The Seamstress (53 page)

Over the next few weeks Antônio asked merchants, colonels, and cotton vendors where he could find a mimo orange. He offered them jewelry, mil-réis notes, even his brass binoculars, but no one could deliver. Finally, at an outdoor fair near Triunfo, they found one. The vendor wrapped it neatly in newspaper and placed it in Antônio’s hands. The skin was withered, the fruit sour. A week later, in the middle of the night, Luzia felt a terrible knotting in her belly. It felt as if she’d eaten a bunch of green bananas. She sat up. There was a warm stickiness between her legs.

On the ground around her, several meters in each direction, she saw the dark forms of cangaceiros sleeping. She heard Inteligente’s snores. Cinders glowed in the cook fire. The sentries—Little Ear and a skinny young man called Thursday, after the day he joined the group—slumped near the weak fire. Hearing Luzia sit up, they instinctively turned toward her. Luzia closed her legs and looked away. She hated Little Ear and the boy for their attention. She suddenly disliked all of those sleeping men—even Antônio—who could do nothing to help her. She needed a woman. She needed Aunt Sofia, with her forceful voice and thick, stable body, to guide her. Luzia recalled stories of pregnant women in Taquaritinga. They’d bled before their time and lost the children in their bellies. Carefully, she stood. The cramping in her stomach released. More fluid expelled from her, wetting her trousers. She grabbed her bornal and moved quickly into the scrub. Antônio sat up but did not follow her.

Near their camp, hidden in the crevice of two large rocks, was a spring. Luzia saw the rocks’ shadows. She headed toward them. The night was chilly and dark. Above her was a sharp sliver of moon, curved like a sickle. Another wave of cramps came upon her. Luzia crouched and held her belly.

At the spring, she carefully stepped out of her trousers and knickers. Her thighs were sticky. There was a sharp, metallic smell. She flattened her knickers on the dirt and stared at them. There was a dark stain. When she touched the wet spot, she felt slick, amorphous clumps. Her hand jerked back.
It’s no different from your monthly blood,
she told herself but didn’t believe it. Staring into the dark scrub, Luzia became nervous about Antônio or another man spying her. She wrapped her trousers over her naked haunches. Other women, Luzia thought bitterly, had rooms with doors. They could shut men out. They could rest in clean beds and wash themselves in tin basins. Luzia wanted to dunk herself in the spring but could not; it was a sin to contaminate drinking water. She took an extra bandanna from her bornal and soaked it. The spring water was cold. Luzia trembled as she wiped her legs.

In the following weeks, Antônio brewed curative teas for her. Canjica gave Luzia extra helpings of beans and manioc flour. Baiano tried to cheer her with shooting contests, but she refused. One night, Antônio led her away from camp. His hand felt hot in hers. The left side of his face moved frantically.

“My Saint,” he said. “Our union must be blessed. If it’s not blessed, our lives won’t be.”

Days later, when they reached the town of Venturosa, Antônio found a church. It was a simple, whitewashed chapel with a brick floor. The pews were a series of crooked wooden benches. Antônio placed a wad of mil-réis into the priest’s hands.

“To build a proper confessional,” Antônio explained. “In exchange for a service.”

The old priest, pleased by the donation, became suddenly wary.

“We don’t need a wedding,” Antônio said. “Just your blessing. And a certificate.”

The certificate was a lovely document, covered with wax seals and calligraphic letters. Some evenings, while the men played dominoes, Antônio unrolled the certificate and asked Luzia to read it.

Antônio José Teixeira, 32 years, Catholic, captain, son of Verdejante, Pernambuco, Brasil, officially weds Luzia dos Santos, 19 years, Catholic, seamstress, daughter of Taquaritinga do Norte, Pernambuco, Brasil, on this sacred day, 28 April, the year of our Lord, 1930.

 

Antônio’s superstition seemed to have merit: after receiving the certificate and the priest’s blessing, their lives became easier. Really, it was Gomes and his revolution that brought them good fortune, though Antônio wouldn’t admit it.

Monkeys weren’t the only ones who disappeared from their posts in the caatinga after Gomes took over Brazil. Insignificant Blue Party officials who happened to be posted in the caatinga—a scattering of sheriffs, tax collectors, and a few odd judges—renounced their positions and either returned to the coast to court the Green Party, or hid in their country houses. In the scrub, order was left to the colonels and the cangaceiros. This wasn’t a novelty for most caatinga residents. To them, the revolution was simply a faraway feud. People were relieved it wasn’t happening on their properties. They were proud for not having such troubles themselves. And, as with all feuds, only women expressed concern.

