Captains of the Sands

by Jorge Amado

  “Terrific, yeah.”

  Pedro Bala remembered the story. Good-Life thought it would be foolish to leave Bahia when he grew up, it would be so nice to live the easy life of a drifter, a switchblade in his pocket, a guitar under his arm, a dark girl to fall onto the sand with. It was the life he wanted when he became a full-fledged man.

  They reached the doorway to Warehouse 7. João de Adão, a husky black stevedore, an old striker, feared and loved all up and down the waterfront, was sitting on a crate. He was smoking a pipe and his muscles showed under his shirt. When he saw the boys he greeted them:

  “Look at my friend Good-Life. And Captain Pedro.”

  He always called Pedro “Captain Pedro” and he liked to chat with them. He offered Pedro Bala an edge of the crate. Good-Life squatted in front of them. In a corner an old black woman was selling oranges and coconut candy, wearing a chintz skirt and a blouse that let her breasts show, still firm in spite of her age. Good-Life kept looking at the woman’s breasts while he peeled an orange he’d picked from her stand.

  “You still got a pretty good pair, eh, aunty?”

  The black woman smiled:

  “These kids today have no respect for their elders, friend João de Adão. Where’d you ever hear tell of a fresh kid like this talking about breasts with a worn-out old woman like me?”

  “Come off it, aunty. You can still make it…”

  The black woman laughed good-humoredly:

  “I’ve shut the gates, Good-Life. I’m beyond the age. Ask this one…” She pointed to João de Adão. “I saw when almost a boy like you he led the first strike here on the docks. In those days nobody knew what the devil a strike was. Do you remember, old friend?”

  João de Adão nodded yes, closed his eyes remembering the faraway times of the first strike he’d led on the docks. He was one of the oldest dockhands, even though nobody thought he was as old as he was.

  Pedro Bala spoke:

  “Black skin, white hair, three times thirty-three.”

  The woman showed her completely white tuft of hair. She’d taken off the kerchief that covered her head and Good-Life joshed:

  “That’s why you go around with that bandana, black woman full of proudfoot bull…”

  João de Adão asked:

  “Do you remember Raimundo, friend Luísa?”

  “The ‘Blond,’ the one who died in the strike? How couldn’t I remember. He was somebody who’d pass by every afternoon to have a few words with me. He liked to fool around…”

  “They killed him right here that day when the cavalry charged the people.” He looked at Pedro Bala. “Did you ever hear tell of him, Captain?”

  “No.”

  “You were four years old. After that you went from one person’s house to another for a year until you ran away. Then people only got to hear about you when you became the leader of the Captains of the Sands. But people knew that you’d take care of yourself. How old are you now?”

  Pedro was trying to figure and João de Adão interrupted him himself:

  “You’re round about fifteen. Isn’t that so, friend?”

  The woman nodded. João de Adão went on:

  “Any time you want you’ve got a place here on the docks. We’ve kept a place for you.”

  “Why?” Good-Life asked, since Pedro Bala was only looking with surprise.

  “Because his father was Raimundo and he died right here fighting for the people, for the people’s rights. He was quite a man. He was worth ten of the kind you find around here.”

  “My father?” Pedro Bala asked. He’d only heard vague rumors about those stories.

  “He was your father. People called him the Blond. When the strike happened he talked to the people, he didn’t look like a stevedore. He was caught by a bullet. But there’s a place for you on the docks.”

  Pedro Bala was scratching the asphalt with a stick. He looked at João de Adão:

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

  “You were too small to understand. Now you’re getting to be a man,” and he laughed with satisfaction.

  Pedro Bala laughed too. He was happy to know the story of his father because he’d been a brave man. But he asked slowly:

  “And did you know my mother?”

  João de Adão thought for a moment:

  “I don’t know anything. When I met the Blond he didn’t have a woman. But you were living with him.”

  “I knew her.” It was the black woman speaking. “A slip of a woman. There was a story going around that your father had stolen her away from home, that she came from a rich family up there above,” and she pointed to the upper city. “She died when you weren’t even six months old. In those days Raimundo was working in the cigarette factory in Itapagipe. He came to the waterfront later on.”

