the enormous sky.
We are standing beside a new gravel road that stretches straight into the dusty distance in either direction. Behind us is the ragged airstrip and in front of us a line of great trees that hides the river, and all around a rolling country of high scrub vegetation shimmering in the heat.
The sun, already high, beats down on us hard as hail so we take cover under the porch of a long hut thatched with palm leaves. Inside we find a counter and some shelves of groceries and a pale sweatylooking heavyset man with a week’s growth of stubble on his chin. Immediately we are all drinking
cafezinhos
out of the inevitable tiny white cups.
First thing I ask, “Is Bernardo Sayão at the Colônia Agrícola?”
“He is,” says the pale man enthusiastically. Then he explains that we still have three leagues to go. We must be patient. They will have seen the plane and will send out for us from the colônia. Sayão always sends out for people, Sayão attends to everything.
The pale man turns out to be a Russian, from the Ukraine. He has lived twentyone years in Brazil. He made big money in São Paulo as a machinist, but when he heard about the colony and the road into the north he’d moved out here. He steps in back behind a bamboo partition and brings out a diving helmet. Gold, he says, rolling his bloodshot gray eyes;he dove in the rivers for gold. Was he making money at it? One eye crinkles up like a parrot’s and his face takes on that sly look of the peasant on the steppe. He doesn’t answer but he holds up his thumb and forefinger and rubs them together vigorously.
Before we know what has happened we are adrift in a tumultuous argument about the Soviet Union. The pale man insists that Russia behaves as she does because she is ringed by treacherous enemies. England and America have always been her enemies. My literary friend from Goiânia brings up the Stalin-Hitler Pact. The Brazilian judge, a small brown sparrowlike man with tortoiseshell glasses, perks up and asks if the Russians did right to partition Poland. In 1918 the imperialist nations fought Russia, the pale man shouts back, fingering his diving helmet in a threatening way as if about to use it for a weapon. We lean across the counter and roar at him.
Meanwhile an audience is gathering, an aged scarecrow with a face of stained leather puckered on one side by some sort of ulcer, a soiled barelegged boy with a cast in his eye, a dog, two hens and a rooster. A pig sticks his snout in through a rent in the bamboo wall. Two tiny yellowfaced children peek in beside him.
We are all sweating like horses. The pale man tears the shirt off his damp chest in an agony of conviction. It is all lies we are telling about the Soviet Union. Then he lays his thick forefinger along his nose and crinkles up his eye with that sly look again and says, “In all this there is a mystery … There is a very secret mystery. It is true that there is no liberty now but the secret of Russia is liberty in the future.”
“Look here,” the judge asks him, “if you are such an admirer of the Soviet Union how is it you’ve been spending all these years in Brazil looking for gold like a capitalist?”
Suddenly the pale man smiles all over his face. He slaps his wet chest. He has a friend in São Paulo, he drawls, who is adoctor and writes very brilliant articles against alcoholism. This doctor wrote a whole book against alcoholism but whenever his friends meet this doctor he is in a bar buying himself a drink. The pale man thrusts out his hand laughing. He shakes hands all around then he brings out another set of cafezinhos on the house.
The cloud of dust that has been coming towards us down the road turns out to contain a bus, a junglestained paleblue bus bulging with passengers and packages. The bus stops in front of the palmthatched hut. A few grimy passengers straggle out to have themselves a coffee. The bus is on its way to the colônia. We are fitted in among dogs
We are standing beside a new gravel road that stretches straight into the dusty distance in either direction. Behind us is the ragged airstrip and in front of us a line of great trees that hides the river, and all around a rolling country of high scrub vegetation shimmering in the heat.
The sun, already high, beats down on us hard as hail so we take cover under the porch of a long hut thatched with palm leaves. Inside we find a counter and some shelves of groceries and a pale sweatylooking heavyset man with a week’s growth of stubble on his chin. Immediately we are all drinking
cafezinhos
out of the inevitable tiny white cups.
First thing I ask, “Is Bernardo Sayão at the Colônia Agrícola?”
“He is,” says the pale man enthusiastically. Then he explains that we still have three leagues to go. We must be patient. They will have seen the plane and will send out for us from the colônia. Sayão always sends out for people, Sayão attends to everything.
The pale man turns out to be a Russian, from the Ukraine. He has lived twentyone years in Brazil. He made big money in São Paulo as a machinist, but when he heard about the colony and the road into the north he’d moved out here. He steps in back behind a bamboo partition and brings out a diving helmet. Gold, he says, rolling his bloodshot gray eyes;he dove in the rivers for gold. Was he making money at it? One eye crinkles up like a parrot’s and his face takes on that sly look of the peasant on the steppe. He doesn’t answer but he holds up his thumb and forefinger and rubs them together vigorously.
Before we know what has happened we are adrift in a tumultuous argument about the Soviet Union. The pale man insists that Russia behaves as she does because she is ringed by treacherous enemies. England and America have always been her enemies. My literary friend from Goiânia brings up the Stalin-Hitler Pact. The Brazilian judge, a small brown sparrowlike man with tortoiseshell glasses, perks up and asks if the Russians did right to partition Poland. In 1918 the imperialist nations fought Russia, the pale man shouts back, fingering his diving helmet in a threatening way as if about to use it for a weapon. We lean across the counter and roar at him.
Meanwhile an audience is gathering, an aged scarecrow with a face of stained leather puckered on one side by some sort of ulcer, a soiled barelegged boy with a cast in his eye, a dog, two hens and a rooster. A pig sticks his snout in through a rent in the bamboo wall. Two tiny yellowfaced children peek in beside him.
We are all sweating like horses. The pale man tears the shirt off his damp chest in an agony of conviction. It is all lies we are telling about the Soviet Union. Then he lays his thick forefinger along his nose and crinkles up his eye with that sly look again and says, “In all this there is a mystery … There is a very secret mystery. It is true that there is no liberty now but the secret of Russia is liberty in the future.”
“Look here,” the judge asks him, “if you are such an admirer of the Soviet Union how is it you’ve been spending all these years in Brazil looking for gold like a capitalist?”
Suddenly the pale man smiles all over his face. He slaps his wet chest. He has a friend in São Paulo, he drawls, who is adoctor and writes very brilliant articles against alcoholism. This doctor wrote a whole book against alcoholism but whenever his friends meet this doctor he is in a bar buying himself a drink. The pale man thrusts out his hand laughing. He shakes hands all around then he brings out another set of cafezinhos on the house.
The cloud of dust that has been coming towards us down the road turns out to contain a bus, a junglestained paleblue bus bulging with passengers and packages. The bus stops in front of the palmthatched hut. A few grimy passengers straggle out to have themselves a coffee. The bus is on its way to the colônia. We are fitted in among dogs
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