“If there’s a spark near a pile of burlap bags, the devil will blow on it,” a farmer’s wife whispered to Luzia. “The fire will spread.”

Men didn’t believe the caatinga would be affected by Gomes, or anyone else who took over Brazil. The countryside had always been ignored, and it would be no different this time. Antônio spoke with many tenant farmers, and most reacted to Gomes and his revolution with curiosity and amusement.

“That Blue Party got its tail caught,” the farmers laughed. “That Gomes is president now.” They always said
That Gomes
and never
Our president,
because Gomes was both a politician and a Southerner, making him doubly alien. Even the title
President
sounded remote, like some fancy brand of hair tonic.

In public, most colonels laughed at Gomes. Privately they built alliances among themselves and sought the Hawk’s friendship and protection. Even the meanest colonels—the ones who hated cangaceiros the most—suddenly tried to reestablish ties with Antônio. The colonels disliked Gomes because of his promises of workers’ rights and secret ballots. They didn’t believe the new president would actually
give
caatinga residents these things, but simply bringing up such reforms gave Gomes power among the common people. Colonels had collaborated with previous governments, giving candidates the countryside’s votes in exchange for autonomy. Gomes didn’t want such bargains; he’d never reached out to the colonels and they’d gone against him in the elections before the revolution. Now they worried that their support of the Blue Party would come back to haunt them. Either Gomes would decide the countryside was too much trouble, as other presidents had, or he would try to change things. If the latter happened, the colonels were afraid their lands would be confiscated. They waited to see what Gomes would do. During this time, they also made plans for the worst; if faced with losing their lands and titles, the colonels would fight and they wanted the Hawk and his small army on their side. Colonels also armed their vaqueiros, tenant farmers, and goat herders.

“Every matuto has a rifle these days,” Antônio often said, shaking his head. He didn’t like most colonels and rarely agreed with them, but now he shared their concern. He didn’t want Gomes’s government or any government taking control of the countryside. He did not believe Gomes’s promises of equality—plenty of other politicians had vowed the same things and never delivered. Antônio did not see Gomes as a president but as another type of colonel, bent on acquiring land and power.

With guns readily available and no soldiers in sight, the caatinga’s population of thieves grew. A colonel asked Antônio to help him catch cattle robbers. A cotton farmer asked for the Hawk’s help in settling a feud with his neighbor, who’d decided to fence his property. A merchant promised Antônio a percentage of his profits in exchange for the right to say that his business was under the Hawk’s protection. That alone deterred thieves. The Hawk’s group was well known and, as one merchant said, their word was as strong as iron.

“Iron rusts,” Antônio corrected the man. “My word is gold.”

After the revolution, several copycat cangaceiro groups sprang up and claimed to be the Hawk’s. They kidnapped colonels’ children and intimidated towns by using Antônio’s fame. There were also crooked merchants who claimed to be under the Hawk’s protection when they weren’t. For weeks, Antônio insisted on traveling around the state to find and punish such liars. Little Ear encouraged these trips. Finally, in the mountain town of Garanhuns, Luzia found a papermaker and ordered six boxes of thick white calling cards embossed with the letter
H
on top. When they conducted business, Luzia handed merchants and ranchers the calling cards, complete with a written message in her impeccable handwriting, affirming that their protection was real. With the Hawk’s card, a man could walk safely through the most dangerous stretches of the caatinga. For many, the cards became more valuable than currency.

Whenever Antônio punished his copycats—making them kneel before him and pressing his punhal into the bases of their necks—he left a calling card beside the slumped bodies. When he sliced off the ears of thieves, or dealt with rapists in the same way a farmer treated old roosters, neutering them with two strokes of a knife, Antônio left a card as proof of his presence. Luzia knew that such punishments were no worse than those inflicted by the colonels. She knew that Antônio hadn’t taught his men cruelty, the scrub had. Their lives in the countryside had. From the time a boy could walk, he was taught to stab, to skin, to clean, and to gut. He was taught how to settle arguments. He was taught that in the caatinga, you did not take an eye for an eye. There were no such equivalents. There was only surpassing, outdoing. An eye for a life. A life for two. Two for four. The men became cangaceiros already knowing this. All Antônio had taught them was how to control their cruelty. How to make it useful. Antônio insisted that the people they targeted had been disrespectful, or had shamed a woman, or had cheated, lied, stolen, or committed any number of misdeeds that merited punishment. Luzia, like the cangaceiros, was swayed by the intoxicating certainty of Antônio’s righteousness. It was dizzying and potent, like the smell of the caatinga in bloom.

