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 The first day of carnival began at an earlier hour each year. The street-children filled bottles and cans with water at the pump, stole grey-white ash from the front of huts, and then trooped down to the trickling stream to mix ash and mud paste for their carnival makeup. They plastered it over their arms, legs and faces, and when they were caked in mud, the Dirty Ones marched on the town with their ripped clothing, beating their bottles and cans.
Trucks trickled in from outlying towns, ferrying dancers and spectators to the event. By noon, buses arrived carrying curious revellers from the nearest cities. Some fathers had come with their teenaged sons, to break them in with experienced women whilst they were still young, as though only one skill determined a man's worth. Many of the revellers dressed like shanty dwellers, with cheap clothing, to avoid being singled out in the crowds. Throngs of military police clad in camouflage and steel helmets patrolled the shanty alleyways in groups a dozen thick, with shouldered shotguns and batons dangling by their sides. As usual, the landowners and gang leaders of various shanties had underwritten carnival. The Mayor had loaned two of his tractors to pull floats depicting the main theme, which was the reseeding of the rainforest. Another plantation had loaned a truck to pull the trio elétrico, the glittering sound system that would provide music for the dancers. By three, the square and main road of the shanty were heaving. To signal the start of carnival, Mayor Don Giovanni turned the key to the town over to Rei Momo, always a hog-bellied man. As the Mayor returned to his seat on the stage, Rei Momo pranced and rolled his jellied hips behind him. Don Giovanni turned around, and Rei Momo swung in the other direction, raising the carnival flag and raucous laughter from the crowd. He marched from the church across the square, followed by the high-kicking female dance master, adorned in colourful eighteenth century breeches. The first samba school marched behind her, its sambistas shuffling to the beat of the bateria, who beat their percussion instruments like warriors on the march. Behind them rolled the main display of the school, the Amazonian float, which appeared as barren as a desert. A girl in traditional pleated frock and white smock waltzed over the float scattering seeds. Half a century passed within a breath, and great hardwood trees that were being felled in the rainforests, constructed from reinforced papier-mâché and styrofoam, and painted emerald green, sprung back into foliage and rose up thirty feet. Once the lungs of the earth were breathing, the forests became populated, and men, women and children flocked out of them, first flapping their feathered wings. As life took hold, those wearing the masks of rodents, monkeys and pumas emerged from alleyways and shacks. Then skimpily clad natives of the forests, painted in their tribal colours, sprang out of the woodlands until they were spilling over into the spectators. The crowd pulsated as if it were one heart that had received a transfusion and now pumped out fresh sustenance, proving that the body of the earth had been reborn, and was ready to live out its dreams to the frantic beat of carnival. Tomas watched the spectacle from the main road, unable to force his way through the swaying crowd into the square. His eyelids kept falling from lack of sleep, because his mother had sat up half the night lecturing him as to how foolish he was being. She had also been eager to persuade him that his illness could be cured if he took up the faith again. When the first samba school had gone by, and some of the crowd had followed them, he turned and pushed his way through the remaining crush towards the square. Revellers uninhibited behind clown painted faces and freakish masks thrust themselves towards him, inviting him to join in their mocking laughter and forgetting. But he was in no mood for their extended weekend of revelry. He stopped at the edge of the square as the second samba school squeezed its way through the bottleneck. After the float had left the square, the truck carrying the trio elétrico edged through, the sound system blasting out the popular carnival tune, "Mama I want to suck". The revellers fell into line behind the truck, shuffling from side to side as they trailed it. The crush in the square began to ease, and Tomas entered it. An empty crate sat outside the bar and he hurried to stand on it. Dozens of policemen beat a path through the square, offering protection that was rarely seen. A large contingent of them waited in the cooling shade of the churchyard, where they already had two trucks filled with poor, young, black men, watching out the rest of carnival through the iron bars of their temporary homes. It was a sight that always made him wonder why