Son
I was raised to believe in the indivisibility of blood. In its almighty power to bind souls as disparate as ours. And while it’s true that this syncretic religion was the worst part of my childhood – today I couldn’t live without it.
Give me a name. The first that comes to your mind. If you can’t think of anything, just do like my Mom (and unlike my father).
Call me Son.
Let’s start with them. My Y chromosome migrated from the Mediterranean to the Brazilian Amazonia in the 1800s. My X chromosome lived inside East Asian thieves and sailors, Amerindian slaves and shamans, before finally landing in the body of a teenage fruit picker who caught the eye of her porcupine boss, Seu Duarte Albuquerque Aragão.
“You’re a delight to my eyes, Jacinta Jatobá. And just fifteen…”
Seu Duarte eyed her in the bushes, on his hammock, in his barn. He did it against her will, whenever he wanted, making my eventual appearance inevitable.
Shortly before delivery day, my half-brothers took Mom for a walk and treated her like a punching bag. She would have bled to death if it weren’t for her big sister, the great Tia Andirá Jatobá, who knew enough of the Amazonia’s healing secrets to save us. To deliver me prematurely but unharmed.
“It was the Caipora,” Mom would boast, years later, “that mischievous red-haired ranger. Her spirit planned our revenge, from gathering the angel’s trumpet to closing the eyes of the rapist’s servants.” She’d guffaw like the Caipora is said to, delighting and terrifying us with vivid descriptions of the poisoned corpses. Tia Andirá would be by her side, slouched over a bowl of castanhas-da-Amazonia, what you call Brazil nuts, ready to correct her sister’s memories.
“You once had a blind grandmother,” Mom would tell me, “a toddler cousin, seven adult half-brothers (six of which tried to kill me), and even a half-sister who believed she was Mary Magdalene incarnate. Once they were all dead, I called their servants, our people. I told them to forget the laws of men. I told them to remember this is the world’s greatest rainforest.”
Together our people plundered what long ago had been plundered from them. Once they were done, they hid in the heart of the Amazonia, determined to never serve another master again.
It would turn out to be an unnecessary precaution. 2,596 km away, our first democratic president in decades was being impeached for corruption. The state had no time to care about the doings of northern peasants. Few of them had land titles anyway.
Leviathan knew that from Acre to Amapá, disputes were settled with slightly more imagination.
*
“Pombero, Master of the Sun, Lord of the Night. This is Ziva Teixeira, your humble worshiper. As you know, my family has been farming by the Solimões River for the last 129 years. And while we haven’t always remained true to the spirits of the rainforest, our sins aren’t comparable to the sins of our enemies: the Jatobá Sisters, the Braga Family. They’re stealing what we hold most dear. Our land.”
Ziva coughed into his calloused hand, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with his filthy sleeve. He could hear the wooden floorboards squeaking next door as his wife and daughters dragged their bags to their pickup truck. The women were baptized Catholics, under normal circumstances they’d have scolded him for this pagan ritual, but this cruel eviction had made their faith a little more flexible.
“More than any other god, you understand the importance of contradictions. In a world of pure Light, or pure Darkness, we’d all be blind,” Ziva coughed again, droplets of blood staining his skin. “After Braga’s men confiscated my cattle, the old man pointed a rifle to my wife’s head. He said I was to empty my land by the next full moon. I lied, God Pombero. I said nothing about my deal with Jacinta Jatobá. The shameful money she had forced me to take for this place.”
Ziva wondered which of his enemies would arrive first. He let out a mad chuckle. He’d have given both eyes to watch them kill each other.
“All I ask is that you let their tempers run high. If Braga’s men kill the wolfish Jatobá boy, I ask you to allow his family their revenge. Perhaps then I might be strong enough to return,” his laughter was uncontrollable now, “to mine the gold they say you’ve hidden under your worshiper’s feet. To serve you as you deserve.”
*
I had all the watermarked papers valued in the West: a BSc and an MSc (pharmacology), a record of consulting for gringo biotech conglomerates. And still my dear Tia Andirá insisted the knowledge she had acquired through fireplace stories beat mine according to every relevant measure.
We were crouching before the orange-red petals of what she claimed was a Monkey Brush Vine and I knew was Combretum constrictum. No matter how vividly I described the power of a compound microscope, no matter how many pictures of my incursions into the depths of stems and petals I showed her, the old witch wouldn’t admit her mistake.
“I guess we’ll have to wait for them to get here,” I said, grinning.
“Their opinion on this matter is irrelevant. Neither my little sister nor your little brother understand the Amazonia like I do. They know how to hunt,” Andirá smiled mischievously. “They know how to spread fear. BUT I ALONE know how to heal. I ALONE know the language of dewdrops.”
