Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant : A Novel     by Manuel Antonio De Almeida, Translated by Ronald W. Sousa Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Published by Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January 2000 Format: Hardcover, 224 pages Dimensions: 0.88 x 8.60 x 5.78 in. ISBN: 019511549X List Price: $30.00, £18.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £18.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $30.00 Published by OUP Format: 224 pages Not available for ordering

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What did it mean to be free, but poor, in a country of masters and slaves? Almeida’s novel, first serialised in 1852, gives us a fascinating and highly entertaining glimpse into the lives of Rio de Janeiro’s ‘middling folk’ — barbers and midwives, policemen and schoolteachers, palace servants and petty legal functionaries, gypsies and sorcerers — at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In fact, we could say that the novel, set in the period between 1808 and 1821, when the Portuguese court took flight from the threat of Napoleon’s armies and installed itself in Brazil’s future capital, bears witness to the birth of the modern city, one with an entire way of life, a ‘popular culture’, that was unique to those sandwiched between the country’s ruling and producing classes, and who were forced to survive by their own wits and means.

One of a kind, it’s impossible to pigeonhole this book in any of the literary movements of the century: too sketchy and narrow in its social focus to be a Realist novel, but too morally neutral and anti-idealist to be a Romantic work. The rough and tumble of the young rogue Leonardo’s adventures, and his transit through a succession of precarious ‘positions’ before his eventual marriage and enlistment in the militia, make comparisons with picaresque novels like Tom Jones or Lazarillo de Tormes tempting. But here the blows of life are always cushioned for Leonardo by an entire network of mutual support — kinship relations, sponsorship, favours, surrogate families (from which the mythical Brazilian patriarch seems conspicuously absent) — that allow him to enjoy rather than suffer his condition of congenital vagrancy, a ‘dependent’ on the good will and hospitality of those around him. So the pace of the book is set not so much by the drama of social ascendancy and success against the odds, as by Leonardo’s endless, playful efforts to evade the career plans laid by his concerned sponsors and to outwit the forces of officialdom, law and order, epitomised above all by the terrifying character of the chief of police, Major Vidigal (based on a actual historical figure).

All of this confirms the view of Brazil’s leading literary critic, Antonio Candido, that Leonardo represents a prototype of that icon of Brazilian popular lowlife who became legendary following the abolition of slavery, in the first half of the twentieth century: the malandro or hustler who, by a mixture of cunning and charm manages to dance his way along a tight-rope between the world of respectability and power, and that of poverty and humiliation. In Almeida’s indulgence of Leonardo’s cheeky indolence and of the general irreverence of Rio society towards officialdom (the novel includes some wonderful little vignettes of religious festivals that have been hijacked and ‘carnivalised’ by the people), it is the satirical journalist’s eye for the truth that comes through, his determination to tear away the veil of polite hypocrisy and tell it as it really was. This makes the book a refreshing and rare alternative to the mainstream literature of the period, with its myths and romances of the new-born nation. A real gem, one of Oxford University Press’s excellent new Library of Latin America series, accompanied by two informative and enlightening essays on the novel and its context.

‘Here comes the weasel now, Major.’

‘Close in, close in!’ said the major.

And each man went off to his assigned position. The major hid in a corridor doorway and kept his eye out.

There approached the major a figure calmly whistling the refrain of a modinha. When he was a short distance away the major leaped out at him and seized him.

A feeble ‘ay’ was uttered, accompanied by a ‘Release me! What is this?’

The major looked more closely, since he had not recognised the voice of Teotônio, and saw that he had captured a poor hunchback, one who on top of that was crippled in the right leg and the left arm...

The major burned with a fury and, gathering together the grenadiers, said to Leonardo: ‘He didn’t come out —’

‘Yes, he did,’ the latter replied; ‘wearing a white jacket and a straw hat. I saw him turn down toward the door where you were posted.’

‘White jacket and straw hat?’ asked the major.

‘Yes, sir, and black breeches. I didn’t grab him because I could see that he wasn’t going to be able to escape you, Major, sir.’

‘Oh the scoundrel, the scoundrel,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve never been so... It was the hunchback, the cripple...’

‘He does a very good hunchback and a very good cripple,’ said one of the grenadiers. ‘I saw him do them once, and it was just like real life...’

The cripple the major had captured had indeed been Teotônio. Leonardo laughed up his sleeve at the trick that had been played on the major.

It was not long, however, before that pleasure turned sour, as the major came to find out that it had all been done with his connivance. 152-53