The Discovery of America by the Turks Read Online Free Page B

than with their gentleman friends. With the brakes off now they did whatever they wanted to. In Sálua’s time they would wave to boys from the upper windows of the house, that chaste mongrel type of lovemaking; with their mother gone there was smooching behind the counter, kisses and touches at the backyard gate. With the exception of Adma, who didn’t like selling and hadn’t found anyone who would court her. There was skimping on the younger daughters’ trousseaus. They married boys from the region. None of them chose a fellow countryman with a propensity or disposition for business. There were expressions of praise for the marriage of Jamile, the second in age, because Ranulfo Pereira, the groom, was well on his way, with planted fields in Mutuns and his four thousand tons of cacao already harvested. Samira, two years younger, was following a modest but worthy destiny as she received her nuptial blessings in partnership with the telegrapher Clóvis Esmeraldino. Although not a lad of many possessions, he was good with words, a riddler, a decipherer of word games, and a versifier for calendars, with funds from some dubious income, and a man of some luster and esteem. As for the youngest, Fárida, she was said to be the prettiest of the Turk girls in that store—tidbit, to use the covetous term of Alfeu Bandeira, a tailor’s apprentice who worked under the watchful eye of Master Ataliba Reis, owner of the English Haberdashery, whose doors opened across the street from the home of theJafets. To tell the truth, Alfeu wasn’t pleased with the way the tidbit would offer herself with a brazenness that was firmly condemned by the families in the neighborhood. All that necking and so much petting was bound to come to a bad end. It came to a good one, however, with a hasty marriage. Fine silk veils fluttered over Fárida’s intrepid little belly, four months pregnant, with orange blossoms, the symbols of purity and virginity, on her wreath. “A virgin only in her armpits,” was the comment of Master Ataliba, chosen as godfather by the groom. “In the armpits, you think?” doubted Raduan Murad, godfather of the bride, skeptical, as a learned man should be. Both of them, however, were in accord with Dona Abigail Carvalho, the seamstress responsible for the bride’s dress, as that distinguished lady compared her to a cherub.
    Without any cacao or word puzzles, Alfeu struggled behind the counter of the Bargain Shop. He wasn’t lacking in goodwill, but he was in everything else. When the time came to balance the books it was pandemonium. When Ibrahim woke up to the fact, he saw his fishing, his betting on checkers and backgammon, his nights of a spree, and the solvency of his business all threatened. The blame for the calamity didn’t lie completely with Alfeu, because at that very same time Adma had gone on the warpath.
    It was a holy war. She had persevered in it ever since Sálua’s soul had appeared to her in a dream, suffering in the infinite and unable to assume her deserved place in the hand of the Eternal Father because of the dissipation into which the family had fallen after they took her to the cemetery. How could she enjoy the delights of good fortune if on earth her loved ones were living in iniquity and sin? In order to save the soul of her mother, Adma had entered into battle.
    She set goals for herself, established during her sleepless nights of solitude and unhappiness. There was little she could do with regard to Jamile’s arrogant behavior, however, as her sister began to take on the airs of a rich lady, quite stuck on herself. She was drinking coffee and belching up chocolate, and there was little Adma could do about it,or with the sassy Samira, a scoffer and joker in the eyes of her husband and a shameless hussy in the mouths of everyone else. One lived in Mutuns and the other next door to the train station, both far from her immediate authority. Only on the rare occasions when the wicked girls came