Her operatic tone sent me back to my childhood. To the bizarre night-long conversations she’d have with Mom, in which the two would compare the advice they claimed to have received from sucuri and salamanta snakes, from bacuri and bacaba trees.
Eddie and I were raised like prisoners. Our legs were free to take us wherever our hearts dared going, but our minds were shackled to the superstitions of the famous Jatobá Sisters.
“Send your dewdrops my regards, Auntie,” I turned around and smirked. “Don’t you think they should be here by now?”
“My dewdrops?”
“No, your sister and nephew.”
Auntie closed her eyes and breathed in, as if the humidity had all the answers. She inhaled twice in a row, then exhaled slowly. She repeated this ritual for several minutes, to my growing annoyance, until we both heard fierce footsteps approaching.
Reaching for the small knife inside her boot, Auntie opened her eyes and waited for our visitor to reveal his presence.
My heart raced. I felt powerless. The seven years I had spent in the city had shrunk my imagination. I had forgotten what real danger looked like.
The footsteps grew louder before stopping. I was struggling to breathe when a familiar face came out of the bushes.
It was Tião, the handyman. One of Mom’s oldest workers. Taking off his straw hat, he stared at Auntie and ignored me.
“Speak up, homem.”
“Eddie is in jail, ma’am. He’s hurt bad. Real bad.”
To me, only the latter sounded like a problem. Everyone knew prison and Eddie were hardly unfamiliar.
My little brother entered our lives when I was four. We found him alone on a ragged cloth beside the Solimões. Even though he was barely a week old, he wasn’t crying. He showed no sign of pain.
The Jatobá Sisters insisted he was a divine being. They argued over who would be his mother, and Mom was victorious. She knew all there was to know about instilling fear. Tia Andirá had no qualms about killing but dying was another story.
Eddie quickly proved he could handle the blows as they came. Aged eight, he hammered to death a salamanta snake large enough to eat him. Aged thirteen, he challenged a local farmer to a duel over his wife’s honor, an episode that greatly amused our Ribeirinho community.
I was seventeen when Eddie got himself Seu Murilo Mendes’s own rifle and woke the bigwig up by pushing the muzzle against his forehead. This is no lie or exaggeration. There were witnesses: the coveted wife. The servants.
My brother pulled the trigger unaware that the rifle wasn’t loaded. His would-be victim was too stunned to fight back.
The war we all expected never came to be. Turns out Eddie wasn’t after Dona Yasmin, but after Seu Mendes himself. The farmer had loved him, made him a man, and then disappeared.
We became faithful pen-pals while I was at uni. If he minded the growing arrogance in my letters, he never said a word. I told him about my botany lectures, the meetings with gringo investors, and my growing attachment to the metropolis.
He told me all about his exploits in the fields, in the ports, and even in jail. The best place to pick up a violent lover.
His favorite kind of man.
*
Holding a degree of any sort made you a doctor in my community. A man of reason. The kind needed in times like these, when fools drunk on power dare to rewrite the rules.
With Mom’s permission, Tia Andirá told me about the gold under Ziva Teixeira’s farm, the price they paid for his property. We figured out together how Braga’s men had settled on land that was now rightfully ours.
This isn’t my quarrel, I thought, stepping inside the police station. I’m here out of fraternal love. That’s all.
In twenty-one days I’d be heading back to São Paulo, where a peaceful life awaited me. A 9-to-5 job at a corporate lab; after-work pints with friends; the odd weekend romance.
“I’m Jacinta Jatobá’s son. Tell the police chief I arrived.”
A good third of the staff didn’t flinch at my mother’s name. This meant they were new. This meant Eddie was really in trouble.
The young receptionist smirked, taking me for some kind of idiot who had been mugged.
“You’re Jata-jata’s son, are you?”
I could see the boredom and sadism in his eyes, as he wondered how to make me regret having walked through the door.
“Why don’t we–”
“Mr. Jatobá!” cried a plump old-timer, coming to his rescue. “Why don’t you follow me? Wait in that room over there. It has a fan and a water cooler. The new boss will join you in a moment.”
Sitting down, my mind raced through multiple scenarios. Braga clearly had the rookies in his pocket. He must have brought them from the Rio Negro—Mom was known to everyone along the Solimões.
“Mr. Jatobá!” said Chief Cardoso. He was in his forties. Bald, scrawny, mustachioed. His eyes scrutinized me with a mix of fascination and horror.
“My brother is a guest here,” I said, sweating a little too much. “I just arrived from the city. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
He bobbed about in his chair then brought his hands to his chin, as if deep in thought.
“Yours is a beautiful community, Mr. Jatobá. I feel very fortunate to serve it. Everyone’s made me feel so welcome.”
