Life and Work
Moacyr Scliar (Porto Alegre, 1937) is the author of a vast body of work that includes short stories, novels, and essays. He received numerous awards and had his texts translated into twelve languages. Several of his works were adapted for film, television, and theater.
For Companhia das Letras, he published A Orelha de Van Gogh (1988), a collection of short stories that received the Casa de Las Américas award; Sonhos Tropicais (1992), a novel based on the life of Oswaldo Cruz; Contos Reunidos (1995), and A Paixão Transformada, a history of medicine in literature (1996).
General Considerations
A novel narrated in the first person, in an almost didactic style. It provides a clear overview of the political situation in Brazil since the beginning of the century. It begins with the arrival of Jewish immigrants in 1921, relating the social situation in Russia until the Socialist Revolution. The narrator, who knew Noel Nutels as a child on the ship that brought them to Brazil, tells the life story of this singular character who dedicated his life to indigenous causes. The action unfolds in Russia, in the upper Xingu region, and in São Paulo. The novel is full of true events and illustrious personalities from Brazilian history.
Summary
The novel begins with the narrator, who is in the ICU, telling the doctor about the life of Noel Nutels, whom he met as a child on a ship that brought them to Brazil in 1921.
The narrative proceeds in a humorous tone, despite the patient's suffering.
The unnamed protagonist harbored a deep admiration for Noel, the defender of the indigenous people, throughout his life.
He begins by recalling the episode in 1973 when Noel, hospitalized in Rio de Janeiro with bladder cancer, shortly before his death, received a visit from four generals.
"...it was the time of the dictatorship; visiting Noel, who was such a respected figure, especially in the left-wing circles, could have a positive impact on public opinion. Upon opening his eyes and seeing those four generals around him (...) he looked at them all, one by one, with his usual mocking gaze. One of the generals asked how he was. And Noel, even while dying, remained the joker he always was, replied: 'I'm like Brazil, in shit and surrounded by generals.'"
The doctor takes notes while the narrator asks him if he himself is also in shit.
"Am I in shit, Doctor? No? Am I not in shit? Are you sure? Not in shit? I'm not? That's good, Doctor. I'm not in shit, that's good."
He continues by explaining that he has Noel Nutels' life story all documented in a folder through newspaper clippings, photographs, articles, and publications. He asks the doctor to listen to him.
"...it's not for me, no. It's for Noel. No: it's for you. You should hear Noel's story, Doctor. I think something will change in you after you hear this story."
The ship that brought them to Brazil was called Madeira. It was a cargo ship adapted for transporting immigrants. They were fleeing Russia. They came from southern Russia, from Bessarabia, on the border with Romania. The region belonged to the Tsarist Empire. Jews could not leave unless they were rich. But they were not rich.
They lived in a small village, a shtetl, of poor people: farmers, artisans, small merchants. His father, a shoemaker, barely earned enough to support the family, although it was small, as he only had one sister. His father repaired the fine shoes of Count Alexei. He revered his shoes and boots, made from soft and rare leathers. The protagonist remembers starting to have nightmares in which, at night, a mocking Cossack would appear and try on the tiny booties his father had made from the scraps of Count Alexei's repairs. He would put them on and gallop on a rat, laughing at them.
The firstborn son had died a month before his birth. The dead brother had become a ghost that lived everywhere.
The pogrom, an organized massacre in the Tsarist Empire, was everywhere. Cossacks would appear at night, killing men, raping women, burning houses.
The Jews were persecuted.
One day, a man from Kiev appeared in the village. He worked for an agricultural colonization company, the Jewish Colonization Association, JCA or ICA, founded by Jewish philanthropists from the other half of Europe. They could take them to South America, where the land was promising. They could go to Brazil to work as farmers. They would receive full support.
