The Seamstress (73 page)

“You have to choose,” Luzia had said to each of them, “to be a cangaceira or a woman. You can’t be both. And once you choose, you can’t go back.”

If a girl didn’t flinch at this, Luzia let her in.

Most were victims of the drought. They’d lost their families or had been sold to houses of disrepute in exchange for food. Some girls begged to enter the group. Others were coaxed to join by the cangaceiros. Before long, each man had a companion.

She knew the girls’ presence could unravel the group. She knew that the women brought the potential for rebellion and disaster, but Luzia let them in. Her reason was a selfish one: the girls would keep their men valiant. They would make the men want to fight, to prove themselves despite their hunger and doubts. The girls hadn’t fallen for a group of scraggly, bleary-eyed boys but for cangaceiros with long rifles and half-moon-shaped hats and gold rings on their dusty fingers. They’d married bandits, not normal men, and they would remind their husbands of this each day. Luzia counted on it.

The girls addressed Luzia as “Mãe,” never “Senhora.” The only name that made her angry was Victrola, and no one called her that anymore. She made herself recall the name when she wanted to stir up rage before a roadway raid. As Victrola she’d been considered crippled and therefore ineffective. To be deemed harmless was the worst insult. It meant you could be easily dismissed. You could be brushed away like a housefly. The girls in the group understood this feeling. Before the drought, in their former lives as wives, daughters, and sisters they were the compromisers, the stoic recipients of life’s and their husband’s or father’s or brother’s punishments. They’d been told, time and again:
Agüenta, menina!
“Take it, girl!” They’d been forced to bow their heads and respond “Yes, senhor,” to every man alive. So when they’d traded their head scarves for half-moon hats and canvas dresses, they harbored bitterness that no man could understand. But Luzia could, and she made the group’s rules. There could be no hitting. Arguments between couples were settled with words, and if they couldn’t be resolved this way Luzia intervened, ruling who was right and who was wrong. The women called their cangaceiro husbands by their nicknames and never “senhor.” That name was reserved for God.

“Thank you, Senhor!” Luzia heard a girl cry as soon as the first drop fell.

It was late but most of the cangaceiros were still awake, sharing Luzia’s anticipation. The wind had picked up. The air was cool. The first drop felt like a trick. Luzia looked up, wondering if an animal in the tree above her had relieved itself. There was another drop, then another. Luzia smelled wet dirt.

Baiano wept. Ponta Fina, Baby, Inteligente, and Maria Magra danced, hugged, whooped. The cangaceiros removed their weapons and rolled in the mud like children. Everyone’s faces were wet from rain or tears; it didn’t matter which. Luzia wanted to cry, but nothing came. It was as if the grit and sand of the drought had settled within her, heavy and numbing. God had answered. The scrub would flower and grow. People would take their faded and mutilated saints off rooftops and worship them again. And Luzia would stay where she was, as the Seamstress.

4

Food was still scarce after a few weeks of rains; crops and animals were slow to grow and reproduce. The scrub, however, quickly turned green and flowered. Towns across the caatinga followed the scrub’s example and flourished. People bustled along dirt roads. They repaired houses. Some dug into their plots of land and planted corn and melon seeds. Villages that were once abandoned now buzzed with activity, and Luzia wondered where the residents had been hiding. They emerged from nowhere, like cicadas suddenly rising from their secret recesses and taking over.

Luzia led her cangaceiros along the Old Chico and into the river town where, years ago, she and Antônio had had their first photograph taken together. The town’s church had received a new coating of whitewash, and it shone in the afternoon sun. Nearby, an entrepreneur had opened a cinema. It was an old cotton depository with high, wooden-framed ceilings. Electric wires ran from the cinema’s rooftop to a nearby pole, then to another and another.

Luzia hoped that one of the town’s merchants had ammunition. Her rolls of mil-réis were dwindling, as were Antônio’s old ammunition stocks, buried throughout the scrub. During roadway raids the cangaceiros took soldiers’ guns, but bullets for the new weapons were hard to find. “A gun without bullets is like a woman without a husband—worthless.” That was what Antônio had said once, long before the roadway had cut across the scrub and soldiers appeared with modern guns. Gomes’s monkeys had consistently better weapons. Because of this, raiding construction sites and train depots became difficult. During attacks, Luzia and her cangaceiros retreated more often than they pushed forward.