others feared them so, and he shook his head again. On the stage, above the bobbing heads of the crowd, the Mayor, his wife, Seu Giomar, Doctor Cunha and other judges sat in wait of the competitors. The floats would circle a few more times, and then they would start the preliminary rounds of the dance contest before the floats took over again. Then under the canopy of the evening sky, they would light the bonfires and hold the finals of the competition. A sharp prod caught Tomas in the side and he lost his balance and stumbled off the crate. Four bloco das piranhas sang, 'Mama, I want to suck,' as they danced around him. The men, dressed in high heels, short dresses and big wigs, had enormous breasts strapped to their chests. They thrust them towards him and other men in an invitation to taste, as though allowing them to sample food that would provide them with real nourishment. Tomas pushed a gap through them to hurry from their lecherous advances, and one of them threw her hands in the air, in dismay at her utter rejection. He ignored festive greetings and invitations to join in the merriment as he snaked through the crowd. By the time the competition dancers trouped on stage, he had found a vantage point next to the road leading out of the shanty. This would be their sambódromo, to perform before the people, and although it did not have the tiered seating and carved columns of the amphitheatre that was said to be in Rio, they made up for what the venue lacked with the bold architecture of their costumes. Dozens of dancers shrouded in feathers flapped their wings as they paraded on to the stage, huge pink beaks over their faces concealing their identities. Some danced as Amazonian Indians, pointing their bows and arrows, with bells ringing from their toes. Others inhabited the spirit of the shy, elusive jaguar, or pranced with the impishness of monkeys they had never seen. The crowd joined in the dance with them, cheering and leaping when they saw a skilful move. The narcotic of carnival had been swallowed and was working, like an anti-depressant, clouding their thoughts, pumping concentrated excitement into their veins, and relieving them of everyday pains. Some claimed the after-effects could feed enough memories to last the whole year. Tomas couldn't see her. He wasn't sure which costume was hers either, because Dona Benedita had made sure it was always hidden under black plastic sheeting, and in any case, many of the costumes looked the same. Maybe she wasn't there and had found some other solution to her problem. He saw Joseph though, as he danced in a cape fashioned from reclaimed paper stuck together and painted with a mixture of oil and charcoal. He wore a black mask with enormous pointed ears, and he spun and danced with an untamed energy that said he had to get out of the shanty, even if like the bat that he represented he was blind to where his journey would end. Thereza stayed in another hut that Seu Giomar owned, not leaving until the final of the dance as he had instructed her. He had gone to her mother's hut when she was out and taken the costume, and now she danced with forty other finalists under the stars, illuminated by four huge bonfires. Faces in the cheering crowd were a blur, because her head whipped around so quickly, and the eye-slits in her beaked mask were too small. Seu Giomar had already told her she would be chosen for a job in Rio. From having watched in previous years, she knew she would be taken straight to the bus and transported to the city, without the chance to say goodbye to her family, or tell Tomas why she was leaving. Was she right to leave, without giving him a chance to explain? Already she was missing them, and it made her hungry in a way she had never been, as if all harvests had failed. But surely for the rest to survive, without having to sell themselves to the highest bidder, one of them had to make the journey. This carnival had brought the fresh air of hope to all her family. She would be better able to help them from Rio, even if it only meant one less mouth to feed. And her mother would soon make a virtue of it by strutting down the alleyways with a glow that said one of mines had made it to the southern cities. She closed her eyes as she spun and strained to see outside the nest of the shanty, into her new world. The characters from her favourite telenovelas were settled there, and they were all unblemished, their problems all blessed with a trivia that meant a solution was near to hand. At first she flapped her white-feathered wings with the stiffness of a bird that had escaped its cage. But when she became accustomed to free flight and her strength grew, she built up speed for her migration, and imagined herself soaring on a current of warm air, until she was circling the costal city. Though her name had been called, Tomas still hadn't seen her. Twelve winners were marched from the stage between two flanks of military police, through the cheering crowds. Spectators jostled forward for a view as they boarded the bus, on their way to the dream. Tomas forced his way through the surge. A line of military police faced them, batons at the ready. Her face glowed like a candle as she pulled off her mask. 