  João de Adão repeated:

  “Any time you want…”

  Pedro Bala nodded. Then he asked:

  “It was a wild thing, the strike, wasn’t it?”

  And they stayed there listening to João de Adão tell about the strike. When he finished Pedro Bala said:

  “I’d like to make a strike. It must be great.”

  A ship was coming in. João de Adão got up:

  “Now we’ve got to load that Dutchman.”

  The ship was whistling in its docking maneuvers. Stevedores were heading for the big warehouse from all sides. Pedro Bala looked at them with warmth. His father had been one of them, had died defending them. The men going there were white, mulatto, black, a lot of blacks. They were going to fill the hold of a ship with backs of cacao, bales of tobacco, sugar, all the products of the State that were going to faraway lands where other men like those, tall and blond perhaps, would unload the ship, leave its hold empty. His father had been one of them. He’d only just found out. And he’d made speeches to them up on a crate, had fought, had caught a bullet the day the cavalry faced the strikers. Maybe his father’s blood had fallen right there where he was sitting. Pedro Bala looked at the surface, which was paved now. Under that asphalt the blood that had poured out of his father’s body was there. That’s why any day he wanted he’d have a place on the docks, among those men, the place that had been his father’s. And he would also have to carry loads…A hard life that, with hundred-pound bales on your back. But he’d also be able to lead a strike, just like his father and João de Adão, fight the police, die for their rights. In that way he’d avenge his father, help those men fight for their rights (Pedro Bala vaguely knew what that was). He imagined himself in a strike, fighting. And his eyes smiled, the same as his lips.

  Good-Life, who was sucking on his third orange, interrupted his dream:

  “Are you wool-gathering, buddy?”

  The old black woman looked at Pedro Bala with affection:

  “He’s got his father’s face. But he’s got his mother’s wavy hair. If it wasn’t for that cut on his face you wouldn’t have to try hard to see Raimundo. A good-looking man…”

  Good-Life chuckled. He asked how much he owed, paid her two hundred reis. Then he looked at the black woman’s breasts again, asked:

  “Have you got a daughter, aunty?”

  “What do you want to know for, you devil?”

  Good-Life laughed:

  “I could get friendly with her…”

  The woman threw her slipper at him. Good-Life dodged:

  “If I had a daughter she wouldn’t be for your sweet talk, you bum.”

  Then she remembered:

  “Aren’t you going to Gantóis today? There’s going to be drumming like you never heard. A first-class fandango. It’s Omolu’s feast day.”

  “Lots of grub? And rice drinks?”

  “If they’ve got any…” She looked at Pedro Bala. “Why don’t you go, white boy? Omolu isn’t just a black folks’ saint. She’s a saint for all poor people.”

  Good-Life extended his hand as a salute when she spoke of Omolu, goddess of smallpox. Night was falling. A man bought some coconut cand
y. The lights suddenly went on. The black woman got up. Good-Life helped her lift her stand onto her head. In the distance Lollipop appeared with God’s-Love. Pedro Bala looked at the men on the docks who were carrying bundles onto the Dutch ship once more. Drops of sweat were gleaming on the broad black and mulatto backs. The muscular necks were bent under the loads. And the cranes squeaked noisily. To lead a strike someday, like his father…Fight for rights…One day a man like João de Adão could tell his story to other boys by the entrance to the docks the way they told his father’s. His eyes had an intense glow in the newly-fallen night.

  They helped God’s-Love unload the good catch. Iemanjá had helped him. A man who had a fish-stand in the market bought his whole load. Then they went to eat at a restaurant in the market. Lollipop went to see Father José Pedro, who was teaching him to read and write. He stopped by the warehouse first to pick up a box of pens he’d lifted from a stationery store that morning. Pedro Bala, Good-Life, and God’s-Love went to the candomblé in Gantóis (Love was an ogan, an acolyte), where Omolu appeared in her red vestments and advised her poor children in the most beautiful canticle ever heard that their misery would soon be over, that she would take the smallpox to the houses of the rich and that the poor would be well-fed and happy. The drums throbbed in Omolu’s night. And she foretold the day of vengeance for the poor. Black women danced, the men were happy. The day of vengeance was coming.