After the drought, every farmhouse seemed to be a trap. Luzia was more careful: she and her cangaceiros wouldn’t enter homes whether they belonged to a colonel or to a simple vaqueiro. They observed a town for a full day before entering it. They had elaborate methods of communication with their coiteiros, requesting food and ammunition through a convoluted series of notes hidden in beehives and beneath piles of dried dung. Luzia appointed subcaptains, and when it became too dangerous to travel in a large group, they divided into smaller sets of ten, making it harder for troops to track them.

Any colonel or rancher who’d spent time on the coast was a potential traitor. After the rains, most returned to the scrubland but didn’t ask for the Hawk’s protection. Luzia understood that they trusted Gomes more than the Hawk. Even small farmers who’d once been her most loyal coiteiros now placed pictures of Gomes on their saints’ altars. Dr. Eronildes had been right—people chose their heroes out of fear, not love.

Luzia hoped that the rains would put an end to Emília’s charitable shipments, but Mrs. Degas Coelho refuted this. In an interview with the
Diário,
she made it clear that the recent rains didn’t wipe away need.

“We will continue our shipments,” Mrs. Degas Coelho said. “The necessity is still great. As is the danger.”

Ponta Fina didn’t push to attack the charity trains, but each time their group was forced to retreat during a roadway attack, he stared accusingly at Luzia. She’d instructed her cangaceiros to consider everyone a possible enemy, except for the woman behind the charity trains. As their captain, Luzia didn’t have to give explanations, only orders. Even if she wanted to explain her reasons, she could not. She didn’t want to think about what those charity shipments contained or where the soldiers’ modern weapons came from. She could question a vaqueiro’s loyalty and even a colonel’s, but not Emília’s.

Luzia went to the river town in the hopes of making her stolen weapons useful; perhaps a few monkeys had traded their new guns and ammunition—as they were prone to do—to relieve gambling debts.

Merchants inspected the new Brownings and Winchester rifles. They whistled and stroked the guns’ barrels. They tried to cram other bullets into their chambers but none fit. Annoyed, Luzia asked for a new
Diário de Pernambuco
. The shopkeeper shook his head. The latest shipment had not come in.

“If you want news, you should watch the reels,” a shop owner said nervously. “Over at the cinema. They’re better than the paper. The picture’s old—ten years at least.
The Lawyer’s Daughter
it’s called. But the reels are new. They come in from Salvador every three months.”

Outside the old cotton depot hung a faded film poster.
The Lawyer’s Daughter,
the poster read. It was a movie from 1928, but was considered new in the scrub. Attached to the bottom of the poster was a bright green sign with the words: “This film brought to you by DIP, the Department of Information and Propaganda and President Celestino Gomes.”

Luzia bought thirty tickets.

The cinema was dim. Lanterns hung along the walls. Their smell of kerosene reminded Luzia of Dr. Eronildes’ kitchen, long ago. She took a deep breath. On a raised table in the rear of the theater was a massive projector. Its round metal reels and protruding lens made it look like some strange weapon. Rows of wooden benches were lined up before a large white sheet stretched across the depository wall. Luzia and her cangaceiros crowded the room along with other patrons, who whispered and looked back warily. Luzia took a place in the rear of the theater, her back to the wall. She didn’t want any surprises in the dark. Ponta Fina and Baby sat on a bench before her. Baiano and Maria Magra took their places beside Luzia. She heard some of the patrons whisper:

“Is that the Hawk?”

“He’s a mulatto?”

Before the crowd could get a good look at the cangaceiros, a boy appeared and snuffed out the lanterns one by one. The darkness was soothing; it allowed Luzia to disappear. She was just another theater patron, not the Seamstress. She’d never seen a moving picture and felt strangely nervous. The theater’s darkness, the crowd’s hushed whispers, the wet sounds of stolen kisses should have distracted Luzia from her misgivings, but they didn’t. Ponta Fina’s doubts about the charity shipments had exposed her own, and these suspicions nagged at her, making her shift in her seat. Emília’s last newspaper photograph was crumpled in Luzia’s jacket pocket. She pressed her hand against it.

