The Head of the Saint

by Socorro Acioli

  These rumors made the number of pilgrims and gawkers grow at an alarming rate during the day. They were outside, praying—which might have consoled Samuel. But it did not. Loneliness would be his forever. He was apart. There wasn’t a single person to whom he could point and say, “They know all about my life, they’re with me, they accept me, they are my family.”

  Mariinha had taken so much away with her. Her absence was too painful, but it was only now, nearly a year later, sitting on that torn sofa in the cemetery house, that Samuel understood that the wound in his heart was incurable.

  He expected nothing from his grandmother Niceia. She was a crazy old woman, blind to the world, locked in the most sumptuous ruin in Candeia. And it seemed Samuel meant nothing to her, nothing at all. As for his father, Samuel was convinced now that he must be dead.

  It was the most difficult day since Samuel had run down Horto Hill and away from Juazeiro. Awareness of his solitude hurt more than any other pain.

  —

  Samuel managed to sleep in the afternoon, and when he awoke, Chico the Gravedigger was sitting beside him. Francisco and Gerusa had gone out to give news of Samuel’s progress to the people who were gathered at the cemetery gate, and Diana was asleep in her room.

  Chico’s expression was very serious.

  “I want to talk to you, now that we have a little time.”

  “What is it?”

  “Leave this place, Samuel. Go away. Osório—if it is him—isn’t messing around. Go somewhere very far away, somewhere he’ll never find you.”

  “You really think he’s as dangerous as that?”

  “I’m sure of it. You’ve changed everything around here.”

  Samuel felt his eyes sting, and Chico the Gravedigger put his hand on his shoulder.

  “I think he’s the only person who hasn’t been pleased that you came. You’ve brought us all a lot of happiness.”

  “Him and the witch Helenice.”

  They both laughed.

  “I’ve never understood exactly how it was you came to be in Candeia. When I first heard about you, it was because of the doctor’s wedding, and Francisco never said a thing to me about you. What brought you here?”

  The subject of this conversation, Chico’s manner, his tender voice…Samuel wanted to cry.

  “I was living with my mother in Juazeiro, just the two of us. When she died, she asked me to come to Candeia to find my father and my grandmother so I wouldn’t be alone in the world. But then I got here, I found the head and all the craziness started.”

  The piece of paper his mother had given him never left Samuel’s pocket, but now he kept it in a leather wallet. He showed it to Chico: “When my mother died, this was all I had, this address in Candeia.”

  Chico asked the names of his father and grandmother, as he couldn’t read.

  Samuel said hesitantly, “Niceia Rocha Vale, Manoel Vale. With each syllable that Samuel spoke, Chico the Gravedigger’s calm eyes were transformed and the most horrified, astonished expression Samuel had ever seen swept over his face. He got up without a word and went to get a drink of water. He pushed his hands through his hair.

  At that moment Francisco and Gerusa arrived. Scared to see Chico looking so pale, they asked what had happened. Samuel answered that he didn’t know, they were just talking when his friend’s father had reacted like that.

  “What’s up, Dad?”

  Chico the Gravedigger looked at Gerusa with tragedy in his eyes. “Samuel is Manoel Vale’s son.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Francisco.

  It was the woman who had the courage to answer:

  “Meticuloso.”

  Before they had been married even six months, Fernando had announced to Helenice that he needed to go on a business trip and that it might take some time.

  “But why on earth to Africa? It’s an outrage!” She was crying as though she was about to suffocate.

  “I’ll come back, my dear, and if everything works out I’ll be a rich man when I do!”

  “Rich? How come?” The crying slowed.

  “Because I’m going to buy fabric in Cape Verde. You can buy cloth from Senegal there, and Mozambique. Then I’ll come back to Rio. There’s a samba group who’s promised to buy whatever I bring back.”

  “A samba group? So now you’re going to Rio for Carnival, too?” The crying was back.

