Thank you for supporting the recent promotion of my novel, Secrets From The Dust, which saw it rise to #36 Free in Kindle Store, #1 Literary Fiction and #2 Drama. I hope the readers who downloaded the book will enjoy it and consider leaving a review at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. For those who were unfortunate to miss out on the promotion, the book is now available through Amazon prime lending or for $2.99 (£1.99, €2.68). Thanks again.
I am interested in peoples struggles, be they for freedom, inclusion or to be loved. I also like to travel, when possible, and learn about different cultures. This has led to incidents from around the world generating ideas for my stories… Read the rest of my interview with Marilou George at Confessions of a Reader
In this next post from my series about how the research for Secrets From The Dust relates to the novel, I look at the Australian Aboriginal civil rights movement, followed by a short scene from the novel which illustrates their activities.
The Aboriginal civil rights movement of the 1960s focused on the key areas of Aboriginals having the right to be citizens of Australia, having ownership rights to land that they had occupied for thousands of years, and halting the policy of taking their mixed-raced children and placing them into institutions or foster care to be assimilated into European culture. The 1965 ‘bus rides’ across New South Wales were inspired by the black ‘freedom ride’ in America. In towns across the state, the participants protested the daily humiliations of Aboriginals not being allowed into public areas such as clubs, hotels, swimming pools, and public toilets (this seems to be a major restriction where bigotry raises its ugly head, as so well depicted in Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help, set in the American South of the 1960s). Counter-protesters had spat, thrown food and sworn at the civil rights marchers, and on several occasions police had to pull the two groups apart.
Some key dates in the Aboriginal struggle for civil rights were:
Scene at Aboriginal Tent Embassy:
They drove the one hundred and seventy miles from Sydney to Canberra in three hours. Heng pulled out at the last moment, giving Margaret no time to frame an excuse not to go, so she and Matthew travelled in one car whilst Nannup and Joyce went in their own. Hundreds of blacks had begun arriving in Canberra on Saturday, on foot, by car and by the busload. The police had forcibly removed the ‘Aboriginal Embassy’, which had stood in a tent on the lawns opposite Parliament House, and they were there to re-erect it. It had been established there on Australia day, the 26 January 1972, to embarrass the government for bringing out a mineral exploitation policy that did not recognise Aboriginal land rights, and to symbolise that the Aboriginals were foreigners in their own land. It had stood for nearly six months, in spite of repeated attempts to remove it, but the government had grown frustrated and told the police to stop drinking wine and coffee in the tents with the protestors and dismantle it. The young Afro wearing Aboriginals who had manned the tent, with the help of their white student colleagues, were educated and proud of their heritage. As the tent was re-erected, blacks and whites linked arms three deep around the embassy and sang, “Black and White together, we shall not be moved,” to the tune of ‘We Shall Overcome’. The flag adopted was raised and fluttered over the tent, its black symbolising the Aboriginal peoples, its yellow circle the sun, and the red the earth and their blood spilt in the battle for it. Hundreds of police looked on not sure what to do.
The demonstrators were waving dozens of placards protesting about the stolen land and mineral exploitation of Aboriginal reserves, and a number of speakers spoke to the crowd, including Joyce.
When Joyce had finished speaking, they squeezed through the crowd into the tent. A few of the older activists jumped up and ran screaming to hug Joyce. She introduced them to the others, and told them that she had been on the ‘65 ‘bus rides’ across New South Wales with some of these people, which had been inspired by the black ‘freedom ride’ in America. They gave the newcomers tea and food, and laughed as they reminisced about driving through those towns to protest that Aborigines on reserves and the fringes of towns were not allowed in public areas such as clubs, hotels, swimming pools, public toilets and had to sit in the front stalls at picture theatres. Some whites had spat, thrown food and sworn at them, and on more than one occasion the police had intervened to pull them apart, but they agreed it had been worth it, it had probably shamed the country into having the ‘67 referendum. Joyce asked the others if they remembered coming to that town where the white men had been out in force, adamant that the protestors would not speak there. But when the Aboriginal women who lived in a camp on the edge of the town learned that they were there, they had hurried into town, some with their hands on their heavily pregnant hips, and they had called the names of the white men who visited the blacks camps at night, and those men had run back like chastened sheep to their homes. All except Margaret laughed with solid breaths at this.
