Macunaíma, page 5
“The sons of manioc can’t beat the machine nor can the machine beat them in this battle. It’s a draw.”
He didn’t come to any other conclusions seeing as he still wasn’t used to speeches but throbbing inside him was the foggy notion, foggy indeed! that the machine must be a god that men could never truly master simply because they hadn’t made her into an explicable Iara but rather a mere reality of the world. Out of all this brewing confusion his mind hailed a shining light: the men were machines and the machines were men. Macunaíma howled with laughter. He realized that he was free once more and felt an enormous satisfaction. He turned Jiguê into a telephone machine and called some cabarets, ordering up fresh lobsters and French girls.
Next day he was so spent from the bender that homesickness hit. He remembered the muiraquitã. And decided to act fast, for it’s the first strike that kills the snake.
Venceslau Pietro Pietra lived in a magnificent tejupar surrounded by woods at the end of Rua Maranhão overlooking the shady slopes of neighboring Pacaembu. Macunaíma told Maanape he was gonna hop over there cause he was hankering to meet Venceslau Pietro Pietra. Maanape gave a speech enumerating the inconveniences of going over there cause that river peddler walked with his heels in front and if God had put the mark on him, it sure as heck wasn’t on a whim. He was most indubitably a malevolent mauari demon . . . Who knew if he wasn’t Piaimã the Giant, eater of men! . . . Macunaíma didn’t wanna hear it.
“Well I’m going anyhow. They gimme respect wherever I’m known, and wherever I ain’t, they will or they won’t!”
So Maanape went along with his brother.
Behind the riverboat peddler’s tejupar there lived the Dzalaúra-Iegue tree, which bears every kind of fruit, cashew cajá cajá-mango mango-mango pineapple avocado jaboticaba graviola sapodilla pupunha pitanga guajiru that smells like a black woman’s armpit, ripe with all that fruit and tall as can be. The two brothers were hungry. They made a zaiacúti blind out of leafy branches gnawed by saúva ants, a hideout on the tree’s lowest branch from where they could shoot arrows at all the game eating up the fruit. Maanape told Macunaíma:
“Look here, if a bird calls don’t answer, brother, or else you can kiss it all goodbye!”
The hero nodded. Maanape started shooting his blowgun and Macunaíma scooped up the game raining down behind the zaiacúti. The game came crashing down with a ruckus as Macunaíma caught the monkeys marmosets monk-sakis muriquis mutum birds jacus jaós toucans tinamous, all that game. But the ruckus roused Venceslau Pietro Pietra from his leisurely snooze and he went to see what it was. And Venceslau Pietro Pietra was Piaimã the Giant, eater of men. He came to his front door and sang like a bird:
“Ogoró! ogoró! ogoró!”
as if a ways off. Macunaíma answered immediately:
“Ogoró! ogoró! ogoró!”
Maanape recognized the danger and murmured:
“Better hide, brother!”
The hero hid behind the zaiacúti among the dead game and ants. Then out came the giant.
“Who answered?”
Maanape replied:
“Dunno.”
“Who answered?”
“Dunno.”
Thirteen times. Then said the giant:
“It was a person. Show me who.”
Maanape chucked down a dead tinamou. Piaimã gobbled up the tinamou and said:
“It was a person! Show me who!”
Maanape chucked down a dead monkey. Piaimã gobbled it up and went on:
“It was a person! Show me who!”
Then he spotted the hidden hero’s pinky and aimed a baníni at it. There was a long moaning cry, yaaawp! and Macunaíma dropped to a crouch with the arrow buried in his heart. The giant said to Maanape:
“Toss down the person I just caught!”
Maanape tossed down guaribas jaós mutum birds, shore-mutum fava-mutum mutumporanga urus urumutum piaçocas, all that game but Piaimã kept gobbling em up then asking for the person he’d shot with his arrow. Maanape didn’t want to give up the hero and chucked down more game. They went on like that for a long time and by then Macunaíma had died. Finally Piaimã let out a fearsome bellow:
“Maanape, sonny, cut the crap! Toss down the person I caught or else I’ll kill you, you ol’ rascal!”