  “Of course I’m not, woman. I’ll be going long before that. They need the fabric to make their outfits. Trust me, I’ll be coming back a rich man.”

  She had no choice but to trust, and to believe, and to hold back her tears when the time came to say goodbye. She knew what the people of the town were always saying about men whose work meant they spent a lot of time on the road. She assumed a serious expression, very serious, which she decided to keep until Fernando’s return, to avoid any stupid conversation coming her way. She learned that being agreeable was just an open door to so many people. She was unpleasant, and she never invited anyone to be a part of her life. Within her house she wept rivers of longing for her husband. Before going to sleep, there were only tears, only lamentation. She worried about his not eating properly, about his health, about his clothes. She missed his dark skin, his accent, his hair, his eyes. Meanwhile he, on the other side of the ocean, wasn’t missing a thing.

  Fernando married Helenice because she was beautiful, because Candeia smelled of prosperity, because deep down he’d always wanted a home to return to. And above all, because he dreamed of having children, and Helenice’s wide hips promised a good brood. But he found it hard to bear the fact that there was no room for anything in his wife’s head beyond that little world of Candeia—who married, who died, who sinned…other people’s lives—she lived without dreams, without trying new paths, as though that town were the whole world, when it wasn’t. The world was huge, full of things, all of them far away from him. And in Candeia the worst thing of all: there was no wind. He needed to air his body, his ideas; he needed the wind on his face. And so he didn’t think twice: Fernando went off to feel the wind in Africa.

  He hadn’t been lying: he really had gone to buy fabric for the Rio Carnival. As soon as he arrived in Cape Verde, the first thing he did was take off his wedding ring and hide it well. To begin with, his plan had been to stay about a month on the island of Santiago, awaiting the arrival of a shipment of fabrics from Senegal, and then return home. In his first few days there he befriended the owner of a little store in Sucupira, the enormous open-air market where all kinds of things are for sale.

  Fernando spent his days at Sucupira looking at the fabrics of his competitors, trading the Indian silks he had brought with him, learning about the patterns on the African cloths and staring at the fleshy bodies of the Cape Verdean women, especially the body of Maria, the stunning owner of a stall selling necklaces and earrings made from volcanic stones.

  Maria had caught his attention, standing out from the others, ever since his first day there. First because of her merchandise, those shining black beads that she used in her necklaces and earrings, and then because she always sang as she arranged her workplace. She’d arrive early, at five in the morning, remove the canvas sheet that protected her possessions from the inclement nighttime weather, and position her chair and the wooden trestle table. On a horizontal board lined with red cloth, she spread out her necklaces, earrings, bracelets. She would hang a few necklaces on the two wooden dummies, to catch the interest of passersby. She invented new designs for bracelets and earrings in that particular stone which shone more brightly than black pearls.

  At five in the afternoon, as she took everything down again to leave, she would resume her singing and cast a spell on Fernando’s heart with her low, strong, sweet voice, articulating each word of Cape Verdean Creole with such pleasure.

  He had been watching her for days, walking past, smiling at her. He tried to remember Helenice, but by this point she was no more than a wisp of smoke. One day he was unable to resist, and he went over to speak
to the girl.

  “What’s that stone called?”

  “It’s sibitchi. It wards off the evil eye and attracts good luck,” she replied in Portuguese, with the set phrase she always used with customers.

  “Can men use it?”

  “They can.” She gave an ivory smile.

  “Then I’d like a necklace, a really big one. I need a lot of good luck.”

  Maria had a long necklace there with her. As usual, she offered to fasten it at the back of his neck. When her hands touched the Portuguese man’s skin, he felt capable of doing anything, anything in this life, to make that woman his, to make her sing just for him.

  She had felt the same as soon as she saw him.

  It wasn’t long before Fernando had rented a house close to Sucupira and moved in with Maria. They expanded the store a little and sold sibitchi and fabrics—the ones from Senegal and the Indian silks he had left.