As night fell the crowd guarding the embassy did not disperse, and their chattering, singing and laughter kept all awake. Margaret stumbled out into the bitter night, and her stomach lurched as she pulled back the tarpaulin and squelched through the soggy mud inside the make shift latrine, which gave off a rank, foul odour that stuck to her senses even after she had retreated. She played with the insipid food that was served up inside the tent, and watched with a caustic squirm twisting her face as Matthew joined the others in singing protest songs and comparing war stories of demonstrations up and down the country. It wouldn’t last she told herself. She had seen the older whites how tired they looked. They eventually moved on to fight over good paying city jobs and forgot about protest and revolution. She would get Matthew to herself some day.
In the morning the police moved in to the chant of “Zieg Heil, Zeig Heil,” from the crowd. Three hundred and sixty-two of them marched four abreast to encircle the embassy, and others pushed back the crowd. Those who had been there longest realised that the police were more bolstered with steel and organised than they had been on previous occasions. They ploughed in, en mass, and this time those who resisted were punched, kicked and beaten. The protestors fought back with inflamed spirits. Men and Women writhed on the ground screaming, those who fell broken and unconscious were put into cars and rushed to hospital, and the blood of protestors and police mingled to soak the ground. Margaret allowed herself to be carried off the lawn with grateful ease, but some of the others held on to each other, the poles of the tents, trees, anything to stop themselves being taken. The operation lasted a little more than an hour, and by the end of it the police had arrested eight people, including Matthew.
Robert and Helga Stevens squeezed through a cordon of photographers to get into the police station. The reception area looked like the northern cattle markets, with the friends and relatives of those arrested frantic to negotiate their release. Everyone was shouting to be heard at the same time, and they were pushing against each other to get closer to the sergeants desk. Mr Stevens saw Margaret on a bench with her jaded cheeks in her hands. He pointed her out to Helga and they went over to the bench. “Margaret?”
She jumped up, “Oh, Mr Stevens.” He didn’t move to take her extending hand, and she dropped it back to her side.
“Where is Matthew?” He asked, his jaws set and his manner terse.
“He— He’s in the cells downstairs. They won’t allow me to see him.” Mr Stevens had already spun and gone. Helga looked up and down Margaret as if she were searching for exactly what Matthew saw in her. Margaret stepped aside and gestured towards the bench, but Helga forced her sealed lips to curl upwards for a second and didn’t move. Margaret looked away and sat down again, but she couldn’t escape the pungent smell of perfumed powder that rose off Helga like steam.
“You do realise that you are not the first,” Helga said.
“What?”
“Matthew likes to choose those less fortunate than himself.” Margaret stole an envious look up at the huge monument towering over her and turned away again. “Before you it was a little Indian girl,” Helga continued. “Then he was into Hinduism, or maybe it was Buddhism, you can never tell with Matthew. I thought his next charitable project would be that Vietnamese girl we’ve seen him with, after all, we are bombing their country.”
Margaret wanted to ignore her, but she couldn’t, Helga was too large a presence.
Bob Stevens strode back through the melee mopping his brow. “He’ll be released on bail in one hour, they are processing his papers,” he said to Helga. “I think it’s best if you return to Sydney by train, Margaret,” he pulled some notes from his wallet and held it towards her. “There are cameras outside and we don’t want to cause any confusion. I’m sure you understand. We’ll wait for Matthew and meet you back at the apartment.” Margaret got up and walked away without taking his money.
