Free The Discovery of America by the Turks by Jorge Amado Page A

She’d been able to get only a glimpse of paradise. She was returning to hell again.
    “You don’t know, good-looking?” Adib Barud, the archangel, the hero, the prince, the hickish dromedary, smiled wider, with openly good or bad intentions now, according to how one sees it. He winked and announced, “Well, then, I’m going to show you right now, my beauty.” He repeated, “My beauty” and added, ready for anything, “My little knockout!”
    He went through the gate and gave it a shove, closing it. With one of his hands he grabbed Adma around the waist; with the other he held her head as her knot of hair came undone. She lost her voice and her movement. Adib held her in a kiss he’d learned from Procópia, the civil judge’s woman. A storm of kisses, tongues, and teeth, marking her mouth and her soul forever. She struggled, but he held her tight. Adma’s body finally softened as she fainted into Adib’s arms. It had been too much for one day. He supported her against the wall and leaned on her. He ran his hand up and down, a pleasant surprise. The ironing board had breasts, and they weren’t limp or fallen.
    Neither limp nor fallen, just one more grace of God on that afternoon of miracles. No one had fallen under the hooves of the animals; the cacao had been picked up grain by grain. There was no damage worth complaining about. As for Adib’s presence at the scene of the drama, it wasn’t because of any supernatural coincidence. Ever since his chatwith Raduan Murad, the boy from the bar had been looking for the right opportunity to speak to Adma about matters of love. When he saw her pass on her way back from the station, he asked Sante’s permission to leave and followed her closely. The rest fell to God to do, and he did it with magnificence, skill, and speed, as everyone can attest.

17
    “Today the drinks are on me,” announced Ibrahim Jafet after ordering a round of anisette.
    He took over the chair left by the druggist Napoleão Sabóia, the only native champion capable of standing up to the invincible Syrio-Lebanese at the backgammon board.
    Lowering his voice, he whispered in Raduan Murad’s ear, “Yesterday I celebrated two weeks, old friend.”
    “Two weeks, Ibrahim? A whole two weeks?”
    Yes, two whole weeks had passed without the old maid Adma’s waiting with curses and insults for her father’s arrival in the predawn hours, without the usual uproar. Some of the neighbors sensed that something was missing. Something inexplicable was happening. Adma didn’t seem to be herself at all. Ibrahim was even capable of swearing that he’d seen her smile more than once in the past few days. Two weeks of complete tranquility, no witchcraft to disturb him in the critical moment of shooting his load, preventing him from exercising his status as a male with ardor and competence—he’d stopped going limp.
    “What can you tell me, old friend? What explanation can you give me?”
    Raduan couldn’t find any immediate explanation, but he went on to conceive and accumulate suspicions in proportion to the growth of unexpected actions on the part of young Adib, always hanging about his table. For no rhyme or reason, when their eyes crossed, the waiter would smile or wink, smiles and winks of complicity. On a certain occasion he whispered in his ear, rubbing his hands,“Everything’sgoing fine, Professor!” The suspicions were ripening in the direction of what Adib might have to do with the mysterious transformation of Adma.
    Weeks went by with no great incidents except for the shooting at the Caga-Fumo, in which two women and three men died, an ordinary fight between gunmen in a whorehouse; and the murder of Dr. Felício de Carvalho, the lawyer for parties opposed to Colonel Amílcar Teles in the Pedra Branca deal, a settling of old accounts. A mediocre balance for a period of a month and a half—could it have been that the bustle of Itabuna was going into decline? Well, on one of those late