Macunaíma, page 11
“There’s some we ain’t never heard before, better save em for the girls.”
Then Drizzle went back to the corner. The hero was ready to brag:
“Were they scared or what!”
“Not one bit, buddy! the giant even told his wife to save the new dirty words for their daughters to play with. I’m the one they’re scared of, wanna bet? Get up real close and just you listen.”
Macunaíma turned into a caxipara which is the male saúva ant and went winding his way up and around the bunches of cotton padding the giant. Drizzle gathered himself into a thick fog and as he was passing right over the family tinkled a little in the air. He started sprinkling a light shower. When the rain began to fall the giant peered at a droplet clinging to his hand and was petrified of all that water.
“Let’s get outta here!”
And everyone ran inside scared outta their wits. Then Drizzle came back down and said to Macunaíma:
“See?”
And that’s how it is to this day. The giant’s family is scared of a little Drizzle but not of any bad-words whatsoever.
Macunaíma was feeling downright sore about it and asked his rival:
“Tell me something: do you speak Igpay Latin?”
“Never heard of it!”
“Well then, my foe: Ogay eatay itshay!”
And he slinked back to the boarding house.
But he was very upset at having lost the bet and remembered to go out fishing. However he couldn’t catch a thing, not with arrows or poisonous plants, not timbó not jotica not cunambi not tingui, not in macerá or pari traps, not with line or harpoon or juquiaí or sararaca or bobber or sinker or caçuá or itapuá or jiqui or trotline or jererê, guê, trammel trawl weir lure snagger snood fyke gillnet scoopnet dropshot fishpot hook-n-rod, all them implements traps and poisons, seeing as he didn’t have a single one. He made a hook out of mandaguari beeswax but a catfish chomped it, making off with hook line and sinker. However there was an Englishman close by catching aimarás with a real hook. Macunaíma went home and said to Maanape:
“What do we do! We’ve gotta nab an Englishman’s hook. I’m gonna turn into a fake aimará and swipe the bait. When he catches me and bops me on the head I’ll go ‘yawp!’ and play dead. He’ll toss me in his samburá basket, you come round asking for the biggest fish to eat and that’ll be me.”
So he did. He turned into an aimará jumped in the lake, the Englishman caught him and bopped him on the head. The hero cried, “Yawp!” But the Englishman pulled the hook out the fish’s jaw all the same. Maanape came round and laid it on thick, asking the Englishman:
“Gimme a fish, wontcha, Mr. Yes?”
“Alright.” And he gave him a little red-fin lambari.
“I’m starving hungry, Mr. Englishman! Gimme a whopper, come on! hows about that fatty in your samburá!”
Macunaíma had his left eye a-snoozing but Maanape recognized him straight away. Maanape was a sorcerer. The Englishman gave the aimará to Maanape who thanked him and took off. When they were a league and a half away the aimará turned back into Macunaíma again. That’s how it went three times over, the Englishman always pulling the hook out the hero’s jaw. Macunaíma whispered to his brother:
“What do we do! We’ve gotta nab that hook from the Englishman. I’m gonna turn into a fake piranha and yank the hook off his pole.”
He turned into a ferocious piranha and jumped into the lake yanked off the hook and turning back around went a league and a half downriver to a place called Umbu Springs where there were stones covered in the scarlet inscriptions of Phoenician folk, pulled the hook out his jaw quite pleased since now he’d be able to catch corimã piraíba aruana pirara piaba, all those fish. The two brothers were just leaving when they overheard the Englishman telling an Uruguayan:
“What shall I do now! I haven’t any more hooks since that piranha swallowed it. Guess I’ll head over to your country, mate.”
Then Macunaíma flailed his arms wildly and shouted:
“Hold on a sec, tapuitinga!”
The Englishman spun around and Macunaíma turned him into the Bank of London machine just for laughs.
The next day he told his brothers he was heading out to catch some big fish on the Igarapé Tietê. Maanape warned him:
“Don’t go, hero, or else you’ll run into old Ceiuci, the giant’s wife. She’ll gobble you up, ya hear!”
