It took more than seven days for Chico Paco to reach São Paulo. It took a week just to get a few hundred miles outside the Matacão and another to reach Brasilia. As Mané Pena had warned, the rainy season was the worst time to travel. Water and the red silt of the earth ran through the newly cut forest in open veins. All along the way, the roads were clotted with broken and stalled vehicles, tractors sinking in the mud, abandoned Volkswagen Beetles turned on their sides. Small groups of stranded passengers ran out in the rain from their stalled vehicles and waved down the moving vehicles. Chico Paco’s bus quickly accumulated new passengers, their cargo, their animals—both living and dead, and their hopeless stories of the road. Chico Paco gave up his seat to an old lady and her chicken and sat in the crowded aisle until it was soon necessary to stand. It was common to get out to push or heave the bus from the gutted road or to walk up an incline rather than risk having the bus slip backward or into a ravine. It was necessary to do this in the rain, sometimes at intervals of only two or three miles. The poor but well-groomed passengers were soon caked and spattered with mud, and by the end of the trip, the outside of the bus was indistinguishable from the inside. Chico Paco felt as if he had, in fact, walked to Brasilia. When he could later compare taking the bus to walking this piece of God’s earth, he often praised the virtues of walking and was apt to suggest this alternative to the stranded and wet travelers he met along the way.
When Kazumasa looked up from his paperwork, I immediately recognized Chico Paco. But to Kazumasa, this was just another muddy, green-eyed, dark-skinned, blonde northeasterner who wanted some of Kazumasa’s lucky money to ease his suffering on earth. After so many months, Kazumasa continued to give away his money as a matter of course. It ceased to concern him whether or not people had legitimate requests. No matter what, Kazumasa smiled and listened carefully, thoughtfully. Although much of his fortune had been spent, there was, by Hiroshi’s private estimates, a fortune to last a lifetime. Cousin Hiroshi, who would have been a business and economics student at the University of Keio, was an entrepreneur and investor par excellence. No matter how much money Kazumasa gave away and despite Hiroshi’s harangues about Kazumasa’s giving, Hiroshi was able to triple whatever remained, so there was virtually no end to it. Many people stopped referring to Kazumasa as the Japanese Santa Claus and began to call him the Japanese Robin Hood. It was, they said, just a more modern way of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Hiroshi himself explained the phenomenon to the press as “recycling capital.” Kazumasa would not have thought of any of this. He was simply listening to people’s stories and their desires, trying to figure out what it was that people wanted or should want out of life. After so many months, you would have thought that Kazumasa had finally gleaned something important from his research, but there we were, still listening when Chico Paco’s turn in line came up.
“I’m looking for a particular woman and her child,” said Chico Paco.
“I see,” said Kazumasa, smiling understandingly but fearing immediately that this was one of those desires that money could not buy. Kazumasa was ready to put this request in the category he called Miracles, but Chico Paco insisted.
“Her name. The woman’s name is Lourdes, and her son is called Rubens. I believe Rubens, the poor boy, is handicapped.”
Kazumasa smiled and then, realizing that Chico Paco had spoken about Lourdes, was suddenly taken aback. “Lourdes?”
“Yes, this is the address I was given. I’ve been in this line for three days now,” Chico Paco explained. He did not explain how he had also been lost in the city for another two days, taking buses and subways twisting around what seemed to him a dense concrete jungle, no different from the living jungle he had left behind, where the sun barely filters through a tight network of skyscrapers trapping a thick layer of carbon monoxide, electric and telephone wires grasping tenaciously at everything. “Everyone has said that you will be able to help me.” Chico Paco’s iridescent eyes glistened pleadingly.
For the first time in his life, Kazumasa felt a sudden twinge of something one might call, at this point, possessiveness. “Why?” he asked cautiously. “I mean, why do you want to find Lourdes?”
I knew that this Chico Paco was a young man, not even twenty perhaps, but Kazumasa could only see the mud on his feet and clothing. The men who went to Serra Pelada to dig for gold were all muddy, and perhaps this was the man, the husband that Lourdes had lost to that gold rush back in the eighties. It did not occur to Kazumasa that Chico Paco would have been a young boy, maybe Rubens’s age in those days. Kazumasa looked at Chico Paco intently, not knowing what to think, what to hope for. He had not been very successful at making Lourdes happy, he thought. Money could not cure Rubens’s paralysis, but at least, the boy was alive. That was something to be grateful for. He sighed.
Finally, Chico Paco produced Lourdes’s crumpled letter and the faded photograph of Rubens, which Chico Paco had so often gazed upon before he dropped off to sleep. The photograph had become very important to him. It was a sign from God. It reminded him of his purpose. When he looked at the photograph before he fell asleep at night, he seemed to sleep better. He could then sleep with the memory of the boy on his mind but the picture of his friend, Gilberto, in his dreaming. The boy’s face no longer superimposed itself on his dear friend, and Chico Paco felt at peace.
“Shiko Pako!” Kazumasa jumped up. “The prayers! Of course!”
People at the front of the line could hear the jubilant commotion.