Previous Author research notes:
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The Brazilian 2012 Carnival officially kicked off in Rio on Friday 17th February (festivities started the previous day in places like Salvador de Bahia), and will run for five days. Carnival provides one of the main turning points in my novel, Carnival of Hope, when Tomas and Thereza, the main characters, begin to discover that rather than offering hope of a job in a Southern city, the carnival competition is a life-threatening deception. So, what is this vibrant and colourful event all about?
Origins: During Lent, some Catholic countries hold grand processions and observe cultural customs. Rio’s wealthy Portuguese imported masquerade balls and festivals from Paris during the 1600s, and this later incorporated traditions from Native Brazilian and African cultures. All these elements have helped to make carnival what it is today.
Religious significance: Carnival takes place in the five days before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday (Lenten season). The five days are a period of excess—in food, lust and celebration—before the self-denial of lent, which is a form of penance leading up to Easter. On Fat Tuesday, the last day before the first day of Lenten season, people eat fatty foods in preparation for fasting, when believers are supposed to abstain from eating meat (“carnival,” derived from carnelevare, “to remove meat”), and indulging in other luxuries.
To signal the start of carnival, the mayor turns over the key to the city to the Carnival King, Rei Momo, usually a pot-bellied man. In this image, Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes turns over the key to Rei Momo.
The events: Samba schools parading and competing against each other in various categories of costume, dance, drumming and floats is the most recognised image of carnival. The sambistas shuffle to the beat of the bateria, who beat their percussion instruments in frenzy, while colourfully decorated floats depicting a carnival theme inch along the route. Trucks draped in exotic finery, carrying huge sound systems—the trio elétricos—blasting out samba or some other music, are also in the mix.
The huge parades in Southern cities such as Rio and Sao Paulo are chiefly spectator events, where millions of people line the route to watch. The competition between the Samba schools takes place along a stretch of street known as the Sambadrome, with tiered seating for 90,000 along both sides in Rio. There are also more than 100 smaller bloco parades taking place in various neighbourhoods of the city.
Smaller events take place in Northern towns and cities such as Salvador de Bahia, Olinda and Recife, where the crowd participates by dancing to the beat as they follow the parades.
The erotic nature of carnival: Bloco das piranhas are men, dressed in high heels, short dresses and big wigs, with enormous breasts strapped to their chests. They sing, ‘Mama, I want to suck,’ as they dance and thrust themselves towards other men in an invitation to taste, as though allowing them to sample food that would provide them with real nourishment. Unsuspecting tourists may find themselves having to swat off lecherous advances from men and boys playing counting coup, where they chase each other and touch, fondle, squeeze or spank each other’s buttocks, to emphasize its privileged position in carnival. In these images of the celebration, the man in the fifth photo with large breasts strapped to his chest is a bloco das piranha.
The Brazilian health services use the event as an opportunity to promote their AIDs awareness messages, and up to 70 million condoms are to be distributed at this year’s carnival.
End of carnival song: In some towns, as samba blasts from trio elétricos, revellers will clutch each other’s hips and dance in a chain, singing the end of carnival song, “…happiness is fleeting, sadness is forever, and playfulness comes to an end on quarta-feira.” Drummers will continue to pound a fast rhythm, as if time was eluding them, and the only way to wrest more pleasure from the night was to squeeze eight beats out of a note written as one. But finally, carnival must come to an end.
If you would like to keep carnival going for a few more days, then you can download my novel, Carnival of Hope, by following one of the links below. Happy reading.
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I am deciding on which novel to work on next, and one of the choices involves a shift in genres, so I would like your help on making the decision as to what is an appropriate time to shift genres.
My first two novels can both be classified into the following genres: General, literary, drama. The first novel also has the historical tag because it is set in 1960s to 1970s, whilst the second novel has some thriller elements.
A couple of the ideas on my list for the next book can be put into the general, literary, drama genres with thriller elements (these will involve much research and take close to a year to complete). But I have a screenplay that received some good reviews on Zoetrope, which can be quickly rewritten as a comedy drama with a romantic sub-plot. The word count would make it a novella, which is much shorter than my previous two works, both being over 100,000 words. Is this too much of a switch in genres for the third book? I plan to use my same name for all my books. I would love views from both readers and writers.
