Macunaíma, page 7
When it was all over, the hussy opened her eyes, started moving a whole lot different than just-today and wasn’t a hussy no more, she was the saint’s horse, it was Exu. It was Exu, the impish trickster who’d come to join them for some Macumba.
The pair of naked women improvised a festive jongo, keeping time to the popping of the old auntie’s bones, the thwapping of the fat lady’s breasts and the ogã slapping on the drums. Everyone else was naked too and waiting for the Son of Exu to be chosen by the great Hellhound in their presence. That fearsome jongo . . . Macunaíma quivered in anticipation hoping for the Cariapemba spirit so he could request a good licking for Venceslau Pietro Pietra. Nobody knows what got into him all of a sudden, he started dodging and weaving into the middle of the room knocked Exu over and fell on top of him playing around in triumph. And the consecration of this new Son of Exu was celebrated with everybody’s approval and they all anointed themselves with urari powder in honor of the Icá devil’s new son.
Once the ceremony ended the devil was brought over to the stool, inaugurating the adoration. The thieves the senators the bumpkins the blacks the old ladies the soccer pros, all of em, went dragging themselves around under the powdery dust turning the room orange, and after pounding the left side of their heads on the ground, they kissed the knees kissed the uamoti demon’s whole body. The rigid red Polack a-trembling foam flecking her mouth in which they all were wetting their flea-squishers to bless themselves with the sign of the cross, went moaning out guttural grunts half sobbing half squealing in ecstasy and she wasn’t a Polack tart no more, it was Exu, the almightiest Jurupari of that religion.
After everybody kissed worshipped and blessed themselves a bunch, it was time for pleas and promises. A butcher asked for everyone to buy his spoiled meat and Exu granted it. A farmer asked for no more ants or malaria on his land and Exu laughed saying no way would he grant that. A loverboy asked for his girl to get a job as a schoolteacher so they could get married and Exu granted it. A doctor gave a whole spiel asking to write spoken Portuguese with the utmost elegance and Exu did not grant that. And so on. Finally it came turn for Macunaíma, the fiend’s new son. And Macunaíma said:
“I came to ask my father for something on account of I’m very upset.”
“What’s your name,” asked Exu.
“Macunaíma, the hero.”
“Hmm . . . ,” muttered the big boss, “names that begin with Ma are a malediction . . .”
But he took a shine to the hero and promised to grant all that he asked seeing as Macunaíma was his son. And the hero asked for Exu to bring suffering upon Venceslau Pietro Pietra who was Piaimã the Giant, eater of men.
And what happened next was horrible. Exu grabbed three sprigs of lemon balm blessed by an apostasized priest, tossed them in the air, made a cross, sending Venceslau Pietro Pietra’s I into Exu himself to get beat up. He waited a moment, the giant’s I came, entered the hussy and Exu ordered his son to beat up the I incarnated in that Polack body. The hero grabbed a crossbar and swung at Exu with all his might. The blows rained down. Exu cried:
Go slow when you whack me!
Cause it hurts ow ow ow!
I’ve got a family, you see
And it hurts ow ow ow!
Finally, all black and blue from the pummeling bleeding from the nose the mouth the ears he fell to the ground unconscious. And it was horrible . . . Macunaíma ordered the giant’s I to take a bath in boiling saltwater and Exu’s body started steaming getting the ground all wet. And Macunaíma ordered the giant’s I to go walking on broken glass through a bramblewood of nettles and cats-claw vines to the high passes of the Andes in midwinter and Exu’s body bled from where the shards had slashed the thorns had scratched and the nettles had pricked, panting with exhaustion and shivering from the freezing cold. It was horrible. Then Macunaíma ordered Venceslau Pietro Pietra’s I to get butted by a charging bull, kicked by a bucking bronco, bit by a gator and stung by forty times forty thousand fire ants and Exu’s body writhed bleeding blistering on the ground, with a row of teeth in one leg, ant stings covering his now-invisible skin, his forehead split open from a bronco’s hoof and a gash in his belly from a sharp horn. The room filled with an intolerable stench. And Exu moaned:
Go slow when you gore me
Cause it hurts ow ow ow!