Maanape really didn’t want to chuck down his brother, so he desperately scooped up six animals all in one go, a monkey a tinamou a jacu a jacutinga a picota and a piaçoca, and tossed em to the ground shouting:
“Get a load of this six!”
Piaimã flew into a rage. He wrangled four timbers from the woods, an acapurana an angelim an apió and a carauá, and came bearing down on Maanape:
“Outta the way, you filthy pig! a gator ain’t got no neck, an ant ain’t got no pecs! can’t trump my four clubs comin’ atcha fast, you double-dealer of trick game!”
Then Maanape was scared outta his wits and flung, slap! the hero to the ground. And that’s how Maanape and Piaimã invented the sublime card game known as truco.
Piaimã was appeased.
“That’s the one.”
He grabbed the deceased by a leg and dragged him along. He went inside the house. Maanape climbed down from the tree in despair. Heading after his deceased brother he ran into the little sarará ant named Cambgique. The sarará asked:
“Whatcha doing round here, pardner!”
“I’m going after the giant that killed my brother.”
“I’m coming too.”
Then Cambgique sucked up the hero’s blood that was splattered on the ground and in the branches and showed Maanape the trail as he went along sucking up the drops.
They went in the house through the front hall and dining room, past the pantry out to the side porch and stopped at the basement. Maanape lit a jutaí torch so they could make their way down the pitch-dark stairs. They tracked the last drop of blood right to the door of the wine cellar. The door was shut. Maanape scratched his nose and asked Cambgique:
“Now what?!”
Then out from under the door came Zlezlegue the tick who asked Maanape:
“What now, pardner?”
“I’m going after the giant that killed my brother.”
Zlezlegue said:
“Alright. Then shut your eyes, pardner.” Maanape shut em.
“Open your eyes, pardner.”
Maanape opened em and Zlezlegue the tick had turned into a Yale key, Maanape grabbed the key off the ground and opened the door. Zlezlegue turned back into a tick and gave these instructions:
“Get those bottles way up top and you’ll win over Piaimã.”
Then he vanished. Maanape grabbed ten bottles, opened em up and out came the most impeccable aroma. It was that famous cauim called Chianti. Then Maanape entered another room in the wine cellar. The giant was in there with his wife, an old caapora crone called Ceiuci who always smoked a pipe and was a big ol’ glutton. Maanape gave the bottles to Venceslau Pietro Pietra, a chunk of Acará tobacco to the caapora, and the couple left the world behind.
The hero who’d been diced into twenty times thirty bits of crackling was bubbling in the boiling polenta. Maanape picked out the bits and bones and laid em on the concrete to air out. After they’d cooled, Cambgique the sarará ant poured the blood he’d slurped over em. Then Maanape wrapped all the bloody morsels in banana leaves, threw the bundle in a saddlebag and doubled back to the boarding house.
When he got there he set the basket at his feet blew smoke over it and out from the leaves came Macunaíma, still more corn mush than not, weak as can be. Maanape gave his brother some guaraná and he was fit as a fiddle once more. He shooed the mosquitoes and asked:
“What the heck happened to me?”
“Well, dearie, didn’t I tell you not to go answering any bird calls?! indeed I did, so there you go! . . .”
The next day Macunaíma woke up with scarlet fever and spent the course of it thinking on how he needed a pistol machine to kill Venceslau Pietro Pietra. No sooner did he recover than he headed over to the English traders to ask for a Smith & Wesson. The Englishmen said:
“The pistols are still quite green but let’s have a look in case there’s a ripe one.”
So they went to stand under the pistol tree. The Englishmen said:
“Now wait here. If a pistol drops, grab hold of it. But don’t let it hit the ground!”
“Done.”
The Englishmen went a-shaking a-shaking the tree and out fell a ripe pistol. The Englishmen said:
“That’s a jolly good one.”
Macunaíma thanked em and took off. He wanted the others to think he spoke English but couldn’t even say “sweetheart,” it was his brothers who knew how. Maanape wanted pistols bullets and whiskey too. Macunaíma advised him:
“Your English ain’t so good, brother Maanape, you could go and come back awful sorry. Say you ask for a pistol and they give you preserves. Better let me go.”