Thanks for your help.
George Hamilton
In the third of a series of posts about how the research for Secrets From The Dust relates to the novel, I look at the loneliness of life in the outback for European women, followed by two short scenes that illustrate Anne McDonald’s isolation.
Assisted immigration fuelled Australia’s growth during the 1960s. Half of all the assisted places went to the British, who were known as “ten pound poms” because of the cheapness of their assisted passages. The remaining places were filled by other Europeans under the white Australia policy, which was finally abandoned in 1973. From that point, many Asians were allowed to settle.
For Australians who had lived in the cities, never mind the Europeans, moving to the sun scorched outback was often a huge culture shock. It was particularly so for the women, who could often be left at isolated homesteads alone for long periods. Some of the features of these communities were:
Scene 40:
Sean ploughed down his food like a hoarder, each spoonful reaching his mouth before the previous one had been fully chewed and swallowed. Even so he ate with a reverence that only people who plucked their meals from their own land could fully appreciate and understand.
Anne could see that he was happy with himself even though she was now back in her own room, and she wanted to ask him before he sat by the radio and fell into a sleep. She got to the end of the plait in Liz’s hair and summoned Margaret from in front of the open fire. “I was hoping we could go into Langley soon,” she said, as if to no one in particular. “We need to get some things for the girls and stock up on provisions.” Anne also needed to see a town with more than five buildings at its heart in order to remind her that she lived in the real world.
“Can’t do it this Saturday,” Sean said. “The Abbo boys are having some ceremony next weekend, so I need to get them to finish the planting this week. We’ll go next week.” With that, Sean got up, stretched his arms and rolled his neck, and then he walked out of the house and into the woods.
Anne’s fingers jumped to a dance in Margaret’s hair. They usually only went to Langley four times each year, and they had used those up already, but now he was prepared to go without any demands. She imagined herself walking down the street looking at people, new faces, probably summoning up the courage to say hello to one or two, and hopefully they would strike up a conversation, which, although she would shiver with stuttering unease, she would savour more than the iced creams from the general store. Just to talk out loud to someone other than the children or the women at church and get an interested response, if that was all she did, then the trip would be worthwhile. And maybe Sean would allow them to see one of those Hollywood movies at the theatre house, or with some luck they might have one of those Ealing movies on, and she might get to see what London looked like now.
“What’s an Abbo?” Margaret asked. The question caught Anne like a trap, and Liz stopped reading her book, but she kept her head down into the pages and waited to hear her mother’s answer.
“Why do you want to know that, Margaret?” Anne asked, trying to give herself time to think it through.
“Because Sister Ruth talked about Abbos at school, and Mr McDonald, he just talked about them, so I just wanted to know.”
Anne coughed up time enough to consider her answer and continued with the plaiting. “Well— they are desert people really— and I think some of them live in the bush. We have some of them close by and they help out on the farms and things like that.”
Margaret’s forehead remained wrinkled, as though Anne hadn’t said anything to help her understand what she needed to. She tried again, “Am I Abbo?” Margaret pressed her thighs against her hands like a vice, as if to squeeze life out of the possibility.
“No,” Anne chuckled haltingly, “Whoever gave you that idea?” Margaret shrugged her shoulders, and Anne tapped them with the comb to remind her not to do that. “You look more like a Southern European I told you, and that’s what you’re to tell Sister Ruth if she asks. The Aboriginals like to keep to themselves and have different ways about them, so you should leave them alone. And from now on when you go outside I want you to wear a bonnet to keep the sun off your face.” Anne tied off the end of the plait, “Now run along and get your things ready for school. And when you get back from school tomorrow I want you to take the scouring brush and scrub the kitchen floor as white as new.”
“Yes, Miss— Mrs McDonald.”