I’ve got a family, you see
And it hurts ow ow ow!
Macunaíma gave a whole lotta orders like that for a whole lotta time and Venceslau Pietro Pietra’s I bore the brunt of it through Exu’s body. Finally the hero’s vengeance couldn’t come up with anything else and he stopped. The hussy was breathing faintly sprawled on the dirt floor. There was an exhausted silence. And it was horrible.
Over at the palazzo on Rua Maranhão in São Paulo there was a constant flurry hither and thither. Doctors came the ambulance came everybody was beside themselves frantic. Venceslau Pietro Pietra was roaring bleeding all over. His belly was showing a gouge from a horn, his forehead was split from what looked like a colt’s hoof, he was burned frozen bitten and all covered in welts and bruises from getting the living daylights beat out of him with a stick.
At the Macumba ceremony the horrified silence went on. Tia Ciata proceeded gracefully and started reciting the supreme devil’s prayer. It was the most sacrilegious prayer of them all, one word out of place was deadly, the prayer of Our Father Exu, and it went like this:
“Father Exu of our very own, who art in the thirteenth hell on the left down below, we shall adore thee greatly, each and every one of us!”
“We shall adore thee! we shall adore thee!”
“. . . Give us this day our daily Father Exu, thy will be done, as it is on the grounds of the sanzala that belongs to our Father Exu, for ever and ever, amen! . . . Glory be to the Jeje fatherland of Exu!”
“Glory be to the son of Exu!”
Macunaíma said thank you. The old auntie ended with:
“Chico-t was a Jeje prince who became our Father Exu and ever shall be, world without end, amen.”
“For ever and ever, amen!”
Exu started healing healing, all that stuff vanished magically as the rum went round and the Polack tart’s body became hale and hearty once more. A big hullabaloo was heard and the scent of burning pitch seized the space as the hussy expelled a jet ring from her mouth. Then she came to, all ruddy and fat but clear worn out and now it was just the Polack tart there, Exu had gone.
And to bring it all to a close everyone made merry together feasting on excellent ham and dancing a spirited samba in which all them folks reveled whooping it up lustily. Then it all ended up becoming real life. And the Macumbeiros, Macunaíma, Jayme Ovalle, Dodô, Manu Bandeira, Blaise Cendrars, Ascenso Ferreira, Raul Bopp, Antônio Bento, all them Macumbeiros set out into the dawn.
Chapter 8. Vei, the Sun
Macunaíma was walking along and came upon the very tall tree Volomã. On a branch was a pitiguari bird who, soon as he spotted the hero, opened his gullet singing: “Look who’s a-coming down the road! Look who’s a-coming down the road!” Macunaíma looked up intending to say thank you but there was Volomã bursting with fruit. The hero had been starving for hours and his belly balked at the sight of those sapotas sapodillas sapotis bacuris apricots mucajás miritis guabijus melons ariticums, all that fruit.
“Volomã, gimme some fruit,” Macunaíma asked.
The tree didn’t want to. So the hero shouted twice:
“Boiôiô, boiôiô! quizama quizu!”
All the fruit fell and he ate his fill. Volomã was furious. He grabbed the hero by the feet and hurled him past Guanabara Bay onto a deserted little island, inhabited in times of yore by Alamoa the nymph who came over with the Dutch. Macunaíma was positively drooping with exhaustion and nodded off in mid-air. He landed fast asleep under a very fragrant guairô palm atop which a vulture was perched.
Now the bird had to do its business, went, and the hero was left dripping in the vulture’s muck. It was already near-dawn and freezing cold. Macunaíma woke up shivering, completely soiled. All the same he took a good look around that peewee rock of an islet to see if there might be any caves with buried money. Nope there weren’t. Not even that enchanted silver chain that leads the finder to Dutch treasure. Nothing but little red jaquitagua fire ants.
Then Caiuanogue, the morning star, passed by. Macunaíma was sorta fed up by now from so much living and asked if she’d carry him up to the sky. Caiuanogue approached but the hero stank to high heaven.
“Go take a bath!” she said. And took off.
And that’s how the expression “Go take a bath!” came to be, which Brazilians use when referring to certain European immigrants.