'Thereza,' Tomas shouted, driving forward to reach her. Someone in the crowd held him back. She turned to him, her eyes swollen, her conviction breaking. "I had to go, Tomas, I had no choice. You have Dona Lena," she said. Then she was gone, on board, out of sight. Tomas twisted free of those holding him and broke forward. The staggered line of military police closed ranks and blocked his path. He bounced off their armour but charged again, others joining him. The butt of a shotgun struck him in the stomach and then under the chin. The earth was spinning like a drunken waltzer. A cursed hiss rose from the crowd as their fuse was lit. It ran a sizzling course along their lines, and with the suddenness of dry tinder only needing a spark, the revelry exploded. Tomas rolled stiff as a log from the feet trampling him, as a military policeman screamed the order to fire and retreat. The crack and aerial burst of shotguns started a stampede, and revellers ran in all directions. It raged for more than an hour, with breezeblocks and planks flying - some ripped from the sides of huts - in response to baton charges and the deafening shock of shotgun rounds. And not until all the buses had gone, with the winners of the carnival dance and residents of the cities, did calm rain on the shanty once more. * The ground felt warm and comforting, and Tomas lay there not wanting to move. His main reason for living had been pulled from under him, and if the earth were to devour him, he would have no complaints. How had she found out about Dona Lena? If he had known their affair would have led to this. Maybe if he had entered carnival with her, they could have escaped the shanty together. Someone pulled him by the arm into a seated position, a leg curled beneath him. Before him was Joseph's grey-white speckled face. How could he trust him, after what he had seen him do in the graveyard with the other carnival hopefuls? Maybe he already suspected Fabricio had died because of him. The boy went down on his haunches and handed him a bottle of cachaça. Tomas took two swigs, not bothering to see that the boy drank from the bottle first. If only the fiery heat could burn away his cancerous aches. "I didn't win, Seu Tomas," Joseph said, his sunken eyes brimming in tears. "You danced well, Joseph. I saw you in your bat's wings." "I should have won, shouldn't I?" Tomas nodded and took another gulp from the bottle, and it seemed to placate the boy. Joseph scratched at his scabby skin and forced a smile. "But Dona Thereza, she won, she was beautiful, her family will be well cared for now." "Maybe, Joseph. Maybe I was selfish for wanting her to stay." "You should have danced with her, then both of you would have won a job in the city." He gave back the bottle to Joseph who inclined his head. Had he been foolish not to try? Maybe Dona Benedita had been right when she said: "Always you have plans, like your father, but they stay in your head." Had he made this fate of his bind his hands to all things? What if the men who had held him were right in accusing him of having too much pride, of being unwilling to do the jobs that would have been available in the cities? But how was he to decide upon such a step, when he had little experience of making the simplest of choices? It often seemed that he and most in the shanty had been penned into the rigid circumstances that dictated their lives. His inexperience itself was a shackle to be broken, but attempting to free himself carried substantial risks. Joseph touched him with the bottle, but he had drank his fill and shook his head. "I'll try again next year. I'll keep trying until I get in," the boy said. His hands were shaking as he sprang up. There was a giddiness in his legs that was not caused by the rum. His eyes sparkled as a rare treasure of an idea flashed across it. "We should sack the market or rob one of the drunks, this is the best time." "No, Joseph." No to everything. Was that who he really was? Joseph lost his sudden inspiration and slumped back down. "Do you remember what happened at your initiation for carnival?" Tomas asked. The boy's lips spread into a frown. "It wasn't that exciting. Giomar killed a goat and took some blood from us." Was that really all the boy remembered? Had Giomar thrown them all into a blind trance, so that they had lived through the stomach churning rituals without experiencing them, or was Joseph faking his lost memory? Maybe everyone had a way of concealing a puzzling part of themselves with greater silence than an illicit affair, including him. One