  Maria liked to talk. She’d say, “Story, story…,” and would start to recount the legends she had known since childhood, of animals and people.

  Fernando liked her talking as much as her singing. Sometimes he would say, “Story, story…,” and he would tell Maria the love stories he had read in books.

  Fernando had never been an early riser, but he got into the habit of waking at four-thirty in the morning to be with Maria and to listen to her as she sang, not saying a word, moved by the sound. Sometimes he even cried.

  “I don’t know why you cry.”

  “They’re painful, those songs.”

  “It’s called morna, this kind of singing. In this country people are born hearing morna songs, and we die with them, too.”

  “I want to die hearing you sing.”

  One day Maria woke earlier than usual, but she was unable to sing. She felt like throwing up. She asked Fernando to set up the things on the stall and take her to a prayer woman in Sucupira to get some medicine. The old lady was exact in her diagnosis: “You’re pregnant.”

  And she was indeed. She got over the nausea and went back to work, singing as usual, stroking her belly. She gave birth to a beautiful little girl, whom she called Rosário. She looked just like her father. The same eyes, the same smile.

  In that life of working at Sucupira, looking after the little girl, listening to mornas, time passed without Fernando realizing it. Things were good for him in Cape Verde. He had already started wearing the local clothes, he never took off the sibitchi necklace, he’d learned a little Creole and he was happy, soothed by the mornas that Maria sang. From time to time, she would sing coladeiras, happy songs, songs to dance to. He loved every note and lived for that voice.

  Occasionally he would write a letter to Helenice, making up excuses for his delay in returning. He’d already been away from Candeia for nearly two years now and was considering never going back. He only sent the letters because Maria asked him to.

  “You and she were married by a priest, it’s a serious matter. Send her a letter from time to time.”

  “But I never want to go back there. There’s no wind in Candeia. What I want is you, and my Rosário, and my Cape Verde.”

  “You’ll have to go back one day.”

  “I didn’t leave anything behind in that place, my love—if it were up to me, I’d never go back!”

  “Never is like the moon—it belongs to nobody. Don’t close the door to Helenice in your life.”

  Maria’s words gained greater significance when the two of them decided to travel to São Tomé.

  They went by boat. Fernando loved the sea, and it was Rosário’s first trip on a boat. It was a lovely journey, all of it, especially when Maria sang mornas for the whole of the boat to hear.

  When they were already very close to São Tomé, the craft struck a rock, the hull was punctured and it capsized. Rosário had been sleeping beside her father, who saved her as he cried out Maria’s name. It was nighttime, impossible to see anything. The next day they found Maria’s body close to the beach. She was the only person to die in the accident.

  He had nobody to turn to in Cape Verde, nor in São Tomé. Maria had no relatives; she had been alone in the world. Fernando didn’t even contemplate returning to Portugal with the child; his family there would never accept her.

  All that was left for him was to rely on Helenice’s support and understanding in taking in the orphaned girl, since his wife had so wanted to be a mother. Fortunately Fernando managed to find his wedding ring. He remembered Maria’s words, which had been a wise premonition. In Brazil he had a home, and a devoted wife who might forgive him.

  He summoned up all his courage and went back to his wife. Old, downcast, defeated: his only joy was Rosário, the keeper of all Maria’s beauties.

  —

  Fernando was all set to tell the truth, but he wasn’t expecting to arrive home to find Helenice with a daughter in her arms, the fruit he had left in her belly before leaving. The girl didn’t even have a name yet. She hadn’t been baptized, nor had her birth been registered, while they waited for her father.

  Fernando introduced Rosário as a lost child he had found in Cape Verde and decided to adopt. Helenice believed him, praised her husband’s kindness and agreed to take the little girl in as her own daughter.

  The two children became good friends. They were close in age and liked to play together, in spite of some differences in language and custom. Fernando immediately arranged the registration of his legitimate daughter’s birth and her baptism. They called her Madeinusa.

