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Authors: John Dos Passos
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the river were off in São Paulo.
At Sayão’s office, in the barracks next to the machine shop that kept his roadbuilding machinery in order, we tried to get a skinny young engineer to explain some of the workings of the colony to us but he begged off saying that Sayão would explain it so much better when he came.
Where the devil was Dr. Sayão?
One man pointed north, another pointed south. Out on the road at work. How could one tell?
A stocky little man, with long blond eartabs combed down from under a pith helmet, drove up in a jeep while we were talking. He spoke with authority. Sayão was in Amaro Leite. That meant sour milk. It was a town, a sort of a town. In the north, far in the north. He would be back this afternoon, he announced.
E certo
. How far was Amaro Leite? The stocky man spread out his arms.
Uma infinidade de leguas
… An infinity of leagues.
While we waited the judge and I went walking along the river. “This I suppose will be the principal
avenida
,” he was saying as we stumbled past wandering trucks through thedeep dust. “They shouldn’t cut down those trees. That should be the public garden right along the river.”
All at once he was seized with a fury of cityplanning. He pointed here and there among the charred stumps, indicating parks and public buildings. I began to see columns sprouting among the trees, monuments to national heroes, bronze generals on horseback. The little judge’s chest swelled.
We started across the floating bridge. The sun had set behind forested hills. In the hurried twilight of the tropics a slight coolness rose from the swift mustardgreen water.
“Soon there’ll be a new bridge,” said the judge proudly and pointed to the unfinished cement piers on the riverbank.
At the end of the bridge we met a very tall slender young man with fine sharpcut features and almost black skin. He wore the usual ragged workclothes. He grabbed the judge’s hand and smiled with all his broken teeth. The judge asked him how he was doing, was he married yet, were there any pretty girls in the colônia? The young man talked fast and smiled some more and grabbed the lobe of his left ear with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. That gesture meant O.K. He shook our hands again.
When we walked on the judge explained that this young fellow had been janitor at the courthouse in Goiãnia. He’d been starving to death there on eight hundred cruzeiros a month. Now he was making fortyfive a day laying bricks. “The man is happy.”
By the time we get back to the Grande Hotel Ceres it is so dark we have a hard time finding it. No word from Sayão. The dining room is jammed with men eating by the light of two lanterns and a candle. There are bearded men in hunting jackets who look like prospectors, there are salesmen and surveyors and engineers working on the road and the new bridge. Everybody is eating fast and talking fast. The dim light glints in eager eyes, on sweating cheekbones. When I grope myway out to the waterbucket to wash my face by the light of the lantern I see that the man ahead of me, a bullnecked character with a strawcolored beard, wears a large pearl earring in one ear. The night is already cool. From somewhere comes a smell of cape jessamine. Down in the dark valley an accordion is playing and a voice is singing a samba.
We are up at daylight standing around outside the office beside the repairshop in the valley with the construction foreman. There are bulldozers and road patrols. The place looks like a construction camp in the States. “No, he’s not back yet.”
“Yes he is,” says the young man from São Paulo. “He got in from Amaro Leite at half past one … He’ll be along any minute.”
“Isn’t it early?”
“He never gets tired. He sleeps while he drives.”
The man with the helmet and the yellow eartabs drives up in his jeep. “He’s back,” he says in an excited tone. “His stomach is a little upset … He has a slight
At Sayão’s office, in the barracks next to the machine shop that kept his roadbuilding machinery in order, we tried to get a skinny young engineer to explain some of the workings of the colony to us but he begged off saying that Sayão would explain it so much better when he came.
Where the devil was Dr. Sayão?
One man pointed north, another pointed south. Out on the road at work. How could one tell?
A stocky little man, with long blond eartabs combed down from under a pith helmet, drove up in a jeep while we were talking. He spoke with authority. Sayão was in Amaro Leite. That meant sour milk. It was a town, a sort of a town. In the north, far in the north. He would be back this afternoon, he announced.
E certo
. How far was Amaro Leite? The stocky man spread out his arms.
Uma infinidade de leguas
… An infinity of leagues.
While we waited the judge and I went walking along the river. “This I suppose will be the principal
avenida
,” he was saying as we stumbled past wandering trucks through thedeep dust. “They shouldn’t cut down those trees. That should be the public garden right along the river.”
All at once he was seized with a fury of cityplanning. He pointed here and there among the charred stumps, indicating parks and public buildings. I began to see columns sprouting among the trees, monuments to national heroes, bronze generals on horseback. The little judge’s chest swelled.
We started across the floating bridge. The sun had set behind forested hills. In the hurried twilight of the tropics a slight coolness rose from the swift mustardgreen water.
“Soon there’ll be a new bridge,” said the judge proudly and pointed to the unfinished cement piers on the riverbank.
At the end of the bridge we met a very tall slender young man with fine sharpcut features and almost black skin. He wore the usual ragged workclothes. He grabbed the judge’s hand and smiled with all his broken teeth. The judge asked him how he was doing, was he married yet, were there any pretty girls in the colônia? The young man talked fast and smiled some more and grabbed the lobe of his left ear with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. That gesture meant O.K. He shook our hands again.
When we walked on the judge explained that this young fellow had been janitor at the courthouse in Goiãnia. He’d been starving to death there on eight hundred cruzeiros a month. Now he was making fortyfive a day laying bricks. “The man is happy.”
By the time we get back to the Grande Hotel Ceres it is so dark we have a hard time finding it. No word from Sayão. The dining room is jammed with men eating by the light of two lanterns and a candle. There are bearded men in hunting jackets who look like prospectors, there are salesmen and surveyors and engineers working on the road and the new bridge. Everybody is eating fast and talking fast. The dim light glints in eager eyes, on sweating cheekbones. When I grope myway out to the waterbucket to wash my face by the light of the lantern I see that the man ahead of me, a bullnecked character with a strawcolored beard, wears a large pearl earring in one ear. The night is already cool. From somewhere comes a smell of cape jessamine. Down in the dark valley an accordion is playing and a voice is singing a samba.
We are up at daylight standing around outside the office beside the repairshop in the valley with the construction foreman. There are bulldozers and road patrols. The place looks like a construction camp in the States. “No, he’s not back yet.”
“Yes he is,” says the young man from São Paulo. “He got in from Amaro Leite at half past one … He’ll be along any minute.”
“Isn’t it early?”
“He never gets tired. He sleeps while he drives.”
The man with the helmet and the yellow eartabs drives up in his jeep. “He’s back,” he says in an excited tone. “His stomach is a little upset … He has a slight
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