Ana Carolina had stretched the blanket and Márcio with Carla joined her together.
‘Well, that’s enough for today... we’ll have to get up early tomorrow... now everyone to their tents.’
‘I really don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep. This story messed with me.’ Said Carla.
‘Well, I’ll dig a hole and put these charcoal to set up my tent. As for you, you’d better forget that story.’
‘Come on Márcio! I really won’t be able to sleep alone! Are you coming along Carla?’
‘I’ll be there in a while! Let me just have some more wine.’ Ana Carolina and Márcio go to the tent talking, hugged.
‘I think that Carla will end up sleeping with the Guide?’ said Márcio.
‘Well, why do you think so?’
‘The way she drank and how drunk she is...’
They got in the tent and held themselves tight in arms.
They made love and tired fell asleep. In the middle of night Ana Carolina thought of having heard some noise. It might be the guide digging the hole to set up the tent. She rolled herself around to Márcio and realized that he was not in the tent. He might have gone to piss. Soon she slept again.
The sun penetrated the tent and Ana Carolina woke up rubbing her eyes. Her head ached. It must have been the last night wine.
Márcio had already gotten up. She stretched herself out and observed the reigning silence. The others might have been sleeping yet. So she started putting together the lining of the tent and tidy the things up inside it.
The time rolled and Márcio did not show up.
Suddenly a scary cry cuts through the air.
Quickly she throws herself out of the tent.
One of the girls from the tour group is standing still with her hands on her face, and a mute cry in her throat. Her face expresses terror.
The other boys and girls get out also from their cottages.
Ana Carolina approaches the girl.
On the floor there was still the rests of the fire camping.
A whole hill of soil announces that a hole was dug.
The girl shows appoints there on a corner.
A human hand pointed up, out from the ground. in her hand the index finger was missing.
Ana Carolina gets into despair.
She sees that Carla and Everaldo disappeared. Márcio doesn’t appear also.
The other campers approached.
And soon the police arrives.
Then they dig up and find out two bodies in the valley over the charcoal.
Both faces were disfigured.
It’s Carla and a man.
A detail catches Ana Carolina’s attention.
A police pronounces the word beard.
Soon, in the bodies recognition, it was proved that Everaldo and Carla have been killed by the same person.
And Márcio’s body?
Where would it be?
Márcio’s body was never found.
MYSTERY ON THE MOUNTAIN
The sky lights frightened me.
It was late at night nearly eleven o’clock p.m.
I had travelled until Água Boa, MT, trying to find a representative for my products, ware; so I took my time and went up to a bugres village. (To those who don’t know, bugres are Indians.) For they’re the best manufacturers of some kind of tools, difficult to be found out there. Then, I really wanted to do that like an exclusivity of their handcrafts. Everything was all right, and already taking the merchandise, not without haggling a good time before. (Oh, difficult people to negotiate with). I was between Barra do Garças, and Nova Xavantina, so, near Roncandor hill I think this was the name, of those mountains hills that surrounded the road, when I saw those lights.
First, I thought that, it was a lightning flash, but there was no sign of rain. Suddenly, more lights, fire balls, are what they really seemed to be more. At first, I was scared, because there was some of those balls that, (I think I didn’t measure) would have passed less than fifty meters from my car; I braked the car, closed the glasses, the radio stopped playing, no noise, nor static, nothing, nothing! And the car then, it went in neutral by itself. Then the headlights went out.
I got in state of fear almost uncontrollable. And just imagine also, I, all by myself, in a such kind of world like that, at night, with bushes all over, and car there, was something of celebrating; I started to think the cases that the Indians told about people who were eaten by jaguars and disappeared without leaving a trace.
I thought better not to get out from the car.
Meanwhile, those lights danced over the mountain. It looked like a ballet of fireflies. I say fireflies, because of the distance I was from them. About two or three kilometers, perhaps more. The one that passed close to me it might have approximately from three to five maters of circumference.
I kept on watching that strange ballet, at the same time I turned on in despair, the ignition key from one side to another, trying to make the car work out.
Then unexpectedly, they were gone. Like magic.
I got scared even more.
I forcefully turned the key and the car started. I turned the headlights on, and then saw something black, that gleamed in the moonlight and my headlights on the road, from a hundred or two hundred in front of me. I jumped out from the car and ran along the road as quickly as I could. My legs never helped me that much. Maybe I should have stayed there.
Damn it! I’m not crazy.
I’m a coward, but I am alive. I thought.
I never thought that I could do that. I think I ran about ten or fifteen kilometers in less than fifteen minutes. These minutes seemed like an eternity. I felt my heart soar. My lungs looked like they were going to explode. My legs were heavy.
In no time turned around. It seemed that they were behind me. I’ve heard so much about them in the area.