Beside the projector, a man flicked switches and checked the reels. When the machine clicked on, it sounded like her old Singer. There was a flicker of light and words appeared across the white sheet: “The Propaganda Ministry of Brazil,” and below them a flag with the motto, “Order and Progress.” It was a government newsreel. Luzia couldn’t tell how old it was.

There was no sound, only the gentle ticking of the projector. The canvas sheet undulated with shadows and light. A scene appeared: gray ocean, blocks of square buildings, and the round hump of Sugar Loaf Mountain. Words appeared unevenly across the bottom of the screen:

Rio de Janeiro—After constitutional revision, delegates, guests, and family members join President Gomes in a visit to the newly inaugurated Christ the Redeemer statue.

 

The camera panned over a group of men and women, dwarfed before a giant stone Christ, his arms open, his head bowed. The camera’s eye narrowed. Celestino Gomes appeared, laughing. He wore his military suit and tall boots. His movements were choppy and fast. He moved about the crowd, shaking hands with men and women. Among the mass of strangers’ faces, Luzia recognized one. Emília wore a well-tailored dress. Her long hair was pinned back. Her lips were painted and dark, and they opened in a smile. A boy sat on her hip. He wore a sailor’s hat, and as the crowd swarmed around Gomes, the cap was knocked from his head. He opened his mouth in a silent cry. His eyes—Antônio’s eyes—stared accusingly into the camera. Before him, Celestino Gomes laughed. He patted the boy’s head and moved on. The camera moved with him. Emília and the child disappeared.

Luzia stood.

Gomes appeared on the screen again, life size and smiling. He was made of light and shadow, like a ghost. Luzia made her way up the center aisle. Her shadow blocked the projection and the ghost was gone. Behind her, a man booed.

“Sit!” someone hissed.

Luzia turned around. The projector blinded her. She shaded her face with her good arm. In the dark room, the projector’s light illuminated only her, revealing her lost teeth, her bent arm, her sun-worn face.

“Shut it off,” Luzia ordered.

The operator nodded but the projector kept ticking, the images swirling across Luzia’s body. The young attendant lit a lantern. There were more hisses and boos. Luzia’s eyes hurt from the projector’s light. She closed them and saw Emília’s awed smile. She saw Gomes’s hand, reaching for her child.

“Shut it off!” Luzia yelled, her voice high-pitched with rage.

In the back, Baiano stood. His face was dark and stern. “Do what she says,” he ordered.

The operator nodded, frantically pulling levers on the machine.

“If you don’t like it, leave!” a voice in the darkened section of the theater shouted.

“Dirty cangaceiros!” another said.

Protected by darkness and by the lingering presence of Gomes’s image, the patrons became braver. Luzia was disturbed by their anger.

“Communists!” a woman said.

“Ungrateful pigs,” Ponta Fina shouted and stood. Soon, the other cangaceiros got to their feet.

“Monkey lovers!” Canjica spat out.

“Viva Gomes!” a young voice shouted.

Luzia’s stomach burned as if she’d swallowed a hot cinder. She looked at the shadows of theater patrons. She’d saved people like these during the drought. She’d freed their daughters from prostitution camps. She’d hindered the roadway from tearing up their lands. This was the thanks she got? Like Emília, they’d picked Gomes over her. The theater patrons insulted her, knowing she would have to respond. She unhooked her holster and removed her parabellum pistol.

The projector kept running. Luzia aimed. She saw the eye of the lens, round and unfeeling, like that of a dead fish. She shot. In the dark pews, a woman screamed. There was the rustle of feet, the dragging of benches across the brick floor. People crowded the side and center aisles. On the front sheet there were no more images, just a crooked beam of light from the projector and Luzia’s tall shadow. She aimed at the single lit lantern. It fell. Kerosene and flame spread across the floor, lapping at the foot of a bench. There was smoke and more gunshots. Luzia ordered her group outside.

In the crush she lost her hat. Her brass spectacles, the lenses scratched and frames bent, fell from her face. Luzia prodded and jabbed with her bent arm. Her skin felt hot and she wasn’t sure if it was the fire or her anger that caused this. She recalled Dr. Eronildes’ warning about her temper: “one day…you will not be able to contain it.”

Once her group was outside, Luzia barred the depository’s doors. Inside there were knocks and screams. Ponta Fina and Canjica stole tins of kerosene and poured them along the building’s edges.