The Miracle of the Birds Short Story, 1979 | Afterword by Ana Miranda
It all happened in the region of Piranhas, Alagoas state, on the banks of the São Francisco River, home to Captain Lindolfo Ezequiel and his wife, Sabô. The Captain was famous for his prowess as a gunslinger and for having wed the most desired woman in the region, all of which demanded a great deal of physical vigor and constant nurturing of his reputation as a killer. One day, along came Ubaldo Capadócio, a tall and good-looking caboclo with a deft hand at the arts of literature and popular music. In addition to authoring cordel poetry, at a push he could play harmonica like no other. The poet was in hot demand the length and breadth of the region to animate baptisms, weddings and even funerals. He was also given to philandering, breaking hearts wherever he went, and was known to keep two families, one in Bahia and another in Sergipe, having sired nine children with his three wives. In Piranhas, Ubaldo Capadócio falls head-over-heels for the wife of Lindolfo Ezequiel. Oblivious to the danger, he ends up in bed with Sabô while the Captain is away on business. But Ezequiel comes back early, and in order to save his hide and become the hero of this famous tale, Ubaldo Capadócio has to call on the support of numerous witnesses, a flock of birds and just a little help from Providence. In The Miracle of the Birds, Jorge Amado turns a well-loved oral folk tale into the stuff of literature. This brief narrative, somewhere between a short story and a novella, is a tale of infidelity and dishonour typical of the popular tradition of the northeastern hinterlands. With his customary good humour and narrative flair, the author recovers and eternalizes this raucous tale, which had long enjoyed the ear of the people and done the rounds of backlands.
The Miracle of the Birds was written in 1979, commissioned by a financial institution as a year’s-end gift to its staff. The first commercial edition only appeared in 1997. In telling his story, Jorge Amado plays with some of the most traditional forms of Brazilian narrative and composes a tale of adventure filled with all the escapades of the typical folk hero. A yarn about infidelity, that is, an anecdote about a much-feared captain whose bravado and murderous fame cannot protect him from becoming a most notorious cuckold, The Miracle of the Birds also manages to be the humorous account of a “miracle”. In producing the story, which fuses fact and narrative, truth and invention, Jorge Amado took his inspiration from cordel poetry and tall tales. The participation of such real-life figures as the widow of the writer Graciliano Ramos, Heloisa, who the author tells us was visiting the town when the bird miracle occurred, lends the story all the character of unquestionable fact. In addition to Heloisa Ramos, the illustrator Calazans Neto and the poet Florisvaldo Matos are also mentioned in the account as living witnesses to the fact that the hero of the story, Ubaldo Capadócio, could make even a corpse sit up and laugh.
Ubaldo’s expedition into the rugged Alagoan backlands was going splendidly. At parties, fairs, christenings, even a bishop’s pastoral mission to Arapiraca, Ubaldo Capadócio turned up with his concertina, his guitar, and a suitcase full of ballads all ready to hang on the line, raking in a fair harvest of coins and breaking hearts right and left. After some time he reached the Sao Francisco River and made his way along its banks until he came to Piranhas. The scene of our story was famous for the beauty of its setting, for its colonial houses, and for having stood fast against Lampiao’s band years ago, a feat sung in many a ballad of the time. Yet another source of local pride was the fact that the town sheltered within its unbreached stone walls the aforementioned Captain Lindolfo Ezequiel and his legal wife, Sabô, also aforementioned but clearly deserving more ample reference to her graceful form, her dancing walk, a rear end that was a living legend, the dimples in her cheeks, and the way the hussy bit her lips to make them redder, as if saying, Oh, yes, I’d like to, ooh, I wish I could, and so on and so forth.
