by Jorge Amado
But the one who was saying yes was the master of the house, the head of the clan, Ibrahim Jafet, brimming with good health and satisfaction, euphoric. He was giving his agreement as father to the request of Raduan Murad, who had just made it with an inspired toast. He was giving the hand of his daughter Adma to Adib Barud, who from that day forward would also be his son.
Jamil appeared in the room just at the moment of toasting by the members of the Jafet and Barud families, gathered in celebration, one that was all the more sensational for being unexpected. He was introduced to Jamile, his other almost sister-in-law, her husband, Ranulfo Pereira, and Adib’s brothers and sisters-in-law. He knew Adib from the bar, but he never would have imagined him involved with Adma. The damnedest things!
He was able to contemplate with fine impartiality the ominous maiden, and he couldn’t know how he had come to accept—even desire!—marriage with her. Seeing her so submissive on the arm of her fiancé, dripping with giggles and coquetry, was repugnant to him. He concluded that not even in exchange for the kingdom of the Thousand and One Nights would a normal citizen subject himself to such an infamous pact. That young fellow Adib Barud, besides being a base, greedy boy, was a degenerate. And yet, less than an hour before, Jamil was climbing the stairs to the living quarters with the aim of putting forth, in plain language, a request identical to the one Raduan Murad had transmitted with poetical emotion in the name of the ex-waiter. Greed just as base. A degenerate? Oh, no! Possessed by Shaitan, bewitched, blind, and deaf.
He raised his glass to drink a toast along with Sante to the health of the betrothed. The bar owner, accompanied by his wife, Lina, the one with the attractive hips, was lamenting the loss of his valuable employee, a hard worker, discreet in his thievery. He foresaw a brilliant future for him in the new business. The drinks were good and they were free, the company pleasant. Jamil Bichara took part in the general merriment. An unexpected guest, he was one of the most expansive.
Talking foolishness with Samira by a window ledge, this time it fell to Jamil to break out suddenly in uncontrollable laughter.
“What are you laughing at so heartily?” the flirtatious girl wanted to know.
“I’m laughing at Shaitan,” Jamil Bichara answered, and it was the truth.
19
Jamil Bichara got out of the mess unharmed, with no great damage. The profits he had imagined back in the wilds of Itaguassu, the fortune, the sultanate, were nothing but daydreams. They would have been hard to bring off. They might easily have vanished into nothing, leaving him with obligations and the marriage on his back. The marriage: Hoo-whee! Holy shit!
He conserved his friendship with Ibrahim, a jovial companion for nights of carousing, and he continued his inconsequential flirtations with Samira. He would go visit her on the Largo da Estação every time he came to Itabuna. They would chat about foolish things, exchange smiles, hints, vague promises, tender squeezing of hands. There would be casual touching here and there, peeking into the neck of her dress, but it never went beyond that. He’d have his rewards in his dreams in Itaguassu, where Samira would relax with him on nights of debauchery—full breasts, broad belly, bushy little precipice. Allah had saved him from Adma and a horrible fate as a pack mule, killing himself in work to sustain the lazybones Jafet family. As a small compensation he was left with a partner for some flirtation. He couldn’t complain.
When the entanglement finally unwound, there was one enigma left to be solved, a mystery to decipher, one that brought on intricate controversies. Young Adib Barud, in charge of the store, still had not transformed it into the grandiose bazaar he had imagined and promised—he and Jamil before him—but he had straightened out the finances, reestablished its credit, and brought back its clientele. If the results had not been extraordinary, neither had they been bad. As far as was known, Adib never complained, always smiling and affable behind the counter, chatty and gossipy as only he could be. He’d learned his skills in the bar. The lady customers adored him.
In spite of being young, he took complete charge, a competent and hardworking boss, accepted and esteemed by his relatives. In addition to this, he was happy in his marriage. He showed himself to be a serene and faithful husband, charmed by the bed of his better half. He didn’t get to be a singular example of monogamy, as Ibrahim had been in Sálua’s time. Every so often he would accompany his father-in-law to have some fun at night with no set time for their return. On the occasion of her husband’s first spree, Adma tried to go back to her old ways. She waited up, awake, gathering up wrath and venom. She turned into a viper and received him with sticks and stones, shrieks and sobs, a fine rowdy celebration. To begin the conversation Adib unloaded a potent pair of slaps on her, the prelude to a memorable thrashing, with which he made an example of her. He immediately mounted her with drive and devotion, leaving her finally calm and satisfied, purring. Whenever necessary and sometimes with no apparent need, he would repeat the treatment. That was how he tamed her, with beating and petting, in spite of being criticized by the male community and by a few ladies who held to the prevailing law—a citizen lies with his wife respectfully and for the purpose of making children in her, a sacred duty. For indecent things, dirty work, there are whores. Ibrahim’s faithfulness was explained by his being the husband of Sálua, the most beautiful of beauties, a body well endowed with curves, ample flesh, the face of a proper woman, the eyes of a sultana. But how could one explain Adib’s moderation? A hotheaded, husky fellow, formerly so welcomed by whores and concubines, he had become scarce and remote. What arts or artifices to keep him home at night were being used by Adma, an iron maiden, a dried codfish, an ironing board?
When Adib ran his hand over her body on that unforgettable day of the donkey stampede, he discovered that was not the way she was. She had firm, sexy breasts. But was a good pair of tits enough to make up for all the rest? Or could Adma, perhaps, as some suggested and suspected in the heat of wild arguments, be one of those favored by God, who had awarded her the grace of a divine twat for a dick to dip into?
It was never known for sure. But Raduan Murad, as he recalled both the real and the magical limits of the story of Adma’s nuptials, called his listeners’ attention to the well-known circumstance that God is a Brazilian. Responsible for the future of Jamil Bichara, with that same efficiency he governed the fate of Adib Barud, both of them favored sons, both brought up with a love for business and money and with respect for the laws of southern Bahia. With the Muslim Allah using the bar boy to stop Jamil from running away from his destiny, Jehovah, the God of the Maronite Catholics, would do no less. He would not leave Adib in the lurch, stuck in a pile of shit. Adma hadn’t inherited Sálua’s facial features, her lovely body, but in recompense God had conceded her the best part of the inheritance, the principal part: that incomparable mystery that turns certain very rare women, pretty or ugly, irresistible. Sálua or Adma, it doesn’t matter—one miracle less, one miracle more; miracles happened at the drop of a hat in those good times of the discovery of America by the Turks.
BAHIA, JULY; PARIS, OCTOBER; 1991
Postscript
At a certain time in Portugal, Jorge was writing a passage of Showdown in which he was telling about the marriage of Fadul Abdala, one of the heroes of the novel. I was quite taken with it. There were moments of great humor, and at the same time it was rather moving. One day I saw a huge pile of typewritten pages in the trash. I took a look and it was the whole chapter of the wedding. But Jorge, are you going to throw this away? He explained to me that it was too long—it was almost another novel inside the first one; the best place for it was the ash can. I couldn’t convince him to keep the chapter, but I did save the originals in a folder. Years later, when the celebration of the fifth centenary of the discovery of America came along and knowing that I’d kept the original of that chapter, Jorge picked up the writing again and this book was born.
ZÉLIA GATTAI AMADO
Amado, The Discovery of America by the Turks