The Rediscovery of Eden (chapter 2)
This is the second chapter of the novel "Rediscovering Eden". To read the previous chapter, click here.
Day 6:
Among grandma Bruna's mother's things, I found some photos of a little dark-cheeked baby, some unfinished knitted clothes and a gold chain with the medal of the Archangel Michael. Who could the child be? I also discovered that the clothes and objects abandoned in the cupboards in the house all belong to grandma and her mother. There's nothing of the others.
I also found out why grandma could never bear to eat shrimp. She tells in her diary that when her father arrived in Rio, he would order Josefa to prepare exquisite dishes with shrimp, lobster or octopus. But as the money he gave for the shopping was small, there wasn't enough food for everyone. So only he ate these dishes, while the others ate the trivial rice and beans. What's more, the father didn't allow them to get up from the table until he had finished eating. They sat there without being able to do anything but smell the delicious food and listen to the noises of contentment their father made while he ate. At the end of the meal, he would get up from the table and laughingly comment that "fine things are not for thick bodies".
Oh, I forgot to tell you that today there was a knock on the door from a very fat and huge man with a nice face, who said his name was Nanico (Dwarf)! He said he was walking down the hill to City Hall, where he had an appointment, when he noticed people in the house. He asked my name and where I was from. When I introduced myself, he stared at me in amazement, his mouth hanging open. I was even embarrassed by the way he looked... Then he asked if he could come back later to talk to me. At that moment, the neighbor, who was spying on our conversation from over the wall, greeted him smiling and asked, "What's up, Nanico? Are you ready to receive the crown and the key to the city?". He then turned to me and, a little awkwardly, told me that he would be King Momo at this year's carnival.
When I saw that everyone knew each other, I felt safer. I told him I'd be home after lunch and that he could drop by at his convenience. I'll tell you later how our conversation went.
Day 7
You won't believe what I have to tell you!!! Nanico was brought up by Josefa, the maid who lived here in the house with GG Bruna, her brothers and her mother. He said that when grandma and her mother went back to the South, Josefa decided to stay. It seems that grandma's older brothers and uncle also stayed. They continued to live here in the house for a while longer.
After her mother and sister returned to live in the South, they never got in touch with the part of the family that stayed here in Rio. Josefa told Nanico that this must have been the old man's doing, who had a reputation for being very strict and for beating his son, and that he must have forbidden his wife to contact the stray children. Nanico also said that the old man, despite being very rich, was very stingy with his family and that he never sent a penny to his children and wife while they lived here in Rio.
When he was free of his father's yoke, Arthur became a bohemian, grew his hair long and wore extravagant clothes. But before that, he was already on a bender. He came home drunk every night, after doing the circuit of the gafieiras and cabarets of Lapa. Now I understand why grandma commented in her diary that fortunately her brother "still knew how to behave with dignity when we went to visit family homes or met young people we knew in the teahouses of Ouvidor Street".
Nanico said that at this time Arthur fell in love with a dancer from the Royal Pigalle cabaret, with whom he ended up having a daughter. The baby, who was born shortly before his mother and sister were dragged away to live in the South again, was the dark-cheeked baby in the photo kept in the closet of his mother. This child, mom, was Nanico's mother!
When the old man heard what was happening in Rio, he left the farm and came to spend Christmas 1940 with his family. But as he was very violent and didn't know how to talk, the older children ended up temporarily running away from home and refused to go back to the South. His wife and youngest daughter were forced to return, but they couldn't take anything with them. They traveled with only the clothes on their backs. The old man left Rio de Janeiro wiping the dust off the soles of his shoes, rubbing them on the cobblestones, just as the Queen of Portugal did when she boarded the ship back to Europe in 1821. "I don't even want the land of damned Rio as a souvenir on my shoes," he parodied Queen Carlota Joaquina, while giving his wife a fierce look.
Voltar