Scene 45:
A car’s horn screamed as Sean swerved into its path, but even this angry blast and duel between two vehicles made a change to the silences of Malee.
Saturday afternoon was the busiest time for the high street, and Anne looked up and down at the afternoon strollers, some, like her, taking sustenance from seeing other people. Women loitered with two or three children in tow, and the parking bay of the general store was full. Most of the vehicles belonged to farmers from outlying areas, stocking up on groceries, and a group of them were talking and drinking on the boardwalk outside of a bar. She knew exactly where she had to go to buy the cloth for Liz and Margaret’s dresses, but she wanted to take a lingering stroll first, to steep herself in the life of the town. Several women were looking through the window of a new dress shop, and Anne and the girls crossed the road to join them. She stood at the end of the half circle peering through the window. Some of the women were giggling like pubescent girls and already in muted conversation. A burly woman turned to Anne, “Could you imagine me in one of those? Mind you, I’m sure my Alfred wouldn’t mind.” Her eyes, like Anne’s, were hungry for the sight of others, and her mouth and ears craving conversation. It was something that outback wives had in common.
“Does anyone really wear those,” Anne said, her usual reservation cloaked in the mist of her smouldering elation.
The dress ended halfway up the mannequin’s thigh, and the shoulder straps, which held it up, were hung low, revealing an ample amount of cleavage. On the wall behind the mannequin was a blown up photograph of the English model Jean Shrimpton, wearing one of the new minis at the Melbourne cup.
“They’re all the rage in London, we were there a month ago,” another woman said, and all turned towards her, an authority who had been in contact with the real world.
Question
How do you think you would cope living in an outback community?
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I love novels that help me to experience a new culture, and the Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck took me on a thoroughly entertaining journey through early 20th-c China. We follow the lives of the hardworking but poor farmer Wang Lung, who marries the plain and thrifty slave O-Lan. Together, they set out on an adventure to improve their lives. But if they succeed, will they inevitably change from simple, industrious farmers to ape the idle lifestyles of the country’s Ladies and Lords? This is the question at the heart of the novel. Drought, flood, locusts, starvation, robbers and hangers on assault Wang Lung and O-Lan’s endeavours, but with their hard work, luck, and O-Lan’s wiles, they survive and begin to prosper. That is when their real troubles begin, and the repercussions reverberate through their entire household.
Ms Buck paints a vivid picture of the struggles ordinary people had to endure in China at the time, and the opium induced stupor of the rich to the plight of their fellow citizens. The fact that the author spent most of the first half of her life in China (her Chinese name was Sai Zhenzhu ) also adds much credibility to the images her work evokes. I’ll definitely be putting the rest of Ms Buck’s novels set in China on my to read list.
Another feature of the research was how common sexual teasing and banter is in the favelas. Here are some examples which I unearthed, and then a scene to depict how this aspect was used in the novel:
Scene:
Thereza and the other women climbed through the window of the office. The man who represented the mayor wasn’t due at work that day, and Dona Fernanda had locked herself in the room and let them in. Each of the women gave Fernanda their ten centavos as they straddled the window, but Thereza was allowed in free. ‘Off the chairs, and don’t touch the table, I’ve already dusted them this morning,’ her godmother said to two of the younger women who were coming for the first time. All twelve in the room settled on the floor. Fernanda pulled the blind but left the window ajar, so they could make a quick escape if the guard with whom she split the takings rapped a warning on the door. To give her an excuse for being in the room, a duster also hung from her waist. Thereza used the opportunity to scout the room for customers, and when she found her first, she started plaiting the woman’s hair. A hum laced with excitement rose as the women clustered towards the corner. ‘Shh,’ Fernanda said, putting a finger to her lips, ‘you’ll have to keep it down.’