“Hell hath no terror for he who has braved the Falls!” Macunaíma shouted. And set off.
No sooner did he cast his line from atop a platform in the trees than old Ceiuci came along for some net fishing. The caapora crone spotted Macunaíma’s shadow reflected in the water and quickly cast her big round net catching nothing but shadow. The hero didn’t even think it was funny seeing as he was a-trembling with fear, and well, to thank her said:
“Good morning, granny.”
The old lady swung her head up and spied Macunaíma perched on the platform.
“C’mere, sonny boy.”
“No way no how.”
“Well then I’ll send some marimbondos up there.”
So she did. The hero grabbed a bunch of fragrant pataqueira leaves and killed the wasps.
“Get down here, sonny boy, or else I’ll send some twig ants up there!”
So she did. The twig ants stung Macunaíma and he fell in the water. Then the old lady cast her net, snared the hero and went on home. When she got there she set the bundle down in the living room which had a scarlet lamp and went to call her older daughter, who was very handy, so the two of em could eat the sitting duck she’d caught. And that duck was Macunaíma the hero. However, the big daughter was kept busy seeing as she was quite handy indeed and the old lady had gone to build the fire to move things along. The caapora crone had two daughters and the younger one, who wasn’t handy at all and couldn’t do anything but sigh, noticed the old lady building a fire and wondered, “Mother whenever you get back from fishing you always say what you caught right away, but not today. I’ll go have a look-see.” She unwound the netting and out popped a young man very much to her taste. The hero said:
“Hide me!”
So the girl, being very kindhearted since she’d had nothing to do in so long, took Macunaíma back to her room where they played around. Now there they are laughing with each other.
When the fire was piping hot, old Ceiuci came over with her handy big daughter so they could pluck the ducky but all they found was the fishing net. The caapora crone went berserk:
“Must have been that little baby daughter of mine who’s so kindhearted . . .”
She pounded on the girl’s door, shouting:
“Oh little baby daughter of mine, hand over my ducky right this instant or else I’ll throw you outta my house for good!”
The girl got scared and told Macunaíma to toss twenty bucks under the door to see if it might satisfy the greedy grubber. In a panic Macunaíma quickly tossed a hunnerd that turned into piles of partridges lobsters sea bass perfume bottles and caviar. The greedy old glutton swallowed the lot of it and asked for more. So then Macunaíma tossed a whole conto de réis under the door. The conto turned into more lobsters rabbits pacas champagne doilies mushrooms frogs, and the old lady kept gobbling it up and asking for more. So then the kindhearted girl opened the window overlooking the deserted Pacaembu neighborhood and said:
“I’ll tell you three riddles, and if you get them right, I’ll let you go. Riddle me this: What’s long and rounded with a hole in it, goes in hard and comes out soft, satisfies our craving and isn’t a naughty word?”
“Aha! that one sure is naughty!”
“Silly billy! it’s pasta!”
“Ahh . . . so it is! . . . Funny, huh?”
“Now riddle me this: In what place do women have the kinkiest hair?”
“Oh ho, very nice! I know this one! right down there!”
“You dirty dog! In Africa, of course!”
“Show me, pretty please!”
“Okay this is your last chance. Tell me what this is:
Dear brother, now let us do
As God intends:
Bring hair to hair,
And leave the bald one in there.”
And Macunaíma:
“Sheesh! Everybody knows that one too! But listen close, between you and me, missy, you sure are one shameless hussy!”
“You figured it out. Aren’t you thinking about how we sleep with our eyelashes touching and leave the naked eye on the inside? Well if you hadn’t got at least one riddle right, I’d’ve turned you over to that greedy mother of mine. Now scat without raising a stink, I’m getting thrown out, I’ll fly up to the sky. On the corner you’ll find some horses. Take the dark chestnut trotter, he’ll clip-clop through rocks and muddy water. That one’s a beaut. If you hear a birdie shrieking ‘Awooga! Awooga!,’ then it’s old Ceiuci swooping in. Now scat without raising a stink, I’m getting thrown out, I’ll fly up to the sky!”