  After Fernando had been back home for a week, life in Helenice’s house seemed to have returned to normal. Fernando swore an oath that he would never travel again unless his family went with him. He asked forgiveness for the lack of news, for the lack of money, and he was relieved to learn that his father-in-law had died and left his only daughter his restaurant—it would make her a good income.

  The two children became ever closer. They played together and slept together, and Fernando took care of them both all day long. Madeinusa thought it was funny when Rosário spoke to her father in Creole. She didn’t understand a thing, but she saw the language as a secret spell, a treasure her sister had brought from the sea. Rosário liked to sing at five in the morning and five in the afternoon, just like her mother. With her father’s help she was able to recall the words to the songs; he had memorized Maria’s five favorite songs and took care to ensure that his daughter learned them, too.

  Rosário frequently asked after her mother, but fortunately she did so in Creole and nobody understood. She called him “Father,” but this didn’t sound strange, since the idea had indeed been that the couple should adopt her as their daughter. Helenice spent her whole day at work and barely saw the two girls. During the night she devoted herself completely to being Fernando’s wife, in all the ways she could, in order to get over those years she’d spent missing him.

  Things started to change one Saturday when they decided to go into Canindé for an ice cream. They were commemorating the one-month anniversary of Fernando’s return. Candeia’s decline had already begun, and going out of town was the only leisure option its inhabitants had. The place was gradually becoming a ghost town.

  The priest of the local parish, who hadn’t seen Helenice in quite some time, praised the beauty of the two little girls and their resemblance: “The same eyes, the same smile, that same expression of their father’s,” he said. “Only the color of their skin is different, otherwise they’re the spitting image. May God bless these two sisters, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  As soon as she began to notice the similarities between Rosário and Madeinusa, Helenice tried to bat the thought away. It wasn’t possible. A mother wouldn’t surrender her child like that, unless it had been a kidnapping. However hard she had tried to ignore her suspicions, the atmosphere between her and Fernando became so fraught with tension that she found herself unable to sleep one more night without knowing the truth.

  When the two girls had fall
en asleep, Helenice asked Fernando whether Rosário was his daughter, and he didn’t dare deny it. He told her the whole story, the tragic death of the child’s mother, Maria’s pleas that he never stop writing to Helenice. The more Fernando tried to explain, the angrier his wife became. It wasn’t what he said, but the way he talked about that other woman, the misty look his eyes took on when he said “Maria.” She’d never seen her husband talk like this about her, or about anything else in life, with that pained passion in his chest.

  Even she didn’t know the power of the sleeping hatred within her, of her shame, of the bitterness she felt when faced with that unforgiveable betrayal. Not because of the nights of passion they had shared, not because he had slept with that African woman, but because he still loved her even now, every second of the day.

  She asked her husband if they could continue with the conversation the following day, as she couldn’t bear to talk any more just then. Fernando was surprised at her reaction; Helenice always cried, she fell apart, but now she looked hard and frightening.

  But there was more than that: she had a gun. She had bought it to defend herself against any drunks and thieves who might show up at the restaurant, and nobody knew of its existence. A lot of people had left Candeia by this time, and as her house was close to the road, she was sure nobody would hear a thing.

  And indeed, nobody outside did hear the bang of the well-aimed shot to her husband’s chest that killed him as he slept.

  Madeinusa was a deep sleeper, but Rosário awoke in alarm. Helenice picked the little girl up and carried her out of the house, taking care that nobody should see her. She hated the child. She wanted to kill her, too. She took the girl out onto the road and told her to walk, because her mother was waiting for her just up there, over in that light—she pointed way off into the distance. Rosário was too young to know that dying meant never again, that her mother wasn’t in that light, that Helenice meant to kill her—and only didn’t because she didn’t have the courage. Rosário smiled, sleepy-eyed, showing an expression of surprise and innocent joy in anticipation of the reunion.