An ivory-skinned woman licking her strawberry lips, her golden-sand hair trailing in the wind, was the first image they saw when Fernanda switched on the television set. The intense sigh that circulated bonded the women through their dreams. Hers was the image they mostly saw when they came to watch the telenovelas, those soaps of higher-class life in the cities that caused the women to both envy and adore the lifestyles of whitewashed villas, American cars, designer clothes and romantic love.
‘What’s she waiting for? She should give it to him before he finds another lover,’ one of the women shouted.
‘It’s good to let them wait a while, then it’s sweeter, Rosie.’
‘What are you talking about, Carmella? You’re so hot all the time that you’re out of your panties before the man’s even swollen.’ The women laughed in unison, as they hurled a constant flow of explicit sexual banter and teasing around the room.
‘At least mine are clean,’ Carmella retorted.
‘That’s only because you hardly ever have them on.’
‘Shh,’ Fernanda reminded them, though creased at the waist too.
‘You’re only jealous because you know I’d win myself a coroa before you,’ Carmella said.
‘You… as black as you are! Have you ever seen a black do anything but clean in one of these telenovelas?’
‘Hmm, hmm,’ the women agreed.
‘Have you not heard of the black Cinderella? When she married her coroa she gained wealth and whiteness, too.’
‘Hmm, hmm,’ the women agreed again, most having feasted on the story.
Thereza laughed along with them, and only when she became intoxicated by the ribbing did she risk the odd comment of her own, because she could not describe a lover’s stroke with the breathless tone of experience like the other women, and would be found out if she tried. She came to soak up the striking images that many of the others failed to notice, like the woman from the favela who was in the parliament, or the women who worked alongside men in the offices in a way rarely seen in the brawny work-gangs on the plantations. Only when able to watch the pictures streamed from the capital did she feel a belonging to the country. Its sleek-lined buildings of concrete and glass, with wide, spotless avenues, pointed like an arrow to the cities in the South, an indicator of where all should head if they had designs on taking part in the future. She had never been further than the nearest towns, which were a few hours on foot, and a little quicker by truck over the rugged terrain. The bus journey to the southern cities was said to take days, which would probably give migrants time to adjust every mile of the way. That in itself was a reason for going. During the afternoons, she liked to climb one of the hills on the edge of the shanty. Once at its summit, she peered into the distance through the heat’s haze, and was sure she could see some of those cities rising like a forest out of the land.
Dona Fernanda collected magazines from the office when the mayor’s representative had discarded them, and gave them to her. She hid them until alone in her mother’s hut, and then she would lie back in her hammock staring at pictures of skyscrapers, beachfront homes and finely cut clothes. Then when she slept, she could be spirited to those places. But the experience was never as uplifting as a stomping spiritual in church, unless she was able to watch those images on the television for herself.
Rolanda was her favourite show. It was said she had become a model after being discovered in the streets of Rio, proving that the blessed hand of fate could protect those brave enough to travel to the cities. She had read in a magazine that Rolanda had travelled to London, Paris and Rome, and though she had no idea where those places were, it left her feeling caged. Now Rolanda hosted her own talk show, had three children and had bought two homes. Thereza had saved the magazine that told the story of how Rolanda, a poor country girl from the North, had travelled to the South many years ago. She had sought to interest Tomas in the story, thinking it would swell his desire for the cities. But all he had asked was if he could borrow it for his lessons. Some had urged her to grant him a taste of the juices he would be missing if she went without him. The thought had been tempting, until she realized that the women who had advised her had used the same trick, and they were still trapped with numerous children in the shanty. Still, she hadn’t given up on him, and planned to give it one more year to turn him in her direction.
‘Thereza, come here when you’ve finished,’ Dona Fernanda said. Thereza twisted the last plait in the woman’s hair, collected her payment, and then joined her godmother on the other side of the room, where the other women couldn’t overhear them.
‘Did you remove my name from the carnival competition?’ Thereza asked.
‘Yes, yes. But when I tell you what I saw you may wish I hadn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘On my way home last night I saw Tomas.’
‘He must have been going home, after he left me.’
