” as he called them. Emília thought it was telling that he did not say “secrets,” but “rots,” as if the families’ troubles were like a foul scent, detected by all but unable to be rooted out. Only Dr. Duarte knew the source and the extent of the decay. He had the power to boast, to spread a family’s failings around the city, but he didn’t. Dr. Duarte had a reputation for discretion; when he took over a property, no one knew if it had been foreclosed or simply sold to him. Because of this, the Old family couples who entered the Coelho house tempered their repulsion with a cool respect. And the Old family men who belonged to the ruling Blue Party allowed Dr. Duarte to support Gomes and his Green Party without political retribution.

Several textile-mill owners also visited Dr. Duarte. These men were cheerful and sweating beneath their wool fedoras and starched three-piece suits. Their mills weren’t booming, but they were healthy. From her bedroom window, Emília could see the long columns of smoke rising from the brick stacks of the Torre Thread and Cloth Company, and from its rivals in Macaxeira and Tacaruna. On her trips to the fabric store, Emília saw lines of migrants snaking outside the factory doors. People who had lost their jobs cutting sugarcane flocked by the hundreds to Recife, hoping for a job in the mills. Dr. Duarte announced that he would use his import-export company to bring in machines for the mill owners and to send out cloth.

After the Crash, the presidential campaign continued. In late November, Blue Party leaders called for staying the course and keeping with tradition. They assured citizens that the Crisis would pass. The Green Party did not offer such reassurance; it called for modernization, for a “New Brazil” that was less dependent on farming and more on industry. Pernambuco’s governor and Recife’s mayor—both Blue Party men—cracked down on Green Party supporters. They ordered police to break up rallies, invade pro-Gomes newspapers, and keep close watch on the British Club, where Dr. Duarte’s political group met. Despite this intimidation, more and more people pasted pictures of Celestino Gomes over their doors, in store windows, and in market stalls, next to the portraits of protecting saints.

In the city of Recife, Gomes supporters were mostly New families and the middle class. Elsewhere in Brazil, Gomes’s fans were an incongruent alliance: military men who wanted one of their own in office; disillusioned Catholics who did not like the Blue government’s separation of church and state; social reformers who wanted limits on factory abuses and child labor; and a hodgepodge of suffragettes, merchants, and intellectuals. These seemingly disparate groups had one thing in common—for years they’d been ignored by the São Paulo oligarchies that controlled the Blue party. During his campaign, Gomes courted them all. And although his messages were sometimes contradictory, his charm and enthusiasm were contagious, so each group of Gomes supporters believed he was “their man,” and was willing to gamble that, if elected, Gomes would serve them first.

Because of the Blue government’s restrictions in Recife, most Gomes supporters could not broadcast their allegiances.

“Even dogs on the street support Gomes,” Lindalva often whispered over lunch. “But they can’t talk about it. No one can.”

Street dogs, with their patchy-haired bodies and protruding ribs, were the lowest caste in Recife’s streets. They were ignored, shooed away, kicked. But during the last stages of Gomes’s presidential campaign, people began to respect the dogs. One by one, they appeared with green Gomes bandannas tied around their necks or to the tips of their tails. As they sniffed for scraps around the outdoor markets, fought in alleyways, or lolled sleepy-eyed in the sun within the city’s gated parks, the dogs became living advertisements for the opposition.

Emília saw one for the first time in January 1930—three months after the stock-market crash—outside a fabric store on Imperatriz Street. She and Lindalva were making their way to the baroness’s car. A clerk followed them, carrying a bolt of dark crepe georgette wrapped tightly in parchment paper. Tucked within the package were two slide fasteners.

“It’s the newest trend, a replacement for buttons,” the salesman had said, and with a flourish he’d pulled the fastener up and down.

Emília watched in amazement as the teeth gathered in on themselves like a line of tiny, metal stitches. She was eager to return to the Coelho house and admire the slide fasteners in private. The Crisis had hindered her and Lindalva’s plans for an atelier. The baroness and her daughter, like the Coelhos, were secure financially, but many others weren’t. Women did not want new dresses, and if they did, the styles they bought were demure, dark toned, and simply cut. Fashions had taken on the world’s somber mood; Emília had to rethink her designs.