Macunaíma thanked her and jumped out the window. On the corner were two horses, a dark chestnut and a dapple gray. “God created the dapple gray to win the race day after day,” Macunaíma murmured. He hopped on that one and galloped away. Roaming roaming roaming he rode and just as he was nearing Manaus at full tilt the horse stumbled so hard it split the earth wide open. At the bottom of the hole Macunaíma caught sight of something gleaming. He dug quickly and found the remains of the god Mars, a Greek sculpture that had been discovered thereabouts back during the Monarchy and also last April First, in Araripe de Alencar’s column in a newspaper called Comércio do Amazonas. He was contemplating that almighty torso when he heard “Awooga! Awooga!” It was old Ceiuci swooping in. Macunaíma dug his spurs into the dapple gray and after riding past Mendoza in Argentina and almost crashing into a galley slave from French Guiana who was also on the run, he made it to a place where some priests were making honey. He cried:
“Hide me, Fathers!”
No sooner did the priests hide Macunaíma in an empty jug than the caapora crone came riding up on a tapir.
“Did you happen to see my grandson pass by grazing his horsie?”
“He already came through.”
Then the old lady got down from the tapir and climbed onto another horse, a green-eyed cremello, who always ends up a worthless fellow, and kept going. When she rounded the Paranacoara Range the priests pulled the hero out the jug, gave him a handsome honey bay, a horse as fine as its neigh, and sent him on his way. Macunaíma thanked em and went galloping off. Soon enough he came upon some wire fencing but he was a true horseman: he jerked on the reins, pulled his steed up sharp and gathering the downed animal’s limbs in one fell swoop, spun the horse round and slid him under the wire. Then the hero hopped the fence and got back in the saddle again. Galloping galloping galloping he went. Passing through Ceará, he deciphered the indigenous inscriptions at Aratanha; weaving his way along the coastal ridge known as Baldy Hill in Rio Grande do Norte he deciphered some more. In Paraíba, riding from Manguape to Bacamarte, he passed by Pedra Lavrada, site of so many stone engravings they amounted to a novel. He didn’t read them seeing as he was hot to trot, nor did he read the Barra do Poti ones in Piauí, nor the Pajeú ones in Pernambuco, nor the ones in the Inhamum Narrows which was already on day four and in the air was heard close as can be: “Awooga! Awooga!” It was old Ceiuci swooping in. Macunaíma dashed willy-nilly into a eucalyptus grove. But the birdie was hot on his heels and gaining fast and Macunaíma just couldn’t shake that old crone. Finally he came upon the ramshackle den of a deadly surucucu viper who was in cahoots with Old Scratch.
“Hide me, surucucu!”
No sooner did the surucucu hide the hero in his latrine pit than old Ceiuci showed up.
“Did you happen to see my grandson pass by grazing his horsie?”
“He already came through.”
The greedy grubber got down from the green-eyed cremello, who always ends up a worthless fellow, and mounted a blaze-face horse, which is a lame horse of course of course, and took off.
Then Macunaíma overheard the surucucu viper conspiring with his gal to roast the hero on a spit. He leaped out that hidey hole of a room and hurled a flashy diamond ring to the ground, the one he’d got as a present for his little finger Pinky. The diamond turned into four contos’ worth of cartful after cartful of corn, some Polisu fertilizer and a secondhand Tin Lizzie. As the surucucu surveyed it all with satisfaction, Macunaíma, to give the honey bay a rest, mounted a spirited silver pinto colt, the kind that’s always rarin’ to bolt, and went galloping over plains wide and narrow. In a flash he crossed that desert sea stretching across the vast Parecis Plateau, up and over steep ridges and sheer bluffs into the caatinga scrublands and spooked the chickens with their golden chicks in Camutengo coming up on Natal. A league and a half farther, parting ways with the banks of the Rio São Francisco all mucked up from the Easter floods, he entered a breach high in the mountains. He was riding along when he heard a woman go “Psst.” Scared stiff he stopped dead in his tracks. Then out from a poinciana stepped a tall homely lady with a long braid down to her ankles. And the lady asked the hero in a whisper:
“Have they gone yet?”