‘He went into the shack of another woman, Thereza. Her name is Dona Lena. Do you know her?’
Thereza shook her head and her eyelids fluttered. ‘Maybe he carried her some food.’
‘He may have been carrying something to feed her with alright, but there was nothing in his hand.’
Thereza shuddered. ‘Are you doing this because I decided not to take part in the carnival competition?’
‘Thereza!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Thereza said, her head turning to the floor.
‘I’m telling you because you’re my goddaughter, and I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘But there could be nothing to it.’
‘That’s what I said, so I went back early this morning to make sure. He came out of her hut and kissed her goodbye. I was lucky he didn’t see me. Afterwards I went back and asked her neighbour who I know, and she said they’d been having an affair for months,’ Fernanda added for good measure, just to make sure, although she had spoken to no such neighbour.
Thereza’s body stiffened and her head swirled. Dona Fernanda would never lie to her. She had entered carnival because he had failed to act, and then when he did, she pulled out again. What a fool she had been. The women may well have been aiming their laughter at her, for having trusted him. It was one thing to have been with other women before they started walking out together, but once they had talked about marriage and a family, she had convinced herself that he had stopped, and would wait until she was ready. One error maybe she could forgive, but this? She felt like a child in the middle of the women’s rowdy chatter. Did their lives have to be filled with coroas, the men’s with other women, all to satisfy the easiest of desires because the essentials went unfulfilled? Was there nothing that could fit only two?
She didn’t hear the knock at the door, so deep was she swimming in her reverie. Dona Fernanda snatched her arm and dragged her to the window. The other women had already scrambled out, and Fernanda pushed her through and pulled the window shut.
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I read several modern day anthropological studies (1980’s) of places in the north-east of Brazil to come up with the fictitious shantytown where the story begins. Some of the descriptions of these places included:
• Smoky, fly-infested huts, hungry toddlers and goats competing for left-overs in tin plates on dirt floors…
• Women squatting by their twig or charcoal fires
• Women taking over a younger woman’s child who they think is in danger from neglect
• The hunger madness afflicting people when they have had nothing to eat for days
So this is the environment which Thereza prays to escape and Tomas struggles to improve. Here’s a scene which depicts some aspects of it:
Scene
He hadn’t eaten for almost three days now. The dizzying hunger mixed with his worries made the mind twisting insanity creep up on him, further than it had ever reached before. He avoided walking past the market, to prevent himself snapping like the fine string struck on a berimbau player’s bow as he laid down a discordant beat. A few of those who had been overtaken by the hunger madness hallucinated that the market was in fact an oasis over-laden with fruit. Then leaping into a rage, they charged to sack it, to steal food for themselves and their families. The vendors all carried machetes hidden under their stalls, and they joined forces and fought those rabid with hunger off, sometimes chopping them to death.
Two days earlier, his hands had begun to shake. At first he thought it was because of his visions of Fabricio’s eyeless corpse in his sleep, but his mother had spotted the speckled pigmentation of the starving rising on his cheek. She had implored him to eat some of her ten spoonfuls of farina, but he refused to take food out of her mouth.
Exhaustion sapped his limbs as he climbed the hill to Dona Menzies’ shack in the boiling sun, carrying a bucket. Her husband worked at a sugar mill, which was two hours travel away. Only on a few occasions had Tomas seen him, as he slept most of the time he was home in the shanty. But his job meant they were better off than most. Her goat was tethered outside feeding from a tin tray. Pentecostal hymns seeped from inside, this time at a genuine service, as that branch of the church had swept through the shanty like a virus, to compete with Catholicism and the various forms of Candomblé.
Under the shade of the overhanging roof opposite Dona Menzies’ shack, Tomas slumped back onto his haunches, to wait for them to finish their doubtful pleadings. A street-child crept up to steal food from the goat’s tray and hid behind a hut to gorge on it, oblivious to his delirious observer. A grey shadow blurred Tomas’ vision, and he imagined that the goat’s bleating was an invitation to join it at a table piled with foods that he didn’t recognize. He squeezed his eyes shut and chewed an ounce of comfort from his gums, as he swayed in time to the rhythmic clapping booming from inside the shack.
