They left the cabaret early in the morning. Ibrahim, a lightweight when it came to drinking, was staggering along the street. Cockeye Paula hadn’t kept her promise to wait for him and had gone off with a bad-tempered plantation owner, a certain Cláudio Portugal, crazy for cross-eyed girls.
“Promise me and don’t give me any shit! Either you come with me, or I’ll save some time and finish off those bums right now.…” He threatened to pull out his pistol.
The owner of the Bargain Shop consoled himself with stuffy-nosed Haydée, who made up for the nasality of her voice with a range of skills. In the state capital she’d worked in a house of French and Polish women, and she could do anything, according to her whim.
In Glorinha Goldass’s room the lamp cast its light on the mirror hanging on the wall and the print of Saint George. The sheets and pillowcases smelled of patchouli. While he waited for the angry woman to clean herself over a basin in preparation for resuming their game of bird and snare, Jamil reviewed the facts he’d collected. Before he went any further, he would have to bring out into the open the true condition of the store, the confused business of the partnership, observe the daughters and sons-in-law, and lastly, get to know the ugly one. He had been destined to have a pretty wife, but in the backwoods wilderness where he did his business, in that out-of-the-way place where he’d set himself up, small farmers were used to eating well one day and poorly the next, on vermin and weeds, without complaining or raising a fuss. In the harsh weather of the cacao farms, mules, mares, and donkeys all grazed and came out okay.
11
Even though he was tied up all the next day with suppliers, goods, and payments, Jamil Bichara found time to have a look at the store. From the brief inventory done with the help of Ibrahim, he came away with a favorable impression, which he kept to himself. He wasn’t going to trumpet his triumphs to his adversary. He called attention to the negative aspects: the delay in payments, the decline in sales, negligence, incompetence.
The lively Alfeu and the merry cherub felt they were on an eternal honeymoon, a romantic and ruinous attitude. Nighttime was not sufficient for their screwing, which they continued well into the morning. Added to that was the baby’s wailing, the changing of diapers, pacifiers. It was impossible to keep a tight schedule. They opened and closed the doors of the establishment when it suited their fancy. Drowsy, they continued their billing and cooing behind the counter without giving proper attention to the seamstresses and housewives who, in exchange for a few small purchases—a thimble, a dozen buttons, hairpins, two yards of ribbon—demanded a little talk and consideration.
Sálua’s clientele, which had been faithful and numerous, had begun to dwindle, leaving for merchants less in love and more solicitous. Nor was the proprietor much help to the store’s progress. The night before in the cabaret, Ibrahim had confessed he had been completely detached from the store during his wife’s life. Sálua had taken care of all obligations and responsibilities and also kept the accounts. He remembered Sálua with moist eyes. Were these easy tears a touch of cunning, or the expression of a sincere and sorrowful longing for a good life and a good home?
In spite of its obvious decline, the Bargain Shop, located on a downtown street, a privileged site with plenty of room, looked to Jamil like a gift from China. The recent difficulties had shaken up only slightly the good reputation the firm had enjoyed in the business world during all those previous years. In capable hands the store would be able to recoup its golden years quite quickly, and it had the makings of being transformed, with a little effort, into a well-stocked bazaar where a little of everything would be sold: men’s and women’s clothing, shoes and hats, suspenders, bows, stockings, and neckties. All that called for a strong hand, an aptitude for business, and hard work, proven virtues of Jamil Bichara. The problem lay in the number of daughters and sons-in-law, too many people. If he decided to join the family and the firm, he would have to make a serious study of the clauses in the contract.
They were going over bills and receipts when, from the living quarters in the rear and into the store, came a slender little tootsie, who kissed Jamil’s countryman’s hand—“Your blessing, Father”—and smiled at Jamil as her curious and calculating eyes examined him from top to bottom, as though evaluating his merits as a male. Could she be the ugly one? Impossible. There was nothing ugly about her; quite the contrary.
“My daughter Samira,” Ibrahim explained. “The one who’s married to the telegrapher.”
“Jamil Bichara, at your service.”
“Jamil Bichara? I’ve heard that name before.…”
“He’s a friend of my old chum Raduan.”