Around this time, Nutels' father decided to go to Argentina. Buenos Aires was prospering. But Salomão Nutels decided to return to Russia. He took a ship that stopped in Recife and ended up selling shoes. In 1917, on the very day Brazil declared war on Kaiser's Germany, he was beaten up after being chased upon disembarking and missed his ship. He settled in Brazil, in Laje do Canhoto, a small village in Alagoas, and there he opened a store that sold everything from birdseed to agate chamber pots. In a short time, he had saved enough to bring his wife and son from Ananiev.
During the civil war, after the 1917 Revolution, Russia was isolated from the rest of the world. Berta, Salomão's wife, and their son had no news of him until 1920, when Salomão Nutels informed them to leave for Brazil immediately.
At that time, leaving Russia was very risky, but they left anyway.
The threats of pogroms continued. However, at one point, a man named Semyon Budyonny appeared in the village, the commander of a Bolshevik cavalry squadron. Imposing, he had a bushy mustache and a fierce look.
Budyonny appeared with his men and announced that the village had been liberated by the Revolution. It was the beginning of socialism.
One of Budyonny's men, Isaac Babel, who was staying at the narrator's house, when asked what he thought about them leaving for America, revealed himself indignant with the idea and gave a passionate speech defending the Bolshevik government, stating that finally all the oppressed would have a decent life, while in America there were only exploiters.
Years later, Babel was arrested and died in a Stalinist concentration camp.
The narrator's family's departure for Brazil was peaceful. In Hamburg, they boarded the ship Madeira bound for Brazil.
On the ship, the narrator became friends with Noel, and as soon as he met him, he was sure they would be friends for life. Noel was outgoing and self-assured. He made friends with everyone. He soon befriended a Russian sailor, a man of the left who had lived in Brazil and, years later, continued to defend his ideas with the same fervor.
The journey was long and unsanitary. The smell of urine and vomit in the hold, where they spent their nights, was unbearable. Everyone on the ship felt insecure about their new life in Brazil. However, upon arriving in Recife, the diversity of colors, the tropical vegetation, and the cheerful population dazzled them.
Salomão Nutels appeared, and Berta, upon seeing him, embraced him and cried, as did Noel.
All the other emigrants also cried.
Noticing Noel's enthusiasm for the little Brazilian boys, our poor protagonist suddenly realized that he no longer enchanted him. Brazil now enchanted him.
Salomão invited the narrator's family to live in his house. His father could help him in the store. They moved to Laje do Canhoto. Upon seeing Salomão's store, the protagonist's father refused to work there. He wouldn't sell chamber pots. He decided they would go to São Paulo. In São Paulo, they settled in Bom Retiro, a Jewish neighborhood. His father had an accident and had to have his right arm amputated. Unable to continue as a shoemaker, he started selling ties.
His father wanted him to have graduated in Medicine like Noel Nutels. He attended the José de Anchieta school. In three years, he knew everything about Father José de Anchieta, especially that he deeply loved the indigenous people, unlike most colonizers who despised them, considering them inferior, especially for being cannibals.
The narrator had a very fertile and dirty imagination. In one of the stories he imagined, his father's arm was eaten by cannibals due to their ancestral kinship with cannibalistic indigenous people. He also imagined Father Anchieta being seduced by a dying indigenous girl. His mind was populated by monstrous beings who devoured prophets and priests. His sordid mind concocted unhealthy fabrications.
He missed Noel. He could write to him, but he didn't dare, so he wrote to him only in his imagination.
His father passed away from a myocardial infarction, and he was left to support the family.
He had to drop out of school and work all day. He worked in the small store of Seu Isaac. It was called A Majestade, known as the store "Não Tem" (Doesn't Have). It sold general notions: spools of thread, crochet needles, etc. He heard nothing more of Noel until much later when he became famous and people wrote about him. Noel went to study Medicine in Recife. His parents also moved there. The house where they lived, Dona Berta turned into a boarding house. Friends like Ariano Suassuna, Capiba, and Rubem Braga also lived there.