“I told you,” someone said. “It is him. It is the angel Chico Paco!” Pretty soon there was a great hubbub of people, and Kazumasa’s sleepy charity line disintegrated in an excited mass of people repeating the suspicions of one bystander. “Didn’t you see those green eyes? Who could forget them?” One woman began weeping joyously. “It is God’s will!” she cried. “I prayed that I would be able to come to São Paulo from Rondônia to see the Japanese with the ball to ask for the money to buy an ice cream cart. And I am here only fifth in line. Then, I prayed that if my prayer was granted, the angel Chico Paco should take my promise to the Matacão. And he is here!” The woman was close to fainting, and the people in line around her had to brace her up.
When Kazumasa appeared, smiling with Chico Paco, people followed us down the street to Kazumasa’s apartment building. Ever since Kazumasa’s sudden winning on the lottery, the building supervisor had had to double the guards at the door in order to keep eager people away from Kazumasa’s apartment. We slipped past the guards, while the crowd clambered at the door. Kazumasa was used to this; he had to run from everyone, smiling and nodding every morning and evening. Lourdes found it easier to bring lunch down to Kazumasa at his office. Kazumasa nodded at Chico Paco, who could not help staring at me. “Nothing to worry,” he assured Chico Paco. “People very friendly. Very friendly,” he explained. “My friends.”
When Chico Paco recognized the boy in the wheelchair, all of his doubts and confusion vanished. Here was the very boy, the vision of whom had been sent to Chico Paco on the Matacão. This was the magic of the God-given mind, greater than TV, as Mané Pena had said. Chico Paco stared carefully at Rubens. Better than a faded photograph was the boy himself, saved by a pigeon and a slow-moving truck full of rags. Everything about Rubens reminded Chico Paco of Gilberto. Despite the paralysis in his legs, Rubens was a restless child, always moving here and there in his wheelchair, his hands constantly occupied with some project or another, some curiosity, some prank to play. Gilberto had been the same way; he could not be without some activity. Chico Paco wondered what Gilberto must be doing now that he could walk, now that his legs could follow his hands and his mischievous mind. How many times had Chico Paco refused to carry Gilberto somewhere to perform some ridiculous task, like painting the old Turk’s white horse with black stripes to resemble the zebras Gilberto admired in the movies, or agreeing to strap some handmade wings to Gilberto’s back and throwing him off the edge of the dunes.
“I can’t walk, Chiquinho,” Gilberto explained. “But I will fly!”
“You’re crazy. I won’t be responsible for the death of a cripple like you!” Chico Paco had refused. Now he thought with amusement that the boy Rubens had even flown. Gilberto would be interested to hear this story.
In a matter of three days, Chico Paco announced that he was ready to return on foot to the Matacão to comply with Lourdes’s promise to Saint George. In preparation for this trip, Lourdes bought him a pair of very sturdy boots, but Rubens had been preparing zealously for Chico Paco’s trip as well. Rubens announced with determination, “I am going with Chico Paco.”
“Don’t be silly,” Lourdes laughed.
“I will wheel alongside of him,” he insisted.
“What are you talking about?”
“The pigeon and I are both going. I have feed for a month.”
Hiroshi laughed, “I suppose you want to send the pigeon home from the Matacão?”
Kazumasa and I thought about this idea. It was an interesting one, but we knew Lourdes would not allow it.
Chico Paco smiled kindly at Rubens. “Your mother is right. It is not a trip for you. The rainy season is not over. I would have to carry you and your chair through the mud.”
Rubens wanted to cry. “No one has done this before. My pigeon would be the first to travel from the Matacão. Perhaps you will take my pigeon with you and release him when you arrive?” He looked earnestly at Chico Paco.
“Well, if you trust me with your animal,” Chico Paco hesitated, “I will try.”
When the word spread that Chico Paco would be leaving for the Matacão on foot with a pigeon, Batista was immediately interested. “Tania,” he said, “this idea of the boy’s is brilliant. Of course, he needs to send more birds than just one. It’s a treacherous trip for animals. You can’t expect all of them to make it. We have some birds who can make it, no doubt.”
“Maybe we can help him out. Send more birds. A dozen.”
“Chico Paco can’t carry and care for all these cages filled with birds. He will never make it to the Matacão.”
“Well then, someone should go with him. Maybe go ahead in a truck.”
“Tania Cidinha!” Batista kissed his wife. “Of course!”
In a week, Batista had arranged for a truck, loaded his birds, kissed his wife and mother-in-law good-bye, and as the truck pulled away, zealously watched the figure of Tania Aparecida in the truck’s rear-view mirror until she was a small speck. A flood of doubt welled up in his heart as he turned the corner. “Leaving that woman behind may be a great mistake.” He shook his head and almost turned back.
Over the radio, Batista heard the news about Chico Paco’s progress. Chico Paco had already left several days before with a small crowd of people, who stuffed his pockets with money for the trip, the names and addresses of relatives and friends along the way, and notes filled with other promises to be fulfilled by this same walk. A jeep with the words “Praise the Lord” and “Living Moments in Sainthood” also followed slowly behind. A reporter rode or walked alongside of Chico Paco with a microphone and a tape recorder, interviewing Chico Paco as he walked toward the Matacão. It was this radio show that Batista listened to in his truck. Chico Paco was in Ouro Prêto today. It would not be long before Batista and his pigeons would overtake the walking angel.