“Of Uncle Raduan? Oh, now I remember.” She pointed at Jamil and said mischievously, “The sultan of the cabaret, right?”
Jamil laughed, a bit embarrassed. “Sultan’s what he calls me. He has his little joke.…”
The lively girl kept looking him over, and all of a sudden she burst into a peal of crystalline and mocking laughter, without explaining what had brought it on. Uncle Raduan had bits of gossip for the interest and pleasure of anyone who wished to listen, but he kept his spicy tales of bohemian life for Samira and a few other preferred women, revealing places and episodes forbidden to married ladies. Uncle Raduan was the Devil incarnate, with that velvety voice and the most innocent of looks as he divulged every little tidbit. In order to explain his friend Jamil’s success with the hookers, he’d make reference to one aspect of his anatomy: It was enormous, like a table leg. Judging from his great build, it must have been true. Samira closed her eyes to give herself a better picture.
As for Uncle Raduan, since he wasn’t a blood relative, there was nothing to stop his gossiping to bring on laughs and pass the time. The double entendres, the hints, the spicy tone, the inconsequential flirting were all fine. Necking and nooky, those were the pleasures of Samira, who had been destined for a storybook marriage. Exchanging glances and smiles, dubious words, feeling the surreptitious touch of a foot, a hand, a lip, by chance or by intent, could anything be better? There were those who called her shameless and said she had put horns on Esmeraldino the riddle maker; others swore that Samira wouldn’t go that far with her liberties. She’d play along, all right, but at H-hour she’d drop out, the little cheat, with her I-never-said-that.
As she bent over to pick up a spool of thread in front of Jamil, she let him take in the curve of her loose breasts. Wanting to or not, who can tell? Before leaving she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, as if they were dry. Dry or thirsty, whichever way you want to interpret it. A sister-in-law isn’t a relative, Jamil reflected. Going over the accounts again in his mind, he placed Samira in the column of the store’s assets.
12
Had it not been for the presence of Adma, the dinner would have been perfect. A most tasty Arab meal prepared by Samira with the help of Fárida the cherub, who had also picked some flowers to decorate the table, as if the two of them were not enough, exotic, dressed and coiffed in the latest style. They were sorry about the absence of Jamile, hidden away on the farm along with her husband. Speaking of husbands, Samira’s, the telegrapher, was in attendance and scintillating, cordial and good-natured, showing a gluttonous appreciation of the kibbe and the esfiha. Making for a refined sense of well-being were Raduan Murad, wise and witty, and Samira’s right knee, as she was seated to the left of Jamil. She didn’t know how to sit still.
Unfortunately there was also Adma, a baleful figure but an indispensable guest. In order for Jamil to get a look at her and chat with her, Ibrahim had invited him to dine with the family in their upstairs living quarters. Cautious, he’d said nothing to his daughters about the plan he was hatching. To do so before his countryman had met the intended would have been foolhardy.
No sooner did Jamil set eyes upon Adma than he realized the enormous challenge. It wasn’t any use to bedeck her in bows and ribbons, cute trinkets from the store. It was insufficient compensation for her complete lack of physical att
ributes. Adma would have to be a saint on an altar for any citizen in possession of his faculties to decide to take her in matrimony. May God bestow that sainthood! During the course of the evening Jamil had proof of the Lord’s indifference. He hadn’t bestowed one single shitty bit of it.
Jamil was given a knockout punch when he faced Adma upon their introduction. But being who he was, one hardened by ambushes, by the quid pro quos of life, he didn’t immediately drop right then and there his idea of transforming the Bargain Shop into the bazaar with the most goods and the most customers in Itabuna. He’d thought of finding an ugly old maid on whose uninviting face was reflected, however, enough natural goodness that almost reached the point of rendering her pretty. Ugly but pleasant, active at household chores, genteel in manner, a charming conversationalist, all in all an affable old maid whose only defect consisted in not being pretty. Thinking that, he came face-to-face with a hag, a toad-faced hag!
Sitting across from Jamil, Adma was governing the table from one end to the other, reproving with her look, her gestures, and her voice anything that might have meant merriment, laughter, and contentment. She was harsh in her condemnation of a new very funny riddle put forth by Esmeraldino to test the guests’ intelligence.