There was a moment when the narrator became aware of his ignorance and felt ashamed. He then began to read. He read a lot and everything, including dictionaries. He led a quiet life, not getting involved in politics. As for women, he frequented a cheap brothel and that was all. He was very shy. His life became a routine. He went to the store, which he had bought from Seu Isaac for a trifle, dusted it, sat behind the counter, and read. Occasionally, a customer would appear.
In 1937, Noel went to Rio with his mother, already a medical graduate. Salomão had passed away. Brazil was living under the Vargas dictatorship. Noel participated in the production of the magazine Diretrizes, which included José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, and Jorge Amado. Around that time, in 1938, intellectuals were all communists. Communists demonstrated with protest posters.
Sarita, a fervent communist from Bom Retiro, blindly threw herself into the cause of the Comintern, the central body of communist parties in Russia, which presented a document to be disseminated in Brazilian society stating that the final conflict would be the opposition between indigenous people and whites. The movement did not take off due to a lack of adherents.
In 1940, Noel married a cousin, Elisa. A year later, the narrator also married, Paulina, the daughter of a neighbor. Through Sarita, who went to Rio periodically, he had news of Noel. Noel was working in public health; he wanted to combat malaria and get involved in campaigns.
The war had begun. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Noel and Sarita listened to Pirineus, a clandestine radio that kept them informed about concentration camps and other events. The narrator never listened to Pirineus. He preferred to remain aloof, immersed in books. Noel went to the streets, carried protest posters. In 1935, he was arrested as a communist during the Vargas dictatorship. Our narrator did not go to the streets to protest because he lacked the courage.
Around 1944, Noel and his wife were working at the Fundação Brasil Central (Central Brazil Foundation), founded by Minister João Alberto. They had been hired to work with indigenous people in regions such as Alto Xingu and Alto Araguaia, which were to be explored and colonized. Noel had been hired as a malaria specialist.
The narrator became the father of a boy: Ezequiel.
In Xingu, Noel works as a malaria specialist and cares for the indigenous people. He is accepted by the Kalapalo tribe after saving the life of a young indigenous girl who was near death. The indigenous people have affection and respect for him.
In 1951, Noel enrolls in a course for the national campaign against tuberculosis.
He decides to work in the region of the great rivers: Tocantins, Xingu, and Tapajós. He obtains air transport and soon is heading the Air Sanitary Units Service for indigenous issues. He dedicates himself entirely to this mission.
João Mortalha, a scoundrel with a murderer's past, goes to Xingu determined to become the owner of the indigenous lands. Noel, discovering his intentions, expels him from the region.
"I could understand Father Anchieta taking care of the indigenous people; Noel Nutels, I could not. For the simple reason that I couldn't imagine myself taking care of the indigenous people. (...) I, the coward, motionless; Noel, the brave one, in motion. In constant and dynamic motion. Noel was becoming indigenous. A restless indigenous man constantly traversing the trails of central Brazil. Trails that could lead anywhere, but would never pass by a store called A Majestade. Our paths had diverged forever."
Our protagonist began to have problems at home: disagreements with his wife, as well as with Zequi, who was showing himself to be rebellious.
Sarita had moved to Rio and sometimes came to visit them. She noticed that Ezequiel was in love with her. Zequi read Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. He joined the Communist Youth cell in Bom Retiro, the Zumbi dos Palmares cell. The young members of the cell, knowing of the protagonist's friendship with Noel, the doctor of the indigenous people, asked him to arrange a meeting between them. The narrator, after panicking, had a brilliant idea: he suggested they correspond with Noel. In the store, he started the correspondence that Noel was supposedly sending them. He wrote letter after letter to the Zumbi cell. The young men were ecstatic. However, Sarita discovered the fraud and threatened to reveal everything unless she herself took over the correspondence from then on. They reached an agreement. Sarita's letters were tedious and doctrinaire, which made the young men quickly understand each other. In a short time, the correspondence ended.
In 1961, Zequi entered the Social Sciences faculty. Completely involved in student politics, he became a member of the UNE (National Union of Students). Soon, he joined a group of radicals. The clandestine leaflets spoke of guerrilla warfare and armed struggle. And then came the 1964 coup.