  Pedro Bala went along the streets of the city alone because Good-Life had gone with God’s-Love to dance in a dive. He went down the slopes that led to the lower city. He walked slowly, as if he were carrying a weight inside himself, he walked as if bent over inside. He was thinking about that afternoon’s talk with João de Adão, a talk that had made him happy because he’d ended up discovering that his father had been a brave man on the docks, a man who’d left a story behind. But João de Adão had also spoken about the rights of the dock workers. Pedro Bala had never heard talk about that and yet it had been for those rights that his father had died. And later on at the Gantóis macumba, Omolu, bedecked in red, had said that the day of vengeance for the poor would not be long in coming. And all that pressed down on Pedro Bala’s heart, just as those hundred-pound bales press down on the back of the stevedores’ heads.

  When he finished his descent he headed for the sands, feeling like going to a warehouse to see if he could sleep. A dog barked as he passed, thinking he was going to claim the bone he was gnawing on. At the end of the street Pedro Bala saw a shape. It looked like a woman walking in a hurry. He shook his boy’s body the way a young animal shakes his when he sees a female and with quick steps he caught up with the woman who was going onto the sands now. The sand squeaked underfoot and the woman noticed that she was being followed. Pedro Bala was able to get a good look at her when she passed under the lampposts: she was a rather young black girl, she may have been only fifteen, like him. But her breasts stood up in a point and her buttocks rolled under her dress, because black people, even when they’re walking normally, seem to be dancing. And desire grew in Pedro Bala, it was a desire that grew out of the wish to stifle the anguish that was pressing down on him. By thinking about the bouncing buttocks of the black girl he no longer thought about the death of his father defending the rights of the strikers, about Omolu asking for vengeance on the night of the macumba. He was thinking about pulling the black girl down onto the firm sand, caressing her firm breasts (maybe virgin breasts, a girl’s breasts in any case), possessing her warm black woman’s body.

  He quickened his steps because the black girl had left the street that cut through the sands and had gone onto them, getting away from the lampposts. But when she noticed that Pedro Bala was getting closer and closer she went straight ahead almost at a run. Pedro understood that she was heading for one of those streets that lay beyond the warehouses, hidden between the hillside and the sea and that she was crossing the sands to take a shortcut and get away from him more easily. There was a silence over the whole waterfront, only the squeaking of the sand under their steps made the girl’s heart quiver with fear and Pedro Bala’s with impatience. He was walking much faster than the girl and he would catch up with her in ten more steps. And she still had a long way to go across the sands before getting to the warehouses and the streets that are on the other side of the warehouses. Pedro was smiling, a smile with clenched teeth, just like a wild animal on the desert hunting another animal for his lunch.

  Just as he was lifting his hand to touch her shoulder and make her turn her head, the black girl began to run. Pedro Bala ran after her and soon caught up. But he was going so fast that he ran into her and they both rolled on the sand. Pedro leaped up laughing and went over to her as she was trying to stand up:

  “You don’t have to, beautiful. Right here is fine.”

  The black girl’s face showed terror. But when she saw that her pursuer was a boy of fifteen or sixteen she felt a little better and asked angrily:

  “What do you want?”

  “Don’t be stuck-up, girl. Let’s have a little talk…”

  And he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back down onto the sand. Fear came over her again, mad terror. She was coming from her grandmother’s and was going home where her mother and sisters were waiting for her. Why had she come by night, why had she taken a chance on the sands of the waterfront? Didn’t she know that the sands of the waterfront are the love beds of all the tramps, all the thieves, all the sailors, all the Captains of the Sands, all those who can’t pay for a woman and are thirsting for a body in the sacred city of Bahia? She didn’t know that, she’d only just turned fifteen, there hadn’t been much time since she’d become a woman. Pedro Bala was only fifteen too, but for a long time he’d known not only the sands and their secrets but also the secrets of the love of women. Because if men know these secrets long before women, the Captains of the Sands know them long before any man. Pedro Bala wanted her because he’d been feeling the desires of a man for a long time and he knew the caresses of love. She didn’t want him because she’d just turned into a woman and she wanted to keep her body for a mulatto who would know how to make her feel passion. She didn’t want to give it to the first one who found her on the sands. And her eyes were wide with fear.