Capei the Moon was passing by. Macunaíma shouted at her:
“Bless me, Nanny Moon!”
“Mm-hmm . . .” she replied.
So then he asked the Moon to carry him to the Isle of Marajó. Capei started approaching but the hero really stank like the dickens.
“Go take a bath!” she said. And took off.
And the expression stuck definitively.
Macunaíma shouted at Capei to at least give him a little fire to keep warm.
“Ask the neighbor!” she said pointing to the Sun who was already approaching from a distance rowing across the vast sea. And took off.
Macunaíma was shivering and shivering and the vulture kept doing its business right on top of him. It was on account of that rock being so teeny-tiny. Vei came closer all red and slick with sweat. And Vei was the Sun. That was just fine and dandy for Macunaíma since back home he always used to make little cassava cake offerings for the Sun to lick dry.
Vei brought Macunaíma onto her raft which had a rust-colored sail dyed with muruci berries and made her three daughters get the hero washed up, pick his ticks and check that his nails were clean. And Macunaíma was nice and neat once more. However on account of her being an old lady all red and sweating buckets Macunaíma didn’t suspect that the old bag was actually the Sun, good ol’ Sun, the poor man’s poncho. That’s how come he asked her to call Vei over with her heat cause he was squeaky clean but shivering cold. Vei was really the Sun and scheming to make Macunaíma her son-in-law. Thing was, she couldn’t warm anyone up just yet, cause it was too early, she didn’t have the strength. To stall for time she whistled a special way and her three daughters fell to petting and tickling the hero all over.
He squealed with laughter, squirming under their stroking and enjoying himself mightily. Whenever they stopped he’d beg for more, writhing on the verge of ecstasy. Vei caught sight of the hero’s shamelessness, lost her temper. She didn’t much feel like pulling fire from her body and heating anyone up. Then the girls grabbed their mother, tied her up tight and Macunaíma socked the old hag’s belly a buncha times as a little flame came puff-puffing out from behind and everybody got warm.
A sweltering heat started up that seized the raft, spread out over the waters and gilded the air’s clear cheek. Macunaíma lay on the raft lizarding there in a blue languor. And the silence expanding everything . . .
“Ah . . . just so lazy . . .”
the hero sighed. You could hear the murmuring waves, that’s it. A contented torpor flowed through Macunaíma’s body, so good . . . The youngest girl played the urucungo her mother had brought from Africa. The sea was vast and there wasn’t a cloud in the glittering mineral sky. Macunaíma crossed his wrists behind his head with his hands for a pillow and, as the eldest daughter of light shooed the swarming mosquitoes, the third little China girl used the pointy ends of her braids to make the hero’s belly quiver with pleasure. And laughing with utmost joy, then bursting into bliss from verse to verse, he sang:
When I’m dead and buried, don’t you cry for me,
I’ll leave this life with nary a sigh;
—Mandu sarará . . .
My only pa was exile,
My ma was misery,
—Mandu sarará . . .
Oh Papa came and told me:
“You’ll never find true love!”
—Mandu sarará . . .
Then Mama came and gave me
A necklace made of woe,
—Mandu sarará . . .
May the armadillo dig a grave
With his lil toothless teeth,
—Mandu sarará . . .
For the sorriest wretch
That you ever did see,
—Mandu sarará . . .
Life was good . . . His body gleamed with gold glinting in the crystalline specks of salt, and on account of the sea air, on account of Vei’s sluggish paddling and with his belly getting rile-riled from a woman’s tickling touch, ah! . . . Macunaíma burst into our ecstasy of ecstasies, ah! . . . “Holy hot damn! . . . what a daughter of . . . of scrumptious delights, hoo boy!” he shouted. And shutting his roguish eyes, grinning the grin of a naughty ragamuffin living it up, the hero went on basking basking in it and fell fast asleep.
When Vei’s jacumã paddle stopped rocking his slumber to and fro, Macunaíma woke up. What stood out most in the distance was a rosy pink skyscraper. The raft was moored at the fishing docks of the sublime maloca of Rio de Janeiro.