With the military coup, Ezequiel was sent to hide at the sítio (rural property) of a friend of Paulina's. As for Noel, during that period, he headed the Indian Protection Service; he had been appointed by Darcy Ribeiro. The military found nothing against him.
There was an anti-communist major, Major Azevedo, who for personal reasons was after Noel.
The narrator had an affair with Iracema, a vulgar type, despite being beautiful, who appeared at the store as a fabric representative. It was his first and only passion.
One day, the narrator missed the last letter Noel had written but not sent. Iracema confessed to him that she had taken the letter at the request of her brother Mortalha, the same man Noel had expelled from Xingu. Mortalha wanted to incriminate him and, with the letter in hand, gave it to Major Azevedo, who, strangely, tore it up and threw it away. Ezequiel went to France. He earned a master's degree, then a doctorate, and became a professor in Limoges. He never returned. He married a Frenchwoman and had two children.
His mother went to a nursing home, completely senile, and passed away there.
His sister Ana became a competent psychologist and got rich.
Paulina wanted to move to Israel. She would never return. The narrator took her to the airport, not without trying to persuade her to stay. They said goodbye, and he never saw her again.
The narrator began to live alone. Ezequiel hardly wrote, unlike Paulina, who wrote long letters keeping him informed of her experiences at the Kibbutz.
He sold the store, which was not doing well, and besides, he imagined specters of bugres (indigenous warriors) beneath the ground. After selling the store, he moved to a small apartment, and his financial problems ended.
On one occasion, he heard on the news that Noel was hospitalized in serious condition. The news affected him so deeply that he immediately decided to go to Rio to visit him. Upon arriving, he leaned over Noel and begged him not to leave him.
Noel was dying. The narrator withdrew, and five generals made comments about the patient.
Back home, he imagined opening a store in Xingu. It would be called "A Majestade do Xingu" (The Majesty of Xingu).
In "A Majestade do Xingu," there would be room for the real and the imaginary. The perfect conjugation of the practical and the mythical.
Tired from the journey, the narrator fell asleep and dreamed that a Cossack, during a pogrom, buried the heel of his boot in his chest. Josiléia, his maid, helped him when he woke up feeling the horrible pain, taking him to the hospital.
He concludes by saying that this is his story and that it is only important because it is, in part, Noel Nutels' story.
Characters
• Narrator - an unnamed character and admirer of the defender of the indigenous people in upper Xingu - Noel Nutels - a Jew whom he met coming to Brazil, fleeing revolutionary Russia as children aboard the ship Madeira.
• Narrator's father - a shoemaker, had his right arm amputated, dreamed of making his son a doctor, settled in São Paulo.
• Ana, narrator's sister - a brilliant student who fulfills her father's dream by graduating in psychology.
• Ezequiel / Zequi - narrator's son with Paulina, daughter of a neighbor in Bom Retiro, a São Paulo neighborhood where he settled as a merchant. An angry boy, considered a bad leader at school.
• Paulina - narrator's wife, returns to Israel.
• Sarita - neighbor in Bom Retiro, a young woman from a wealthy family, disdained luxuries. Upon returning from Rio de Janeiro, where she always went, she brought news of Noel.
• Iracema - João Mortalha's sister, becomes involved with the narrator.
• Noel Nutels - left-wing revolutionary, passionate about the indigenous cause in Xingu, came to Brazil at a young age with his mother at his father's command. On the ship Madeira, he meets the narrator.
• Salomão Nutels - Noel's father, settled in Brazil in Laje do Canhoto, a small village in Alagoas, after trying to leave Buenos Aires to return to Russia.
• Berta - Noel's mother, settled in Brazil as a boarding house owner, owns the house where Ariano Suassuna and Rubem Braga, now famous writers, would stay.
• Elisa - cousin whom Noel marries in 1940 and who will be his companion in his adventures in upper Xingu.
