because aside from tuberculosis, I’m never sick. Meanwhile, my brother and the baby are always coming down with earaches and stomachaches and fevers.
Thanks to tuberculosis, I know the public health clinic inside out, with all its sick people. I don’t like to go there, but my mother makes me. My brothers rarely come along because their skin puffs up after the vaccination, and that shows they’re not tubercular. Not mine. No matter how I scratch, I don’t get infected, not even a hint of irritation. My blood doesn’t fight germs, everything gets into my body and I don’t react, my mother says. It’s not true, the doctors say, the vaccination has taken. But nothing will change her mind, and a month later she takes me for a new one. The doctors don’t want to give me another BCG. It’s not good for me, they tell her, a vaccination isn’t like a dose of vitamins, and they get angry when they see her coming.
I dread those visits to the clinic. What a nightmare! She wakes me up early in the morning, irritated because we’re going to be late. I’m not allowed to eat anything. Half asleep, I pull on my clothes and before I know it we’re on the streetcar heading for the harbour. There are all kinds of things to see on the trip, but I’m worried. Not because the vaccination hurts. I know it’s only superficial, it itches a little and the way the skin puffs up isn’t pretty to look at, but that’s all. What I don’t like is the clinic. Maybe one day they’ll agree with her, and I’ll have to stay there for the rest of my life, the way they kept her brothers in the sanitarium until they died. I’m not tubercular enough for the doctors, and that disappoints her. She starts calling them good-for-nothings who only look after the rich, and who don’t know what they’re doing. Just look at me: no doubt about it, I’m like her brothers. Suddenly people start staring. They’re afraid because I’m contagious.
A throng of wretched souls is lined up at the clinic door. Mostly women and children, because men don’t get sick much, except old men and syphilitics. Inside, the place is filthy and the corridors are dark. Through the glass doors, you can see into the waiting rooms filled with suffering and fatigue, crying children and emaciated, greenish babies that their mothers try to suckle at their flaccid breasts. At my leisure, I observe legs swollen fat from the heat and the long road, toes protruding from too-short sandals, sometimes nothing but stumps of limbs. Groups of bent-over, vitreous-eyed old women who seem to be weeping continuously as they hide their coughing behind crumpled bits of fabric. Everything takes on the piss-yellow tint of the tiled walls. The nurses bustle about their business, irritated by the people waiting for them. The smells of ether, iodine and bitter substances mingle with sweat, mould and methane from the surrounding factories. From time to time a doctor walks by nonchalantly, with a superior look, not glancing at a soul.
We have a long wait until they call out our number. My mother plops me down and goes off towards the other wards, trying to find the nurses she knows who are aware of my problem. Nurses she trusts because they agree with her on the subject of tuberculosis. Some of them might even give me a BCG in secret, or maybe some other lung remedy that even the doctors have never heard of. It’s the same routine every time, ending with interminable arguments between my mother and the doctors. Finally we go home without my BCG, but weighed down with advice about plenty of rest, good, fresh food, sunshine and vitamins. She sulks while I hide my sense of relief behind the downcast face of a sickly child to help her save face. I keep my voice down, too, so no one’11 notice, since she still thinks I’ll end up infecting everybody.
