‘Have you no shame? A child your size beating up a little kid.’
Everyone at home said that Seu Rozemberg had a secret crush on my sister Lalá. He knew us and whenever she was with us, he’d hand out pastries and sweets with the biggest of smiles dotted with several gold teeth.
* * *
I couldn’t help myself and ended up telling Pinkie about my humiliation. I could hardly hide it with that puffy black eye. Besides, when Father had seen me like that, he’d given me a few raps on the head and Totoca a dressing-down. Father never hit Totoca, but he did me, because I was as bad as it got.
Pinkie must have heard every word, so how could I not tell him? He listened, indignant, and only when I finished did he say angrily, ‘What a coward!’
‘The fight was nothing. You should have seen …’
Blow by blow, I relayed everything that had happened with the piggyback. Pinkie was amazed at how brave I’d been and said, ‘One day you’ll get even.’
‘Yes, I will. I’m going to borrow Tom Mix’s revolver and Fred Thompson’s Silver King and I’ll ambush him with the Comanche Indians. One day I’ll bring home his scalp, flapping in the wind on a bamboo stick.’
But my anger quickly wore off and soon we were talking about other things.
‘Sweetie, guess what? Remember how last week I won that book The Magic Rose for being a good pupil?’
Pinkie liked it when I called him Sweetie; it let him know that I really loved him.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve already read it. It’s a story about a prince who is given a red and white rose by a fairy. The lucky fellow rides a handsome steed “all festooned with gold” – that’s what it says in the book. And on the steed all festooned with gold he goes off in search of adventure. Whenever he’s in danger he shakes the magic rose and a big cloud of smoke appears so the prince can escape. To be honest, Pinkie, I think the story’s a bit silly, you know? It’s not like the adventures that I want to have in my life. Tom Mix and Buck Jones have real adventures. And Fred Thompson and Richard Talmadge. Because they know how to fight, to shoot, to throw punches … If they had to pull out a magic rose every time they found themselves in danger, it’d be no fun at all. What do you think?’
‘Yeah, that’d be no fun.’
‘But that isn’t what I want to know. I want to know if you believe a rose can do magic like that.’
‘It does sound pretty weird.’
‘People tell stories and think children believe everything.’
‘True.’
We heard a noise. It was Luís coming over. My little brother was becoming more and more beautiful. He wasn’t a cry baby or the sort to throw tantrums. Even when I had to look after him, most of the time I did so willingly.
I told Pinkie, ‘Let’s change the subject, because I’m going to tell him the story and he’s going to love it. We shouldn’t ruin a child’s illusions.’
‘Zezé, let’s play?’
‘I’m already playing. What do you want to play?’
‘I want to go to the zoo.’
I looked at the chicken coop with the black hen and her two new chicks, without enthusiasm.
‘It’s too late. The lions are already asleep and the Bengal tigers too. It’ll be closed by now. They won’t let us in.’
‘Then let’s travel around Europe.’
The bright spark learned and repeated everything he heard perfectly. But, to be honest, I wasn’t in the mood to travel around Europe either. What I really wanted was to hang out with Pinkie. Pinkie didn’t tease me or make fun of my puffy eye.
I sat beside my little brother and spoke calmly.
‘Just wait a second. I’ll think of something for us to play.’
Presently, the fairy of innocence flew past on a white cloud that ruffled the leaves on the trees, the grasses in the ditch and Pinkie’s leaves. A smile lit up my battered face.
‘Was that you, Pinkie?’
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Oh, goody, then it’s the windy season coming.’
On our street there were all kinds of seasons. The marble season. The spinning top season. The season to collect movie-star trading cards. The kite season was the most beautiful of them all. The skies would fill with kites of every colour. Beautiful kites of every shape and size. It was war in the air. Headlong collisions, battles, lassoing and line cutting.