• João Antônio Silva, known as João Mortalha - troublemaker, outsider, aspired to indigenous lands in upper Xingu, decided to spread smallpox among the indigenous people by contaminating clothes. He contracted the disease but was cured by Noel, who ordered him to disappear from the region.
• Shaman - rivals with Noel, who, as a doctor, overthrew the region's shamanism by curing the indigenous people.
• Others - Rufino the postman, the doctor who listens to the narrator, the generals who visit Noel in 1973, and Major Azevedo.
The novel begins with the narrator, who is in the ICU, telling the doctor about the life of Noel Nutels, whom he met as a child on a ship that brought them to Brazil in 1921.
The narrative proceeds in a humorous tone, despite the patient's suffering.
The unnamed protagonist harbored a deep admiration for Noel, the defender of the indigenous people, throughout his life.
He begins by recalling the episode in 1973 when Noel, hospitalized in Rio de Janeiro with bladder cancer, shortly before his death, received a visit from four generals.
"...it was the time of the dictatorship; visiting Noel, who was such a respected figure, especially in the left-wing circles, could have a positive impact on public opinion. Upon opening his eyes and seeing those four generals around him (...) he looked at them all, one by one, with his usual mocking gaze. One of the generals asked how he was. And Noel, even while dying, remained the joker he always was, replied: 'I'm like Brazil, in shit and surrounded by generals.'"
The doctor takes notes while the narrator asks him if he himself is also in shit.
"Am I in shit, Doctor? No? Am I not in shit? Are you sure? Not in shit? I'm not? That's good, Doctor. I'm not in shit, that's good."
He continues by explaining that he has Noel Nutels' life story all documented in a folder through newspaper clippings, photographs, articles, and publications. He asks the doctor to listen to him.
"...it's not for me, no. It's for Noel. No: it's for you. You should hear Noel's story, Doctor. I think something will change in you after you hear this story."
The ship that brought them to Brazil was called Madeira. It was a cargo ship adapted for transporting immigrants. They were fleeing Russia. They came from southern Russia, from Bessarabia, on the border with Romania. The region belonged to the Tsarist Empire. Jews could not leave unless they were rich. But they were not rich.
They lived in a small village, a shtetl, of poor people: farmers, artisans, small merchants. His father, a shoemaker, barely earned enough to support the family, although it was small, as he only had one sister. His father repaired the fine shoes of Count Alexei. He revered his shoes and boots, made from soft and rare leathers. The protagonist remembers starting to have nightmares in which, at night, a mocking Cossack would appear and try on the tiny booties his father had made from the scraps of Count Alexei's repairs. He would put them on and gallop on a rat, laughing at them.
The firstborn son had died a month before his birth. The dead brother had become a ghost that lived everywhere.
The pogrom, an organized massacre in the Tsarist Empire, was everywhere. Cossacks would appear at night, killing men, raping women, burning houses.
The Jews were persecuted.
One day, a man from Kiev appeared in the village. He worked for an agricultural colonization company, the Jewish Colonization Association, JCA or ICA, founded by Jewish philanthropists from the other half of Europe. They could take them to South America, where the land was promising. They could go to Brazil to work as farmers. They would receive full support.
Around this time, Nutels' father decided to go to Argentina. Buenos Aires was prospering. But Salomão Nutels decided to return to Russia. He took a ship that stopped in Recife and ended up selling shoes. In 1917, on the very day Brazil declared war on Kaiser's Germany, he was beaten up after being chased upon disembarking and missed his ship. He settled in Brazil, in Laje do Canhoto, a small village in Alagoas, and there he opened a store that sold everything from birdseed to agate chamber pots. In a short time, he had saved enough to bring his wife and son from Ananiev.
During the civil war, after the 1917 Revolution, Russia was isolated from the rest of the world. Berta, Salomão's wife, and their son had no news of him until 1920, when Salomão Nutels informed them to leave for Brazil immediately.
