The Discovery of America by the Turks

Author:Jorge Amado [Amado, Jorge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101603574
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2012-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

10

It could be seen immediately that Jamil Bichara and Ibrahim Jafet were twin souls, made to understand and esteem each other. The meeting took place in the cabaret. Glorinha Goldass introduced them. It didn’t take her long to regret it. The two Turks, instead of devoting their time to her, began to gab, leaving her reduced to the ridiculous role of a deaf-mute, as though she were a piece of furniture. Wounded in her self-respect, she went off to dance with Chico Lopes, a traveling salesman given to the conquest of hookers. He’d been laying siege to Glorinha for some time without any success until then. The one in question didn’t give of herself for free, except on those rare occasions when tricks were played on her, clouding her judgment. Not out of avarice, but from necessity. In Laranjeiras, where she had come from to ply her trade in Itabuna, she had left four sisters, devout virgins, a crippled mother, and a father who worked other people’s land for his consolation of cachaça. All those and, in addition, two loony aunts—“my dearly beloved creatures,” she would weep with longing as she remembered them—all dependent on her, on the little money she would send each month by Aureliano Neves, the owner of the Casa Sergipana, first-class furniture, her parishioner on Saturdays.

The youngest daughter, a flirtatious mulatto girl in full bloom, had given her cherry for free to the judge’s son, that son of a bitch, who after making a great fuss over her had kicked her out as soon as she’d been fucked, to the fury of her drunken but moralistic father, without even a good-bye. He’d promised to set her up in a house, all established, for a love affair. In some strange way she was grateful to him because when he’d popped her cherry he’d brought her good luck. The divine Glorinha went off to be a whore in cacao country, Glorinha Goldass, sought after. The fulsome pledges of the traveling salesman went in one ear and out the other, in spite of his elegant mustache and his hair that gleamed with brilliantine and was parted down the middle just like a pussy, the height of fashion. The dandy danced well, and Glorinha wasn’t far behind him in that. She adored waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, but the best of all was the maxixe.

Interest on Jamil’s part was there right from the start when, rejoicing in the unexpected appearance of the ideal candidate, Ibrahim went straight to the business at hand. On that afternoon the person of his fellow countryman was still the center of attention, the object of conversation and speculation. Raduan Murad, a friend in common, a man of great aptitude, had proposed the name of Jamil, and he had regretted his absence. What had his name been proposed for? To solve a problem of interest for Ibrahim, but one that might be of equal interest for Jamil. He would like to lay it out if his countryman would care to listen and set a time and place.

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