No coffee for his beloved brother Alves? Out of the question!
Begging?  He hated. Steal? That was below his standarts and he never steals. It was allready eight o'clock and firmly he stepped to the grocery store of senhor Gonçalo where he bought regularly alcohol for his little stove, and the good man, after he heard Wellingtons his story, gave him a bottle on credit. He went back to his wooden hen-house and waited for the arrival of his brother Alves, whom usually would arrive around noon. Meanwhile he had given a bath to Michelangelo and tear out the thick green, full of blood sucked ticks. It was almost half past twelve when a young man appeared. He was dressed in jeans and T-shirt. "Are you Wellington," he asked. "Yes ... and who are you? " Welligton asked uncertain.  "They call me 'contraband'. I am a friend of Alves," said the boy. "Alves? Where is he? Why he didn't come?"
"Your brother is sick. He sends me tell you this. He told me also that he'll urgently want to see you... He gave me some clothes... put them on and let's go... "
"Should I go to Sao Paulo?" Wellington asked anxiously.  "Should... is not the real word my friend. Your brother asks for it. Please... He is seriously ill. Vamos! Let's go!"

And arrived Wellington in Sao Paulo. It was already evening when they reached the place where his brother lived in a house located near the neighborhood Bras. It was an old house, about to collapse. Alves lay on bed in a smelly gloomy room. At the foot of the bed laid his strato Fender guitar. On the ground stood some amplifiers and microphones. He was in bad shape, since the half year Wellington had not seen him. The brothers embraced and wept and Michelangelo the dog howled like a straneg wolf from another planet. The skinny Alves told Wellington that his life was come to a end, as he was infected with the aids virus. The last months his life has been a mess. Injected heroin and felt in love with Madalena a little mulata. It was an addiction and he screwed on regular base other hookers. He had lived as an excessive, a stray wandering desperate outlaw and became infected. That simple? "No!" Wellington shouted: '... Alves do not dying! I love you!"
"I'll have no way to deny brother. It is "finished", you hear, "acabo". I'm going back to the "jail" of salvation. See, it's my karma, no game-playing, nada! You see brother all was so planned for me, and will be right now, and the band will play: "Lagrimas dos Indios "
'Indian Tears". You remember ... When we were young and listened to the music of Muddy Waters? B. B. King... the blues ... Stevie Ray Vaughan... Frank Zappa...Yes ... The harmonica of ... yes, lembra? Wellington, say it ... "
"Sonny ... Terry ... “Wellington said in a broken voice.  Alves: "... Yes ... Sonny Terry ... All right ... Robert Johnson ... We are all Negroes Wellington; we have the blues, Wellington, our parents and ancestors ... the blues! And I? I played the blues of Sâo Paulo ... the city of blues, misery, injustice ... Wellington? Are you listening, my brother? I've had my share in this fucking world ... but little brother ... Your life, yes, that the life I really wanted to live. Eating from the street. Wellington ... a sincere bare Jackal ... you hear me brother! No whining in your head, no obligations ... And a dog as your best friend, a good friend. Michelangelo. Your karma Wellington is sacred ... Listen, you have to do something for me ... Go to the headwaters of the Xingu river and look for the Txukahami tribe ... Give this letter to Kalia ... Give her my love and tell her that I'll be wait where the rivers meet. And you brother ... drink every week a Pinga on me and our new embrace .. See you my brother ..."
Wellington cried in his heart when he embraced Alves. Than Alves took a pistol from beneath his pillow and Wellington could not stop him. Michelangelo pricked his one ear when Alves pulled the trigger and shot a bullet through his head. The Sâo Paulo hard-core blues has ended.

WAYN  

for brawabooks 2002 (c)

The death of a blues singer in Sâo Paulo

Wellington lived on the north side of Rio de Janeiro, near Ramos along the Avenida Brasil. He lived to be more specific, on the border. But let me say, along the abyss. Around the corner lay the dump where he got a daily job to collect something to eat. Living, meant between boards. A henhouse. Yes, he had fixed his wooden cabin lately with some old paint that he found at the dump. And damned it was yet a color that pleased him; blood red. Above the entrance to his domain was an iron plate with the vulgar text: 'banheiro', or poophouse. He just awake, turned around on his mattras of carbon and looked at the old clock, wich he had renenewed with a battery yesterday, had a hard fart and yawned. It was still early. Quarter past six, but the sun was already rising. Today, would be an important one, for his brother Alves came to visits him. 

Every six months Alves. Exactly, without exception. Yes, he knew the data from his head and today was the 13th of september. Alves, his beloved brother was two years younger, forty-one. Alves was famous, (quotes). He was a musician and played in a hardrockband with the bizarre name Irmaos da Cadeia, something like The prison brothers. The music that they played was riddled with 'bluesy"sounds, subject to the deep dark accords. A purée of sounds, which would alarmed the dead in their graves. Yes, Alves kicked regularly against the authority. He was a the treu anarchist and wild with his music, to awake the young Brazilian generation. Regime? Now you have to consider that this is in Brazil as a disaster-stricken mess, and that is why he hated everything what had to do with goverment. Yes, Alves was a outlaw who thought that lines only caused annoyance , and he named this: straitjacket-politics. Therefore, every half-year he visitid Wellington and gave him money and clothing. Often he had offered him to work as a roady, but Wellington would't not say goodbey to his hermit-existence and Alves the hardcorebluesrocker could understand this.

