The Seamstress (44 page)

Each evening, Dr. Duarte tapped his feet to such songs while Degas shot Emília knowing looks.

“I hate those songs,” Emília finally said, unable to tolerate Degas’ smugness.

Dr. Duarte looked at her, startled. Dona Dulce nodded.

“Samba is terrible,” she said. “I’ve always thought so.”

Dr. Duarte’s brow wrinkled. He stared at the radio as if contemplating the machine for the first time. After a moment, he clicked it off.

“It’s all Blue Party propaganda,” he said gruffly. “They want us to remain stationary. But we will rise! We will rise!”

He poked his thick finger in the air excitedly. When no one responded, he clicked on the radio and listened intently to
Five Minutes of Feminism
.

Dr. Duarte, like most Green Party men, believed that suffrage was an inevitable step toward modernity. He and many women in the Ladies’ Auxiliary were convinced that voting would not interfere with a woman’s duties to her family. Brazilian feminists were not, after all, like those radical British women who martyred themselves and bombed buildings, Lindalva often said, and Emília always detected wistfulness in her voice.

In retaliation for the Blue Party’s attacks, Recife’s Green journalists printed salacious crime stories, charging that the Blue government had lost hold of the country’s moral authority. In Pernambuco, papers wrote about the Hawk’s group. The cangaceiro leader had surprised reporters and government officials by telegramming Recife. His message made the
Diário de Pernambuco
’s front page:

Correcting a mistake in your paper. STOP.

Vultures take what is already dead. STOP.

Hawks are different. STOP.

They hunt, kill, then eat. STOP.

I am alive and well. STOP.

When more troops come, make sure they pack water. STOP.

I don’t want them to die of thirst. STOP.

Signed,

Captain Antônio Teixeira

vulgo,
The Hawk

 

Since their ambush on government troops, there had been a brief lull in the cangaceiros’ activities, followed by more violence. The Hawk’s group kidnapped a colonel’s daughter and later released her for a hefty ransom. They robbed a train in the town of Aparecida, Great Western of Brazil’s westernmost station. The train’s cargo cars were filled with corn and manioc flour destined for sale on the coast. The cangaceiros shot the conductor in the thigh and distributed the food among the locals.

When the first of such articles appeared in the
Diário de Pernambuco,
Degas read it aloud during breakfast.

“Please,” Dona Dulce said, waving her pale hand in Degas’ direction, “I won’t have gore at the table.”

“I’ll skip over the gore then,” Degas said, “for your sake, and Emília’s.”

Beside her, Degas opened the
Diário
to the article’s second page. Emília smelled the newsprint’s ink. She sensed Degas’ stare, as if he was daring her to look at the paper. Emília recalled their conversation in his bedroom, when she’d smoked her first and last cigarette. Felipe and the colonel’s maids had told Degas all about her kidnapped sister with the crooked arm. He knew the Hawk had taken Luzia.

Emília kept her head bowed and her eyes upon the runny egg on her plate. She stabbed its yolk, then ran her knife in quick diagonals across it.

“Read on, son,” Dr. Duarte said.

After Degas read the first cangaceiro article, Emília was determined not to be surprised again. She woke each day at dawn and took the newspaper before anyone else did.

Emília smuggled the papers into the mirrored reception room, where maids rarely entered. There, in the room’s dim light, she read. Slowly, the newspapers’ favorite topic shifted from the Hawk to his companion. A woman, they said. A woman who dressed like a man. According to interviews with locals, the cangaceiros called her the Seamstress. At first, people doubted her existence and the reports printed no specifics about the cangaceira’s looks, which frustrated Emília. Finally, a Recife reporter caught sight of the Hawk’s group while traveling in the backlands. The cangaceiros fleeced him of his money and smashed his typewriter, but he managed to return to Recife alive and write a series of articles about his adventures.

“The Seamstress” Revealed: A Profile

by Joaquim Cardoso

Who is this Seamstress? One could say she is just a woman, but she wears men’s trousers and brass-rimmed spectacles of considerable value. One hint of womanliness can be found on her belongings: her bags and canteens are decorated in gaudy colors. In this respect, she is like many women in the backland’s small, dingy towns: trying to look presentable but failing. She is unusually tall and has a deformed arm. Despite these unique attributes, in every other sense she is like any farmer’s wife. She has big feet, dirty nails, a meaty mouth, and flaccid breasts. She is a vulgar woman, and the backlands are filled with such women.