Razors would cut strings and kites would go wheeling through space, out of kilter, tangling bridles and tails; it was all beautiful. The world belonged to the kids in the street. In all the streets of Bangu. Then there’d be kite skeletons tangled in the electric wires, and we’d all run away from the power company truck. The men would come and angrily pull down the dead kites. The wind … the wind …
With the wind came the idea.
‘Let’s play hunting, Luís.’
‘I can’t ride the horse.’
‘Soon you’ll be big enough and you’ll be able to. You sit there and watch how it’s done.’
Suddenly Pinkie became the most beautiful horse in the world, the wind blew stronger, and the scraggy grasses in the ditch became vast, lush plains. My cowboy outfit was festooned with gold. A sheriff’s star flashed on my chest.
‘Let’s go, little horse, go. Run, run …’
Thubalup-thubalup-thubalup! I was back with Tom Mix and Fred Thompson. Buck Jones hadn’t wanted to come this time and Richard Talmadge was working on another film.
‘Go, go, little horse. Run, run. Here come our Apache friends churning up dust as they ride.’
Thubalup-thubalup-thubalup! The Indians’ horses were making a racket.
‘Run, run, little horse, the plains are full of bison and buffalo. Let’s shoot, folks. Bang, bang, bang! Pow, pow, pow!’
‘Phwoo, Phwoo, Phwoo!’ whistled the arrows.
The wind, the speed, the wild gallop, the clouds of dust and Luís’s voice almost shouting.
‘Zezé! Zezé!’
I slowly reined in my horse and jumped down, flushed from the ride.
‘What’s the matter? Did a buffalo come your way?’
‘No. Let’s play something else. There are lots of Indians and I’m scared.’
‘But these are Apaches. They’re our friends.’
‘But I’m scared. There are lots of them.’
Chapter Two
MAKING FRIENDS
For the next few days I left for school a little earlier to avoid running into the Portuguese buying cigarettes. I also took care to slip around the corner on the other side of the street, which was almost completely in the shade of the hedges in front of the houses. The minute I got to the highway, I would cross over and carry on, shoes in hand, staying close to the large factory wall. But my efforts were pointless. The street has a short memory and soon no one remembered yet another of Seu Paulo’s boy’s antics. Because that’s how I was known when I was being accused of something: ‘It was Seu Paulo’s boy.’ ‘It was that boy of Seu Paulo’s.’ ‘It was that little troublemaker of Seu Paulo’s.’ Once they even came up with a horrible joke: when the Bangu Football Club was thrashed by Andaraí, people joked, ‘Bangu took more of a beating than Seu Paulo’s boy!’
Sometimes I’d see the goddam car at the corner and I’d hang back so as not to have to see the Portuguese—I really was going to kill when I grew up—strutting his stuff as the owner of the most beautiful car in the world and in Bangu.
That was when he disappeared for a few days. What a relief! He must have gone out of town or taken a vacation. Once again I could walk to school with a calm heart, and I was already beginning to doubt whether it was really worth killing him later on. One thing was for sure: without fail, when I went for a piggyback on a less important car, I no longer felt the same thrill and my ears would begin to sting terribly.
Life in the street went on as always. Kite season had come and we were always outside. The blue sky would be dotted with the most beautiful, colourful stars during the day. As it
was the windy time of year I didn’t spend as much time with Pinkie, only going to see him when I was grounded, after a beating. I never tried to sneak out when I was grounded; being beaten twice in a row hurt a lot. Instead I would go with King Luís to festoon – I loved that word – my orange tree. As it happened, Pinkie had grown a lot and soon would be giving me flowers and fruit. Other orange trees took a long time. But my sweet-orange tree was ‘precocious’, which is how Uncle Edmundo described me. Then he told me what it meant: something that’s ready a long time before everything else. Actually, I don’t think he knew how to explain it properly. It just meant anything that came first.
So I’d fetch bits of rope, scraps of thread, make holes in a bunch of bottle tops and go festoon Pinkie. You should have seen how smart he looked. When the wind blew, the bottle tops would clink against one another and he looked like he was wearing the spurs Fred Thompson wore when he rode Silver King.
