Circo do Cafuz ---pen-drawing   Wayn 2002


The Circus of the Cafuz

Cajari, Maranhâo, Brazil, 1957  :twisted:

The bells of the white church were ringing, because in the distance they saw the circus approach. There were four wagons drawn by mules and after the last one were some slow strolling animals. Cajari was full of enthusiasme, because once a  year the circus visit the small village. The children screamed and joyfull sounds escaped from their mouths. When the travelling ensemble entered the little square, Benedicto stood in the crowd. He was twelve and his desire has always been to travel with the circus. It was not that he wanted to hurt his grandfather, the old man Deuszinho (small god), but he wanted to be free and roam with the colorful company. As an orphan, this was an unthinking desire in his little soul. His father died when in a knife-fight in a dark bar and his mother Marcela died one year later on dengue, transmitted by mosquitoes. But they thought Benedicto died of sadness and it was his grandfather who took care of him. He lived with the old man now for five years, with love and care. He helped his grandfather on the small farm where manioc, maize and herbs growned, and helped him with baking of maniocbread, which they sold. But his little soul longed to see that beautiful gypsy dancing girl again. Now Benedicto stood at the old square and looked at the old painted cars and mules.                                

               How long ago was it, thirteen months? Yes ... she was a dancing around the fire; she was young and beautiful, sixteen and was known as Lailadrinha. He saw the old Lama, the six peccary, and the small white pony where Lailadrinha balanced on. He also saw the old black wool-monkey Utopia, which was yelling on the front of the wagon. On the first wagon holding the reins, was the Cafuz (half Indian-Negro), son of Koub and a Indian woman named Jessusa. He was the boss of the company, a rugged, medium-sized man with a golden ring through his nose. It was told that he had ruined many lives with his knife, a blade he called 'amigo'.

                  Yes, Cafuz was a notorious bandit, but he had been converted when a holy vicinity appeard to him. He said: ' ... it was the Black Madonna who was crying red tears and spoke to me by saying that I do understand that I was led a murderers life and my odds that there no justice existed in this country was refuted by her, saying: "Why do you think I am crying? I am crying for the poverty of the wildlands of  Brazil! I am crying against exploitation by hallucinating imbeciles. One day all will be getting better and there will be blowing a breathe of Justice, of fresh air; and you are a man of strength. You need to lead  people, not kill them. You will serve God and gender equality. It is hypocrisy on the greedy, but he will have sunk to a crying beast on the day that he will meet Cain," and then disappeared the Madonna, as fast as she came. From that day on Cafuz changed. A few years befrore he had traveled with a carnival company and  because he loved it, he decided, in name of the Madonna, to do the good thing and entertain people with the circus. He bought a wagon and Utopia, the monkey, who was then still young, approximately four years, from an old Gypsy and felt in love with Tamari , a little woman who could be directly abandoned a Paul Gaugin painting. She had an oval face, Tahitian pointed breasts and short regular legs with small feet, only the pearls were missing.

       He took her and started to perform. He was fire-eater and learned how to bending steel and Tamari danced and and sang old songs. They met two dwarfs Zilda and Pascoal which joined them with a  clown act. In addition, there were: the woman with the four breasts, whom the Cafuz had met in a small village; Saikaku, a small fat Japenese, who swallowed swords and stuck needles of half a meter in to his body; and later the troubador Antonio joined them, he who sings that stories from old Brazil, and then there was the youngster Chico Bobo, the boy without arms or legs, which Cafuz picked up in his group when they were in a small town, were he saw that Bobo was at the point of being murdered by his foster parents, who thought the young boy was only a burden. Further there was Taticus, the half-indian with the tapir face and elephant feet, and last but not least Grandâo, a giant of almost two fifthy. In the meantime they had four wagons and they were beloved in the many villages that they visited. An old Gypsy mother asked the Cafuz to take her granddaughter Lailadrinha along with them. She could cook and dancie like the best. "Please take her with you, Cafuz," she begged: "because I am about to die and am expelled from the tribe." The girl was ten years back then, but now she was a  beautiful slim woman, and in all places the men were silent and stared at her with their mouths wide open, to her moving body,  her firmly round young breasts and her skin soft as a peach. She was the beauty which God did descent in the wilderness of Maranhao in the Brazilian north-east. And here in Cajari she would dance, she would dance, and dance.

        Benedicto stood still and  looked for the right moment to find the gypsy girl, who held a small boy in her arms, her son, Zumbizinho, small-Zumbi. The caravan stopped at the square next to the Church where they marked a spot. The monkey ran glaring over the church-square and the folks laughed and clapped their hands. They circus would remain one week in Cajari, and Benedicto was determined to continue with them. He had already warned his grandfather and the old man had wept, but gave his blessing to Benedicto.                     

At six o clock, after the fall of darkness, the show started and the old lama kneelded to the public and the peccary ran through the lama's legs. The giant man Grandâo took the two dwarfs in his coal-shovel hands and raised them high into the air, and the people looked surprised to the man with a mouth so great that you could put easily a watermelon in it. Then came the gypsy Tamari and danced around the fire and Cafuz itself spat fire and bended thick irons bars. The Japenese Saikaku was swallowed his swords and made strange jumps; then came the woman with the four breasts and some have been allowed to feel whether they were real. Than the people stood back as the man with the tapir head appeared: Taticus. Where his nose should be, was now a trunk-like thing and his hair were high and prickly as a 'porco-espinho, a porcupine. In his arms he held the torso of Chico Bobo, who was a-chewing on quid with the result that black tobacco juice dripped from his mouth when he laughed. And the people screamed as he began to sing for Taticus, which then made his gruesome dance-steps on his horrible feet. Then came  Lailadrinha seated on the small pony named 'passarella', and she went on her feet at the pony's back while the people clapped and cheered and then, flying like a cream-angel she jumped from the pony's back and danced wild and passionated in the shadow of the tamarind tree among the fire. Her skirt rolled up and two artistic coffee-brown legs appeared, while the men went mad and wanted to touch her, but the Japenese defended her like she was his treasure. 

She, the flower of Brazil, the 'sertâo', the wilderness.

continued...