And he went to talk to the English again. Under the pistol tree the Englishmen went a-rustling a-rustling the branches but not a single pistol fell. So they went under the bullet tree, the Englishmen shook it and a whopping load of bullets rained down. Macunaíma let em hit the ground and scooped em up.
“Now for the whiskey,” he said.
They went under the whiskey tree, the Englishmen shook it and out dropped two cases that Macunaíma caught in mid-air. He thanked the Englishmen and headed back to the boarding house. Once he got there he hid the two cases under the bed and went to have a word with his brother:
“I spoke English with em, brother, but there wasn’t any pistols or whiskey on account of a whole line of jaguar ants came marching up and ate it all gone. Here’s the bullets I brought. Now I’ll give you my pistol and if anyone messes with me, ya shoot.”
Then he turned Jiguê into a telephone machine, called up the giant and cursed his mother.
Chapter 6. The French Lady and the Giant
Maanape really liked coffee and Jiguê really liked sleeping. Macunaíma wanted to pitch a papiri for the three to live in but the papiri never got done. Their group effort always petered out cause Jiguê slept all day and Maanape sat around drinking coffee. The hero got mad. He grabbed a spoon, turned it into a little critter and said:
“Now go hide in the ground coffee. When brother Maanape comes to drink some, bite his tongue!”
Then picking up a cotton pillow, he turned it into a fuzzy white caterpillar and said:
“Now go hide in the hammock. When brother Jiguê comes to sleep, suck his blood!”
Maanape was already heading into the boarding house for more coffee. The critter pricked his tongue.
“Ouch!” went Maanape.
Macunaíma played dumb saying:
“Does it hurt, brother? When a critter pricks me, doesn’t hurt a bit.”
Maanape got mad. He sent the critter flying as he said:
“Scram, you pest!”
Then Jiguê went into the boarding house to catch some shut-eye. The furry white grub sucked so much of his blood it turned pink.
“Ouch!” cried Jiguê.
And Macunaíma:
“Does it hurt, brother? Well I’ll be darned! When a caterpillar bites me it actually feels good.”
Jiguê got mad and sent the caterpillar flying as he said:
“Scram, you pest!”
And the three brothers went back to building the papiri. Maanape and Jiguê stood on one side and Macunaíma caught the bricks his brothers tossed over. Maanape and Jiguê were in a tizzy and wanted to get square with their brother. The hero didn’t suspect a thing. Well now, Jiguê grabbed a brick but turned it into a hard leather ball so it wouldn’t hurt as bad. He passed the ball to Maanape farther up and Maanape kicked it hard at Macunaíma. It flew smack into the hero’s nose.
“Ow!” went the hero.
The brothers played dumb shouting:
“Aww! does it hurt, brother! Cause when we get hit by a ball, doesn’t hurt one bit!”
Macunaíma got mad and sent the ball flying with a kick saying:
“Scram, you pain!”
He came over to where his brothers were standing:
“That’s it, I’m done with this here papiri!”
And he turned bricks stones tiles hardware into a swarm of içá ants that descended on São Paulo for three days.
The critter landed in Campinas. The caterpillar landed over yonder. The ball landed in a field. And that’s how Maanape invented the coffee leaf critter, Jiguê invented the pink bollworm and Macunaíma invented soccer, those three plagues.
Next day, with his thoughts ever fixed on that She-devil, the hero realized that he’d blown it once and for all and couldn’t ever show his face again on Rua Maranhão cause now Venceslau Pietro Pietra knew exactly who he was. He let his imagination go roaming roaming and come 3 p.m. had an idea. He decided to fool the giant. He stuck a membi flute down his gullet, turned Jiguê into a telephone machine and phoned up Venceslau Pietro Pietra saying a French lady would like to speak with him in regards to a matter of a business machine. The giant answered why yes of course and that she could come over right this minute seeing as the old Ceiuci was out with their two daughters and that way they could talk business at their leisure.