At that time, leaving Russia was very risky, but they left anyway.
The threats of pogroms continued. However, at one point, a man named Semyon Budyonny appeared in the village, the commander of a Bolshevik cavalry squadron. Imposing, he had a bushy mustache and a fierce look.
Budyonny appeared with his men and announced that the village had been liberated by the Revolution. It was the beginning of socialism.
One of Budyonny's men, Isaac Babel, who was staying at the narrator's house, when asked what he thought about them leaving for America, revealed himself indignant with the idea and gave a passionate speech defending the Bolshevik government, stating that finally all the oppressed would have a decent life, while in America there were only exploiters.
Years later, Babel was arrested and died in a Stalinist concentration camp.
The narrator's family's departure for Brazil was peaceful. In Hamburg, they boarded the ship Madeira bound for Brazil.
On the ship, the narrator became friends with Noel, and as soon as he met him, he was sure they would be friends for life. Noel was outgoing and self-assured. He made friends with everyone. He soon befriended a Russian sailor, a man of the left who had lived in Brazil and, years later, continued to defend his ideas with the same fervor.
The journey was long and unsanitary. The smell of urine and vomit in the hold, where they spent their nights, was unbearable. Everyone on the ship felt insecure about their new life in Brazil. However, upon arriving in Recife, the diversity of colors, the tropical vegetation, and the cheerful population dazzled them.
Salomão Nutels appeared, and Berta, upon seeing him, embraced him and cried, as did Noel.
All the other emigrants also cried.
Noticing Noel's enthusiasm for the little Brazilian boys, our poor protagonist suddenly realized that he no longer enchanted him. Brazil now enchanted him.
Salomão invited the narrator's family to live in his house. His father could help him in the store. They moved to Laje do Canhoto. Upon seeing Salomão's store, the protagonist's father refused to work there. He wouldn't sell chamber pots. He decided they would go to São Paulo. In São Paulo, they settled in Bom Retiro, a Jewish neighborhood. His father had an accident and had to have his right arm amputated. Unable to continue as a shoemaker, he started selling ties.
His father wanted him to have graduated in Medicine like Noel Nutels. He attended the José de Anchieta school. In three years, he knew everything about Father José de Anchieta, especially that he deeply loved the indigenous people, unlike most colonizers who despised them, considering them inferior, especially for being cannibals.
The narrator had a very fertile and dirty imagination. In one of the stories he imagined, his father's arm was eaten by cannibals due to their ancestral kinship with cannibalistic indigenous people. He also imagined Father Anchieta being seduced by a dying indigenous girl. His mind was populated by monstrous beings who devoured prophets and priests. His sordid mind concocted unhealthy fabrications.
He missed Noel. He could write to him, but he didn't dare, so he wrote to him only in his imagination.
His father passed away from a myocardial infarction, and he was left to support the family.
He had to drop out of school and work all day. He worked in the small store of Seu Isaac. It was called A Majestade, known as the store "Não Tem" (Doesn't Have). It sold general notions: spools of thread, crochet needles, etc. He heard nothing more of Noel until much later when he became famous and people wrote about him. Noel went to study Medicine in Recife. His parents also moved there. The house where they lived, Dona Berta turned into a boarding house. Friends like Ariano Suassuna, Capiba, and Rubem Braga also lived there.
There was a moment when the narrator became aware of his ignorance and felt ashamed. He then began to read. He read a lot and everything, including dictionaries. He led a quiet life, not getting involved in politics. As for women, he frequented a cheap brothel and that was all. He was very shy. His life became a routine. He went to the store, which he had bought from Seu Isaac for a trifle, dusted it, sat behind the counter, and read. Occasionally, a customer would appear.
In 1937, Noel went to Rio with his mother, already a medical graduate. Salomão had passed away. Brazil was living under the Vargas dictatorship. Noel participated in the production of the magazine Diretrizes, which included José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos, and Jorge Amado. Around that time, in 1938, intellectuals were all communists. Communists demonstrated with protest posters.