School life was good, too. I knew all the national anthems off by heart. The big one was the real one. The others were the hymn to the flag and the one that went Liberty, Liberty, spread your wings over us. For me, and I think for Tom Mix too, it was the best. Whenever we went for a ride, except when we were at war or on a hunt, he’d say respectfully, ‘C’mon, Apinajé warrior, sing the anthem of liberty.’
My high-pitched voice would fill the vast plains, even more beautifully than when I sang with Seu Ariovaldo in my job as a singer’s helper on Tuesdays.
Every Tuesday, I would skip school to wait for the train that brought my friend Ariovaldo. He’d come down the stairs holding up the brochures of song lyrics that we’d sell on the streets. He’d be carrying two more full bags too, which were our backup. He almost always sold everything and this made both of us very happy.
At school recess, when there was time, we’d play marbles. I was really good at it. My aim was spot on and I almost never went home without my satchel jiggling with my winnings, often triple the number of marbles I’d gone with.
My teacher, Dona Cecília Paim, was really sweet. You could tell her I was the most terrible boy on my street, and she wouldn’t believe it. She didn’t believe that I knew more swear words than anyone else in class, or that no one got up to as much mischief as me. She refused to believe it. At school I was an angel. I was never told off and had become the darling of all the teachers, as I was one of the youngest kids who had ever been there. Dona Cecília Paim could see our poverty from a mile off and, at break time, when everyone else was eating their snack, she’d take pity on me, call me over and send me off to buy a sweet pastry. She was so fond of me that I think I was good just so she wouldn’t be disappointed with me.
Suddenly, it happened. I was walking along the highway slowly, as always, when the Portuguese’s car drove past, very close. He honked the horn three times and I saw that the monster was smiling at me. All over again I felt angry and wanted to kill him when I grew up. I scowled haughtily and pretended to ignore him.
* * *
‘It’s like I said, Pinkie. Every single day. It’s as if he waits for me to go past and then he comes along and beeps his horn three times. Yesterday he even waved.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I don’t care. I pretend not to see him. He’s starting to get scared, you see. I’ll be six soon and it won’t be long before I’m a man.’
‘Do you think he wants to be your friend because he’s scared?’
‘I’m sure of it. Wait a second, I’m going to get the crate.’
Pinkie had grown a lot. I had to stand on a crate to climb into his saddle now.
‘There, now we can talk properly.’
Up high there I felt bigger than everything. I’d look around at the landscape, at the grass in the ditch, at the tanagers and finches that came to look for food. At night, darkness would barely have fallen when another Luciano would come swooping happily around my head like a plane at the Campo dos Afonsos air base. At first even Pinkie was surprised that I wasn’t afraid, because most children are terrified of bats. Come to think of it, Luciano hadn’t appeared for days. He must have found other Campo dos Afonsos air bases to fly around.
‘Did you know, Pinkie, the guavas at Eugênia’s house are starting to turn yellow. They must be just about ripe. The problem is if she catches me. I’ve already been beaten three times today. I’m here because I’m grounded …’
But the devil gave me a hand down and pulled me over to the hedge. The afternoon breeze was starting to waft the smell of the guavas to my nose, so it seemed. I peered through the hedge, pushed a branch aside, heard no noise … And the devil was saying, ‘Go on, silly, can’t you see there’s no one there? She must have gone to the Japanese lady’s grocery store. Seu Benedito? Don’t worry. He’s practically blind and deaf. He can’t see a thing. There’s time to run away if he notices.’
I followed the hedge to the ditch and decided. First, I signalled to Pinkie to be quiet. By now my heart was racing. There was no messing with Eugênia. God knows she had a tongue on her.
I was tiptoeing along, holding my breath, when her voice boomed from the kitchen window.
‘What’s going on, boy?’
It didn’t even occur to me to lie and say I’d come to fetch a ball. I bolted and jumped into the ditch with a splash. But something else was waiting for me there. A pain so intense that I almost screamed, but if I screamed I’d get beaten twice: first, because I’d left the backyard when I was grounded, and second, because I’d been stealing guavas from the neighbour and had just managed to get a shard of glass in my left foot.