Right there on the waterfront was a long expanse of savanna densely lined with Brazilwood trees and colorful palazzos on both sides. And that savanna was Avenida Rio Branco. That’s where Vei the Sun lived with her three daughters of light. Vei wanted Macunaíma to be her son-in-law since he was a hero after all and had offered her so many cassava cakes to lick dry, so she said:
“My dear son-in-law: you must marry one of my daughters. For a dowry I’ll give you Yerup France ’n Bahia. But you gotta be faithful, don’t go playing around with other girls all over town.”
Macunaíma thanked her and promised he’d be true, swearing on the memory of his mother. Then Vei set off with her three daughters to make the day out on the savanna, ordering Macunaíma one more time not to leave the raft so he wouldn’t go playing around with other girls all over town. Macunaíma promised again, swearing on his mother once more.
No sooner did Vei and her three daughters reach the savanna than Macunaíma was filled with the desire to go play around with a girl. He lit a cigarette and desire rose up. Out there flocks of purty chick chick chickadees were strolling beneath the trees shimmyshimmying with such beauty and verve.
“Burn it all down!” Macunaíma shouted. “I ain’t a sissy man now who lets a woman do me wrong!”
And a vast light shone in his brain. He stood on the raft and with his arms waving over this country solemnly declared:
“ANTS APLENTY AND NOBODY’S HEALTHY, SO GO THE ILLS OF BRAZIL!”
He leaped from the raft in a flash, went off to salute the statue of Saint Anthony, who was captain of the regiment, then started coming on to girls all over town. Soon enough he met a broad who’d been a fishwife back in the land of that ol’ ditty “Compadre Chegadinho” and what’s more, still smelled like it too! boy did she reek of fish. Macunaíma winked at her and the two came back to the raft to play around. So they did. It was plenty of playing around. Now there they are laughing with each other.
When Vei and her three daughters came home from the day and it was night-fall, the young ladies got there first and found Macunaíma and the Portuguese girl playing some more. Then the three daughters of light flew into a rage:
“So that’s how you do it, hero! Why, didn’t our mama Vei tell you not to leave the raft and go playing around with other girls all over town?!”
“I was so awfully blue!” went the hero.
“Don’t gimme that boo hoo, I was so blue, hero! Now you’re gonna get a tongue lashing from our mama Vei!”
And they turned fuming to the old lady:
“Look, Mama Vei, lookit what your son-in-law did! Soon as we went off to the savanna he snuck out, started coming on to some dish, brought her back to our raft and they played around till they couldn’t no more! Now there they are laughing with each other!”
So then the Sun flared up and laid into him:
“Well well well, dearie! Now didn’t I tell you not to go coming on to any girls?! . . . Indeed I did! And on top of that you go and play around with her right here on my raft and now there you are laughing with each other!”
“I was so awfully blue!” Macunaíma repeated.
“Why, if you’d listened to me you’d have married one of my daughters and you’d be young and handsome forever and ever. Now you won’t be young for long, just like all the other fellas and soon enough you’ll be old and ugly as sin.”
Macunaíma felt like he was gonna cry. He sighed:
“If only I’d known . . .”
“Your ‘if only I’d known’ is the saint that never did nothing for nobody, dearie! You’ve been real naughty, yessir! I’m not giving you any of my three daughters no more!”
So then Macunaíma fanned the flames higher:
“You know, I didn’t want any of them three anyway! The devil comes in threes!”
Then Vei and her three daughters went to go find a hotel and left Macunaíma to sleep with the Portagee on the raft.
When it was just about time for dawn, the Sun and her girls came for a stroll round the bay and found Macunaíma and the Portuguese girl still sound asleep. Vei woke the pair and presented Macunaíma with the Vató stone. And the Vató stone makes fire whenever folks want. And off went the Sun with her three daughters of light.
Macunaíma spent the day playing around with the fishwife all over town. When night-time came they were sleeping on a bench in the Flamengo district when a terrifying phantom appeared. It was Mianiquê-Teibê come to swallow up the hero. He breathed through his fingers, listened through his belly button and had eyes where his nipples ought to be. His mouth was two mouths, hidden in the folds between his toes. The phantom’s stench woke Macunaíma and he hightailed it outta Flamengo. So Mianiquê-Teibê ate the fishwife and took off.
