The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray by Jorge Amado Read Free Book Online Page A

someone had stolen an arm, a leg, had torn out an eye. That eye in the heart that the priestess Senhora, mistress of all wisdom, spoke about. All together, Sparrow thought, was how they should put in an appearance at Quincas’s wake.
    He went off to look for Bangs Blackie, at that hour most certainly on the Largo das Sete Portas helping out numbers bankers and putting together a little change for his nighttime cachaça. Bangs Blackie stood over six feet tall, and when he puffed out his chest he looked like a statue, so big and strong was he. No one could beat him when he was mad. Fortunately, that rarely happened, because Bangs Blackie was jolly and good-hearted.
    Sparrow found him on the Largo das Sete Portas, just as he had figured. There he was, sitting on the pavement by the small market, drenched in tears, clutching an almost empty bottle. Next to him, in the solidarity of grief and cachaça, were several vagabonds, making up a chorus for his lamentations and sighs. He’d already heard the news, as Sparrow could see as soon as he took in the scene. Bangs Blackie would toss down a drink, wipe away a tear, and roar with despair, “Our father, the father of the people, has died…”
    “…father of the people…,” the others moaned.
    The consoling bottle was passed around, and tears formed in the black man’s eyes as his suffering grew greater.
    “The good man has died…”
    “…the good man…”
    From time to time a new element would join the group, sometimes without knowing what it was all about. Bangs Blackie would pass him the bottle and let out the cry of someone who had been stabbed.
    “He was so good…”
    “…so good…,” repeated the others, except for the newcomer, who was waiting for an explanation for the lamentations and the free cachaça.
    “You say it too, damn you.” Bangs Blackie, without standing up, stuck out his powerful arm and was shaking the newcomer, an angry gleam in his eyes. “Or do you think he was no good?”
    Someone hurried to explain before things got ugly.
    “It was Quincas Water-Bray who died.”
    “Quincas? He
was
a good man,” the new member of the chorus said, both convinced and terrified.
    “Another bottle!” Bangs Blackie demanded between sobs.
    An agile little black boy jumped up and ran to a nearby stall. “Bangs wants another bottle.”
    Wherever the news arrived, Quincas’s death increased the consumption of cachaça. Sparrow was observing the scene from a distance. The news had traveled faster than he had. The black man saw him too and gave out with a fearsome roar, lifting his hands up to the sky, standing up.
    “Sparrow, little brother, our father, the father of the people, is dead.”
    “…our father, the father of the people…,” the chorus repeated.
    “Shut up, you bastards. Let me give my little brother Sparrow a hug.”
    They observed the rites of courtesy of the people of Bahia, from the poorest to those properly brought up. Mouths fell silent. Sparrow’s coattails were flapping in the breeze; the tears began to run down his painted face. Bangs Blackie and he embraced three times, their sobs mingling. Sparrow drank from the new bottle, seeking consolation in it. Bangs Blackie wasn’t finding any consolation.
    “The light of the night has gone out…”
    “…the light of the night…”
    Sparrow proposed, “Let’s go find the others and pay him a visit.”
    Corporal Martim might be in any of three or four places. Either sleeping at Carmela’s, still tired from the night before, chatting by the market docks, or playing cards in the Água dos Meninos market. Martim had dedicated himself to those three occupations only after he was discharged from the army some fifteen years earlier: love, conversation, gambling. He’d never followed any other known trade, with women and fools providing him with enough to live on. To work after having worn his glorious uniform would have been an obvious humiliation for Corporal Martim. His haughty