Still giddy with pain, I tugged at the glass. I moaned quietly and saw the blood swirling into the dirty water in the ditch. What now? My eyes brimming with tears, I managed to remove the glass, but I had no idea how to staunch the flow of blood. I was squeezing my ankle hard to ease the pain. I had to stay strong. Night had almost fallen, and with it, Father, Mother and Lalá would arrive home. If any of them caught me they’d beat me. Or they’d each beat me separately. I climbed over the barrier and hopped over to my orange tree, where I sat down. It still hurt a lot, but I didn’t feel like I was going to be sick any more.
‘Look, Pinkie.’
Pinkie was horrified. He was like me—he didn’t like the sight of blood.
Oh Lord, what was I going to do?
Totoca would have helped me, but where was he now? There was Glória. She was in the kitchen, no doubt. Glória was the only one who didn’t like the fact that everyone was always beating me. She might give my ears a tug or ground me again. But I had to try.
I dragged myself to the kitchen door, trying to think of a way to win Glória’s sympathy. She was embroidering something. I sat down awkwardly and this time God helped me. She looked over and saw me with my head down. She didn’t say anything because I was grounded. My eyes welled up with tears and I sniffed. I found her eyes on me again. She had stopped embroidering.
‘What is it, Zezé?’
‘Nothing, Gló … Why doesn’t anyone love me?’
‘You get up to a lot of mischief.’
‘I’ve been beaten three times today, Gló.’
‘And didn’t you deserve it?’
‘That’s not it. It’s just that because no one loves me, they take everything out on me.’
Glória’s fifteen-year-old heart was beginning to thaw, and I could feel it.
‘I think it’s best if a car runs over me on the highway tomorrow and squashes me completely.’
Then the tears came streaming down in torrents.
‘Nonsense, Zezé. I love you lots.’
‘No you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t let them beat me again today.’
‘It’s getting dark now and there won’t be enough time for you to get in trouble again.’
‘But I already have …’
She put down her embroidery and came over. She almost screamed when she saw the puddle of blood at my foot.
‘My God! Shrimp, what’ve you done?’
She picked me up and sat me down on the chair. Then she quickly got a bowl of salty water and knelt at my feet.
‘This is going to hurt a lot, Zezé.’
‘It’s already hurting a lot.’
‘My God, the cut’s almost an inch and a half long. How did you do it?’
‘Don’t tell anyone. Please, Gló, I promise to be good. Don’t let them hit me so much …’
‘OK, I won’t tell. But what are we going to do? Everyone’s going to see your foot all bandaged up. And tomorrow you won’t be able to go to school. They’re going to find out.’
‘I’ll go to school. I’ll wear my shoes to the corner. After that I can take them off.’
‘You need to lie down and put your foot up, otherwise you won’t even be able to walk tomorrow.’
She helped me limp over to my bed.
‘I’ll bring you something to eat before the others get home.’
When she came back with the food, I couldn’t help myself and gave her a kiss. I hardly ever did that.
* * *
When everyone had assembled for dinner, Mother noticed that I was missing.
‘Where’s Zezé?’
‘He’s lying down. He’s been complaining of a headache all day.’
I listened in ecstasy, momentarily forgetting how much my foot hurt. I liked being the topic of conversation. That was when Glória decided to stick up for me. She put on a voice that was sorrowful and accusatory at the same time.
‘I think everyone’s been hitting him. And today he was in really bad shape. Three beatings is too much.’
‘But he’s always up to no good. He only stops when he gets a paddling! Do you mean to say you never lay a finger on him?’
‘Hardly ever. At the most, I give his ears a tug.’
They all fell silent and Glória went on.
‘After all, he isn’t even six yet. Yes, he’s naughty, but he’s still a child.’
That conversation pleased me no end.
My Sweet Orange Tree Page 8