“Who’s gone!”
“The Dutch!”
“You’ve gone batty, what Dutch’re you talking about! Ain’t no Dutch round here, lady!”
It was Maria Pereira, the Portagee shut-in who lived tucked away in that mountain gap ever since the war with the Dutch. Macunaíma couldn’t tell what part of Brazil he was in anymore and remembered to ask.
“Say, tell me something, if the son of a possum’s a fox, what do they call this pile of rocks?”
The woman answered haughtily:
“’Tis the Hole of Maria Pereira.”
Macunaíma let out a huge guffaw and split, while the woman went back into hiding. The hero kept on and crossed to the far bank of the Rio Chuí. That’s where he happened upon the tuiuiú stork doing some fishing.
“Cousin Tuiuiú, wontcha take me home?”
“Sure thing!”
Right on the spot the tuiuiú transformed into an aeroplane machine, Macunaíma straddled an empty aturiá basket and they took off. They flew over the Urucuia tablelands in Minas Gerais, did a lap around Itapecerica and made off for the Northeast. Passing over the dunes of Mossoró, Macunaíma looked down and spotted Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, his cassock hiked up, struggling to cross that vast expanse of sand. The hero shouted at him:
“Come fly with us, illustrious sir!”
But the priest shouted with a sweeping gesture:
“Enough already!”
After skirting the Tombador Range in Mato Grosso and passing the rolling prairies of Sant’Ana do Livramento on their left, Macunaíma and the tuiuiú-aeroplane shot all the way up to the Roof of the World, quenched their thirst at the headwaters of the Rio Vilcanota and flying the last leg over Amargosa in Bahia, over Gurupá then over the Gurupi, with its enchanted city, finally landed back in that illustrious mocambo on the banks of the Igarapé Tietê. Before long they were at the front door to the boarding house. Macunaíma thanked him very much and wanted to pay for the lift but remembered he was hard up. He turned to the tuiuiú and said:
“Look here, cousin, I’m too broke to pay you but here’s some words of wisdom: In this world, there are three bars that’ll bring a man down: sand bars, gold bars, and bars full of women, watch out!”
However, he was so used to being a big spender that he forgot all about pinching pennies. He gave the tuiuiú ten contos, went up to his room feeling quite pleased and recounted everything to his brothers who were put out by the delay. The whole escapade had ended up costing a bundle. Maanape then turned Jiguê into a telephone and lodged a complaint with the Police who deported the greedy old glutton. However, Piaimã pulled some strings and his wife came back with the opera company.
The daughter who got thrown out goes shooting across the night sky, kicking around the heavens on high. She’s a comet.
Chapter 12. The Perky Peddler, Shiny Cowbird, and the Injustice of Men
The next day Macunaíma woke up feverish. Turns out he’d been delirious all night long and dreamed about a ship.
“That means travel by sea,” the boarding house madam said.
Macunaíma thanked her and was so pleased that he immediately turned Jiguê into a telephone machine just so he could insult Venceslau Pietro Pietra’s mother. But the telephone operator shadow informed him that nobody was picking up. Macunaíma found it peculiar and had a mind to get up and go see what was going on. But he felt a terrible itchy heat coursing through his body along with a liquid languor. He murmured:
“Ah . . . just so lazy . . .”
He turned to face the corner and started uttering profanities. When his brothers came over to see what was going on, turned out to be a bad case of the measles. Maanape ran off to fetch Bento the famous healer from Beberibe who cured people with his Indian soul and water from a jug. Bento gave him a splash of water and chanted a prayer. In a week’s time the hero was already scabbing off. Then he got up and went to see what had happened to the giant.
There was nobody home at the palazzo and the neighbor’s scullery maid told him that Piaimã and the whole family had gone off to Europe to take it easy after the beating. Macunaíma lost all his swagger and got very upset. His head was spinning as he played around with the maid then trudged morosely back to the boarding house. Maanape and Jiguê met the hero at the front door and asked him:
“Aw, who killed your puppy dog, lil dearie?”