All that matters to me is getting back on the trolley and heading in the opposite direction. The cars are big and green and filled to overflowing. Knots of human beings hang on wherever they can find a fingerhold. The steps are steep and hard to climb, and you’ve got to be fast on your feet because the conductor doesn’t wait long at the stops. Strange hands pull me up on board. I wiggle through the crowd to find a spot between the seats where I can look out. Streetcars are fun, like big fat insects rolling along the rails, hanging from a wire. At night they shoot out blue and green sparks at the crossings, and white smoke like from cigarettes. Cool breezes blow in from every direction. The streets and storefronts parade by slowly enough for me to see everything, and taste everything. Here’s the Mango Canal again, with its stink of sulfur and iodine, its algae and slimy water dotted with brownish refuse and oil slicks. All along the main street are fabric stores with their wares displayed on the sidewalk like the decorations at a fair. There are kitchenware shops with their shiny new aluminum and copper pots. Factories, warehouses, garages, strong-smelling breweries. Along the narrow sidestreets I catch a glimpse of the customers waiting outside the brothels of the district they also call the Mango. You mustn’t say the word “Mango” at home because it’s not a nice one. It makes my aunts titter and glance at each other, whisper and even want to pee. They don’t like to think that they live so close to the Mango. If any of their girlfriends live there, they say they come from the Zone. That sounds better. Lili is crazy to see what it’s like. From a distance. I want to see it up close because everyone looks like they’re out strolling, like at some kind of fair, but nobody can tell me what they’re doing there. My mother’s always saying that such-and-such woman will end up in the Mango. In the trolley, the passengers’ interest picks up, and sometimes they joke and whistle as we trundle by. Then we reach Praça Republica, full of people and not a ghost in sight. Next is Praça Tiradentes, crammed with small shops and so different when the dancehall lights are off. By now, we’re almost home. I’m happy to have escaped tuberculosis for another few months.
Our Sundays are a lot better, as if the sun shone on them. The weather’s always nice on Sunday. You can tell from the moment you open your eyes. My brothers and I go out with our father, just the men of the family. He fixes us breakfast his own way, perfectly organized, methodically laying out the triangular slices of toast spread with jam. He smiles as he watches us eat, as if he were seeing us for the first time, and he tells us to help ourselves to more. The women are careful, they keep their distance. We put on our Sunday best. Father brings along his camera, and he has a cigar in his mouth. The streets are empty and cool; a few Portuguese are washing down their bars. We walk along slowly, in no hurry, just looking around. Papa examines everything: the macumba bundles, the sleeping beggars, the dead bodies along the way. The shop windows, the passing automobiles, the posters on the walls, the overflowing garbage cans, the pigeons and the sugarcane press at the juice stand — everything is a subject for the minutest observation. If he buys a newspaper, we take a seat in the shade at the Avenida bar, near the trolley stop. He orders a gin and tonic for himself and lemon soda for us, with well-salted potato chips. His movements are slow and studied, there’s an absent-minded look on his face, his glance hardly ruffles the surface of things. He likes to watch life, he says, and see time go by. Well ensconced in my seat, I learn how to look at things. I watch him carefully as he leafs through his newspaper, but I have no way of telling what he’s thinking. He’s not thinking about anything, he tells me when I ask.
Our walk leads us towards Praça Quinze and the Niteroi docks. The fish warehouse gives off a powerful scent, and the surface of the water is littered with flotsam rising and falling with the swell. Overlooking the square is the public market, with its blinding colours, sugary smells and squadrons of flies. It’s a noisy, busy place, with awnings under which the vendors hawk their wares in shrill voices. The fish stalls attract me the most, and I can spend all the time I want watching the fishmongers hacking up flesh and weighing out slimy octopuses, the heaps of sardines and the baskets full of crabs with their vicious mauve and blue claws crawling among the seaweed. Then come the mountains of coconuts with their fuzzy brown hair, whole troops of soft bananas alongside piles of pineapple. The women bustle through the stalls, prodding and squeezing the merchandise and bargaining with the Portuguese, while letting themselves be prodded and squeezed in turn by wandering hands. Like flies, a legion of poverty-stricken children hovers nearby, volunteering to carry bags for the ladies. Some of the smaller ones scoot about in improvised wagons pushed by older children, making no attempt to hide their infirmities or their deformed limbs, their harelip mouths grinning broadly, their raggedy clothes barely covering their bodies. Others dash past, teasing the mulatto women, pilfering as they go. Astonished, I watch these vagabond children and silently compare myself to them, my mind filled with conflicting feelings.
Father
