Free Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado Page A

he went over into the State of Bahia and even gave a performance for Lampião’s gang. He was in a poor town in the backlands and he didn’t just lack money for the transportation of his carrousel. He didn’t have any for the miserable hotel where he stayed and which was the only one in town or for a shot of cane liquor or beer that wasn’t cooled but which he liked all the same. The carrousel, set up on the grass on the square by the church, had been still for a week. Nhôzinho França was waiting for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in order to see if he could pick up a few pennies to enable him to get to a better place. But on Friday Lampião entered the town with twenty-two men and then the carrousel had to work. Like children, the big bandits, men who had twenty or thirty deaths to their credit, found the carrousel nice, found that looking at its spinning lights, listening to the very old music of its player piano, and getting on those beat-up wooden horses was the highest form of happiness. So Nhôzinho França’s carrousel saved the small town from being sacked, the girls from being deflowered, the men from being killed. Only two members of the Bahian state police who were shining their boots in front of the police station were shot by the bandits, before they saw the carrousel set up on the square by the church. Because maybe even the Bahian state policemen might have been spared by Lampião onthat night of supreme happiness for the bandit gang. Then they were like children, enjoying the happiness they had never enjoyed in their childhood as peasant children: mounting and riding a wooden horse on a carrousel, where there was music from a Pianola and where the lights were of all colors: blue, green, yellow, purple, and red, like the blood that poured out of the bodies of murder victims.
    That was what Nhôzinho told Dry Gulch (who was all excited by it) and Legless on that afternoon when he found them in the Gate of the Sea and invited them to help him run the carrousel during the time it was set up in Bahia, in Itapagipe. He couldn’t promise any set wages, but there might be enough for each one to get five
milreis
a night. And when Dry Gulch showed his skills at imitating all kinds of animals, Nhôzinho França got all enthusiastic, ordering another bottle of beer and declaring that Dry Gulch would stand by the entrance calling people in while Legless would help him with the machinery and be in charge of the Pianola. He himself would sell tickets when the carrousel was stopped. When it was turning, Dry Gulch would. “And every so often,” he said, winking, “one of us can take off for a shot of something while the other does double duty.”
    Dry Gulch and Legless had never picked up on an idea with such enthusiasm. They had seen carrousels many times but almost always from a distance, surrounded by mystery, their swift horses ridden by rich and whiney children. Legless had even once (on a certain day when he went into an amusement park set up on the Passeio Público) got to buy a ticket for one, but a policeman kicked him out of the place because he was dressed in rags. Then the ticket-taker refused to give him back his ticket, which led Legless to stick his hand into the change drawer that was open and he had to disappear from the Passeio Público in rapid fashion while all up and down the street cries of “Stop thief!” could be heard. There was tremendous confusion while Legless very calmly went down Gamboa de Cima, carrying in his pockets at least five times what he had paid for the ticket. But Legless doubtless would have preferredriding on the carrousel, up on that fantastic mount with a dragon’s head that was without a doubt the strangest of all on the marvel that the carrousel was in his eyes. His hatred for policemen and love for distant carrousels grew even greater. And now, all of a sudden, a man had shown up who was paying for beer and performing the miracle of calling him to live alongside