Antônio insisted that he and his men were not for hire; they simply performed services for friends. In return, their friends gave them shelter and gifts, never payments. They did not need money—their bornais were already weighed down with rolls of mil-réis. More often than not, their gifts were guns and stocks of ammunition. During and after the revolution, when Gomes kept most munitions for his troops, shipments to the countryside became precarious. Antônio stockpiled whatever he could.

For her part, Luzia stockpiled newspapers acquired in their Blue Party robberies. After the revolution, the
Diário
stopped printing its Society Section. There were only photographs of Celestino Gomes in Rio de Janeiro’s presidential palace, where he’d established his provisional government. And later, there were portraits of the “tenentes”—Green Party men appointed to temporarily govern each of the states until a new constitution was written. Captain Higino Ribeiro became the tenente of Pernambuco. For weeks, the paper’s front page was stamped with his photograph.

Only later, after Carnaval of 1931, did Luzia find pictures of her sister. The
Diário de Pernambuco
printed photographs of ribbon cuttings, official dinners, and other festivities promoted by the new government. In one such picture, Emília stood in the crowd surrounding Dr. Otto Niemeyer, a foreign economist Gomes had invited to Brazil to create an economic improvement plan. In another photo, Emília was pictured at a dinner held for several pale men in business suits—representatives from foreign oil conglomerates, electric companies, and rubber firms. These men were the future, according to Gomes. He wanted large, noticeable projects to show that his government was working. At each groundbreaking ceremony or celebratory dinner, banners with Gomes’s motto—
Urbanize, Modernize, Civilize!
—were draped behind the guests. Emília always stood in the crowd beneath these banners. Her hair was longer than Luzia remembered it, her face thinner. In one article, dated May 1931, a reporter quoted Emília. There had been a Women’s Congress in Rio de Janeiro, where Gomes’s delegates were drafting the country’s new election code. In the document’s initial version, suffrage was extended only to widows with property, and to wives with their husbands’ permission. “We’re troubled,” Mrs. Degas Coelho said. “We hope this will be revised. Mr. Gomes made a promise, and when a man makes a promise to a lady, he must keep it.”

Luzia smiled when she read this. Emília still believed in the powers of propriety and courtesy. Or she pretended to believe. When Luzia studied the photographs of her sister, Emília’s face did not match the polite hopefulness of her words. The woman in the photos rarely smiled. She jutted her chin out. She pressed her lips together in what resembled an expression of defiance.

While Mrs. Degas Coelho attended Gomes’s groundbreakings and inaugurations, Luzia and the cangaceiros attended their own dedication ceremonies. Antônio gave money to towns in order to repair their wells or renovate their chapels. He gave farmers new tools and their wives reams of cloth. He gave an elderly tailor a pouch filled with bills so that he and his sons could build their own shop.

The Hawk’s group gained a reputation for both cruelty and generosity. More men wanted to join. New recruits stared at Antônio with reverence and fear. Luzia felt sorry for them. Soon, they would feel the effects of the bitter xique-xique juice. Soon, they would see that their captain was a fickle man. Despite their success after the revolution, Antônio became moody. His body weakened, his eye clouded, and his superstitions grew. On Friday, the sacred day, he didn’t allow his men to sing or play dominoes or even speak. Luzia could not touch him on this day. Each night, Antônio’s prayers became longer and the men shifted on their knees. Once, Little Ear and four new men complained about the length of the prayers. Antônio put his subcaptain on garbage duty for one month, giving Little Ear the lowly task of burying the group’s refuse each time they left camp. After this, Antônio slept little. He lay beside Luzia and listened to the sentries’ whispered conversations. Some nights he waited until the cangaceiros were asleep, then woke Luzia and moved the location of their blankets so no one knew exactly where they slept. Antônio’s fear of poisoning also grew more acute, and he refused to eat if Luzia did not try the food first. If the new recruits questioned him or disappointed him, they were not allowed to pray for corpo fechado and seal off their bodies from harm. They were left unprotected and fearful. They were left without his approval or his love. To get it back, even Little Ear obeyed.