So then Macunaíma borrowed from the boarding house madam some pairs of froufrou things, a rouge machine, a silk-stockings machine, a slip machine scented with sacaca bark, a girdle machine fragrant with lemongrass, a décolleté machine spritzed with patchouli, lacy fingerless glove machines, all them froufrou things, then he dangled two pointy banana flowers from his chest and got dressed up like that. To complete the look he smeared some blue dye from the campeche tree over his little kid eyelids which grew languid. All that stuff sure was heavy but he’d turned into the most beautiful French lady perfumed with jurema and a sprig of Paraguayan pine pinned onto her heaving patriotism to ward off the evil eye. And she set out for the palazzo of Venceslau Pietro Pietra. And Venceslau Pietro Pietra was Piaimã the Giant, eater of men.
On his way out the boarding house Macunaíma ran into a scissor-tailed hummingbird. He didn’t like that bad omen one bit and considered ditching the rondayvoo but since a promise made is a debt unpaid, he did an incantation and kept going.
He got there to find the giant at the front gate, waiting. After several deep bows Piaimã picked the French lady’s ticks and led her to the loveliest alcove with beams and rafters made from acaricoara and itaúba wood. The checkerboard parquet was made of dark muirapiranga and blond satinwood. The alcove was furnished with those famous crocheted white hammocks from Maranhão. Right in the center was a carved jacaranda table set with red-and-white porcelain dishes from Breves and ceramics from Belém, arranged on a lace tablecloth woven from banana fiber. Steaming in enormous clay vessels originally found in the caves along the Rio Cunani was tacacá with tucupi, soup made from a Paulista man out of the industrial freezers at the Continental meat-packing plant, alligator stew and polenta. The wines were a superior Ica varietal procured from Iquitos, an imitation port from Minas Gerais, an eighty-year-old caiçuma liqueur, ice-cold champagne from São Paulo and a genipap fruit cordial of great renown and foul as three days of rain. Adding the most charming decorative touch were those exquisite Falchi bonbons with colorful paper cutouts and cookies from Rio Grande piled high in shiny black bowls lacquered with cumaté sap and engraved with a pocketknife, sourced from Monte Alegre.
The French lady seated herself in a hammock and made dainty gestures as she began chewing. She was awfully hungry and dug in. Afterward she washed it all down with a glass of the premium vintage Ica and made up her mind to just waltz right in to the matter at hand. She asked straight out whether it was indeed true that the giant possessed a muiraquitã in the shape of an alligator. The giant left the room and came back holding a snail. And he pulled from it a green stone. It was the muiraquitã! Macunaíma felt a chill pass through him from so much emotion and realized he was gonna cry. But he covered it up, asking whether the giant might care to sell the stone. But Venceslau Pietro Pietra winked suggestively saying the stone wasn’t for sale. So then the French lady begged him to let her take the stone home on loan. Venceslau Pietro Pietra winked suggestively again saying the stone couldn’t go out on loan neither.
“You really think I’ll give in after a coupla giggles, Mademoiselle? Come now!”
“But I want that stone ever so much! . . .”
“Well you can go on wanting it!”
“Why then I couldn’t care less, Mr. River Peddler sir!”
“River peddler my foot, Mademoiselle! Bite your tongue! A collector is what I am!”
He left the room and came back carrying a humongous grajau woven from embira fiber and brimming with stones. There was turquoise emeralds beryl polished pebbles, rutile nuggets in needle formation, chrysolite teardrops ringing rocks emery stone pegmatites dove-egg quartz cat’s-eye kyanite hatchets machetes chiseled arrowheads, gris-gris amulets jagged crags petrified elephants, Greek columns, Egyptian gods, Javanese Buddhas, obelisks Mexican tables, Guyanese gold, ornithomorphic stones from Iguape, opals from the Igarapé Alegre, rubies and garnets from the Rio Curupi, itamotingas from the Rio das Garças, itacolumite, tourmaline from Vupabuçu, hunks of titanium from the Rio Piriá, bauxite from the Riberão do Macaco, limestone fossils from Pirabas, pearls from Cametá, the humongous boulder that Oaque, Father of the Toucan, shot out his blowgun from that mountain on high, a lithoglyph from Calamare, all those stones were in that basket.