Outside the fabric shop, in her rush to Lindalva’s car, Emília didn’t see the street dog on the ground before her. She stepped on its tail. The animal yelped and then growled. The store clerk cocked his foot to kick it but stopped short—there was a green bandanna around its skinny neck. The dog skulked away. Lindalva, Emília, and the store clerk hurried to the car.

After that, Emília began to see the Gomes dogs everywhere. They lay on the dirt path just beyond the Coelhos’ gate, contorting themselves in strange positions in order to gnaw away at the green cloths tied to their legs and tails. At the house’s back gate, Dr. Duarte placed bowls of milk and scraps of food for the mutts. On Rua Nova, where each Saturday she and Degas strolled arm in arm beside other New family couples, the mutts swerved between their feet. They raced across city streets, expertly dodging the trolley cars departing from Alfonso Pena Park. They begged for food before the golden doors of the Leite Restaurant, where Emília and Lindalva often lunched with the Baroness Margarida. And on the rare occasions when Degas took her to the cinema in São José, Emília saw the dogs crossing the covered metal bridge leading to the Bairro Recife. It was a neighborhood of casinos and flophouses, a neighborhood that respectable women never entered. Even men were known to cross themselves before crossing that bridge. But the street dogs didn’t care about propriety. They strutted back and forth across the iron bridge, the green cloths tied to their tails flapping like flags.

Unlike the street dogs, few people acknowledged their support of Gomes. But many listened to him. Each evening when they finished dinner, Emília and the Coelhos sat in the parlor and listened to Celestino Gomes’s speeches. In the doorway, the maids jumbled together in pairs, taking turns in their work so that they, too, could listen.

“This republic is unequal!” Gomes yelled, his voice crackling from the radio speaker. “São Paulo coffee barons run the country, leaving crumbs for the rest of the states! Corrupt colonels run the interior. Where is government? The chief executive needs to fight for Brazil! Citizens—my friends, my compatriots—this will be a long journey to victory. And during this journey, I will need you. I will need you as much as you will need me.”

Emília wondered how such a powerful voice could come from such a small man. During his first speeches, Emília was riveted by Gomes’s proclamations. He wanted to fight crime, embrace science, promote morality, build consumers’ cooperatives, create pension plans, and enforce protections for working women and children. All of these ideas sounded exciting and just to Emília, but after a few weeks of listening to his radio speeches, Emília began to take her embroidery hoop into the parlor and work while Gomes spoke. His voice was always excited but his words never changed. There were no details, no new specifics. There were only exclamations and yelling and his final, trademark phrase, “Fight for a New Brazil!”

After each radio address, Dr. Duarte stood and applauded.

“That’s how a man makes a speech, Degas,” he said, kicking his son’s shoe. “Listen and take note.”

Degas pursed his mouth as if he’d eaten something sour. That night, he didn’t listen to his English records. He went directly to Emília’s room and settled into bed beside her. She believed Degas had come for his weekly ritual of trying to conceive a child, and Emília lay stiffly, waiting for him to touch her hand, as if asking for permission, and then to reluctantly climb on top of her. He did neither of those things. Degas kept to his side, and spoke.

“I’d rather be in the dentist’s chair than listen to any more of that man’s blustering,” Degas said, yanking up the bedsheet.

“You father means well—” Emília began.

“Not
him,
” Degas hissed. “Thankfully I can get away from
him
. But every time I leave the house I hear Gomes. The fellows at the legal college turn on the common room’s radio to listen to his blasted speeches! And if it isn’t the radio, it’s people whispering about the speeches, or the papers printing his quotes.”

Degas lay back, resting his head on their embroidered pillows. Emília stared at the shadow of her husband’s rounded stomach, then at his lovely profile: the curved nose, the thick eyelashes. She had admired him long ago on Taquaritinga’s mountainside, and she felt astonishment and dread at the thought that she knew as little about his opinions now as she had then.