  Pedro Bala ran his hand over the black girl’s curly hair:

  “You’re a mouthful, dark girl. We’re going to have beautiful children…”

  She fought to get away from him:

  “Leave me alone. Leave me alone, you bastard.”

  And she looked around to see if she could spy someone to shout to, someone she could ask for help, someone who would help her preserve her virginity, which she’d been taught was a precious thing. But in the night on the sands of the waterfront of Bahia nothing could be seen but shadows and nothing could be heard but the moans of love, the tumbling of bodies rolling together in the sand.

  Pedro Bala stroked her breasts and she, in the depths of her terror, began to feel a thread of desire, like a trickle of water that flows between mountains and soon grows until it’s transformed into a great river. And that made her terror greater. If she didn’t resist desire and let him possess her she’d be lost, she’d leave a bloodstain on the sand that the stevedores would laugh at the next morning. The certainty of her weakness gave her new courage and strength. She lowered her head and bit Pedro’s hand as he held her breast. Pedro gave a cry, pulled his hand away, she got up and ran. But he caught her and now his desire was mingled with rage.

  “Let’s stop playing around,” and he tried to pull her down.

  “Let me go, you bastard. Do you want to ruin me, you son of a bitch? Let me go, I’ve got nothing for you.”

  Pedro didn’t answer. He’d known others who played coy. Usually because they had a lover waiting for them. He didn’t think for a moment that the black girl could be a virgin. But she resisted and cursed him, and bit, beat her small fists against Pedro Bala’s chest.

  “What’s with you, girl? Do you think I’m going to l
et you go before you give in? Cut the pride. Your man won’t find out, nobody’s going to know. And you’ll see what a good man is like…”

  And now he was trying to caress her, he wanted to overcome her anger, make her feel desire. His hands went down along her body, laid her down forcefully. Now she was repeating a refrain:

  “Leave me alone, you bastard…Leave me alone, you bastard…”

  He raised her cheap cotton skirt, the black girl’s firm thighs appeared. But one was on top of the other and Pedro Bala tried to separate them. The girl reacted again, but as the boy was stroking her she felt the sudden arrival of desire and didn’t curse anymore, but asked with anguish:

  “Leave me alone, I’m a virgin. Be good, you don’t want me. You’ll find someone else later. I’m a virgin, you’re going to hurt me.”

  He looked at her, she was weeping with fear and also because her will was weakening, her breasts were swollen.

  “Are you really a virgin?”

  “I swear by Almighty God, by the Virgin,” and she kissed her crossed fingers.

  Pedro Bala hesitated. The girl’s swollen breasts under his fingers. The firm thighs, the curly hair of her sex.

  “Are you telling the truth?” and he kept on stroking her.

  “I am, I swear. Let me go, my mother’s waiting for me.”

  She was crying and Pedro Bala felt sorry but desire was loose in him. Then he proposed in the girl’s ear (and tickled her with his tongue):

  “I’ll only do it in the rear.”

  “No. No.”

  “You’ll still be a virgin. It’s nothing.”

  “No. It’ll hurt.”

  But he was caressing her, a shiver ran up her body. She began to understand that if she didn’t satisfy him the way he wanted her virginity would be left behind there. And when he promised (his tongue excited her in the ear again):

  “If it hurts I’ll withdraw…” she consented.

  “You swear you won’t do it in front?”

  “I swear.”

  But after, when he’d satisfied himself for the first time (and she’d cried out and bitten her hands), seeing that he still had desire, he tried to deflower her. But she felt it and leaped up like a madwoman: