'The human ship' by Autran Dourado reads like a whirlwind

An outsider or unexpected event that holds up a mirror to characters and turns things upside down - it is a classic literary feature. In the hands of Brazilian writer Autran Dourado, this produced a fascinating novel in which, above all, a lot happens in the main characters' heads.

Once Maria's nanny, Luzia now looks after Maria's three children and moves in with Maria and her husband Godofredo with her adult, dark and retarded son Fortunato. Because of his mental disability, the usually mild-mannered Fortunato sometimes does incomprehensible or crazy things, and was even once admitted to an asylum, a place he never wants to return to. One day, when he loses himself in the smells and colours of Maria's lingerie and Godofredo suddenly walks in, he jumps out of the window out of fear.

From one moment to the next, Fortunato is a fugitive, as Godofredo reports his gun missing to the police. In the hands of a mentally challenged boy, it could well be life-threatening, judges Lieutenant Fonseca. He has the town cordoned off, orders the inhabitants to stay indoors and sends his men on the hunt for Fortunato, with killing as their goal. Tonho, a fisherman with an alcohol problem and Fortunato's only friend, also goes looking for him. Who will find him first?

Retake

In his own country, the Brazilian Autran Dourado (1926-2012) was a respected and frequently awarded author, including the Prémio Camões, Brazil's most important literary prize. In the Netherlands, his work has not really gained much of a foothold until now. In 1997, Dourado's famous novel Opera of the Dead (1967) released in Dutch.

But positive reviews notwithstanding, his work subsequently disappeared into oblivion. With the translation of The human ship publisher Koppernik is giving Dourado a second chance; soon to be published also Opera of the Dead in a reissue. This will also give the reading public another chance to get to know this extraordinary writer and his oeuvre.

Fictitious island

The human ship is set on the fictional island of Boa Vista off the Brazilian coast, a place of past glory, separated from the mainland by an estuary less than a kilometre wide, 'an ugly dirty sea, a sea full of work and oil slicks, an ugly dirty sea, a sea of poverty, misfortune and rotten oranges, a sea of fishermen and black workers'. In the dark night, the island turned into 'a ship alone in the world'.

On that 'ship' (a reference to Plato's allegory The narrator ship) there are all sorts of colourful characters, who are given their own voices: in addition to Fortunato, Maria, Tonho, Fonseca and Godofredo, among others, Father Miguel, three inmates, the young soldier Domício - a boy still who is given an important assignment for the first time -, and a couple of ladies of pleasure.

The day of Fortunato's manhunt turns out to be a day of reversal for them all. Father Miguel, already shaky, falls from his faith for good. The inmates plot a ruse to escape. And while one prostitute dreams of love and another gives birth to a child, Maria realises she is disgusted with Godofredo and Fonseca, meanwhile, dreams of making Maria his own.

Inner monologues

How they fare, and especially how Fortunato and Tonho fare, the reader learns through their inner monologues. The writer crawls into the characters' heads, where it is a busy, messy mess: their thoughts tumble over each other, repeat and contradict each other, react and get confused.

Not without reason, translator Harrie Lemmens, in his enriching afterword, in which he explains Dourado's working methods and literary references, compares his style to Portuguese writer-psychiatrist António Lobo Antunes, that other grandmaster "of the capricious stuff in our brain".

Poetic style

It is a peculiar way of storytelling, full of sensory perceptions, which as a reader you have to surrender to, let yourself drift through, as it were. Fonseca, for instance, dreams his way out of his sad existence by thinking of 'nightclubs full of light, women full of light, with rouge, rouge and lipstick, restaurants, neon signs. Red and green, sometimes green, sometimes red. Green and red. The women red and green, lights in the night.'

And when Dourado makes Tonho fight with the raging sea, his whimsical, poetic language reflects the pounding waves and, as a reader, you sit there with the fisherman in that hot-sea boat, drunk on cachaça and the turbulent body of water.

The same dedication palpable in his novel is what Dourado asks of his readers. Sometimes that takes some perseverance, but the reward is a thrilling reading experience, like a whirlwind.