I might have fallen two or three times and then got up without looking behind and ran. Ran, ran. My head ached, my sight were already darkening, and could hardly see anything in front of me, even with the full moon at night that illuminated my desperate run.
And when my strength was running out, I was at a white house by side of the road.
Ask me why did I not get away from the road?
Because there are lots of puddles, with alligators, Cayman, we never know what more, and the farms that surround the roads, they got a headquarters at the end of it, for those who arrive to catch a glimpse of the farmers full potential. It’s one of valorizing one another even more. The house resident Mr. Antonio, received me well.
He said that, he had woken up as he heard the noise of my footsteps on the road.
I told him what had happened and he laughed.
Then he asked me if in the village, I’d smoked with people there or had eaten some food from them.
I didn’t quite understand what he meant with that.
He explained me that the Indians use so much hallucinogens, sometimes because of their culture and tradition, some other times to kill the hunger, they eat some fruits which contain some kinds of elements of this nature. I remembered of Piquitui, I think this is the name that a small Indian had given me, and taught me how to eat that. It was a kind of fruit which looked like a mango, however inside there were two nuts, the taste was good, a little bit sweet, almost as an orange, but juiceless.
When I said about this fruit, Antonio smiled and told me that, I probably might have had hallucination caused by the fruit.
He told me to sleep that night there, and he would go with me in the morning up to where I’d left the car. He offered me a glass of milk, pure from cow, without a mixing of those artificial things of nowadays. I felt the fat, texture of milk in my lips, thicker, without water. At the beginning I found it strange, I was not used to it.
Antonio and D. Ester, who had just woken up when we started talking and laughed about my situation.
Then we went to sleep. I slept like a rock.
I was woken by Antonio poking me.
<
br /> He was with a hat and wore spurs on his boots. He coiled a horse for me and told me not to be worried, the horse I would be riding was meek.
I was a little bit afraid, in fact it had been ten years now I’d not ridden a horse anymore. The sun had not risen yet. We could still see some stars in the sky. There were whitish rips in the sky and a colored half-yellow on the horizon. That would be a beautiful day.
We rode on horse.
Antonio rode on silent, didn’t make any questions and said nothing. He seemed to be in hurry.
I saw the van.
There was the car, intact.
This is difficult to happen at Florianopolis, and at Rio then, can’t say anymore.
The door was open the way I left, when I got out, running. I switch the key and the engine worked out. It gave a shriek of joy. I showed Antonio where the “beast” was in front of me. We saw no marks of anything on the sand. Sand, yes, because the roads there are still unpaved.
I said goodbye to Antonio, and thanking everything he had done for me. I told him that I would like to give him a souvenir. But he said that, it was not necessary, with the same simplicity the way as he helped me last night.
One thing from those countryside people in the country to wonder about is their simplicity and honesty. That’s something for taking your hat off.
I insisted and got on the F1000’s body.
I pulled the tarpaulin and asked him to get on also. Half reluctant he got on. He said that he needed to go home to take the cow’s milk, just before the sunrise.
He took a very beautiful tool.
I had not seen anybody putting that tool there. It was a jar with a very strange drawing, which seemed as triangle with a ring around it, full of small stones.
Antonio went back home and I arrived at Barra do Garças, nearly at midday. I still would travel more to arrive at Florianopolis.
I stopped at a restaurant just outside the town, to have a lunch.
I was watching and listening to TV when I saw on the table aside upon a chair a headline that said.
“They’ve just arrived. They’re with us” first page.
I got the newspaper and started to read it. That was a local newspaper. There was a description of a Flying Saucer which many people claimed to see and one of these people made a drawing. It was an identical drawing to that which was on the jar that Antonio had taken.
That intrigued. I do not know how to say why. That awakened the spirit of adventure in me, that I think I always had. I rented a room in a small hotel, I unloaded my tools. I paid a week to stay and went back to the village.
I don’t remember of stopping at Antonio’s house.
I was tired and wanted to kill my curiosity as soon as possible.
Two days later I arrived at Água Boa. I was well received in the village.
There were also people from FUNAI. A dentist and a doctor made an inspection to bugres.
As I talked with the Dentist Dr. Dr. Sonia, who was concerned about the situation of “poor indigenous people” the way she called them. She told me that it has been three years now since the last time she was there, she and the doctor, who was now injecting two old Indians ladies, with tits showing and without a tooth. They were using skirts over the legs, but upper they didn’t wear anything.
I did not tell anybody the reason of my return. I wanted to talk to cacique Iru, and the one had gone in the town.
I went up to where the younger people of the tribe were taking the clay.
It was all a handwork.
They took the clay in cans and carried until, I don’t remember how they called, it was a clay mil, if I may say so. A kind of a giant pot, or better saying, to understand what I mean, a popcorn pot; where they threw the clay and an animal, a donkey that moved a heavy load, let’s say that, spoon, that stirred and crushed the clay, trying to give it an ideal consistency.
