By Maria Elsa da Rocha
as translated from the Portuguese
by Paul Melo e Castro
Maria Elsa da Rocha (1924-2005) was one of the last Portuguese-language Goan writers. A primary school teacher by profession, her short stories appeared in the local press—particularly the newspaper A Vida—in the years following the integration of Goa into India and were often broadcast on All-India Radio’s ‘Renascença’ programme. In 2006, a selection of the 25 odd stories she wrote were published in Goa under the title Vivências Partilhadas [Shared Lives].
‘Xilú’s Story’—one of the narratives unpublished during the Rocha’s lifetime—shows various constants of the author’s work: her linguistic divergence from standard Portuguese (though here in the form of Damanese creole rather than Goan usage), the ambiguous representation of a colonial bureaucrat (here both a sex pest and a man of unstinting generosity), her low romanticism, where ordinary yet idealised characters are rewarded for their integrity (or, here at least, go unpunished for their hot-headedness…). But it’s the setting that is of particular interest: the story’s linguistic, topographical, even numismatic, inscription in a recognisable late-colonial Damão where Rocha had lived and worked.
Powdery moonlight drifted down on both sides of the Sandalcalo.
On its back of ramshackle crenels and collapsed turrets the Old Fort received its due of the moon’s warm caress. Yet it could muster no smile. It could but sigh for the revels of past times, for blackly beaded men toying in the dark with the gossamer-thin clothes of gorgeous banianas… Ena!
According to legend, Saint Jerome had so trembled in his niche at those carryings-on that he implored Our Lady, Star of the Sea to turn a blind eye…. And so the Fort of St Jerome, on moonlit nights, was blurred into little more than a charcoal outline. At its feet the river swirled by, eyes half-shut under the floury luminescence.
Adjusting his cigarette, Xilú cast his gaze across the light-dredged expanse before him. With a leather belt girdling his rake-thin body and two spindle-shanked legs protruding from khaki shorts, Xilú was lost in a dream: Ena, Mãe Santiss! How soft Anica’s lips were. Did all women have lips like that? Who knows?
On the far bank of the Sandalcalo he could make out a dinghy, the Judge and the boatman Calpá. Had the lapping water not been so loud their voices would have carried across quite clearly. Hmmm… Xilú imagined more than he could see: Calpá with one hand steadying the little vessel as he held out the other for the magistrate to alight in safety, stammering his respects in Portuguese while the Judge leapt ashore, lithe as a mischievous schoolboy, thanking Calpá in Gujarati.
Fed up now with peering at the opposite bank, he wheeled round and was about to stride away when his eyes, miles distant until that point, noticed a dark, rectangular object lying on the ground before him. He crouched down. Mãe Santiss! A wallet! A snakeskin wallet! Mãe Santiss, who didn’t know that wallet? The whole of Damão knew it! Xilú ran his rough fingers unenthusiastically over the speckled leather. Mãe Santiss! So many fine wallets out there and the Judge went for this snakeskin number. Shi! Snakeskin! A free-handed man, the Judge, with a taste for women. But, Christ, who hadn’t? What would he, Xilú, do if his wallet ever bulged like that? Ahn? For one, he wouldn’t have to keep putting off his marriage to the prettiest girl in Damão. What was it his Anica had said that last time? Ah: ‘Xilú, minh’vid, my patience is wearing thin, man!’
‘Our wedding never happening…’. Hearing that remark made his head spin. He invented excuses, between kisses and other games. But then he had to draw brusquely away, because she was a red-hot flame and fooling around like that wasn’t right… It just wasn’t! All Xilú did was brush his nicotine-stained lips down her silky arm, before stopping at her ring finger and promising: “by next month this little digit will have a ring on it...”
But nothing doing! Life was a dreary business. And there was no escaping their straitened circumstances, that’s what hurt the most. Apre! Oh, the promotions exam, you got old just thinking about it… Their strapped little lives… One week in and his salary almost spent! No chance to put a little aside. But what was he waiting for? No, nothing. He’d return the wallet to the Judge the next morning. He must have dropped it on his way out. Who didn’t know about the Judge’s night-time escapades? He smiled inwardly, at a thought that made him comrade-in-arms to all men, independent of rank… He hefted the wallet with distaste. This time, cautiously, he opened it … Without breaking stride, he readied himself to find banknotes and photographs of women… in the nude! He spat out his cigarette butt and stopped, in two minds… The wallet was full to bursting. In the first section, scraps of paper like Post Office receipts. No nudie pics, just an image of Our Lady, Star of the Sea. In the other section, a sheaf of thousand-escudo notes. Caramba! One, two, three. Loads! Caramba! Do they earn that much? And all to blow on women… An image of the Judge sprang to mind, lurking on the latticed terrace of his residence, lying patiently in wait for girls heading to market, spying on them through the diamond-shaped holes… Psst… Psst and Violeta, a cousin of Anica´s, coming running with one hand clasped to her vigorous young breast.
