The Fugitivities, стр. 64
“Does she know about dinosaurs?” he asked Francesca.
“A little bit, we haven’t learned their names, but she knows about them.”
“Tell Paolina we don’t have lions and zebras in America, at least not anymore. But a long time ago, Africa and America were actually all one big piece of land stuck together, and back then we had some of the biggest animals that there ever were: the dinosaurs. They were ferocious but they all died when the Earth got hit by a large rock from space.”
This took Francesca a while to relate but it seemed to leave a strong impression on the child, and she remained quiet for a long time. Her doughy legs were draped over his thigh and her wondering head rested on Francesca’s hip.
They were climbing through green mountains. They passed a small white church and a long wooden-slatted hall, and then turned up a smaller dirt path that led up to a large sort of bungalow and, beside it, a stable. “We’re here,” Euclides announced with magisterial authority. “In the arms of the Serra do Mar.”
Euclides had built the house himself. He showed them where he got the wooden beams for the frame from a grove of faveira trees. He had used a large trunk that fell in a storm to build a support for his veranda. The whole house had more or less the shape of a wide boot, with a roof patched together from different materials that sloped upward, culminating in the kitchen in the back and its stove-pipe chimney. In the entranceway there was a vestibule stocked with riding gear: saddles, harnesses, heavy wool wraps, stirrups and packs, leather boots and spurs, and embroidered Paraguayan blankets. At the other end of the room there was a shrine for Euclides’s patron saints: Jesus, Che Guevara, and Lenin. Euclides had a small bookshelf as well, upon which were mounted several distinguished volumes, including books by Eduardo Galeano, the poems of Langston Hughes, The Count of Monte Cristo, and an elegant clothbound edition of Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas. The Americans made a point of showing their familiarity with the great Machado de Assis.
“One of the great black writers of all time,” Euclides mused, gazing lovingly at the tattered spine. “But,” and now he turned, with special attention to Jonah, “not a great writer of blackness. No…not a writer of blackness at all. The greatest Brazilian novelist—a black man born half a century before the abolition of slavery in his own land…and what does he write about? The flings and pangs of aristocrats…the little underwear affairs of the empire! Yes, I’m afraid it’s true! Nothing on the enslavement of his forefathers! A man of magnificent, innovative genius…maybe the only thinking man to emerge from that slumbering sick empire in exile…and he could not even talk…about himself. What he might have done with Palmares! What a Monte Cristo we could have had if he had looked to Zumbi for a hero! If he had the courage…to imagine the free slave societies of the Quilombos! I tell you, my friends…I have thought on these things a long time. A hero must have his labyrinth…a true hero struggles through one alone. But I have come to the conclusion that the labyrinth of the black hero has no exit.”
Before preparing dinner Euclides took them out to the stable to see his horse. As they approached, the animal became very agitated. But Euclides cooed and sweet-talked his way inside. It was dim in the stable and the only thing you could see was a giant watery eye staring out of the darkness. It belonged to a dapper chestnut criollo named Garibaldi. They stood and watched as Euclides brushed down Garibaldi’s neck, soothing him until only a little wreath of steam periodically appeared from his gray nostrils.
“I have always believed that a man is made complete by a horse,” Euclides confessed. “I can’t help it. In my blood, in my spirit, I am a gaucho. Sometimes I feel that I am even a horse myself,” he said laughing.
They heard a shout and turned to see an old black man walking up the path toward the house carrying an enormous bundle of branches. He was wearing a tattered poncho and walking steadily in dust-colored sandals. As he neared, they could see that the bundle he was carrying was lashed together with rope that rose almost four feet above his head and extended behind and over his back so that he looked almost like a snail in its shell.
“Oi, Orígenes!”
The two men engaged each other in a hearty greeting. Francesca looked on attentively. Jonah looked at Octavio, who looked back to confirm that he could not understand a word the old black man was saying. His words slurred into each other in a way that made his speech impossible to follow. After a moment it was clear that Orígenes wanted to ask Octavio something. But Octavio didn’t understand, and so he smiled, and the two became stuck in each other’s perplexity. Euclides explained that Orígenes wanted to know if he and Jonah were brothers.
Octavio looked at Jonah. “No. No, we’re not brothers. We’re friends. We’re visiting Francesca. We have been traveling through the country.”
Orígenes looked incredulous. He started to laugh and wheeze as the branches creaked over his back. Euclides invited the old man to join them for a beer, but Orígenes declined, saying that he had more work to do, that a drink was a bad idea for him, that he had stopped drinking, more or less. More or less? Euclides prodded. Mostly chimarrão now, Orígenes clarified. Euclides nodded approvingly. And with that Orígenes moved off into the dusk, climbing up the hill behind the house along a line of cashew trees.
That night they cooked together, raising a hot ruckus in the kitchen. They were making a feijoada. First off, the sausage bits. Euclides cut the slices roundly, their faces mottled and rouged.