The Marble Army. Gisele Firmino

heat deep inside his stomach all the way up to the very tip of his tongue and the roof of his mouth was nothing new to him. He had had quentão many many times. What was new was the tingle in his feet, the looseness on the back of his knees and neck, and just how bright and blurry a starry night could be.

      Eduardo had brought a bottle of cachaça with him, and between him and Pablo and Rita and Jerônimo, they were almost through all the alcohol they had. Pablo leaned against a tree, his feet planted in the meadow as if hoping to mirror his solid companion. Jerônimo, always the clown, was clumsily dancing chula, a squatting, tap-dance mess. Rita immediately joined in, smiling, slightly uncoordinated, but nothing short of pure grace. She’d steal glances at Pablo’s eyes as often as she could hold her focus. The both of them danced for a short while, Eduardo clapped and laughed hysterically. Pablo just watched her, mesmerized.

      When they stopped, she walked over to him, and gave him a long, wet kiss. This was also new to him. She kissed differently, and she tasted differently as if she had suddenly, in one kiss, revealed to him the woman she would become. Somewhat startled, Pablo opened his eyes to look at his friends, but both of them had their backs to the couple, and were watching the lights on the mine twinkle behind the trees that stood between them.

      Rita stopped kissing him. Grabbed his face with both hands, and said, “I really like you, Pablo Fonte, did you know that?”

      Pablo tightened his grip around her waist, pulling her closer to him. Then he kissed her again, wondering if his kisses were as telling as hers, and how far he was from becoming this man he hoped to be. And that’s the last memory he had of that evening.

      TWO

      MÃE HAD ASKED me to fetch some parsley from our backyard, and I when got out I noticed Pablo standing next to the shed; his saw hung from his right hand as his left shielded his eyes from the setting sun. He stretched his neck as if to make sense of what could be going on at the mine. We lived about a half a mile from the mine, the closest house to it, close enough to hear the quietest of explosions, or see when the trucks pulled in or out for coal.

      “Pablo!” I called, but he didn’t look at me. “Pablo! What?”

      “Something going on at the mine. Saw a bunch of cars pulling up.” His eyes were fixed on the horizon.

      “Probably visitors. Pai said there’s a new mine in Butiá. He’s probably teaching them a thing or two.” The air was crisp enough to cut through one’s nostrils.

      “Yeah. I don’t know.” He leaned his saw against the shed’s door. “I’m gonna go peek,” he announced and immediately started running. “Tell Mãe that I’ll come back with Pai.”

      “Wait! I want to go!” But he didn’t look back.

      …

      Pablo crawled between trees, bushes and some of the cars in an effort to inch himself closer to where all the men stood. No sound came out of the mine. No trucks pulled in or out. No workers rested by its entrance, no stray dogs feasted on leftovers. It was all silence.

      Pablo’s knees dug the black wet mud, and he thought of our mother, and how upset she’d be once she saw how careless he had been with his clothing. His heart was almost jumping out of his chest from the sprint, and his stomach suddenly felt empty, as if a winter wind ran through him, taking away everything that was familiar, and replacing it with the new folds of life, the inevitable changes revealing themselves right in front of you, and inside of you. Pablo spotted a few pink wood sorrels close by, their petals shutting in on themselves as they prepared for a long frosty night. He plucked five or six of them and started to munch at their crunchy stems, hoping the tart juices would tame the storm within his stomach.

      While savoring the azedinhas, Pablo monitored three men armed with rifles pacing across the mine’s main entrance, right by the elevator shaft. Two of them exchanged small talk, while the third, the taller one, paid close attention to José, the security guard on duty.

      José had monitored the afternoon shift ever since people started mining that place. He was a quiet man who knew all there was to know about what happened in that mine. He spotted the army convoy as the first car turned the street corner, almost a kilometer away, and immediately called our father by cranking the telephone as fast as he could. José knew he was being watched, and stood still.

      The guards’ hardhats didn’t look much different from those worn inside the mine, but everything else about them seemed foreign and dangerous. That was the first time that my brother had seen their boots and uniforms up close and thought it a lot more intimidating than he’d expected. Pablo reached for some rocks underneath him, saving them inside his pockets for a few seconds, but returned them to where they belonged as soon as he got another look at the men’s rifles. The temperature was dropping quite fast, and in his impulse and curiosity he’d forgotten his coat inside the shed. His lips hardened as they assumed a dark tint of red and purple. His fingers felt the chill as well, and he breathed into his cupped hand to ease the pain. A cloud of his breath hung in the air. It seemed everything hung in the air. Pablo glanced at his other hand as he pressed it against the damp coal-tainted mud as if lulling it into revealing its secrets, into sharing whatever was going on within its caves.

      While my brother waited, our father stood inside, hand holding hand behind his back. His men lined up behind him, like little wary children, sharing stares between him, the army and each other, as they allowed our father to ponder the choices offered by the General. Some of the miners posed as if they were about to have their portrait taken, hoping their faces, their already nostalgic eyes would tell each of their stories for generations to come. Some held on to their tools as if they were mementos they should never part with, while others hooked their thumbs through their belt loops, on a desperate attempt to look tough. After a day’s work inside the mine, the men were covered in black dust, creating the illusion of a uniformed army, or that of slaves, depending on who was watching.

      Pai looked at nothing but one wall of the galleria where they all stood. Through the carbide lamps hanging from some of the wood planks, he saw the tunnel his own hands had helped carve, and thought of his two boys. He saw the image of Pablo and me running through the passages with oversized hardhats. He saw us zipping past him inside a wagon as one of his workers, one of his friends, pushed us as fast as he possibly could. He heard the silly sound of my laughter when I tried to contain myself, and Pablo’s shushing, hoping we weren’t too much of a disruption.

      Our father turned his right foot from side to side as if to smooth the surface underneath him, but really just trying to remind himself of how the earth below the earth felt soothing and familiar against his work shoes. That gravel, the stench of sulfur almost like vinegar, the blackness on his men’s faces, the wood planks, the maze… All these things he thought he knew better than the back of his own wife’s hands. He was a little older than Pablo when he became a miner and never thought he’d have a different life. And as he contemplated his years inside the mine, he wondered whether he could work for the government, and more importantly, if he could heed a man he despised.

      He took his hat off and looked at each of his men’s faces. With their eyes wide open, they followed his every movement hoping that he would take the offer and continue to be the person they looked up to, continue to be the man they came for when their son had caught the flu and they needed an advance for the antibiotics, or when their in-law had passed and they needed a day off for the wake. The General who had made the offer grew impatient as our father took his time. His thick and bushy eyebrows arched inward in a frown as he caught a glimpse of his own subordinates’ unrest, exchanging quizzical looks with one another.

      What the General didn’t mention in his offer was that he also expected our father to be the man who’d report back to him, who would tell on his own friends when anybody went astray, when anybody dared to criticize the changes pushed upon them. He would be the one to fire workers for causes with which he wouldn’t necessarily agree. He would be the person who would have to turn somebody in when he was probably the one who despised the whole thing more than anybody else. No. The General didn’t mention any of that. But our father knew, and his men had a feeling.

      “General.”