‘Xilú, Xilú!’
‘What is it, Violeta?’
‘Xilú, that pesky Judge… Catcalling, flashing banknotes… What the hell does he think, ahn?’
Yes, the Judge was a good man but the way he pestered the local girls left Xilú with his heart in his mouth… What if he laid eyes on Anica? Santo Deus! Never! Xilú had lived for his dream for almost a year now. Tortured by a love with the fresh exuberance of new shoots before the monsoon… Mãe Santiss! That raise! When, when? Before the judge seduced Anica? He tried to bat away this fear, but it stuck in his heart like a purple-blue clot … Walking on he reached the lamppost before Dona Bulina’s house. Damn it! A wallet stuffed with thousand-escudo notes and his Anica only needing one for her trousseau! One lousy thousand always out of reach. All he came up with were mantras:
“You know, Anica, my sweet, we’re investing in life insurance. It’s for our future.”
“Oh, the shame!” he thought.
The moon went on courting the silvery, cat-like Sandalcalo. Damn night! So pretty, its voice echoing in the steady rhythm of the waves as they engraved gentle arias on the shells of Deuca beach. A pretty night, so clear you could see the lacework on Dona Bulina’s windowsills… Up ahead, the collapsed bridge with that gaping hole in its middle… Ah, it was the very picture of his soul imploring fate to intervene. In the distance the Hotel Brighton with one solitary casuarina raising its palms to the sky like human hands… Friday: just one more night and hordes of drunken revellers would pitch up from Bombay… Mãe Santiss, chewing betel, sniggering like loons in their alcohol-fuelled euphoria. Slugging back anything that came their way: whisky, cognac, Macieira…
“Ena! Wouldn’t the old man be out on a night like this? Who could stay at home asleep in bed? Ah, to hell with him, and with Lieutenant Catanas, that psycho, taking out his frustrations on humble wretches like him, Xilú…
‘Hey, number 8! Call that a patrol? Get a move on, you fool!’
He trudged on, clutching the Judge’s wallet. Now from Dona Bulina’s house a piano tinkled. He went on with his rounds up to Mukerji’s vegetable garden. He wouldn’t get his patrol done stopping like that all the time but the moonlight was playing havoc with his mind, the judge’s cash dangling a thousand possibilities before him… Everything quiet, even the power station! The only noise was Dr Naique’s dog barking like mad. Xilú’s boots on the asphalt goaded a night otherwise engaged with that silent avalanche of light … When he was young he would go to Mankeji’s balcão to play with the man’s grandchildren. The windows at Mafaldinha’s seemed to blink, unable to take the brightness. From inside that house another piano could be heard.
Xilú would hand over the wallet untouched at about eleven when the magistrate left for court. It wouldn’t do to approach him in the wee hours on his way home from his adventures…
Lost in thoughts of Anica, he ended up opening the snakeskin wallet once more…
Gingerly, lovingly, he eased out a crisp thousand-escudo note and held it up against an electricity pole. Pulling out a pen, in one corner he doodled two hearts pierced by a scarlet arrow. His heart and that of Anica, the prettiest girl in Damão, with her round little hips and firm bust… He returned the note to the wallet.
The next day:
‘Sir, did you lose this wallet by any chance?’
‘My lad, this is incredible! I won’t ask where you found it. Look, take this…’ The Judge yanked another thousand-rupee note from the pocket of his famous Prince of Wales trews and extended it to Xilú with a smile… Xilú was sorely tempted… The trousseau… Anica! Man, the Judge was classy all right, didn’t even open his wallet to check its contents!
He heard his own voice: ‘No, sir. I really can’t accept. Thank you anyway, sir. At your service, sir!’
He took his leave with a military salute and the smile of a missionary.
*
Two polished boots and a starched uniform marched into Anica’s kitchen. But Xilú didn’t get a chance for his usual games. Anica, euphorically, broke through his encircling arms, dashed off to her room and hurried back brandishing a thousand escudo note with a drawing of two hearts in one corner: ‘Here, man, take this for our wedding things’.
What? No, nothing. Just the judge’s banknote in the hands of his Anica!
Something fragile cracked in the little soldier’s heart. He couldn’t think… Jesus! Suddenly he was like a rag doll. He clutched his head and stammered:
‘Oh, my head!’ and dashed off, leaving Anica standing there, mouth agape, the thousand-escudo note crumpled in one hand.
