The Seamstress (82 page)

Emília moved toward the ship’s railing. The moon was out and the ocean shone and rippled, like a snake’s skin. She took another deep breath. On her exhale, a sob escaped and Emília clamped a hand over her mouth. Other passengers on deck stared. Emília leaned slightly over the rail, as if she was going to be sick. Perhaps she was; she had trouble telling the difference between grief and seasickness. Sometimes, she simply felt angry. Luzia had known the meeting was a trap, but she’d gone anyway. Was it bravery or pride that had driven her into that gulley? Emília recalled Degas and their last talk. “Maybe I wanted to be caught,” he’d said. “Maybe I wanted it to end.” Was it bravery or pride that had made Degas drive into the Capibaribe? Maybe it was neither, Emília thought as the ship swayed beneath her. Maybe it was an escape, a break from the trap he, and everyone around him, had confined him to. Emília was also escaping from a trap of her own making. She would move to an island. She would make another transformation. She stared over the guardrail and watched the black waves rise and fall, taking comfort in their steady rhythm.

In a few weeks, Lindalva would be waiting for her at a dock in New York. Her friend would be as buoyant and as energetic as she’d always been, but she would notice a change in Emília: a seriousness that Lindalva and the baroness would attribute to Degas’ death and her subsequent escape from Brazil. Emília and Lindalva would open another shop together. This new atelier would be sandwiched between a deli and a shoe-repair shop, so every morning when Emília woke she would smell leather mixed with the sharp, pungent odor of cheese and beef. She and Expedito would live above the atelier, in a small room with a rust-stained sink and toilet in its corner. Each time Emília visited the baroness and Lindalva’s apartment, they had copies of Brazilian newspapers and Lindalva read the articles aloud. Gomes flirted with Germany but never committed as its ally. Then German submarines shot and sank passenger ships near the ports of Recife and Salvador. Suddenly there were reports of rowdy, fair-haired Americans building an air base in Natal, and members of the U.S. Fourth Fleet crowding the bars and beaches of Recife. Brazil was at war. No one had the time or the energy to recall the cangaceiros’ deaths, and they fell away, forgotten. “Politicians change, like fashions,” the baroness liked to say until her death after the war. She was right—eventually even Gomes went out of style. In 1952, when Expedito was just entering Columbia Medical School, old Celestino was called to resign. Instead, in showman fashion, he shot himself at his desk in the Presidential Palace. “I leave life to enter history,” he scribbled on the notepad before him. After Gomes’s demise, Lindalva returned to Brazil. In her letters, she said that radio stations played popular forro songs about the Hawk and the Seamstress. Clay figurines of the couple, dressed in half-moon hats and flowered uniforms, began to appear in tourist markets. Scholars began to write articles about the Seamstress and the cangaceiro phenomenon. Emília would be remarried by then. Chico Martins had emigrated from Minas Gerais and gone to Emília’s dress shop to order a gift for the sweetheart he’d left behind. He wore his hair short and swept back, revealing a broad forehead. Chico’s eyes were brown and shining, like two stones beneath clear pools.
Kind eyes,
Emília would think the first time she looked into them. He was a shy and earnest man, nothing at all like the heroes in her old
Fon Fon
s. She liked that about him. The next time he returned to the shop, Chico Martins said that he no longer wanted the dress—he wanted a dinner date. Emília accepted. Her daughters with Chico were two fine, sweet girls. Even as young women Sofia and Francisca retained the bold, guileless joy of their girlhood. Nothing, it seemed, could dampen their spirits. Emília and Expedito were the serious ones, the bores. The girls preferred to confide in Chico about their dreams and their romantic crushes. Emília was jealous but she understood. She could not deny that her love for Expedito was fuller and darker, like the first dahlia that bloomed on a stalk.

She could not see all of these eventualities from the deck of the
Siqueira Campos
but, as Emília leaned against the boat’s railing, she sensed them. Beneath the water’s dark and glistening surface were unfathomable depths and, just as she perceived the existence of this immeasurable space, Emília perceived the breadth of her new life. She quickly moved away from the rail.

Her tiny cabin was comforting and warm. Expedito hid beneath his covers and Emília pretended to look for him. When he giggled, she flung the blanket away and held Expedito in her lap. They sat this way for a long time, listening to the wind outside.