day he might discover it. "What are you two doing there?" Dona Maria said as she cut a swathe through dancing revellers and crept up on them. It was Friday, the day of her deity Oshala, so she was wearing the lacy gown of a Candomblé priestess in his favourite white and carrying her bible in the Yoruba language. Red, black and white beaded necklaces adorned her neck, which she believed helped to transport her to the homeland and back again during ceremonial trances. It was at times like these that she said the spirits lifted her up out of the gutters of the shanty and made her the equal, and more, of anyone. "Thereza has gone, Mama. She won her freedom from this place," Tomas said. "Yes, I heard. That's why I've been trying to find you. Come," she held out her bangled hand. He waved her off, "No, Mama, I'm not ready to go home." "I'll not let you sit out here and suffocate in your own grief. Come. You must come too, Joseph. I have something prepared to help both of you." Dona Maria marched them through the shanty to the white house of Candomblé, a building fashioned from four shacks nailed together. The sign painted on the door in Yoruba, the old language from Africa, said kô si óbá afi Olorun, "there is only one god who is Olorun," who was the supreme god of the faith. Tomas pushed the door open and they entered the dimly lit building, which was bulging at its seams with dozens of devotees. Many had come there instead of going to carnival, especially to see his mother fall into trance, as they had heard that she anticipated one of the deities visiting her. She was known throughout the shanty and much further for performing the subtlest of possession trances, unlike many of the young devotees. Often they danced the same exaggerated patterns whichever deity possessed them, so that no one could identify which god had resolved to descend upon them, or interpret the message sent. Dona Maria took him and Joseph to sit amongst the devotees, who had all dressed in their white gowns and doeks, and taken longer than normal to prepare themselves for the ceremony. Then she scuttled past the pile of plaster cast legs, arms, torsos and heads - whatever parts of the body that had been cured by divine intervention - crammed at the back of the building. At the altar, the pai-de-santo washed the river and thunderstones of the orishas - the deities through whom ordinary men could communicate with the supreme god, Olorun - with the blood of a goat that had been sacrificed earlier. Then he replaced them next to the paper flowers and statues and lithographs of the saints. That continued the tradition of hiding the African nature of the rituals as their slave ancestors, and then those who had lived under military dictatorship had been forced to do, though many of the policemen who broke into the Candomblé houses to break up the ceremonies were themselves fearful followers of the orishas. Some of the black faces of ancestral divinities were still covered with white masks, to conceal them within the image of Catholic saints, but there were many uncovered now. The irons of Ogun and the bow and arrow of Oshoosi were amongst other emblems of the orishas that appeared on the altar. Joseph watched the proceedings with bulbous eyes, and although Tomas refused to believe, he too was ensnared like a child before a circus. When the priest had finished, two high ranking daughters proceeded to dance around the sacred offerings of a bottle of dendé oil, a plate of manioc flour, a glass of water and a glass of rum on the floor at the centre of the room. The atabaque hand drums set a pulsating rhythm, which the two dancers mirrored with sudden exaggerated jerks of their chests. After a while, each dancer scooped manioc flour into her hand, and one of them went towards the door, whilst the other approached a small padlocked room at the front of the building. It was the shrine to Eshu, controller of all crossroads and dangerous places, who had to be satisfied to prevent him from becoming angry and disturbing the ceremony. The pai-de-santo unbolted the door, and while one daughter threw manioc flour into the shrine, the other threw it outside into the alleyway, both with the chant, 'Eshu, here's your food; go away, this is not your place.' With Eshu satisfied, the mother, who sat by the orchestra, struck her two pieces of metal adja. This signalled the start of the chanted hymns in tainted Yoruba to all the orishas, to the accompaniment of three drummers. Each daughter when they heard the music of their orisha hurried forward to dance, their bodies vibrating and spinning out of balance as they became vessels for the deities to express themselves before their devotees. The gods and the dead were descending, to mingle with the devotees and hear their problems, offer advice and heal their ailments, all for the pledge of a gift. At least that's what all who accepted