Carioca Fletch

down or make you less entertaining.

Idalina was delighted. It did not disturb her to be marrying the liveliest boy in the favela, or that her bond to you in marriage would have to be made of elastic.

Fernando fell into a mood so black for weeks he could not think of bookkeeping. He spent his time keeping his eye on Idalina. He argued with the air.

“Am I the only sane man in the world to see that Janio Barreto is a bad boy and no match for my Idalina? He has done enough to me, in keeping my sons from thinking in assets and debits! Why does he want a wife when he has every girl in the favela spitting at each other over him? He will never stop! Does he want to marry my daughter and continue his wild life just to torment me? It is as natural for him to be a husband as it is for a tomcat to pull a wagon!

“Idalina, he is no good! At the first difficulties of life, he will wander away! Already he has wandered from his home once! I want to know why! Once a man has wandered from his home, he is never to be trusted! He will wander again!

“Believe me, he will end up beaten in a gutter! That will not be a husband to be proud of!

“Probably dead! Some day someone will put a knife to him, and that will be the end of your husband, Janio Barreto, and of your marriage!”

The weight of the favela was on the side of the young lovers, of course, as people who are not directly involved in a situation always prefer romance to reason, and while Fernando stewed in his deep gloom, you and Idalina were married.

Now, as you must remember, not only were you known to be able to dance better and for a longer time than anyone, with more admiring eyes upon you, also you brought to the favela many new things about kick-dancing, capoeira, it being a skill which really developed in the interior. You taught the young men in Santos Lima more about capoeira than people knew in all the other favelas in Rio.

At that time, the Carnival Parade was beginning to become more organized from just a street competition among the favelas to the more formal presentation and attraction it is today.

Immediately, the samba school of Santos Lima became most famous for its troupe of capoeiristas you had trained. Santos Lima still has the reputation as having the best capoeira group in Rio de Janeiro.

But the first prophecy of Fernando came true.

You did not return immediately from Carnival that year. For days afterwards you were missing.

Finally you returned to Santos Lima from somewhere in the city. It was clear you had been physically beaten, and very badly. Your body was black with bruises. There were knife cuts on your upper arms and shoulders. Your face was as lumpy and welted as the bed of a couple married fifty years. You dragged yourself home like a beaten dog. Obviously, you had ended up beaten in a gutter.

People remarked, in hushed voices, the change in you. Silently you sat in your little house, licking your wounds. You never said what happened. You spoke to no one. Your laughter was not heard anywhere in the favela. You never went out and embarrassed Idalina by being with other women, to such an extent Idalina was beginning to lose her pride in you.

This is as I have the story from my mother and my uncles. Is your life beginning to come alive for you?

Then the second prophecy of Fernando came true.

After sitting quietly at home, not working, not playing, for almost all of Lent, you rose up and, carrying nothing, taking nothing with you except the working shorts you wore roped around your waist, you walked down the favela without a salutation to anyone, and disappeared. You wandered away.

Everyone was sure you were gone for good. Fun had gone from the favela.

Everyone commiserated with Fernando for having an abandoned daughter and two small grandchildren living out of his pocket, and congratulated him on the accuracy of his prophecies.

But the next winter, nine months later, you came back. You sailed into Guanabara Bay in a fishing boat you said was your own, a big boat ten meters long. You said you won it playing cards in Uruguay. The name painted on her side was in Spanish, La Muneca. Surely you had sailed a long way. You were as thin as a street dog and very badly sunburned across your nose and shoulders. Some people said you went to Uruguay and stole the boat. Did you?

So now you had your own fishing boat.

In the inactivity caused by your absence, one of the Gomes brothers had become too fat to fish, the other too drunken. They both said they wanted to stay ashore now and think about bookkeeping.

You took on another young man, younger than you, named Tobias Novaes, to help you fish.

You worked hard. Shortly, you had a house near the top of the favela, higher even than Fernando’s house. And for every married year, you had a child from your wife, Idalina. And every one of those children had children to play with their own ages who were also partly fair and looked as much like them as cousins.

At about your present age, it happened that a girl younger than you, who was as fair of hair and skin as yourself, came to the favela. Immediately, the favela said, “Oh, poor Idalina! This one will be serious! If they love themselves, how can they not love each other?”

And it was noticed that you became more serious then, worked longer hours, seldom looked up from your work. It was if you were trying to ignore the inevitable: Ana Tavares, her name was.

But the inevitable is the inevitable, and as if your seed were transmitted by the wind, it was soon seen that Ana Tavares was glowing in her pregnancy.

This was especially noted as Ana Tavares was only waiting out the year to be old enough to join the convent of The Sacred Heart of Jesus. People marveled that a girl who spent so many hours of the day and the night kneeling before the statue of the Blessed Virgin could become pregnant. They attributed it to the wind.

Spending just as much time in prayer as always, Ana did not explain or complain.

Her father, however, whose life had not been as saintly as is recommended, was outraged. It had been his fondest wish to have a daughter a nun to pray for his soul before and after it departed.

You, having no father or brothers to attack, and being too young and strong, too expert a capoeirista, to attack, laughed for days after old Tavares attacked your father-in-law, Fernando, for his trouble-making son-in-law. Your father-in-law did not defend you. He too carried such rage at you that he yelled back at Tavares, and the two fathers of women became so enraged thinking about you that soon they were beating each other with their fists, then rolling on the ground, apparently fighting about which had the greater rage against you.

In truth, the son of Ana Tavares was entirely fair. She became the wife of a carpenter, and the boy—most likely another of your sons—became a Puxador de Samba, a singer of great repute in the samba school.

Yes, Oswaldinho there, in the window, is a son of that son of yours. You see how fair he is? Clearly, he has your blood, as have I.

Then the third prophecy of old Fernando came true—really came true.

One night you did not come home. You did not come home most nights. You were still young and perhaps by now considered it your obligation to entertain the favela with your tricks and to continue increasing your ever-growing audience by copulation.

But after this night in particular, after a heavy sea storm, you were found on the beach, face down, with your throat slit ear to ear. Your blood had drained from your neck into the sand. Your shorts and hair and skin were caked with salt water, as if you had swum a long way to shore.

People say that in that particular spot on the beach, it has been impossible to light a fire or even light a match, ever since.

Your boat, La Muneca, was missing, and never seen again.

Never seen again also was the boy who had helped you on the boat, Tobias Novaes.

For many years it was believed you had been murdered by young Tobias, although that surprised people, as it was generally believed he was a good boy. People thought he had slit your throat and stolen your boat.

But years later, his father got a letter from him, saying he had become a monk in Recife. Instantly, they had a letter written to him, asking if he had murdered you and stolen your boat.