“Ribeirinho hospitality is the stuff of legend, Chief Cardoso. You know what they say about the boto cor-de-rosa?”
“When the pink dolphin hears there’s a gathering on dry land, he turns himself into a handsome man and abuses your people’s hospitality. He seduces the women. Leaves them with children. Then never comes back again.”
“It happens every year and we never learn.”
Cardoso chuckled, twirling his coffee-stained mustache. His voice suddenly became serious: “How close were you to your brother?”
I didn’t like his tone. I held his gaze and said, “Eduardo was adopted. An orphan found by the water. Mom always thought there was something supernatural about him.”
“And you resented that?”
“How can anyone compete with a god?”
This did the job. I was led to my brother’s cell, where the stink of urine and feces nearly made me sick.
The guard leaned against the bars, making no effort to disguise his spying. I crouched down before Eddie, slowly absorbing the crimes Braga had committed against our family.
Oh, what a mess of red and purple. Wire filaments had been used to stitch his eyelids together. His thumbs and little fingers had been severed. He had been made to stand on hot oil.
I whispered, “You’re the salamanta snake. You’re the pedo farmer. Who am I?”
Shrieking, Eddie begged the horrified guard to get rid of his visitor. This, the guard did despite his confusion.
I was taken back to Cardoso’s office, where the man awaited me with two curious items on his desk: a binder with Eddie’s files and a loaded pistol.
Pretending not to notice them, I said, “Jacinta Jatobá has her own way of doing business. She places the highest value on cooperation.”
“So do I, sir. So do I.”
“Whenever she has a disagreement, she goes to great lengths to find a mutually satisfactory solution.”
“So I’ve heard, sir. So I’ve heard.”
“If they refuse to listen, if there’s no other way, Mom does what has to be done.”
Chief Cardoso gulped.
“Things are slightly different when one of our own breaks the rules,” I continued, “when one of our own threatens peace. Jacinta Jatobá finds it very hard to act with moderation.”
“Some would say your brother has been punished already,” the police chief stuttered. He didn’t know whether to believe me. He didn’t even know which side he was supposed to be on anymore. All he wanted was for this meeting to end.
“My mother disagrees.”
I walked out with Eddie, who showed with thespian prowess how much he feared me. The last one to see us was the receptionist. My brother and I couldn't resist it.
We blew him a kiss.
His face lost all color.
*
I wanted to go home to the city. This place was swallowing me. We should have left it centuries ago. We should have given everything back to the Amerindians, who know how to steward the rainforest without yielding to its savagery.
Tia Andirá removed the wire filaments from Eddie’s eyelids, nursed his wounds, but failed to give him back two thumbs and two pinkies. In our world, unable to grip a pistol, my brother was doomed.
Sitting at the edge of his bed, we managed to laugh about Chief Cardoso. Then all of a sudden, Eddie turned serious. To read his emotions you had to learn how to read his bruises. He could only open his right eye a little. Enough to tell light from darkness. Friend from foe.
While Auntie and I comforted him, Mom prepared herself for the Ceremony. She claimed to have scheduled it long before recent events. She said they were no reason to change her plans.
“You’ve lost touch with reality!” I shouted, furious that she’d abandon Eddie like this. “You’re leaving as the colonizers arrive at our shores!”
“So are you, Son.”
She was right. In twenty-four hours I’d take a boat to Manaus, where in a week’s time I’d fly to São Paulo.
“When will you come back to see us?” asked Tia Andirá, shyly.
Never, was what I thought. “Soon,” was what I replied.
Her candle-lit face as she dabbed a wet cloth against Eddie’s skin would haunt me forever. I saw it when I hung my hammock on that run-down boat. I saw it the next day when we moored at Itororó, one of the several communities run by our new enemy.
Itororó had been re-shaped in the image of Braga’s avarice. Gold had sparked the hunger of the modern-day conquistador. The green was erased to make space for bars and brothels open 24/7. Anything to appease the ferocious men he had transformed into excavating machines.
I saw too many ordinary citizens limping. Too many fuzzy eyes who couldn’t put a sentence together. My suspicions were confirmed when I came across several containers filled with liquid metal: the poison Braga used to separate ore from gold.
It was hard to sleep that night. The boat shook as if it were being hit by violent waves. My net worked but I could still hear the mosquitos’ frenzied buzzing, which, according to Tia Andirá, was their love song, their attempt at seduction.
I thought of Mom – 1,169 km away, by the Peruvian border – preparing herself to call up the spirits of the rainforest. To dance throughout the night, to the music of Duda and Daiana, friends from her days as my father’s servant.