From there they took to shape it and then took it into a wood oven. It was a big oven, where fitted without any problem maybe four people. This oven had something like two floors. At the bottom, almost like a cavern, dug on the soil, they were throwing woods and on the top put the clay, already in an adequate shape, to be done and get dried up.
In the late afternoon Iru arrived.
He did as if he didn’t see. He ignored me.
That was his way to negotiate.
He thought that I had returned to buy more. Maybe, but that was not my main issue.
At night, I looked for him at maloca.
He was watching TV, together with the other guys of the tribe.
I called him aside and told him what had happened when I was there the last time.
he made a serious face when I told him about Antonio and D. Ester. Said that, nobody in the tribe would make that drawing alike the way I drew on the ground, which he quickly stepped with his foot cleaning it.
He asked me not to get back in the village again, unless when invited. I wondered at this attitude. He’s always been very rational.
He almost became furious, I think so, because I didn’t understand his words he spoke to the other guys at maloca, but I saw their faces and expressions, and these details demonstrated to me, that was time to leave.
I drove out from there willing to go up to Antonio’s house. Who knows that he would tell me more about that.
I drove all night long and in the morning I thought I had found Antonio’s house. That was the local, I perfectly remembered well, however, there was not any house there. It was just a meadow of some other farms.
I got in the car and went up to where I had left the pick-up that night. I mentally re-calculated the distance I had gone through running and again I found myself on farm field.
That was not possible! What had happened?
Nobody disappears like that with the house and everything in two days.
I drove a little bit more and further there I found two bars, which was also a bus ticket office.
A fat lady was behind the counter. As I approached she came to attend me smiling.
I ordered a beer. I drank a good sip of that and started to talk with her.
She told me that, she’d seen light in the fields and were just faery fire a kind of gas swamps. This was, wait, let me tell you my story. When I told him about Antonio she laughed and told me that there hadn’t been any house there, and for more than fifty years ago no one lived between Água Boa and up to her bar. And she told me that several travelers and truck drivers have been already helped by this couple, who nobody knew and who were seen only at the moments those lights turned up.
Until today, I don’t know whether my car had broken down and they’d helped me or they were themselves who’d caused all that. Recently I discovered that, the symbol which Iru had cleaned symbolized a passage between life and death for the Indians.
Don Caramujo
O
ne
The facts annotated here, they don’t follow a logical sequence.
Marcelo Ferreira da Silva was born on February 22nd in 1969. It was on a Wednesday. He never cared about knowing the right time. Perhaps when he remembered asking, his parents might have forgotten. But this, is just saluting in our little story. Dear friend, this story may be similar to many other people’s stories, but for sure it may also differ from many other ones. Your dreams and illusions are only yours, although that others may think alike, however with proper characteristic’s.
Marcelo remembers of the lady who taught him to read and write. She was a black woman. And him, son of Italians and German , and he had as a wet nurse a black woman. His grandparents never looked with eyes his approach with this kind lady. He might have been nearly five years old. And she was just more than sixty years old. She was fat, and she used to wear a pair of old and dirty glasses, and a very shabby dress. She lived at the back of the large house they lived. The house had a backyard, with a very big orchard, where the mango trees and tangerines were her favorite trees. And there was still an avocado big tree, where somed
ay she almost fell down and could have been taken to death all at once. Almost eight meters tall.
But, getting back to the old lady whose Marcelo forgot the name beyond the time, she taught him the first scribbles and scratches on a sheet of paper where they used to buy bread.
When he was away from home, his mother knew where to find him. Without hesitating she used to go straight at the old house, at the back of the yard. His mother let the black woman to live there, in compensation of helping her to take care the kid. He doesn’t remember of her complaining about the kind of life she had. And he doesn’t also remember of anyone going to visit her. She never spoke of her relatives, children or any other person. She had an empty life. So empty like the shell of a dead snail.
For Marcelo she was without doubt his second mother. Many times whenever he fell down the trees, it was this black lady, who took care of him. She passed the mercury or made a poultice of herbs.
She really protected him when he got up to mischief. She hid him in the basement of the old house and pretended not knowing where he was when his mother or father felt like hitting him in his hands or with belt. Yes the parents those days, could still educate their children, without risking to end up in jail.
He doesn’t remember if the black lady had died when they still lived there or if it was when they left that place. But without any doubt, that was a very remarkable fact, for, not after long time before, he’s been accused of being racist, something that he had to put in judge. No dear reader, don’t take him as prejuced, for he has lots of black friends, or of several colors, whatever. So, then don’t admit this horrible and stupid thing of racism. Many times are the very black people who have been racists. They discriminate among themselves. Just look around. A famous black man has no black wife. A famous woman... will hardly get along with other black guys. Of course there are exception for everything. Thanks goodness. That’s the way he thinks.
Ivair Antonio Gomes Page 4