With his right index finger Wellington shoot some cockroaches out of sight, yawned again, scratching his head, drunk his last sip out of the bottle pinga and crawled out of his shelter, just like a Inuit out of his igloo. The old street dog Michelangelo layed beside his hovel. He was medium-sized white with black spots, he had one ear and no tail. It was the most faithful companion that Wellington had and not a minute Michelangelo departed from his side. Yes, he had called him that way because, when the dog licked his face, he found an an old post card with the work of  the Italian artist. This is the reason. Not that Wellington had the slightest sense of art, but he saw the name and liked him. The Sun was already shining sharply despite the fact that the Brazilian winter was not endid yet and today it would be quite hot. Still half a sleep he stumbled to the water source, where he washed his face. Then he combed his hair, at least he tried, because the old comb made of ox horn, refused sliding through his thick and greasy hair. 'Alves is a coming today from Sao Paulo, ' he thought of happiness and toke Michelangelo by his fore legs and danced in circles. In fact, he should have to beg for alcohol for his small stove, but he was a totaly naive, so he spent his last money to buy a bottle of pinga cachaça, the most ceapest brand '51' (white sugarcane gin) and some cigarettes of the brand Mustang.

continued

'Esperanda o Zagal' by Antonio Parreiras, oil on canvas 1905 Brazil

... And it happened on a hot morning that Benedicto left with the circus of Cafuz. The Cafuz took him, after persuaded the old man,  with him. Yes, he could take care for the animals and further jobs. Everything went well, and four years later, Benedicto celebrated his 16th anniversary, he gaved his first kiss to Lailadrinha. She had allready three children by Cafuz: Zumbizinho, Casmira and Tita, two girls. At her fifthteent birthday she was already unflowered by Cafuz: "Once she have to be a woman! ' he had said to his wife Tamari. Benedicto had the year before his sexual debut with Catarina a instinctively detailed whore. Because Cafuz tought the time was right that he became a man. It was a devil-like happening to Benedicto and he was quite confused. Astonished! Because what he saw was a revelation for him. Yes, ... the whore Catarina was certainly beautiful and perfect, and... subsequently he screwed many hookers at places where the circus stopped. But.. It was a year earlier, in his dreams, that Lailadrinha made his cock bloat and gaved it a certain smell. It was an experience that he could not placed. He wanted more intimate dreams and  got his first orgasm. Now he had kissed Lailadrinha, innocent under the palm trees behind the old barn, between chicken and skimmed cattle. He was shy and walked away with a blush on his cheeks. The day after that it was a lips kiss and a depressingly contact, and easily it became a wet tongue kiss. He sought for her breasts, more beautiful than those of the whore Catarina and all the others. He felt a tension in his thigh and his heart beated. He found her vagina, nicer than in his dreams and he penetraded, wild and frenetic. And he was not aware of the bizarre sounds of monkey Utopia who had followed them, and who watched from a tree. Love was intense and a year later Yali was born, this with affection of the Cafuz.

The following year the Cafuz was killed. It happened in a knives-fight and during the battle he tought on and cried to the the black Madonna. His opponent, a rough  former golddigger  had tried to rape his wife Tamari, who was already unconscious on the ground with a bloody head. He used to defend itself, but the blood tears of the Madonna made him hesitate to kill again. But, on the moment he was ready  to slice through the throat of the rapist he saw the Lady in a flash with red tears. This meant his death. Why did the Madonna does not defend him, after his worthy life? It would always remain a mystery, and sometimes Madonna's are happen to be outlandish creatures.

The circus continued without the Cafuz and Saikaku the Japenese became the leader, rather he demanded on it.  He was also driven by jealousy, as he had long be eager on the beautiful Lailadrinha and at a given moment he challenged Benedicto for a duel. Everyone tried to prevent this, most Lailadrinha itself. But the Japenese was Samorai who kept his word because he was a descendant of a Sjogoen, a military dictator, and the Japenese Emperor was only a bastard. He had to fight and wanted  finally screw that lovely gypsy woman. But Benedicto was not affraid, only young and inexperienced, and the big knife was not born in his hand. The battle was out of control and the little fat Japenese put his knife on Benedict's throat. Only the intervention of the giant Grandâo saved his life. The giant grabbed the arm of the Japenes and and pulled him up like a puppet.  He took Saikaku's left leg, turned around four times and swung the Samoerai ten metres further between the cactus shrubs. Saikaku was so angry that he attacked Grandâo while cursing in Japanese. The giant received him as a broken sock-puppet and stood a moment later with its large foot in the small Japenese-thick neck. The Jap asked for forgiveness and finally it all went off well. But, Saikaku left the circus. He went off south on foot , just muttering about his friends the Xingu Indians. A long trip and rough trip, but he always repeated : "... I am a Samurai, of military nobility, son of the Sjogoen Sanjuro, I am a fighter!" A few days later he was found next to a giant cactus. His heart pierced with his sword. Benedicto was the new leader, although he first refused, but Tamari, the widow of the Cafuz insisted. In this way. They went on, and when they visited Cajari, Benedicto's place of birth, again, his grandfather Deuszinho was deceased.  Benedicto was crying and sad and the same day they went further to the East, towards Ceara.