Their noses would be pierced with grass, like a jaguar’s whiskers. Before sunrise, as the dancers lay exhausted in a big cool tent, Duda would press pieces of ember against their arms until they drew blood. He’d then unwrap a banana-leaf wrapping, revealing several giant monkey frogs. Daiana would rub them against everyone’s wounds then go back to her percussion. A slow sensual beat would guide them into the reality of dreams.
Mom would talk to the Caipora. To the trees, the plants, the animals. She’d confess her fears and her ambitions. Together they’d concoct a plan.
That’s how it would have happened if the conquistador hadn’t been a step ahead of us. If Duda’s throat hadn’t been slit as Mom lay there waiting for frog slime. If Daiana hadn’t sold herself to the soy farmer, the dam-builder, the gold miner.
A golden dart frog was brought to my mother’s skin. Phyllobates terribilis, as I’d later learn. An amphibian I had studied myself, on behalf of a certain gringo company, in a failed attempt to develop a painkiller.
Mom felt like her blood was on fire. Like her heart was pumping pain to the extremities of her body. Each Phyllobates terribilis could kill thirty men at once. Knowing Jacinta Jatobá’s reputation, Daiana employed a couple.
I was told everything on my third day traveling, after we moored in Manacapuru and I called home to report on what I had seen, the poisoning of Itororó by the God Mercury.
The boat left without me. I stood for eighteen hours on the sinking planks they called port, waiting for the coffin that would take me home.
*
“We burn every square meter Braga has ever stepped on,” my brother cried out, “we turn everyone he loves into ashes.”
Auntie shook her head, pacing around the room. “I’ve seen this before. We can’t win without your mother. We must disappear in the darkness of the Amazonia. Braga will hunt us for years. He’ll use us to break new ground in the art of torture.”
“How can we go on living without seeking revenge?” Eddie whispered, his voice raspy, his eyes closed.
Lying on the dining table, her skin swollen beyond recognition, the top half of her head severed, was our mother’s body. That very evening Braga would frighten his party guests by drinking from her skull.
“My soul is starved for revenge as much as yours,” said Auntie, “I held her as a baby. I thought of her as my daughter. But this is a war we cannot win. By now every farmer and miner and smuggler know what Braga has done. New alliances have been formed and they don’t include us.”
“I WANT TO DIE REVENGING HER!” Eddie shrieked, trying his utmost to open his eyes, wrecking what was left of his tarsal muscles.
It was the end of everything I took as fundamental. And I don’t mean mother, Eddie, Auntie. I don’t mean our land and workers and products.
“We’ll give them fire,” I whispered, seeing the world as Jacinta Jatobá had seen it, an eternal struggle between the deluded and the delirious. “We’ll give them darkness.”
We’ll give them blood.
*
The fastest way to blacken green is with a match. Livestock doesn’t need centenary trees or hallucinogenic plants to grow fat and become steaks. The flora is a nuisance that must be gotten out of the way.
It’s how we’ve done things ever since the military junta dreamed up the Trans-Amazonian roads, drawing ignorant city folks to settle here and farm away.
We built dams without any thought for rivers. We dug up gold without worrying about poisoning the gold-diggers. We sold ‘exotic’ animals to the 1% of the Rich World – America, Russia, China, is there any difference among that cohort? – without caring about their survival.
My mother once told me that no one can match the lunacy of Leviathans. That’s because each person can only be so insane, while governments and corporations soak up their people’s worst ideas, keeping them long after they’re gone.
We can’t resist them. Billions of gringo dollars have been invested here. Fire, mercury and assassinations are no longer the way to conduct business.
Someone should have told this to Braga before I gathered all that footage, the samples of blood and soil, the proof that he ticked every box possible.
Our partners unwittingly fought our war for us. Thank you, Feds. Thank you, Gringos. Everyone Braga cared about was either arrested or made to disappear. As for the God Mercury, well, a truck crashed into the police van transporting him. He woke up in a cabin surrounded by his loved ones.
“Witness what you’ve done to my nephew, Braga,” said Auntie. “I have to give him new fingers.”
She tied thin sharp blades to Eddie’s hands. My brother let out a demented chuckle. Sitting astride each member of Braga’s family – his wife, his little kids – my brother lived up to his new nickname: Edward Mãos de Tesoura.
If he was the butcher, I was the chef. I prepared their remains medium-rare, the way I heard Braga liked, and seasoned them with the slime of a certain amphibian. I served this delicatessen in an artisanal bowl my guest had carved with his own hands.
“Just take a bite,” I said, feeling tears run down my cheeks. “After witnessing all of this you must want to die. I would. So would Eddie and Tia Andirá.”
“No. Please!”
“To die you must eat your children.”
Like in a Greek myth. Like in a Goya painting.
Isn’t this a work of art?
Haven’t we reached the pinnacle of madness?