“I had a sister with a crooked arm,” Emília whispered, not knowing if Expedito was asleep or awake. “People called her Victrola.”

She closed her eyes and recalled Expedito’s earlier question, about the blurry girl in the picture:
Where is she?
One day, Emília would have to answer this. Waves lapped against the ship’s side. She imagined that dry gulley filling with rain and the bones within it floating into the São Francisco. In the river they hit rocks and bumped against the hulls of boats and broke into pieces. By the time they reached the coast, the bones had disintegrated into small, white bits. Children playing on Boa Viagem Beach picked up the particles and put them in their sand castles. Other pieces were scattered into the breeze. Some pieces stuck to the oily bodies of sunbathers. Some got caught in shoes and were swept into cars and carried into the finest houses in Recife. Some floated in the air and flew into the beaks of birds. And some were sucked into the ocean and would be kept in its blue depths for hundreds of years, only to land on another shore.

This is a work of fiction inspired by historical events.

Writing this novel, I took creative liberties: changing the names of people and places, condensing events, simplifying politics by reducing the myriad actual political parties. All the characters in this book—including political figures—are fictional. Cangaceiros existed for centuries in northeastern Brazil. The Hawk, the Seamstress, and their group were inspired by several real cangaceiro groups throughout history. Details of the characters’ daily lives, however, are as authentic as I could make them. I tried to accurately represent 1930s fashions and etiquette, caatinga flora and fauna, and the cangaceiros’ rituals, natural cures, weapons, and clothing. Most major historical events and the details surrounding them are also real: the revolution of 1930; the drought of 1932 and the internment camps that were built as a result; women’s suffrage in Brazil; the phrenology movement and the common practice of decapitating cangaceiros in order to study their heads.

History, family stories, and personal interviews provided fertile soil for my imagination. What sprouted and grew is, I hope, a story that is true in spirit.

I would like to thank the following people, organizations, and places.

In the United States:

The Fulbright Program, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, the Sacatar Foundation, and the Jentel Artist Residency Program for their generous support. Claire Wachtel and Dorian Karchmar, for your patience and guidance. Mika and Deanna, for reading countless versions of this book and offering wise counsel. James, for always listening. Danny, Melanie, and Maria Eliza for your encouragement. My teachers at Iowa, particularly Elizabeth McCracken and Sam Chang. The dressmakers at Dame Couture in Chicago, Illinois, for answering my sewing questions. Andréa Câmara, for being my second pair of eyes. Tatiana, for being my sister. Dedé, for encouraging me to splatter the matter, and Mamãe, for teaching me to clean it up.

In Brazil:

Moises and Mônica Andrade, Dona Ester, Múcio Souto and family, Jeanine, Jaqueline, Marcelo, Lucila, Tia Taciana, Rolim and Ivanilda, all of whom were my adoptive families in Recife. The Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, especially Rosí in the photo archive, who helped with my research. Rosa and Alan, my guides at Serra da Capivara Park in Piauí. Jairo, a fine historian who helped me during my trip to Sergipe and Alagoas. The community of Itaparica, Bahia. The town of Taquaritinga do Norte and within it, my dear Várzea da Onça, both of which inspired large sections of this book. Dr. Rosa Lapenda, who treated my leg. All those I interviewed during the research phase of this book, with particular thanks to: Dr. Gilberto, who gave me my first book on cangaceiros; Bezzera, taxi driver and storyteller; Dona Teresa, who answered my endless questions and taught me how to plant; Maria, who cooked all of my favorite foods and kept me healthy; Américo, who took me riding in the caatinga; Fernando Boiadeiro, a true
cabra macho,
and his wife, Tuta; Dona Aura, midwife; Mr. and Mrs. Manuel Barboza Camêlo. Thanks also to my grandfather Edgar de Pontes, a gentleman who took a risk and stopped his car beside an orange tree to talk to the pretty girl sitting beneath it, and thus put several stories—including my own—into motion. My grandmother Emília and her sisters, my great-aunts Luzia and Maria Augusta, whose perseverance and imaginations inspire me. The cangaceiros who lived and died the only way they knew how, and their victims, who were unfortunate casualties. All of my
antepassados,
known and unknown. And all the saints who looked after me during my travels and kept me company during my solitude.

Jacket photograph © Barry Pringle/Photolibrary.com

Jacket design by Mary Schuck