How he managed the crossing he hardly knew.
The evening had drawn resplendent curtains across the Gulf of Cambay, the horizon deep tones of gold and saffron. Xilú didn’t want to suffer but the pain wouldn’t let up. Anica’s hand and that thousand-escudo banknote. All that stuff about embroidery, just to fool Xilú. Ah, life! He would go up to the broken bridge and… but instead of the bridge his feet carried him to the beach.
Calpá was there working on his dinghy. Calpá greeted him:
‘I’ve got a problem. My boat’s sprung a leak. That’s why I’ve dragged it ashore… But now it’s too late to fix it. I’ll have to wait till tomorrow. No going back in the water tonight!’
Calpá walked off along the esplanade, towards the neighbourhood where his people, the Machiyars, lived. Ashen-faced, Xilú sat on the prow of the dinghy… Limp, lifeless… A little dazed by the sumptuousness of that Indian Ocean sunset… Gradually the ramparts across the river were wrapped in a winding sheet and all about him in the scrub insects sang endless ragas. How long did Xilú sit there? Even he couldn’t say… Suddenly a familiar voice nearby:
‘Calpá? Where are you? Quickly, man, I need to get to the other side. Calpá, you bloody layabout, where are you?’
Xilú got to his feet. Him, the Judge himself… There he was in flesh and bone! This ravisher of Damanese girls, this despoiler of Xilú’s happiness. What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he just get in the boat and push off? The tide was high… What was he waiting for? Here, man, take this for our wedding things…
The Judge approached.
‘Ah, is that you, lad? That Calpá’s a yellow-belly. Bet he was frightened off by this wind. Though a storm is brewing. Come on lad, help me get this in the water and I’ll do the rest…
Should Xilú tell him about the leak?
“Never, Mãe Santiss! I’m no man to…”
He shoved the dinghy out into the water. The judge leapt aboard, grabbed up the oar and, plunging it down into the sand, pushed off as he’d seen Calpá do so often. The dinghy bobbed out into the river. Xilú, strangely relieved, hardly felt the gale whipping the beach of Damão Pequeno, though it blew so fiercely he could hardly keep his footing. Almost soaked through, he reached the road. Across at Francisco’s hotel the drunks were enjoying themselves. The tempest howled across Damão Pequeno as Xilú picked up his pace.
‘God doesn’t sleep.’
God would render justice. The boat would sink, dragging down that sinner who deserved no place on the face of the earth!
How did he pass the night? Even he couldn’t say. Somehow that stormy welter of lightning, thunder and rain, logs and hollow coconuts swept along in the swollen, muddy waters of the raging Sandalcalo, brought peace to the little soldier’s wounded heart:
‘The river will swallow up that deviant…’
The next morning:
‘Xilú! Madam wishes to speak to you’, bellowed the orderly from the Palace.
Mãe Santiss! The wife of the governor was about to reveal what everyone knew but him. What a fool he’d been! So long in the dark! He never wanted to hear the name of that wretch again, that whore!
He trudged up the stairway to the Palace. He paid his respects to Dona Maria João with a military salute and then froze, immune to the provocations of the world around him. His mind visualised logs and hollow coconuts floating around a pair of Prince of Wales trousers off Deuca Beach.
‘Listen, boy, you’re engaged to that girl Anica who works here as a seamstress, aren’t you? Well now! We’ve started a fund to help young fiancées and have given her a thousand escudos. But if you think that’s too little, go and have a word in the secretariat, do you hear?’
Xilú kneaded his cap and his lips refused to speak. Madam continued:
‘It was the Judge who dug deepest. A clean thirty thousand escudos…’
The vast chessboard of black-and-white flagstones were like a bellicose military parade, with the polished toes of Senhora Dona Maria João’s shoes cannons trained upon his scrawny chest. Had he understood right? Ahn, had he?
Dona Maria João spoke again:
‘Are you listening, boy? His excellency the Governor wants the car at midday now, not nine… He slept here last night, came in dripping like a sponge. Can you imagine, he made the crossing alone without the ferryman…’
Had he understood right? Everything was OK? Ahn, Xilú heard his own voice:
‘At your service, madam!’
A radiant morning dawned in the little soldier’s heart.
Paul Melo e Castro is an academic and lecturer in Comparative Literature and Portuguese at the University of Glasgow. His publications include Lengthening Shadows: An Anthology of Goan Short Stories translated from the Portuguese Volume I and II (Goa 1556, 2016). He is also the author of Shades of Grey: 1960s Lisbon in Novel, Film and Photography. (London: MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 2011).