Another five hymns interspersed with praying nibbled away at the afternoon before the congregation trooped out. Dona Menzies bade them farewell at the door. Seu Dilmar and Dona Isadora, the two who Tomas had visited to vet as prospective students, stopped on the steps for a moment. Then they went on their way as if the heart-stopping glance of recognition had not darted between them. Tomas stood up and stumbled against the side of the shack. Dona Menzies shielded her eyes from the sun to seek out the source of the clatter. She waited until the congregation had left the alleyway, and then, ‘What are you doing here?’
Tomas shuffled across to her shack, raised his bucket and lifted the frayed shirt and pants that were on top. Underneath were the last two books of his father’s. ‘I wanted to trade them and thought of you, Dona Menzies.’
‘Are you mad? What if Giomar searches the houses?’
‘I’m sure you’ll find somewhere to hide them.’
‘My answer is no, and I want you to leave, Seu Tomas.’
‘Then… could you pay me an advance on the next time I work for you; we could leave it several weeks.’
Her face contorted like tomatoes left to dry in the sun. ‘What do you take me for? Do you think because my husband isn’t here you can take advantage? There’ll be no next time.’
‘But Dona, you’re my only patroa… There’s no one else I’d come to like this.’
‘I’ve been more than good to you, Seu Tomas.’ She gathered up her dragging skirt, worn especially for church, and swung back inside.
‘We’ve nothing to eat,’ Tomas said to the slamming door. He stayed where he was, swaying in the heat, knowing she could see him from behind the wooden slat window.
After a short standoff, she stomped back out and slapped two reais on the steps to be rid of him. ‘There’ll be no more where this came from,’ she said. Tomas waited until she had scuttled back inside to pick up the coins. If he bought supplies for Dona Dora too, it would only be enough to see them through one day. So he would have to come up with some other way if they were to survive.
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I saw a thread recently on a kindle forum about writers not interacting with their readers enough. I forget which one it was—I’ll have to remember to bookmark them in future. But my writing alter ego couldn’t help but conjure up a short scene to illustrate the indie author’s problem.
Ann-Marie packed her bags this morning and stomped out of the house, dragging the children behind her, for the final time she said. I ran outside in my pyjamas and stood in front of the car, pleading with her to stay.
‘I think the next novel will be a hit, and it’ll all be fine,’ I said.
‘Well you can tweet that to your friends,’ she said as she threw her bags into the vehicle and ushered the children inside.
I knew what she was referring to. Three nights before I had rolled off her whilst making love, so that I could send three tweets to satisfy the early evening surfers in the West Coast time zone. Then when I returned to continue she turned her rigid back to me and feigned sleep, but I sensed her morbid frown. She doesn’t understand me, but I know you my readers do. I had also risen at five to post for my antipodean friends, wrote for two hours before leaving for eight hours at the office, ate my dinner whilst editing the previous ten pages, then stayed up until one so that I could connect with potential East Coast fans. I know you all understand me.
‘Look how happy we were when I got my first Amazon cheque,’ I reminded her.
‘Yes, that $23 lasted all of five minutes,’ she recalled with a smirk, stomping on my brief elation.
‘Will you get out of my way so that I can leave.’
‘Will you wait a minute so that we can talk this out? I’ve plotted a new route to success.’
‘I’ve been waiting for twenty years, and I’m tired of this.’
‘It’s actually 19 years 9 months and 3 days,’ I said with fake indignation.
The timer on my watch beeped. I’d set it for five different time zones, to remind me when to blog, tweet or post. ‘Don’t you have something to do?’ she said, as though she could sense my nerves tingling at the lost prospect.
‘Could you give me a minute before you go,’ I said, ‘I have to connect with my Kindle forum pals, I don’t want to let them down.’
