Curupira

Curupira, of flaming orange hair, feet facing backwards so trackers run the wrong way. Guardian of the forest, the one who keeps hunters in line, the one who kills those who would harm a nursing pampas, the one whose whistle drives men insane.

They caught him in a net before the loggers came through. Dragged him out, face down, stood on his arms and head, hard soles leaving mud on his fiery locks. Fear was in the men there, as if they had found a broke-winged angel, as if they expected their due deaths at any moment. None so vicious as the afraid. Sledgehammer in hand. We can’t let him get away, we’ll never find him again, those damned feet. While the guardian ate dirt and moaned his toes still pointed to the sky. Nothing so dangerous as disgust. They pushed his feet down so the sides touched earth, but still the bones and muscles brought the toes back to the sky. Ankles wired wrong. Like when Pedro’s brother broke his forearm and it bent at right angle and his arm in whole showed x plane, y plane, z plane. Nothing so terrible as disgust, but nought as right as setting a bone.

Twenty pounds and a shaft thick as cola cans. Swung an arc, and gravity and momentum pulled smashed down onto the ankle. Yes, even mythical creatures have bones. At the sound of Curupira’s scream, rats and monkeys and deer ten miles away started from their homes and rushed, and ran, and stampeded through the growth, knowing they were no longer safe. Second. Curupira had sharpened teeth and he bared his lips as he cried but he did not move. Spines tingled underneath t-shirts. Luan snatched the sledgehammer from Ricardo, desperate to make it stop, desperate to complete their heresy. He slammed the metal on the toes. Crunch. Crunch. A third time. That’s enough, Pedro whispered as he winced. Fourth, to be sure. The birds left every tree. Luan threw the hammer aside, exhaled as if he had finished absolution. Curupira whimpered.

What now?

Put him in a museum. Put him on show. They’d pay good money for this, they would, everyone, show that myths are real, more money for all of us —

Pedro picked up the hammer.

Curupira, spirit of the forest, could show himself as parakeet, as barbet, as sloth or bat or jaguar. He could have shown them the dead body of a wife and crawled away as they raged and lamented. He could have whistled.

The guardian lay still, silent, as if he wished to sleep. The others discussed who to call first about their prize. Curupira was always described as a boy in their childhood tales, but as Pedro approached he saw wrinkles and worry on his forehead, an ancient man behind a youth’s face.

A wind blew.

Curupira opened his bright green eyes and looked at him. He spoke exhaustion without word. Muddied hair. Feet bleeding, no longer backwards, no longer recognisable as feet. He closed his lids and made a noise like a sigh, as Pedro raised the sledgehammer once again.

The others shouted, hands out, no, our future —

The hammer slammed on empty earth.
A pile of leaves skittered away, danced in circles from where the body had been just before.

The men shouted and argued and came to blows. Pedro returned home with a swollen nose, cut lip, bruised arms.
At dinner he clasped his hands to say grace, and the words were clogged leaves in his throat. Tears sprung at the backs of his eyes. Curupira did not whistle. Curupira did not kill them or take their minds.

The next day, the loggers moved into the trees.

Savage Writing: To Leave Brazil

The Savages Overlord, Doug, decreed that this week’s topic be Brazil, because of some international kicksphere tourney. I ended up doing this crazy freewrite late the night before. Best heard at 100mph.

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Imagine one of these days, Bella. We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to fly straight across the sea – across and up – and we’ll fly right over Africa and up to Portugal, and there they’ll think we’re quaint, loud, “Oh look, these beautiful Brazilian woman, ha ha ha!” And no-one will tell us what to do any more, because they’ll fall at our feet and give us rubies just for a smile, and we’ll be secretaries and washer women and maids, anything, until we find men worth keeping, and then we’ll say “yes” but we won’t settle down, oh no, we’ll get a man who moves, and we’ll carry him all across Europe and Asia until we reach Vietnam and the Philippines and Taiwan and then maybe we’ll find a new man there, who knows? Old or young, it doesn’t matter as long as they have vitality, spark in their eye enough to take in our swaying hips. You’ll see Bella, they’ll adore us. Across the world, they’ll adore us, anywhere – just anywhere that’s not FUCKING Brazil!

Paola, Paola, no, never, it can never be. The world is not made of rubies – the sea is not sapphire, and the plants are not emerald. We walk down the street in Rio and we see twenty girls prettier than us, girls with hips that sway wider than ours, woman built like the symbol for spades on playing cards, round perfect symmetrical buttocks tapering up to a waist of nothing, nothing, nothing. These girls have hair spun from silk, teeth white as desert skulls, skin of caramel, of ebony, of cream, always in one flawless matte colour. Why, then, should we – with our pimples and our wide mouths and oval faces – be courted so in Portugal or Vietnam or Taiwan? You say men would appear to give us money once our penance of wash-work is done, but my mother and your mother know the wash-work is never done and the secretary goes home last and maids will always exist because there will always be a mess to pick up. If we start that work, we will work forever. We are not fairytale princesses waiting to be saved, we are the serving girl, the farmer’s daughter, the townsfolk not even with the power of the crone. What could Portugal hold that is not here? Or Vietnam? We will always work. We may find boys to share our beds, yes, but never men to rescue us from our financial trolls, our dragons of debt. There are no knights, and my love, even if there were – do you think yourself so feeble that you must be rescued? Do you think you have not intelligence enough to be better than a maid? Only you can rescue yourself. Reliance on hypotheticals leads to death. An optimistic man in the jungle may believe he’s safe, but we know the thirst or the spiders or the crocodiles will get him in the end.

But let me out of this country! This place of invisible walls, this trench between poverty and wealth, let me out of here! You say rescue myself, Bella. Then let me rescue myself, let me hustle and sell and bargain until I’m little else but husk – but let me away from the fawning hail marys after an evening shoot-out, the starving mother inches away from the football Midas. Let me out of this awful place!

What, you think no favelas means no trench? In India we would wear gold watches in front of a dozen starving beggars. Near every country is the same, only cleaner. You want cleaner? Then yes, let’s go to Europe. But not to get away from the church, and not to get away from the stench of the poor and the reek of the rich.

Cleaner streets. I would like that. Where even the poor have shoes so they do not fear stepping in shit or glass. Yes, Bella, I want cleaner. I want Europe. We go.

And we work. We do not seduce, we do not toil: we work, and we save. You want Asia, and the rest? We work, and we pound our own path with what we have. We grow, and earn more. We see everything – and maybe in some other part of the world, we find a man to say “yes” to.

We do! Though we may toil, a little – we may do whatever needs be to eat – but not indefinitely. Even maids are not always maids, not in this future time. But yes, yes, let’s – let’s go away to Portugal, and cross the Alps, and teach and work and learn and love.

And even if at the end we have no money and no man, we will have stories – oh, such stories as no-one will ever know!

And even if they say our stories are boring or trivial, we will have one thing over our mothers, over our brothers, over our families.

And what is that, Paola?

We won’t be in fucking Brazil!