She even helped these unfortunates, as poor as poor can be. She would call the pastry seller over, give him some of yesterday’s tapioca, and while the boy was eating, look at his dirty nails, filthy feet, and frayed trousers. How could he work like that? Wasn’t he ashamed to be so dirty? When she had scolded him, she would choose some pastries for me, then give him a coin or two, and some advice: have a shower before you come out in the morning. But Toad-Leg, the seasonal fishmonger, was her favorite target. From time to time, he would suddenly disappear—both the man and the voice. Then one morning he returned, shaking, bloated with cachaça, measuring every step, on the brink of falling over again. It might seem difficult to imagine any vestiges of pride in someone like that. However, what was missing in his body and appearance, he more than made up for in courage.

A little medallion of pride and bravery decorated his past. His story had been passed from mouth to mouth on our street, in the neighborhood, throughout the city. It was one of those stories that came downriver, from distant settlements, and were reborn in Manaus, with all the power of something really true. He was from the river Purus, from a place called Lábrea, where there are lots of cripples. He suffered from leprosy, the most dreaded of all illnesses, and the most shameful. He was a rubber tapper from wartime, when American ships and planes sailed the Amazon, and hummed in its skies; the time of huge, powerful cargo ships and seaplanes. They brought all kinds of things, and took rubber to America. Then, one day in 1943, a Catalina strayed from its course up the Purus. It disappeared. There was a thorough search, and small planes crisscrossed the area. They flew low, in increasing and decreasing circles. They scoured every mile from above, and followed vultures as they wheeled in, in their search for carrion: searching, maybe, for the remains of the two crewmen of the Catalina. That’s the forest: fly over it, wonder at it, take fright, and give up. After two weeks searching, they gave up. In September, before Independence Day, the seventh, Adamor, rubber tapper and tracker, appeared in Lábrea carrying a body: or rather, dragging a heavy bundle behind him. The inhabitants crossed themselves, frightened, hardly believing their eyes. The survivor, wrapped in a hammock, had the strength to grip Adamor’s hands and cry. Flight lieutenant A. P. Binford was a wreck, naked, grazed all over, his ribs broken, both his feet twisted; he looked like a curupira, or a ghost from the forest. Adamor nearly lost his left leg. It was infected, and permanently paralyzed. In Manaus he was a hero for a night: he got a medal for services rendered to the Allies. He had his photograph taken, gave an interview; Adamor and the flight lieutenant embraced, together again, for the last time, on the front page of the papers. The tracker thanked everyone, and refused a trip to the United States. He would no longer be able to clear moorings and paths in the forest. Never again would he be a wanderer, free to look for shortcuts through the jungle. He didn’t return to Lábrea or the Purus: instead, he plunged into Manaus’s labyrinth of alleyways, built a house on the mudflats, and rotted in the stink of the swamps. The man who saved the American airman? What an achievement, saving a real hero! From a distance, the shine on the medal could be seen, pinned onto his ragged shirt. He trained his voice to produce bass notes and prolonged shouts; just as he had done in the forest, where the noise warded off the fear of solitude, animals, and ghosts. Another survivor. Adamor: Toad-Leg. No one’s past is anonymous. He had his name and nickname; he was a real rubber tapper, and he was Zana’s favorite fishmonger. “Yes ma‘am. Of course, ma’am. I’ll look for your son, ma’am.”