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The Hands Of The Blacks |
I don’t remember now
how we got onto the subject, but one day Teacher said that the palms of the
black’s hands were much lighter than the rest of their bodies because only few
centuries ago they walked around on all fours, like wild animals, so their
palms weren’t exposed to the sun, which made the rest of their bodies darker
and darker. I thought of this when Father Christiano told us after catechism
that we were absolutely hopeless, and that even the blacks were better than us,
and he went back to this thing about their hands being lighter, and said it was
like that because they always went about with their hands folded together,
praying in secret. I thought this was so funny, this thing of the black’s hands
being lighter, that you should just see me now – I don’t let go of anyone,
whoever they are, until they tell me why they think that the palms of the
black’s hands are lighter. Dona Dores, for instance, told me that God made
their hands lighter like that so they wouldn’t dirty the food they made for
their masters, or anything else they were ordered to do that had to be kept
quite clean. Senhor Antunes, the Coca Cola man, who only comes to the village
now and again when all the Cokes in the cantinas have been sold, said to me
that everything I had been told was a lot of baloney. Of course I don’t know if
it was really, but he assured me it was. After I said yes, all right, it was
baloney, then he told me what he knew about this thing of the black’s hands. It
was like this: - ‘Long ago, many years ago, God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Virgin Mary, St. Peter, many other saints, all the angels that were in Heaven
then, and some of the people who had died and gone to Heaven – they all had a
meeting and decided to make blacks. Do you know how? They got hold of some clay
and pressed it into some second-hand moulds. And to bake the clay of the creatures
they took them to the Heavenly kilns. Because they were in a hurry and there
was no room next to the fire, they hung them in the chimneys. Smoke, smoke,
smoke – and there you have them, black as coals. And now do you want to know
why their hand stayed white? Well, didn’t they have to hold on while their clay
baked? When he had told me this Senhor Antunes and the other men who were
around us were very pleased and they all burst out laughing. That very same day
Senhor Frias called me after Senhor Antunes had gone away, and told me that
everything I had heard from them there had been just one big pack of lies.
Really and truly, what he knew about the black’s hands was right – that God
finished making men and told them to bathe in a lake in Heaven. After bathing
the people were nice and white. The blacks, well, they were made very early in
the morning, and at this hour the water in the lake was very cold, so they only
wet the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet before dressing and
coming into the world.

After
telling me all this, my mother kissed my hands. As I ran off into the yard to
play ball, I thought that I had never seen a person cry so much when nobody had
hit them.