The Woman Who Cooked at the Boarding House During the Dictatorship

By Urariano Mota

Excerpt from the novel “Never-Ending Youth,” translated into English by Peter Lownds:

It will never be too late or too excessive to pay tribute to the amazing generosity of anonymous women. On more than one occasion, their goodheartedness sheltered us when fear of the State threatened to overwhelm us. I think about Severina, the pension’s cook, an unlettered Black woman who understood when we were balls to the wall with no one else to turn to. She was better, even, than Manuel Bandeira’s ‘Beautiful Irene, Black Irene, always good-natured Irene.’ Yes, Severina was better because her benevolence was active, she was not always the perfect maid at her mistress’s service and for this fact alone she will go straight to heaven. How much we owe her! When we were most at risk, in our flagless, mute conspiracy, Severina read the anguish in our eyes with her sly smile, and pretended we were bigwigs. It was as if she had told me: ‘I understand you. I know, if there is any future for humanity, you are and will remain my comrade.’ I dedicate this part of my memoir to her. We have to write what we remember and it must be heartfelt. Otherwise, we are just word mongers, ungrateful louts, not worth the price of our keep. I was the only one who paid for room and board. I ate downstairs while, upstairs, Luiz do Carmo was locked in that room with no food. I ate only half of whatever was on my plate. When I got up from the table with the other half intact I explained to all with earshot, ‘I eat the rest at work’. Severina seemed to approve of my subterfuge.

I knew she knew. By the third day of my half lunches, she was putting more beans and more meat on my plate, by mistake. At mealtimes, the old maid owner inspected the amount of food served to the guests. Severina put off serving me until the owner left and, when this was not possible, hid the excess meat under a heap of beans and rice. When I was sure of her complicity, I ate my meat rapidly so, when the spinster returned, my portion resembled that of the other tenants.

I believed, then as now, that Severina would have taken us to her house and covered us with her skirt to hide us, even as terrorists with no future but death. Her round Black face grows larger as I write, those willing eyes and good-natured smile. Perhaps we could have achieved the kind of popular unity we dreamed of had we cultivated the unlimited resources close at hand. Instead we were transfixed by the image of the macho Viet Cong soldier with his finger on the trigger and Che in the Chaco, pre- capture. Severina’s smile could have reminded us. She was a benevolent sister at a time of need and anxiety. She covered for us like a fugitive slave sheltering runaway Black brothers. Meanwhile, persecuted and delirious, we were looking to stir up the People. What interests me now is that I felt so guilty about stealing that food under the owner’s nose that I made believe that the extra food came my way accidentally, even though the accident was repeated. Severina, if questioned, would claim that her hand had slipped while she was filling my plate.

Urariano Mota is a Brazilian writer and journalist, born in Recife on September 29, 1950. He is the author of novels about the horrors of the Brazilian dictatorship, such as “Soledad no Recife” and “Never-Ending Youth”