I was a sad little boy. I liked to run and jump
with my cousins, I went around with the black kids, but at heart I was sad.
Sometimes I used to talk to myself, and I would wander alone in the shade of
the trees in the garden, listening to the melancholy bird songs. It was alone
that I enjoyed my favourite sport, laying traps and catching birds. I could
watch for hours, waiting for success.
I would place a captive canary in a cage as
bait. Then another canary would come along and perch on top of the cage,
exchanging caresses with the prisoner, lamenting the fate of his poor friend,
and then cast an eye on the corn in the cage, and as he hesitated, I would
spring the trap and he would fall into his prison.
I would spend hours on end like this. Quite a
number of canaries would come, check out the cage, the prisoner and the corn,
and fly away well aware of what was happening. While I waited and watched I
entertained myself with my thoughts. The sound of rustling in the bushes would
alert me to the arrival of any birds.
On my own I could think of things that I
couldn't think of when in the company of others. I had already been on the
plantation for four years. I had changed a lot since the day I came from
Recife.
'Next year you will go to college.' they told
me.
And what would this college be like? My cousins
told me many things about it, about the scary headmaster, the school benches,
punishments, organized games, military exercises. Half of me wanted to go along
with them.
But I had everything I needed here on the
plantation. My Aunt Maria took care of me as if she were my mother. The memory
of my mother would cloud my quiet moments. Why had she died? And my father? Why
did they never give me any news of him? When I asked about him, they told me
that he was ill in hospital. That was what a hospital was, a place from which
you never returned. I saw people from the plantation go there with letters of
recommendation from my grandfather, and they never returned.
The black women, would lower their voices
whenever somebody went off to hospital.
"She's gone to hospital," they would
whisper, as if the person had died.
I was petrified of dying. The business of being
left to rot below the earth, eaten up by the worms, seemed incomprehensible to
me. Everybody had to die. The black women said that some remained in the earth
as seed. I wanted to be one of these fortunate ones. Why not remain as seed?
When the world ended I wanted to be upon a
boat. I saw myself sailing along, surrounded by all the animals, my Aunt Maria,
Old Generosa, Granny Galdina and my grandfather. All those who loved me would
be with me. This horrible worry about death took hold of my imagination.
On one occasion one of the plantation workers
died. They took me to see him, laid out on a stretcher, his back arched, his
mouth half open. The man had only just died. His face, damp and emptied of
colour, his eyes turned up to the sky, his jaw fallen, did not let me sleep at
night. I would wake up screaming, seeing the man at my bedside.
"They should never have taken the boy to
see such a thing."
This was the image that death left engraved in
my mind. I had already seen Cousin Lili in her little white coffin, covered
with roses. My poor cousin had not looked dead. Pale and wan, she had had much the
same appearance in life.
The dead man would not leave me alone in the
dark. When the light was put out at night there he was. I needed somebody to
sleep next to me. I turned into a frightened little boy.
In the day time, on the other hand, when I was
watching out for canaries I loved my solitude. Solitude allowed me to speak
about what I normally held inside: my worries, my fears, my dreams. The world
of a solitary child is the sum total of his wishes. So when I hid away I found
hidden treasure, rode winged horses, played with fairies who held magic wands
that changed everything into anything I wanted.
Most of all I wanted Sinhàzinha to die. I
imagined my enemy tied to wild horses, dragging her body through bushes filled
with thorns.
My greatest happiness was when a canary fell
into my trap. I would forget all about dinner, so enthralled I was with my
hunting. They would come and look for me. Aunt Maria would threaten to let all
my birds loose if I didn't come to the table.
"You hardly eat. You spend all the day
with your canaries."
Indeed, I was totally wrapped up in this cruel
sport. My playmates - my cousins and the black boys - were discarded. But I
couldn't get my canaries to sing. When they were loose they sang and chirped
with joy, giving the world a concert from the branches of the trees. But in the
cages, every one of them fell silent. They were on strike against me. I looked
after them like a mother. I cleaned out their cages, crushed the corn for them
- and nothing, absolute silence. So I hung their cages in the trees, thinking
that by placing them at the scene of happier times I might deceive them. But
no, not a peep. My birds would only sing when free.
"If you hurt little birds you'll go
straight to hell. The Good Lord made the birds to sing in the woods,
free!" the old women threatened me.
For all that, some of the best days of my
childhood were spent in trapping the ingenious canaries of Santa Rosa.
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