“Listen! Listen! It’s quite easy. What everyday action can turn you into someone filthy?”
He looked around triumphantly and then gave the answer himself. “Walking down the street. That makes you a streetwalker, a prostitute. Ha ha ha!”
Very good, very good, a nice riddle. The cherub clapped her hands, all worked up by her brother-in-law’s ingenious invention. “Indecent!” thundered Adma. Indecent were the kisses exchanged by Alfeu and Fárida between mouthfuls; intolerable was the satisfied belching of Ibrahim, his belly full. She didn’t dare interrupt Raduan Murad, but she tightened her face as she listened to him declaiming poetry in Arabic about women and wine: filth! Immune to the noisy jollity, apart from the general well-being, intolerant and unhappy. At a certain moment, in order to serve the coffee better, Samira leaned over in front of Jamil, and her neighbor had no way of preventing his eyes from landing on the open neck of her dress. That was enough for Adma to lock her sister in a deadly stare, along with the hateful guest and the heedless riddler. Jamil trembled.
The malignant look of accusation and repugnance followed Jamil outside when, after dinner, gathering up his courage, Ibrahim asked the gentlemen present. “Shall we take a walk around the square, to help digest our food?”
With the exception of Alfeu, still on his honeymoon, as has been noted, and Esmeraldino, who started along but held back when Samira wanted to know, “So who’s going to take me home?” addressing her husband without taking her roguish eyes off Jamil.
The others picked up their hats and headed for the whorehouse. Raduan Murad wondered if there was still any salvation for poor Adma. Maybe it was too late and neither young Adib, with his adolescent gawkiness, or the gigantic Jamil, with his immense tool, could rescue her from her madness, from the fires of hell, save her from the curse of her hardened virginity and teach her, in bed, the love of life.
13
Ibrahim stopped midsentence. He tried to get up from his chair and slipped down under the table, from where they pulled him up with the help of the waiters. The meeting was adjourned, and Jamil resolved to take his countryman to the door of his house. He would never get there by himself. His legs wouldn’t hold him up.
Sad and weepy, Ibrahim had spent most of the night thinking about the dead woman. All that love was very moving for the whores who had gathered around the table to listen to him. Some of them had known Sálua when she was behind the counter at the Bargain Shop, where they went to shop for adornments for their dresses, fine combs, fancy rings. A married and rich lady owner—and such a beauty!—Sálua had made no distinctions among her customers, treating all of them with the same courtesy, whether mothers with a family or licentious harlots.
Sharing Ibrahim’s feelings, they remembered that during his wife’s lifetime he was a model husband—a terrible example for the community in the majority opinion of the heads of families. He never frequented the cabaret, nor did he spend the night in bawdy houses, and if he did happen to do so, it was with an idea to forget it, but he never forgot. On the occasion of a festive dinner at home, so frequent when she was alive, so rare after her death, the weight of her absence became unbearable. Cockeye Paula, the sentimental reader of serialized novels that came out every Thursday, would burst into tears. A love like the one that joined Sálua and Ibrahim could be found only in the one between Paul and Virginie, and even then!
Jamil had come to realize that the widower had very little or no wisdom at all, never going beyond being just a nice fellow. He would listen to his laments with silent sympathy as he got ready to take him home. Raduan Murad had left sometime earlier, off to his duties at the poker table, but Jamil could count on the help of Glorinha Goldass and Cockeye Paula. Among the three of them they led Ibrahim and his cross in fits and starts up to the vicinity of his store.
At the sound of footsteps, a shutter on the second floor opened. A storm of insults broke the silence of the night. Posted at the window, Adma, the mouth of hell, was spewing out imprecations, accusations, complaints, and threats at her father, the Cyrenaic, and the Magdalens. It was really something to behold. Raduan Murad had witnessed such a spectacle only once, and he’d had to have recourse to unusual terms to classify it: Catilinarian, vespine, atrabilious.