“You mean…,” Emília began, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You’re a Blue man?”

Degas puffed air from his nose. “I can’t be. Not in this house. You’re fortunate you don’t have to vote.”

“I want to vote,” Emília replied. “Just because you don’t appreciate your good fortune doesn’t mean others wouldn’t.”

“I forgot. You’re a suffragette,” Degas chuckled. “Please, Emília, you’re much too pretty to be one of those ‘Miss Almas.’ I’d hate to see you wearing glasses and sensible shoes, preaching for liberty.”

Degas’ voice had the easy, teasing tone he used to rile Emília. Despite herself, she fell into his trap.

“There are no ‘Miss Almas’!” Emília said. “None of the women in the Auxiliary looks like the ones in those nasty cartoons. And every woman in the Ladies’ Auxiliary is for suffrage. Every one.”

“I know, I know.” Degas sighed. “But do you really think Gomes will give you the vote?”

“He says he will.”

“That’s awfully naive logic.”

“You used to praise me for that.”

Degas shifted beneath the bedsheet. His feet brushed Emília’s leg. They were cold and rough.

“I know a fraud when I hear one,” Degas said. “He’s making promises to everyone. At some point he’ll have to break them. Compromise is inevitable. We’re all obliged to do it. Don’t think Gomes is any different. He’ll disappoint you.”

“Why me?” Emília asked. “Why not the military men? Why not the scientists, or your father?”

Degas turned toward her. Emília felt his breath, hot and smelling of baking soda, on her cheek.

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s innocence in you, or stubbornness,” he said. “Sometimes I think you see everything around you quite clearly, you’re just too hardheaded to admit it.”

“Admit what?” Emília asked. She felt pressure in her temples, the beginnings of a headache. Her body was tired but her mind was not, and she sensed the same agitated fatigue she’d experienced as a child, before the onset of a fever.

Degas sighed. Emília turned her head but his voice filled her ear. It was a hesitant whisper, reminding Emília of Luzia and their secrets before bed.

“I envy those criminals my father studies,” he said.

“Why?” Emília whispered.

“There’s no cure for them. They are what they are.”

“But they’re doomed,” she said, recalling Dr. Duarte’s breakfast lectures. “There’s no betterment for them. No escape. That’s awful, Degas.”

“Not as awful as having a choice. Thinking you could reverse things, make yourself better, if only you weren’t so weak. So corruptible.”

Degas coughed. His breath was phlegmy and clipped, as if it had snagged in his throat. Emília shut her eyes. She would have preferred his awkward fumbling on top of her to these strange confidences. Earlier in their marriage she might have comforted him. During her first days in Recife, Emília had believed that married couples confided in each other before bed, sharing stories and exposing their deepest feelings. Impelled by this belief, she might have wheedled Degas into revealing more, explaining himself. Now she didn’t want to hear him. Emília felt the same chilling sensation she’d experienced during their first Carnaval, watching Degas with Felipe. The men studied together, went on drives, attended school, though Felipe never appeared at the Coelho house. Gentlemen were different from farmers, Emília told herself. City men had close friendships; these were signs of refinement, of a worldliness she couldn’t yet comprehend. But she sensed something different with Degas, some depth of feeling that frightened him, and her.

“Good night,” Emília said, turning her back to him. Degas did not answer.

3

As elections approached, the Blue Party tried to discredit Gomes by condemning the suffragettes. Blue Party newspaper reporters printed articles about the “dangerous emancipation” being offered to young women. They printed cartoons of frazzled husbands left with a brood of crying children while their wives—always elephantine and never stylish, Emília noticed—left the house with briefcases and trolley fare in hand. A short-lived women’s radio program called
Five Minutes of Feminism
was bookended by cheery samba songs proclaiming:

She’ll take all she wants.

She’ll do anything she can,

But, dear fellows, she’ll never be a man!