Sarita, a fervent communist from Bom Retiro, blindly threw herself into the cause of the Comintern, the central body of communist parties in Russia, which presented a document to be disseminated in Brazilian society stating that the final conflict would be the opposition between indigenous people and whites. The movement did not take off due to a lack of adherents.
In 1940, Noel married a cousin, Elisa. A year later, the narrator also married, Paulina, the daughter of a neighbor. Through Sarita, who went to Rio periodically, he had news of Noel. Noel was working in public health; he wanted to combat malaria and get involved in campaigns.
The war had begun. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Noel and Sarita listened to Pirineus, a clandestine radio that kept them informed about concentration camps and other events. The narrator never listened to Pirineus. He preferred to remain aloof, immersed in books. Noel went to the streets, carried protest posters. In 1935, he was arrested as a communist during the Vargas dictatorship. Our narrator did not go to the streets to protest because he lacked the courage.
Around 1944, Noel and his wife were working at the Fundação Brasil Central (Central Brazil Foundation), founded by Minister João Alberto. They had been hired to work with indigenous people in regions such as Alto Xingu and Alto Araguaia, which were to be explored and colonized. Noel had been hired as a malaria specialist.
The narrator became the father of a boy: Ezequiel.
In Xingu, Noel works as a malaria specialist and cares for the indigenous people. He is accepted by the Kalapalo tribe after saving the life of a young indigenous girl who was near death. The indigenous people have affection and respect for him.
In 1951, Noel enrolls in a course for the national campaign against tuberculosis.
He decides to work in the region of the great rivers: Tocantins, Xingu, and Tapajós. He obtains air transport and soon is heading the Air Sanitary Units Service for indigenous issues. He dedicates himself entirely to this mission.
João Mortalha, a scoundrel with a murderer's past, goes to Xingu determined to become the owner of the indigenous lands. Noel, discovering his intentions, expels him from the region.
"I could understand Father Anchieta taking care of the indigenous people; Noel Nutels, I could not. For the simple reason that I couldn't imagine myself taking care of the indigenous people. (...) I, the coward, motionless; Noel, the brave one, in motion. In constant and dynamic motion. Noel was becoming indigenous. A restless indigenous man constantly traversing the trails of central Brazil. Trails that could lead anywhere, but would never pass by a store called A Majestade. Our paths had diverged forever."
Our protagonist began to have problems at home: disagreements with his wife, as well as with Zequi, who was showing himself to be rebellious.
Sarita had moved to Rio and sometimes came to visit them. She noticed that Ezequiel was in love with her. Zequi read Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. He joined the Communist Youth cell in Bom Retiro, the Zumbi dos Palmares cell. The young members of the cell, knowing of the protagonist's friendship with Noel, the doctor of the indigenous people, asked him to arrange a meeting between them. The narrator, after panicking, had a brilliant idea: he suggested they correspond with Noel. In the store, he started the correspondence that Noel was supposedly sending them. He wrote letter after letter to the Zumbi cell. The young men were ecstatic. However, Sarita discovered the fraud and threatened to reveal everything unless she herself took over the correspondence from then on. They reached an agreement. Sarita's letters were tedious and doctrinaire, which made the young men quickly understand each other. In a short time, the correspondence ended.
In 1961, Zequi entered the Social Sciences faculty. Completely involved in student politics, he became a member of the UNE (National Union of Students). Soon, he joined a group of radicals. The clandestine leaflets spoke of guerrilla warfare and armed struggle. And then came the 1964 coup.
With the military coup, Ezequiel was sent to hide at the sítio (rural property) of a friend of Paulina's. As for Noel, during that period, he headed the Indian Protection Service; he had been appointed by Darcy Ribeiro. The military found nothing against him.
There was an anti-communist major, Major Azevedo, who for personal reasons was after Noel.
The narrator had an affair with Iracema, a vulgar type, despite being beautiful, who appeared at the store as a fabric representative. It was his first and only passion.