The two whores fell back, and Ibrahim sobbed on Jamil’s shoulder. Adma went on, an insatiable fury, waking up the whole neighborhood. Ibrahim made an effort to get his balance and headed off to the gates of Calvary. Before he crossed the threshold he lifted his arms and waved them about in the gesture of a drowning man. Adma was unmoved, nor did she relent. Pointing to Jamil, she thundered her last words.
Quickening his pace, the Turk caught up with his companions in fun, who were fleeing down the street. Cockeye Paula, offended, remarked, “Goddamned daughter! Ibrahim’s a softy. If he took the whip to that willful bitch, her rotten mood would stop right there.”
With her usual gentility, Glorinha Goldass offered a better alternative. “What she needs, poor thing, is a good dick.”
As he thought about it, Jamil found them both to be right. Suffering from a grave illness, a hopeless one, Adma, if she was to be cured, stood in urgent need of both remedies, the dick and the whip, in generous doses. In which, without knowing it, he was in agreement with young Adib: You tame a woman with pats and slaps.
14
For two months, an eternity, the Turk Jamil Bichara lived the problem at its fullest, pondering it down to its smallest details, analyzing it from all kinds of angles. At the station where he was taking the train to Mutuns, he said to Ibrahim, “I need time to think before I make any decision. When I get back I’ll have an answer for you. In the meantime, look after the store a little and take charge at home.”
In the wilds of Itaguassu, with Shaitan tempting Jamil ceaselessly night and day, Ibrahim’s proposal was looking better, ever more attractive and enticing. Allah seemed to be staying on the sidelines, indifferent. He’d abandoned Jamil at that decisive moment, leaving the responsibility entirely in his hands.
Seen from the miserable hamlet where he was hard at work, the city of Itabuna—lively and turbulent, with its businesses, church, and chapel, the Lords Hotel, cabaret, bars, houses with ladies of the night, its cobblestone streets, the hustle and bustle at the station with the daily arrival and departure of the passenger train, the intrigues of politics and landgrabs, the hired guns, the mule trains unloading cacao at the great warehouses of the export companies—was becoming a regular capital city. In Itabuna you lived; in Itaguassu you suffered.
Glorinha Goldass would work him up, as usual, disturbing his sleep, offering herself to him naked, lewd, and inaccessible. She would be joined by another demanding lure, a more delicate temptation, a married lady, Samira Jafet Esmeraldino. Her saucy
knee, her loose, abundant breasts, just right for grabbing and squeezing with your hands, her crafty look, a look that was on the make, her wet tongue over dry lips, Samira whispering, “Come here, come here right now, I’m waiting for you, a sister-in-law isn’t a blood relative, no.” Which of the two was the more desirable, the trickier? Two mistakes were leading him astray: the whore in a cathouse and the other one even more.
Most of all, however, weighing on the balance was the prospect of reviving the store in just a short time and immediately turning it into a bazaar, well furnished with merchandise, provided with everything fine and good, a business with lots of customers, fat profits. Once he was declared chief of the clan, Jamil would lay down the law benevolently. He imagined himself behind the counter, aided by his sisters-in-law Samira and Fárida. Instead of staying home sucking on a lollipop or in boobish conversation with people at the station, Samira, young and robust, would be of obvious help in the store, making her pleasant manner useful. By the same token, Fárida would be a beautiful presence, pleasing to the customers’ eyes, and the masculine clientele would increase just as soon as the Bargain Shop was changed into a bazaar. As for the agreeable Alfeu, back at his true vocation at the English Haberdashery, there he could fulfill his enviable career, advancing from apprentice to journeyman, from journeyman to master tailor, ceasing to represent any threat to the store’s finances.
It’s worth repeating what everybody knows quite well: A sister-in-law is not a blood relative, but family ties do permit an intimacy that could be called fraternal. Jamil’s horizons were expanding: a sultan with his harem. That, yes, was living.
Jamil studied minutely the clauses in the contract to be drawn up at the notary’s office. Partnership on Adma’s side from her mother’s inheritance, partner with Ibrahim on his side in his role as manager of the business. Given over to his leisure activities, Ibrahim would stay on as a kind of silent partner, with Jamil in the position of complete authority with the right to do and undo things.