"Life is a shadow play. I believe in physical cosmology, human beings are the stars! " spoke Pisgah, a dark man, who one year later joined the circus. He was a philosopher, but could also remain for five minutes under water. He was an attraction, and Benedicto was pleased with the little man, with curved legs, short arms, flat nose and ears like a little elephant. Pisgah said that he was born in Colombia, his father was a black slave who have fled, without his mother who was a slave too. In the meantime, Tamari the women with the oval Tahitian face, seduced the young Benedicto and she took him into her cart. She stripped him of his clothes and putted his penis stanta pede between her pointed tits, and slowly he forgot about the present and the reason. He met the heated tongue of the thirty years older Tamari, for whom he actually had an outspoken respect. She, the former wife of the Cafuz, his mistress. Now he named her lady Tamarinha. Yes, she was small and keen as a strange dark mare and Benedicto enjoined it and she laid him gently beside her and she danced on top of him. She stroked his cock and pushed him inside her, which made him explode between her legs. Lailadrinha was at that point outside the cart and heard the voices of love. She was confused, evil and indulgent at the same time. It was later  that Tamari explained all to her and the little gypsy girl accepted the sharing. And so Benedicto loved two women. The circus gaved his shows in the inlands of the poor country of Ceara and they had success.

Than came the day  that the gang of the throat-cutter Jorge Pedro attacked their camp which they had built along the Caninde river, situated near by the small village of Pentecosta. The gang consisted of ten men. Men with wrinkle faces, white leather jackets and hats, leather leggings against the thorns, and just like their masters covered with ammunition bags and crucifixen. They kidnapped the fine gypys Lailadrinha and Tamari and nobody could do something about it. Not Pisgah with his intelligentsia and even the giant Grandâo was powerless in the face of the rifles and revolvers. Laughing on their small desert horses with brilliant leashes and with gold and silver harness and glossy saddle the bandits disappear in to the night. Anger and with tears in his eyes Benedicto sat next to the fire, and the big hand of the giant on his shoulder was no comfort to him. The next day, Pisgah, Benedicto and the giant searched the area, but couldn't find nothing. The bandits were missing just as the substance of the poor dry land. Disappeared along with the jewelry of wimmen's hearts. "Life is hard, but once one day we will find the antidotum, that guarantees re-encounter with the beasts!" spoke Pisgah a little too thoughtful. He he folded his thick fingers together, and knelt in the dust where he spoke words that resembled Chinese.

The time came, indeed. Five months later, when people told them that te throats-cutter was seen in a small village. He was drunk and spread fear among the people and the police chief did it in his pants from fear of the gang leader. But not Grandâo who grabbed the revolver of the bandit and bended it like a iro-wire. The throat cutter, and his three fellow contributors were held at gunpoint by Benedicto, Pisgah, Antonio the folksinger and dwarf Pascoal. The giant took the bandit's throat and lifted him  with one hand up in the air, and the butcher gasped for breath. He had to confess where the women were and so Benedicto saw them back They where tied up in a cave between dog and a one-eyed man looked at them, like the women told later, licked them like a jackal like a anti-christian dog. The women were free. The giant broke the neck of the throat-cutter, when he unexpectedly picked up a large knife. The three other bandits were killed and six others flights on their fast horses in to the bushes. Their last rescue was ironic the sertao. The women told their story's of the last few months and the many times that they were screwed by the bandits. Benedicto saw that Tamari had become skinny a skeleton, and her fine pointed breasts were now like udders. Lailadrinha was not much better off and appeared to be a wilted rose.

The day after Taticus with the tapir head died unexpectedly on a strange disease, in which he spat a green vomit and turned around of pain on his elephant-legs. His nose was trunk-like in the upright position and he was crying over and over. He cried for his misshapen mother somwhere in the woods of the Mato Grosso: "Maezinha, minha ... Maezinha ... to amo ...," and his father the Indian garimpeiro, the diamond-searcher, which he had cursed as a child: "Iranxe ... Iranxe ... meu Paizinho ..." and he asked for forgiveness. Then he received the dead convulsion and laid still with wide open eyes of turquoise. "He went to another world, "said philosopher Pisgah: " ... a world where only people live alike Taticus... A world full of woods, green, rivers, mountains, giant- anteaters, horses, singing snakes, unicorns, elves and gnomes! "

Once again the circus moved on.

End

Circo do Cafuz ---pen-drawing   Wayn 2002


The Circus of the Cafuz

Cajari, Maranhâo, Brazil, 1957 

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...