One day, the narrator missed the last letter Noel had written but not sent. Iracema confessed to him that she had taken the letter at the request of her brother Mortalha, the same man Noel had expelled from Xingu. Mortalha wanted to incriminate him and, with the letter in hand, gave it to Major Azevedo, who, strangely, tore it up and threw it away. Ezequiel went to France. He earned a master's degree, then a doctorate, and became a professor in Limoges. He never returned. He married a Frenchwoman and had two children.
His mother went to a nursing home, completely senile, and passed away there.
His sister Ana became a competent psychologist and got rich.
Paulina wanted to move to Israel. She would never return. The narrator took her to the airport, not without trying to persuade her to stay. They said goodbye, and he never saw her again.
The narrator began to live alone. Ezequiel hardly wrote, unlike Paulina, who wrote long letters keeping him informed of her experiences at the Kibbutz.
He sold the store, which was not doing well, and besides, he imagined specters of bugres (indigenous warriors) beneath the ground. After selling the store, he moved to a small apartment, and his financial problems ended.
On one occasion, he heard on the news that Noel was hospitalized in serious condition. The news affected him so deeply that he immediately decided to go to Rio to visit him. Upon arriving, he leaned over Noel and begged him not to leave him.
Noel was dying. The narrator withdrew, and five generals made comments about the patient.
Back home, he imagined opening a store in Xingu. It would be called "A Majestade do Xingu" (The Majesty of Xingu).
In "A Majestade do Xingu," there would be room for the real and the imaginary. The perfect conjugation of the practical and the mythical.
Tired from the journey, the narrator fell asleep and dreamed that a Cossack, during a pogrom, buried the heel of his boot in his chest. Josiléia, his maid, helped him when he woke up feeling the horrible pain, taking him to the hospital.
He concludes by saying that this is his story and that it is only important because it is, in part, Noel Nutels' story.
Characters
• Narrator - an unnamed character and admirer of the defender of the indigenous people in upper Xingu - Noel Nutels - a Jew whom he met coming to Brazil, fleeing revolutionary Russia as children aboard the ship Madeira.
• Narrator's father - a shoemaker, had his right arm amputated, dreamed of making his son a doctor, settled in São Paulo.
• Ana, narrator's sister - a brilliant student who fulfills her father's dream by graduating in psychology.
• Ezequiel / Zequi - narrator's son with Paulina, daughter of a neighbor in Bom Retiro, a São Paulo neighborhood where he settled as a merchant. An angry boy, considered a bad leader at school.
• Paulina - narrator's wife, returns to Israel.
• Sarita - neighbor in Bom Retiro, a young woman from a wealthy family, disdained luxuries. Upon returning from Rio de Janeiro, where she always went, she brought news of Noel.
• Iracema - João Mortalha's sister, becomes involved with the narrator.
• Noel Nutels - left-wing revolutionary, passionate about the indigenous cause in Xingu, came to Brazil at a young age with his mother at his father's command. On the ship Madeira, he meets the narrator.
• Salomão Nutels - Noel's father, settled in Brazil in Laje do Canhoto, a small village in Alagoas, after trying to leave Buenos Aires to return to Russia.
• Berta - Noel's mother, settled in Brazil as a boarding house owner, owns the house where Ariano Suassuna and Rubem Braga, now famous writers, would stay.
• Elisa - cousin whom Noel marries in 1940 and who will be his companion in his adventures in upper Xingu.
• João Antônio Silva, known as João Mortalha - troublemaker, outsider, aspired to indigenous lands in upper Xingu, decided to spread smallpox among the indigenous people by contaminating clothes. He contracted the disease but was cured by Noel, who ordered him to disappear from the region.
• Shaman - rivals with Noel, who, as a doctor, overthrew the region's shamanism by curing the indigenous people.
• Others - Rufino the postman, the doctor who listens to the narrator, the generals who visit Noel in 1973, and Major Azevedo.