believed. Tomas recognised in her precise steps, submissive to the rhythm of drum and chant, the capricious Oshun - goddess of springs, creeks and sensual lore, whose Catholic name to conceal her African heritage was Senhora Candeias. She had leapt into one of the young daughters, who pirouetted to dance in front of him, fanning herself with the subtlest of teases as she wielded her hefty sword. He looked away, refusing to be pursued by temptation now. Then in a sudden rush of whim that was her nature, Oshun flew off to taunt another man. When the spirit had tired in her, she recovered her composure somewhat. With the gentlest of touches, she lifted a pregnant woman from her stool and blew on her stomach to bless her unborn child as though the spirit had instructed her. Oshun bolted from her body as suddenly as she had come, and the young daughter collapsed on to the floor sucking her thumb as she took on the inferior spirit of an éré child, which would comfort her until transition to her normal state. As soon as she had fallen, a deft modulation in the drumming, which was mirrored by the chanting, called upon the rhythm of Yemanja, goddess of the sea, conceived as a mermaid, whose hidden name was the Virgin Mary. The young daughter who took on that spirit ran to the centre of the room dressed in Yemanja's favourite blue. She danced as if drowning in turbulent seas, which she had never seen. She was falling as if drunk, beating herself as sweat poured from her rigid face. The congregation broke into murmurs that spread like measles: they didn't recognise the adventure she was portraying; she was trying too hard; her possession was extreme; she was clumsier than a newborn foal. Female assistants rushed out to restrain her, and in the meantime, other women became possessed by gods in order to stop Yemanja from dominating the ceremony. Tomas turned when his mother hobbled through the door at the back, immaculate in the gown of her orisha and leaning on an invisible cane. The congregation immediately recognised Oshala, father of all orishas, grandfather of all mortals, and fixed their eyes on her. Dona Maria had gained much recognition for the hardships she had endured, the accounts she had given of her visions, her spiritual travels to the homeland and other magical experiences. If these 'gifts'; as well as the fact that she was the only one to own a bible written in the Yoruba, the original tongue of the ancestors; elevated his mother in the eyes of the other devotees, then where was the harm in that? She shuffled through the congregation, slapping her cane against the stool of a devotee here, and offering Oshala's outspoken advice to someone else there. She stopped in front of him, blew into his face and babbled in the Yoruba tongue. He didn't understand her advice and she wouldn't remember the strange words that she had spoken afterwards, so the wiry priest interpreted for him. First he issued a warning, to watch out for various signs. Then he repeated, "Oshala says if you choose another woman for your wife, he'll grant your wish if you promise to light a candle for him." She knew he didn't believe their faith could rescue him, any more than carnival could deliver for the revellers, so why was she doing this? Was Oshala speaking to her, or was she voicing her own wishes through him? He had done the same with not inconsiderable skill when she had first persuaded him that his place was in the Candomblé, and Yemanja was his orisha. This, though she already knew that he, like his father before him, grew too bloated with education to truly join them. Still, he had made the spirits of the gods and dead ancestors visit him with nightly regularity in his teens. Some of the older women had taught him that he could not be punished for actions which the spirits carried out through him whilst he was possessed, and he had returned their touches, strokes and rubbing as they stood amongst the devotees. Then later, some of them had invited him back to their huts to lie with them. He did not want this demon set lose in him again. "What is your answer?" the priest said. "I've made a wish and promised to light a candle if it's granted," Tomas said, not telling them that his wish was to see Thereza again. The priest drew in smoke from a cigar until his chest ballooned, and then he blew the medicinal mist into Tomas' face. Like a serpent it penetrated his eyes, ears and nose, stinging him. Dona Maria and the priest first blended into one, as though they had possessed each other, and then the world disappeared. The above text is an excerpt from the still unpublished novel Carnival of Hope. George Nerra lives in the United Kingdom and is a chartered accountant by profession. His ambition is to write novels full time. The author can be contacted at gnerra@hotmail.co.uk.
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...sneezy.....!!!!!!!