What sets the Seamstress apart is that she is
not
a farmer’s wife. She has wed a bandit—a dark-skinned, ugly, foul-smelling man. She has a troubling and furtive gaze. She puts her own life at risk, protects the weakest of the band, and with silent repulsion she allows her husband’s sanguine atrocities. She is insensitive and yet sentimental, frigid and yet fierce—in short, she is a woman. And what man would be capable of penetrating the mysteries of such a contradictory soul?

 

Emília read the article until its words became blurs. Luzia was alive. There was no doubt now. But her relief was quickly replaced by anger. Who was this reporter, to say such things? Luzia’s gaze was not furtive. Her sister was not vulgar. Then came fear: What if Luzia had changed? Hadn’t Emília herself become someone different during her time in Recife? Sadness pressed on her, like a rock set upon her chest. It was as if something precious had been stolen from her and then returned, but in an unrecognizable form. Who was this woman? This Seamstress? Beneath everything, Emília felt something strange. Cold. The way she used to feel when she looked at a lovely piece of lace and could not own it. The way she sometimes felt about the
Fon Fon
models, with their perfect hair and smart dresses. She had always envied Luzia’s freedom, her strength. She envied it still.

Emília wanted to clip the article and place it with her Communion portrait, but she could not. She had to carefully refold the paper, as she did each day, and return it to the mailbox beside the Coelhos’ iron gate. At breakfast, Degas read the article hesitantly, as if its contents troubled him. Impatient, Dr. Duarte snatched the paper from his son’s hands and finished it himself. Then he asked a maid for a pair of scissors and clipped the article at the table, despite Dona Dulce’s objections.

The clipping sat on his desk, in his study. Emília was forced to see it each afternoon. She’d become her father-in-law’s personal secretary. After his political meetings at the British Club, Dr. Duarte had many ideas and plans. Emília’s father-in-law kept whatever Green Party strategies he knew a secret, but Dr. Duarte believed that after the election his criminology theories would be accepted and enforced. He had to be able to explain his science succinctly and effectively to Green Party leaders. Dr. Duarte could not keep all of his ideas in his head, but he could not write them down fast enough either. When he did, he couldn’t understand his own penmanship. He didn’t want to hire “some silly girl” who would gossip about his plans. The party would not approve. Dr. Duarte needed someone discreet, trustworthy, and immediately available. Emília was the obvious choice. As Dr. Duarte spoke, she wrote, though she didn’t always spell his words correctly.

There were Dr. Ernst Kretschmer’s three body types: Asthenic, or bony and narrow; Athletic, or muscular; and Pyknic, or rotund and fatty. The Asthenics were often schizophrenics, eccentrics, and criminals. The Athletics were generally normal. The Pyknics were philosophers, idlers, depressives. There was the inherent difference between a criminaloid (one who commits crimes or practices perversions because of his weak nature, which can be cured) and the true criminal, the
homo delinquins
(one who perpetuates crimes from childhood, showing no remorse and having no possibility of a cure). The true criminal was similar to primitive races and to children, both of whom were hedonistic, curious, and cruel.

“Among savage peoples,” Dr. Duarte said as he paced his office, “the female appears to be less sensitive. That is, more cruel than the male and more inclined to vindictiveness. But no one knows if that’s true in today’s criminal. There are so few female offenders.”

He looked down at his desk and brushed the newspaper clipping gently with the tips of his fingers.

“How I would like to measure her,” he sighed. His voice was soft, affectionate.

“What would you see?” Emília asked.

Dr. Duarte looked up, startled by her voice.

“What would you see…in her?” Emília repeated.

“I don’t know. But I have my theories.” Dr. Duarte pursed his lips and looked at Emília, then opened a desk drawer and removed a wooden box. Inside, set within a velvet casing, was a set of silver pincers. They were large and curved. Their ends were flat. Dr. Duarte removed them from the box. They had handles like scissors.

“Allow me to show you?” he said.

Emília put down her notepad. “Oh, no! No, Dr. Duarte. It was just a silly question.”

“Please,” he said. “It’s my pleasure to explain. And it will help with your note taking if you know what I’m referring to.” He walked around the desk, calipers in hand. “No need to be frightened, my dear!” Dr. Duarte chuckled. “Now sit up straight. I may muss your hair.”

He placed one of the caliper’s flat ends between her eyes and stretched the other to the back of her skull. The metal felt cold.

“Root of nose to the back of skull is the maximum anterior posterior diameter,” Dr. Duarte said. He took her notepad and pen. He scribbled a measurement on it and hid it from her view. Then, Dr. Duarte moved the calipers to either side of her head, pressing her temples. “The transverse diameter.”

Emília closed her eyes. His suit smelled strongly of limes. It was the citrus cologne he spritzed on before each meeting at the British Club. She heard him mark another measurement.

He reset the calipers to the top of her scalp and at the base of her neck. “Transverse or bi-auricular curve,” he said, then scribbled.

She felt his fingers—strong and stubby—hold the base of her skull straight. He was measuring with his hands now. Emília swallowed hard. She opened her eyes.

“There,” Dr. Duarte said. “Finished. Now we do a bit of math. I have to add all five elements to get your cranial capacity, then apply a formula to get what we call the cephalic index.”

Emília nodded. Dr. Duarte sat at his desk and hunched over the notepad. Emília turned in her chair. The Mermaid Girl was still placed on the back shelf, calm and sleeping.

“Ahem,” Dr. Duarte coughed. “Emília?”

She turned back.

“You, my dear, are a brachycephalic.”

“A what?”

Dr. Duarte laughed. “You have a perfectly lovely cranium, well within the normal index for women.”

Emília sighed. Dr. Duarte smiled.

“Were you worried?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and weaving his nubby fingers together. “Criminal women are egotistical and malicious. They are liars. You, Emília, are none of those things.”

Emília nodded and excused herself.

In her room, she slid the Communion portrait from its hiding place in her jewelry box. Emília wanted to pray, but for what? In thanks for her normalcy? For her lovely skull? She’d been nervous in Dr. Duarte’s office. Even a bit frightened. When he’d revealed her results, she was both relieved and disappointed—she was normal, knowable. And Luzia was not. Luzia was immeasurable. She was as murky and unpredictable as the Capibaribe that dissected the city with its brown waters. Calm one moment, turbulent and frightening the next.

But to what extent, Emília thought, did their physical attributes dictate their fates? Aunt Sofia and Padre Otto believed that the body was a shell for the soul. It was the soul—that intangible spiritual essence—that shaped a person. But even souls had their limitations; Padre Otto said that Jesus saw into people’s souls and knew every sin humans would commit before they’d even committed them. Instead of preventing those sins, he’d died for them. He’d given his life for their forgiveness, because the sins were inevitable.

Dr. Duarte attended mass and took Communion, but he believed that people’s skulls—not their souls—dictated their futures. Skulls were shaped to accommodate brains, which were shaped by heritage. The Mermaid Girl’s mother had been a drinker and a criminaloid, so her daughter, had she lived, would have inherited the same traits. Emília’s father had been a drunk, but neither she nor Luzia could stand the smell of cane liquor. Dr. Duarte did not know her family history, yet he’d proclaimed her normal—not deceptive or malicious or selfish. And he was wrong; Emília knew that she carried all of those flaws. She’d lied, telling the Coelhos that her sister was dead. Some days, after bearing one of Dona Dulce’s scathing remarks, Emília had sneaked into the kitchen, licked a spoon, and inserted it into all of her mother-in-law’s precious jars of jam, maliciously hoping to sour them. And the other night, instead of comforting her husband after his strange confession, she’d turned from him, too concerned with her own fears to care about his.

Degas had confessed that he preferred a prescribed, predetermined life; it was comforting for him to believe his actions were inevitable, his brain inflexible.

Emília couldn’t imagine entire lives being dictated by such coarse and vulnerable things as bodies or such elusive things as souls. She couldn’t convince herself that her fate, or Degas’, or Luzia’s had been doomed from the beginning. Emília was accustomed to choice. Every seamstress was. Even the dullest, roughest muslin could be dyed, cut, and shaped into a fine dress if the right choices were made. Similar choices could turn the loveliest silk into a dimpled, snagged catastrophe. But individual fabrics, like people, had unique limitations and benefits. Some were tissue thin, lovely but fragile, undone by the smallest snag. Some were so closely woven that you could not see the fibers. Others were coarse, thick, and scratchy. There was no changing the character of a cloth. It could be cut, ripped, sewn into dresses or trousers or table settings, but no matter the form it took, a cloth always remained the same. Its true nature was fixed. Any good seamstress knew this.